She remembered that she had gone a little mad after her mother’s murder. There was no possible way to exist in normal life, among regular people, while her entire mind was swimming with images of the lace imprints left in her mother’s neck from where the elastic of her underpants had dug in, of her mother dying, watching the person strangling her, feeling her heart break as the life drained out of her. Had that happened with Belinda? Had she looked into the eyes of her killer, had it been someone she loved?
Sam knew that having crazy thoughts and dreams as the daughter of the victim was one thing: But what about a killer? And what about a victim who dropped into a pool of blood wearing someone else’s wedding dress? She thought of delusions, paranoia, dissociation, the inability to stop reliving a terrible moment.
And she thought of that envelope she had seen Conor take from that drawer in the library desk at home, when he thought he was alone. Seeing what it contained—a tiny tooth and a lock of hair—had activated a ton of suspicion in Sam. But that had passed—when she was home, just an hour ago, she had checked the drawer and found it empty. On top of the desk was a receipt and a note from Trooper Dave Liggett saying he had taken the envelope to the crime lab.
Sam figured the envelope had come from Belinda, and that brought her back to 1740.
“Maynard-King is the center of it all,” she said out loud. “It has to be.”
“Why do you say that?” Lincoln asked, not looking up from what he was doing.
“I think some of them were in the hospital for treatment, and they met each other there,” she said.
“We can put it on the list of things to check out,” he said. “But what makes you think it?”
“Because I know what it’s like to lose touch with reality.”
“Sorry,” Lincoln said. “That must have been awful. When?”
“After my mother died.”
“So why do you think Maynard-King is the center of this?”
Sam didn’t answer right away. She thought of how she had spiraled after her mother’s death. Every night for months she had dreamed her mother was alive. They were wonderful dreams, full of love and comfort. She could hear her mother’s voice, feel her arms around her.
But after a while, her dreams changed. She began having nightmares about her mother’s last day on earth. She had visions of her mother in their garden, tending the roses and hydrangeas. Her mother had been pregnant, and Sam remembered how they would talk about what the baby’s name would be. But the killer would be waiting there, hiding in the garden, waiting for Sam’s mother to go inside the house. And then her mother would be murdered, and Sam would never see her again.
Those nightmares, and the grief Sam felt, had made her want to die herself. Kate saw Sam falling apart and arranged for her to be admitted to McLean, outside Boston. It was one of the best psychiatric hospitals in the world.
The reason Sam felt so strongly that Maynard-King was key was that she related to sad, lost girls, and she knew how easy it was to fall off the edge of life. It would be even easier if there was someone evil standing there, giving them a push. But she didn’t say all that to Lincoln.
“That note at Dr. Tyler’s grave,” she said, because she knew it was a more acceptable response that wouldn’t require her getting too personal. “‘1740, With Love, Always’”
“We don’t have the note, do we?” he asked. “Maeve grabbed it just before she got into that Range Rover.”
“But I saw it,” Sam said. “So I know what it said.” She paused. “Lincoln, the way you say Maeve ‘got into that Range Rover’ makes it sound as if you think she did it of her own free will—instead of being forced in.”
Now he looked up from his keyboard, reached up with one hand to push his long hair out of his eyes. “Sometimes I do think that.”
“Then why hasn’t she called you? Or Kate?”
“She was freaked out by seeing all that blood run down the stairs from Belinda’s body,” he said. “Wouldn’t you be?”
Sam nodded. She knew she would. Add that to the list of ways to lose your mind.
“And it messed her up, knowing that Belinda was killed wearing Kate’s wedding dress. She was obviously obsessed with Conor. Even though she was a widow and had a kid, I guess she never got over her fantasy of getting married to the boy next door.”
Fantasy, Sam thought. Just like in the old Yellow Pages ad.
1740 Events: Fantasies our specialty.
She looked at the photo she had taken of the ad. Even though Sam had called the number earlier, she wanted to try again. Maybe someone would answer this time. She dialed it on her phone.
“Who are you calling?” Lincoln asked. Sam put a finger to her lips because she had just reached voicemail again, and she wanted to listen more carefully. When it finished, she hung up and turned to Lincoln.
“It’s a florist,” she said.
“Well, I guess we can cross that off the list, then,” Lincoln said. “A florist is pretty far from an event company.”
