The Mephisto Club

from the Putnam Academy. She laid the letter next to her notebook. She looked back and forth, between the biblical quote and Margaret Saul’s letter.
    She jumped to her feet and called out. “Gabriel? I’ve got to leave.”
    He came back out of the baby’s room, holding Regina. “She’s not going to appreciate it, you know. Why don’t you give her another hour at the party?”
    “This isn’t about my mom.” Jane went into the living room. He watched, frowning, as she unlocked a drawer, took out her holster, and buckled it on. “It’s about Lily Saul.”
    “What about her?”
    “She lied. She knows exactly where her cousin is hiding.”

THIRTY-FOUR
    “I’ve told you everything I know,” said Lily.
    Jane stood in Sansone’s dining room, where the dessert dishes had not yet been cleared from the table. Jeremy quietly placed a cup of coffee in front of Jane, but she didn’t touch it. Nor did she look at any of the other guests seated around the table. Her gaze remained on Lily.
    “Why don’t we go into the other room, Lily, where we can talk in private?”
    “I have nothing else to tell you.”
    “I think you have a great deal to tell me.”
    Edwina Felway said, “Then ask your questions right here, Detective. We’d all like to hear them.”
    Jane looked around the table at Sansone and his guests. The so-called Mephisto Club. Even though Maura claimed not to be part of it, there she was, seated in their circle. These people might think they understood evil, but they couldn’t recognize it, even when it was sitting right here at the same table. Jane’s gaze returned, once again, to Lily Saul, who sat stubbornly in place, refusing to move from her chair.
Okay,
thought Jane.
This is the way you want to play the game? That’s how we’ll play it, with an audience watching.
    Jane opened the file folder she’d brought into the house and slapped the page down in front of Lily, setting off the musical clatter of wineglasses and china. Lily looked at the handwritten letter.
    “Dominic’s mother didn’t write that,” said Jane.
    “What is it?” asked Edwina.
    “It’s a letter withdrawing fifteen-year-old Dominic from the Putnam Academy boarding school in Connecticut. It was supposedly written by his mother, Margaret Saul.”
    “Supposedly?”
    “Margaret Saul didn’t write that letter.” Jane looked at Lily. “You did.”
    Lily gave a laugh. “Do I look old enough to be his mother?”
    Jane placed the notebook on the table now, open to the page with the quote from Revelation. “You wrote that passage for me tonight, Lily. We know it’s your handwriting.” She pointed back to the letter. “So is that.”
    Silence. Lily’s mouth had tightened to two thin lines.
    “That summer, when you were sixteen, your cousin Dominic wanted to vanish,” said Jane. “After the things he did in Purity, maybe he
needed
to vanish.” Her eyes narrowed on Lily. “And you helped him. You told everyone a convenient cover story: that his mother suddenly came to town to fetch him. That they left the country. But it was a lie, wasn’t it? Margaret Saul never came to get her son. She never showed up at all. Isn’t that right?”
    “I don’t need to answer you,” said Lily. “I know my rights.”
    “Where is he? Where is Dominic?”
    “When you find him, let me know.” Lily shoved back her chair and stood up.
    “What went on between you two that summer?”
    “I’m going to bed.” Lily turned and started out of the dining room.
    “Did he do all your dirty work for you? Is that why you’re protecting him?”
    Lily stopped. Slowly, she turned, and her eyes were as dangerous as radium.
    “When your parents died, you came into a nice little inheritance,” said Jane.
    “I inherited a house that no one will ever buy. And a bank account that paid for my college education, but not much more.”
    “Did you get on with your parents, Lily? Did you have arguments?”
    “If you think I’d ever—”
    “All teenagers do. But maybe your fights went a little further. Maybe you couldn’t wait to get out of that dead little town and get on with your life. Then your cousin moves in for the summer and he gives you ideas, ways to make your escape happen a little easier, a little quicker.”
    “You have no idea what happened!”
    “Then tell me. Tell me why
you
were the one to find Teddy’s body in the lake, why
you
were the one who found your mother at the bottom of the stairs.”
    “I’d never hurt