Free Good Intentions by Joy Fielding

reached it across the top of the desk toward Lynn.
    “What’s this?” Lynn pushed Marc Cameron into the back corners of her mind, concentrating on the file her secretary dropped into her hands.
    “It’s from McVee,” Arlene said, standing up, about to return to her own desk just outside Lynn’s office door. “Suspected child abuse. He wants it handled very carefully. All files are to be kept in his office. Strictly confidential. Apparently we might be treading on some very big toes. Check out the address.”
    Lynn opened the folder and glanced at the few lines typed across the first and only page. By the time her investigation was concluded, she knew, there would be many such pages. Too many. Keith and Patty Foster, she read, not recognizing the names; daughter, Ashleigh, age seven.
    Lynn’s eyes shot automatically to the framed photographs of her own two children, which were all but hidden by the stacks of paper on her desk. Impatiently, she shuffled the papers around until they afforded her a clear view of the two smiling figures which when last seen boarding their bus for day camp that morning, were glaring in barely concealed fury at each other’s recent transgressions. Megan, who had been nine years old at the time her picture was taken, looked shy and quietly beautiful, the woman already visible behind the child’s delicate features, whereas Nicholas’s photo, taken last January on his seventh birthday, was one big, toothless record of self-congratulation.
    Lynn closed the file folder and rested her chin against the palms of her hands. She didn’t want to read about seven-year-old children who were the possible victims of parental abuse. In her twelve years of front-line work for the Department of Social Services in Delray Beach, this was the one aspect of her job to which she had never grown accustomed. Reluctantly, she reopened the file, checking out the address as her secretary had suggested. Harborside Villas, she read, then shook her head. Not the usual address for this sort of thing, but then she had learned long ago that money and social standing had little bearing on matters such as these, although they obviously had a great deal to do with the careful way this case was being handled.
    The suspected abuse had been reported by a neighbor, she read, a Mrs. Davia Messenger, who lived in the town house next to the one owned by the Fosters. Lynn understood that she would have to drive out to the Harborside Villas to interview the woman as soon as possible. She looked around for her appointment book, and saw only the notepad with Marc Cameron’s phone number scrawled boldly across it. “Arlene, what’s my schedule like today?”
    “You have a meeting at two o’clock.”
    “And this morning?”
    “Nothing that can’t wait.”
    A few minutes later, Lynn was in her car heading south on Federal Highway toward the Harborside Villas, a Mrs. Davia Messenger, and a story she didn’t want to hear.
    The Harborside Villas were part of a horseshoe-shaped complex situated on the Inland Waterway, boasting aprivate marina, two large swimming pools, and four tennis courts. Prices started at a quarter of a million dollars for a one-bedroom apartment, and went up from there, the most expensive units being the row of eight identical, white, two-story town houses that ran parallel to the main building and directly overlooked the Inland Waterway.
    Davia Messenger lived in the second-to-last house next to the corner unit owned by the Fosters. Lynn walked steadily across the curving sidewalk of interlocking red bricks, her eyes casually perusing the luxury that was everywhere around her, to the Messengers’ front door. She barely had time to lift the bronze dolphin-shaped knocker before the door was opened by a tall, thin, slightly stooped woman whose sharp, irregular features had long ago cemented themselves into a look of anxiety.
    “She didn’t see you come in, did she?” the woman greeted Lynn nervously in the