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“Oh.” She had to stop and think. “Really?”
“Yes, really. I’ll drive you. I’ll kip in the car. And don’t say I won’t, just because I didn’t sleep well on the plane. I’ve barely slept for days, and I’ve passed some kind of tipping point. I could’ve fallen asleep with my head on the table talking to that cop, with my possible felony conviction on the line.”
“Then why did you think you could do this questioning?” she asked.
He grinned. It was so unexpected, she nearly jumped. “Dunno. Male ego?”
She laughed. “OK. You’re driving, and I’m asking.”
“Fair enough. That’s a plan, at least. Of sorts. Let’s go. Where first?”
“Her parents. Let me start there. I need to work on my cover story before I start asking about the party anyway.”
She must have fallen asleep herself during the drive, because when the car stopped, she jerked awake and said, “What? Are we here?”
“Yeah,” Beckett said. “I parked over the road and a few houses back so they wouldn’t see me.”
“Over the road?” She blinked and wished the world didn’t feel so woozy.Pretend the race is about to start,she told herself.No excuses. Time to go for it.
“Across the street,” he said. “Over the road. You good?”
“Yeah.” She opened the car door and swung her legs out. They felt like they weighed about forty pounds each. She stood up, took some deep breaths of sauna-type air, rolled her shoulders, and said, “Number six-eighteen. Here I go.”
With only the sketchiest plan of what to say.
49
THE LIFE OF THE MIND
The house was modern, white, angular, and full of glass, and the neighborhood was upscale and brimming with palms and exotic bushes and trees covered with bright flowers. Pink, red, purple. Alotof flowers. Even the chime of the doorbell sounded expensive.
A short wait, and Quinn was raising her hand to ring the bell again when the door opened to reveal a woman. Tall, slim, blonde, dressed in lightweight trousers and a sleeveless top that looked like linen, and very well-preserved for, what? Sixty-five? More? A little bit like Bam, possibly, because she looked … capable.
“Hi,” Quinn said. “You don’t know me, but I really need to talk to you.” She’d decided on being as honest as possible. If the cops did follow up on the tip and question people again, they’d soon discover she’d been here. They wouldn’t be happy about it, but she wouldn’t have done anything illegal or unethical, just annoying. She was used to being annoying. “My name is Quinn Jeffries, and I’m American, as you can probably hear. I’ve been in a relationship with your son-in-law for a while now. It’s getting pretty serious—we’ve talked about marriage—” All right, oneteenylie— “but I’ve just found out some … some really troubling information. I couldn’t think where to go for the truth, so I decided to come to you. I don’t want Beckett to know I have any doubts, if there’s nothing to them, but I—” She stopped. “Honestly, I’m so worried and confused. May I come in? Please?”
It would’ve worked on her mother. Apparently it worked on Christine Cargill, too, because she held the screen door open and said, “Come in.”
Through a light-filled, concrete-floored living room with pale fabric couches, then—probably more linen, and concrete floors? Really? But that sure seemed like what it was—and back to a sun porch off a streamlined kitchen that was all resolutely flat surfaces. The cabinets didn’t have any handles, and neither did the drawers. Neither did the dishwasher or the refrigerator, for that matter. It was an extremely handle-less kitchen. If a manufacturer had figured out how to make an oven with no handle or a sink with no faucet, Christine would have bought them.
At least the sun porch was cozy. Christine said, “Sit down, please. Cup of tea?”
“Sure,” Quinn said, plopping herself into a rattan chair with extremely tasteful floral fabric cushions. What was this mania for hot beverages? Whatever happened to offering a glass of lemonade with ice cubes?
Another few minutes, and Christine was back and sitting in a matching chair, handing Quinn her tea and setting down her own. “Beckett’s in the States now. He took our grandchildren and left. Is that where you’ve come from? It’s a long way.”
“Yes,” Quinn said. “So you can see that I felt—well, a little desperate. I’m from a small town.” She tried to look however big-city Australians—the country seemed surprisingly cosmopolitan so far, with no crocodiles, no kangaroos, and lots of very tall and very stylish buildings—would imagine Americans from small towns looked. Chewing on a piece of hay? Eating corn on the cob? Spitting watermelon seeds? Doing country line dances? She had to fight an insane urge to giggle. “I don’t know any Australians, or any other foreign people, really. I mean, Beckett’s very, uh … very appealing. Very … But how much of that is just himbeingAustralian? Kind of exotic, you know?” More small-town earnestness. “And then I heard that his wife died mysteriously, and the police questioned him, and I … well, I just wasn’tsure.What kind of a man is he, really? IthoughtI knew, but …”
That was about twelve ellipses in there. She sure sounded confused to herself, anyway.
Christine said, “I may not be the most impartial person to ask.”
“Oh,” Quinn said, “I realize that. I mean, gosh, it was your daughter. I’m asking you to remember something so painful. I’m sorry.”
“It’s not something I’m likely to forget,” Christine said. “Were we happy when Abby first brought him around? Not especially. She was brilliant. A brilliant mind, like her father. My husband is a professor and researcher in the genetics field. He’s still teaching and consulting, though he should by rights have retired by now. It’s the life of the mind, which Abby shared. We couldn’t imagine how—”
“How she’d fallen in love with somebody so different?” Quinn suggested. “So blue-collar? From a crappy background, maybe? That’s what my own mom said. Even though my parents just have a store. They’re not in … genetics, or whatever. But it still matters who your family is, you know? Everybody knows who’s from a bad one, at least if their family’s from around there, but, you see, Beckett isn’t.”
“Obviously, it wasn’t just that,” Christine said. “We’re hardly snobs. We were concerned about Beckett’s prospects initially, but he did quite well. It was when she fell pregnant with Troy that we really became troubled. She didn’t just want to take a leave this time. She wanted to take years. Her dad explained to her that academia in particular is relentless—she taught medical students, you know.”
