He listened quietly, without interruption, while she told him.

“Carruthers must be so pissed off at you,” he commented when she’d finished.

“I don’t give a damn. David, someone’s been here, in my apartment. There’s no sign of a forced entry and nothing’s missing, but I can smell pipe smoke.”

She sighed; it sounded so ridiculous now.

But David took her seriously. Too much had happened already for him to accuse her of paranoia. “Missing any keys?”

“I don’t know. David, could you check

if the keys I gave Barky are still there? They should be hanging inside the closet in the kitchen. On a penguin key chain, I think.”

“I’ll have a look.” In a few seconds he was back, and there was an undertone of near panic in his voice. “Ash, they’re gone.”

“Then he was here, David.” She closed her eyes. “Barky was here.”

12

Ashley slept late the next morning—sheer exhaustion had overcome her—and took the noon shuttle back to Boston. It was a gray, drizzly day, but the forecasters promised clearing by nightfall. She didn’t mind the weather: the dankness fit her mood. To hell with it, she thought forcefully. I’m not going to let this get to me.

But it was, in insidious ways. She’d had trouble falling asleep, and when she had, she’d had nightmares. When she was awake, she couldn’t call on her enormous ability to concentrate; her mind kept wandering to her conversations with Barky, MacGregor Stevens, Jeremy Carruthers, Elaine Stevens.

She needed answers. An end to this.

At Logan Airport, she made her way out to the garage, her stomach lurching when she saw her uncle’s truck. Barky had always been there. Ashley could go to college, work in the city, buy expensive clothes, go to fancy parties, watch her investments make her richer by the hour. She could try on new identities, and she could change with the wind. But she could always count on Barky: he would never change.

Now she’d been compelled to wonder if her uncle had ever been the man she’d thought he was. She didn’t know Bartholomew Wakefield.

She didn’t know if she could still believe in him.

The heavy door of the old truck creaked when she pulled it open and climbed inside. It smelled of greasy tools and grain and stale manure. Suddenly she felt overwhelmed. There was so much she didn’t know! So many options! And yet none at all, none that made sense.

If only she had left the jewels in the vaults of Piccard Cie...had smashed Rob Gazelle’s camera into the dust...had caught Sybil Morgenstern’s reporter stealing the snapshot of Barky.

But she hadn’t.

As she fished the key out of her bag, she noticed a slip of paper tucked into the torn seat. It had almost disappeared into the stuffing, never to be seen again. Something she had missed earlier?

Probably a grocery list, she told herself as she unfolded the paper.

Her uncle’s precise handwriting was unmistakable.