Marta Perry - Sound Of Fear

Unfortunately, he had no idea what Ms. Amanda Curtiss of Boston wanted with an attorney in tiny Echo Falls, Pennsylvania. The contact had been made by someone he’d met at a conference last year. He and Robert McKinley had sat and talked one evening, exchanged business cards and parted, sure they’d never see each other again. Until his call came out of the blue.

McKinley had been downright evasive on the phone when he’d set up this appointment. It was the sort of approach Trey might have instinctively refused back in the day when they’d had more business than they could handle. Not now. He could only hope this Amanda Curtiss wasn’t a nutcase.

The intercom buzzed, and he stood as the door opened. “Ms. Curtiss, Mr. Alter,” Evelyn Lincoln, their office manager, murmured.

She closed the door discreetly, and Trey had a moment to assess the woman who came toward him. Slim, average height, with blond hair pulled back in a tie at her nape and intensely blue eyes that were looking him over, as well. And perhaps a bit disapprovingly. He had a quick impression of expensive casual clothes and an assured manner before they were shaking hands and murmuring conventional greetings.

“I see you brought a friend to our meeting.” Trey nodded to the yellow Lab that followed at the woman’s heels.

“I didn’t want to leave him in the car. Your receptionist said it would be okay if I brought him inside. I hope you don’t dislike dogs.” She sounded as if that would end this meeting in a hurry.

“Not at all.” He held out the back of his hand to the animal. “I hope he likes attorneys.”

“Barney’s quite indiscriminately affectionate.” The tight control she’d been exercising over her expression became evident only when her face relaxed in a smile as she looked at the animal. The dog proved the truth of her words by licking Trey’s hand with enthusiasm.

She took the chair Trey had indicated, and the dog sat obediently next to her. “Thank you for seeing me on such short notice.” The reserve had returned.

“No problem,” he said easily. “Tell me what I can do to help you. Robert McKinley didn’t say much, just that you needed an attorney here in town.”

“Yes.” She frowned, studying him so seriously that he began to wonder if he had something on his face.

When she didn’t continue, he raised an eyebrow. “I’m not what you were looking for?”

A flicker of annoyance crossed her face. “I expected you to be older.”

“Sorry I can’t oblige.” If that sounded flippant, too bad. The woman’s attitude didn’t bode well for their relationship.

But her lips twitched, and she looked human again. “Sorry. I just assumed a friend of Robert’s would be around his age. And this is...rather complicated. I’m not sure you can help me.”

“We’ll never know unless you tell me what it’s about, will we?”

Amanda Curtiss was actually quite attractive when she relaxed her guard for a moment, with those mobile lips and long, slim legs. Not that he ought to be noticing anything of the kind about a client. Oddly enough, there was something vaguely familiar in the oval face and regular features, but he couldn’t place it.

“No.” She paused, as if not sure how to begin. “This situation arose when my mother died a few weeks ago.”

“I’m sorry for your loss.” Maybe that explained the air she had of holding a tight guard on her emotions.

Amanda nodded, accepting the words of condolence. She’d probably heard them often recently. She couldn’t be more than about thirty herself, so her mother had apparently died young.

“She had been caught in the cross fire of what the police thought was gang violence. In the course of the postmortem, it was determined that she’d never given birth to a child.” She met his gaze briefly and then looked away. “Robert and I assumed I was adopted, but we couldn’t find adoption papers anywhere. He’s started a search through court records, but without knowing where or when, it seems impossible to trace.”

Trey tried to imagine himself in that situation and ran up against a blank wall. He couldn’t even begin to think what it must be like. His family roots went deep here in Echo Falls, where everyone knew everything going back several generations. “But you must have a birth certificate.”

“I have a baptismal certificate from a church outside Boston that appears genuine, but that’s when I was three. What we thought was a birth certificate was actually a hospital form, not a state-registered certificate. And no such birth actually occurred at that hospital on that date.”

Trey frowned, caught up in the story in spite of himself. “Your mother must have been very determined to wipe out traces of who you really were. If she were desperate to have a child...”

“No. If you’re thinking she took me because she was mentally unbalanced...well, you never knew my mother. That’s not something she would do.”

He’d reserve judgment on that one. Children weren’t always the best judge of what their parents would do. Come to think of it, that worked the other way around, too.

“So you’ve run into a lot of blind alleys. But what brought you to Echo Falls?”

She hesitated, and for a moment he actually thought she was going to call the whole thing off, say goodbye, send me a bill and walk away. But instead she took something from her bag and handed it to him.

“Do you recognize that?”

It was a photograph of what seemed to be a painting.

The subject was familiar to him. “That’s Echo Falls.” He studied it closely. “But I’ve never seen that painting of the falls.”

“My mother painted it. She was Juliet Curtiss. I don’t know if you’re familiar...”

“Yes, of course. I read the account of her death somewhere.” That shed a bit more light on things. Juliet Curtiss most likely had a considerable estate to leave her heir, which was now in doubt. On the other hand, if the woman thought the painting would lead her to answers about her parentage...

“This is a photo of the words on the back of the painting. I enlarged it to make it more readable.”

He read the short line of printing, struggling to make sense of it. “It sounds as if your mother did the painting as a tribute to a friend, but that doesn’t mean there’s a connection to you.”

“It’s a memorial, so it’s logical to assume that the date on it was the date when this person died.”

He nodded. “M. I’m with you, but...”

“The date is two months after I was born.” She seemed to think that made everything clear. It didn’t.

“Even so,” he began.

“You think I’m imagining a connection that isn’t there.” Her face flamed with sudden anger.

“I think you’re building a great deal on a slim chance. If I thought I could help you...”

“Never mind.” She held out her hand for the photos. “Robert suggested I see you rather than a private investigator, both because he trusts you and because as a local attorney, you’re more likely to know what to search for. Maybe I’ll do better looking into the situation on my own.”

Annoyed, he held the photos out of reach. “Hold on. I didn’t say I wouldn’t try. I just don’t know that I can come up with the answers you want.”

“I want the truth.” Her tone was uncompromising.

“Good. So do I. Now we have common ground, at least. May I hold on to these?”

“Why?” She shot the word at him.

“Well, mainly because I was four years old in 1989. I’d like to show them to someone who might remember something from that year.”

She frowned. “I assume you have a copier in the office. Suppose you keep a copy.”

Trey nodded. “We can do that on the way out. Now, where are you staying?”