Catherine Coulter - The Edge

Thank God Charlie lives right next door to Doc Lambert. Charlie managed to crawl over just before he fell unconscious. Doc said it didn't look good. I'm heading over there now."

"He's the old guy I met at The Edwardian yesterday at lunch. I remember he wanted to talk to me. Who would hit him? Jesus, Maggie, that doesn't make sense."

"I agree. I'm out of here. See you later."

I hoped the old guy would be all right, but serious head wounds seldom turned out well. I wondered what he'd wanted to talk to me about. I wondered why anyone would hit him on the head.

I picked up two sandwiches from Grace's Deli on Fifth 1 Avenue and brought them back to Liverpool Street. I rousted Paul out of his lab and we sat down at the dining room table at twelve-thirty.

Paul set a cold can of Coors in front of each of us. "I accomplished next to nothing," he said as he sat down. "I can't seem to think, to solve the easiest problems." He peeled back the foil on his sandwich.

"Ah, rare roast beef, my favorite. How'd you know that, Mac?"

"I remembered Jilly telling me some time ago. She said you would only eat it half-cooked and slathered with mayonnaise. The woman at the deli knew exactly how you liked it."

Paul's face became still. "I can't believe Jilly's not here, telling me I'm a jerk because I forgot to do something she'd asked me to do, telling me to leave her alone because she's working and who says my work's more important than hers? She could be yelling at me one minute, then she'd just start laughing, lean over, and bite my ear. Jesus, Mac, it's hard."

"Paul, who's Laura?"

I thought Paul was going to have a heart attack. He jerked and spilled his beer onto the back of his hand and wrist. He didn't curse, didn't say anything at all, just looked down at the beer dripping off his hand onto the shining mahogany tabletop.

I handed Paul his paper napkin. When he'd finished mopping up, I said again, "Paul, tell me about Laura.

Who is she?"

Paul took a bite of his sandwich, chewed slowly, not looking at me, just chewed. He swallowed, took a long pull of beer, then said finally, "Laura? There isn't any Laura."

Paul Bartlett was thirty-six, skinny as a post, at home in preppy clothes-this morning a dark green Ralph Lauren T-shirt and khaki slacks, light tan Italian loafers with tassels.

He was a genius, Jilly had always said, simply a genius. Well, that could be, I thought, but he was a lousy liar. I wasn't about to let this slide. "Laura, Paul. Tell me about her. It's important."

"Why would Laura be important to this? How the hell do you even know her name?"

"I heard it from Jilly," I said. I wasn't about to tell him that I'd come suddenly awake at the hospital, my face on Jilly's hand, saying Laura's name aloud. It sounded too off the wall. I leaned back in my chair and added easily, "She mentioned Laura's name. Didn't say anything else about her-just said her name."

Did Paul look relieved? I realized I'd blown it. I never should have told him that the woman's name was all I knew. I was an idiot. I was supposed to be trained to lie and bluff well. I was losing it. But why did Paul feel he had to lie? And then of course I realized what Jilly had meant. Laura had betrayed her with her husband, Paul.

Paul took another bite of his sandwich. Some of the mayonnaise oozed out the sides and fell to the napkin. He chewed slowly, buying time, I knew, an old ploy to gain time to think, to make the other person begin to question himself. He said finally, after a long stretch of silence, "She's not important, just a woman who lives in Salem. I don't even know if that's the Laura Jilly mentioned. As far as I ever knew, Jilly never even met Laura, never even heard of her. I don't understand why she'd say her name." He sipped his beer, his hand steady as a rock now.

"How did you meet her? What's her last name?"

"More questions, Mac, about a person Jilly only mentioned in passing? What's this all about?"

"Jilly said to me, 'Laura betrayed me.' What did she mean, Paul?"

Paul looked like I'd socked him in the jaw. He shook his head as if to clear it and said, "All right, dammit.

There was a Laura, but I haven't seen her in several months. I broke it off. I just lost my head for a while there, but then I realized that I loved Jilly, that I didn't want to lose her. I haven't seen Laura since March."

"Laura was your lover then?"

"You find that hard to believe, Mac? You look at me and you see a nerd who's a decade older than you are, and not a thing like you? No bulging muscles? No big macho cop with broad shoulders and a full head of hair who goes chasing after terrorists, for God's sake? The only thing good you can say about me is that I'm at least an evolved nerd since I attracted your sister."

I forced myself to take another bite of my tuna salad sandwich. So both this Laura and Paul had betrayed Jilly. I wanted to jump over the table and tear Paul Bartlett's head off. I made myself chew slowly, just as Paul had done. It gave me time to cool down. What I needed most of all was control. I said after just a moment, no anger at all in my voice, "Let's get something perfectly straight here, Paul. I find it hard to believe you'd sleep with another woman because you're a married man, supposedly a happily married man. A married man isn't supposed to screw around on his wife."

"Shit, I'm sorry." Paul rubbed his fingers through his light brown hair. "I didn't mean all that, Mac. I'm upset, you can see that."

"What's Laura's last name?"

"Scott. Laura Scott. She's a reference librarian at the public library in Salem. I met her there."

"Why were you at the Salem Public Library?" Paul just shrugged. "They've got great science reference materials. I do some research there once in a while." "How did Jilly find out about you sleeping with Laura?"

"I don't know. I didn't tell her. Of course Laura knows Jilly. They're friends."

"So Jilly went to the Salem Public Library too?" "Yes, she liked to go there. Don't ask me why, but she did. Look, Mac, Laura is shy, withdrawn. She wouldn't have told Jilly. I just can't imagine how she found out. The two of them, they're opposites. Jilly is beautiful, talented, outgoing, like all of you-you, Gwen, and Kevin. She never just plain walks, she struts. She oozes confidence, is immensely sure of herself. She believes she's the best. Laura isn't any of those things. She's so self-effacing she could be a shadow."

"Why did you sleep with her, Paul, if she's so damned self-effacing?"

Paul looked down at the remains of his roast beef sandwich. "What is that old saw about having steak all the time? Maybe I just needed a change from Jilly for a while."

"Is Laura Scott still in Salem?"

"I don't know. She was upset when I told her it was over. I don't know if she stayed or not. Why does it matter? I tell you, Jilly should never have found out about her. Maybe I dreamed about her and happened to say her name, with Jilly overhearing. But it doesn't matter. It's not important, Mac. It wasn't important as of over a month ago."

I didn't let on to Paul that it was more than important to me. Jilly had known that Laura had betrayed her.

Laura was so much in Jilly's mind that I'd somehow picked it up from Jilly when I'd been with her in the hospital. Was Laura the reason Jilly had driven her Porsche over the cliff?

An hour later, I was on the highway heading to Salem.

Salem, the capital of Oregon, sits in the heart of the Willamette Valley, on the banks of the Willamette River. It's only forty-three miles southwest of Portland, just a short hop as the natives say. I remembered Jilly telling me once, on her third glass of white wine, that its Indian name, Chemeketa, meant "place of rest" and had been translated into the biblical name of Salem, from the Hebrew shalom, meaning "peace."