Bleeding Hearts(37)

“Fine.”

“Phone’s off the hook,” Sid said.

The phone receiver was lying on its side on the kitchen table. There was no hold button on this set. Candida had probably heard every word Fred had said to Sid. Fred wondered what she’d thought of it. Fred had never been able to decide, with Candida, what really impressed her. Candida did not give much away.

Fred picked up the receiver and said, “Candida? This is Fred.”

“Fred,” Candida said. Her voice sounded like music. “Hello. I was beginning to wonder if I had been cut off.”

“If you had been, you should have called right back,” Fred told her. “I’m always happy to hear from you. I’m sorry about the delay. Things are a little crazy here at the moment.”

“Things are always crazy where you are, Fred. I’m used to it. To tell you the truth, I called to ask you a favor.”

“So ask. Anything I can do.”

“I was wondering if you could come down to Pennsylvania for the weekend. This coming weekend.”

Fred cast an involuntary glance in the direction of his living room. By the time the weekend rolled around, they would know who this woman was, and what they were going to do with her, and whether there was a hope of catching the men or boys who had hurt her. They would be involved in warehousing her, that was all. Nobody needed Fred for that.

Fred sat down in the nearest kitchen chair. “Of course I’ll come to Philadelphia,” he said. “I’ll be glad to. You’re not in some kind of trouble, are you?”

“Oh, no,” Candida said. “No, of course not. Not legal trouble, or anything like that. You’ll stay with me, of course. I’ve got a perfectly nice guest room with its own Jacuzzi.”

“I’ll be delighted. You sound worried.”

“Oh, I’m not, not really. I just need some advice, and I couldn’t think of a better person to give it to me.”

“You don’t want to give me a hint?”

“No, no. It’s something I’ll have to show you. You’ll see. And don’t make too much of this. You know how you get.”

“Overwrought,” Fred suggested.

“Overzealous,” Candida amended. “I’ll see you—when? Friday? Saturday?”

“I’ll be down Friday afternoon, if you don’t mind having me that early.”

“I don’t mind at all.”

“Good,” Fred said. “And Candida? I’m glad to hear from you.”

“I’m glad I called,” Candida said. “I’ll see you Friday.”

Then she hung up.

Fred sat still for a while in his chair, tapping his feet against the oversize kitchen floor tiles. It wasn’t that unusual that he should hear from Candida DeWitt—although he’d never been invited to her house before. They had been in touch on and off since Fred had wound up Paul Hazzard’s murder trial with an acquittal. They contacted each other randomly and tentatively, as if neither one of them were entirely sure what they wanted to do besides that.

It was unusual to hear such a note of strain in Candida’s voice. Candida was never strained. She was never angry or upset or indiscreet either. It went with the territory.

“I wonder what Paul’s doing to her now,” Fred said to himself, out loud, as if Sid were in the room and he could ask for some input. Then he got up and replaced the receiver gently in its cradle.

Once he started talking to himself, he knew it was time to stop thinking and start taking action.

Action always made him feel a million times better.





3


Out in Bryn Mawr, Candida DeWitt sat in her living room in front of her fireplace, contemplating the white spray paint that now defaced the fireplace’s fieldstone façade. She didn’t mind the spray paint much. That could be removed. She didn’t even mind the message.

    DEATH TO YOU



it said in oversize letters, but that was silly and melodramatic. If that had been the beginning and end of it, she would never have taken it seriously. No, it wasn’t the fact of the spray paint or its message that bothered her. It was how it had been done.

None of her locks had been forced.

None of her windows had been opened.

At no point had her alarm system gone off or even started to go off.

What that meant was that the person who had painted this message on this fireplace had entered Candida’s house with a key and known the house well enough to disarm the security system. Candida could think of only a handful of people who could do that, and they were all connected to Paul Hazzard.

One of the reasons they had suspected Paul of murdering Jacqueline to begin with was the fact that none of the locks had been forced in that house either, and none of the windows broken, and the alarm system hadn’t gone off in spite of the fact it was armed.