The Ice Cradle by Mary Ann Winkowski, Maureen Foley Page A

was to go to bed for the rest of the afternoon, pick up Henry and spend the evening with him, and then, once he fell asleep, settle down to a few hours’ work before turning in myself.
    Though Caleb had liked my idea for the main book’s structure, I wanted to lay out all the pieces in the order in which I was thinking of using them, just to make sure that this concept really worked. I also planned to e-mail my favorite suppliers of leather and paper and ask them to FedEx us samples. We wanted to have a look that unified all the materials pertaining to the
Larchmont
disaster, so Caleb and I had decisions to make on everything from the shade of the papers and the texture of the leathers to the matting material we’d be using on the snapshots and the color and shape of the acid-free boxes.
    “I was just bringing you this,” Lauren said, handing me a copy of the book we had discussed over tea on Sunday, Antony Wicklow’s
Inn of Phantoms
.
    “Oh, thanks, great! I’ll take a look at it.”
    “I didn’t know you were around.”
    “I just got back.”
    “You must be ready to drop,” she said. “I’m so sorry.”
    “It’s not
your
fault. Did you get any sleep?” I’d found her in the kitchen when I’d come in for coffee at about a quarter of six this morning. She, too, had been tossing and turning for hours.
    Lauren nodded. “I just woke up a little while ago.”
    “Good. Any sign of Frances?”
    “No. I’m not surprised, though. There have been so many cars and trucks in and out of here that she’s probably spooked. If she … I mean …”
    “At least she wasn’t in the barn,” I noted quickly.
    “No, no, they looked everywhere. No sign of her in there.”
    Lauren suddenly teared up.
    “I’m sure she’s
fine
,” I said. “She’s probably just hiding somewhere until things quiet down.”
    Lauren sniffed and shook her head, obviously trying to get her emotions under control, but the tears spilled over.
    “It’s not that,” she whispered.
    “You poor thing. Come here.” I took her arm and steered her over to an upholstered chair by the hall window. I pulled out its matching hassock and we both sat down.
    “I’m fine,” she said. “Really, I am. I don’t know what’s the matter with me.”
    “You don’t? I could offer some possibilities.”
    “They think the fire was set,” she announced abruptly.
    “You’re kidding. You know, I didn’t want to mention anything last night, but Frank—your neighbor Frank?”
    “Frank Hansen?”
    “He said the same thing. He claimed he could tell by the color of the smoke. But then when Mark was talking about the cans of gasoline …”
    “They found signs of accelerant all along the exterior foundation. The gasoline caused those black plumes inside, but somebody poured something on the outside and lit it.”
    “That’s terrible! Who in the world would do that?”
    “We don’t know. We have no idea. It’s such an awful feeling, to be asked if you have any enemies!” Lauren began to cry again.
“Enemies
? We thought everyone—liked us.”
    “Everyone
does
like you! You should have heard the way Caleb talked about the two of you—how much admiration everybody has for you both.”
    “Not everybody, obviously.”
    “So they have no clue as to who might have done it?”
    Lauren sniffed and shook her head. “There’s one weird thing, but it’ll probably turn out to be nothing.”
    “You never know. What is it?”
    “You remember Bert?”
    Did I remember Bert?
“Uh, yeah,” I said.
    “Bert has a sister, Aitana. She has her own catering company; she does a lot of the weddings and parties on the island. She had a last-minute request from the Rawlingses.”
    “Senator Rawlings? For the cocktail party?”
    “How’d you know?”
    “He came looking for Caleb this morning. He wanted to invite him.”
    “The senator?”
    “Yeah, but I had no idea who he was.”
    Lauren laughed. “Did he give you the once-over?”
    “He