The Twisted Thread (31 page)

He stood as well. “I have to be honest. I don't know what will happen. It's up to the immigration people. But Kayla, if I can, I will help you.”

She looked at him and said, “Thanks,” without much hope but without irony, too. She was too worldly to believe what any bureaucrat said, but she hadn't entirely given up on him. Still, she wasn't quite done. “What's going to happen to that boy, the one who killed her? Is he going to go to jail?”

“Maybe, Kayla. It's still too early to say.” He looked at her and felt she understood that, for people like Miles, there were nearly endless permutations to that possibility, and they depended on money, judges, the vagaries of courts and juries. It would take months if not years to sort out the public punishments. Matt hadn't seen Miles since that moment in his office with Lucinda and Porter; the lawyers had swooped down with ferocious speed. The DA was nervously appeasing them all.

Kayla leaned down. “Scotty brought this bag with him when he gave me Pablo. It looks expensive, like she went out and bought it from some fancy store. I forgot to give it to her mother. Could you do that for me?” She placed the tote on his desk, and Matt was struck by it, too. It looked like the sort of present people gave at baby showers, a crisp little blue sack with compartments for bottles and wipes. Claire must have gotten it for herself, a small badge of motherhood, of preparedness for an experience that had in fact entirely overwhelmed her.

Kayla stuck out her hand. He took it and was impressed with both the delicacy of her bones and the strength of her grip. “A cop who went to school up there,” she said, shaking her head and opening the door to meet her father, who'd been standing there the whole time, waiting for his daughter. Matt watched them walk down the corridor, the man's arm wrapped around his girl's shoulder, both of them murmuring in Portuguese.

In his office, he called Vernon, who said that he had no idea where Scotty was but that most of his gear was still in his room and he wasn't at home. His parents, naturally, were frantic, but Vernon had a feeling he hadn't taken off anywhere. His wallet was on his desk, complete with credit and bank cards. Matt told Vernon where he thought he should look for the boy, then asked what was going on with the search of Fuller's apartment.

“Almost done,” Vernon said. “We did find something, but I want you to see it. I don't want to talk about it on the phone.” His partner sounded oddly morose and somewhat chastened.

“Vernon?” Matt asked.

“Later, Matt,” Vernon said and clicked off.

Another quick call confirmed that the police officer had accompanied the baby and Flora back to her hotel. “I'm on my way,” Matt said, but as he spoke, he'd begun rifling through the contents of Claire's fancy bag. A gruesome habit of cops, he thought, licensed snooping. Our fingers always moving through people's drawers and pockets, trawling for news. It was an activity he could engage in almost absentmindedly, the blunt search and display of personal effects. Claire had tried, he thought, as he probed the bag's contents. She had tried. There were a few diapers for infants. A pacifier still in its plastic wrapping. Some talcum powder and a tiny yellow shirt. These items made a forlorn clump on his desk, and again, he cursed himself for having focused so doggedly on Armitage, for having forgotten that Greenville could so easily have been involved. Of all people, he should have known better. But at least the baby wasn't dead. At least they had picked Kayla. Someone competent, someone careful. Claire and Scotty had chosen well; he wondered if they had known how lucky they were.

He tugged along an inside zipper. He really ought to stop and go to see Claire's mother, who had a certain amount of explaining to do about why she hadn't seen fit to mention that she had seen Porter at a critical moment this summer. But Matt's fingers felt the outline of some object in this part of the bag. He discovered a notebook, much like the one that had held Claire's brief journal entries. European, he thought, expecting whatever notes he found inside to be in French. But the pages held not words but images.

She had started with photos, mostly of her mother when she was younger. The resemblance to Claire was uncanny. The father had left no apparent trace. The pictures, fading now, were of Flora in dresses and on sailboats, an incredibly pretty young woman savoring her beauty. Then Matt saw one that made his chest clench. A man who looked astonishingly like Miles McLellan sat on a bench, his arm around the young Flora. They couldn't have made a better-looking couple, and there was something heated and convincing about the way he held her shoulders. She was turned toward him, and her hair was a blond cloud that seemed to wrap about them both. It was Porter, of course, and Madeline's rushed story about how her sister thought that Flora and Porter had once been a couple began to make sense. It was the only picture in Claire's book that featured the two together, and it held pride of place in the center of the page.

Then everything shifted. On the next pages, all Claire had gathered were images of Porter, first alone, and then with Lucinda and his growing family. Some were taken from newspapers. Some were ones that Matt recognized from the alumni magazine. An album of obsession. An album, he realized, of the family that might have been hers, of what she had so badly wanted. Parents who stayed together. Parents who loved their children. Who did what they said they would do. But Porter wasn't her father. Some feckless banker who had no time for her was. Yet, Matt thought, turning over the pages, it was probably a lot easier to blame Porter. To be at Armitage year after year getting more and more jealous of what he had built and what he had and then, in Miles, a very convenient way to get back at them. For what, precisely? Matt wondered. For merely existing, he guessed. For being so palpably happy and successful. For having what she never could: a circle of loving care that surrounded them. People who would do anything for each other.

He packed the notebook and the few items the bag had held and decided on impulse to bring them to Flora, who was staying in the area's best hotel, which still wasn't much more than a glorified Best Western.

When she opened the door to her room, he was struck by its resemblance to Claire's: expensive disorder everywhere—silk and shoes and scarves draped casually on every surface, all of it lightly wreathed in a scent of cologne. He noticed, too, bags lined with tissue paper, full to the brim with small blue shirts and sweaters. All the proper clothes. A brand-new crib, white and draped in flounces of green gingham, was tucked in the corner next to the bed. Flora had worked quickly to get the right accoutrements in place. And inside the small, soft palace slept the tiny child. Flora herself looked composed if tired.

She stood by the crib and watched the baby. “We're going to call him Nicholas, for my father,” she said. He had died, she said, when she was quite young, as had her mother. But he had been the kindest man, she added, and tugged a blue blanket around the child's shoulders. Matt came to look at the little boy. He still had that newborn pucker to his face and that mat of black hair, but it was clear, even fast asleep, that he was a beautiful child. “Kayla called him Pablo. She said even when people are very small, they still need a name.”

“That was sweet of her, wasn't it? Though of course that's not a name we would ever keep,” said Flora. She was returning to Paris as soon as the baby's passport came through, probably late this week. How funny that even little babies needed all the proper documents before they could travel. They had some friends in Washington who were going to expedite the process for them. And then there were a few legal hurdles, questions of custody, that had to be handled. But they had a lawyer working on that. Of course they did, Matt thought. Expedience and instant, expert help were of the utmost importance to people like Flora Duval. Matt said then, still standing, a cold line of anger threading into his voice in spite of himself, “Mrs. Duval, I'm aware you and Claire's father aren't interested in pressing charges against Scotty and Kayla, but there are several questions I'd still like an answer to. They may prove helpful in understanding why Claire died. Were you and Porter McLellan ever involved with each other? I can be blunter. Did you have a romantic relationship with Mr. McLellan, and did Claire know about it?”

If she was surprised, she didn't show it. She merely said, “Yes, in college. Porter and I were together for three years. Everyone thought we were going to get married. My parents adored him.” She pulled a chair from the desk and sat down next to the crib, as if taking her eyes off the baby for even a moment might be dangerous.

“But you left him?” Matt asked. It was another facet of police life that made him deeply uncomfortable: the very infrequent desire to press a witness extremely hard. Right now, he was quite content to make Flora Duval incredibly uncomfortable. It would change nothing, what she said. It wouldn't bring her daughter back or restore Porter's reputation, but it was still what he was going to do.

“No,” she said, sadly. “I didn't. He broke up with me the spring of our senior year. It was something I had said in passing, something I'd mentioned at a party. Something about not being able to imagine life as a schoolteacher. How dull, I said, and he had taken it to heart and realized that his ambition to be part of schools, to lead them, would make me dreadfully unhappy.” Soon after, he had taken up with Lucinda, who Flora noted rather scornfully, “had grown up the daughter of a head in some godforsaken part of Vermont.”

The baby began to stir and stretch. Flora reached toward him, but then he settled again. In the hall, Matt heard the rhythmic drone of a vacuum cleaner. “Why didn't you mention that you and Claire had seen the McLellans this summer? You must have known the timing was crucial.”

“I was there for a day. What could possibly happen in a day?” She was shaking her head now, as if Matt were an insect she wanted to shoo off.

“But Claire was there for slightly longer. I'm still interested in knowing if she was aware of your relationship with Mr. McLellan. And if so, how much did she know?” This sensation, an actual pleasure in having the right to badger someone, was something he was going to need to discuss with Vernon. But for right now, he planned to let himself savor it.

“Why does this matter, Mr. Corelli? What does that piece of my history have to do with why Claire was killed?” It was the first time she bristled. A frown line appeared between her eyes, and something close to a pout shadowed her mouth. “To answer your question, however, she knew a few things. She'd stumbled on a photo of us taken years ago, and she needled me all about it. Why hadn't I told her when she was applying to Armitage, the usual teenage silliness.” Flora's hands had tightened around the bars of the crib.

“And what did you say, Mrs. Duval?” His own rage, at himself for not seeing all this earlier, at her for having not known her daughter, was beginning to twist through his jaw.

She looked at him then and said simply, “That he could have been her father. And that, in some ways, it was a pity he hadn't been.”

Matt unzipped the diaper bag, took out the notebook, and gave it to her mother. Flora said, “What's this?” then began to look at the pictures Claire had painstakingly gathered and glued to the pages. “But I didn't mean it seriously. It was just something I said.” Her voice was breaking, and the baby was beginning to rouse himself below his gossamer-soft blanket.

“I know,” Matt said. “I understand that. But Claire was paying close attention.”

He left as the baby woke and started to cry and nearly ran into the small woman manhandling the heavy vacuum in the hall. He apologized, and she smiled at him. Seeing where he'd come from, she said, “Pobrecito.” Matt hoped she wasn't right, that Flora would provide more than intermittent attention and excellent clothing while she raised this child.

He had to sit in his car for a few minutes, with the windows rolled down, before he dared to call Vernon. He was remembering what his father did when he had been accused of cheating at the academy. He had kept saying, “I didn't do it, I promise I didn't do it, Dad,” as his father paced back and forth across their small living room. His mother had sat in an armchair saying nothing, her face heavy with disappointment. Joseph had stopped then and come over to him, and Matt hadn't been sure what was going to happen next, whether his father was going to hit him, hold him, shove him out of the house. Joseph had a fearsome temper, and Matt and Barbara had at times cowered before him. But that afternoon his father had stood in front of him and taken his face in his hands and said, “My son, my beautiful boy, I believe you. I just can't stand it that I couldn't protect you. That I wasn't there.”

Protection. The delay or avoidance of harm. All Claire had wanted was something resembling a family. Something whole and solid that might offer a shield against the hardest pieces of growing up. And when she couldn't fashion one of her own that made any sort of sense, she was going to hurt the one that she most envied as much as possible. His phone rang then. Vernon, with Scotty found, he hoped. “He's at the shelter. Won't move. You better get down here.”

When Matt arrived, a worried man in blue surgical scrubs met him at the entrance. “Are you the other police officer? Mr. Cates told me to tell you to meet him out back.” Matt went around the building, following the sounds and smells of dogs, and saw in the yard with the waist-high, chain-link fence, Scotty sitting on the ground, three or four dogs of various breeds and sizes lapping at his hands. Vernon was leaning against the fence and watching. Matt opened the gate and joined them. The dogs took little notice of him and Vernon, intent on greeting Scotty, who was bending toward them and speaking to them softly. Mostly pit bull mixes from the looks of them, ribs visible, with those jaws and scarred heads, tattered ears.