bag, and hurried to pack her papers and clothes. For the first time since she’d seen the morning newspaper, she was functioning. She had to get back to Philly, and find out if Willa was dead and who had killed her. And there was only one way to do it. If the world believed Anne was dead, then she was going to stay dead.
For now, it was the only way to stay alive.
4
Half an hour later, Anne had turned in her apartment key to a puzzled realtor and was streaking toward the Atlantic City Expressway in the red Mustang. She had twisted her shower-wet hair into an up-knot under a white baseball cap, and its rounded bill rode low on her forehead. With the cap she wore a white T-shirt, the jeans skirt, and the leopard-print mules, because her sneakers were soaked. Her eyes were still puffy behind her Oakleys, from tears shed in the hot shower. She sensed they wouldn’t be the last.
The Mustang zoomed along the highway, and she tightened her grip on the thick, padded wheel, sheathed in fake leather. The yellow spike of the speedometer jittered at seventy, then seventy-five. Traffic was next-to- nothing, because everybody was heading to the beach for the Fourth, looking forward to a sunny holiday weekend. Anne hit the Power button on the radio, found the all-news station, and suffered through sunburn indexes, traffic reports, and ocean temperatures until the hard news finally came on. She cranked up the volume:
“Police still have no suspects or motive in the shooting death last night of Rosato & Associates attorney Anne Murphy.”
Anne bit her lip. It was so hard to hear, surreal and awful. Her alleged death was the big news, and poor Willa remained nameless.
“The Center City law firm of Rosato & Associates is offering a $50,000 reward for information leading to the arrest and capture of the person or persons involved. Anyone with information is asked to call homicide detectives at—”
It took Anne by surprise. She hadn’t even thought about a reward, much less that the office would offer one.
“Stay tuned and we’ll keep you posted on developments as they occur. For in-depth coverage of the story, visit our website at—”
Anne turned off the radio. A boxy Harrah’s bus blocked the fast lane but she accelerated to pass it. When she found open road, she plugged in her cell phone and called her house again. Still no answer. Then she called Mary again. Also no answer. She declined to leave a
An hour later, having temporarily given up on raising Mary, she reached Philly. She got off the Expressway at Twenty-second Street and took a right toward the Benjamin Franklin Parkway, a six-lane boulevard that thronged with red, white, and blue activity. The Parkway was closed by a line of painted sawhorses, and traffic was being diverted.
Anne cruised to the corner, and a cop waved pedestrians across the street. She lowered the bill of her baseball cap. She couldn’t afford to be recognized. The Mustang’s engine idled, low on gas and superheated from the long trip, and she eyed the crowds crossing in front of its muscular grille. Families held hands as they headed to the Art Museum, where aluminum bleachers and temporary tents of parachute silk had been set up, and runners loped to the Schuylkill. Art students flung Frisbees to Labs in bandannas, and kids skipped down the gum-spattered sidewalk, flying Mylar balloons. Hot-dog steam scented the air, and vendors hawked American flags, Uncle Sam hats, inflatable Liberty Bells, and T-shirts that read i got banged on the fourth of july. Eeek.
Anne tensed at being back in the city. Her neighborhood began only five blocks from here, and she couldn’t count the number of times she’d walked through this very intersection on the way to and from work, but now it didn’t feel familiar at all. It had been changed forever, taken from her. If Kevin was free, she’d lost her chance to start over. And even so, she knew her loss was nothing compared with Willa’s. If she really were dead.
The cop waved her ahead, and she looked down as she crossed the street under his nose. A wind from the Schuylkill River whipped down the wide boulevard, setting the multicolored flags of all countries flapping, rattling the chains that affixed them to the streetlights. A man crossing the street watched her as she drove by, and Anne pulled over and put up the convertible top. The cloth roof slid smoothly into place, and she felt safer with it covering her like a factory-installed security blanket.
She took off again, and in a few blocks—Greene, Wallace, then her street, Waltin—crossed the unofficial border into Fairmount. She turned left onto Waltin and stopped at an unusually long line of traffic inching down its single lane. Out-of-towners, coming into the city for the celebration on the Parkway. Strangers, swarming over her street. Was one of them Kevin? Anne eyed them under her brim. None looked like him. She came to a stop behind a white Camaro. Her stomach tightened. Everything felt different now.
She scanned the block with new eyes. Rowhouses lined it, American flags hung from the second floors, and a gay neighbor flew his rainbow-colored flag with pride. The scene looked normal enough, though it was completely parked up on both sides, with only a few cars displaying the white residential-parking sticker. The sidewalk was crowded with people, but Anne didn’t know if they were her neighbors because she didn’t know her neighbors.
An older man walked a fawn-colored pug down the street, and the dog’s curlicued tail bopped along, its rolling gait jaunty. She watched it with a pang, worrying about Mel. She craned her neck and peered down the street. The cat wasn’t anywhere in sight. Her rowhouse stood midway down the block; its red brick had been newly power-washed and its oak door stripped of old green paint and shellacked a natural varnish. The usually chummy sight left her cold.
The traffic eased and the Camaro moved forward a car-length. Anne inched a few feet ahead, affording a closer view of her house. A piece of torn yellow plastic flapped from the top of her doorjamb. The sight pressed her back into the cushy driver’s seat, a weight on her chest. It was crime scene tape. Willa had to be dead. It was only denial to think she wasn’t. And Anne’s home had become the scene of her murder.
She held back her tears. She had to know who did this; if it was Kevin. She had examined a few crime scenes in her time at Rosato & Associates, and she resolved to treat this scene like any other, even though she paid the rent. And Willa might have been murdered inside.
She drove ahead when the Camaro moved, her gaze trained on her house. There was no cop standing guard outside her front door, logging in official visitors, keeping out the curious, and otherwise preventing evidence from being contaminated. The absence signaled that the crime scene had been released. It was surprising. Cops generally didn’t release a scene until the second or even third day.
The Mustang rolled ahead, and as she got closer, Anne noticed something else odd about her house. Passersby were lingering in front of her doorway, and when they moved on, she could see that on her front stoop lay a few cellophane-wrapped bunches of flowers. She looked out the window, puzzled. She’d guessed they’d been left for her, but she didn’t have even that many friends. She squinted behind the Oakleys, trying vainly to read the cards from a distance. She couldn’t help wondering if one was from Matt. Did he believe she was dead? Was he hurting for her today? She felt a twinge she couldn’t shrug off.
HONK! A beep jolted her out of her reverie, and she glanced at her rearview mirror. A minivan driver, itching to let the kids out of the car. She rolled forward. She had to get into her house, but people were everywhere. She had to enter without being recognized. Then she had an idea.
Fifteen minutes later, Uncle Sam himself rounded the corner onto Waltin Street. He was wearing a red- white-and-blue stovepipe hat, a fake beard of thick cotton, and joke-sunglasses with superwide blue plastic frames—along with a jeans skirt, leopard-print mules, and a T-shirt that read HAPPY FOURTH FROM AN INDEPENDENT WOMAN! The outfit was completely ridiculous, but it was all the street vendors were selling, and fit in with the crowds of wacky tourists. Since she bought the stuff, Anne had already seen four girl Uncle Sams, one in Tod loafers.
She strode down the street and paused at the wrapped bouquets on her step. A dozen white roses lay on the top step, and she recognized the handwriting. Matt’s. She reached for it reflexively, then caught herself. There wasn’t time to dwell on it. She continued down the street until she reached the alley, where she slowed her step. She eyeballed the street behind the cartoon sunglasses. The coast was clear.
She sidestepped and slipped out of sight. The alley ran behind the line of rowhouses on her side of the street, and their backyards bordered it. Nobody ever used the alley for anything; there had been a flyer that circulated early this year, suggesting that the neighbors chip in and gate it for security reasons, but no one had bothered. It was
