Free Puppet by Joy Fielding

pictures Ben scrambling to sit up, sees him brush several loose strands of hair from half-open eyes. “I’m assuming there was a lot of blood,” she continues. “I just wondered what they did with the rug.”
    “I don’t know,” he answers, as if this were the most natural of conversations for them to be having at this hour of the morning.
    “Who the hell is John Mallins?” she asks.
    “We don’t have a lot of details.”
    “What
do
you have?”
    “We know he’s from England. That he was here on vacation with his wife and kids.”
    “What’s his connection to my mother?”
    “As far as the police can determine, there is none.”
    “You’re saying that my mother shot and killed a total stranger?”
    “Apparently.”
    Amanda leans back against her headboard. This was excessive, even for her mother. “Was she drunk?”
    “No,” Ben says. “You really need to come home, Amanda.”
    Amanda hangs up the phone without saying goodbye. She walks to her window and stares out at the moon.

SIX
    T HE plane from Palm Beach to Toronto takes off almost an hour late.
    Amanda breathes a sigh of relief that they are finally taxiing down the runway, grateful that she no longer has the opportunity to run screaming down the aisle, hollering, “I’ve changed my mind. Let me out of here,” which she would surely have done had she not found herself at the very back of the crowded 737, squished between a gum-chewing teenage girl and a middle-aged businessman so engrossed in his spy thriller, he hadn’t even bothered looking up when she was climbing all over him to get to her seat.
    More of the things Amanda hates: middle seats on airplanes; teenage girls who chew their gum loudly and crack it even louder, all the while flipping long, straight hair over their shoulders into her face; the shapeless black wool coat she’s wearing for the first time in eight years, a coat she should have thrown out years ago.
    Why hadn’t she? Whatever style it once possessed is long gone, and it feels scratchy against her bare forearms. She thinks of taking it off, but there’s hardly enoughroom in the tiny space allotted her to exhale properly, let alone to start shedding layers of clothing. Serves me right, she thinks, as several strands of her neighbor’s hair flick toward her cheek. Should have taken off my coat before I sat down. Should have thrown the stupid thing out when I left Toronto.
    “Should never have gotten on this damn plane in the first place, is what I should have done,” she says out loud, then glances around self-consciously. But the teenage girl in the window seat is now cracking her gum to the sound of rock music leaking from her headphones, and the face of the man on the aisle is buried even deeper inside his book, so apparently neither has noticed her outburst.
    Why didn’t I think of bringing a book? she wonders, trying to remember the last time she had the luxury of curling up with a good novel. A mystery thriller like the one the man beside her is so engrossed in, something that would help her pass the two and a half hours she’ll be spending in the air, something that would help her forget where she’s going. And why.
    Amanda can’t remember at what point she actually made the decision to go to Toronto. After talking to Ben, she’d drifted into an uneasy sleep, only to dream about being chased down the middle of I-95 by a pregnant Jennifer Travis, an angry Janet Berg, and a sobbing Caroline Fletcher. Somewhere in the middle of this pursuit, she stopped to buy a painting from Carter Reese’s wife, Sandy, then awoke in a pool of sweat, thinking it was definitely time to get out of Dodge.
    At barely 6 a.m., she called the airlines and was able to secure the last available seat on the nonstop flight that left Palm Beach for Toronto at two thirty in the afternoon.Then she called her secretary at home, forgetting that the poor young woman might actually have preferred sleeping in a little later on a Saturday