“It was found on Carrington property.” Maggie couldn’t resist that one.

“Technically on the property, but outside the fence. Anyone could have put it there.” I didn’t give Maggie a chance to respond before I said, “Did you know it was Daddy’s idea to move the fence back so that none of the landscaping would be affected if there was any public work in that area?”

“Yes. I remember your dad talking about that at the time. He intended to do something with that property outside the fence, but he never got to do it.”

“Maggie, you were wrong about something. Daddy was not fired because he had a drinking problem. He was fired because Elaine Carrington started flirting with him, and when he didn’t respond she got rid of him. Peter told me that. Where did you get the idea that it was because of his drinking?”

“I don’t care what your husband told you. Your father had a drinking problem, Kay.”

“Well, according to Peter, he certainly wasn’t drinking when he was working.”

“Kay, when your father told me that he’d been fired, he was upset, terribly upset.”

“That was only a few weeks after Susan Althorp disappeared, wasn’t it?”

“Yes, as I remember it was exactly fifteen days later.”

“Then the police must have questioned Daddy as well. He was still working there.”

“They questioned everybody who worked on the estate or even visited it. You were staying here with me the night Susan disappeared. Your father had some of his friends in for a poker game at your house. They were at it till midnight, and I gather when it broke up they were all feeling pretty good. That Greco fellow was way off base insinuating your father’s suicide had anything to do with Susan Althorp.”

“I’m sure of that, but he did have a point. Daddy’s body was never recovered. Why were you so sure he committed suicide?”

“Kay, I went with him to the cemetery on the sixth anniversary of your mother’s death. That was only a month before he killed himself. Six years and still he broke down and cried like a baby. He told me he missed her every single day, and it wasn’t letting up. Something else. He loved working on the Carrington estate. Sure, he had other families up there he worked for, but the Carringtons were the only one who would let him do exactly what he wanted. It was a terrible blow to be thrown out of that job.”

Maggie got up from her chair, walked over, and put her arms around me. “Kay, he loved you like crazy, but your dad was in serious depression, and when you drink and are depressed, terrible things happen.”

We cried together. “Maggie, I’m so scared,” I admitted. “I’m so scared of what may happen to Peter.”

She didn’t answer, but she might just as well have shouted what she was thinking: Kay, I’m scared of what may happen to you.

I called Peter on his cell phone. He was still in the city and wasn’t going to be home until at least ten o’clock. “Take Maggie out for dinner,” he said. Then he even laughed when he added, “Tell her it’s on me.”

Maggie and I went out for “a plate of pasta,” as she puts it. Our conversation led her to reminiscences about my mother, and once again she told me the story about how she had stopped the show when she sang that song. She sounded so poignant when she sang that last line, “I heard that song before,” Maggie said, her eyes glistening as she hummed the tune, off-key. It was on the tip of my tongue to tell her about my visit to the chapel that afternoon long ago, but I held back. I didn’t want a lecture about how foolish I’d been.

Following dinner, I dropped her off at her door, watched until she was inside, then drove home. There were some lights on in the gatehouse, so I assumed that the Barrs were there. I never can tell if Elaine is in, though. Her house is too far away from either the front gate or the mansion to see any lights coming from it.

It was only nine o’clock. The mansion felt really scary to go into alone. I could almost imagine someone hiding inside the suit of armor in the entrance hall. The outside lights sent muted shadows through the stained-glass windows. For an instant I wondered if they were the same lights my father had installed, the ones he’d rushed over here to check that afternoon when he brought me with him.

I got comfortable in a robe and slippers and waited for Peter to get home. I was reluctant to turn on the television, afraid I’d come across another story about the Althorp case and the newest development, the maid who had changed her testimony. I had started a book on the plane coming home and picked it up again. It was no use; the words were meaningless.

I was thinking about my father. All the good memories were flooding my mind. I still missed him.

Peter came in a little after eleven. He looked exhausted. “As of today, I’ve resigned from the board,” he said. “I’ll maintain an office at the company.”

He said that Vincent had ordered dinner brought into the office, but admitted he hadn’t touched it. We went down to the kitchen, and I got some of Jane Barr’s homemade chicken soup out of the refrigerator and heated it for him. He seemed to perk up a bit and got up and brought a bottle of red wine and two glasses from the bar. He poured the wine and held up his glass. “Let’s offer each other the same toast every night,” he said. “We will get through this. The truth will come out.”

“Amen,” I said fervently.

Then Peter looked directly at me, and his eyes were thoughtful and sad. “Here we are alone, Kay,” he said. “If anything happened to you tonight, they’d be sure to blame it on me, wouldn’t they?”

“Nothing’s going to happen to me,” I told him. “Whatever would make you say that?”

“Kay, do you know if I have been sleepwalking since we’ve been home?”

His question surprised me. “Yes, you were, that first night. You’ve never told me that you knew you were a sleepwalker, Peter.”

“I was as a kid. It started after my mother died. The doctor gave me some medicine, and for a while it pretty much stopped. But I had a nightmare about putting my arm in the pool and trying to get at something, and it keeps sticking in my mind. You wouldn’t know if that happened, would you?”

“It did happen, Peter. I woke up at about five o’clock and you weren’t there. I looked for you in the other bedroom and happened to glance out the window. I could see you at the pool. You were kneeling beside it and your arm was in the water. Then you came back into the house and got into bed. I knew enough not to wake you.”

“Kay,” he began, his voice hesitant. Then he said something in so low a tone that I could not hear him clearly. His voice broke, and he bit his lip. I could tell he was close to tears.

I got up, went around the table, and cradled him in my arms. “What is it, Peter? What do you want to tell me?”

“No…it’s nothing.”

But it was something, and it was terribly important. I could swear that Peter had whispered, “I’ve had other nightmares, and maybe they really happened…”