Chapter 16: His Study

I sat down in my father's chair in that closet and read the line until the letters stopped being letters.

"Lise," Dorinda said softly from the linen store. "There's more on the back."

I turned the page over.

Two words, smaller, in the same shaking capitals.

CALL ELISE.

And under that, a date and a time, and the word dinner.

"He never called," I said.

Nobody answered, because nobody had to.

We locked the Saltmarsh boxes in Dorinda's apartment.

The night supervisor carried them up himself, two at a time, and then sat on Dorinda's couch and wrote out everything Damon had ever told him to do.

Noah locked the panel behind us and gave me back the key.

"Go to bed," he said.

"I'm going to the house."

"It's two in the morning."

"Then I'll go at eight."

At nine the next morning the inspector reopened the ballroom without a word to Damon, and I was already on Broadway.

The house looked the way it always looked in April, white and green with the oleanders blooming pink along the porch.

My key still worked.

That surprised me more than anything had in twelve days.

The hall smelled like furniture polish and lilies from the funeral that nobody had thrown out.

The door to my father's study stood half open.

My mother sat at his desk.

She was in a cream sweater and pearls, her silver hair perfect, a stack of heavy ivory cards at her elbow and a fountain pen in her hand.

Thank-you notes.

Three hundred people had sent flowers.

She looked up and saw me in the doorway, and she didn't stop writing.

"You should have called," she said.

"I have a key."

"So I see." She blotted a card. "If you've come to shout, Vanessa's at the hotel."

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