Now it seemed that Grace Peltier had been due to meet with Paragon shortly before she died. I wondered if she had made the meeting. If so, Paragon might be worth talking to.

“Do you have any notes she might have made for her thesis, any computer disks?” I continued.

He shook his head. “Like I said, she took everything with her. She was planning to stay with a friend after she'd met with Paragon and do some work on her thesis there.”

“You know who the friend was?”

“Marcy Becker,” he said immediately. “She's a history grad, friend of Grace's from way back. Her family lives up in Bar Harbor. They run a motel there. Marcy's been living with them for the last couple of years, helping them to run the place.”

“Was she a good friend?”

“Pretty good. Or I used to think she was.”

“What do you mean?”

“I mean that she never made it to the funeral.” I felt that little lance of guilt again. “That's kinda strange, don't you think?”

“I guess it is,” I said. “Did she have any other close friends who didn't show for the service?”

He thought for a moment. “There's a girl called Ali Wynn, younger than Grace. She came up here a couple of times and they seemed to get on well together. Grace shared an apartment with her when she was in Boston, and she used to stay with her when she traveled down to study. She's a student at Northeastern too, but works part-time in a fancy restaurant in Harvard, the ‘Hammer’ something.”

“The Blue Hammer?”

He nodded. “That's the one.”

It was on Holyoke Street, close by Harvard Square. I added the name to my notebook.

“Did Grace own a gun?” I asked.

“No.”

“Are you sure?”

“Positive. She hated guns.”

“Was she seeing anybody?”

“Not that I know of.”

He sipped his coffee and I found him watching me closely over the rim of the cup, as if my last question had caused a shift in his perception of me.

“I recall you, you know,” he said softly.

I felt myself flush red, and instantly I was more than a decade and a half younger, dropping Grace Peltier off outside this same house and then driving away, grateful that I would never have to look at her or hold her again. I wondered what Peltier knew about my time with his daughter and was surprised and embarrassed at my concern.

“I told Jack Mercier to ask for you,” he continued. “You knew Grace. I thought maybe you might help us because of that.”

“That was a long time ago,” I answered gently.

“Maybe,” he said, “but it seems like only yesterday to me that she was born. Her doctor was the worst doctor in the world. He couldn't deliver milk, but somehow, despite him, she managed to come wailing into the world. Everything since then, all of the little incidents that made up her life, seem to have occurred in the blink of an eye. You look at it like that and it wasn't so long ago, Mr. Parker. For me, in one way, she was barely here at all. Will you look into this? Will you try to find out the truth of what happened to my daughter?”

I sighed. I felt as if I was heading into deep waters just as I had begun to like the feel of the ground beneath my feet.

“I'll look into it,” I said at last. “I can't promise anything, but I'll do some work on it.”

We spoke a little more of Grace and of her friends, and Peltier gave me copies of the phone records for the last couple of months, as well as Grace's most recent bank and credit card statements, before he showed me to her bedroom. He left me alone in there. It was probably too soon for him to spend time in a room that still smelled of her, that still contained traces of her existence. I went through the drawers and closets, feeling awkward as my fingers lifted and then replaced items of clothing, the hangers in the closets chiming sadly as I patted down the jackets and coats they held. I found nothing except a shoe box containing the mementos of her romantic life: cards and letters from long-departed lovers, and ticket stubs from dates that had obviously meant something to her. There was nothing recent, and nothing of mine among them. I hadn't expected that there would be. I checked through the books on the shelves and the medicines in the cabinet above the small sink in the corner of the room. There were no contraceptives that might have indicated a regular boyfriend and no prescription drugs that might have suggested she was suffering from depression or anxiety.

When I returned to the kitchen there was a manila file of papers lying in front of Peltier on the table. He passed it across to me. When I opened it, the file contained all of the state police reports on the death of Grace Peltier, along with a copy of the death certificate and the ME's report. There were also photographs of Grace's body in the car, printed off a computer. The quality wasn't so good, but it didn't have to be. The wound on Grace's head was clearly visible, and the blood on the window behind her was like the birth of a red star.

“Where did you get these, Mr. Peltier?” I asked, but I knew the answer almost as soon as the words were out of my mouth. Jack Mercier always got what he wanted.

“I think you know,” he replied. He wrote his telephone number on a small pad and tore the page out. “You can usually get me here, day or night. I don't sleep much these days.”

I thanked him, then he shook my hand and walked me to the door. He was still watching me as I climbed into the Mustang and drove away.

I parked on Congress and took the reports into Kinko's to photocopy them, a precaution that I had recently started to take with everything from tax letters to investigation notes, with the originals retained at the house and the copies put into storage in case the originals were lost or damaged. Copying was a small amount of trouble and expense to go to for the reassurance that it offered. When I had finished, I went to Coffee by Design and started to read the reports in detail. As I did, I found myself growing more and more unhappy with what they contained.

The police report listed the contents of the car, including a small quantity of cocaine found in the glove compartment and a pack of cigarettes that was lying on the dashboard. Fingerprint analysis revealed three sets of prints on the pack, only one of them belonging to Grace. The only prints on the bag of coke were Grace's. For someone who didn't smoke or take drugs, Grace Peltier seemed to be carrying a lot of narcotics in her car.

The certificate of death didn't add much else to what I already knew, although one section did interest me. Section 42 of the state of Maine certificate of death requires the ME to ascribe the manner of death to one of six causes. In order, these are: “natural,” “accident,” “suicide,” “homicide,” “pending investigation,” and “could not be determined.”

The ME had not ticked “suicide” as the manner of Grace Peltier's death. She had, instead, opted for “pending investigation.” In other words, she had enough doubts about the circumstances to require the state police to continue their inquiries into the death. I moved on to the ME's own report.

The report noted Grace's body measurements, her clothing, her physique and state of nutrition at the time of death, and her personal cleanliness. There were no signs of self-neglect indicative of mental disorder or drug dependency of any kind. The analysis of her ocular fluid found no traces of drugs or alcohol taken in the hours before her death, and urine and bile analysis also came up negative, indicating that she had not ingested drugs in the three days preceding her death either. Blood taken from a peripheral vein beneath her armpit had been combined in a tube with sodium fluoride, which reduces the microbiologic action that may increase or decrease any alcohol content in the blood after collection. Once again, it came up negative. Grace hadn't been drinking before she died.