Peter Ingram sat erect, his hands folded on his lap. He was waiting.
Nat found herself increasingly irritated by Ingram’s silent treatment. Her first instinct was to read it as hostility, but then she tried to open her mind to the possibility that he was frightened, upset, and possibly even grief-stricken. After all, his daughter was, at this very moment, fighting for her life in a hospital in Boston.
His
daughter.
How easy for Nat to think of Lynn that way. Lynn wasn’t her flesh and blood. Lynn hadn’t started out life as Nat’s
son.
“You have a lovely home,” Nat said lightly. “Did your wife do the decorating herself?”
“She had some help.”
“I’d love to know the name of her decorator.”
“I have no idea.” Ingram put his glasses back on—more, it seemed to Nat, to give him something to do than anything else.
“My sister looked out in Westfield a few years ago,” Nat continued. “She toured a house in this development, but it was a bit too pricey even though her husband does very well in banking.” Leo glanced at her, knowing she was lying through her teeth.
Ingram didn’t know it, though, and Nat could see that her comment made him uneasy. “I. . . was fortunate ... to come into a bit of money,” he muttered.
“Oh, that was fortunate,” she said.
“Look,” Ingram said gruffly, “you haven’t driven all the way out here to pay a social call. Can we just get to it?”
“Fine,” Leo responded pleasantly, pulling out a pad and flipping it open, then removing a ballpoint pen. “Would you tell me your whereabouts yesterday?”
If Ingram was taken aback by just how quickly Leo got to the point, he gave no indication. Indeed, he met Leo’s gaze head-on and responded without even a moment’s hesitation. “I was at work until five. I got home at five forty-five, and that’s where I was until I got up for work this morning at seven
a.m. You
could ask me about any weekday and I’d have the same answer. I lead a very uneventful life.” Ingram’s voice was tight, mechanical, unmodulated.
“I believe your work requires doing some on-site computer troubleshooting. Did you visit any sites yesterday?” Leo was glancing down at a page in his notebook. Nat wasn’t sure whether it contained some information about an on-site visit or whether it was a bluff. If it was a bluff, she could see from the way the muscles in Ingram’s jaw tightened that he was succeeding.
Ingram lost his rigid control. “Yes, Thursdays I occasionally do on-site ...” His prominent Adam’s apple bobbed as he swallowed hard. “I did make a brief visit to Dekko Computers. It’s in Wayland.”
“What time was that?” Leo asked.
“I got there before one and left after two.”
“How much before one p.m.?”
A thin bead of sweat broke out across Ingram’s broad forehead. He clenched his hands together. “I don’t know exactly. Twelve-forty, twelve forty-five. Look, I never wanted anything bad to happen to . . . him. I don’t suppose you can understand what it’s like. Losing a child. We were close, Larry and I. I mean . . . when he was little. You probably think we weren’t because of . . . but we were. I used to take him fishing and camping. Just the two of us. Did his mother tell you that?”
Nat gave Leo a quick look. Ingram noticed. “Yes, Ruth told me she went to the hospital. She thought I’d go ballistic.” He sounded suddenly sad, drained. “I’m not a monster. He’s our child. Ruth is his mother. I wasn’t mad she went to the hospital. I understand my wife a hell of a lot better than she understands me.”
“She understands that you disowned your child,” Nat snapped, ignoring Leo’s peeved look in her direction for piping up. Bjut she couldn’t help it. Her blood was starting to boil listening to this man talk as if he was the good guy here.
“I gave my son a choice,” he answered stiffly.
“A choice? To live a lie in order to be accepted by her father, versus—”
“Do you have any children, Superintendent?”
“The point is,
you
have one,” she shot back. “And you cast him out of your life without so much—”
Ingram popped out of his chair, again cutting her off. “I was not going to let him humiliate us. I should have thrown him out the first time I—” He stopped abruptly. “What does it matter now?”
“You mean right after Larry graduated high school?” She was not about to let him off the hook.
Ingram flushed. “Larry told you?”
She didn’t respond. Neither did Leo.
Ingram sat back down, clasped his hands together. “He thought we were gone for the weekend. But Ruthie and I had an argument. We were at her mother’s. Her mother always took her daughter’s side. Never did like me. I stormed out. Drove home.” Ingram unclasped his hands, putting them up to his face.
“Larry was ... in our bed. With ... a man. They were ... I think ... I could have . . . gotten past that part. . . Not right away, but... I mean you think having a kid who’s . . . gay is probably as bad as it can get, but—”
“Worse than leukemia? a brain tumor? muscular—?”
Leo glared at Nat for breaking in again.
Ingram was glaring, too. “Larry leaped out of bed when he saw me. He was wearing a wig and makeup. And he was ... he was dressed in a pair of his mother’s bra and panties.
His mother’s
.”
He stared starkly at them. “You don’t have the faintest idea what that did to me. I thanked God Ruthie wasn’t with me that night. I never told her. I. . . never—” He shook his head, the glare replaced by agony.
“What did you do?” Leo asked quietly.
Ingram’s eyes filled with tears. “I. . . ran. I ran out of the house. I got to the street and ... I threw up. I threw my guts up. And then I got in my car and drove. I don’t know where I went or, even worse, how I got there. I think a part of me wanted to drive right into a tree. Anything . . . Anything to eradicate that . . . sight. It was obscene.”
“But your wife said you made up?”
“Larry promised—never again.”
“He even got married,” Nat said.
Ingram stiffened. “That didn’t last long.”
“What became of Bethany?” Nat asked.
Ingram was staring down at the floor again. “I heard she died several years ago.”
Nat and Leo shared a look. “Who told you?” Leo asked.
“I don’t remember now. Maybe I read it in the paper.”
“Your wife never mentioned that Bethany was dead,” Nat said.
“I don’t remember if I even told my wife. It didn’t seem to have any bearing on us.”
“Did your son know?”
“Yes. I believe so.”
“You believe so?”
“I did think Larry should know. Okay? So I asked my priest to write to him at... at the prison.”
“So she died during the time of Lynn’s incarceration,” Nat commented, deliberately referring to his child by her name. Ingram merely nodded.
“How?” she asked.
“Car accident,” Ingram muttered, still looking down.
“Where did it happen?”
“Somewhere in France. I don’t know the details.”
“And you read about it in a local paper?”
“No. I remember now. It wasn’t in the paper. Someone ... a friend of Larry’s from Harvard ... I bumped into him a few years ago. And . . . he’d known Bethany and he happened to mention it in passing.”
“What was this friend’s name?” Leo asked.
“I don’t remember. And I don’t understand why all this interest in Larry’s ex-wife,” Ingram snapped. “Their whole marriage was a sham. It lasted all of a couple of months. And that was ten years ago.”
“Routine,” Leo said offhandedly. “What did she look like? Bethany? Describe her for us,” he went on, pen poised, maintaining a perfectly calm demeanor.
Ingram’s demeanor was anything but calm. “Describe her? For God’s sake, why? She’s dead. What could it matter—”
• “Tall? Short? Blonde? Brunette? Thin—?”
“Average. Just. . . average. Brown hair, I think. Not heavy. Not thin. There was nothing . . . distinctive about her.”
Nat was certain Ingram was lying through his teeth about Bethany. Which also made her even more certain that Lynn’s exwife was very likely the current wife of Daniel Milburne.
“Perhaps your wife will be able to be more specific,” Nat said. “Leave my wife alone. She’s nearly at the point of collapse as it is. If you continue to pursue us, I’ll press charges of police harassment,” Ingram warned.
“You’re free to do that, Mr. Ingram,” Leo said blandly. And Nat wanted to hug him on the spot for not referring to Lynn’s father as “Mr. Everett.” “But there’s been a serious murder attempt on your daughter—”
Again Ingram flinched. Again Nat wanted to hug Leo.
“And I intend to pursue this investigation until I track down , the bastard who did it.”
Ingram retreated from his threatening stance. “Please. Please,” he repeated. Now there was a note of pleading in his voice. “I don’t know if this is something either of you can understand, but I find it extremely painful having these old wounds reopened. It’s taken me a long time to . . . heal.”
“It’s going to take Lynn an even longer time,” Nat said. “And I’m not just talking about the horrendous physical wounds.”
twelve
I didn’t only lie to her, I lied to myself. I honestly thought we could make our marriage work. Talk about self-deception. I hope she will some day find it in her heart to forgive me.
L. I.
"YOU THINK HE was telling the truth?” Nat asked Leo as they headed back to Boston.
“About where he was yesterday?” Leo shrugged. “We need to nail down the time he got to Dekko. But even if he got there at twelve-forty, it leaves open a small window of opportunity.” “And that bit about Bethany having died? Awfully convenient. And awfully vague. Wouldn’t you say?”
“Yeah,” Leo agreed.
“And I’d still love to know where the Ingrams got the money to buy a home that had to cost at least half a million bucks. A
sum like that would be a drop in the bucket for someone as wealthy as Milburne.”
“Even if it was hush money, it’s still a big jump from paying someone off to keep quiet about a marriage, to attempting a murder.”
“Milburne had to be in a panic that Lynn would see a picture of Bethany in the paper or on TV. Politicians and their wives are always being photographed.”
“Maybe the wife got a complete makeover. I saw a few photos of her. She’s anything but average. She’s a real knockout.”
“But Lynn was married to her. She might still recognize her, makeover or not. Plus we only have Peter Ingram’s word that Bethany was ‘average.’ And his word isn’t exactly trustworthy. And if Lynn saw the photo and recognized Bethany, it makes sense she’d start wondering why she was informed of Bethany’s demise. Maybe Lynn contacted her ex. And Beth told Milburne. And—”
Leo was scowling.
“What?”
“Don’t go jumping to conclusions, Natalie. But there was a photo of Beth Milburne at a charity ball that she attended on Wednesday night. It made the Thursday morning paper.”
“Tall? Blonde? Hair down to here?” Nat pointed to her shoulders. “Patrician-looking?”
Leo was nodding. .
So was Nat. Now she knew why the woman in the cafeteria had looked familiar to Carrie Li. The nurse must have seen Beth Milburne’s picture at the charity ball as well.
“You going to fill me in?” Leo asked knowingly.
Nat told him about the woman who’d fled the cafeteria that morning.
As they approached the city, Nat called the hospital for a status report on Lynn. It was over twenty-four hours since the attack. But there was still no change in her condition. Which meant she was still unconscious, still hanging by a thread.
“Has anyone else called or shown up at ICU?” Nat asked the head nurse, already having learned that Carrie Li was unavailable. Nat and Leo would have to wait to talk to her about Beth Milburne.
“Dr. Bell came by a short while ago. He was rather upset when I told him Ms. Ingram couldn’t have any visitors. It was a bit awkward for me. Dr. Bell does have staff privileges at the hospital and, as he pointed out, he wasn’t technically a
visitor.
I told him to talk to the officer posted by Ms. Ingram’s door since the ‘No Visitor’ mandate was a police order.”
“And did he?”
“No. He just left. But he wasn’t looking very happy.”
Nat related this information to Leo. He listened, not looking too happy himself.
“You think it’s time to have a little chat with Bell?” Nat asked.
Leo glanced at the car clock. It was just after four. They were approaching one of the refurbished turnpike rest stops with a spanking new McDonald’s less than ten miles from the city.
“Let’s make a pit stop.” He pulled off the exit. “I suppose you want to come along for the chat with Dr. Bell.”
“I suppose I’d better. Otherwise, how could you be sure I wasn’t off sleuthing on my own?”
There was a family photo on Bell’s desk. He saw Nat eyeing it and smiled. “That was taken this summer down at the Cape. We’ve got a little cottage in Truro. Carol and the children used to stay all summer when the kids were little. I’d come down on weekends and for most of August. This past summer it was only Daphne, my baby.”
Nat glanced at the pretty blond-haired girl swept up in Daddy’s arms in the photo. She looked to be around four or five. Her chubby arms were circling her dad’s neck and she was smiling brightly. The only one in the family who was smiling.
“We’re lucky if we manage a couple of weekends there with the boys. Billy goes to baseball camp and Josh spends half the summer at hockey camp and the other half at basketball camp. Two regular jocks, my boys,” he added proudly, a smile on his face now. “Not that Daphne’s a slouch. You should see that little one kick a soccer ball. But then, with two big, athletic brothers to teach her—”
“Which boy got in trouble at school yesterday?” Nat asked. Harrison’s smile faded. “That would be the oldest. Josh.” He pointed to the taller and heavier-set boy in the photo. “He’s fourteen. Teenagers. Hey, they have to rebel. It’s healthy. That’s what I keep trying to explain to my wife.”
Nat’s gaze fell on the tall, athletic blonde standing in front of her husband and daughter in the photo, her arms draped affectionately around the two boys who flanked either side of her. Josh was already as tall as his mother.