The Sugar House

for self-preservation.

“You know, I’m in the information business,” Dick Schiller said at last. “I can’t help thinking how ironic it is that my daughter could go unidentified for nine months, just because a missing persons report was filed in one jurisdiction and she died in another.”

“We’re not exactly at the cutting edge of technology-” Tull began, but Tess interrupted him.

“What do you mean, nine months? Gwen was missing for more than a year.”

“Gwen walked out of the clinic on her birthday, January thirty-first. I think I know my own daughter’s birthday. She had turned eighteen, and they couldn’t hold her legally against her will. The clinic staff tried to notify us before she left, but we were en route to-I’m not sure where we were in January. Chile?”

“Wherever we were right before Brazil,” Patsy said, adding for Tull and Tess’s edification: “We were in Rio for Carnival.”

“Gwen didn’t check herself out, that’s the point,” Tess said. “She ran away in October of the previous year, well before her birthday. Devon Whittaker told me she heard about the escape from someone else who was still at the clinic.”

“Impossible,” Dick Schiller said. “We continued to receive e-mail from her through January. Not much, I grant you-she was very angry at me for putting her in Persephone’s-but she stayed in touch.”

“Through e-mail,” Tess said.

“Right.”

“And you knew she was the one writing the e-mail because…”

Schiller put his head in his hands. “Because it came from her e-mail address at the clinic. How stupid can I be to think that means anything? Anyone who had her laptop could have used it to send me those notes. No wonder they sounded so stiff and impersonal. But Jesus Christ, why would the school wait so long to report her missing?”

“Because they didn’t want to appear negligent,” Tess said, working it out for herself as she spoke. “Gwen ran away, probably to punish you for putting her there. Maybe she thought you’d go crazy, offer a huge reward, or at least come home from your honeymoon. But the clinic decided to risk not notifying you, to stall until her eighteenth birthday. Then, at least, they could say she left legally, instead of having to admit she had run away. I imagine Persephone’s long waiting list might have been somewhat diminished if the news had gotten out about her escape.”

“All this subterfuge, to disguise the fact that a girl had run away?” Dick Schiller shook his head. “It seems excessive.”

It did, Tess thought. The clinic was hiding something else, something bigger. But what?

“Where is this place?” Tull asked her, his mind following the same trail.

“On the Eastern Shore, near Easton,” Patsy said. “It’s really quite nice. I thought Gwen would be happier in some place that didn’t look so much like a hospital.”

Maybe, Tess thought. Or maybe you thought you’d be happier if she were tucked away in some place far away from Potomac, even while you were trotting around the globe.

“We need to get out there,” Tess said. “We need to get there with a warrant before Herman Peters extracts Gwen’s name from someone, which will give the clinic a heads-up that we know she was dead three months before she was reported missing.”

Tull stood up. “We could drive straight there, radio the state police and county officials to meet us there. If Herman is pushing too hard, the department might make the information public, and it will be all over WBAL and the television stations. They’ve got no reason to hold it back. They knew I was meeting with Gwen’s next of kin this afternoon. But it would still take us two hours to get over there.”

“Three hours, once you factor in afternoon traffic on the Capital Beltway,” Schiller said. “However, my company has a helicopter on call. My old company, I should say, but I think they’d let me use it under such extraordinary circumstances. Would that help?”

“Sure.” It was Tess who answered, not Tull. He gave her a look as if to say, Why do you think you’re coming along for the ride? She knew, in the end, he would let her go with him. It was only fair, after she had accompanied him here, and Tull was always fair. She couldn’t wait to step out of a helicopter on the clinic’s grounds, to let them see who had brought the police to their door. One if by land, two if by sea, three if by air.

It was their fault. They should have let her in the first time she asked.

chapter 16

TESS DID A PRETTY GOOD JOB KEEPING HER STOMACH south of her throat until the helicopter was about halfway across the Chesapeake Bay. She clenched her fists, trying to hide them from Tull. There was more swaying than she would have expected, a rocking motion not unlike being at the top of a Ferris wheel, although this was side to side, instead of back and forth. It seemed to take forever to cross the wide expanse of water and head south, toward the protected cove where Persephone’s Place waited.

Waited unwittingly, Tess hoped, because otherwise this whole exercise was pointless.

“You’re sure there’s a place for me to land?” This was the pilot, a stone-faced man who gave the impression that he considered this particular assignment no different from ferrying corporate executives around the Mid- Atlantic region.

“There’s supposed to be,” Tess shouted back.

“Don’t see it yet. We may have to improvise.”

“Everyone’s in place on the ground,” Tull put in. “The state police have blocked off the road leading to the school, and the Department of Natural Resources police are at the cove’s edge. All they need is the go-ahead from us. You ready, Tess?”

He was grinning at her, obviously attuned to the second, third and fourth thoughts that had dogged Tess since she had talked her way into this helicopter. She was grateful now that she had only picked at her lunchtime sub. Eaten, it seemed, about a million years ago, back in a place called Baltimore, when the matter of Gwen Schiller’s death was still tragic, but not particularly sinister or mysterious.

Tess nodded, and the helicopter began its vertical descent, its propellers whipping the branches of the trees at the property line. Tess wondered if Sarah Whittaker was watching this scene unfold from her casement window on the third floor. They were on the ground blessedly quick. Ducking their heads beneath the blades, Tull and Tess ran toward the white-and-pink house. He had lent her a shoulder holster, so she looked quasi-professional, the bulge of her gun visible beneath her suede jacket. Sirens sounded in the distance, and the state police rolled up the drive, even as the DNR police massed on the shore behind them.

Once free of the helicopter, Tess began enjoying herself immensely. Girls were pouring from the house-one, three, five, eight, a dozen in all, all quite thin and frail looking. She thought she glimpsed Sarah’s furred face among the girls, but they looked startlingly alike. Behind them came the orderlies who had tended to Tess after her shipwreck, and behind them even more staff, all new to her. Finally, she saw the auburn-haired woman and the doctor.

“Capsize again?” This was the woman, Miss Hollinger, her mechanical voice as crackly as dry ice today, steam coming out of her mouth in the cool air, a coat thrown around her shoulders. The doctor was not so cool; he moved toward them, then started back toward the house, only to find state police blocking his way.

“Baltimore City police,” Tull said, showing his badge. “Homicide.”

“Homicide?” The woman’s puzzlement was sincere. “No one has ever died here.”

So you’re not surprised to find the police swarming over the lawn, but you are surprised to find out it’s related to a homicide. Interesting, Tess thought.

“One of your patients, Gwen Schiller, was killed after leaving the school.”

Miss Hollinger hugged her elbows, but said nothing. She was trying to keep her face empty, but Tess thought she saw an excited glimmer in the pale blue eyes.

“She was killed November sixteenth.”