Her calm voice was like balm on a wound. I took a deep breath. “My mother killed herself, but before she did, she had made many attempts. She would take pills, then call for help. They had to pump her stomach out at the hospital. You can check with Cayuga Medical Center in Ithaca. She was there four times.” My shoulders were trembling. “I don’t think she wanted to die. It was her way of controlling Claudia and me. If we did something she didn’t like, she would threaten to kill herself.”

“Had you done something she didn’t like?” Renfrew’s voice was soft.

I nodded and looked down at my hands. They were wrestling in my lap like palsied snakes. “She didn’t want me to go back to college in New York City. I don’t think she meant to die. She just wanted me to come back, and not leave again.” The bracelet from my father seemed to gleam as I touched it. “I’ve been worried for a long time that my sister would kill herself with an overdose. She came close once.”

“What happened?”

“About a year-and-a-half ago, Claudia had a bad breakup. That’s the wrong way to put it. The guy she’d been living with died of an overdose.” My voice was terribly calm to my ears. “Claudia came to my apartment a few days later and overdosed. She almost died. That’s why I had to take her in. She wanted proof that I cared about her.” I looked up at Bruxton. “That woman at the morgue doesn’t have track marks on her arms. Don’t try to tell me they heal up. My sister has pits and hollows in her left elbow from infected tracks. Those don’t go away.”

The detectives glanced at each other, communicating in the silent way of a long-married couple. “I think it’s time we went back to the sister’s apartment,” said Renfrew as she stood up. “I’m going to make a quick call. Be right back.” She opened the door and stepped out, leaving it yawning behind her.

“You have to admit, it looks strange, this woman dying on the anniversary of your mother’s death,” Bruxton said.

“It does. But that doesn’t mean it’s my sister.”

“Here’s something for you to think about,” he said. “If that girl who died in your sister’s apartment isn’t your sister, what was she doing there? And what does your sister have to do with her death?”

CHAPTER 5