The Keepsake: A Rizzoli & Isles Novel

you’d be acting this way if she looked like a dog.”
    “Her looks have nothing to do with this. Why do you keep suggesting I’ve got other motives?”
    Jane sighed. “Look, I’m just trying to keep you out of trouble, okay? I’m Mama Bear, doing her duty and keeping you safe.” She thrust the key into the ignition and turned on the engine. “So when’s Alice coming home? Hasn’t she been visiting her parents long enough?”
    He shot her a suspicious look. “Why are you asking about Alice?”
    “She’s been gone for weeks. Isn’t it about time she came home?”
    That elicited a snort. “Jane Rizzoli, marriage counselor. I kind of resent it, you know.”
    “What?”
    “That you think I’d ever go off the rails.”
    Jane pulled away from the curb and merged into traffic. “I just thought I should say something. I’m all for heading off trouble.”
    “Yeah, that strategy worked
really
well on your dad. Is he talking to you these days, or did you piss him off for good?”
    At the mention of her father, her grip on the steering wheel tightened to a stranglehold. After thirty-one years of apparent marital bliss, Frank Rizzoli had suddenly developed a hankering for cheap blondes. Seven months ago, he had walked out on Jane’s mother.
    “I only told him what I thought about his bimbo.”
    Frost laughed. “Yeah. Then you tried to beat her up.”
    “I did not beat her up. We had words.”
    “You tried to arrest her.”
    “I should have arrested
him
for acting like a middle-aged moron. It’s so frigging embarrassing.” She stared grimly at the road. “Now my mom’s doing a pretty good job embarrassing me, too.”
    “Because she’s dating?” Frost shook his head. “You see? You’re so damn judgmental, you’re gonna piss her off as well.”
    “She’s acting like a teenager.”
    “Your dad dumped her and now she’s dating, so what? Korsak’s a good guy, so let her have some fun.”
    “We weren’t talking about my parents. We were talking about Josephine.”
    “
You
were talking about Josephine.”
    “There’s something about her that bothers me. Do you notice how she hardly looks us in the eye? I think she couldn’t wait to get us out of her apartment.”
    “She answered all our questions. What more did you expect?”
    “She didn’t give us everything. She’s holding something back.”
    “Like what?”
    “I don’t know.” Jane stared ahead at the road. “But it wouldn’t hurt to find out a little more about Dr. Pulcillo.”
             
     
    From her window above the street, Josephine watched the two detectives climb into the car and drive away. Only then did she open her purse and pull out her ankh key ring, the one she’d found hanging on the apple tree. She’d said nothing to the police about the return of these keys. If she’d mentioned it, then she would also have had to tell them about the note directing her there, the note addressed to Josephine Sommer. And Sommer was a name they must never know about.
    She gathered together the notes and envelopes addressed to Josephine Sommer and ripped them up, wishing that at the same time she could rip away the part of her life she’d been trying all these years to forget. Somehow it had caught up with her, and no matter how hard she tried to outrun it, it would always be part of who she was. She brought the shredded bits of paper into the bathroom and flushed them down the toilet.
    She had to leave Boston.
    Now was the logical time to get out of town. The police knew she was frightened by what had happened today, so her departure would rouse no suspicions. Perhaps later, they might ask questions, search records, but for now they had no reason to examine her past. They would assume she was who she said she was: Josephine Pulcillo, who lived quietly and modestly, who’d worked her way through college and grad school while waitressing at the Blue Star cocktail lounge. All of that was true. All of that would check out fine. As long as they didn’t dig deeper or earlier, as long as she gave them no reason to, she would never trip any alarms. She could slip away from Boston with no one the wiser.
    But I don’t want to leave Boston.
    She stared out the window at a neighborhood she’d grown attached to. Rain clouds had given way to splashes of sunshine, and the sidewalks sparkled, fresh and clean. When she’d arrived to take the job, it had been March and she’d been a stranger to these streets. She’d trudged