This is the cast of characters: a father, a son, a stepmother, and two half sisters. This is the plot: the father comes home from a poker game to find his wife and daughters slain. The son later confesses to the crime. Open and shut, the State’s Attorney says. Next case, the judge says. But, ah, that wasn’t enough. The man who had hold of my elbow and my ear, the man sipping champagne here from a stemmed plastic glass, needed something more. I could not imagine what essential ingredient was missing. Perhaps he only wanted another body to float up from the bayou behind Jamie’s house, which the State’s Attorney had mentioned by name, I was now informed, and which name—Fairy Bayou—caused my unknown friend here to comment that it was undoubtedly named after a closet queen up the street. He guffawed at this, and I seized the opportunity to drift away from him on the crest of my own mirthless laughter.

  The talk everywhere around me was of the murders on Jacaranda. Lacking another body, or another spate of bodies, lacking even another suspect—no butler to cast long menacing looks, no lady in a black raincoat running for the misty heath, no crazy old uncle in the tower room babbling about what he’d seen—why then the obvious questions had to be asked about the facts that existed. And the people here at the party seemed to find the facts questionable at best. I heard someone ask whether Jamie Purchase was really at a poker game the night before, as had been mentioned in the newspapers, though not in the State’s Attorney’s interview. Or had he possibly left the poker game early, and gone back home to kill his own wife and children? This particular cynic, of course, did not know that Jamie had indeed left the poker game early, or that he’d gone not home but to the bed of his loving surgeon’s wife. Or so Jamie claimed, an alibi that Catherine Brenet had already effectively demolished, dear loyal Kate. The Calusans gathered here to honor the Italian painter knew nothing of Jamie’s love life, however, and so they only guessed he might have been somewhere else, the parlor game of murder becoming pallid if one could not speculate on intrigue and romance, poison rings and stilettos.

  Which brought the partygoers to the matter of the murder weapon itself, the very same weapon the State’s Attorney had described on television as having been thrown in the Gulf. Well, no one here expected the police to drag an ocean in search of a bread knife, or whatever kind of knife it was—the newspapers simply described the murder weapon as “a big kitchen knife,” information presumably given to them by the Police Department, or the State’s Attorney’s office, or both. But it seemed to almost everyone present, judging from what I could overhear, that a knife of that size and weight, even if it sank to the bottom when it was first thrown in the water, would by this time have been washed ashore, the tide having come in—as one expert sport fisherman was quick to ascertain—at 12:59 P.M. this afternoon.

  I heard the Italian artist telling someone in broken English that he had been flown from Naples, Italy, to Rome and then New York and Miami, and had been driven from there to Naples, Florida, because the big promotional idea was “Da Napoli a Napoli, from Nepples to Nepples, you unnerstan?” But the gallery opening there had been a huge disappointment, largely due to the fact that his work was far too young and vigorous for the Florida Neopolitans—“gli anziani,” he called them. So he’d come up here to Calusa, there had been a nice crowd at the show tonight, nice-dressed people, plenty of money, and what did they talk about? They talked about murder! His host assured him that this was an unusual circumstance, there were hardly ever any murders in Calusa. The Italian rolled his eyes and said, “Allora, perche me? Why he dinna wait some other time?”

  Susan looked spectacular.

  She was wearing a white silk jersey tunic, belted at the waist with a golden rope and draped over a long white matching skirt. Gold sandals and gold hoop earrings, a hammered-gold cuff-bracelet on her right wrist. Her hair was pulled tightly to the back of her head, held there with a golden comb. She looked altogether sleek and sinuous, somewhat Grecian, her mouth slightly pouting as always, that spoiled sullen cast to her face, the brown eyes challenging falsely.

  The glances she flashed about the room were only distant relatives of what had been her mother’s direct and honest look, Susan took the legacy and wasted it. The look became calculated, she used it to foster an aura of boldness, lips slightly parted to simulate surprise or anticipation, a breathlessness accompanying the direct eye contact. She flirted outrageously, my darling wife, and later denied it, outraged. Over Leona’s shoulder, she met the Italian painter’s eyes now, and when his own eyes sparked with interest, she cut him dead with a sudden lowering of long lashes and a faint superior smile. The first time I’d seen her years ago I especially wanted to take her to bed because she looked so damn superior. I wanted her to groan beneath me. I wanted her to whisper gutter talk in my ear. She could still excite me, I realized. She was wearing no bra, her gown clung to her breasts; as I approached her I actually found myself trying to peek into its low-cut front.

  I shook hands with Frank, and a pair of cross-conversations immediately developed, Frank filling me in on what had happened at the office after I left today, Susan telling Leona about Sebastian’s accident. True, most everything she said or did managed to annoy me lately, but this annoyed me particularly. It seemed to me that she was using the death of the cat to solicit sympathy and solace or—even more unforgivable—to call attention to herself as someone grieving and bereft. So I listened partially to what Frank was saying, and partially to what Susan was saying, and I heard Leona’s clucking little sounds of condolence, and then somewhere on my left I heard a woman talking about the murders. It was the woman’s question that captured my full attention.

  She was asking the man at her side whether he thought Maureen and the two girls had been raped. I suspected she was deliberately leading the conversation into sexual channels, but the man missed his cue and responded with a long discourse on the sex offender in America, lacing it with statistics on how many homicides and aggravated assaults had been committed in conjunction with the crime of rape. Benny Freid, the criminal lawyer I’d tried to convince Michael to retain, once told me, “Matt, there are no mysteries. There are only crimes with motives for them.” The one thing Michael Purchase did not seem to have was a motive. I tried to remember now what he had told me this afternoon. While the buzz of homicidal cocktail chatter swelled around me, while Frank told me about a visit from an Internal Revenue agent questioning the valuation of a decedent’s estate, while Susan tried to explain the extent of the injuries that had caused Sebastian’s death, I tried to reconstruct sentence by sentence the conversation I’d had with Michael. I could recall the gist and many of the details, but for the most part I could remember verbatim only snatches of what he’d said—and I had the certain feeling it was important to remember exactly what he’d said if I was to know exactly what had happened.

  He’d told me that Maureen was the woman who’d called him, said she wanted to see him, asked him to come to the house. She’d referred to his sisters as the little girls, yes, I was sure that’s what he’d said, the little girls were there, the three of them were there, Maureen and the little girls. But why had she given him this information? Was it to reassure him that she was alone except for the children? Had she further told him Emily and Eve were already asleep? Was she advising him the coast was clear?

  She was scared.

  Why?

  Of…she didn’t know what to do.

  About what?

  I don’t know.

  Michael Purchase had a way of not knowing, of not remembering. He could describe in detail the rosette on the low neck of a nightgown, but he could not recall why he had reached for a kitchen knife and chased his stepmother into the bedroom. Kissed her on the mouth. I took her in my arms. I kissed her on the mouth. Was he trying to tell me he’d raped her? Was this what he was conveniently forgetting—that he’d been forced to kill her because first he’d raped her? But he’d earlier told me he hadn’t raped her, and he seemed genuinely shaken when he confessed to kissing her. She was my father’s wife, I’d kissed her. He’d told Ehrenberg he’d only hugged her, though, so maybe he was leading up to the whole truth in gradual steps, I hugged her, I kissed her, I raped her, yes!

  You kissed her after she was dead?

  Yes.

  In which case, and assuming kissing was a euphemism for something more sordid, Michael Purchase hadn’t gone immediately to the police only because he knew what their reaction would be to necrophilia. Maybe he was what his father had called him this morning—a monster.

  Did you kiss Emily, too?

  No, just my mother.

  Your mother?

  Maureen.

  There were darknesses here I no longer cared to explore. I closed my mind to what Michael had told me, closed it as well to the talk of murder everywhere around me. Our host was standing with the Italian artist, placating him, telling him the turnout at the gallery tonight had been truly remarkable.

  Our hostess was calling us to dinner.

  We got home at twenty to twelve. I checked on Joanna, who was sound asleep, and then went into the study to switch on the telephone-answering machine. The first message was from a client for whom I’d recently drawn a will. He said his son had been arrested driving a motorcycle at ninety miles an hour in a forty-mile zone. I made a note to call him in the morning, and then switched on the machine again. The next message was from Karin Purchase, leaving a phone number, and asking that I return her call. Jamie’s daughter, according to what he’d told Ehrenberg, had been living in New York City for the past three years, but the number she’d left began with a 366—a Calusa prefix. I dialed it at once.

  “Calusa Bay Hotel, good evening,” a voice said, “May I help you?”

  “Miss Karin Purchase, please,” I said.

  “Thank you, sir.”

  I waited. I could hear the phone ringing on the other end. I began counting the rings. I was about to hang up when a woman’s voice said, “Hello?”

  “Miss Purchase?”

  “Yes?”

  “Matthew Hope.”

  “Oh, hello, Mr. Hope, I was hoping you’d call, what time is it? I’m sorry, I was in the shower, where did I put my watch? A quarter to twelve, is that too late? I’d like to see you, do you think you can come here now, it’s very important that we talk.”

  “Well…”

  “It’s room 401,” she said, “can you get here in ten minutes or so, I’ll be expecting you,” she said, and hung up.

  12

  * * *

  TALL, LISSOME, wearing a striped caftan slit at the neck, slit at the sides, blue eyes shadowed with a deeper blue, wet blonde hair captured in a scarf that matched the caftan, Karin Purchase opened the door and said at once, “Come in, you got here fast,” slurring the sentences so that they became a single hurried invitation-observation. She turned and walked into the room. I followed her in, closing the door behind me.

  She resembled her father strikingly, the same light blue eyes and arching blonde eyebrows, the same flaring nose and thin-lipped mouth. But there was in her angular length something entirely female as well. Slender arms showed in the kited sleeves of the caftan, collar bones veered wildly in the V-neck, narrow ankles and youthful legs flashed where the long skirt was slit to the knee on either side.

  “Would you like a drink?” she asked. “Some cognac? Crème de menthe?”

  “Cognac, please,” I said, and to my surprise she picked up the telephone receiver at once and asked for room service. It occurred to me belatedly that a young woman traveling alone, or for that matter a dowager traveling with an entourage, would not have packed her suitcase with a selection of after-dinner drinks. I felt like a clodhopper. Karin Purchase’s cool assurance was unsettling; she was far too young to be so smooth. How old had Jamie said? Twenty-two?

  “This is Miss Purchase in 401,” she said into the phone. “Would you please send up a cognac and a Grand Marnier?” She looked across at me. “Courvoisier all right?”

  “Yes,” I said.

  “Courvoisier’s fine, thank you,” she said, and hung up, and immediately said, “I read about it in the Post, that’s New York’s afternoon paper, are you familiar with it? Said my brother had confessed to killing Maureen and the two girls.” She shook her head, took a cigarette from a package on the dresser. Lighting it, she said, “There’s a five-forty-five plane out of Newark.” She blew out the match, exhaling a stream of smoke that looked like a visible sigh. “I got to the airport here at a little past ten, and called you the minute I was in the room.”

  “Why me?”

  “The paper said you were representing Michael. Aren’t you?”

  “More or less.”

  “What does that mean, Mr. Hope?”

  “It means your brother doesn’t seem to want representation.”

  “I love my brother dearly, but he’s a fool—”

  “I’ve tried to indicate as much to him.”

  “He didn’t commit those murders.”

  “He says he did. I was there when he made his statement to the police.”

  “I don’t care what he told the police,” Karin said. “I know otherwise.”

  “You sound very certain.”

  “I am,” she said, and went to where a leather pouch-bag was sitting on a chair near the windows. Behind her, the sky stretched wide and black across Calusa Bay. She reached into the bag and took from it a white, legal-sized envelope. “I got this from Michael last week,” she said. “I think you ought to read it.”

  The envelope was addressed in typescript to Miss Karin Purchase at her address on Central Park West. Michael’s return address was in the upper left-hand corner. I opened the already torn flap, and removed from the envelope four typewritten pages folded around another squarish, oatmeal-colored envelope that had in turn been folded to fit inside the letter. This second envelope was addressed by hand to Michael at Pirate’s Cove. The monogram on the torn flap was BJP.

  “My mother,” Karin said.

  “Which should I read first?”

  “Michael’s letter. It makes reference to hers.”

  I took Karin’s bag from the seat of the chair, put it on the floor, sat, and was starting to read the letter when a knock sounded on the door. Karin went to open it. A bellman came in with a tray on which were two snifters, two glasses of water, and a check.

  “Good evening,” he said.

  “Good evening,” Karin said. “Just put it there, please, on the dresser.”

  He put down the tray. Karin scarcely glanced at the check. She scrawled a tip and her signature onto it, and then said, “Thank you.”

  “Thank you, miss,” the bellman said. His eyes avoided mine. This was five minutes past midnight, the lady was casually dressed, she had ordered drinks in her room for two. The bellman knew an assignation when he saw one. Not for nothing was he nineteen years old and growing a mustache. He backed his way discreetly out of the room. Karin closed and locked the door behind him. She brought me my cognac, went back to the dresser for her own snifter, and then sat on the arm of the chair.

  “May I read over your shoulder?” she asked.

  “Yes, certainly.”

  The letter was dated Wednesday, February 25.

  Dear Sis,

  I don’t know what to do about this latest letter from Mom. As you can see, what she’s trying to do again is get me involved in her problems with Pop. This time it’s because he’s cut off alimony payments. I don’t know what the hell she expects me to do, I really don’t. I’m living on Pop’s boat, does she want me to go to him and tell him he should start paying her the alimony again? He’d kick me off the boat for sure, and I can’t afford that right now, especially when I’m saving money for tuition in the fall. Anyway, Kar, I’m not even sure I agree with Mom this time.

  He’s been married to Maureen for eight years now, he’s got a new family and a new life. His only ties to Mom were those checks he sent each month. I had a long talk with Maureen last night. Mostly about going back to school, but we also talked about the alimony. Kar, it really was a terrific burden on Pop. He was working harder than he ever had before, going to the office every Wednesday, for example, which used to be his day off, turning off the phone and catching up on paperwork he doesn’t have a chance to get to during the week because he’s increased his case load so much.

  Maureen told me they took only one vacation last year, to Montreal for a week. You know Pop, he really likes his vacations. But here he is taking just a week, and you know as well as I that Mom spent six weeks in Italy last summer and two weeks skiing in Austria this Christmas. She got a two-hundred-thousand-dollar cash settlement, and the interest on that, if she invested it in anything but buggy whips, would have to bring a conservative eight percent a year. I wish I could get that kind of money for doing nothing but being alive. Somebody’s suffering for sure, Kar, but I don’t think it’s Mom, and I really think Pop had every right to tell her to go to hell. He’s got a life of his own to lead and he wants to lead it without any ties to a woman he never even thinks about anymore.

  My point, Sis, is that Mom has been doing the same number for ten years now, and she does it all over again in the letter I’m enclosing. I love her to death, and I’d do anything in the world for her, I mean it. But that’s partly because she’s made me feel so goddamn sorry for her, playing the widowed old lady when she’s only forty-two! I don’t know what to do, Karin, I really don’t. I think I’m going to call her and tell her to give it up, let Pop go, for Christ’s sake! But then I’m afraid she’ll start bawling, and I never know what to do when she cries. Sis, please read her letter and let me know what you think I should tell her. I may call her before I hear from you, because you know Mom, she gets frantic if she thinks she’s being neglected.