order, for one thing,” Zee said. “If he’s harassing you, we can go get a court order making him stay away from you.”
“Then William would find out,” Lilly said.
“Probably,” Zee said.
“I can’t do that,” Lilly said. She couldn’t stay seated but got up and stood nervously by her chair.
“Did Adam threaten you in any way?”
“I don’t want to talk about this anymore.”
“Did he threaten your children?” Zee asked.
“No. I didn’t say he threatened anyone. You’re putting words into my mouth.”
“So he didn’t threaten you,” Zee said.
“No,” Lilly said.
Zee could tell she was lying.
“Isn’t your safety and the safety of your children more important than keeping this secret?”
“I’m so stupid.” She was crying in earnest now. “I can’t believe I ever started up with him.”
“You’re anything but stupid,” Zee said. “You made a mistake.”
“One I can’t recover from,” Lilly said.
“I think you can,” Zee said.
“With a restraining order?” Lilly asked.
“As a start,” Zee said.
“Do you know how many women are killed every year who’ve gotten restraining orders?”
Zee had to admit she had no idea. But it was interesting to think that Lilly had been looking into it.
“A lot,” Lilly said.
Zee went to Mattei as soon as the session was over.
Mattei called a detective she knew in Marblehead, a woman she’d been on some panel with a few years back, who agreed to look into things.
“Can you do it discreetly?” Mattei asked. “We already have confidentiality issues with the husband.”
“Do you have a last name for Adam?” Mattei asked, turning to her.
Zee shook her head. “But he drives a red truck. A Ford. With the name of a construction company on the side.”
“Do you know the name of the company?” Mattei asked.
“No,” Zee said. “I think it’s an Italian name.” Zee thought for a moment. “It starts with a C?”
A few hours later, Mattei came into Zee’s office.
“We might be lucky,” she said. “This Adam guy seems to have left town.”
“Really?”
“The truck belongs to a local company. Cassella Construction, I think it was. They said that Adam drove the truck once in a while. He hasn’t been around lately. He got into some kind of fight with the foreman, and he took off. They said he’s a good worker. They were actually hoping he’ll come back to work,” Mattei said.
“That doesn’t mean he left town.”
“The police stopped by his house. None of the neighbors has seen him for several weeks.”
“Are you sure Lilly was telling you the truth?” Mattei asked. “The only reason I ask is something the detective said.”
“What was that?”
“She told me that this wasn’t the first time there’d been trouble involving Lilly Braedon,” Mattei said.
“What is that supposed to mean?”
“Evidently the Marblehead police have gotten calls about her before. Not just with this Adam but with other men as well.”
Zee sat staring. “Men? As in plural?”
“Classic bipolar if you think about it. Sex with multiple partners certainly qualifies as risky behavior.”
Zee thought about it for a moment. “It doesn’t mean that one of them isn’t stalking her,” Zee said.
“No,” Mattei said. “It doesn’t.”
Zee looked shaken.
“The police will keep an eye out for Adam,” Mattei said.
“Which won’t help a bit if she takes off with him again,” Zee countered.
“Well, at least we now know it wasn’t William,” Mattei said.
Zee shot her a look but said nothing.
The funeral ser vice went on for far too long. Zee was aware that many people spoke, though she could not keep her mind on their words. Her eyes scanned the crowd.
Sweet William sat silent and obviously drugged in the first pew.
Zee realized that both Mattei and Michael had been right about her coming here today, if for different reasons. Mattei thought it was unprofessional and strongly advised against it. Michael hadn’t advised her at all; he simply put forward a question: What good could come of it?
She wondered just that as she sat here. The family certainly wouldn’t want to see her. Years later, as they looked back on this day, they might be glad she’d paid her respects. But today it would only serve as a harsh reminder that she hadn’t been able to save Lilly.
There was another reason Zee had come, though she hadn’t admitted it to either Michael or Mattei. She needed to see for herself whether or not Adam showed up. If he did, it would mean one thing. If he stayed away, it would mean something else entirely. By all rights he shouldn’t come anywhere near them today. But if he had been stalking Lilly, as Zee still believed he had, he probably wouldn’t be able to stay away.
Even if she was right, though, there wasn’t much to be done about it. Lilly had jumped off the Tobin Bridge and into the Mystic. It was suicide, not foul play.
It turned out that Adam didn’t come to the funeral. But, to Zee’s surprise, two of the eyewitnesses showed up. Not the woman who had been so competitive for camera time, as Zee might have expected. It was the other woman, the toll taker, who came. And the man in the blue van, the one who’d been so reluctant to talk with the newscaster, was there as well.
When the organ signaled the end of the ser vice, the funeral director gave the sign to the pallbearers to lift the coffin, and the congregation filed out behind, family first and then, row by row, the other congregants.
As the family passed, Zee was careful not to catch William’s eye. Whatever he might feel when he saw her, she didn’t want to make it any worse.
As the crowd moved out into the bright sunlight, Zee followed them to her car. She didn’t see the red truck until it was directly in front of her. It was pulled over illegally, half blocking the street. Adam watched the pallbearers and the family. When she looked up, his eyes met hers. He looked at her coldly. Then he put the truck in gear and pulled out, tires screeching, leaving about twenty feet of rubber.
Shakily, Zee let herself into her car. Stuck in the middle of the funeral procession, she moved with it through old town and around Peach’s Point to West Shore Drive and Waterside Cemetery.
She wanted to pull out of the procession, to head directly to the police station and tell them what she’d seen. But she and Mattei had already talked it through. Lilly’s death was a suicide. The police were not likely to open any kind of investigation. And if they did, and the story of Lilly’s affair with Adam came out, it would only hurt the family more than they’d already been hurt.
“Let it go,” Mattei had told her.
When