I walked to the mantel over the fireplace to look at the photographs displayed there. All of them were studies of gardens and trees, presumably favorites of Sinclair Phelps.

I was pacing now, walking from the front window, where I looked in vain for signs of the groundskeeper or Mike and Mercer, back to the bookcases on the far wall.

I returned to the window, parting the thin lace curtains again to search for headlights, then crossed the room again.

There were more photographs on one of the shelves. A rugged-looking young Phelps on skis, and another of a child in a young woman's arms-his mother's, perhaps. I smiled at her outfit, which so clearly dated the picture to the sixties-bell-bottom jeans, a peasant-style blouse, long stringy hair parted in the middle, and a peace symbol patched onto the arm of the child's jacket.

A car door slammed in front of the house, but before I could get to the entrance, Phelps had opened it and found me in the middle of his living room.

"Miss Cooper? Is there something wrong?"

"I apologize, Mr. Phelps. I-uh, we had a problem over at the conservatory-"

"Yes, I've just come from there. Everything's going to be fine. What are you doing here?" he asked, his eyes scanning the room to see if anything had been disturbed.

"Well, I was trying to tell you that one of the detectives got sort of stuck outside-"

"Chapman? He's on his way in. Zeldin wants you all to meet over at the office in the snuff mill and-"

"But Zeldin's gone," I said.

"I just saw him, Miss Cooper," Phelps said. His tone seemed to get more stern as we talked. "He's asked me to bring the detectives to meet with him. You might as well join them there."

I started to back up toward the kitchen door as he made a move toward me.

The sudden knocking on the front door startled both of us.

"I'll just step out a minute to take care of this. One of the staff must have a problem." Phelps walked toward the door, but before reaching it he turned back to the table and chair. He picked up the open book, stopped to make sure the money was still in place, and continued on his way to the door. I noticed his large hands, covered with calluses, dried and cracked from years of physical labor.

I was frozen in place-uncertain about what to do-one hand on the bookshelf and the other poised against the kitchen entrance.

I glanced beside me at the floor-to-ceiling array of books. The bottom shelves were all to do with plants and landscape gardening. The ones above my head were a neatly lined-up collection of volumes of poetry.

I tried to listen to the voices outside as I read the familiar names: Yeats, Eliot, Spender, Auden, Owen, Roethke, Thomas, Heaney. Edgar Allan Poe.

The man Gino Guidi knew as Monty-Aurora Tait's killer- was never without a book of poetry in his back pocket. Even in his teens and twenties, the jobs he had taken to support himself had imprinted their physical hardship on his hands.

The voice of the man that Phelps was talking to was raised a pitch. They were arguing about something. The visitor cursed, and the words were spoken in Spanish. The visitor stepped back away from the door, and through the gauzelike curtains I could make out a dark-hooded sweatshirt covering his head.

Packs of marauding teenagers. Aaron Kittredge had encountered a similar group outside the back gate a decade ago when he tried to visit Zeldin to talk to him. Others had attacked me at Poe Cottage while the rest of their gang caused a distraction at the bandshell. Today, a threesome assaulted Ellen when Zeldin ordered them to go and get Sinclair Phelps. Maybe Phelps was running them the way a spymaster would send his agents out on missions. Maybe the money stashed inside the book was a payoff for a job well done at the conservatory today. Maybe.

I made a sudden decision. I pushed against the kitchen door, padded across the linoleum flooring as quietly as I could, and let myself out into the cold, dark February night.

I turned the key to start the golf cart. Without flipping the switch for the headlights, I jammed the pedal and swung the small machine around in a tight circle. Instead of driving out as I had come in, I followed the stone wall behind the house in the opposite direction-certain that I could avoid Phelps and the hoodie and just as sure that I could connect around to one of the main paths.

The strong afternoon breeze seemed to have died down with the sunset. I was grateful for the cart's overhead cover and windshield, which sheltered me somewhat from the winter chill. I hadn't stopped to retrieve my jacket from the kitchen chair, but I was glad for the silk camisole I had put on beneath my cashmere sweater and slacks when I had dressed so many hours ago.

The road looped around a fenced-in area of several acres in which bushes were covered with a large tarp to ward off the frost. I was racing through an urban oasis-the most natural of settings in the most unnatural neighborhood-hoping to find homicide detectives from whom I was separated by fields of rose gardens, lilac bushes, and a conifer arboretum.

Had I identified the murderer, who was indeed hiding in plain sight, whose bold imitation of Poe's fictional brick crypt had been revealed accidentally by the destruction of the old building in which the grand master of crime stories had lived for a brief time? And had the tragic circumstances of his own childhood led him to live out the fictional tortures of the literary master of revenge?

I took no chances with lights, and slowed down only to look at the path markings at the first intersection. From the direction of the carriage house I heard shouting-perhaps Phelps and the young man still arguing or-maybe worse-commands being given to the thugs to hunt me down.

In the distance I could hear the gurgling sounds of the river, and I followed the pavement toward the noise, as it intensified into a pounding of water against rock.

There was a sign to the snuff mill, and I veered off in that direction before the small overpass, hoping to see familiar NYPD Crown Vics parked nearby.

I paused above the driveway entrance to the three-story building. It was completely dark with no cars in sight. Of course Phelps had lied to me about Mike and Mercer wanting to meet me there.

I juiced the machine and was about to retrace my route when I saw headlights coming from the direction of Phelps's carriage house. I didn't want to take the chance of crossing his path, so I drove away from the mill instead. Anxious to get back to the conservatory and a populated area of the gardens, I turned left at the first possible break in the road. It was a larger stone structure-the sign said Hester Bridge-and as I ramped up and over it I could hear the rushing noise of the waterfall at the foot of the Bronx River Gorge where Dr. Ichiko had met his death.

There were only two choices as I rolled down the incline. A left would lead me to the farther bridge, toward which I had seen Phelps or his cohort heading just minutes ago. According to the arrow on the signpost, the straightaway would take me back to the conservatory and administration building-after a drive through New York City's only native forest-fifty acres of undisturbed stands of hemlock, birch, and beech.

I was pushing the cart as fast as it could go, and it bounced me around on the seat as it rattled over branches and rocks that winter storms had thrown down in its path.

The birds and animals that populated the dense trees and exotic park in warmer months had either flown south or hibernated, and there was a dreadful silence that hung over the dark woods-a quiet appropriate to a greenhouse, but not one that I had ever known before on a city street.

Ahead of me, between bare brown tree trunks and filtered through the evergreen branches, I could make out the headlights of another cart. They were coming my way.