Ellery Queen Mystery Magazine. Vol. 101, Nos. 3 & 4. Whole Nos. 610 & 611, March 1993

“Sometimes,” he said after a moment, “I forget how much that boy owes this family — and so does he.”

“Not a boy any longer,” Alan said mildly. “He’s twenty-six. But he lost a dear friend in old Mac as well as a benefactor, and he’s burned up over the funeral.”

“He’d better get over it.” Charles tapped a finger on the document he’d been studying earlier. “Now maybe this makes more sense.”

Katherine said, “What does?”

“This.” Charles showed it to her. “Came in today’s mail.”

4

He called her name and was surprised when she stopped and waited for him.

“Yes?” she said guardedly.

“I want to apologize for throwing you into that piranha tank,” Tom said. “And to offer you a ride home.”

“Why?”

“To ease my conscience. To explain what that was all about. And, of course, to find out all I can about you. You don’t have to cooperate.”

“It’s quite a ways.”

“The 405 to the 101, west to Topanga Canyon Boulevard and up into the hills. How’d you get here?”

“Hitched a ride and took a bus and hitched another ride.”

“My way’s easier.”

“...Okay.”

He brought her back up the driveway. The garage was to the right of the house, way in back.

“Who was that?” Shannon asked. “My look-alike?”

“Katherine Anne McCauley. Charles is her father. Michael J. McCauley was his father. We just came back from his funeral.”

“I guess that’s why everyone’s so... stressed out.”

“Not really. They’re a pretty stressed-out family.”

“Aren’t you one of them?”

“I’m just the gardener’s kid. Or I was. I used to help my dad out. Michael J. had just retired from the family business, against his will, and was finding it heavy going. He was a marvelous old coot, ‘Mac’ to everyone, the original nonconformist. Back in the thirties he was one of the last of the barnstormers, flying one of those old jennies held together with string and sealing wax. Flew by the seat of his pants and built a business the same way, small-time air freight, then packaging for cargoes, a few other things. Eventually the business outgrew him. Charles eased him out and McCauley, Inc., became big business.

“Mac figured being retired didn’t mean just waiting to die. He was going to spend some of his money his way and have fun. Which is where I got lucky. I was a marginal delinquent and potential dropout, but he thought I was educable. He offered to take me in and give me all the education I could handle. My dad threatened to beat me stupid if I didn’t try it. So I did. Katherine was six, just graduating from nannies to governesses.”

“Where’s your dad now?”

“Died two years later. He’d been drinking himself to death for years. My mother died in a fall down stairs at a house where she was babysitting, when I was nine.”

“What about Michael J. — Mac?”

“Inoperable cancer.”

They had come to the garage. It had only three cars in it: Katherine’s Corvette, Mac’s old blue Camaro, and Tom’s Accord, a college graduation present from Mac. The Chrysler Imperial was still at the front door waiting for someone to tuck it in for the night.

She climbed into the Accord. He studied her face through the open window for a long time.

He said abruptly, “He was getting dependant on painkillers. He decided that was no way to live, so he wrote Charles a note and checked himself out. I found him when I went to his room to see if he was coming down to breakfast. Charles suppressed the note, and Mac’s doctor certified death by natural causes instead of an overdose of sleeping pills and good brandy. Everyone knew he’d left most of his money to Katherine, so when you show up three days later, suspicions break out in a rash: you’re part of a plot to raid Mac’s estate.”

He left her window and walked around the car and got in beside her.

Shannon said, “Because I look like her.”

“Enough like her to be her twin.”

She let out a dispirited breath. Tom started the car, eased it forward on the driveway and toward the front gate.

Shannon said, “They couldn’t maybe think it’s just a coincidence, huh?”

5

It was after dark when he got back. He found Charles, Katherine, and Alan Scherer still in the library, Katherine still in her riding togs and fingering a glass of white wine. Alan had a fresh beer at his elbow.

“Learn anything?” Charles asked.

“She works at Needham’s Flower Shop and Nursery in Malibu,” Tom said. “She ran away from home at sixteen, keeps in touch with her mother but doesn’t let her know where she is. And she sticks to her story: she never knew Michael J. McCauley, just got the letter and came here and got dumped on. She thinks her resemblance to Katherine is a coincidence, someone noticed it and sent the letter as a practical joke.”

“Do you think Mac wrote it?”

“No idea. Ask the experts.”

“Let’s keep this in the family for now,” Charles said.

“One interesting item: Shannon’s birth date. December thirteenth, nineteen seventy-three — the day after Katherine’s.”

A protesting sound came from Katherine’s throat. The stem of her wineglass snapped loudly. Her hands flew apart and wine spilled. The pieces of the glass thudded to the carpet.