“Yes, of course. But he clearly relied on you. I’m sure you knew at least the outline of what was going on.” I was almost leering with the effort to seem warm and fuzzy. It was keeping the door open but not making Gertrude more forthcoming.

“It was a long time ago, more than thirty years. I’ve forgotten the details.”

This was so nearly identical to what Shirley Kiel had said that my mouth had opened with a sarcastic comment at the ready when the kaleidoscope turned in my brain and two pieces of glass lined up over each other: 1983, when so much happened—the protest at the silo, the birth of Cady Perec, the death of Jennifer Perec, the disappearance of Matt Chastain.

“Your daughter, Jennifer. Is Matt Chastain Cady’s father? If he is, why don’t you want Cady to know? Surely not because of some long-forgotten science—”

“You know nothing.” Her face shriveled and turned white, transparent, like a petal from a dying narcissus. “You come from up north, you think you’re smarter than us small-town folk, but you know nothing.”

She shut the door on me. I lingered on the stoop, wondering if I should go in to make sure she hadn’t collapsed. After a moment, though, I saw a light come on in the room behind the porch where I’d sat yesterday. The house was too stoutly built for me to hear anything—such as the phone call I assumed she was making to Nathan Kiel—but she was probably okay.

I walked slowly back to the car, trying to make sense of the story. Shirley Kiel said Sonia had stalked Matt. Say Sonia had seen him with Jennifer Perec, seen her own romantic daydreams ripped apart. What would she have done? Had the psychotic break her parents claimed? And then had she attacked Matt? No, more likely she attacked Jennifer. I felt something cold in my stomach, like a large glacier—had she killed Jennifer? Was the car in the Wakarusa a cover-up for that?

And where had Chastain been when Jennifer died? Was he glad not to be saddled with a baby? No one knew he was Cady’s father, so he could slide out of town, away from Nathan Kiel’s wrath, away from fatherhood. Maybe he’d changed his name and become CEO of a pharmaceutical company. Or he’d dropped off the grid and was living under a viaduct with a bottle of Mad Dog 20/20 to keep him warm.

Nothing I could imagine made any sense. It wasn’t really my business either. My business was to find Emerald Ferring and August Veriden. I repeated that to myself about a dozen times as I drove over to the Hippo for another nourishing cortado.

16
Down by the Riverside