I took a glass of champagne off one of the girls' trays and drained it in time to take a second after Jessica took hers. Every time I turned, one of those girls was going by with a tray and not many of them got past without taking an empty glass away and leaving me with a full one. I felt the bubbles lifting my spirits and it seemed to me that that party was the first gathering since James's death that wasn't tainted with mourning.

  The room was crowded and noisy and in my ears it began to sound like ocean surf. My teeth lost all feeling, and in a discussion with Howard Reese about the World Bank, I became remotely aware that my words weren't coming out quite right. I got quiet after that and noticed that Marty was up on a chair pinging a water glass with a spoon. It took about five minutes before it was quiet enough for him to announce that dinner was served and would everyone please go to the front table to find their place cards.

  I started toward the dining area, saw Jessica, and gripped her hand in mine. The big oval table in the middle of everything was where James always sat with Eva, Scott, and Emily, and the most important guests from outside the company. Out past the mullioned windows stretched a spacious deck, then the black water and the peninsula beyond. Jessica and I took our places, James's and Eva's seats, in the middle of everyone with our backs to the windows. I sat down on my hands and pressed my lips tight. The room leaned one way, just a bit, then the other. I lowered my eyelids halfway until Jessica nudged my ribs with her elbow. Everyone was looking. It was time for a toast.

  "I thought you said traditions didn't matter," I said, leaning toward her. "Now it matters all of a sudden? Shit."

  She forced a smile at me, her eyes darting around the table. I stood up, bracing my hand against the table. A hundred faces scattered among a sea of round tables, each offering up a trio of candles surrounding a bloom of yellow roses. I raised my glass and felt them lean toward me. I opened my mouth to speak, then stopped and narrowed my eyes.

  Beyond the glimmering candlelight, in the open area of the bar where the stairways led up to the bedrooms, the lights had been dimmed. But my eye caught the movement of someone coming down the stairway, descending almost mechanically with his hand on the cast-iron railing. When he reached the bottom landing, I felt a tight ball in my gut. I couldn't make out the features of his face, but could see from its pale glow that it was regal and topped with a flow of white hair. I felt Jessica's fingertips on my arm.

  I saw the nose. The high cheeks and the strong jowls. The eyes glaring, snowy eyebrows pitched toward the floor. I looked at Jessica and flicked my eyes toward his shape until she looked too. The glass slipped from my hand and smashed somewhere in the distance.

  I stepped away from the table and fell back over my chair. I heard small screams and a wave of murmuring.

  Jessica stood over me with a pale face, tugging on my arm, helping me to my feet.

  "We're fine," she said, raising her hand to the crowd and sweeping a strand of hair behind her ear.

  "Please, everyone eat."

  She braced my arm over her shoulder, straining under my weight. My feet fumbled underneath me and my eyes lost their focus as she led me away.

  37

  "Do you still see him?" he asks.

  "That's what those pills they gave me are for," I say, "right?"

  "They're more for depression, I'd say. Were there others you haven't told anyone about? You said you see your wife. In your cell."

  "When I close my eyes I do," I say, closing them for a moment to show him. "But you mean like James, right? Like ghosts?"

  "Is that what you think he was?"

  "I guess that's what made me crazy, huh?" I say.

  "Were you?" he asks.

  My lip curls up at this. "You people say I am. What's a label, though? Fiction. With money you can create any fiction you like. 'My wife designed the wing on the museum.' 'I'm a hell of a polo player.'

  'She's a brilliant art collector.' Crap like that. Everyone swallows it."

  "Did you have a fiction?" he asks.

  I lace my fingers together behind my neck and lean back. "The happy couple. Horatio Alger. In control . . ."

  I let the chair fall forward with a crash and I lean across the table. "I was seeing dead men, for Christ's sake. Johnny G was in my shorts. The FBI had Bucky on a leash, tracking me down like a bloodhound."

  "Interesting choice of words."

  "What is?" I ask, sitting back.

  "Bloodhound."

  "Why? Blood on my hands?" I asked.

  "Was he really with the FBI?"

  "They were all working together against me," I said. "That's why Ben had to go."

  He riffles through his papers, studying them with a frown, then looks up and says, "Together? All of them? This is something new."

  "Not to me."

  38

  BEN PULLED UP THE DRIVE, rounded the bend, and saw Bucky's blue Suburban resting in front of rubble. The log house looked like a squashed matchstick sculpture. Jagged ends of wood sprouted from the twisted mass of piping, wires, and sheet metal.

  A head popped up from the middle of the mess. Two dark eyes and a thick, drooping mustache beneath the rim of a camouflage cap. Ben cut his headlights and got out.

  "Bucky," he shouted.

  Bucky disappeared for a moment, then came from around the side of the mess with a shotgun in one hand and a gazelle mount in the other. He held the stuffed head by the good horn. The other was broken, but Bucky still opened the rear window of his Suburban and laid it in.

  "You want me out?" Bucky said, staring baldly. The shotgun in his hand wasn't aimed at Ben, but it was pointing in his general direction. "A lot of this stuff is mine."

  Ben shook his head. "You don't understand. Adam told me what happened. He had no right."

  "James's gone, though, right? Now it's just you and him running things."

  "Buck," Ben said, shaking his head, looking hard into his churning eyes, "I am not a part of this. I tried to get the board to put me in charge. Jesus, he put the union on the job at Garden State. We fought them for fifteen years and now they're down there running a poker game in the job trailer."

  "I guess we all got our problems," Bucky said, motioning his head toward the broken heap.

  "We're on the same side here, Bucky," Ben said.

  "Who's side is that?" Bucky said, lowering the gun and walking toward the pile.

  "You don't believe me, do you?" said Ben, following.

  "They treated you both like family," Bucky said, pushing a beam up out of the way and stepping in to retrieve a clock radio with one hand and a reading lamp with the other.

  "Look at this," Ben said, taking a business card from his pocket and handing it to Bucky. Bucky set the clock down on the ground and took the card, holding it at arm's length to read it.

  "Yeah, so? I talked to them already. They think it was Scott. Is that what you think?" he said.

  "I've been talking to them," Ben said. "Trying to convince them what's really going on here."

  "Which is?"

  "The union, I think," Ben said. "Thane helping them, maybe."

  "Who else could have got in?" Bucky said, picking up the clock and taking it and the lamp to the back of his truck. "I saw man tracks. Thane's size. They came from the lower entrance by the gun room. There's a scanner there to let you in."

  "I can't see Thane," Ben said, still trailing him. "Letting one of them in, but not doing it."

  "There was just one track," Bucky said, standing still in the fading light.

  "Maybe he let them in another door."

  "Maybe a skunk don't spray."

  "Can we prove he went in?" Ben asked. "Does the scanner record the activity anywhere? The time and who used it?"

  "I think it's just like a lock and your eye is the key, but I don't know," Bucky said. "I couldn't find out. It's that Eye Pass company. They wouldn't tell me anything, one way or the other."

  "You're not an officer of the company."

  "Yeah, so?"

  "So, I am," Ben said. "I don't know if it's there, but if it is, I'll find it."

  He held out his hand, and Bucky took it.

  39

  AMANDA DASHED INTO THE ROOM, tugging a wrinkle out of her blouse. Everyone else was already seated at the conference table. She sat down next to Dorothy and ignored the stares, fixing her eyes on the supervisor's shiny bald head. Even he was looking at her in an off-center way. She looked at her shoulder and saw the Pop-Tart crumbs. She brushed them off and looked up at her supervisor's eyes magnified by the thick lenses. He cleared his throat and began to speak. Amanda had a hard time paying attention to the laundry list of uneventful details. An argument between a hit man and his cousin. A forged check by the wife of a street thug. A wiretap that shed light on nothing more than a teenage romance and a preferred brand of condoms.

  Finally, they came to her. Amanda looked at Dorothy, saw the flat line of her mouth, and stood up.

  "Well, the plot thickens," Amanda said. All eyes were on her. "One of our sources is claiming another source is the one responsible for James King's murder."

  "What source?" the supervisor asked, his mouth agog.

  "Ben Evans--his picture isn't up there--thinks Thane Coder either killed James King, or helped someone from Johnny G's organization do it. But Evans himself could be involved. We need more resources. To watch them all."

  "Was Johnny G or Peter Romano anywhere close to this lodge?"

  "Johnny was at a political fund-raiser," she said. "Pete was in a holding tank in Morristown, New Jersey, for some unpaid parking tickets."

  "Shit."

  "Evans is the other friend?" one of the NYPD cops asked.

  "Of James King's son," Amanda said.

  "Who we thought was the killer," said another.

  "And no one can find," the supervisor said.

  "Someone's working with the union," Amanda said, nodding toward Johnny G's glossy photo in the middle of the board. "I don't know who. The son. This, Ben Evans. The union is all over that project."

  "Probably our former football star," Dorothy said, leaning back in her chair with her hands laced behind her head. "Coder's dirty. Taxes are just the start. So is the wife. Comes off like a Girl Scout, but she's a snake. Cold-blooded."

  Amanda shot her partner an annoyed look, even though her interruption was no surprise. Dorothy had voiced her opinion on the drive home last night.

  "Based on?" the supervisor said, his magnified eyes unblinking.

  "Had a little dinner with Johnny G he didn't tell us about," Dorothy said, popping her fingers into the air, as she counted off the reasons. "Only alibi for that night is the wife. And, the caretaker says there was a boot print in the snow outside the lodge the night of the murder, Coder's size."

  "The lodge has a retina scan security system," Amanda said. "We've asked for a warrant to see if there's any record of who accessed the system and when."

  "Monte?" the supervisor said, looking at the agent the team relied on for any information technology. Monte shrugged and said, "Depends on the level of the system. Some have it, some don't."

  "Why didn't we check this from the start?" the supervisor asked.

  "We had the son's bloody knife and him on the run," Dorothy said. "No one thought about someone sneaking in. The son was in there already."

  "We missed it," Amanda said.

  "We didn't," Dorothy said.

  "You two got a problem?" the supervisor said, eyes darting between them for clues.

  "Bucky Lanehart, he's a hunting guide at the lodge," Amanda said. "I'm betting he'd say anything if it helped Scott King. No one else saw those prints. They conveniently melted."

  "Size thirteen," Dorothy said. "Coder's size."

  "He says."

  "Footprints are a hunting guide's specialty, wouldn't you say?"

  Amanda saw the grins around the table. They were obviously happy it was her instead of them who had to listen to Dorothy's junk.

  "We've put time into Coder already," Amanda said. "My gut tells me he's all right. I don't know. If Coder were discredited in any way, Ben Evans would end up running the company. If Evans is the dirty one here, I'm sure the union would prefer to have him running the company instead of Coder."

  That set off a round of murmurs, everyone speculating, until Dorothy said, "Your gut sucks."

  The room went quiet.

  Their supervisor cleared his throat and said, "Get the warrant. See what the scanner says and we won't have to worry about anyone's gut. If it was Coder there that night, then he's lying."

  40

  AT FIRST I THOUGHT the house might be burning. The sky over the trees was thick with dark smoke aglow in the setting sun. When I drove through the gates, I saw the house standing tall and clean. It was the lot next door where the smoke came from and it wasn't a fire. Five big excavators belched black diesel exhaust into the air. The earth was torn open. Dirt piled high. A steady stream of dump trucks filled their beds and rumbled off up the dirt lane to the main road, grinding their gears and disappearing into the dusk.

  I pulled into the garage and walked around the outside of the house. A section of fence had been removed, and there was a path beaten in the grass between the lower level of the house and the work site. Through the sliding glass doors I saw a table set up on sawhorses that was covered with plans. Around the table, wearing orange hard hats, stood Jessica and two construction men in muddy boots. I looked over at the work. The thundering machines shook the air and the fresh scent of raw earth mingled with the exhaust. I realized now that the red steel bore the Con Trac emblem. I took two steps toward the site, drawn by its enormity, then retreated back toward the house, where the plans were being laid.

  "What the hell?" I said, before they could turn their heads.

  "Thane," Jessica said, easing my way and planting a kiss on my cheek. She had on work boots too and a fleece-lined jeans jacket. "We got started."

  "The house?" I said, eyeing the crusty men in their Carhartt overalls.

  "Johnny said they had a couple machines that could dig the foundation in two days," she said. "It's not costing us a dime."

  "Oh, it's free, right?" I said, raising my voice.

  She checked me with her scowl. I motioned my head and we went upstairs. Jessica closed the door quietly and turned to me, frowning.

  "I thought you'd be happy."

  "To see a hole in the property?" I said.

  "I'm saving us almost a hundred thousand. Johnny said they could just come up and dig it quick while they were between things on the project. I don't know why you're doing this."

  "Johnny?" I said, shaking my head, searching her face. "When the hell did you talk to him?"

  "On the phone," she said. Her jaw was set, warning me.

  "You don't just dig a foundation like this on an off moment," I said. "It costs thirty thousand just to move those machines up here. You've got ten million dollars' worth of equipment out there. Nothing's free."

  "Well, technically," she said, "they're not here."

  I threw my hands up and spun toward the big picture window, catching a glimpse of the red monsters tearing into the ground with their steel-toothed buckets.

  "Great. That's great," I said, wheeling back to her. "I'm two weeks behind schedule already and we've got ten million dollars' worth of equipment in the backyard. You have no idea what you're doing."

  "Let me get you a drink," she said.

  "I don't want a drink. I want you to stop pushing."

  "Pushing got us here," she said, taking down a bottle of wine, driving the screw into the cork and yanking it out. "Think about if you'd pushed the night our baby died."

  I stared at her, noticing the red rims of her eyes, the bitter sharpness of their focus.

  "You gonna do that?" I said, my voice cracking.

  "Want to play Xbox?"

  We both turned. Tommy had come downstairs wearing a backwards orange Syracuse hat.

  "How about when we get home?" I said. "We're going to go out for dinner. Get changed, okay, pal?

  Lose the hat."

  He shrugged and went back upstairs. We stared at each other.

  "Are you taking those Vicodins?" I asked her, lowering my voice.

  "Because I'm saying what we both already know?" she asked.

  "Because you're acting out of control," I said.

  Her face contorted, then relaxed. She smiled.

  "It'll be fine, okay?" she said. "They're here already. They'll get it dug and then get back to the project. I'll go tell them to hurry. Why don't you get out of that suit and we'll go to dinner. Tommy's hungry."

  I shook my head and sighed and went upstairs to change into jeans. In the bathroom, I went to look in the mirror. It was gone. Bare wall, torn through to the gypsum in the places where the glue was. There was a mirror on the back of the door, inside her closet. I went there. Gone. I went into the guest bedroom and the bathroom there. Gone.

  "Tommy," I said, and my son popped his head out of his room, smiling.

  "Is there a mirror in your bathroom?"

  His face fell and he shrugged. I went in, past the big TV and its tangle of wires and control sets and into the bathroom. No mirror. Downstairs, the decorative mirror in the entryway had been replaced by a painting.

  I went into my library. From there, through two windows, I could see down into the main room on the ground floor. There she was, down there with those men, planning her dig. Her face was bright with her dark hair tucked back behind her ears as she pointed from the plans to the machines, and they all shared a laugh.

  I sat down at my desk and turned my attention to the jewels of light on the far shore as they went out one at a time. The lake got dark and the machines shut down, one by one, until the silence pressed in on me. I heard her saying good-bye, then her footsteps on the stairs. She was behind me.