Lucy's father owned the camp."
"Right."
"Nasty?"
"I don't know. I wasn't that involved."
"But you guys won?"
"Sure. It was a summer camp with practically no security." I squirmed when I said that. "The families got Silverstein's biggest asset."
"The camp itself."
"Yep. We sold the land to a developer."
"All of it?"
"There was a provision involving the woods. It's fairly unusable land, so it's held in some kind of public trust. You can't build on it."
"Is the camp still there?"
I shook my head. "The developer tore down the old cabins and built some gated community." "How much did you guys get?" "After lawyer fees, each family ended up with more than eight hundred grand."
Her eyes widened. "Wow."
"Yeah. Losing a child is a great moneymaker."
"I didn't mean-"
I waved her off. "I know. I'm just being an ass."
She didn't argue. "It must have changed things," Muse said.
I didn't answer right away. The money had been held in a joint ac count. My mother took off with a hundred grand. She left the rest for us. Generous of her, I guess. Dad and I moved out of Newark, moved to a decent place in Montclair. I had already gotten a scholarship to Rutgers, but now I set my sights on Columbia Law in New York. I met Jane there.
"Yeah," I said. "It changed things."
"Do you want to know more about your old flame?"
I nodded.
"She went to UCLA. Majored in psychology. She got a graduate degree from USC in the same, another in English from Stanford. I don't have her entire work history yet, but she's currently down the road at Reston U. Started last year. She, uh, she got two DUIs when she lived in California. One in 2001. Another in 2003. Pleaded out both times. Other than that, her record is clean."
I sat there. DUI. That didn't sound like Lucy. Her father, Ira, the head counselor, had been a major stoner-so much so that she'd had no interest in anything that would provide a high. Now she had two DUIs. It was hard to fathom. But of course, the girl I knew was not even of legal drinking age. She had been happy and a little naive and well-adjusted, and her family had money and her father was a seemingly harmless free spirit.
All that had died that night in the woods too.
"Another thing," Muse said. She shifted in the seat, aiming for nonchalance. "Lucy Silverstein, aka Gold, isn't married. I haven't done all the checking yet, but from what I see, she's never been married either."
I didn't know what to make of that. It certainly had no bearing on what was going on now. But it still pierced me. She was such a lively thing, so bright and energetic and so damn easy to love. How could she have remained single all these years? And then there were those DUIs.
"What time does her class end?" I asked.
"Twenty minutes."
"Okay. I'll call her then. Anything else?"
"Wayne Steubens doesn't allow visitors, except for his immediate family and lawyer. But I'm working on it. I got some other coals in the fire, but that's about it for now." "Don't spend too much time on it." "I'm not.
I looked at the clock. Twenty minutes.
"I should probably go," Muse said.
"Yeah."
She stood. "Oh, one more thing."
"What?"
"Do you want to see a picture of her?"
I looked up.
"Reston University has faculty pages. There are pictures of all the professors." She held up a small piece of paper. "I got the URL right here." She didn't wait for my reply. She dropped the address on the table and left me alone.
I had twenty minutes. Why not?
I brought up my default page. I use one with Yahoo where you can choose a lot of your content. I had news, my sports teams, my two favorite comic strips -Doonesbury and FoxTrot - stuff like that. I typed in the Reston University Web site page Muse had given me.
And there she was.
It wasn't Lucy's most flattering photograph. Her smile was tight, her expression grim. She had posed for the picture, but you could see that she really didn't want to. The blond hair was gone. That happens with age, I know, but I had a feeling that it was intentional. The color didn't look right on her. She was older-duh-but as I had predicted, it worked on her. Her face was thinner. The high cheekbones were more pronounced.
And damn if she didn't still look beautiful.
Looking at her face, something long dormant came alive and started twisting in my gut.