Free Fall from Grace by Richard North Patterson

must have heard Adam behind her, she gave no sign of this. Finally, she crossed herself and, rising, turned to face him.
    Tall and slender, she looked a touch older than her age, which he put at thirty-two. On television she had been striking and exotic, an Italian-American brunette with dark, intense eyes and a vitality that made her all the more memorable. Now she had the tempered beauty of a survivor. In the last photograph Adam remembered of her, taken after her arrest, her eyes were clouded by drugs and filled with shame and confusion. But the eyes that regarded him now were clear and flecked with sadness. The faint smile at one corner of her mouth did not change them.
    “You could only be Adam.” Her voice was as he recalled it, smoky, with a trace of Mediterranean intensity. “Now I know how your father must have looked at your age.”
    She took it for granted that he knew who she was. The strangeness of the moment left him briefly silent. Then he said, “And you’re Carla Pacelli. Or used to be.”
    The veiled insult did not change her expression. “I’m sorry if I’ve upset you. But the only service I could hold for him is private.”
    Instinctively, Adam looked toward the road. Near his car he saw a Jeep, then a woman he took to be Amanda Ferris with a photographer whose telescopic lens glinted in the sun. Facing Pacelli, Adam said, “Not too private. I think you and I just made the National Enquirer.”
    Briefly, Pacelli shut her eyes. “I’m used to this,” she said wearily, “and it’s way too late to care. But I didn’t mean to inflict them on you or your family.”
    Adam dismissed this. Perhaps she had staged her touching graveyard visit to cast herself as a woman in mourning. She was, after all, a performer, no doubt conscious that an image, if artfully created, could conceal avarice and calculation. Adam’s reality was this—she had been his father’s lover and the chief beneficiary of his will, heedless of the damage she inflicted on Clarice Blaine. At length, Adam said, “You were far from his only woman—just the one in the girlfriend chair when the music stopped. All I care about is what you’ve taken from my mother.”
    A moment’s anger flashed in Pacelli’s eyes, then died there. In the same even tone, she said, “Then there are a few things I should say to you, as clearly as I can. Whatever you choose to think, I loved your father. Except for consideration and respect, I didn’t expect much in return. Nor did I ask for anything. I didn’t know about the will, or request him to change the one he had. From time to time, he helped me with expenses, but that was all. I’d far prefer that Ben were still alive.”
    This was the defense that Adam expected, stated with the quiet command of an actress. In his estimation, Carla Pacelli had been a good one—whether feigned or real, grief was written on her face. “Nonetheless,” Adam said, “his demise has worked out nicely for you.”
    She gave him a long, cool look. “Then I should be happy, shouldn’t I. Do I seem it to you?”
    Adam met her eyes. “No,” he answered. “But your business is appearance, not reality, and good taste requires the appearance of sadness. I am curious, though, about the last time you saw him alive.”
    Pacelli looked at him with the same directness. “I’m not sure I’m ready for this conversation. You buried him yesterday; I buried him just now. That’s hard for me. But if we’re going to talk, would you mind sitting down? I haven’t slept much lately.”
    With mock gallantry, Adam gestured at a swatch of grass beside his father’s tombstone. After a moment, Pacelli sat, Adam beside her. When he looked toward the road again, the reporter and photographer were watching. Facing Pacelli, Adam asked, “Did you see him on the night he died?”
    “No,” she answered. “The last time I saw him was that afternoon.”
    “What did you talk about?”
    She turned to him. “I’m sorry, but