Manfred’s eyes followed mine, and his widened. He asked me a silent question. After a moment, I shook my head. There was no point in having a confrontation—at least, my scrambled head couldn’t instantly see any advantage.

If Matthew admitted he’d been there, he’d simply tell us that he was visiting another doctor, or a lawyer, or an accountant, in the same building, for whatever reason. It would be hard to disprove. But his presence in Tom Bowden’s building was more coincidence than I could bite off and chew.

It had never occurred to me that Matthew’s reappearance in his children’s lives had anything to do with the Joyces.

Instead of joining the three men, I went into the bedroom and sat on the side of the bed. I felt as if someone had just slammed a car door on my legs, when I was only half in. I tried hard to focus on one idea out of the dozens that were suddenly percolating in my head. My whole world had shifted, and regaining my balance in that world was almost impossible.

Mariah Parish was dead. She had died in childbirth.

Rich Joyce was dead. He’d been shocked to death, if you could call it that.

Victoria Flores, whom Lizzie Joyce had hired to investigate Mariah’s death, was dead, too.

Parker Powers, who’d been investigating the case, was dead.

My stepfather had been to the doctor’s office, the doctor who was present when Mariah Parish had died.

And what else had happened only a couple of months after the mysterious birth of the mysterious baby eight years ago?

My sister Cameron had vanished.

Sixteen

Sixteen

I went into the bathroom and locked the door. I closed the toilet lid and sat on the toilet. I didn’t turn on the light. I didn’t want to see my reflection.

Matthew was somehow connected to the Joyces, though I had no idea how. And he was also Cameron’s stepfather. And as near as I could ascertain, not that long after Mariah Parish’s baby had been born, Cameron had disappeared. It had never, ever occurred to me that anyone in our family had anything to do with Cameron’s disappearance. When the police had questioned my mother and Matthew, and Mark and Tolliver and me, I had raged at them because they were wasting time that should be spent tracing the real killer or killers.