He nodded. “Meeting with some potential investors, adding to my goddamn fortune. I’d throw this all away, if only I could…” Suddenly he stood up. “I think I could use a stiff drink right now. Can I pour you one?”
“Thank you, but no. I’m driving.”
“Ah. The responsible policewoman. If you’ll excuse me,” he said, and walked out.
Jane opened the Bolton yearbook to the sophomore section and spotted Charlotte in the bottom row of photos. Her blond hair hung loose to her shoulders, and her lips were barely curved in a wistful smile. She was a beautiful girl, but tragedy already seemed stamped into her features, as if she knew that the future held only heartbreak for her. Printed beneath her photo was a list of her interests and activities. DRAMA CLUB. ART. ORCHESTRA. TENNIS TEAM.
Orchestra. She remembered that Charlotte had played the viola. She also remembered that Laura Fang had played the violin. The girls might have grown up in different universes, but they had music in common.
She paged through the book until she found the activities section, where she once again spotted Charlotte, posing with two dozen other music students. The girl was seated in the second row of string players, her instrument propped in her lap. The caption read: CANDACE FORSYTH, MUSICAL DIRECTOR, AND THE BOLTON ACADEMY ORCHESTRA.
She heard Patrick return to the dining room, carrying a drink that tinkled with ice cubes. “Did your daughter know a girl named Laura Fang?” Jane asked him.
“Detective Buckholz asked me that same question, after Charlotte disappeared. I told him I hadn’t heard the name before. I only found out later that Laura Fang was a girl who vanished two years before Charlotte. That’s when I understood why he asked me about her.”
“You can’t think of any link between the girls? Charlotte never mentioned Laura’s name?”
He looked at the photo of the Bolton orchestra. “Your child comes home from school and talks about this girl or that boy. How can any parent possibly remember all the names?”
He was right; it was an impossible thing to expect of a parent.
Jane flipped to the back of the book, to the section of senior students, and scanned the photos of clean-cut boys dressed in their Bolton uniforms of blue blazers and red neckties. There was Mark Mallory, his face a bit thinner, his hair longer and curlier. Already he was a handsome young man, bound for Harvard. Beneath his photo, his interests were listed: LACROSSE, ORCHESTRA, CHESS, FENCING, DRAMA.
Orchestra again. That was, after all, how the Dions and Mallorys had met-through their musical children at the Christmas pageant.
“I’m not quite sure how any of this is going to help you,” said Patrick. “Detective Buckholz asked me all these questions nineteen years ago.”
She looked up at him. “Maybe the answers have changed.”
AS JANE LEFT BROOKLINE and drove west on the Massachusetts Turnpike, the afternoon sun was in her eyes. She made good time to Worcester, but the drive north from that point was slow, on secondary roads where traffic funneled into a single lane because of repaving work. By the time she reached the Bolton Academy, it was nearly five PM. She drove through the front gate, onto a curving drive shaded by ancient oak trees. At the main hall, three girls sat chatting on the stone steps. They did not even bother to look up as Jane parked and climbed out of her car. They appeared to be fifteen or sixteen, all of them slim and pretty, perfectly designed by Mother Nature to fulfill their biological purpose on earth and attract young men.
“Excuse me. I’m looking for Mrs. Forsyth, the music director,” said Jane.
The three goddesses responded with passive stares. Even in their plaid skirts and white cotton blouses, they managed to make Jane feel hopelessly unfashionable.
“She’s in Bennett Hall,” one of the girls finally said.
“Where’s that?”
The girl extended a graceful arm to point at the stately building across the lawn. “There.”
“Thanks.” As Jane walked across the lawn, she felt their eyes following her, the alien specimen from the world of merely ordinary people. So this was what boarding school was like, not a fun place like Hogwarts at all. More like sorority hell. She came to the steps of Bennett Hall and gazed up at the white columns, the elaborately carved pediment. It’s like scaling Mount Olympus, she thought as she climbed the stairs into the central hall.
The sound of a scratchy violin drifted from the corridor to her left. She followed it to a classroom where a teenage girl sat bowing with fierce concentration while a silver-haired woman frowned at her.
“For heaven’s sake, Amanda, your vibrato sounds like a high-tension wire! It makes me nervous just listening to it. And you’re practically strangling the neck. Relax your wrist.” The woman tugged at the girl’s left hand and gave it a hard shake. “Come on, loosen up!”
The student suddenly noticed Jane and froze. The woman turned and said: “Yes?”
“Mrs. Forsyth? I called earlier. I’m Detective Rizzoli.”
“We’re just finishing up here.” The teacher turned to her student and sighed. “You’re all tensed up today, so there’s no point continuing the lesson. Go back to the dorm and practice shaking your wrists. Both hands. Above all, a violinist must have flexible wrists.”
Resignedly the girl packed up her instrument. She was about to walk out of the room when she abruptly stopped and said to Jane: “You said you’re a detective. Are you, like, with the police?”
Jane nodded. “Boston PD.”
“That is
“Then you should go for it. The Bureau could use more women.”
“Yeah, tell that to my parents. They say police work is for
“I’m afraid that girl is never going to be much of a musician,” said Mrs. Forsyth.
“The last I heard,” said Jane, “playing the violin isn’t a requirement for the FBI.”
That sarcastic remark did not win Jane any points with this woman. Mrs. Forsyth eyed her coolly. “You said you had questions, Detective?”
“About one of your students from nineteen years ago. She was in the school orchestra. Played the viola.”
“You’re here about Charlotte Dion, aren’t you?” Seeing Jane’s nod, the woman sighed. “Of course it
“It would be hard for any parent to accept. You can understand that.”
“Boston PD thoroughly investigated her disappearance, and they never considered our school negligent. We had more than enough chaperones on that excursion, a ratio of one to six. And these weren’t toddlers on the outing, these were teenagers. We shouldn’t have to babysit them.” She added under her breath, “But with Charlotte, maybe we should have.”
“Why?”
Mrs. Forsyth paused. “I’m sorry, I shouldn’t have said that.”
“Was Charlotte difficult?”
“I don’t like to speak ill of the dead.”
“I think the dead would want justice served.”
After a moment the woman nodded. “I’ll just say this about her: She was not one of our academic stars. Oh, she was bright enough. That showed up in her entrance exam scores. And the first year she was here, she did fine. But after her parents divorced, everything went downhill for her and she barely passed most of her classes. Of course we felt sorry for her, but half our students come from divorced families. They’re able to adjust and move on. Charlotte never did. She just remained a morose girl. It’s as if, just by her poor-me attitude, she
For a woman who didn’t like to speak ill of the dead, Mrs. Forsyth certainly had no trouble letting loose.
“She can hardly be blamed for losing her mother,” Jane pointed out.
“No, of course not. That was awful, that shooting in Chinatown. But have you ever noticed the way misfortune seems to target certain people? They’ll lose their spouse, their job, and get cancer all in the same year. That was Charlotte, always gloomy, always attracting bad luck. Which may be why she didn’t seem to have a lot of friends.”
This was certainly not the impression of Charlotte that Jane had picked up from talking with Patrick. It surprised her to hear about this side of the girl.
