Getting her parents to agree to an investigation seemed like the most important first step: I could get going on more ideas, and keep pushing on the independent autopsy. Harriet said Amy Blount hadn’t had any luck with locating a key to Marc’s house. We agreed to meet there the next morning around nine, whether Amy had found a key or not.

I gulped down the rest of my chicken soup while I scribbled down my other messages, and then hightailed it to Vina Fields. Not that I often visit the Gold Coast, but I’d never really noticed the school before, so carefully was it tucked into its surroundings. It presented the same bland, inwardturning fa~ade as the apartments and homes on the street, pushing outsiders away as firmly as a guard dog. Only a small plaque near the double doors identified the stone building-that and the waiting nest of mothers and nannies clustered at the bottom of the steps. Actually, two men stood in the group, one with a stroller and a toddler, the other with a copy of the New York Times tucked under his arm.

This late in the school season, those on foot seemed to know each other, at least by sight. They chatted about their children’s triumphs and whether they could sell the tickets for the school play each family had been allotted, occasionally shooting a curious glance my way.

After about ten minutes, the doors opened and children began streaming out. The primary grades left first, in knots of giggling girls, of boys

loudly haranguing each other, punching each other’s arms, both sets ignoring the children alone, who hunched down in their coats as if already resigned at age eight to life as outsiders. A lot of the boys were in shirtsleeves, their coats slung over a shoulder: hey, we’re men, we’re too tough for sissy things like coats in winter.

The cars started to pull up, honking and jockeying for curb space, parents screaming invective at each other. A woman with a blond coiffure that spoke of weekly visits to the salon climbed out of her Lexus to yell abuse that would have made a truck driver squirm; the Jaguar in front of her replied with a finger.

The adults on foot were waiting on the young kids-older students living close enough to the school to walk could make their own way home. When the upper grades began to trickle out a little later, I was the lone grown-up still standing by the stairs.

I fingered the ratty teddy bear in my shoulder bag. As time passed, I began to fret that I’d missed my quarry, or that she had lacrosse practice or junior publishers’ club. Just as I had decided to take my chances on getting into the Banks Street apartment, Catherine Bayard appeared.

Although she was paler than I’d thought from seeing her by moonlight, I knew her at once. Her mouth was wide and tremulous, her face so narrow the cheekbones almost seemed at oblique angles to her nose. Sleep deprivation had produced violet bruises around her eyes.