Free Act of Darkness by Jane Haddam

filling up with tourists, and the interstate was probably filling up with cars. Gregor wondered if their driver was using a CB to keep them out of trouble. The thought of a CB in a Rolls limousine made him want to laugh.
    By now, they were off the interstate for good, on the flat winding road that led to Great Expectations’ front gate. The gate, in fact, was right in front of them, not quite blocking off the world at the end of 300 feet of lawn and asphalt. Even at this distance, Gregor could see that there were polished metal hearts dotted across the cedar shingle roof shakes. There were polished metal hearts linked together to make that gate. Just beyond the gate, Gregor was sure he saw even more polished metal hearts, studded into the drive.
    He turned to Bennis, who seemed to have put her manuscript away for good and taken up smoking as an avocation, and said, “You won’t believe this, but I feel like an absolute ass.”
    Bennis tapped ashes into the tray beside her and said, “What for?”
    “For the way I’ve been thinking about these people,” Gregor said, gesturing at the gate in front of them, coming closer by the minute, but not at any great speed. The road was narrow and pocked, and the driver was more interested in protecting the Rolls than in getting them anyplace in a hurry. “I’ve been so—fixated—by Senator Fox and his problems, I’ve been thinking of this house as his.”
    “You’ve been thinking of Victoria Harte’s house as his?”
    “I know whose house it is, Bennis. I always did. I just meant—”
    “I know what you meant.” Bennis’s cigarette was out. She lit another one. “It’s just funny, that’s all. Under the circumstances.”
    “Under what circumstances?”
    “Under the circumstances that the house belongs to Victoria Harte in particular,” Bennis said.
    They had covered the three, or however many, miles to the gate, and stopped. Their driver had gotten out and gone to speak into a small metal box in the gate’s left wall. He was doing a lot of talking, as if someone on the other end was making up for the inadequate security wall by indulging in verbal annoyance.
    Finished with the inquisition, their driver came back to the car and got in. A moment later, the gate popped open, as jerky as an automatic door in a thirties insane asylum. Gregor looked through his window at the asphalt of the drive as they passed on to it and saw that he’d been right. It was studded with polished metal hearts.
    “Victoria Harte,” Bennis told him, “is the woman who told the entire Hollywood press corps that her second husband was going to be a kept man and proud of it.”
    “What?” Gregor said.
    “Victoria Harte,” Bennis repeated. “What I’m trying to tell you is, she’s famous for being—I don’t know what you’d call it. For making sure everybody knows what’s hers is hers.”
    “She’s certainly making sure everybody knows this house is hers,” Gregor said.
    “You’d think she’d get tired of hearts,” Bennis said. “I mean—never mind. Anyway, according to my mother—”
    “Your mother knows Victoria Harte?”
    “They’ve met. They were on an American Heart Association thing together in 1972 or something.”
    “I didn’t think the Main Line mixed with—actresses.”
    “My mother would have mixed with anybody to get money for the Heart Association. At least, she would have back in 1972. Afterward—”
    “I know about afterward, Bennis.”
    “Yes. Well. Anyway, what Mother said was that Victoria Harte had a little notebook she carried with her everywhere, and every time she did anything she wrote it down. Most people don’t do that, you know, when they’re working for charities. They get a big kick out of toiling in the vineyards, or they say they do. But she wrote it all down, and if there was a press story she got to the reporters and made sure they put in exactly what she had done. You see what I mean?”
    “She wanted to get credit for her