'How did your wife die?'

'She lost control of the car. Just a freak thing. Went off the road, turned over.'

Spencer sat and absorbed what he'd just heard. He hoped his face didn't show what his heart was feeling. He hoped he didn't sweat himself into an electric shock with that microphone taped to his chest.

'Waitress!' Spencer called. 'I think I'll have a whiskey.'

'We have '

'Anything. As long as it's whiskey,' Spencer interrupted her.

She brought it to him.

'Let me ask you,' Spencer said finally. 'Did anyone investigate her death?'

'Certainly. The insurance company.' Nathan leaned over and smiled thinly. 'It really was an accident, Detective O'Malley.'

'Yes, and Kristina really was naked in the sub-freezing temperature. She could've very well frozen to death.'

'What are you talking about?' said Nathan. 'You know she didn't freeze to death.'

'Yes, but that was strictly an accident itself. Kristina was meant to look like she froze to death.'

Nathan lit another cigarette and flung his groomed hair back. 'Detective O'Malley,' he said, 'I'm not saying it's not pleasant to see you, but why are you here? Conni Tobias is in prison.'

'Yes, Conni Tobias is, isn't she?' said Spencer pointedly. If it weren't for the fact that Nathan was into his second pack and it had only been about thirty minutes, Spencer would've thought he had wasted his time by coming. But Nathan was smoking the cigarettes so mechanically, so tensely, so systematically, that Spencer suddenly became sure, sure, that his gut feeling was dead on.

'Nathan '

'I really wish you'd call me Albert,' said Nathan. 'I haven't gone by that name in years.'

'Strange. You went by that name in Kristina's letters to her grandmother, and in her letters to you that she never sent, and in the other things she left behind, except her will. You are Nathan to Kristina's mother. Let me ask you, did your bride what was her name? know you by your rightful name?'

'No, because it is not my rightful name and hasn't been for years.'

'What was your bride's name?'

Nathan lit a cigarette before he said, 'Elizabeth.'

'Elizabeth. Elizabeth. That's beautiful name. What was her last name?'

'When she died, I believe she was Maplethorpe.'

'How about before she died?'

'I really can't remember, detective. Why are you so concerned?'

'I'm not concerned at all. I'm concerned she's dead, I'll be honest with you.'

Nathan smiled. 'Well, don't be so concerned.'

Nathan Sinclair was very cool on the exterior. Spencer was so shaken, he didn't want to pick up his bourbon; he didn't want Nathan to see his unsteady fingers.

Where did one go with these pointedly bad feelings?

Did one crawl away, did one die with them?

Spencer didn't want to crawl away. He wanted to know more about Elizabeth. Nathan, though, was very close-mouthed on the subject and only acknowledged that it was hard to be a widower at twenty-five. Spencer stared at Nathan to see if there was genuine emotion behind the words. When he looked across at Nathan, all he saw was a cool young man in trendy clothes, chain-smoking Camels. He said the right words, certainly, but Nathan did not seem to be suffering a tragic loss. And Spencer knew something about loss.

'Let me ask you a question. Was there suspicion of foul play?'

'No, why? Should there have been?'

'I don't know. Should there have been?'

Nathan looked mystified. 'On whose part foul play?'

'Yours,' said Spencer bluntly.

Nathan first tilted his head back and then smiled broadly. 'No, detective. There was no suspicion of foul play on my part. You see, I was in the car with her.'

Spencer nodded, unconvinced. 'It seems that no matter where you go, Nathan Sinclair, you leave death in your wake. Kristina is dead '

'Are you accusing me of killing Kristina, detective?' Nathan laughed.

'Death follows you like Aristotle used to,' Spencer said. 'How did you manage to get your wife to die, too?'

'Ah, well, this is not such a friendly visit after all. Detective, as I told you a number of times, my wife was driving. It was an unfortunate accident '

'Unfortunate accidents seem to be your MO.'

'Unfortunate accidents are not my MO at all,' said Nathan, mimicking Spencer. 'What happened with Kristina '

'Which time is that now? The time you got her pregnant? Or the time you ...' But Spencer stopped short of accusing Nathan of murder.

There was no profit in it.

He didn't want to get Nathan's emphatic, condescending denial on tape. Instead Spencer fell quiet, wanting whiskey, but having black coffee instead.

Having lost his wife in an accident, Spencer knew what a grieving man behaves like, and Nathan did not behave like one. He might as well have been speaking about a spring break loss by the Red Sox. Nathan didn't care. He looked straight at Spencer with insolent eyes, as if to say, I dare you. You've been trying so long to catch me in something, and all this time you haven't caught me in shit and now you're coming to me again, and I'm telling you, you will again go away empty-handed to your apartment in the suburbs while I will continue to live on Sound Beach Road, in a house you can only dream of. I won't even allow you to set foot in my house. I won't allow you into my house, and do you know why? Because you really, really want to come in. But I will not let you in.

But Spencer knew there was something in their conversation that would open a door for him.

'A philosophy major, weren't you?' said Spencer. 'I'm surprised your sense of guilt isn't more developed.'

Nathan laughed dryly. 'Sense of guilt? It has nothing to do with philosophy. It has to do with religion and mothering. And I've had neither. Philosophy has to do only with rationalization. I've had plenty of that.'

'You've had plenty of mothering, too.'

'Who? Katherine?' He scoffed mildly. 'If you call going to charity functions four times a week and entertaining friends the other three mothering, then yes, I've had plenty.'

'She loved you very much.'

'Is that what she told you? Well, I'm sure she believed it.'

'She took you into her home and made her house yours,' said Spencer in an impassioned voice. 'How can you be so ungrateful?'

'What should I be grateful for? Did I ask her to do that for me? Who said I wasn't happy where I was? I had friends, I had three nuns who took care of me better than Katherine Sinclair ever took care of me. I went from a warm place to a gilded cage with no supervision and no discipline. A lot of show. A lot of manners. But what besides that? I was seven when I came to the Sinclairs. They thought I had just been born, but I was already somebody before them. Then all of a sudden they didn't like the somebody I was and threw me out. Not just me but their own daughter, too.' He sounded angry when he said that.

Spencer was surprised. He hadn't seen much emotion in Nathan.

Except for the maroon coat.

Spencer said, 'They didn't throw her out.'

'What would you call it? They arranged a marriage for her just so there would be less of a scandal. They couldn't keep their only child in their home? It was so important to make nice for the neighbors. God forbid the Sinclairs should become the talk of the town. They discarded her as they had discarded me. And it was the worst moment of her life.'

'Well,' said Spencer caustically, 'she didn't have much of a life. I'd say dying an unnatural death at twenty-one was the worst moment of her life, wouldn't you agree?'

Nathan flinched, barely, and it was this wincing that stayed with Spencer. Nathan flinched. Spencer hadn't been prepared for that.

Shrugging and outwardly calm, Nathan said, 'I don't know. I'm sorry she's gone.'

'Of course. She is the only family you ever had. The only one who treated you like family.'

Nathan smirked. 'See, here you're wrong, detective. You're romanticizing our relationship. I'm an orphan, or have you forgotten? Every female I ever meet melts at the sound of that word. "Or-phan." Oh, they say, poor baby, let me take you home, let me show you to my mommy, let me love you as if you were mine, let me cook you a meal, let me make your bed. Kristina was this way, Conni was this way. Elizabeth was this way and then some. Every protective fiber of their female souls is shaken by the word "orphan." They want nothing better than to take care of me. To bring me into their family circle.'

'That's because they don't know what you are.' Spencer was becoming convinced that Nathan had murdered Kristina. He was the only one capable, the only one remorseless and heartless enough to snuff out the life of a young woman who loved only him, and then go on as if it didn't matter. Like his old dead cat. It didn't shake him up one bit. He killed her and went on with his life as if she had never existed. This broke, poor kid from nowhere killed the hand that fed him and then quit the college she had paid for.

He was obviously well off, thanks to his late wife. He was now alone and seemingly happy about it, ensconced in the same social sphere that had spit him out as an adolescent. Nathan Sinclair didn't need to go to Edinburgh to learn the philosophy of rationalization. He seemed at peace with everything he'd ever done, and there was nothing that made Spencer's Catholic soul sicker. Had he shown some remorse, her death would have been less meaningless. But he acted like a man for whom the act of murder was as forgettable as taking Aristotle for a walk.

With an amused expression, Nathan said, 'I know who I am. But what am I, detective?'

Spencer leaned across the table, his fists clenched underneath, and said, 'The Sinclairs adopted you! How can you be so heartless?'

'Who's heartless? They adopted me and changed my name, calling me after their dead kid. Every year on November twenty-first, Thanksgiving or not, they would bring me to the family cemetery and make me put down flowers at the grave of Nathan Sinclair. Every year since I was seven. Boy, that was fun,' Nathan said dryly. 'According to the tombstone, I was already dead.'

Spencer listened. It wasn't what he had come to hear. 'Did you have a name before?'

'I'm sure I did. I don't know it. The nuns called me Billy.'

Shaking his head, Spencer said, 'Billy, Nathan, Albert. Do you even know who you are?'

'Do you know who you are?' Nathan retorted. 'You say your name is Spencer, but I heard your cop buddies call you Tracy, and when you introduce yourself you say Spencer Patrick O'Malley. No one includes his middle name in an introduction.'

'That's who I am,' said Spencer, beginning to tremble in helpless anger. 'Spencer Patrick O'Malley.'

'And that's who I am Albert Maplethorpe.'

'Kristina chose that name for you, didn't she?'

Blinking twice, Nathan said, 'We chose it together.'

'Did you get the tattoo on your arm together too? With her initials on it? Have you tried since her death to have it surgically removed?'

'What are you talking about, detective? Why would I do that?'

'Tell me, Nathan-Albert-Billy, did you love her?'

Nathan answered him fast, without thinking. 'Yes, I loved her,' he said.

'Did you kill her?'

The reply came instantly. 'No, I did not.'

The tape recorder whirred.

'Are you lying?'

'No, I'm not.'

'You've lied your whole life to everyone about everything. Are you lying now?'

'No, I'm not.'

'I see.'

'I have an alibi, detective. You know that.'

'Yeah, alibi.' Spencer was tapping furiously on his empty glass.

Nathan laughed.

Then they were quiet. Nathan ate his turkey club with no mayo and no bacon, while Spencer nursed his coffee. He thought of something else, the grandmother.

'Yeah? What about her? We stayed with her every summer. It was a lot of fun. The lake was nice. She was a good cook. Kristina was sad when her grandmother died.' 'Did you know Louise Morgan had a will?' 'Of course I knew she had a will. These are the Sinclairs and the Morgans. They're born with a will.' After taking a big bite of his club, Nathan continued, 'When Kristina was living in Brooklyn Heights she told me that her grandmother was furious at the way the family treated Kristina Grandma's only grandchild. Louise couldn't believe Kristina had been thrown away with the baby, so to speak, just to maintain appearances on North Street. So Louise turned her back on her family after they turned their backs on Kristina. She vowed to cut them all out of her will, including Kristina's mother.' 'Did Kristina tell you who Louise Morgan was leaving her money to?'

Nathan paused. 'Krissy said she didn't know.' Spencer shuddered at the diminutive of Kristina's name on the lips of Nathan Sinclair. There was something sacrilegious about it.

'You sound like you feel Louise Morgan was right to disinherit the whole family.'

'Absolutely. They had treated Kristina horribly. Me, I don't care, I expected it. Who am I to them? But she was their princess, she was the pinnacle of their dreams. All of what they both were, John and Katherine, was sublimated into Kristina.'

'I thought John was sublimated into you.'

'Is that what she said?' He scoffed. 'Yeah, right.'

'Nathan, you can't ignore the fact that because of what happened between you two, the entire family completely fell apart.'