LITMIR.BIZ

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barters them for produce and firewood. I traded a couple of bushels of tomatoes and a wheelbarrow-full of zucchini for this.” She laughed for the first time that evening, feeling suddenly as if she’d run into a friend.

      Matt was looking at them as if he didn’t know what they were talking about. She ignored him.

      “When I knew Tamara we were both still in our teens,” Marg the waitress said reminiscently. She set the coffeepot down on the table, forgotten, and her expression was faraway, as if her dingy surroundings had faded into the background. She smiled dreamily, and it was possible to see that she’d once been vibrantly pretty. “Everything seemed so simple then—she’d make her dresses, and I was going to set up a pottery studio. But then I met Dwayne and fell madly in love, and the next thing I knew, I was married and expecting a baby. Dwayne took a job for a few months at a factory, but he hated it, and two weeks after Debbie was born he took off. I never heard from him again.” She stared unseeingly through the steam-fogged window of the coffee shop to the darkness outside, and then blinked. Slowly she picked up the pot and one of the thick, chipped mugs. “I’ll never forget that summer. I still have one of the plates I made back then. But you wouldn’t even have been born in the ’60s—how do you know Tamara?”

      “My father and I lived on the Sunflower Commune for a while about three years ago,” Jenna said. Out of the corner of her eye she saw Matt frown uncomprehendingly. He probably thought the lifestyle she’d lived up until recently had died out with sit-ins and peace medallions, she thought impatiently. “It’s a well-respected artists’ colony now, with a self-supporting organic farm attached—their stone-ground bread is famous all over the state. They didn’t have a resident potter when I was there, though,” she added. Beside her, Marg bit her lip thoughtfully.

      “It’d take a while before I could turn out anything good again,” she said slowly. “But I’m a hard worker, and a bakery can always use an extra pair of hands. Since Debbie got married and moved away, there’s been nothing to keep me here.”

      She poured Matt another cup of coffee almost briskly, and her smile at Jenna as she left their table was nothing like the mechanical one she’d worn earlier. As soon as she was out of earshot, Matt spoke.

      “How’d you do that?” His voice was almost accusatory. He looked baffled. “I’ve seen agents with years of experience who can’t draw that much out of someone in hours of interrogation, but she spilled her most secret hopes to you after two seconds. Where’d you learn that?”

      Jenna shook her head, momentarily taken aback. “I didn’t learn that. It’s not a technique, Matt—I just thought she looked kind of lonely. And when she noticed my dress, she reminded me of the people I grew up with.”

      “Ex-hippies.” He couldn’t keep the skepticism out of his voice. “You really were brought up on communes? I didn’t know they still existed.”

      “It’s not that unusual,” she said with a spurt of defensiveness. “A lot of people still choose to opt out of mainstream society and live an alternative lifestyle closer to nature. It’s not as if we painted our bodies blue and sat around contemplating blades of grass all day.”

      “Well, it explains the ankle bracelet, anyway,” he muttered, and at that her temper flared.

      “And it explains what happened back at my apartment, right? I’m just an off-the-wall flake that lives in a fantasy world half the time, is that it?” She took a deep breath. “I know it must have seemed weird, Matt, but you’ve got to believe me—somebody went into my home today and completely changed everything!”

      Put like that, it did sound outrageous, she thought in sudden uncertainty. Why would anyone in the world want to discredit her? What threat was she to anybody?

      All of a sudden the answer was right in front of her. Her breath caught painfully in her throat as she considered her theory, examining it for flaws and finding none. Of course, she thought with growing certainty—that had to be it! And once she explained everything to Matt, he’d have to believe her, because with this missing piece in place, the whole thing made sinister sense. Jenna looked around the coffee shop, leaned across the table and lowered her voice to an urgent whisper.

      “It’s a vast conspiracy aimed at making me look crazy,” she said in a rush of excitement. “That’s why it’s working so well—because it was planned that way! They wanted you to discount everything I said, so they created the whole setup—changed the locks so my keys wouldn’t work, re-painted and papered my apartment and got rid of all my furniture, and installed that terrible old woman in there with her phony walker. I was watching her, Matt.” She gave an unladylike little snort of derision. “She wasn’t even putting her weight on that thing! Heck, she probably teaches swing dancing when she’s not busy with her criminal career—” She stopped in mid-sentence, taking in the expression in the dark gold eyes across from her.

      It was pity. But that was only because he still didn’t know the reason she’d called him today in the first place, Jenna thought, exasperated at herself. She did sound like a kook, spilling it out like that. She took a deep, calming breath to center her thoughts, but Matt’s voice broke into them.

      “A vast conspiracy.” His tone was placatingly noncommittal, as if he was taking care not to set her off on another tirade. “Sure, Jenna, that’s probably what’s going on. But right now let’s try and find you a place to stay for the night—since Mrs. Janeway and her cohorts have stolen your apartment.”

      He paused, and invested his next words with a casual carelessness, shredding another toothpick to sawdust as he spoke. “And it might be a good idea to take you to the hospital and have that graze on your arm attended to in case it gets infected. In fact, we should do that first. My car’s still outside the apartment, so we’ll walk back. I’ll drive you over to Mass. General straight away.”

      He couldn’t have telegraphed his meaning more clearly if he’d been wearing a white coat and chasing after her with a net, she thought in annoyance. She discarded her plan of leading up to the subject logically and dispassionately.

      “I saw Rupert Carling today, Matt. That’s what this is all about.”

      Across the table from her he let the last remnants of the toothpick fall from his fingers. His features smoothed into a bland mask, revealing nothing of what he was thinking, but the gold glints in his eyes intensified and he flicked a glance around the half-empty room before he spoke. When he did, he sounded as perfunctory as if she’d made a comment about the weather. “Run that one by me again. You saw who?”

      “Rupert Carling. You know—the missing tycoon who disappeared two days ago,” she elaborated impatiently. “His photo’s been on the front page of all the papers with the story about how the police think he might have been murdered. You must have seen it!”

      “I’ve seen the articles. I know who Rupert Carling is.” He held her gaze with his own. “I still don’t get the connection between his disappearance and what happened tonight at your apartment.”

      “It’s obvious! For some reason, no one’s supposed to know where he is or even that he’s still alive, and when they found out I’d seen him at Parks, Parks, and Boyleston today in the basement, they had to totally discredit me before I told the authorities.” Jenna tapped her thumbnail nervously on her bottom lip. “They couldn’t simply kill me. I wonder why?”

      “And Parks, Parks, and Boyleston is…?” he inquired politely.

      “The law firm where I started work yesterday.” Her hair had fallen forward in her excitement and she pushed it back with a quick gesture. “Don’t you see? This whole thing makes sense now—I’m simply a crazy lady with one crazy story after another.” A thought struck her and her eyes darkened. “The mugger! He wasn’t after my money, he was after my identity! Everything that could help me prove I’m who I say I am was in my wallet….”

      Her voice trailed off as the enormity of the plan became clearer. “They couldn’t kill me for some reason, so they did the next best thing. They were trying to make it look

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