"I'm glad." She turned to leave.

"Bonnie..."

"Yes?"

"Can I talk to you a minute?"

Bonnie steadied herself at the side of Lauren's bed. "Sure."

"I wanted to ask you something."

"Okay."

"It's personal."

"Okay," Bonnie repeated. Did she really want to hear this?

"It's about you and my dad."

"What about us?"

There was a long pause. "I saw you last week."

"You saw us...?"

"In bed."

Oh G.o.d, Bonnie moaned silently.

"I didn't mean to. It was when-"

"I know when it was," Bonnie said quickly, pushing several of Lauren's books out of the way and sitting down on the edge of the bed. "What exactly is it that you want to ask about?"

"Your hands were tied," Lauren said after another long pause, her words suspended in the heaviness of the air between them. She shook her head, obviously unable to corral the thoughts circling in her brain.

"That confused you," Bonnie stated.

Lauren nodded.

Me too, Bonnie thought. "We were making love," she said instead. "We just thought it might be fun to try something new." What else could she say?

"Was it?" Lauren asked.

"It was interesting," Bonnie replied honestly, trying to imagine herself having this conversation with her own mother. It was impossible. Her mother had never so much as mentioned the word s.e.x. She'd learned most of the gory details from her younger brother.

"Thank you," Lauren said quietly.

"For what?"

"For being honest. I could never talk about these things with my mother," she said, as if privy to Bonnie's most secret thoughts.

"No?"

"Don't get me wrong," Lauren said immediately, already on the defensive. "She was great. My mother was great. It was just that there were certain things she was uncomfortable talking about."

"I hope you know that you can talk to me about anything," Bonnie told her. "I may not always have all the answers, but I'm willing to listen to the questions."

Lauren lowered her eyes to the bed, as if scanning one of the texts. "I have a geography test on Friday," she said.

"Can't help you there, I'm afraid," Bonnie told her with a laugh. "I was absolutely useless in geography. Failed every test."

Lauren laughed. "So there's hope for me."

"There's definitely hope for you," Bonnie told her, patting her hand. And for us, she added silently, hearing Rod's footsteps on the stairs. Everything was going to work out fine.

"Aren't you coming to bed?" Bonnie asked as Rod lifted the now-empty cup of tea out of her hands.

"I have some more work to get finished," he told her. "I'll be up as soon as I can." He kissed her forehead, left the room.

Bonnie sat in her bed, staring absently at the Salvador Dali lithograph on the wall, with its faceless bald woman sketched in blue. "She looks good compared to me," Bonnie said, climbing out of bed and making her way to the bathroom, where she washed her face and brushed her teeth, swishing the water around in her mouth for several seconds, then spitting it into the sink.

The sink was full of blood.

Bonnie pulled back. "Jesus." She took another gulp of water, swirled it around inside her mouth, spit into the sink. More blood. As soon as she felt better, she'd have to get a new toothbrush. The bristles on this one were way too hard.

And while she was out buying that toothbrush, she just might stop in and have her hair done. She definitely needed something. Her hair had never looked so dry and lifeless before. She looked positively G.o.d-awful, she thought, staring at her reflection.

The woman in the mirror stared back silently, a thin trickle of blood dripping from the side of her mouth toward her chin.

21.

The next morning, Bonnie called a mechanic to look at her car. The young man, whose white name tag on his gray shirt identified him as Gerry, spent a few minutes looking underneath the car's hood, turning various k.n.o.bs, and examining a.s.sorted wires and valves. "Everything looks okay to me," he told her, his dark brown hair pulled back into a ponytail that ran halfway down his back. "You say it wouldn't start?"

Bonnie nodded, dropping the car keys into Gerry's open palm as he climbed into the driver's seat. She watched him stick the keys in the ignition, then twist them slightly to the right. The car started immediately.

Bonnie shook her head in amazement, careful not to shake too long or too hard. She was still feeling nauseated, had spent most of the night tossing and turning, unable to find a comfortable position. It hurt even to turn over in bed. As a result, she'd spent most of the night lying on her back, waiting for morning. Sam had given her a lift to school this morning. When she asked him where he'd been last night, he said, simply, "Out."

"I don't get it," Bonnie told the mechanic. "I tried it half a dozen times last night. It wouldn't start."

"Maybe you flooded the engine."

"It never even turned over. It was absolutely dead."

"Well, it's alive and purring now," Gerry told her, turning off the ignition, then restarting it again immediately, as proof. "You might want to take the car in though, get it checked out. But it seems to be working fine now." Once again, he turned off the engine, then climbed out of the car. "How do you want to pay for this?" he asked.

After Gerry left, Bonnie stood looking at her white Caprice, trying to remember exactly what had happened last night. She'd said good-bye to Maureen Templeton, gotten into her car, tried repeatedly to start it, and nothing had happened. She remembered frantically pressing on the gas. Could she have flooded the engine?

"Car trouble?" a familiar voice asked, coming up behind her.

Bonnie didn't have to turn around to know who it was. Even if he hadn't spoken, his scent would have given him away. Did the boy never change or wash his clothes, or had he already been smoking dope this early in the morning? Coffee and a hand-rolled cigarette-a little something to start the day.

"It seems to be all right now," Bonnie told him, turning around, squinting into the sun. The boy's handsome face was half hidden by his uncombed hair. Even still, the mottled, purplish bruise at the side of his chin was clearly visible. "What happened to your face?" she asked, her hand reaching out reflexively.

He flinched, pulled away. "Walked into a wall," he said, then laughed, a hollow sound.

"It looks more like you walked into somebody's fist."

Haze lifted one tattooed arm, brought his hand to his chin. "Yeah, the old man still packs a wallop."

Bonnie's mouth opened in stunned surprise. "Your grandfather hit you?"

"Do me a favor, Mrs. Wheeler," Haze said. "Don't bother my grandparents anymore. They don't appreciate getting calls from the school."

"I can't believe-"

"It's a tough world out there, Mrs. Wheeler," Haze said, balancing on the heels of his black boots. "You never know when someone might be waiting to punch your face in...or disconnect the battery of your car so it won't start-"

"What?"

"-or throw blood on a cute little kid-"

"My G.o.d." Bonnie felt her legs about to give way. "Are you saying-"

"-or even shoot you straight through the heart," he concluded, nonchalantly. "The police paid us a visit about that, you know." He rubbed his jaw. "My grandfather didn't appreciate that visit very much either." He laughed. "They asked a whole lot of questions about whether I knew anything about what happened to Sam's mom or to your little girl. What's her name? Amanda? Yeah, real cute kid. It'd be a shame if something happened to her. I'd keep a real close eye on her, if I were you. Well, I gotta go. Don't want to be late for my first cla.s.s."

Bonnie watched him walk away, too stunned to speak. She wanted to chase after him, wrestle him to the ground, pin him down, pummel his face with her fists if necessary, in order to get the answers from him that she needed. Except that his grandfather had already done that.

Was it any wonder the boy was the way he was? Was she really surprised he needed a narcotic to get him through the day? And could she really be feeling sorry for him after all he'd just implied? My G.o.d, the boy had been in her home less than a week ago; he'd sat at her dining room table with her family and eaten her food. Was he telling her now that he'd tampered with her car, that he'd emptied a pail of blood over her daughter's head, that he was a cold-blooded killer?

Bonnie looked toward the school, watching as a steady stream of students filed through the doors, hurrying to get inside before the bell. Haze would be waiting for her at the back of her cla.s.s, his feet stretched insolently out in front of him, she realized, falling back against her car door. In the next instant, she was inside the car, pulling out of the parking lot, and heading for Newton.

"What did he say to you about my daughter?" Bonnie demanded, barely giving Captain Mahoney time to get out of his chair.

"Hold on here a minute, Mrs. Wheeler," the captain said, tucking his white shirt inside his brown trousers and straightening his brown-and-gold-striped tie as he stepped out in front of his desk. "I can see you're upset-"

"Tell me what Harold Gleason said to you about my daughter," Bonnie repeated, trying to calm herself down by taking deep breaths.

"He said he didn't know what we were talking about," Captain Mahoney told her.

"Did he have an alibi for the time my daughter was attacked?"

"He claimed he was on his way home from school."

"Can he prove that?"

"We can't prove he wasn't," Captain Mahoney said.

"So, that's it? He says he didn't do it, and you say okay?"

"We have no proof he did anything wrong, Mrs. Wheeler. Your daughter couldn't give us a description-"

"My daughter is three years old."

"-and we just can't arrest someone for behaving provocatively," Captain Mahoney said. "You should know that."

Bonnie ignored the inference. Did he really still consider her the prime suspect in Joan's murder? "What about Joan?" she asked. "Did he have an alibi for the time of Joan's death? Was he on his way home from school that day too?"

"It was a P.D. day," Captain Mahoney reminded her, pointedly. "He said he was with your stepson."

The air buzzed painfully around Bonnie's ears, like a dentist's drill.

"Your stepson also claims they were together. They say they were just hanging out, not doing anything in particular, that they don't know if anybody saw them together or not. Do you think they might be lying?"

"I think Haze might be lying, yes."

"And your stepson?"

"I'm sure my stepson had nothing to do with his mother's death," Bonnie said, one hand reaching toward the back of a nearby chair for support.

"Are you?"

Silence. More buzzing, the drill moving closer, digging deeper.

"Could I trouble you for a gla.s.s of water?" Bonnie asked.

Captain Mahoney left the room and returned seconds later with a paper cup filled with cold water. "Are you feeling all right?" he asked, as Bonnie sipped slowly at the contents of the cup. "You're looking a little green around the gills."

"It's my hair," Bonnie said impatiently, although she wasn't sure if her impatience was directed more at Captain Mahoney or herself. "Maybe if you stopped concentrating on my family and started looking in other directions, you'd have more luck finding Joan's killer," she told him. "I should go. Sorry if I wasted your time."

"Always interesting talking to you," he called after her. "We'll be in touch."

"What can we do for you today?" the young woman was asking, scissors in hand.

Bonnie was sitting in a barber's chair, staring at her reflection in the long mirror that ran the full length of the downtown beauty salon. Behind her stood a tall young woman wearing a large green felt hat that completely hid the fact she had any hair. Not a good sign in a hairdresser, Bonnie thought, then remembered that Diana claimed Rosie was the best hairdresser in Boston. Certainly she always did a great job on Diana's hair, Bonnie thought, deciding that she couldn't look much worse. "I need something new." Bonnie pulled at the ends of her hair.

"It's very dry," Rosie said, crinkling a fistful of Bonnie's hair in her palm. Bonnie thought it might break off in her hand. "We should probably give it a treatment. Are you in a hurry?"

"I have all day," Bonnie told her, wondering what on earth had possessed her to come here. She'd called the school, told them she wasn't feeling up to par and didn't think she should risk infecting the students, and now here she was in downtown Boston, sitting in the window of Rosie's Hair Emporium, about to have her dry hair treated and trimmed. What if somebody were to see her?

"I think it could use a treatment, and a good cut," Rosie said. "What do you think?"

"I'm in your hands," Bonnie told her. "Do whatever you think is best."