“I never knew Leydon could draw at all,” I admitted. “I’m just trying to find out what was going on in her life. Sewall said Leydon called you two days ago and talked to you in an obnoxious way.”
Faith’s sunburnt face turned redder. “I got upset at the time, but if I’d known—if I’d had any idea she meant to—do what she did—I would give anything to be able to go back two days and be more patient with her!”
I smiled sadly. “I’ve been beating myself up, too, for not taking her more seriously. It would be a help if you’d tell me what she said.”
“She called because she thought Sewall was spying on her. She wanted me to tell him to stop, especially if he was using her own trust fund to pay for spies, that was how she put it. She called him See-all, which always makes him furious. He got on the line and told her he was fed up with her not taking her drugs, and then she said, did he want her to take a drug test, and she asked—she said—did he want to hold out his hands so she could—pee—in them.”
Faith ducked her chin like a guilty seven-year-old. “She could be so dirty in how she talked,” she whispered. “She talked about how it would be incest, brothers and sisters exchanging bodily fluids, and how distressed Mother Ashford would be, but she’d do it if he wanted to know her drug profile.”
I couldn’t keep back a crack of laughter.
Faith looked at me with startled, wounded eyes. “It wasn’t funny at all, Victoria.”
“Leydon has always had the knack of driving Sewall around the bend,” I said. “Sorry I didn’t see his face when she said that. But is he spying on her?”
Faith grimaced. “You know, he and Leydon don’t agree on one single thing. He doesn’t think about her unless he has to.”
“So he wouldn’t have hired a private detective to follow her when she got out of the hospital?”
“I can ask him.” Her voice was doubtful, as if asking him would be a painful exercise. “Or Mother Ashford.”
“Ask me what?”
Mrs. Ashford had appeared on the patio. She was about eighty now but still moved easily, holding herself erect. She was dressed for day in a silk print shirtwaist, her makeup complete, despite the heat. On her collar she sported the pin of an American flag topped by a corncob: Helen Kendrick’s campaign button for high-end donors.
I got to my feet. “Hello, Ms. Ashford. I’m sorry about Leydon; I was with her—”
“You were with her when she jumped. Sewall told me that you had encouraged her to steal his car.”
I felt the pulses in my temples begin to throb but made a halfhearted effort to control my anger. “She didn’t jump. I was with her when Sewall came in, yapping about his car keys. The cops were as disgusted as I was that he didn’t even pretend to care about Leydon.” Okay, very halfhearted.
“Leydon always did her utmost to upset her family,” her mother said. “I’m sure that’s why she used to invite you out here, for the pleasure it gave her to see you enrage my husband. If you came out here today to see how angry you can make me, you might as well leave now, because I’m already angry.”
Faith shifted uncomfortably in her deck chair. She picked up a pair of binoculars from an occasional table and looked at the windsurfers. “I think Terence has gone out too far; I’ll just go down and wave him in.”
She scurried down the stairs to the beach. Ms. Ashford didn’t look at her, or at her grandson out on the water.
“You could be right,” I said. “I think Leydon enjoyed having a blue-collar friend to flaunt at her dad. But with all her flaws, and despite her illness, I continue to love her, and I’ve agreed to do some work for her. I wondered—”
“If you think Sewall or I will pay you, you can stop wondering.”
“Leydon has her own money, no?”
“She has a trust fund from her father, but Sewall is her trustee and he certainly won’t authorize payments to a private detective.” She bit the words off as if she were spitting out cigar ends.
“Would he pay a different detective?” I asked. “I mean, would he, or you, hire someone to follow Leydon to make sure she didn’t commit any major new embarrassment? Although it would be hard for someone to stay in her apartment with her, making sure she didn’t paint all over the walls again.”
“Are you trying to suggest that we employ you?” Ms. Ashford’s nostrils dilated in her outrage.
“Not at all. Leydon has hired me and it would be a conflict of interest for me to work for both of you. Merely, I wondered—”
“Hired you to do what?” Ms. Ashford interrupted.
I smiled. “To conduct a confidential inquiry. Did Sewall spy on Leydon when she left the hospital? That’s what she told Faith.”
Down on the beach I could see Faith waving small colored flags, trying to signal the windsurfers, who seemed to be paying no attention to her. Her fate in the Ashford family, apparently.