Not long after she crossed the border and entered the Green Mountains, heavy clouds rolled in from the west. Fat drops of rain slapped onto the windscreen, transforming the landscape into a watercolour painting. By the time Erin turned onto the road to Stern’s farm, the rain had slowed, and the sky began to clear.
Stern’s SUV was the only car in the driveway. He must be alone in the house with Tim. Or was his woman friend inside as well, the one he’d passed off as his housekeeper? Not that it mattered. She would tell Stern what she had come to say, with or without an audience.
By the time she reached the front door, her clothes were damp from the spitting rain. Heart thumping, she pushed the bell and waited. She must look a mess, but it didn’t matter. All she wanted was to see the look on Stern’s face when she told him what she knew.
The door swung open. If Stern was surprised to see her on his front doorstep, looking like a drowned rat, he didn’t show it. Though he must have heard her car drive up, so it was unlikely she’d caught him off guard.
‘Dr Cartwright.’ He stood back to allow her to pass.
She crossed into the foyer and stood dripping on the slate.
‘If you’ll wait here, I’ll get you something to dry off with.’ He ducked into the downstairs bathroom and returned with a thick white towel. No sign of Tim.
Every day since his discharge from the hospital in Burlington two weeks ago, she had expected to hear he had suffered a relapse, or that Stern was mortally wounded.
‘This is a surprise,’ he said, showing her into the front room.
The fireplace was clean swept and laid with birch logs, but there was no need for a fire today. Even with the rainstorm, the air was oppressive.
As if he had guessed why she’d come, Stern dispensed with the usual gestures of hospitality, even failing to offer her a coffee from his machine in the kitchen. ‘You’ve come a long way.’ He gave her a cool look of appraisal. ‘Is this about Tim?’
The room was cast in shadow. Through the glass, she could see a new batch of storm clouds building up on the horizon. With the windows closed, the room was stifling.
‘I’ll get right to the point,’ she said. ‘When the police questioned you about your whereabouts on the evening of August 26, 1977, you told them you had spent the entire night at a hotel in Portland. The woman you were with confirmed your story, although her name was later redacted from the police report, at her request.’
Stern waited, arms across his chest. He had yet to bat an eye.
‘When I spoke with the woman in question, she admitted she wasn’t with you all night. And that you received a phone call around ten in the evening and left the hotel. When you hadn’t returned by one in the morning, she left and drove home.’ Erin waited. ‘She also said you asked her to lie to the police.’
Stern’s eyes were flat, his face expressionless. He flicked a spot of lint from his sleeve. ‘So, you talked to your mother. It must have been a shock to see you after all these years.’
Her heart bumped. He knows who I am?
‘I can see you’re surprised.’ His laugh came from deep within his throat.
When their eyes met, the fury in Stern’s face froze her blood.
And, just like that, the mask dropped, sliding away with scarcely a whisper. Wasn’t that what she’d wanted all along, to unmask him as a charlatan and a fraud? But nothing about this moment was the least bit satisfactory. Not when he’d pulled a trump card of his own. All this time, he’d been playing her for a fool.
The room grew darker with the gathering storm. Uncomfortably aware she was alone with this man, possibly dangerous now that she’d upped the stakes, she tried to figure out her next move. In the hall, the clock chimed the half-hour.
‘It doesn’t say much for your ability to read people, Dr Cartwright – or perhaps I should call you Mimi? Seeing as we’re old friends.’ His smile was thin. ‘Not to have noticed, I mean. That a psychiatrist of your calibre wasn’t aware I recognised you the moment I saw you. Well, not the very first, perhaps.’ He chuckled. ‘But I had a strong suspicion. I knew you as a girl, of course. A plump little thing you were, with the dirty blonde hair you inherited from your mother. But I’ve never seen anyone else with eyes like yours. Such an odd shade of green. Not quite human, I used to think, always watching. Impossible to forget. And when I caught you snooping in my den, taking an undue interest in that photo, I knew it was you. You couldn’t have been more than eight or nine when that photo was taken, but it clearly sparked a memory.
‘Your mother used to keep a copy of it on her bedside table. Naughty Vivien, rubbing our affair in her husband’s face. But, otherwise, a memento of our days as a happy foursome. Until that idiot father of yours got caught with his hand in the cookie jar. Working-class trash to the bone, but what a poser he was.’ He sneered. ‘Clever of your mother to concoct that cock-and-bull story of Ian’s death. But what else could she do? Who would want it shouted all over town that her prim and proper schoolteacher husband had been caught embezzling old ladies’ pensions?’ He ran his hands through his hair. ‘You’d think Ian would have enough sense to keep well away, after everything he’s done, but lately he keeps showing up like a bad penny.’
‘My father died in a car crash,’ Erin said. She struggled to keep the quiver from her voice.
Stern hooted with laughter. ‘Vivien deserves an Academy Award for that one,
