“You can’t run a medical facility for rich bulimics without crossing paths with an all-night drugstore,” Whitney had reasoned. “I’ll go in first and scope it out. If there’s a young woman behind the counter, we’ll send Crow in. A man-you take it, Tess.”

“Who died and made you führer?” Tess asked.

“I can’t help it if I have natural leadership abilities,” Whitney replied. She sauntered into the drugstore, returning a few minutes later with a copy of Harper’s magazine and a twenty-ounce Mountain Dew. “The pharmacist on duty is a girl. Take it away, Crow.”

“What do I say?” he asked. Asked Whitney, Tess noticed, not her.

“Tell her you need medical advice. You found an empty Ipecac bottle in your girlfriend’s car, and you want to know if you should be worried. No-your sister’s car, so she thinks you’re in play. Let that lead to a general discussion of eating disorders and treatment. Tell her you’ve heard about this Persephone Place -”

“No-” Tess kneeled in the driver’s seat so she could turn and face Crow. “Specific names make people a little more suspicious. Grope for the name, or get it wrong. She should feel she’s leading the conversation.”

Crow leaned forward and kissed her. “I find this enormously exciting. It’s like our first date, when we broke into that lawyer’s office together.”

“That wasn’t exactly a date,” Tess felt compelled to say, but Crow was already out of the car. Esskay, usually so unflappable, made a strange, high-pitched sound at the back of her throat. She was probably asking Crow to bring her back a candy bar, or a beef jerky strip. It had started to drizzle, and they watched him run across the parking lot, his step so light and carefree that he appeared to be skipping.

“Is it just me, or does he find everything enormously exciting?” Whitney asked at last.

“Pretty much everything,” Tess conceded, trying not to sound smug. The way she brushed her teeth, the way she stretched in the morning. The way she read the newspaper, the way she scrubbed the sink. This, too, would pass, so why not enjoy it?

Crow being Crow, he stayed in the store for almost forty-five minutes and returned not only with the clinic’s location, but a detailed biography of the young pharmacist, which he delivered in her patois and accent. “She has three kids, not a one of ’em over six years old, and her husband got laid off twice in the past two years, and he sure does hate to be stuck at home with them. But she sure as hell doesn’t make as much money as you might think, and the hours are all erratic-”

“Fascinating,” Whitney snapped. “Did she know about the clinic?”

“Oh sure, she told me that right away.” He unfolded a piece of paper. “She even drew us a map. You were right, they’ve had some middle-of-the-night calls. Although she said it’s primarily Sundays, when most of the other places are closed. The pharmacy doesn’t deliver, but she’ll drop stuff off at the end of her shift, for extra money.”

The clinic proved to be considerably south of where they were, on the other side of the Talbot house in Oxford. They left Crow there to baby-sit Esskay-Tess didn’t want to think what the dog might do, alone with Mrs. Talbot’s family heirlooms-and found the unnamed, unmarked road just after sunset.

Now it was dark, Eastern Shore dark, the kind of complete night that never came to Baltimore. They could smell the bay, but couldn’t see it. The only sound was Tess’s Toyota, rough and asthmatic sounding, sending puffs of white-gray smoke into the night air. She wondered how far the sound traveled, how far it had to travel before it alerted someone to their location at the gate.

“What are you waiting for?” Whitney asked. “Don’t you think you can talk your way in? You have a perfectly reasonable request-you’re a private eye, you want to know if Jane Doe might have spent any time here. “

“They made this place awfully hard to find,” Tess said. “Besides, they probably treat famous people. Their antennae will go up if I say I’m a private investigator.”

“You’ve got to try something,” Whitney said, “Nothing ventured-”

No one killed. But no, she wasn’t being fair to herself. No one had ever gotten killed because she asked a few questions. Well, almost no one.

They pulled the car up so they were even with a call box. Tess pushed the button marked Talk.

“Hello.”

“Yes?” a voice replied quickly, almost too quickly, suggesting the possibility the car was already on a video monitor somewhere. Tess couldn’t see a camera, but she kept her head inside the car just in case.

“Yes?” The voice repeated, now impatient. It was a woman’s voice, and Tess had a feeling the clipped, mechanical tone was not the intercom’s distortion.

“I’m a private investigator from Baltimore, working on a missing persons case.” Better not to mention the dead part, at least not yet. “It’s possible she once stayed here.”

“Our client list is confidential,” the voice told her. “We can’t confirm or deny who stays here. It’s a medical facility.”

Time for the dead part. “This particular client is beyond caring about such things. She was murdered in Baltimore a year ago.”

There was a series of clicks, as if a button was being depressed over and over again, while the voice mulled its response. “Murdered in Baltimore? One of our girls? I think not.”

The voice made it sound as if Baltimore was simply too declassé a site in which to be murdered. Palm Beach, perhaps. San Francisco, certainly. Acapulco -claro que si. Baltimore, never.

“Still, I’d like to show you an artist’s sketch, see if anyone can identify her.”

“A sketch? Don’t you have a name?”

“The name is what I’m trying to find. The girl was never identified. I thought I told you that.”

Again, a series of clicks. “But the name is the very thing we could never give. I hope you understand.”

“I don’t understand. This girl is dead, she has no privacy or confidentiality left to protect. But I have a client who is very keen to identify her.”

“Really? Who’s your client?”

“Confidential,” Tess said. She almost wished a video camera were trained on her, so it could see the gleam of her teeth as she smiled.

The voice was not amused. “One of our security guards is coming to the front gate. It’s your choice to leave now, or make his acquaintance. Although you are on the other side of the fence, you’re still trespassing. In fact, the final quarter mile of this road belongs to us. There’s a sign advising you that you’re entering private property-a large sign, with bright red letters on a white background, visible even at night. You were trespassing once you drove past it.”

Tess saw a pair of headlamps approaching through the trees. She hesitated for a moment, then backed the Toyota onto the road and turned around. She went as slowly as she could, as if to say: I’m going because I want to, not because you’re making me.

They were on the public portion of the road when Whitney finally spoke. It was only then that Tess realized how uncharacteristically quiet she had been.

“A private road. So that’s why we couldn’t find it on a map.”

“One mystery solved at least.”

They rode in silence until they found the highway back to Oxford. Then Whitney said: “Turn the radio on and see if we can find a forecast for tomorrow. We’ll need to check the weather.”

“Why, for God’s sake?”

“Because a good sailor always checks the weather.”

“I hardly think I want to spend a December afternoon sailing on the bay, all things considered. Let’s just go back to Baltimore, or spend the day in Chestertown, like you said. I’ll figure another way to make a run at Persephone’s Place. I can always claim I’m an investigator for the Department of Health and Mental Hygiene.”

“I wasn’t thinking of taking the sailboat out. We’ll use the motor boat, the old Boston Whaler my father keeps. One if by land and two if by sea, old buddy, and it’s two lanterns aloft in the belfry arch tonight.”