Free Ring of Truth by Nancy Pickard Page A

book.
    “You're on the tours.” Anne looks back at me over her shoulder as I follow them into my living room. When she sees my puzzled look, she explains, “The tourist boats and buses? The ones that go past landmarks and homes of famous people? One time we took some relatives on one of those big boat tours, and they pointed out where your house is.”
    “They know where I live?” I am surprised, displeased.
    “Because of your trees.” Ah. Damn. I have six magnificent cypress trees in front of my house, three to each side of my front door. “You can see those trees from miles away, so it wasn't hard to find this place again. We think of you every time we take our own boat out and go past this neighborhood. Didn't you know you were on the tours?”

    I shake my head. This would seriously annoy me if it weren't so amusing in an ironic way. Here I thought I was hidden under those trees, and now I find that they are fingers pointing right at me. “And that's where the true crime writer Marie Lightfoot lives, folks. See those six cypress trees on that point of land over there?”
    “I hope they plug my books, at least,” I say, with a wry smile.
    Her frown relaxes a bit. “I don't remember.”
    “What's in the bag, Jenny?”
    When the child glances back at me, I am again surprised to see what looks like trepidation in her blue eyes. And more evidence of impending tears. She doesn't speak, but turns around quickly and edges closer to her mother's legs, as a younger child might do. She is not such a little girl now, I note with a sudden pang. She looks a couple of inches taller, her hair is a little less red, a little more brown, and flatteringly long. The tomboy looks more feminine now, but I'll bet that Jenny can still scale fences with the best of them. Even with that fearful, sad tinge to her gaze, she has the same direct, alert expression that I remember from when I interviewed her.
    We've come through the front hall, around a corner. When they step fully into my house, the view has the usual distracting impact on them that it has on everybody who sees it for the first time. I like to knock people out of their socks. “Wow!” Jenny says. She drops her handle of the bag and runs around her mother, toward the wraparound windows. “Cool house!”
    “What a beautiful view,” her mother echoes.
    “Excuse the mess,” I say, automatically, as I try to recall all I know about these two, which is significantly more than I've put in my book. That's always the way. I've heard that fiction writers do that, too—accumulate tons more material about their characters than they really need, all in the service of knowing them well so they can write with confidence about them. My brain is a file cabinet on every person in this case, and what's not in my brain is stored in my computer, along with hundredsof facts that I keep around the way some old ladies keep bits of string, because I never know when I might need them to fill a paragraph or enliven a metaphor. You probably didn't know, for instance, that Greater Bahia Beach boasts 550 tennis courts and eighteen major shipwrecks. We had almost 900,000 overseas visitors last year, and half that many from Canada alone. None of those tourists visited me. But now I have my own little statistic: two visitors in three weeks, and here they are now. I bring up the rear as they step around piles of reference books. I'm getting curious about the bag, and what's in it. “So what's in the bag, Jenny?” I ask again. Her skinny shoulders visibly stiffen and I get the impression she is not looking at me—or up at her mom— on purpose.
    I turn to her mother. “Anne?”
    But she frowns down at her daughter and says, “I want Jenny to tell you.”
    It suddenly seems merciful to change the subject. “How about some lemonade first? Anne, I've also got iced tea, or I could make some coffee.” Why am I doing this? I ask myself, but too late. I seem to be encouraging them to stick around;