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fifty-three years old, Phillip Carter was a familiar figure in the Danbury area.
    He regularly worked at his desk for several hours after everyone else had left for the day because, since a number of clients and candidates were located in the Midwest and on the West Coast, early evening in the East was a good time to contact them. Since the night of the bridge tragedy, Phillip rarely left the office before eight o’clock.
    When Meghan called at five of eight this evening, he was reaching for his coat. “I was afraid it was coming to this,” he said after she’d told him about the visit from the insurers. “Can you come in tomorrow around noon?”
    After he hung up he sat for a long time at his desk. Then he picked up the phone and called his accountant. “I think we’d better audit the books right now,” he said quietly.
9
    W hen Meghan arrived at the Collins and Carter Executive Search offices at two o’clock on Saturday, she found three men working with calculators at the long table that usually held magazines and plants. She did not need Phillip Carter’s explanation to confirm that they were auditors. At his suggestion, they went into her father’s private office.
    She had spent a sleepless night, her mind a battleground of questions, doubts and denial. Phillip closed the door and indicated one of the two chairs in front of the desk. He took the other one, a subtlety she appreciated. It would have hurt to see him behind her father’s desk.
    She knew Phillip would be honest with her. She asked, “Phillip, do you think it’s remotely possible that my father is still alive and chose to disappear?”
    The momentary pause before he spoke was answer enough. “You
do
think that?” she prodded.
    â€œMeg, I’ve lived long enough to know that anything is possible. Frankly, the Thruway investigators and the insurers have been around here for quite a while asking some pretty direct questions. A couple of times I’ve wanted to toss them out bodily. Like everyone else, I expected Ed’s car, or wreckage from it, would be recovered. It’s possible that a lot of it would have been carried downstream by the tide or become lodged in the riverbed, but it doesn’t help that not a trace of the car has been found. So to answer you, yes, it’s possible. And no, I can’t believe your father capable of a stunt like that.”
    It was what she expected to hear, but that didn’t makeit easier. Once when she was very little, Meghan had tried to take a burning piece of bread out of the toaster with a fork. She felt as though she was experiencing again the vivid pain of electrical current shooting through her body.
    â€œAnd of course it doesn’t help that Dad took the cash value out of his policies a few weeks before he disappeared.”
    â€œNo, it doesn’t. I want you to know that I’m doing the audit for your mother’s sake. When this becomes public knowledge, and be sure it will, I want to be able to have a certified statement that our books are in perfect order. This sort of thing starts rumors flying, as you can understand.”
    Meghan looked down. She had dressed in jeans and a matching jacket. It occurred to her that this was the kind of outfit the dead woman was wearing when she was brought into Roosevelt Hospital. She pushed the thought away. “Was my father a gambler? Would that explain his need for a cash loan?”
    Carter shook his head. “Your father wasn’t a gambler, and I’ve seen enough of them, Meg.” He grimaced. “Meg, I wish I could find an answer, but I can’t. Nothing in Ed’s business or personal life suggested to me that he would choose to disappear. On the other hand, the lack of physical evidence from the crash is necessarily suspicious, at least to outsiders.”
    Meghan looked at the desk, the executive swivel chair behind it. She could picture her father sitting