“The assassination.”
She smiled, shrugged, and seemed to be acknowledging that they both understood her claim of being an assassin was a mere fantasy, that whatever task awaited her was mundane even if nevertheless unpleasant.
And yet . . . this time she kissed him not on the mouth but on the cheek, with a certain solemnity, as if greater passion were inappropriate with murder in the wind.
He watched her until she drove out of the lot and out of sight.
He was weak with a desire that was more longing than appetite, a craving to set right the great wrong of his past. His heart felt swollen and yet empty in her absence. He told himself that he did not know Maddison well enough to love her, but he felt as if he’d known and cherished her for half his lifetime.
Whatever the answer to the mystery of this woman might be, David Thorne believed that what he felt for her was right and true, that if they couldn’t make a future together, he would have no future at all and no reason to want one.
In his SUV, on the way home, his mind filled with memories of Emily, a montage of moments and images. By the time he pulled into his garage, he was irrationally convinced that somehow he had found her, that for Emily time had stood still. If he were invited to undress Maddison Sutton, would he discover a symmetrical, flat, golden birthmark an inch below her navel, the very one that he’d so often kissed, that he had claimed tasted like honey?
| 24 |
The night received the day, and the scarlet sunset burned into blackness in the west, leaving the sea to reflect only the lamp of an early moon.
At 6:50 p.m., David was about to drop pasta in a pot of boiling water, preparing a dinner of linguini in butter with roasted pine nuts and Parmesan cheese, broccoli on the side—a meal that Emily had often prepared—when Isaac Eisenstein called from New York.
“Your cutie has a job, such as it is. She’s one of the three directors of the Patrick Michael Lynam Corley Foundation. It’s not a paid position.”
David put down the box of pasta and leaned against the counter. “Which means what? What’s this foundation do?”
“Its resources aren’t enormous. It’s not like the Ford or the Gates Foundations. They make about a hundred thousand a year in grants to various academics studying the effects of new technology on society.”
“They need three directors for that?”
“It’s how these things work. Here’s an interesting factoid. The other two directors are ghosts. Try to background them, and you find several people with the same names, different SS numbers. None has anything to do with the Corley Foundation. As far as we know, your Maddison is the only director who’s a real person.”
“What do you make of that?”
“I don’t make anything of it, my friend. What it suggests to me is that maybe you should forget this lady and use an online dating service. Or join a monastery.”
Sinuous curls of steam rose from the boiling water in the pot. They looked like a series of question marks without the dots.
“For the time being,” David said, “I’m giving her the benefit of the doubt.”
“Have you been hooked and reeled in or what? Hoo-ha.”
“There has to be trust in every relationship.”
“Hoo-ha!”
“Don’t hoo-ha me. Change my mind with facts. Yesterday you said all this had taken a weird turn because of Patrick Corley. You said maybe he’s been dead seven years, maybe not.”
“A PI from Santa Barbara, Lew Ross, did all the local footwork for me out there. You’ll see it on your bill.”
David sighed. “Maybe I better write an extra book to pay for this.”
“According to Lew, Corley was in a supermarket when he had a massive heart attack. The guy was dead before paramedics got there. Because there was no living family, a director of his foundation signed to release the body from the morgue. Maddison Sutton.”
“Seven years ago, she’d have been like eighteen. Can you be a foundation director at eighteen?”
A soft, fluttery tapping drew his attention to the window above the sink. Only darkness beyond the glass. Maybe the sound had been that of a frenzied moth seeking the solace of light.
Isaac said, “More interesting is what happened to Corley’s body. She hired Churchill’s Funeral Home in Santa Barbara to collect the remains from the morgue, install them in an airtight casket, and deliver them to the Corley Foundation. She didn’t want the body to be embalmed or in any way whatsoever prepared for viewing.”
“Did they cremate it or what?”