The Keepsake: A Rizzoli & Isles Novel

blame.”
    “He knew the victim.”
    “Lot of folks probably did.”
    “Your son worked at the Crispin Museum that summer. The same place where her body has just turned up. That’s quite a coincidence.”
    “I’ll ask you both to leave.” He turned toward the door, but Jane did not move from her chair. If Kimball was not going to cooperate, it was time to move to a different strategy, one that would almost certainly provoke him.
    “Then there was that incident on the Stanford University campus,” she said. “An incident you know about, Mr. Rose. Since it was your attorney who arranged for your son’s release.”
    He pivoted and strode toward her so quickly that Frost instinctively stood up to intervene. But Kimball halted just inches from Jane. “He was never convicted.”
    “But he was arrested. Twice. After following a female student around campus. After breaking into her dorm room while she was sleeping. How many times did you have to bail him out of trouble? How many checks did you write to keep him out of jail?”
    “It’s time for you all to go.”
    “Where is your son now?”
    Before Kimball could respond, a door opened. He froze as a soft voice called out: “Kimball? Are they here about Bradley?”
    In an instant his expression transformed from rage to dismay. He turned to the woman and said, “Cynthia, you shouldn’t be out of bed. Please go back, darling.”
    “Rosa told me two policemen came to the house. It’s about Bradley, isn’t it?” The woman shuffled into the room, and her sunken eyes focused on the two visitors. Though her face had been stretched taut by plastic surgery, her age still showed in the rounded back, the drooping shoulders. Most of all it showed in the wispy gray hair that feathered her nearly bald scalp. As wealthy as Kimball Rose might be, he had not traded in his wife for a younger model. All their money, all their privilege, could not change the obvious fact that Cynthia Rose was seriously ill.
    Frail as she was, supported by a cane, Cynthia stood her ground and kept her gaze on the two detectives. “Do you know where my Bradley is?” she asked.
    “No, ma’am,” said Jane. “We were hoping you could tell us.”
    “I’m going to walk you back to your room,” said Kimball, and he took his wife’s arm.
    Angrily she shook him off, her attention still fixed on Jane. “Why are you looking for him?”
    “Cynthia, this has nothing to do with you,” said Kimball.
    “It has
everything
to do with me,” she shot back. “You should have told me they were here. Why do you keep hiding things from me, Kimball? I have a right to know about my own boy!” The outburst seemed to leave her out of breath, and she tottered toward the nearest chair and sank down. There she sat so motionless, she might have been just another artifact in that dark room of funerary objects.
    “They came to ask about that girl again,” said Kimball. “The one who disappeared in New Mexico. That’s all.”
    “But that was such a long time ago,” murmured Cynthia.
    “Her body has just been found,” said Jane. “In Boston. We need to speak to your son about it, but we don’t know where he is.”
    Cynthia slumped deeper into the chair. “I don’t know, either,” she whispered.
    “Doesn’t he write you?”
    “Sometimes. A letter here and there, sent from strange places. An e-mail once in a while, just to say he’s thinking of me. And that he loves me. But he stays away.”
    “Why is that, Mrs. Rose?”
    The woman raised her head and looked at Kimball. “Maybe you should ask my husband.”
    “Bradley’s never been all that close to us,” he said.
    “He was until you sent him away.”
    “That has nothing to do with—”
    “He didn’t want to go. You forced him.”
    “Forced him to go where?” asked Jane.
    “It’s not relevant,” said Kimball.
    “I blame myself, for not standing up to you,” said Cynthia.
    “Where did you send him?” asked Jane.
    “Tell her,” said Cynthia. “Tell her how you drove him away.”
    Kimball released a deep sigh. “When he was sixteen, we sent him to a boarding school in Maine. He didn’t want to go, but it was for his own good.”
    “A school?” Cynthia gave a bitter laugh. “It was a mental institution!”
    Jane looked at Kimball. “Is that what it was, Mr. Rose?”
    “No! The place was recommended to us. Best of its kind in the country, and let me tell you, the price tag reflected it. I only did what I thought was best