Buch lesen: «Sound Of Fear»

CHAPTER ONE

AMANDA CURTISS HAD hoped that going back to work would distract her from the grief that threatened to drown her. It didn’t work. Every person at the veterinary practice felt they had to commiserate with her on her loss.

“So very, very sorry about your mother’s death. So shocking to have one of Boston’s most noted artists taken away by a random street crime.” Alicia Farber’s prominent blue eyes, so like those of her pampered Pekingese, welled with tears. “Pookie is sorry, too. Aren’t you, Pookie?”

Pookie’s expression exhibited its usual disdain for lesser beings. The sight of Amanda’s white lab coat always brought out the worst in him, and he bared his teeth.

“Let’s just see what’s going on with Pookie, shall we?” Amanda lifted the small dog to the exam table with gentle hands, careful to stay out of the way of his needle-sharp teeth.

“He’s been barely eating a bite of his food.” Alicia hovered anxiously. “I just knew you’d want to see him. Tell me the worst. I can take it.”

To do her justice, Alicia was genuinely apprehensive. They all were—all the owners of the pampered pets that came through the doors of one of Boston’s most successful veterinary services. Amanda’s job, one of the lowest rungs of the ladder, was to reassure the owners while treating their pets. And to refrain from pointing out that both pets and owners would benefit from more exercise and less rich food. No one took that kind of advice well.

By the time Amanda was ushering Alicia and her pet out of the exam room, her head was throbbing and her throat was tight, as it had been since the police officers had come to the door with their grim news.

Gracie, the receptionist, caught her as she passed. “Dr. Curtiss, there’s someone here to see you.” Lowering her voice, she added, “He said it was personal business, so I put him in an empty exam room. Number 4.”

“Thanks, Gracie.” Brushing any stray Peke hairs from her lab coat, Amanda headed for the exam room, her stomach clenching. Personal business had taken on an ominous meaning lately, since it invariably had to do with her mother’s death.

But when she opened the door, her face relaxed into a smile. Robert McKinley was not only her mother’s attorney but a longtime family friend, as well... Uncle Robert until she’d felt she was too old for the term.

“Robert. I didn’t expect you...” She stopped, her brain catching up with her tongue. Robert wouldn’t come to her workplace on anything routine. “What’s wrong?”

“Why should anything be wrong?” He kissed her cheek, and she smelled the faint aroma of musk that always advertised his presence. “Are you sure you should have come back to work so soon? It wasn’t necessary.”

Maybe not financially, but it was for her mental health. “I’d rather be busy. I need something to occupy my mind.”

“If you’re sure.” He didn’t sound convinced, and Amanda read the uneasiness behind his warmth.

“You wouldn’t come here unless something had happened. Out with it.” Amanda fought to keep her voice steady. “Whatever it is, it can’t be worse than what’s already happened.”

Nothing could be worse than losing her mother in such a brutal way...never again to see her forehead wrinkle in absorption over a new painting, never to feel the warmth of her hug, never to hear the laughter in her voice...

Robert frowned, taking a step away. “I know.” His voice wasn’t entirely steady, either. He’d adored Juliet in his own staid way. “It may be nothing, but one of the detectives dropped by with the coroner’s report. It had raised some questions in his mind.”

“Questions?” Her mind shied away from imagining a coroner’s report.

“Perhaps I’m making too much of this. You might already know.” He shook his head slightly, as if to clear it. “The autopsy confirmed something that seemed...odd.” He held up a hand to silence her when she would have burst out with a demand to hear it, whatever it was. “It seems that Juliet Curtiss, your mother, never had a child.”

Amanda froze, staring at him. The words were in English, all right, but they didn’t make any sense. “What do you mean? Of course she had a child. I’m standing right here.”

“Juliet never bore a child,” he repeated. “There isn’t any doubt, Amanda. I read the report for myself, and then I called the coroner for confirmation. Juliet never gave birth.”

Her sluggish wits started to work. “You mean I’m adopted? But why on earth wouldn’t she have told me?”

Robert shrugged, seeming relieved that the worst of his news-breaking was over. “I believe specialists do recommend that the child be told, but it could be that Juliet couldn’t bear the idea that your feelings about her would change if you knew she wasn’t your biological mother.”

At some level she wanted to laugh at that, because it was so ridiculous to think of Juliet in those terms. But if she started to laugh, she wasn’t sure she’d be able to control her emotions.

“Be serious, Robert. Juliet wasn’t a clinging mama. That wasn’t the sort of relationship we had.”

Amanda paused to consider what she’d just said. She and her mother had certainly been close, but Juliet didn’t dote. It hadn’t been in her nature. True, Amanda had lived at home since her practice and her life had fallen apart in Pennsylvania, but they’d lived very independent lives. Juliet had her work, and Amanda had hers.

“You never thought...” Robert began, stepping delicately in what no doubt seemed like a minefield to him.

“Never,” she said flatly.

“You see the problem,” he said, frowning again. She thought he held back impatience when she looked at him blankly. “Legally,” he explained, “your mother... Juliet...must have adopted you prior to the time I met her. You’d have been about eight, I think, when she bought the brownstone. That was the first bit of business I did for her.”

Obviously Robert expected her to concentrate on the problem. She tried to rein in her wandering thoughts. Focus, she ordered herself. “Yes, I’d have been eight when we moved uptown. She’d had her first really successful show, and our lives changed.”

Not that she’d minded the life they’d had before that. The tiny apartment in one of Boston’s many ethnic neighborhoods had been home. But Juliet had wanted more...for herself, but certainly for her daughter.

“If you don’t remember any other life, Juliet must have adopted you when you were quite small.” Robert wore his worried look. “There surely are papers to that effect somewhere.”

“Aren’t all her legal documents at your office? She always said she didn’t have the talent or the energy to deal with things like that. Her work...”

“She was an artist, of course. But that’s no excuse for not having your affairs in order.” That was as close as Amanda had ever heard him come to sounding critical of Juliet. “You can see the quandary that leaves us in now. We must establish your legal position in regard to your mother’s estate.”

“But she had a will. You showed it to me, remember?”

“At my insistence, she did.” He sounded grim. “It leaves everything she possessed at the time of her death to her daughter, Amanda Elizabeth Curtiss.”

“Well, then...”

“Come, Amanda. Concentrate. You’ve always been the practical one. If you’re not her biological daughter, the language becomes ambiguous.”

“You mean our home might not be mine?” That possibility did penetrate the fog in which she groped. The brownstone was home. It might be lonely without Juliet, but every inch of it was filled with memories.

“If someone contested the will on the grounds that you are not Juliet’s daughter, that might well happen.” Robert clasped her hands in a firm grip.

“Someone must be aware of the circumstances. What about her brother, George? They’d been estranged for a long time, but he did come to the funeral. Surely he’d know...” Know where I came from. She finished the sentence in her mind.

This was crazy. It was like spinning on ice in an out-of-control car. Every anchor she reached for slid from her grasp.

“George Curtiss is the last person I’d confide in at this point. Don’t you see, Amanda? He can’t know there’s any question, or you can be sure he’d have brought it up.” Robert’s frown deepened. “There were good reasons for the breach between him and your mother. If half of what she said about him is true, he’d be contesting the will in an instant if he even suspected.”

“Then what should I do? How can we find out?” If her uncle didn’t know...but he wasn’t her uncle, it seemed, any more than Juliet had been her mother.

“First of all, it’s essential that we find any documents relating to you. You’d better have a good search throughout the house for papers. You must have a birth certificate, at least. We may want to hire a firm of private investigators to look into it. And whatever you do, don’t talk about this to anyone but me.”

She blinked at that. “But my closest friends...”

“Not your friends, not anyone. Not until we have a better handle on your identity than we do now.”

Her identity. Amanda had always known who she was and where she belonged. Now it seemed she didn’t know at all. Who was she?

* * *

AMANDA WALKED THE four blocks home, glad to be outside even in the chill dampness of the mid-October afternoon. The wind was strong enough to wipe away some of the fog from her thoughts.

But that didn’t help much. It served only to expose how much she didn’t know. She’d always been able to talk to her mother about everything. Amanda couldn’t begin to come up with an answer for her silence on this crucial subject. Why didn’t you tell me?

She rounded the corner and the brownstone came into view—a three-story building sandwiched between two taller ones, looking squat in comparison. Someone was just coming down the three stairs from the glossy black door.

In another step Amanda had identified him. Bertram Berkley, Juliet’s agent. She wondered, as she always did, if that could possibly be his real name, or if he’d taken it to fit his persona—the sleek, successful artists’ representative whose sponsorship, according to him, ensured entrée to people of influence in Boston’s art world.

He spotted her and swooped down on her, kissing her ceremoniously on each cheek. “Amanda, my dear. You poor child. I just came by to see how you are. You surely haven’t been out already.” He made it sound as if she’d breached some unwritten rule of mourning.

“I went back to work today.” Bertram’s extravagant manner always made her feel even more intensely grounded than she already was. “I have a job, remember?”

“Surely they didn’t expect you to be back a scant two weeks after your mother’s tragic demise.” He linked arms with her and marched her up the steps to the door. Obviously he intended to come in.

She detached her arm. “I wanted to go back, but I have to admit, I’m wiped out. I appreciate your stopping by.”

His face stiffened for an instant before his dark eyes grew mournful. “Won’t you let me take you out to dinner?” He turned persuasive. “We can have a nice long talk.”

“Not tonight. Another time.” She put her key in the lock and heard the usual answering bark from Barney, her yellow Lab, greeting her.

“But I wanted to talk to you. We really must plan a show of your mother’s work, just as quickly as possible.” His voice became urgent. “A tribute show, you see. I’ve already looked into arrangements, and there’s considerable enthusiasm for it. A retrospective, including all her work, even the private pieces you have that aren’t for sale. If I could just take a quick look at what’s here...”

“Not tonight,” she repeated, putting a bit more emphasis on the words. Maybe she was being unfair, but she suspected that his eagerness stemmed at least in part from a desire to cash in on the publicity that had surrounded Juliet’s death. “We’ll talk soon,” she added, then slipped inside and closed the door before he could come up with an argument.

For a moment she just stood, leaning back against the door, relief sweeping over her. Home. It felt like a refuge at the moment. As long as she didn’t let her mind stray to the possibility that it might not be hers.

Barney was pressing up against her, whining for her attention. She ruffled his ears. If only she could talk this over with someone. Her friend Kara would be ideal—she knew how to listen without trying to solve your problems for you. But Robert had said to tell no one.

No sense in paying an attorney if you don’t take his advice. Her mother had said that when she’d been brought, reluctantly, to making out a will. Had she realized the will could be contested? Obviously not, or she’d have told Robert the truth.

In a crazy way, that was reassuring. It seemed to show that Juliet hadn’t conceived of anyone thinking Amanda wasn’t her child. Not that Amanda doubted her love, even in the face of the news that had turned her world upside down.

Barney nudged her hand impatiently, then let out a single bark. He trotted a few steps away and then looked back at her, whining.

Supper? But he was headed for the den, not the kitchen. She frowned when he barked again. “All right, Barney. Enough. What’s so important?”

He trotted toward the den and again looked back at her. Obviously she was expected to follow him. She obeyed, knowing he wouldn’t quit. “Whatever is wrong with...”

She stopped in the doorway, staring, shivering a little when chill air reached her. The window that overlooked the tiny garden behind the house was broken. Shards of glass lay on the Oriental carpet. Fear kept her immobile for another instant.

She should run, get out, call the police...but clearly the intruder was gone. Barney looked at the broken window with an air of triumph, his tail waving as if he announced that he’d vanquished the invader. He’d hardly react that way if someone were still in the house.

“Good dog, good boy.” She patted her knee, drawing him back to her. The glass could give him a nasty cut on the paw. He came, rubbing his nose against her palm. “Good Barney,” she said again, holding him by the collar.

Calling the police was the obvious next step, but a quick glance told her there’d be little they could do. It didn’t look as if the thief had been in here long enough to take anything. The only sign of disturbance besides the broken window was the painting that lay facedown on the rug, its frame broken.

Amanda had to restrain herself from rushing to pick it up. Juliet had done that painting the summer Amanda went to camp for the first time, when she was ten. A realistic-looking view of a waterfall, it was very different from her usual work. But Juliet had been attached to it, and it had hung over the fireplace in the den since that summer. If it was damaged—

She’d have to wait until the police arrived to see. She backed out of the room, dragging Barney, who clearly wanted to remain at the scene of his triumph. Amanda closed the door, ignoring the way he whined at the crack, and pulled out her cell phone.

The police first. Assured they’d be there soon, Amanda leaned against the wall, discovering that her knees were weak. Silly, but normal, she supposed.

Clutching the cell phone in one hand and Barney’s collar in the other, Amanda went through the rest of the downstairs. Nothing was disturbed. The thief hadn’t gotten far before Barney caught up with him. Thank goodness he apparently hadn’t had a weapon.

Shaken by what might have happened, Amanda sank down on the rug and put her arms around the dog. If she’d lost him, too...

It seemed an eternity until the doorbell rang. She peered out the side window. Reassured by the sight of the uniforms, she opened the door.

Much ado about nothing, she told herself a half hour later, when she closed the door behind them again. One of them had been obliging enough to help her tape cardboard in place over the broken panes and sweep up the broken glass while the other filled out a report.

Their attitude said she’d been lucky. Nothing missing and only minor damage that her insurance would most likely cover. With a parting admonition to use the alarm system at all times, they’d gone.

“So that’s it,” she told Barney. “Let’s see how bad the damage was to the painting.”

He woofed as if he understood and followed her back to the den. Amanda shivered a little when she paused inside the door. This room, at least, wouldn’t feel like a refuge again for a time. While Barney nosed around the broken frame, Amanda lifted the painting gingerly. She turned it over and let out a sigh of relief. The only damage was to the frame.

Odd, that the thief had gone straight to the painting. A burglar would probably look for expensive electronics, rather than a painting. Unless he’d thought it hid a safe. Or perhaps the thief knew whose house this was and had some idea of the value of a Juliet Curtiss painting.

Amanda smoothed the canvas out flat, trying to look at it as if for the first time, but it had become so much a part of the surroundings that it was impossible. The falls were very realistic, as was the dark water at the base and the jagged rocks that interrupted the water’s flow. A little shiver went through her. She’d always found the tone of the picture rather ominous. Her mother must have loved it, since it had pride of place in the room where they usually spent the evenings. But there had been times when she’d regarded it broodingly, her face set, maybe dissatisfied with her own work.

Amanda started to put the painting on the side table until she could arrange to have it reframed, but something on the back caught her eye. Along the bottom, in her mother’s impeccable printing, ran a tiny line of text, so tiny she had to carry the painting to the lamp to make it out.

In memoriam. M, April, 1989. Echo Falls. Too young to die.

It was the date that jolted Amanda: 1989. She’d been born on February 10, 1989. If that date, at least, was true.

Amanda sank into the desk chair, studying the face of the painting, then turning it again to read the words on the back. It was too much of a coincidence. Or was she thinking that only because of the shocks she’d had?

No. She couldn’t buy that. It had to mean something. She had no idea where Echo Falls might be, or who M had been. But she intended to find out.

* * *

IF SHE WERE PUNCTUAL, the new client should be showing up in the next few minutes. Theodore Alter, Trey to his friends, straightened his tie and prepared for the novelty of a new client. New clients had been thin on the ground for the firm of Alter and Glassman since the scandal broke involving the former head of the law practice. He wanted to make sure this one didn’t slip through his fingers.

Unfortunately, he had no idea what Ms. Amanda Curtiss of Boston wanted with an attorney in tiny Echo Falls, Pennsylvania. The contact had been made by someone he’d met at a conference last year. He and Robert McKinley had sat and talked one evening, exchanged business cards and parted, sure they’d never see each other again. Until his call came out of the blue.

McKinley had been downright evasive on the phone when he’d set up this appointment. It was the sort of approach Trey might have instinctively refused back in the day when they’d had more business than they could handle. Not now. He could only hope this Amanda Curtiss wasn’t a nutcase.

The intercom buzzed, and he stood as the door opened. “Ms. Curtiss, Mr. Alter,” Evelyn Lincoln, their office manager, murmured.

She closed the door discreetly, and Trey had a moment to assess the woman who came toward him. Slim, average height, with blond hair pulled back in a tie at her nape and intensely blue eyes that were looking him over, as well. And perhaps a bit disapprovingly. He had a quick impression of expensive casual clothes and an assured manner before they were shaking hands and murmuring conventional greetings.

“I see you brought a friend to our meeting.” Trey nodded to the yellow Lab that followed at the woman’s heels.

“I didn’t want to leave him in the car. Your receptionist said it would be okay if I brought him inside. I hope you don’t dislike dogs.” She sounded as if that would end this meeting in a hurry.

“Not at all.” He held out the back of his hand to the animal. “I hope he likes attorneys.”

“Barney’s quite indiscriminately affectionate.” The tight control she’d been exercising over her expression became evident only when her face relaxed in a smile as she looked at the animal. The dog proved the truth of her words by licking Trey’s hand with enthusiasm.

She took the chair Trey had indicated, and the dog sat obediently next to her. “Thank you for seeing me on such short notice.” The reserve had returned.

“No problem,” he said easily. “Tell me what I can do to help you. Robert McKinley didn’t say much, just that you needed an attorney here in town.”

“Yes.” She frowned, studying him so seriously that he began to wonder if he had something on his face.

When she didn’t continue, he raised an eyebrow. “I’m not what you were looking for?”

A flicker of annoyance crossed her face. “I expected you to be older.”

“Sorry I can’t oblige.” If that sounded flippant, too bad. The woman’s attitude didn’t bode well for their relationship.

But her lips twitched, and she looked human again. “Sorry. I just assumed a friend of Robert’s would be around his age. And this is...rather complicated. I’m not sure you can help me.”

“We’ll never know unless you tell me what it’s about, will we?”

Amanda Curtiss was actually quite attractive when she relaxed her guard for a moment, with those mobile lips and long, slim legs. Not that he ought to be noticing anything of the kind about a client. Oddly enough, there was something vaguely familiar in the oval face and regular features, but he couldn’t place it.

“No.” She paused, as if not sure how to begin. “This situation arose when my mother died a few weeks ago.”

“I’m sorry for your loss.” Maybe that explained the air she had of holding a tight guard on her emotions.

Amanda nodded, accepting the words of condolence. She’d probably heard them often recently. She couldn’t be more than about thirty herself, so her mother had apparently died young.

“She had been caught in the cross fire of what the police thought was gang violence. In the course of the postmortem, it was determined that she’d never given birth to a child.” She met his gaze briefly and then looked away. “Robert and I assumed I was adopted, but we couldn’t find adoption papers anywhere. He’s started a search through court records, but without knowing where or when, it seems impossible to trace.”

Trey tried to imagine himself in that situation and ran up against a blank wall. He couldn’t even begin to think what it must be like. His family roots went deep here in Echo Falls, where everyone knew everything going back several generations. “But you must have a birth certificate.”

“I have a baptismal certificate from a church outside Boston that appears genuine, but that’s when I was three. What we thought was a birth certificate was actually a hospital form, not a state-registered certificate. And no such birth actually occurred at that hospital on that date.”

Trey frowned, caught up in the story in spite of himself. “Your mother must have been very determined to wipe out traces of who you really were. If she were desperate to have a child...”

“No. If you’re thinking she took me because she was mentally unbalanced...well, you never knew my mother. That’s not something she would do.”

He’d reserve judgment on that one. Children weren’t always the best judge of what their parents would do. Come to think of it, that worked the other way around, too.

“So you’ve run into a lot of blind alleys. But what brought you to Echo Falls?”

She hesitated, and for a moment he actually thought she was going to call the whole thing off, say goodbye, send me a bill and walk away. But instead she took something from her bag and handed it to him.

“Do you recognize that?”

It was a photograph of what seemed to be a painting.

The subject was familiar to him. “That’s Echo Falls.” He studied it closely. “But I’ve never seen that painting of the falls.”

“My mother painted it. She was Juliet Curtiss. I don’t know if you’re familiar...”

“Yes, of course. I read the account of her death somewhere.” That shed a bit more light on things. Juliet Curtiss most likely had a considerable estate to leave her heir, which was now in doubt. On the other hand, if the woman thought the painting would lead her to answers about her parentage...

“This is a photo of the words on the back of the painting. I enlarged it to make it more readable.”

He read the short line of printing, struggling to make sense of it. “It sounds as if your mother did the painting as a tribute to a friend, but that doesn’t mean there’s a connection to you.”