Seconds later, the door quietly opened.
She undressed quickly, laying each article of clothing exactly where it had been. Then she stood in the middle of the room, naked again, now with the moonlight cutting a ribbon of white across her.
She climbed back onto the bed, a bare knee first. She started to ease beneath the covers.
He sprang up, surprising her so that she began a slight scream.
He grabbed her shoulders with both arms and pushed her back down onto the mattress. An image flashed into his mind as he saw the scar across her throat: the image of the Italian youth who'd tried to kill her.
He lay on top of her, pinning her down playfully and trapping her between himself and the mattress.
He began to laugh, showing her that everything was all right.
'Did I scare you?' he asked.
'Half to death' she said, her British intonation sounding particularly indignant.
'What's wrong? Restless?'
'I couldn't sleep' 'No?' He gently' slid off her and sat up, propping a pillow against his back. She sat up with him, the sheet falling away from her and resting across her lap.
'I went out' she said.
'For some air. I took some change from your dresser,' she said.
'The air is free,' he offered.
'Of course,' she said.
'I was looking for a soft-drink machine. I was thirsty, too' 'Find it?' he asked.
'Yes she said.
He smiled, watching her closely and seeing that she was perfectly at home with a lie.
'I guess customs are different here from in England,' he said.
'Sorry?' she asked, cocking her head slightly and not knowing what he meant. He studied her carefully in the soft indirect light. He could see all of her, from the delicate features of her face to where the sheet lay motionless and slightly rumpled across her lap.
'Customs?'
'Yes,' he said.
'Over here, people don't normally get sodas out of telephone booths.'
There was a moment's awkward pause, as if she'd been slapped suddenly, not expecting it at all. Then her mouth flew open, not in defensiveness, it seemed, but in resentment.
'Why, you spy,' she charged.
'You sneak!'
'Me? It wasn't me who was skulking around in the dark.'
'Might just as well have been' she ranted indignantly. She folded her arms across her breasts so that he could see them no longer. She pulled up the sheet and held it to her.
'You're a wicked, distrustful man she declared.
'I know this trick,' he said.
'You learn it in the first year of law school. Put your opponent on the defensive. Don't try it with me.'
She looked away from him in disgust.
'Tell me who you telephoned ' 'No one' she said, abandoning her initial tactic and now playing the hurt little girl.
'The booth was out of order.'
'I could see that much. Who'd you try to call?'
She reached to him and took his hand. His hand resisted slightly, indicating to her that he wanted the truth, not affection, not at that I moment, anyway. Her face appeared confused, as if torn between two confessions, neither attractive. Then she spoke to him with feeling, the same sincere voice that she'd first used to lure him into her case weeks earlier.
'The truth will hurt you, I suspect' 'Not as much as the goon on the boat wanted to hurt me, I hope.'
Her voice was quiet, appearing to come from the heart as much as from the scarred throat.
'No,' she agreed with a weak smile.
'Not that much ' She paused and then gave it to him, as if to thrust a dagger quickly to get it over with.
'I already have a lover,' she said.
The bluntness of it took him aback. He could not find words. She could.
'In point of fact' she said slowly,
'I was living with a man in Montreal. Before I came down to see you.
When this is over I plan to go back to him. I love him.'
He sensed a certain deflation within his chest, a sensation of hopes tumbling. He knew he had no right to her, no claim, other than a professional and theoretically dispassionate one. She too, like Andrea, like his ex-wife, was another man's woman. He had no right to expect otherwise.
'I've been thinking of him;' she said.
'Each time I've been in bed with you… Shall I go on?'
'Why not?'
'Each time I've been in bed with you, I've thought of him. At least part of the time. I wanted to hear his voice' she said, still holding his hand.
'Even if only for a few minutes. That's where I was. That's who I tried to call.' She watched her words sinking in and watched his expression, which he tried to maintain without change.
'I'm sorry,' she said.
'Sorry? Why?'
'I thought you might be hurt' she explained.
'Most men like to think they're the only ones.'
'I suppose they do,' he allowed, the sullenness in his spirit carefully disguised.
'Some men. I won't make that mistake. As long as we understand each other.'
'I think we do,' she said. She kissed him affectionately, not as a lover might, but as a good friend would. She was very tired, she explained further. She settled down onto her half of the twin beds and pulled the covers closely around her body. She slept.
He understood. He knew what she'd been trying to tell him and he accepted it, her story, at its face value. It fit perfectly into place.
Women like her were always taken, or so it seemed. He eased into his half of the sleeping accommodations.
He wanted to turn to her. He wanted to ask more about the other man.
Thomas disliked him, having never met him, and wanted to know about him, perhaps to be able to find a chink in the man's armor, a character weakness which she'd never noticed.
He lay there in thought, feeling very lonesome, feeling quite left out from something he wished to share. He wanted to wake her and join her on her side. But now, because he'd asked about the telephone call, he couldn't. He wondered why he couldn't have kept his suspicions to himself. At least for one more night.
They checked out of the motel and drove across Barnstable, passing through a strip-mining area and then by a coal-processing plant.
They easily found the white split-level home, surrounded by bare trees, which had the name J. GROVER on the mailbox before it.
When Thomas pulled his car to a stop at the curb before the house, he noticed a long blue car already parked in the driveway. A young girl, school aged and appearing to be about ten, played on the front walk.
Thomas turned off the ignition of his car.
'Coming with me?' he asked Leslie.
'If you want me to' she answered.
'You don't have to.'
She pondered it for a moment.
'Tom,' she said, 'it's upsetting to me.' at is?'
'To have to look at this man. An associate of my father's.' She hesitated.
'I know I come across as pretty cold-blooded sometimes, but other times … well, I am human, you
