Nighttime Is My Time

82

Jake could not skip his first class at 8:00 a.m., but as soon as it was over, he rushed to the studio. In his opinion the prints of the pictures he had taken yesterday looked even better in daylight than they had under the overhead light in the late afternoon. He congratulated himself as he studied them.

The McMansion on Concord Avenue really looks so 'see me, I'm rich,' he thought. The house on Mountain Road is such a great contrast to it-middle-class, comfortable suburban, but now with a mystique about it. At home that evening he had checked the Internet and confirmed that Karen Sommers had been murdered in the corner bedroom on the right side of the second floor. I know Dr. Sheridan used to live next door when she was growing up, Jake thought. I'll stop at the hotel and see if she can confirm that was Laura's room. It probably was. According to the floor plan of the Sommers murder on the Internet, it's the other large bedroom on that floor. It makes sense that precious only-child Laura got it. Dr. Sheridan will probably tell me. She's been nice -not like old 'Throw-Him-in-Jail' Deegan.

Jake put the prints of yesterday's pictures in the bag with his extra film. He wanted to have them available while he was shooting, in case he needed them for comparison.

At 9:00 a.m. he was approaching Mountain Road. He had decided that it wouldn't be smart to park in the street. People noticed strange cars, and that cop might recognize his pride and joy. At times like this he wished he hadn't painted it with zebra stripes.

I'll have a soda and a Danish, leave my car at the deli, and walk up to Laura's house, he decided. He had borrowed one of his mother's oversized shopping bags from Bloomingdale's. There'd be no car and no camera in sight. I can sneak down Laura's driveway and get my pictures of the back of the house. I hope the garage doors have windows. That way I can tell if there are any cars parked inside.

At 9:10 he was sitting at the counter of the delicatessen at the foot of Mountain Road, chatting with Duke, who had already explained that he and Sue, his wife, had owned the place for ten years, that it used to be a dry cleaner, that they were open from 6:00 a.m. to 9:00 p.m. and that they both enjoyed being here. ' Cornwall is a quiet town,' Duke said as he whisked an imaginary crumb from the counter, 'but a nice town. You say you go to Stonecroft Academy? That's pretty Tony. Some of the reunion people were in here. Oh, there he goes.'

Duke's eyes had darted to the window that faced Mountain Road.

'There who goes?' Jake asked.

'The fellow who's been coming in early mornings and some late evenings to pick up coffee and toast or coffee and a sandwich.'

'Know who he is?' Jake asked, not really caring.

'Nope, but he's another one of your reunion people, and he's been coming and going all morning. I saw him go out in his car, come back a little while later, and now he's on his way again.'

'Uh-huh,' Jake said as he got up and pulled some squashed dollar bills out of his pocket. 'I feel like stretching my legs. Is it okay if I leave my car outside for about fifteen minutes?'

'Sure, but not more than that. As it is, we don't have enough parking spots.'

'Don't worry. I'm in a hurry, too.'

Eight minutes later Jake was in the backyard of Laura's former home, taking pictures. He photographed the back of the house and even took a couple of shots of the kitchen through the door. A grill covered the glass pane over the door, but looking in, he could see a fair amount of the room. It could be a display kitchen in Home Depot, he thought. The counters that he could see were bare-no toaster, no coffee pot, no canisters, no cutsie-pie plates or trays or radio or clock. Absolutely no sign of occupancy. I guess for once in my life I was wrong, he decided reluctantly.

He studied the tire tracks on the driveway. There have been a couple of cars here, he thought. But that could be from the guy who rakes the leaves. The garage doors were closed and didn't have windows, so he couldn't check for cars.

He went back up the driveway, crossed the street, and took several more pictures of the front of the house. I guess that'll do it, he thought. I'll go and develop them right away. Then I'll phone Dr. Sheridan and ask her if she remembers which bedroom was Laura's when they were kids.

It would have been more fun to have found Laura Wilcox and Robby Brent holed up here, he thought as he put the camera back in the shopping bag and started down the hill. But what can you do? You can cover a story, but you can't invent one.

83

After her first class, West Point yearling Meredith Buckley rushed to her room for a final review of her notes for the exam in linear algebra, the course that was proving to be the toughest of her second year at West Point.

For twenty minutes she focused intensely on the notes. As she was putting them back in the folder, the phone rang. She was tempted not to answer it, but thinking that it might be her father calling to wish her luck on the exam, she picked it up and then smiled. Before she could speak, a cheerful voice was saying, 'May I have the pleasure of inviting Cadet Buckley, daughter of the distinguished General Charles Buckley, to share another weekend with her parents and myself at my home in Palm Beach?'

'You don't know how wonderful that sounds,' Meredith said fervently as she thought of the glamorous weekend she had enjoyed with her parents' friend. 'I'll come anytime except, of course, when West Point has other plans for me, which is just about always. I hate to seem rude, but I'm heading into an exam.'

'I need five, make that three, minutes of your time. Meredith, I was at a class reunion at Stonecroft Academy in Cornwall. I think I mentioned to you I was going to it.'

'Yes, you did. I'm so sorry, but I simply can't talk now.'

'I'll be fast. Meredith, a classmate of mine who attended the reunion is an intimate friend of Jean, your birth mother, and has written a note to you about her. I promised to deliver the note to you personally. Tell me when to be in the museum parking lot, and I'll be waiting for you with it in hand.'

'My birth mother? Someone who was at your reunion knows her?' Meredith could feel her heart pounding as she gripped the phone. She looked at the clock. She absolutely had to get to class. 'I'll be finished with my exam at eleven- forty,' she said hurriedly. 'I could be in the parking lot at ten of twelve.'

'That works out for me. Ace your exam, General.'

It took all of Cadet Meredith Buckley's training to force herself to put out of her mind the realization that in a little more than an hour she would know something tangible about the girl who at age eighteen had given birth to her. The only information she had so far was that her mother had been about to graduate from high school when she learned she was pregnant and that her father had been a college senior who was killed in a hit-and-run accident before she was born.

Her parents had talked to her about her birth mother. They had promised Meredith that after she was graduated from West Point, they would try to learn her identity and then arrange a meeting between them. 'We have no idea who she is, Meri,' her father had told her. 'We do know, because the doctor who delivered you and arranged the adoption told us, that your birth mother loved you deeply and that giving you up was probably the most unselfish and difficult decision she would ever have to make in her whole life.'

All this ran through Meredith's mind as she tried to concentrate on the linear algebra exam. But she could not block out the awareness that every tick of the clock brought her closer to greater knowledge of the mother she now knew as Jean.

As she handed in her exam and rushed toward Thayer Gate and the military academy museum, she realized that the reference to Palm Beach had solved the question her father had asked her yesterday on the phone. That's where I lost my hairbrush, she remembered suddenly.