Edge

skinny legs. I wonder if they really looked like that back then. You think they’d fall over a lot.”
    Joanne smiled at this—an observation worthy of Claire duBois.
    Maree then asked, “How do I go online? I need to check email.”
    “I’m afraid you can’t.”
    “Oh, not the spy stuff again? Please. Can I beg?” She said this with that teenager’s coy glint in her eyes. Her lips, of course, pouted admirably.
    “Sorry.”
    “Why not?”
    “We have to assume Loving’s found your account. If you read messages or send any, it’s possible for him to correlate time with router and server traffic in the area here.”
    “Corte, do you look four ways before crossing the street?”
    “Mar,” Joanne chided. “Really.”
    “Oh, puh-lease.”
    I said, “Just taking precautions.” I regarded her serious expression and nodding head. “What’s wrong?”
    “If I can’t get my masseur here, then somebody owes me a massage. . . . Say, Mr. Tour Guide, is that in your job description?” I must have been staring at her blankly. She said, “You don’t joke much, do you?”
    “Maree,” her sister said sternly. “Give it a rest.”
    “Seriously,” she said to me. “I’d just like to send a few emails. I’ve got to get some images to a gallery for a show.”
    “If it’s really important, I can encrypt it, send it to our central communications department and we could route it through some proxies in Asia and Europe.”
    “Is that a joke?”
    “No.”
    “So other people would read it?”
    “Yes, three or four. And me.”
    “Then I think I’ll just opt for the exciting alternative of . . . going to bed.” She turned defiantly and vanished down the dim corridor.
    Joanne watched her sister walk away, Maree’s slim hips shifting under the wispy skirt as she took steady, almost flirtatious strides.
    “What’s she taking?” I asked.
    Joanne hesitated. “Wellbutrin.”
    “Anything else?”
    “Maybe an Ativan. Or two or three.”
    “And?”
    “Nothing else she needs a prescription for. She never got insurance so I see her medical bills. Because I pay for them. . . . How’d you know?”
    I told her, “Language, some of her behavior. I found out about her hospitalizations. There were two, right?”
    Joanne barked a cautious laugh. “You know about those?”
    “My associate looked into anything that might be relevant. Suicide attempts? That’s what I deduced from the report.”
    Joanne nodded. “The doctor said more of a gesture than an attempt. She’d been dumped by her boyfriend. Well, not even a boyfriend. They’d only gone out for six months or so but she was ready to move in, have his babies. You know the drill, I imagine.”
    Her voice faded and she was looking me over, as if maybe I didn’t know the drill. Ryan had probably told her I was a single man with no children.
    She continued, “A note, a little overdose. The second time, same thing. A bit worse. Different man. I wish she’d get as obsessed about going to therapy as she gets about lovers.”
    I glanced up the hall and then asked softly, “Was it Andrew who hurt her?” I tapped my arm.
    Joanne’s eyelids fluttered. “You’re good. . . .” She shook her head. “To be honest, I don’t know. He has hurt her, in the past. He put her in the hospital once. She claimed it was an accident. They always do that, abuse victims. Or she says it was her fault. This time she was pretty convincing that some guy knocked into her. But I just don’t know.”
    “And the forwarded mail? She broke it off with Andrew and moved in with you?”
    Joanne caught her reflection in an old, scabby mirror and looked away. “That’s right. Andrew’sgot a lot going for him. He’s talented, he’s handsome and he thinks my sister’s talented. Or at least he tells her she is. But he’s also jealous and controlling. He convinced her to quit her day job and move in with him. That lasted a couple of months. He was mad at her all the time but when she moved out he got even madder. Thank God we were in the area; she had someplace to go when she bailed.”
    Maree, who’d been born Marie and never officially changed her name, duBois had learned, also had been the subject of some runaway reports, filed with local police, when she was in her teens, and a few drug and shoplifting charges, which had been dropped; it seemed the boys she was with had coerced her to join them. They’d tried to set her up to take the fall.
    None of this was