Mr. X

 •When Laurie opened her front door, I saw sheer, unalloyed pleasure radiating through all the complications of her beautiful face. 'Ned! I'm so glad. Come in.'

    She moved into my arms. 'Tell me about the funeral.' “It was all right. An old friend of my mother's named Suki Teeter came, and so did Rachel Milton. The three of us had lunch afterward. Rachel isn't so bad, after all.'

    “I should phone her. Would you like to hear some good news? Ashleigh called to say they're working on the indictments. Grennie may not have long to enjoy true love.'

    'Even shitheads get the blues,' I said.

    'Let's celebrate with a really good bottle of wine.' She went into the kitchen and returned with a bottle of Heitz Private Reserve cabernet and two glasses.

    After I poured, she said, “I have to make sure this won't be too hard on Cobbie. I don't know how you explain to a kid that his father is going to jail, but I want to protect him. He's out with Posy, by the way. She took him to seeAladdin.'

    “It's nice to see you alone.'

    “I've been thinking.' She leaned back into the sofa. 'Columbia accepted Posy into their Ph.D. program. Cobbie's going to need more training than he could ever get here. New York might make a lot of sense for us.'

    'Would Posy stay on with you?'

    'She'd jump at the chance, and having her with us would give Cobbie some continuity. Besides, I'm crazy about Posy Fairbrother—I don't want to lose her, either. If I bought a big apartment or a brown-stone, we'd all have enough privacy.'

    'The kind of place you're talking about costs a fortune,' I said. 'Private schools would be another ten or fifteen thousand a year. Plus the music lessons. Can you afford all that?'

    'The trust can,' she said. “I'm not going to let Parker Gillespie run my life.'

    It was the reason she had called Gillespie: Laurie had been thinking about moving to New York before she had ever met me. I said, “It sounds like a great idea. I want to be around the first time Cobbie hears Bach. Or Charlie Parker.'

    'You should be around. Cobbie needs more than music.' Laurie smiled to herself, as if realizing that she had said too much. 'Let me back up. Would you like it if I moved to New York?' She moved an inch away and, in a kind of compensation, put her hand on my knee. “I don't want to put you in an awkward position.'

    'Of course I would,' I said. 'Think of all the nice places we could go.' I heard myself say the word 'nice' and knew that I was talking about a fantasy. I wanted the fantasy to be true.

    'What places?'

    'The Metropolitan Opera. The Frick museum. The corner of

    Bedford and Barrow in the Village.Second Avenueon a Sunday morning in August, when all the lights turn green at once and you hardly seea car for miles. The Great Lawn inCentral Park. The Esplanade in Brooklyn Heights. The Gotham Book Mart. About a hundred great restaurants.'

    'Let's find our favorite one and go there once a month, religiously.'

    'Laurie,' I said, 'when you met my aunts at the library, did you ask them to take some photographs?'

    'Take snapshots? They didn't bring a camera.'

    A more innocent answer could not be imagined. I laughed. “I meant, take as in walk out with.'

    She looked puzzled. 'Why would I do that?'

    'Forget I asked. Hugh told me that Stewart's family photos had disappeared. He discovered they were missing after you visited the library with my aunts, who could stuff the Empire State Building into a couple of shopping bags without anyone noticing. I don't know, maybe you wanted to shake him up a little. It was a bad idea. Sorry.' It was worse than a bad idea—it was ridiculous. Laurie could not have known that Stewart was going to demand the return of his archive.

    'Now two sets of pictures are missing? Yours and Stewart's?'

    'Awfully strange coincidence, isn't it?'

    'So strange that you thought I must have had something to do with it. And then didn't tell you. Which makes it sound like, instead of trying to annoy Stewart, I was concealing something from you.'

    She was right: it did sound like that. I remembered what Rachel Milton had said to me about the Hatch photographs, but Laurie's talent for perception had already pushed this conversation past anything intended by my thoughtless question. 'Whoa,' I said. 'Too far, too fast. Around you, I have to watch what I say.'

    'Who drove you to the V.A. Hospital?'

    “I know,' I said.

    A car rolled into the driveway and stopped in front of the garage.

    Laurie kissed my cheek. 'Remember who your friends are.'

 •Cobbie burst in and squealed with pleasure. 'Ned, Ned, I have a trick!'

    Posy smiled at me, put down the stroller, and set two shopping bags on the counter. 'After the movie, I bought some books and a couple of the CDs Ned recommended.'

    “I have a trick!' Cobbie's eyes were dancing. He smelled like popcorn.

    'Let me know how much you paid, and I'll add it to your check.' Laurie hugged Cobbie. 'Hello, squirt. Did you like the movie?'

    'Uh-huh. And I—'

    'You want to show usa trick.'

    'Uh-huh.' He paused for dramatic effect and sang an odd series of notes. Then he went limp with laughter.

    “It's beyond me,' Posy said. 'He's been singing it over and over, and it cracks him up every time.'

    Cobbie began singing the peculiar melody again, and this time he found it so funny he could not get to the end.

    'Do it all the way through,' I said.

    Cobbie stationed himself before me, looked directly into my eyes, and sang the entire sequence of notes.

    I thought I knew why it sounded so odd. 'Urn, backwards something singing you are, Cobbie?' It took me longer to work out the order of the six words than Cobbie had taken to reverse eight bars of melody.

    'Huh?' Laurie said.

    Chortling, Cobbie trotted to the piano and plunked out the notes.

    'Now play it the right way,' I said.

    He hit the same notes in the opposite order and grinned at Posy.

    'Oh, my God,' she said. “It's from the movie.'

    'Whole wide World,' Cobbie said.

    'That settles it,' I said to Laurie. 'He's going to be Spike Jones when he grows up.'

    “Is Ned staying for dinner?' Cobbie asked.

    “Is he?' Laurie asked me.

    'As long as Cobbie and I can listen to one of those new CDs,' I said, thinking that after dinner, I would go back to Buxton Place to see what Earl Sawyer had hidden in a drawer. Earl Sawyer was a troubling man. He cherished the notion that H. P. Lovecraft's stories described a literal reality, and he had nearly fainted when I had touched the first edition with the owner's inscription on the flyleaf. I tried to remember the name: Fleckner? Flecker? Fletcher. W. Wilson Fletcher, of theFortress Military Academy in Owlsburg, Pennsylvania.

 •For about half an hour, Cobbie sat entranced through most of Haydn'sTheresienmesse, occasionally turning to see if I had heard some particular sonic miracle. Now and then, he said 'Huh' to himself. During the 'Credo' movement, he looked at me with an expression of puzzled delight. 'That's called a fugue,' I said. He turned back to the music and muttered, 'Foog.' When the movement came to an end, he announced that it was time for cartoons and sped into the room on the other side of the fireplace.

    In the kitchen, Laurie and Posy were gliding back and forth between the counter and the stove. Posy asked