I smiled. She stepped aside, eyes wary, led me to the kitchen.
An empty KFC bucket sat on the center island, along with an uneaten biscuit, a container of coleslaw, paper napkins, and plastic utensils.
No sign of the kids.
She said, “Coffee? It’s decaf, after three I can’t handle the real stuff.” Bouncing on her feet, lilt in her voice, the kind of tension that came from forced casualness.
I said, “Sure, thanks.”
Clearing the island, she poured two mugs, brought milk and sugar. Once I was settled she sat to my left, positioned so she could avoid eye contact if she chose.
Untying her hair, she let it swing and sipped. “You really do have me curious.”
I said, “The investigation into Chet’s death has included surveillance of your street.”
Her eyebrows arched. “Even though it happened somewhere else?”
“The surveillance has produced some information that may or may not be related to either murder. Either way, I feel strongly that you need to know. My decision, not the police. As we both know, Chelsea leaves your house late at night. Last night she left shortly after one a.m. and entered Trevor Bitt’s house. I’m required to report suspected child abuse.”
I braced myself for shock, horror, anger.
Felice Corvin shook her head as if I’d said something foolish and let out a shrill laugh. “Oh, boy.” She put her cup down, took a deep breath, faced away. “First off, it’s not child abuse because she’s not a child. She’ll be eighteen soon. In a few days, as a matter of fact.”
“Legally, she’s still—”
“Oh, please. Really?”
“It doesn’t bother you.”
“You’ve obviously convinced yourself something ugly is going on.”
“You disagree.”
“Oh, Lord.” She returned to the sink, yanked a drawer open, shut it. “I know you mean well. But this isn’t going to help Chelsea.”
I said nothing.
She returned to the island, this time facing me, but staying on her feet. “I have no doubt you’re thinking, She’s a horrible mother.”
Tears formed in her eyes.
I said, “If there’s something I should know.”
“Oh, there’s something.” Scanning the room like a hungry animal scrounging for scraps, she settled on her purse and got it. “There’s a whole lot of something.”
Removing her cellphone, she punched a one-digit pre-program. “Hi. We’ve got a situation...” Glancing at me. “Can’t. Needs to be now... yes, please.”
Sitting back down, she drank more coffee.
A doorbell rang. Not from the front; the utility door leading from the backyard to the laundry room.
Chelsea’s exit route. The body-drag route.
Felice Corvin called out, “It’s open!” A latch turned. Footsteps. A man trudged into the kitchen, shoes scuffing the floor.
Tall and rangy with a narrow, pallid face crisscrossed by wrinkles. White hair, precisely side-parted. His clothes bagged, his cheeks were twin hollows, wrinkles deepening toward the bottom, as if dragged down by tiny fishhooks.
Executive haircut, executive-at-leisure clothes straight out of a cruise-ship ad: gray cashmere V-neck sweater, white polo shirt, razor-pressed khakis, oxblood penny loafers each bearing a shiny copper image of Lincoln.
Washed-out aqua eyes flecked with brown nested in flesh-colored crepe. No interest in me. He looked at Felice and spoke her name.
His voice was a feeble croak. He looked ready to cry.
“This is the psychologist I told you about.”
The man looked at me, blinking convulsively, lips quivering. She pulled out a chair. He sat. She placed a hand on his shoulder. He trembled.
“Dr. Delaware, Trevor Bitt.”
No news there. Same face as on the Internet, older, wearier.
I said, “Alex Delaware.”
Bitt said, “Psychologist. I’ve known a few.” Flexing his fingers. Spidery, graceful, restless digits, the nails elongated and filed smooth. Ink stains on the right thumbnail and the meat of the right hand.
Felice had kept her hold on his shoulder. The ink-stained hand inched upward, was about to make contact with her fingers when footsteps from the left made the three of us turn.
Chelsea shuffled in, barefoot, holding a bowl in one hand, a spoon in the other. She wore a shapeless gray sweatshirt and jeans.
Her eyes raced to Bitt. “You’re here.” The bowl tumbled from her hands, hit the floor, shattered. The spoon followed an instant later, bouncing and pinging.
Trevor Bitt got up, retrieved the utensil. “Where’s your broom?”
Felice Corvin said, “I’ll handle it, Trev.”
Chelsea Corvin said, “I will, Daddy!”
She ran to Bitt, threw both arms around his waist, rested her head on his chest.
“Let me do it,” he said. “I don’t want those pretty hands of yours cut.”
“I can do it, Daddy.”
Bitt reached down and took her right hand. “Save them. You’ve got art to make.”
Still hugging him, she said, “Let me at least get the broom.”
“Sure.”
She let go, tottered, ran off, and returned with a Swiffer that she handed to Bitt like a ceremonial sword. In her other hand, a dustpan. The two of them set about cleaning up, working in obvious harmony.
Felice leaned close and whispered, “Now you know. So we can move on, okay — Trev, Cheltz, when you finish why don’t you go work on a project.”
Chelsea turned to her mother. Joy on her broad, pasty face. First time I’d seen that.
“Really?” she said. “When it’s still light?”
“If Trevor’s okay with it.”
“More than okay,” said Bitt. He straightened with what looked like pain, held out the dustpan. “Where do I toss this?”
Chapter 33
Father and daughter left in lockstep, a trudge duet.
When the utility door closed, I said, “This is the first time he’s been inside your house.”
Felice Corvin nodded. “It was going to happen, eventually. I wasn’t sure how to do it.” Wan smile. “Guess you took care of that... you didn’t touch your coffee. I’m having more — what I’d really like is a double Martini.”
“Go for it.”
“And make myself vulnerable? Don’t think so, Doctor.”
She walked to the coffeemaker, took a long time to do a simple task, returned to the island. Positioned so she’d have to face me.
“Okay. Here goes.” The flat of her hand landed on her left breast. “Okay. Nineteen years ago, I was living in the Bay Area, getting my master’s at Cal, and I met Trevor at a party. I’d just ended a toxic relationship — a professor, don’t ask.”
The “intellectual girlfriend” Lanny Joseph had mentioned.
She played with her hair. “Trevor was an underground celebrity but I knew nothing about him or his art. I just thought he was a nice, quiet guy, which is exactly what I was looking for. Turned out he’d also ended a fling, some stripper with a subterranean IQ.”
Bitt’s uncharitable assessment of Maillot Bernard. No doubt he’d sidestepped the incident with the gun.
I waited.
Felice Corvin said, “That’s it, basically. We started something, it lasted a year, it ended.”
“Basically” is a favorite word of liars and evaders.
I said, “Go on.”
“Oh, Jesus.” She reclamped her hair. “It ended with Trevor because I met Chet and he swept me off my feet, okay? Trevor was handsome but so was Chet, in a different way. What I saw as super-masculine, back then. He had — was nothing like what you saw. Really. I’ve long thought of him as fruit that didn’t ripen properly. I suppose we all change but Chet really changed. When I met him he was courtly, attentive. The proverbial sweep off the feet, nothing was good enough for me. I loved it.”