Transgressions

an elbow, smiled at the other boys, telling them with a motion of her elegantly coiffed head to move along. She dumped ice out of a glass onto a napkin.

'Dance with your old ma, Peter.'

Somewhat shamefaced, he allowed himself to be led to the dance floor, holding ice knotted in the napkin to his lower lip.

'It's twice already this month I see you too much in drink.'

'It's a wedding, Ma.' He put the napkin in a pocket of his tux jacket.

'I'm thinking it's time you get a grip on yourself,' Kate said as they danced to a slow beat. 'You don't hear from Echo?'

'Sure. Every day.'

'Well, then? She's doing okay?'

'She says she is.' Peter drew a couple of troubled breaths. 'But it's e-mail. Not like actually—you know, hearin' her voice. People are all the time sayin' what they can't put into words, you just have to have an ear for it.'

'So—maybe there's things she wants you to know, but can't talk about?'

'I don't know. We've never been apart more than a couple days since we met. Maybe Echo's found out—it wasn't such a great bargain after all.' He had a tight grip on his mother's hand.

'Easy now. If you trust Echo, then you'll hold on. Any man can do that, Petey, for the woman he loves.'

'I'll always love her,' Peter said, his voice tight. He looked into Kate's eyes, a fine simmer of emotion in his own eyes. 'But I don't trust a man nobody knows much about. He's got walls around him you wouldn't believe.'

'A man who values his privacy. That kind of money, it's not surprising.' Kate hesitated. 'You been digging for something? Unofficially, I mean.'

'Yeah.'

'No beefs?'

'No beefs. The man's practically invisible where public records are concerned.'

'Then let it alone.'

'If I could see Echo, just for a little while. I'm half nuts all the time.'

'God love you, Peter. Long as you have Sunday off, why don't the two of us go to visit Rosemay, take her for an outing? Been a while since I last saw her.'

'I don't think I can, Ma. I, uh—need to go up to Westchester, talk to somebody.'

'Police business, is it?'

Peter shook his head.

'Her name's Van Lier. She posed for John Ransome once.'

SEVEN

The Van Lier residence was a copy—an exact copy, according to a Web site devoted to descriptions of Westchester County's most spectacular homes—of a sixteenth-century English manor house. All Peter saw of the inside was a glimpse of slate floor and dark wainscotting through a partly opened front door.

He said to the houseman who had answered his ring, 'I'd like to see Mrs. Van Lier.'

The houseman was an elderly Negro with age spots on his caramel-colored face like the spots on a leopard.

'There's no Mrs. Van Lier at this residence.'

Peter handed him his card.

'Anne Van Lier. I'm with the New York police department.'

The houseman looked him over patiently, perhaps hoping if his appraisal took long enough Peter would simply vanish from their doorstep and he could go back to his nap.

'What is your business about, Detective? Miss Anne don't hardly care to see nobody.'

'I'd like to ask her a few questions.'

They played the waiting game until the houseman reluctantly took a Motorola Talk-about from a pocket of the apron he wore over his Sunday suit and tried to raise her on a couple of different channels. He frowned.

'Reckon she's laid hers down and forgot about it,' he said. 'Well, likely you'll find Miss Anne in the greenhouse this time of the day. But I don't expect she'll talk to you, police or no police.'

'Where's the greenhouse?'

'Go 'round the back and walk toward the pond, you can't hardly miss it. When you see her, tell Miss Anne I did my best to raise her first, so she don't throw a fit my way.'

Peter approached the greenhouse through a squall of copper beech leaves on a windy afternoon. The slant roofs of the long greenhouse reflected scudding clouds. Inside a woman he assumed was Anne Van Lier was visible through a mist from some overhead pipes. She wore gloves that covered half of her forearms and a gardening hat with a floppy brim that, along with the mist floating above troughs of exotic plants, obscured most of her face. She was working at a potting bench in the diffused glimmer of sunlight.