Her disappointment made her realize how much she had counted on the possibility of finding something. Now she had to face the probability that her theory about Wilkes was all wrong, and that made her heartily ashamed of herself for having searched his room. In future she would leave detection to the police.
She went back to the patio and looked about for a book to read. She was sure she had seen some on the coffee table that morning. She remembered thinking: Someone will have to bring them in if it rains. And then she had realized that it hardly ever rained in Sotavento at this time of year.
The books were still there. She picked up the one on top of the others, and from its pages a piece of paper fluttered to the ground. Apparently, it had been used as a bookmark.
As she picked up the paper to put it back in the book, she glanced at it and froze.
She sat down to look at it more carefully.
It was a letter in Spanish from someone in Madrid, a letter handwritten in a smoothly flowing, stylish script as clear as print.
Calle de Valencia, 100,
Madrid, Espana.
10-6-71
Dear Carlos,
We eagerly anticipate your visit, but please let us know when you expect to reach the airport, so I can make proper arrangements to meet your plane.
Your devoted cousin,
Saturnino.
She read the first four lines again.
Why had they caught her eye? What was wrong with them?
Suddenly, she knew.
She put the letter in her pocket. Carlos would never miss an old scrawl he had used as a bookmark. Even if he did, it no longer mattered now.
She went to the telephone and tried to make a person-to-person call to Bill Brewer. She heard his secretary’s voice tell the operator he wasn’t there and no one knew where he was.
She called the airport. The quickest route was a local plane from Cayo Siesta to Miami, a jet from Miami to Washington, and another local plane to her own city.
If she could catch the plane for Miami that left Cayo Siesta at eleven, she could go straight through without delays and reach her destination around five-thirty.
She didn’t stop to pack, but she scribbled a short note.
Dear Carlos,
Something desperately important has come up. I must leave for the States at once. I can’t even wait to say good-bye to your mother or I’ll miss my plane. Please forgive me and apologize for me, and tell everybody I’ll be back to explain myself in a day or so.
Yours,
Tash.
She rang for Felipe and gave him the note.
“Can you run me over to the airport in a car, or shall I get a taxi?”
“A car is at your service, senorita.”
Thirty minutes later, she was airborne.
In Washington there was no plane available, so she went on by train.
In the dingy, old railway station, she found a pay telephone and called Bill’s office again. She knew she could not handle this alone, and she was counting on Bill’s help, but he was still out.
“I’m sorry, Miss Perkins,” said the secretary. “But he’s been out all afternoon. No, I don’t know when he’ll be back, but why don’t you try again later?”
“Because I need to talk to him now. Have you no telephone number where he could be reached?”
“No, he didn’t leave one. You want to leave a message?”
So she would have to handle it alone after all.
She looked resentfully at the telephone as if it were at fault. “All right. Please ask him to call Tatiana Perkins at 742-6539 when he comes in.”
A taxi took her to the garage she used in town. When she drove out, the sun was low in the west, casting a liquid, golden light over roof tops, leaving streets below in a blue dusk.
She crossed the main thoroughfare, turned left, and was soon on the long, winding road to Fox Run.
PART V
Further Lane
17
WHEN SHE CAME to the place in the road where woods gave way to open meadow, she stopped the car.
It was the same hour of late afternoon when she first saw this house, the day she and Hilary had been surprised on the lawn by Jeremy and Carlos just back from Sotavento.
How strange that the past, so vivid in memory, no longer existed in fact. Where did the past go? Why couldn’t she find her way back to it?
It had been Jeremy’s fancy that this lane was called Further Lane, instead of Farther Lane, because it led somewhere in time rather than space. If only it did . . .
She started the car again and turned down the driveway toward the tall, angular house, sitting on its grassy knoll among shade trees, surrounded by fields.
The first change she noticed was an ugly wire-mesh fence between the road and the house, probably electrified. The second was the fact that the sentry didn’t recognize her. A stranger in uniform examined her press card and driver’s license, and telephoned to the guard room before he finally let her pass.
A new chief usher greeted her politely enough at the door and showed her into one of the reception rooms on the north side of the house, away from the garden.
All signs of Jeremy’s personal presence were gone. This was Job Jackman’s house once more, simple, solid, unimaginative.
Jo Beth was the first to put in an appearance.
“Tash, dear, it’s been so long!” A double handclasp, a quick, dry kiss on one cheek. “But you’re looking well!” Jo Beth stood back and surveyed the suntan with a touch of envy. “Sotavento agreed with you. What will you have now? Tea or a drink?”
“Tea, please.”
“Just what I’d like myself.”
As she touched a bell, one of her boys came into the room.
“You know Greg, don’t you?”
“I don’t believe I do.” Tash smiled at him. “But I’ve heard so much about you from your mother, I feel as if we were old friends.”
He smiled
