“More cake,” Rafe demanded, nudging me with his foot.
“Get it yourself. I’m busy.” I had given up on fastening the daisy chain one-handed and was putting it on Justin instead.
“You’re a lazy object, do you know that?”
“Look who’s talking.” I pulled one of my ankles round the back of my head-all the gymnastics as a kid, I’m flexible-and stuck my tongue out at Rafe from under my knee. “I’m active and healthy, look.”
Rafe raised one eyebrow lazily. “I’m aroused.”
“You’re a pervert,” I told him, with as much dignity as I could from that position.
“Knock it off,” Abby said. “You’ll burst your stitches, and we’re all too drunk to drive you to the emergency room.”
I’d forgotten all about my imaginary stitches. For a second I considered getting wound up about this, but I decided against it. The long evening sunshine and being barefoot and the tickle of grass, and presumably the booze, were making me light-headed and silly. It had been a long time since I’d felt like this, and I liked it. I maneuvered my head round to peer sideways at Abby. “They’re fine. They’re not even sore any more.”
“That’s because up until now you haven’t been tying yourself in knots,” Daniel said. “Behave.”
Normally I’m allergic to bossy, but somehow this felt nice; cozy. “Yes, Dad,” I said, and disentangled my leg, which sent me off balance so I fell over onto Justin.
“Ow, get off me,” he said, flapping a hand at me without much energy. “God, how much do you weigh?” I wriggled myself comfortable and stayed put with my head in his lap, squinting up into the sunset. He tickled my nose with a grass stem.
I looked relaxed, at least I hoped I did, but my mind was going fast. I had just realized-Yes, Dad-what this whole setup reminded me of: a family. Maybe not a real-life family, although what would I know, but a family out of a million children’s-book series and old TV shows, the comforting kind that go on for years without anyone getting any older, to the point where you start to wonder about the actors’ hormone levels. These five had it all: Daniel the distant but affectionate father, Justin and Abby taking turns to be the protective Mammy and the lofty eldest, Rafe the moody teenage middle kid; and Lexie, the late arrival, the capricious little sister to be alternately spoiled and teased.
They probably had no more clue about real-life families than I did. I should have spotted from the beginning that this was one of the things they had in common-Daniel orphaned, Abby fostered out, Justin and Rafe exiled, Lexie Godknowswhat but not exactly close to her parents. I’d skimmed over it because it was my default mode too. Consciously or subconsciously, they had collected every paper-thin scrap they could find and built their own patchwork, makeshift image of what a family was, and then they had made themselves into that.
The four of them had been only eighteen or so when they had met. I looked at them under my lashes-Daniel holding a bottle up to the light to see if there was any wine left, Abby flicking ants off the cake plate-and wondered what they would have been if they had missed each other, along the way.
This gave me a whole bunch of ideas, but they were hazy and fast-moving and I decided I was too comfortable to try and put any shape on them. They could wait a few hours, till my walk. “Me too,” I said to Daniel, and held out my glass for more wine.
“Are you drunk?” Frank demanded, when I rang him. “You sounded langered, earlier.”
“Relax, Frankie,” I said. “I had a couple of glasses of wine with dinner. That doesn’t make me drunk.”
“It better not. This may feel like a holiday, but I don’t want you treating it like one. You stay alert.”
I was loitering along a potholey lane, uphill from the ruined cottage. I had been thinking, a lot, about how Lexie had ended up in that cottage. We had all taken it for granted that she was running for cover and couldn’t make Whitethorn House or the village, either because the killer was blocking her way or because she was fading fast, so she made for the nearest hiding place she knew. N changed that. Assuming N was a person, as opposed to a pub or a radio program or a poker game, they had had to meet somewhere, and the fact that no places were marked in the diary said they had used the same meeting point every time. And if those times were nights rather than mornings, then the cottage made total sense: privacy, convenience, shelter from wind and rain and no way for anyone to sneak up on you. She could have been heading there anyway that night, long before someone jumped her, and just kept going-maybe on autopilot, after N ambushed her on her way; maybe because she hoped N would be there to help her.
It wasn’t the kind of lead detectives dream of, but it was about the best I’d got, so I was spending a lot of my walk lurking in the general area of the cottage and hoping N would help me out by showing up some night. I had found myself a convenient stretch of lane: it had a clear enough view that I could keep an eye on the cottage while I talked to Frank or Sam, enough trees to hide me if I needed it, and enough isolation that no farmer was likely to hear me on the phone and come after me with his trusty shotgun. “I’m alert,” I said. “And I’ve got something to ask you. Remind me: Daniel’s great-uncle died in September?”
I heard Frank moving stuff around, flipping pages; either he had brought the file home with him, or he was still at work. “February third. Daniel got the keys to the house on September tenth. Probate must’ve taken a while. Why?”
“Can you find out how the great-uncle died, and where these five were that day? Also, why probate took so long? When my granny left me a grand, I got it six weeks later.”
Frank whistled. “You’re thinking they bumped off Great-uncle Simon for the house? And then Lexie lost her nerve?”
I sighed and ran a hand through my hair, trying to work out how to explain. “Not exactly. Actually, not at all. But they’re weird about that house, Frank. All four of them. They all talk about it like they own it, not just Daniel-‘We should get double-glazing, we need to decide about the herb garden, we…’ And they all act like this is a permanent arrangement, like they can spend years doing it up because they’re all going to live here forever.”
“Ah, they’re just young,” Frank said tolerantly. “At that age, everyone thinks college mates and house shares are forever. Give them a few years and it’ll be all semi-ds in the suburbs and Sunday afternoons buying decking at the home-and-garden shop.”
“They’re not that young. And you’ve heard them: they’re way too wrapped up in this house and each other. There’s nothing else in their lives. I don’t really think they knocked off the great-uncle, but I’m shooting in the dark here. We’ve always thought they were hiding something. Anything weird is worth checking out.”
“True,” Frank said. “Will do. Don’t you want to hear what I’ve been doing with my day?”
That undercurrent of excitement in his voice: very few things get Frank that worked up. “Damn straight,” I said.
The undercurrent broke through into a grin so wide I could hear it. “FBI got a hit on our girl’s prints.”
“Shit! Already?” The FBI guys are good about helping us when we need it, but they always have a spectacular backlog.
“I’ve got friends in low places.”
“OK,” I said. “Who is she?” For some reason my knees felt shaky. I got my back up against a tree.
“May-Ruth Thibodeaux, born in North Carolina in 1975, reported missing in October 2000 and wanted for car theft. Prints and photo both match.”
My breath went out with a little rush. “Cassie?” Frank said, after a moment. I heard him draw on a cigarette. “You still there?”
“Yeah. May-Ruth Thibodeaux.” Saying it made my back prickle. “What do we know about her?”
“Not a lot. No info till 1997, when she moved to Raleigh from someplace in the arsehole of nowhere, rented a fleabag apartment in a crap neighborhood and got a job waiting tables in an all-night diner. She had an education somewhere along the way if she was able to jump straight into a postgrad at Trinity, but it’s looking like self- taught or homeschooled; she doesn’t show up on the register at any local college or high school. No criminal record.”
Frank blew out smoke. “On the evening of October tenth 2000, she borrowed her fiance’s car to get to work, but she never showed up. He filed a missing-person report a couple of days later. The cops didn’t take it too seriously; they figured she’d just taken off. They gave the fiance a little hassle, just in case he’d killed her and
