In retrospect, it seemed as if all the disappointments of the day were preparing him for the biggest let-down of all—his interview with Lorna. Sitting in an overstuffed armchair with a sunflower slipcover, arms folded over her chest, yanking her glasses off and on, Lorna had alternated between crisp, vague, and evasive answers.

Had her mother been discouraged by her husband, Michael’s, dismissal of her talent?

“She never listened to what he said.”

Had she been hurt by his criticism of her singing?

“She wasn’t easily hurt.”

Why had her mother given up singing after her husband died?

“She wanted to.”

Why had she turned down so many offers?

“She felt like it.”

As for the information supplied to them by the Walshes, about Pauline’s last rowdy days, her fights with her sister, her tendency to throw furniture around—Lorna tossed that off as meaningless.

“I didn’t know those two were still alive. You couldn’t trust anything they said even before they lost their minds.”

She broke off the interview after two hours, claiming she had to go out and stock up on supplies for the storm. Desmond had managed to secure a promise from her that she’d let them come back tomorrow. “Come if you want,” she said, and then qualified the invitation with: “Assuming we haven’t all blown out to sea.” They could rearrange some of the memorabilia if they wanted to, lay it out so it would be easier to photograph. Tim had packed up the video equipment and stacked it all in neat piles in a shady corner of the sunporch. Chloe didn’t want to part with it overnight, but leaving it there was like a security deposit. Lorna couldn’t change her mind about letting them in, and Desmond had discovered over the years that you never knew what you were going to find once you got your foot in the door.

Although really, he thought, lying on the thin, uneven mattress, wrapping the orange bedspread around his body more tightly, listening to the relentless clatter of the broken air conditioner, he didn’t hold out too many hopes for this one. Lorna would offer nothing tomorrow she hadn’t offered today. The collected junk would look just as badly deteriorated. He wasn’t going to find a missing key to Pauline’s story. Jane had said little on the ride home, obviously as discouraged as he was about this project. When he finally asked her what she’d thought, she said, “That Lorna’s not exactly great TV material.”