Chapter 24: Keys

I went down the stairs in my robe and bare feet, and out the front door, and across the gravel.

Gran was already standing beside it in her green cardigan with her coffee.

It was the white Rolls-Royce.

The same one.

I knew the tiny scratch on the rear door where a groomsman's cufflink had caught it at somebody's wedding two summers ago.

I'd written the incident report.

"Kenward sold the fleet on Tuesday," Gran said. "My grandson went to the sale. He bid against a funeral home from Skokie. It got quite heated."

"He bought it?"

"He bought it for you." She handed me a small white envelope. "He said it's not his. He's never going to sit in the back of it."

Inside were two keys on a plain ring.

And a card in Clay's square handwriting.

"You drive. C."

I stood in the drive in my robe and laughed until I had to hold on to the ribbon on the hood.

At one o'clock I came down the stairs in my mother's gown.

Ivory silk, the sleeves she'd worn in 1994, the tiny covered buttons all the way down my back.

Sydney had done every one of them up with a crochet hook and swearing.

My mother's pearls were in my ears.

The little scar through my left eyebrow showed under the makeup, and I'd told the makeup artist to leave it.

Gran was waiting at the bottom of the stairs.

She didn't say anything for a long moment.

"Well," she said finally, and her voice wasn't steady. "There you are."

Sydney came out of the kitchen in her bridesmaid's green with a white envelope in her hand.

"This came to the office yesterday," she said. "Your new assistant gave it to me because she's terrified of me. Postmark's Denver."

I opened it.

A plain card, no picture.

One line, in round handwriting I'd seen on a hundred Kenward memos.

"Ride in front. B."

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