“Why did you let him watch the news?” Ruth demanded.

“No one told me about the history, or I wouldn’t have let him,” Theresa snapped back. “Everyone in this house tiptoes around simple things and then blames me for not doing my job, because I’m supposed to use ESP to figure them out. Get a psychic off the TV hot line if that’s what you need in a nurse.

To my surprise, instead of blistering Theresa for impertinence, Ruth said, “No one’s trying to keep things from you, Theresa. It was before my time, too, but it was so important in the Bayard lives that people still talk about it-I just assumed someone had told you.”

“Who’s Deenie?” I asked, rubbing the place on my shoulders where Calvin Bayard had dug in his hands.

“It’s a nickname for Mrs. Bayard,” Theresa said. “He cries for her when he’s really upset. Mr. Bayard, we’re going to get you a nice hot drink and take a little walk. You come with me. You like to watch Sandy heat your milk, don’t you? With Sandy and me to look out for you, no one can hurt you. Remember that.”

CHAPTER 19

Under the Dragon’s Spell

I sat in my car, shaking. When I was a student I had daydreamed about being held in Calvin Bayard’s arms. The nightmarish way my old fantasy had come true made me sick to my stomach. The man who’d stood up so valiantly to the Walker Bushnells and Olin Taverners of America now derived pleasure from watching the cook boil milk. It was too much. I couldn’t bear it.

My eye caught a movement at one of the front windows. Ruth waiting for me to leave. I found a bottle of water in the backseat and drank it down. Not the pint of rye Philip Marlowe would have used, but it steadied me just the same.

I drove slowly down Coverdale Lane. At Larchmont Hall, I pulled in through the gates, trying to regain my composure. In the twilight, the whitewashed brick looked more than ever like the prop to a Gothic novel. But my Gothic ideas about why Renee Bayard had dug a moat around her husband were wrong: she merely didn’t want people to know he had Alzheimer’s.

Maybe Calvin really had somehow gotten hold of a key to Larchmont Hall. Maybe he did wander over there, and Catherine really did follow him-and was protecting him and the family secret. But why keep it a secret? Was it Renee’s own pain he couldn’t bear her husband’s diminishment and

didn’t want the world to know? Or were there majority publishers at Bayard who only let Renee hold the CEO spot because they thought Calvin was guiding the reins behind scenes? I couldn’t make sense of it.

I got out of the car and walked up the drive to the pond. I couldn’t see much in the growing dusk, but the sheriff’s deputies hadn’t treated this like a crime scene. No tape, no signs of any investigation. Only the scarring along the grass where I’d dragged Marcus Whitby’s body showed that anyone had been here.