The DeadHouse

"Bird on a rock. Your friend at the Schlumberger salon said you've been eyeing it for years. Hold still." He unhooked it from the animal's plush stuffing and attached it to my pale silk pajama shirt. "That's why I had to get this outfit to go with the brooch."

I stood up and headed for the bedroom. "I've got to see how it looks. It's the most beautiful thing I've ever owned." Jake followed me in and watched me preen in front of the full-length mirror. "I'm never taking it off."

"Except when you go to work every day, and right at this very moment." He unbuttoned my top and laid it carefully across the chaise at the foot of the bed, the facets of my elegant bird catching every glimmer of light from the candles on the bedside tables. "That's how I want you to think of us, always. You're the exquisite, delicate bird, and you've always got me to land on, to be your bedrock. Merry Christmas, my angel."

We finished undressing and got under the covers, making love again before we drifted off in each other's arms.

Our internal alarm clocks each went off as usual at about six-thirty, as the morning sky was attempting to brighten. We ignored the signals and decided to sleep late, reveling in the fact that neither of us had a deadline or a decision to make the entire day. It was eleven o'clock by the time I was up and dressed and had brewed the first pot of coffee. After calling our families and friends, we bundled up in thermal underwear and heavy jackets and set out on a hike to Squibnocket Beach. For more than a mile, packed snow crunching beneath our boots, we walked along the ocean, hand in gloved hand, talking about things we had never explored with each other before.

Jake asked me questions about my relationship with Adam, and about my slow recovery from the nightmare of his death. He spoke about his broken engagement, when the woman he had dated for four years moved out and married one of his closest friends, tired of the instability of his life on the road and anxious to start a family.

The only people we passed were several of my neighbors, walking dogs along the vast expanse of Atlantic beachfront. Back at the house, we converted the remains of our di

After a simple supper of chowder and some greens, we watched a DVD of The Thirty-Nine Steps and put ourselves to bed early. We were up before dawn, on a seven o'clock flight to Boston, co

"I'm expecting you at my apartment tonight. Till you get confirmation that your window has been replaced and that your pistol-packing victim isn't waiting by the front door, we're doing a test run of my proposition. See you later."

The driver took me down to Hogan Place and let me off in front of the entrance. It was after ten, and the place seemed like a ghost town. Only a skeleton staff would be at work today and tomorrow, and I expected to be able to get a lot done.

Laura had taken the day off, so I signed for the packet myself when the FedEx deliveryman appeared with an overnight letter from the New Jersey telephone company.

I opened the envelope to study the jumble of digits that comprised the incoming and outgoing calls made to and from Lola Dakota's temporary shelter at her sister Lily's. It could take hours for a detective, using a reverse directory, to put the numbers together with the subscriber to whose home or office the calls had been placed. Each was coded with the date, hour, and minute the co

I sca

Lily had heard Lola make the call presumably to be picked up by a cab company. And then Lily had medicated herself and gone to bed.

I stopped at 1:36 P.M. A single call, made to a local Jersey number from Lily's home. Maybe I wouldn't need a detective to help decipher and track the telephone co

I dialed the exchange and waited while the phone rang three times.

An operator answered. "Office of the District Attorney, may I help you?"

I swallowed hard. "Perhaps you can. I'm not sure if I dialed the right number. Is this Mr. Si

"It's his office. But it's not his direct line."

"The extension I dialed," I said, looking down at the printed record, "is 8484. Can you tell me whose number that is?"

"Who are you trying to reach, ma'am?"

The last person to see Lola Dakota alive, I thought to myself. I stammered. "I, uh, I've got a message to call this number. I just can't make out the name my secretary took down."

"Oh, okay. This is Bartholomew Frankel's office. He's the executive assistant district attorney, Mr. Si

17

"You saved me from a miserable afternoon with my mother." Mike had been at his desk in the squad when I called, and instantly agreed that we should drive out to Si

"Mom's been begging me to help her plan her funeral. Pick out the coffin, go to-"

"Has she been ill?" I had known his mother for years and had no idea that anything was wrong. Perhaps that's why Mike had been delayed at the hospital on Monday morning.

"Fit as a horse. But at Midnight Mass on Christmas Eve, she got me to promise I would take her to get everything arranged. Peace of mind and all that. She's so excited you'd think she was going to Disney World with John Elway, for chrissakes. Told her I was breaking the date 'cause of you. That's the only way I could get a reprieve."

"Tell her that when we solve this one, we'll both come out and take her to lunch… Does it bother you as much as it does me that Frankel's the guy who got Lola's call?"

"Hey, if the escort was strictly professional, they would have had detectives taking her out of Lily's home and making sure she got inside her apartment safely. Your big guns in the Manhattan DA's office do witness escort and protection? I can just see Battaglia asking Pat McKi

"I've only met him once, when Si

"Any sense of what he's like?"

"I heard he's a law school buddy of Si