been in all the papers, and still cropped up from time to time, perhaps
because the police had never solved the case.
His father's case, Michael recalled.
That had been the year Michael had been named MVP on his Little League
team. And his father had missed most of the games. And a lot of
dinners.
It had been a long time ago, Michael mused, but he wondered if his
father ever thought about Brian McAvoy and his dead son. Or the little
girl who had taken the picture. Some people said that she'd seen what
had happened to her brother and had gone crazy. But she hadn't looked
crazy when Michael had met her. He remembered her only vaguely as a
slight girl with pale hair and big sad eyes. And a soft, prettily
accented voice, he recalled now. A voice a lot like her father's.
Poor kid, he thought as he placed the tassel over the snapshot. He
wondered what had ever happened to her.
EMmA COULDN'T BELIEVE her time was almost up. In less than a week she
would head back to New York and Saint Catherine's. true, she missed
Marianne. It would take weeks for them to talk through all the things
that had happened over the summer. The best summer of her life, even
though they'd only spent two weeks of it in New York.
They'd flown to London to film part of a recording session for a new
documentary, and had had tea at the Ritz just as she and Bev had so many
years before. She'd been able to spend time with Johnno and Stevie and
P.M., listening to them play, eating fish and chips in the kitchen while
they discussed their next album.
She'd taken rolls of pictures and could hardly wait to store them in her
photo album where she could look at them over and over and relive the
memories.
Her father had treated her to her first grown-up salon session as an
early birthday gift. Now her shoulder-length hair was permed in
corkscrew curls that made her feel very grown-up.
And she was starting to develop.
Emma took a quick, surreptitious look down at her bikini top. They
weren't much as breasts went, but at least she wouldn't be as easily
mistaken for a boy. And she was tanned. Emma hadn't been too certain
she would enjoy spending her last weeks in California, but the tan made
it worthwhile.
And there was the surfing. She'd had to launch a major campaign before
Brian had agreed to let her try her hand at shooting the waves. Emma
knew she had Johnno to thank for the bright red board. If he hadn't
joked and teased Brian into it, she would still be whiling away her
hours on the beach watching everyone else skim the water.
Maybe she couldn't do much more than paddle out and fall in, but at
least the process took her farther away from the bodyguards who sweated
under nearby beach umbrellas. It was ridiculous, she thought as she
carried her board toward the water. No one even knew who she was.
Each year she was sure her father would let them go, and each year they
remained with their solemn faces and big shoulders. At least they
couldn't follow her out here, she thought as she stretched out on her
board and began to paddle through the cool water. Though she knew they