From Potter's Field by Patricia Cornwell Page A

someone rung up a lot of charges on it?'

    'I don't think so.' I did not tell her who that someone was.

    'You've canceled it by now, right?'

    'It's being taken care of,' I said. 'Tell your mother I will be down to see Grans as soon as I can.'

    'As soon as you can is never soon,' my niece said.

    'I know. I'm a terrible daughter and a rotten aunt.'

    'You're not always a rotten aunt.'

    'Thank you very much,' I said.

    7

    Commander Frances Penn's private residence was on the west side of Manhattan where I could see the lights of New Jersey on the other side of the Hudson River. She lived fifteen floors up in a dingy building in a dirty part of the city that was instantly forgotten when she opened her white front door.

    Her apartment was filled with light and art and the fragrances of fine foods. Walls were whitewashed and arranged with pen-and-ink drawings and abstracts in watercolor and pastel. A scan of books on shelves and tables told me that she loved Ayn Rand and Annie Leibovitz and read numerous biographies and histories, including Shelby Foote's magnificent volumes on that terrible, tragic war.

    'Let me take your coat,' she said.

    I relinquished it, gloves and a black cashmere scarf I was fond of because it had been a gift from Lucy.

    'You know, I didn't think to ask if there's anything you can't eat,' she said from the hall closet near the front door. 'Can you eat shellfish? Because if you can't, I have chicken.'

    'Shellfish would be wonderful,' I said.

'Good.' She showed me into the living room, which offered a magnificent view of the George Washington Bridge spanning the river like a necklace of bright jewels caught in space. 'I understand you drink Scotch.'
     
    'Something lighter would be better,' I said, sitting on a soft leather couch the color of honey.
     
    'Wine?'
     
    I said that would be fine, and she disappeared into the kitchen long enough to pour two glasses of a crisp chardonnay. Commander Penn was dressed in black jeans and a gray wool sweater with sleeves shoved up. I saw for the first time that her forearms were horribly scarred.
     
    'From my younger, more reckless days.' She caught me looking. 'I was on the back of a motorcycle and ended up leaving quite a lot of my hide on the road.'
     
    'Donorcycles, as we call them,' I said.
     
    'It was my boyfriend's. I was seventeen and he was twenty.'
     
    'What happened to him?'
     
    'He slid into oncoming traffic and was killed,' she said with the matter-of-factness of someone who has freely talked about a loss for a long time. 'That was when I got interested in police work.' She sipped her wine. 'Don't ask me the connection because I'm not sure I know.'
     
    'Sometimes when one is touched by tragedy he becomes its student.'
     
    'Is that your explanation?' She watched me closely with eyes that missed little and revealed less.
     
    'My father died when I was twelve,' I simply said.
     
    'Where was this?'
     
    'Miami. He owned a small grocery store, which my mother eventually ran because he was sick many years before he died.'
     
    'If your mother ran the store, so to speak, then who ran your household while your father lingered?'
     
    'I suppose I did.'
     
    'I thought as much. I probably could have told you that before you said a word. And my guess is you are the oldest child, have no brothers, and have always been an overachiever who cannot accept failure.'
     
    I listened.
     
    'Therefore, personal relationships are your nemesis because you can't have a good one by overachieving. You can't earn a happy love affair or be promoted into a happy marriage. And if someone you care about has a problem, you think you should have prevented it and most certainly should fix it.'
     
    'Why are you dissecting me?' I asked directly but without defensiveness. Mostly, I was fascinated.
     
    'Your story is my story. There are many women like us. Yet we never seem to get together, have you ever noticed that?'
     
    'I notice it all the time,' I said.
     
    'Well'