"I can't sleep," Amanda said.

"I know. It's hard." Bonnie approached the bed, watching Amanda's round little face grow increasingly visible through the darkness, as if she were being lit from within. And perhaps she was, Bonnie thought, marveling that she could have played a part in creating anything so beautiful, so absolutely perfect Amanda Lindsay Wheeler, she repeated to herself, all blond curls and puffy chipmunk cheeks, huge navy blue eyes and tiny turned-up nose. Sugar and spice and everything nice. That's what little girls are made of. Bonnie brought her hand to her lip, felt it sting.

And then they grow up, she thought.

Soon the chipmunk cheeks would thin out and become more sculpted; the eyes would grow less curious, more fearful; the lips would narrow from smile to pout. Already, the toddler's skin had been shed to make room for the little girl. Already, the sleeping adolescent hovered, threatening to burst prematurely out of its coc.o.o.n.

"Do you think Lauren's pretty?" Amanda asked suddenly, catching Bonnie off guard.

"Yes, I do," Bonnie answered. "Do you?"

Amanda nodded vigorously. "Is she going to be my big sister now?"

"Would you like that?"

Again, Amanda nodded, throwing up her arms for emphasis.

"Get some sleep now, sweet thing." She kissed her on the forehead, tucked her back under the covers, walked to the door.

"I love you," Amanda called after her.

"I love you too, angel."

"I love you more."

Bonnie stopped, smiled at what was becoming a nightly ritual. "You couldn't possibly love me more."

"Okay," Amanda giggled. "We love each other exactly the same."

"Okay," Bonnie agreed, walking to the door. "We love each other exactly the same."

"Except I love you more."

Bonnie threw her daughter another kiss from the doorway, watching as Amanda reached up to pluck it from the air and glue it to her cheek. Then she stepped back into the hall.

The light was still on in the den, beckoning to her from under the closed door. Bonnie hesitated, then knocked gently, gingerly pushing open the door when Sam failed to answer.

Sam lay spread across the sofa, which doubled as a pull-out bed, wearing only his baggy brown pants, a lit cigarette dangling from his lips, ashes dropping onto his bare chest. He jumped up when he saw her, and the ashes spilled onto the taupe carpeting.

"I know I'm not supposed to smoke in the house," he said quickly, looking around for a place to extinguish his cigarette, finally b.u.t.ting it out between his fingers.

Bonnie looked helplessly around the small den, once intended as her sanctuary, a room to which she could retreat to mark essays and exams, to prepare her lessons, to read, to relax. Now, clothes hung over the top of the large-screen TV, a guitar stood propped against one soft-green wall, gray ashes mingled with the yellow and green flowers of the sofa bed, and a large gla.s.s tank had all but overtaken the top of her stately oak desk, pushing the framed photograph of Amanda unceremoniously off to the side and relegating her computer to the floor. She froze. "Where's the snake?" she asked, her brain suddenly registering that the tank was empty.

Sam raised one long skinny arm and pointed toward the window. "Right there-on the windowsill. He thinks he's a cat."

Reluctantly, Bonnie's eyes veered toward the window at the far end of the room. The mint green curtains were partially open to reveal the coiled body of the snake behind them.

"Would you mind keeping him in the tank when we're home?" Bonnie asked, her voice small, fighting the almost overpowering urge to run screaming down the hall.

"Sure thing," Sam said, though he didn't move.

Bonnie paused in the doorway. "Are you all right?" she asked. "Is there anything you'd like to talk about?"

"Like what?" the boy asked.

Bonnie didn't know what to say-How about the weather? Or the Red Sox? How about the fact that your mother was murdered this morning?-so she said nothing. She waited, trying to penetrate the boy's opaque features, finding it ironic that boys so often resembled their mothers, while girls tended to look more like their dads. At least such was the case with Sam and Lauren. And such had been the case with her and Nick. "Goodnight, Sam," she said finally, wondering if her brother would call. "See you in the morning."

Bonnie stepped out of the room, closing the door behind her just as the door to the guest room opened and Lauren appeared. Instinctively, Bonnie took a small step back.

"I'm just going to the bathroom." Lauren motioned toward the small room at the end of the hall.

"There are fresh towels and a new bar of soap," Bonnie said as Lauren brushed past her. "If you need anything else..."

Lauren entered the bathroom and closed the door behind her.

"...just call," Bonnie said. "Give her time and s.p.a.ce," she reminded herself, returning to her bedroom, seeing Rod already underneath the covers. "I'll just be a minute," she said, pulling her dress over her head, dropping it to the floor, sliding out of her underwear and into bed beside her husband, looking forward to the luxury of his arms. Maybe he was right. He'd always known exactly how and where to touch her. She snuggled in against him, felt the steady rise and fall of his bare chest.

He was asleep, she realized with a smile, running her hand along his warm skin, delicately kissing his slightly parted lips. He looks like a little boy, she thought, the troubled lines around his eyes and mouth now smooth with sleep.

She'd never sleep, she realized in that same moment, getting up and going to the bathroom, brushing her teeth and splashing some soap and water on her face, careful not to rub too hard around her swollen lip. Her mind was too full of disturbing sounds and images: Joan's voice on the phone that morning; Joan's body at the kitchen table in the house on Lombard Street; the gaping hole in the middle of her chest; Joan's bedroom; Joan's sc.r.a.pbook; her brother's name in Joan's address book; the insurance policy with its d.a.m.ned double indemnity clause; a life brutally extinguished; two motherless children. Why? What did any of it mean?

"I'll be awake all night," Bonnie moaned, crawling back into bed, and closing her eyes. In the next instant, she was asleep.

In Bonnie's dream, she was standing in front of her high school cla.s.s, about to hand out their final exams. "This is a difficult test," she was telling her students, peering across their bewildered faces, "so I hope you're prepared."

She moved quickly among the rows of desks, dropping an exam paper in front of each student, hearing a.s.sorted groans and giggles. Looking up, she realized that someone had decorated the room for Halloween, as one would a kindergarten cla.s.s, with large cutouts of witches balancing on broomsticks; silhouettes of black cats with their backs arched; orange pumpkins with horrific faces, their eyes large empty black holes. "You can start as soon as I finish handing these out," she told her students, concentrating on the task at hand. There was loud laughter. "Would someone mind telling me what's so funny?" she asked.

Haze pushed himself away from his desk and sauntered toward her. "I have a message for you from your father," he said, a hand-rolled cigarette falling from his shirt pocket to the floor.

"No smoking in this room," Bonnie reminded him.

"He says you've been a bad girl," Haze told her, looking toward the window, Bonnie's eyes following his gaze, seeing a large cutout of a boa constrictor woven through the old-style, thick venetian blinds.

"No," Bonnie protested. "I'm a good girl."

The fire alarm suddenly sounded, students bolting for the door, knocking Bonnie down in their rush to escape, trampling her under their heavy boots. "Somebody help me," Bonnie called after them, torn and b.l.o.o.d.y, as the cutout of the snake dropped to the floor and bounced to life, slithering toward her, its mouth opening in a chilling hundred-and-eighty-degree angle, as the fire alarm continued its shrill cry.

Bonnie bolted up in bed, arms stretched out protectively, the alarm still ringing in her ears.

It was the phone.

"Jesus," she said, trying to calm the rapid beating of her heart with a series of deep breaths. She reached across her sleeping husband and grabbed for the phone, noting the time on the clock radio. Almost two A.M. "h.e.l.lo?" Her voice was husky, hovering between panic and indignation.

"I understand you were asking about me."

"Nick?" Bonnie leaned back against the headboard, feeling vaguely sick to her stomach, inadvertently dragging the phone wire across her husband's face. Rod stirred and opened his eyes.

"What can I do for you, Bonnie?"

He either didn't know or didn't care that it was the middle of the night, Bonnie thought, picturing her younger brother as he spoke, his dirty blond hair falling across his close-set green eyes and small delicate nose, a nose that seemed altogether wrong for the rest of his tough-guy face. His voice was the same as always-a mixture of charm and impudence. She remembered how he used to make her laugh, wondered at what precise moment the laughter had ceased.

"I didn't realize you were out of jail."

"You should call more often."

"You're living with Dad?"

"Condition of my parole. Is there a point to this conversation?"

"Joan Wheeler was murdered today," Bonnie said, and waited for his response.

"Is that supposed to mean something to me?" her brother asked after a lengthy pause.

"You tell me, Nick. The police found your name in Joan's address book."

The phone went dead in her hands.

"Nick? Nick?" She shook her head, handing the phone over to Rod. "He hung up."

Rod sat up, running a tired hand through his tousled hair, and dropped the phone back into its carriage. "You think he could have had something to do with Joan's death?"

"Joan calls first thing in the morning to warn me that Amanda and I are in some kind of danger," Bonnie said, thinking out loud. "A few hours later, she turns up dead, and my brother's name turns up in her address book. I don't know what to think."

"I think we should let the police handle it."

"The police think I did it," she reminded him.

Rod put his arm around his wife, hugged her close to his side. "No, they don't. They think I did it. I'm the guy with the life insurance policies on all of you. Double indemnity, remember?"

"Thanks."

"Any time." They settled in against the pillows, Bonnie's backside pressed into her husband's stomach, Rod draped, spoonlike, around her.

"Of course, there's also Josh Freeman," she said several seconds later.

"Who?"

"Josh Freeman, Sam's art teacher. He's also in Joan's address book, and he's another link between us."

"Get some sleep, Nancy Drew."

"I love you," Bonnie whispered.

"I love you too."

"I love you more," Bonnie said, and waited. But Rod merely squeezed her arm and said nothing.

8.

Joan's funeral took place at the end of the week.

Bonnie sat in her front-row seat in the small chapel beside Rod and his children, amazed by the large number of mourners, trying to figure out who each one was, to determine what, if any, relationship each had with the deceased.

Rod had said Joan had no friends, only "drinking buddies." And yet, the room was literally filled to the rafters, well over a hundred people crowded into the narrow benches and pressed against the walls, and they couldn't all be casual acquaintances with whom Joan had merely shared a few gla.s.ses of wine. Nor could they all be business a.s.sociates, although the back row's coterie of immaculately dressed women whose hair never moved were unmistakably Joan's cohorts from Ellen Marx Realty. True, there were probably a number of people present who hadn't known Joan at all, who were there out of morbid curiosity, intrigued by the newspaper and television coverage, aroused by the specter of sudden, violent death in the midst of their normally peaceful community.

Bonnie's gaze stretched across the room, like an elastic band, gathering all those present into her line of vision, and then slowly popping them out, one at a time. Captain Mahoney and Detective Kritzic stood near the rear door, the captain in dark blue, the detective in light gray, their eyes alert for any movement that might seem even slightly out of place. There were several undercover officers, and, like the agents from Ellen Marx Realty, they seemed fairly easy to spot: the young man with the brownish-blond hair and blue-striped tie who sat near the back of the room and trailed after everyone with his watery brown eyes; the two balding men in casual dress, standing near the rear door, whispering to one another through loosely spread fingers. Who were these people, if not the police?

But what of all these others, these men and women with tears in their eyes and catches in their throats? Who was the middle-aged couple consoling one another in the third row on the other side of the center aisle? Who were these people immediately behind her, sharing hushed memories of the dear friend they had lost? Could they really be talking about Joan? Bonnie pushed back in her seat, straining to catch part of their conversation, but their voices suddenly stilled, as if aware of her interest.

Joan had no living relatives outside of her children, no sisters or brothers to mourn her. An only child. Lucky her, Bonnie thought, warily glancing over her shoulder, half prepared to see her brother waltz through the door, something he would do if only for the perverse pleasure of seeing the shock on her face. She wondered absently whether the police had contacted him, then pushed him rudely from her mind, concentrating on those present. She smiled at her friend Diana, there to lend moral support, nodded at Marla Brenzelle, sitting in the row behind Diana, dressed in a hot pink number that made her look more like a mother of the bride than a mourner at a funeral. But Marla was staring just past her, looking dramatically solemn for the several photographers who hovered nearby. Was everything a photo opportunity to this woman? Bonnie wondered, catching her breath as Josh Freeman entered her line of vision. Why hadn't she noticed him before?

He looked exactly the way he did at school, she thought, handsome in a careless sort of way, as if his good looks were something of an inconvenience, a fact of life he'd learned to accept but never really felt comfortable with. His first appearance in the staff room at Weston Secondary had created an immediate buzz among the female staff, everyone wanting to know more about the soft-spoken widower from New York. But Josh Freeman had proved as inaccessible as he was attractive, sticking mostly to himself and rarely socializing with the other teachers, although he was unfailingly pleasant and polite whenever Bonnie had approached him. What was he doing here? she wondered now. How well had he known Joan?

"Mr. Freeman's here," she whispered across Rod to Sam, who glanced back at his art teacher and waved, as casually as if he'd just spotted a friend at a baseball game.

A woman gingerly approached, her steps halting, her eyes swollen with tears. "Lauren," she began, taking the girl's hands inside her own. It was hard to determine who was trembling more. "Sam," she acknowledged, trying to smile, but her lips began quivering uncontrollably, and she had to clamp the palm of her hand over them to still them. "Lyle and I are so sorry about your mother," she managed to whisper. "We just can't believe this has happened."

Bonnie became aware of a short, heavyset man standing behind the tall, blond woman, a protective hand on her shoulder. "She was such a wonderful person," the woman continued. "I know I wouldn't be here today if it weren't for your mother, and everything she did for me. I just can't believe she's gone. I can't believe anyone could have hurt her. She was a great lady. She really was." A loud sob escaped the woman's lips. Her husband's grip tightened on her shoulder, creasing the delicate silk of her navy dress.

A great lady? A wonderful person? Who on earth was this woman talking about? Bonnie looked toward Rod, who was staring at the woman with bemused detachment.

Lauren stood up, drew the woman into a close embrace.

"I'm the one who should be comforting you," the woman told her, pulling back, wiping stubborn tears from her eyes.

"I'll be all right," Lauren a.s.sured her.

The woman's hand reached out and gently caressed Lauren's cheek. "I know you will." Again she tried to smile, this time with marginally more success. "Your mother loved you so much, you know. She talked about you all the time. Lauren this and Lauren that. My Lauren, she would say, my beautiful Lauren. She was so proud of you...of both of you," the woman added in Sam's direction, belatedly seeking to include him.

Sam nodded, quickly looked away.

"Anyway, if there's anything we can do"-the woman broke off as Lauren lowered herself back into her seat-"you know where to reach us." The woman's eyes scanned across Bonnie, stopping at Rod.

Rod rose quickly to his feet. "Caroline," he said, extending his hand. "I'm sorry we had to see each other again in such sad circ.u.mstances. h.e.l.lo, Lyle."

"h.e.l.lo, Rod," the man said, coolly.

"Rod," the woman acknowledged without taking his hand. "You look well."

"You sound disappointed."

"I guess I keep expecting justice."