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and freckled face, devoid of make-up, witness to an activelife spent outdoors. He had often seen her striding out along the wooded lanes north of town, sinewy calves protruding from clumpy hiking boots, a small canvas knapsack on her back.
    ‘You must think me a dreadful harpy.’
    ‘Excuse me?’
    ‘Always complaining, always after something. You only ever see me at my worst.’
    ‘I’ll take your word for it,’ he said with a wry smile.
    Christ, thought Hollis, I’m flirting with her, stop flirting with her.
    Mary cocked her head slightly, eyes narrowing, taking his measure. Hollis squirmed under her gaze; he had been way too familiar.
    ‘Oh, you don’t need to do that,’ she said. ‘Ask around, you’ll see I’m not such a terrible old hag.’ Hollis’ brain was racing too fast to fathom the implications of the last comment, so he searched for a way to move the conversation on.
    ‘Can I have a word alone?’
    ‘Yes, you may,’ replied Mary, stressing the ‘may’ to correct his grammar. She paused before continuing. ‘Damn,’ she said, ‘you’ll never believe me now.’
    Hollis watched her closely as she flipped through the photographs of the dead girl and knew immediately that he had just gotten a positive identification. They were standing in the shaded garden at the back of the building. A small fountain played nearby, humidifying the air around them. A climbing rose, loosely wired to a trellis, strained under the weight of its flowers. Birds chirped merrily and the wind lapped at the leaves of a tall birch tree. It was a tranquil spot, quite at odds with the expression on Mary’s face.
    Hollis was intrigued. From her very first glance she had clearly recognized the girl, but she insisted on viewing all four photographs, taking her time as she did so. When she was finished, she handed them back.
    ‘Lillian Wallace. Her family has a house on Further Lane.’ Only now did she look Hollis in the eye.
    ‘Thank you,’ he said.
    Mary accompanied him around the side of the building to the street. She folded her arms across her midriff as if chilled by the eighty-five-degree heat. ‘She loved the ocean. I sometimes saw her there, down at the beach, in the evening when I was walking the dog. She liked to swim there.’
    Strange, somehow she didn’t seem like a woman who owned a dog. What would it be? Something devoted and fiercely loyal—a retriever, maybe, or a labrador.
    ‘She was a good swimmer?’ he asked.
    ‘Not good enough, it seems.’
    ‘I appreciate it,’ he said, holding up the envelope. Mary watched him leave.
    ‘I was sorry to hear about your wife,’ she called after him. Turning back, he groped for something to say. In the end he simply nodded then carried on his way.
    Returning to the patrol car, he found a note from Abel on the driver’s seat: Dinner tonight, 7:30. Don’t worry—I’m cooking!
    Hollis smiled, fired the engine and pulled away.
    The length of the yew hedge that flanked the entrance gates of the Wallace property on Further Lane gave some indication of the scale of the plot, close on a hundred yards wide, while the height of the hedge concealed all else from prying eyes. The white wooden gates, discreet but imposing, were open and Hollis guided the patrol car through them, slowing only to read the name painted in neat black capitals on a board—Oceanview—proof that wealth and imagination didn’t always make for natural bedfellows. All the properties on Further Lane gave directly on to the ocean at the rear.
    He always found it strange when he entered the colony, this narrow belt of oceanfront the wealthy had claimed as their own. A mile to the south of Main Street, it was in East Hampton, but not of it. There were no stores, no filling stations, no bars or boarding houses. In fact, there was almost no trade whatsoever, nothing that might remind the residents of how they had amassedtheir fortunes. There were simply stretches of half-glimpsed residential