Free The Edge of Doom by Amanda Cross Page B

one has spent so much energy planning a conversation, one does not welcome having it diverted before it begins.
    “I’ve had a short note from Jay,” Kate said. “Scrawled on a piece of paper, and left with the doorman. I asked him, the doorman, about the man who left it, but he said a black man handed it to him. I doubt it was Jay in disguise.”
    “A messenger, obviously,” Reed said. “What did Jay scrawl on the piece of paper?” Kate was holding it in her hand.
    She looked at it, although she certainly knew what it said. She read it to Reed. “It says: ‘Sorry to disappear. I’ll be back in touch. Tell Reed it’s not quite as bad as it looks.’” Kate glanced at Reed. “Do you think he knew you were planning to investigate him?”
    “Of course he did,” Reed said. “Damn it to hell.” And having poured drinks for them both, he collapsed in the living room and told Kate all about that day’s inquiries.
    Kate sipped her drink and had a short exchange of pleasantries with Banny before responding to Reed’s report.
    “He changed his name. But he is an architect. And he did go to Yale. And he did take the time, and perhaps the risk, to let me know he’d gone. All right, he’s been one step ahead of us all the time, and you find it annoying. I don’t blame you. I guess I’ve been more dazed than curious, more concerned with what effect, if any, the knowledge of him as my father makes in my life. Do you still want to go on probing?”
    “Not for the moment,” Reed said, draining his glass and extended his long legs their full length. He also raised his arms above his head and stretched them. “I think we might as well admit that the next move, if any, is his. But,” he added, getting up to refill their glasses, “I don’t promise not to think about it.”
    “And you’ll keep me up on what you’re thinking?”
    “Absolutely, if I come up with anything more than meaningless, unescapable cogitation. You know, Kate, I think I’m getting to like Jay more than I originally did. No, don’t ask me why. I haven’t a clue.”

 
    CHAPTER EIGHT
    Where be thy brothers?
    After her introduction to Jay which Laurence had arranged at his club, Kate had given no further thought to Laurence or her other brothers, nor had she wondered if they had been in any way disturbed by the revelation about their mother that Jay’s appearance had forced upon them. Kate was so used to thinking of her brothers as conventional and conservative in the extreme, not to say boring—stultifying might better have described the effect of their conversation upon her—that she had failed to consider how the shock of Jay’s appearance might have affected them. She and Reed no longer saw much of her brothers or their families; occasions to which it was felt that she and Reed must be invited were few. She was therefore considerably unnerved to hear the next day from all three of her outraged brothers. They had probably not planned to telephone in a series, one after the other within a few hours, but so it had turned out.
    They had, she gathered, been working themselves up to confronting Kate, or at the least to informing her of their entire disapproval of this man who had so suddenly, and so irrefutably, appeared to cast aspersions on the reputation of their beloved mother. Now that the man had disappeared, as Kate, when asked, had been forced to admit to Laurence, they insisted upon a family conference. Kate did not doubt that they had been goaded to this by their wives, nor did she expect the wives to be included in this unpleasant gathering; Fansler wives were, in times of stress, attended to in private but were not permitted to be present in what were considered business meetings. Kate decided, however, that Reed would certainly be present; she did not intend to face her brothers alone—not in this case.
    Reed pointed out to her that their feelings of violation, to say nothing of disgrace, were hardly to be condemned out of