“Morning, Grandma,” she said, and then noticed Francie.“Oh, hi.”
“Hi,” said Francie.
Em brushed her hair out of her eyes. “Getting ready for another tournament?”
“No.”
The girl hit the button on the countertop TV, reached up in the cupboard for cereal and a bowl, put them on the table. On the screen, a commercial for pain relievers ended and two newscasters appeared at a desk. Francie was right beside the TV; she switched it off. Em and her grandmother both turned to her, understanding registering on the woman’s face, surprise on Em’s. Francie, unable to invent any explanation for her conduct, said nothing. She went to the fridge, opened it, said, “Two percent or nonfat, Em?”
“Two percent,” said Em, glancing at the dark screen of the TV.
Francie poured milk in her bowl. “How about some strawberries on top?” She’d seen them in the fridge.
“Sure.”
Francie took a handful of strawberries from their carton, washed them in the sink. Not a good idea, strawberries, because a strawberry couldn’t remain a simple strawberry, of course, but had to be red, ripe and full of life. Francie put them on a plate, set it before Em.
“Thanks,” said the girl, popping one in her mouth and placing the others one at a time among the cornflakes in a star-shaped pattern. She raised her head. “Mom up yet?”
Francie and Ned’s mother looked at each other; neither answered.
“Hey,” said Em. “What’s up, Grandma?”
“Maybe you’d better go,” Ned’s mother said to Francie.
“I’d like to help.”
“That won’t be necessary,” said Ned’s mother. “Most considerate of you, but it’s a family matter.”
Francie turned to Em, but what could she say? Em’s mouth opened, strawberry-red inside.
Francie didn’t put up a fight; she left, now a coward on top of everything. She was outside on the walk, almost to her car, when she heard Em’s wail: piercing, unmitigated, unbearable-catastrophe beyond repair.
And she’d forgotten to leave the sandwiches, somehow still in her hand. She realized she’d loved Anne. It wasn’t too strong a word.
30
Back in her own house, Francie found a stranger talking to Roger in the living room. “Here she is now,” said Roger as Francie came in. The stranger rose, a big, broadly built man with a broad face; he reminded her of the blacksmith in the background of a Dutch genre painting she could picture but not identify at that moment.
“Francie, this is Mr. Savage, chief of police in Lawton Center,” said Roger. “Mr. Savage, my wife.”
“Pleased to meet you,” said the chief, speaking to Roger although his eyes were on Francie. “And it’s Savard. Joe Savard.”
“My apologies,” said Roger. “Will you be needing me any longer?”
“No,” said Savard. “Thanks for your help.”
“Think nothing of it,” said Roger. He came to Francie, took both her hands in his, said, “Oh, Francie. It’s dreadful, just dreadful.” Then he left, pausing to pick a few dead leaves from the base of a plant as he went out.
“Please sit down,” Francie said. Savard sat on the window seat, back to the morning outside, darkened by thick, low clouds; Francie couldn’t sit, but leaned on the arm of a chair by the fireplace, about three steps away. “What happened to Anne?”
“She was murdered sometime last night, Mrs. Cullingwood, in the cottage owned by your friend-” He leafed through his notebook.
“Brenda.”
He found the page. “It says here Countess Vasari.”
“She’s not a real countess,” Francie said, an unconsidered remark that made her sound like a pompous fool, exactly the opposite of her intent.
Savard looked up from his notebook. “What’s the difference?”
A good question. What had she meant? That Brenda was back to being plain Brenda Kelly again; that she didn’t want this man to form a false impression of her, Francie, because of some improbably and temporarily titled friend. “Nothing. I didn’t mean to interrupt.”
“There’s not much to interrupt at this stage. The lab guys are still at the scene and we haven’t got a suspect.” Savard closed the notebook, laid it on his knee. His hand was big, thickened by some sort of hard work, but not ugly. “I’m hoping for some help from you,” he said.
“Anything,” Francie said.
He nodded. “Your friend says she hasn’t been to her place for two or three years-she couldn’t remember exactly-and that you kept an eye on it for her.”
“That’s true.”
“How often did you go up there?”
“A few times a month in summer. Sometimes more.”
“And in winter?”
“Almost never.”
“When was the last time?”
A Friday. The day after she’d fallen through the ice. Ned had called her for the first time on her car phone, had been waiting there, surprising her on the darkened porch with his fury over her call to the radio show. She made the calculations in her head-it took longer than it should have because she kept remembering him out on the river: Wouldn’t there be something wrong with two people who could just throw it away? — and gave Savard the date.
He wrote it down. “Did you notice anything unusual when you were there?”
“No.”
“No sign of a break-in, or an attempted one?”
“No.”
“Nothing missing or out of place?”
“No.”
“Anything spilled, knocked over, broken?”
“No.”
There was a pause. Francie had a cast stone figure by Jean Arp on the bookcase-Roger’s wedding present to her, not a big or important one, but Arp nevertheless-and the policeman’s eyes were on it: whether taking it in or thinking about something else, she couldn’t tell.
His gaze swung back to her. “I assume you have a key to the cottage?”
“Two,” Francie said. “One for the gate, one for the door.”
“Have you ever lost them?”
“No.”
“Given them to someone else?”
“No.”
“Had copies made?”
“No.” Although Ned had asked for one, she now recalled: Might help if I had a key. It’s cold out there. But she’d never gotten around to doing it: everything had fallen apart first.
“You know of no other person with access to the cottage, then?”
“No.”
“Would you mind showing them to me?”
“Showing what to you?”
“The keys, Mrs. Cullingwood.”
They were in her car in the garage, hanging from the ignition. When she came back with them, Savard was
