“I thought you meant Darla,” Sam said.
“No,” Jennifer said, putting her arms around Nola. “This is my therapist, the woman who was more my mother than my mother. She’s the brilliant lady who trains us in the art ofBeauty and the Beast. She sees the beauty in us and helps us tame the beasts.”
The trainer, the bad therapist, Sam thought. Now she knew why the description had sounded so familiar; she remembered that day in the cabana, on the beach in front of the Ocean House, when Nola had said she was a behaviorist, a psychologist who worked with criminals and their victims.
“I thought you were trying to help us,” Sam said to Nola. “Tracking down 1740, finding out who killed Belinda.”
“I’m sorry, Sam,” Nola said. “Truly. We wish you had stayed away.”
“And besides, we alreadyknowwho killed Belinda,” Suzanne said.
“Her daughter did it,” Jennifer said.
“You?” Sam asked, looking at Suzanne.
“No,” Jennifer said, beaming as if she had just pulled off the best joke. “Me. I’m Belinda’s daughter.” She walked across the room to Leo. “And this is my dad.”
Tuesday, July 6; 7:30 p.m.
Conor, Tom, and Mike walked up the path from the dock. Conor’s gaze swept back and forth. Everything and nothing seemed to matter; Kate was here. Miranda had said it, and Conor felt it. When they got to thesmaller of the two buildings, Mike stopped and looked at the cluster of cars parked out back.
“That’s strange,” Mike said. “That black Mercedes belongs to Edward and Nola.”
“You sure it’s theirs?” Conor asked.
“Yes, I see their yacht club sticker on the windshield.”
“What’s it doing here?” Tom asked.
“Nola is on an advisory board, to advocate for better mental health treatment for law enforcement officers. It came out of her work at the prison. Maybe they’re meeting here tonight,” Mike said.
“So far that’s two of your friends who are connected with Maynard-King,” Tom said. “Leo and Nola.”
“Well, if you put it that way, Anne and I have a connection too. We all met at a conference on criminal justice in Aspen a few years ago, not long after I retired. Nola was leading a panel on the psychology of defendants who employ the insanity defense, and she asked Leo and me to join her. Anne and Edward were just along to keep us company.”
“Nola’s an expert in insanity defense?” Conor asked.
“She’s a prison psychologist, as well as a very good profiler.”
“And Leo?”
“He has used that defense very effectively for several clients—lack of culpability due to mental illness. I’ve presided over trials where it was argued. There were several staffers and board members, people from Maynard-King, in the audience. We had dinner with one of them.”
“Who’s that?” Conor asked.
“Her name is Darla Vandeveer,” Mike said.
“What did she have to add to the panel?” Conor asked, remembering how he’d tried to find her his last time here. “I thought she was on the business side of this place.”
“According to Nola, she has a master’s in psychology. She admires Nola’s work with victims of crimes, and she was there to observe. She talked about how many of the patients here have suffered trauma fromone kind of assault or another and how she wanted to transition from business to clinical work.”
“The trauma comes from being here,” Conor said.
He walked into the parking area to have a closer look at the black Mercedes when he spotted a Range Rover hidden on the other side of a maintenance shed. His heart rate sped up at the sight of it.
“That’s the Range Rover we saw on the video,” Conor said. “The one Maeve got into. She’s going to tell us where Kate is.”
He ran to the driver’s side and looked through the window. The vehicle was clean except for a paper on the floor in the back seat. Conor cupped his hands around his eyes and pressed close to the glass to get a better look.
