Since then, she’d felt nothing. It was as though she’d turned her emotions off to prevent them from overwhelming her completely. It was an unusual reaction for Sydney, who prided herself on her strength and compassion.
She barely heard her mother enter the room from the marble foyer, where the grand staircase to the second floor swept around in a regal ellipse, its carved oak banister smelling of rich wood polish. Lydia Chapin walked over to the bar at the far end of the room and began fixing herself a stiff drink.
“Do you want one?” she asked her daughter after a moment.
Sydney looked up. Everything seemed muted to her, as if she were under water. “No.” She shook her head.
“Do you not drink?” Lydia asked. “Or is it just that you won’t drink with me?”
Sydney rubbed her forehead. “I just don’t think my system could handle it right now. I don’t know how to feel.”
Lydia stared off into space. “Yes, I think there’s a lot of that going around.”
“How’s Amanda?” Sydney asked.
Lydia’s shoulders dipped as she set her drink down on the marble bar. “Who knows? She’s sleeping now, thank God. The doctors think she will be all right, eventually. They gave her some sedatives, and they think after a long rest she’ll be ready to talk.” She picked up her drink again and took a long sip.
“Should we have kept her at the hospital?”
“Certainly not.” Of this, at least, Sydney’s mother seemed sure. “I’m not going to allow her to wake up in a sterile environment surrounded by strangers and doctors and nurses. Dr. Phelps will stop by early in the morning, and he said I should call him if she wakes before then—although he said that was unlikely to happen. Right now Amanda needs to be with her family.”
“Her family,”
Sydney repeated in a hollow voice. So odd, she thought, that she and her mother should be all the family left for the fourteen-year-old upstairs.
“Yes,” Lydia said firmly, as if reading her daughter’s thoughts. “Her family.” She locked her daughter in a hard stare. “Like it or not, we are the only family that girl has in the world.” She brought her drink over to the sitting area and settled stiffly into one of the high-backed Queen Anne chairs, taking a deep breath before she continued. “You need to think about that. I know that we have had our . . .
disagreements
... in the past. But we need to put all of that behind us now. Whatever you think of me, Amanda needs you—needs us— and Lord help you if you shirk that responsibility.”
As you have in the past
, was left unspoken, but hung in the air between them.
Sydney held her mother’s gaze, searching her eyes—for what, she didn’t know. Her mother still had a leathery disposition, but with it came a strength that Sydney had always admired in spite of herself. Only hours after learning of Elizabeth’s murder, Lydia had already regrouped and composed herself sufficiently to think of the future. Sydney still couldn’t even grasp the reality of the present. “She has you,” Sydney said after a moment. “I’ve no doubt you’ll get her through this, no matter what.”
Lydia shook her head. “Not good enough.” She set her drink down on the coffee table, moving a coaster over so she wouldn’t leave a ring on the expensive mahogany. “I’m old, Sydney,” she said. “I have no illusions about the way you and your sister viewed my skills as a mother; neither of you made any effort to hide your disdain. But I did the best I could. I
tried
. I may not have succeeded always—or even often—but I made the effort; and everything I did, I did because I thought it was in my children’s best interest.” She looked down at her hands, clasped tightly in her lap, and for just a moment Sydney thought she saw a crack in the veneer her mother displayed to the world at all times. Then she straightened her back and looked up at Sydney again. “But that was a long time ago, and I was younger then. I’m sixty-five years old now, and I’m too old and tired to raise another child—certainly too old and tired to do it by myself.” She looked down at her hands again. “I’m asking for your help.”
Sydney’s eyes never left her mother’s face. Before the summer, she’d been back to D.C. only once in the prior nine years—for her father’s funeral five years before. Even then, she had stayed with a friend rather than at home. She spoke to her mother once a month, if that. Her mother had flown out to her graduation, and they had seen each other on a few rare occasions, but they were strangers now. Nine years out from under her mother’s controlling fist had turned Sydney into a different person, independent and self-reliant. And yet now, here again, she felt insecure and tentative once more.
The years had changed her mother, too, she could see. The strength was still there, but there was defensiveness to it now— as though in the solitude imposed by her children’s estrangement and her husband’s death she had begun to question some of her most firmly held beliefs. Perhaps there was more complexity to her than Sydney had ever suspected.
“I’ll think about it,” Sydney said. She could see the disappointment in her mother’s face—or was it anger? “I’ll stay the night, at least,” she added quickly.
“Good,” Lydia said. “I’ll have your room made up.” She nodded, almost more to herself than to her daughter, and in her eyes Sydney thought she saw a brief look of triumph that brought back a rush of unhappy memories from her younger days, when her mother was able to manipulate her at will. Had this been what her mother had wanted all along—to bring her back under her control?
At the same time, once she agreed to help with Amanda, there was probably no going back. Even by staying for the night, she was sticking her toe in a tar pit from which she might never extricate herself, and as much as she instinctively cared for her niece, taking on the responsibility of raising her would require sacrifices she couldn’t fully comprehend. Yet, did she have any choice? Could she ever leave her mother alone to deal with her niece—and more to the point, could she ever leave her niece alone to deal with her mother? The decision, she realized, had already been made.
She looked over at her mother once more, and noticed that an unusual calmness had settled over her. For just a moment, Sydney wondered if she might regret her decision.
J
ACK STOOD NEXT TO
his partner on the covered portico at the front door of the Chapin mansion. It was a towering Federal on three acres fronting Wisconsin Avenue, in the heart of Washington, D.C.’s most prestigious neighborhood. “Jesus,” Train said to him. “I always thought this was an embassy.”
“Easy mistake,” Jack responded. “Most of the houses in this area
are
embassies.”
Train took another look at his notebook to make sure they had the address. “I take it Chapin was Elizabeth Creay’s maiden name?” he asked Jack, who had worked up the preliminary background on the murdered woman.
“Yeah,” Jack replied.
Train looked up from the notebook, his expression prodding for more. “We get any additional info from the searches you did? Any idea what we’re dealing with on the other side of the door?”
Cassian took out his notebook. “Lydia Chapin is the lady of the manor, as it were. She’s Elizabeth Creay’s mother. Also has another daughter who lives in California. Father and husband—”
“She married her father?”
Cassian made a face. “—father to Elizabeth, husband to Lydia—was none other than Aloysius Chapin—”
“Quite a mouthful.”
“—the well-known industrialist.”
Train’s eyes grew wide. “You mean of Chapin Industries?”
“The same.”
Train let out a low whistle. “I guess that explains the house, then, doesn’t it?”
“Yeah, I guess it does. I wasn’t able to get any real research done on the company yet—I’m planning on spending tonight doing that—but I did enough poking around to know it’s one of the biggest, most powerful conglomerates in the United States. Aloysius was the third generation, until he died five years ago of liver cancer at the age of sixty-five.”
Train shook his head. “Damn, too young.”
“How old are you, Sarge?” Cassian asked his partner.
“Fuck off.”
“Thought so. You’ve still got a few years, but you better start watching what you eat. The kind of crap you consume is likely to take its revenge.”
Train glared at Jack. “Lots of ways to die young—food ain’t the only thing that can take revenge. You hearing me?”
“Loud and clear.” Cassian held up his hands in surrender, but allowed a sly smile to tug at the corner of his mouth.
“You ready?” Train growled.
“As ever,” Jack replied, reaching out toward the door.
z
The doorbell startled Sydney, and she turned to look at her mother. Lydia didn’t move, though, and a moment later the doorbell rang again. It was clear that Lydia had no intention of getting up to answer the door, and Sydney rose and walked out into the foyer.
She peered out through the expensive lace curtains that cov
ered the glasswork at the sides of the ornate front door. Two men stood quietly on the other side, with a patience that unnerved her. They didn’t pace, or fidget, or shuffle their feet; they stood perfectly still, as if they were accustomed to long stretches of waiting and watching.
She opened the door a crack, keeping the chain in place. “Yes?” she asked.
“Good evening,” said the older one. He was a tall, barrel-chested black man who looked to be in his fifties. “We’re looking for Lydia Chapin. Is she in?”
“Who are you?” Sydney demanded.
“Detective Sergeant Train, miss, D.C. police.” He nodded toward the younger man, who was also tall, but thin and attractive, and looked like he couldn’t be much older than thirty. “This is my partner, Detective Cassian.” When Sydney didn’t respond, the older officer continued. “I called earlier and left a message that I’d be stopping by to talk to Mrs. Chapin. We’re investigating the murder of her daughter.”
The murder of her daughter.
In the tumult of the afternoon and evening, Sydney hadn’t even thought about the reality in such stark terms. The notion shook her for a moment. “Yes,” she said at last. “Can I see some identification?” She put some mettle into her voice as she said it, almost a habit now after two years of law school, where she was taught by liberal-minded professors never to relinquish control to those wielding government authority.
The older man looked at his partner, and the two simultaneously dug into their pockets like annoyed college students asked for their IDs by a suspicious tavern bouncer. They pulled out their police identification cards and held them up so she could examine them. After a moment, Sydney shut the door and unhooked the chain. Then she reopened it and waved them in.
“It’s been such a hard day,” she said. “I don’t trust anyone or anything anymore.”
Train remained noncommittal. “I don’t think we’ve been introduced,” he said.
“Oh, right,” Sydney replied. “My name’s Sydney. I’m Liz’s sister.” She paused. “Was her sister.” Then she thought again. “Liz was my sister,” she finally spat out, feeling exhausted by the effort. “Like I said, it’s been a hard day.”
The older cop looked sympathetic. “I understand,” he said. “I’m very sorry for your loss.” She liked him. He reminded her of a kindly uncle, or at least what she envisioned a kindly uncle might seem like. “I know how difficult this must be.”
“Do you?” Sydney asked. She looked back and forth between the two detectives, wondering what they were thinking. She supposed it was an impertinent question, but she didn’t mean it to be. She wasn’t trying to challenge them, but was desperate to hear that there were others who did, in fact, understand what she was going through.
“I do,” the younger cop said, and she turned and settled her gaze on him, probing his eyes, trying to determine if he was being sincere. After a moment, she concluded that he was, and she decided that she liked him as well.
“Thank you,” she said.
The three of them stood there in the grand foyer of the enormous house in silence for a moment or two, until it became awkward. Sydney felt like there should be more that someone should say, but nothing came. At last she nodded to them. “My mother’s in here,” she said, pointing the way into the living room. The two detectives looked at each other, and the older one finally took a step in that direction. The younger detective—Cassian, she thought she remembered his name— fell into step behind his partner, and Sydney followed both of them into the room to introduce her mother.
C
ASSIAN SIPPED HIS COFFEE
leaning forward on the chair at the cor
ner of the low-slung coffee table in the living room. Train, who had refused the offer of a beverage, was in a chair next to him, and the two women sat at opposite ends of the couch across the table.
Lydia Chapin was an enigma to Jack. She looked like she was in her late fifties or early sixties, but struck him as very well preserved, with a tightness around her eyes and chin that told him that she had had numerous “procedures,” as they were known among the wealthy. Upon the detectives’ arrival, she had summoned a maid from somewhere deep within the house and had cookies and coffee served, as if they were there to debate literature, rather than discuss her daughter’s murder. In fact, everything about Mrs. Chapin seemed too put together—from her clothes, to her hair, to her makeup. It was only when Cassian looked into her eyes that he could see the stress of the day’s events, and a hint of the loss she no doubt felt, but tried to hide.
“So you think it was a burglary?” she said, summarizing the preliminary analysis Train had just conveyed.
“Well, we’re not leaping to any hard-and-fast conclusions at this point, Mrs. Chapin,” Train said. “There are some indications in that direction, and your daughter lived very near to some dangerous areas, so it’s a very good possibility.”
“I told her not to move into that neighborhood,” Lydia said angrily. “I told her no good could come of it, but my daughters rarely listen to me on such matters.” She didn’t look at Sydney, but her surviving daughter shifted uncomfortably in her seat.