An Imperfect Spy by Amanda Cross

Author:Amanda Cross [Cross, Amanda]
Language: eng
Format: epub, mobi
Tags: cookie429, Kat, Extratorrents
ISBN: 9780307802156
Publisher: Random House Publishing Group
Published: 2011-07-19T14:00:00+00:00

Who owns him? she wondered helplessly.

Who writes his lines and gives him his directions?

—JOHN LE CARRÉ

THE LITTLE DRUMMER GIRL

Six

CHARLES Rosenbusch lived in a small house that faced on the square of a small New Hampshire village. There was a church, a graveyard, a common, and one or two other houses. Kate knocked at the door of the wrong house before having the right one pointed out to her. Rosenbusch did not respond to a knock on his front door, and Kate finally trailed around to the back to find him, or at least a man, clearing bushes at the edge of his back field.

“I’m looking for Charles Rosenbusch,” Kate called out, after her hello had made him raise his head. He turned back to his bushes. “It’s about your sister, Nellie,” Kate added. She began to feel that she was making a fool of herself, and had come on a mindless excursion; if she had had a rational reason, it seemed to be escaping her now. Really, she should listen to Reed when contemplating this sort of idiocy.

But Rosenbusch had dropped the tools with which he had been attacking the undergrowth, and walked toward her.

“You knew Nellie?” he asked.

“I’m grappling with her memory and her death,” Kate said. “Could I take a moment to explain?”

“You didn’t know her.” It was a statement.

“Give me ten minutes to explain,” Kate said. “Standing right here. We’ll synchronize our watches. If in ten minutes you say go, I’ll go.”

He took her at her word, literally, glancing at his watch as she glanced at hers. There was no need to synchronize them; ten minutes is ten minutes. I’ve seen too many war movies, Kate told herself. They stood, perhaps three feet apart, his defensive stance daring her to interest him.

“I am teaching at Schuyler Law School this semester; I’m a professor of literature, on leave from my regular job, teaching a course on law and literature with Blair Whitson. He was a friend of Nellie’s. Blair and I have questions about Nellie’s death. There is little chance of proving anything, one way or the other, but we would like to know more about Nellie, for our own sakes, and because something she knew may help us to bring those who tormented her—and she was tormented—to justice, if not for her murder, at least for something. You are the only person who may be able to tell us something about her. I want to know if you saw her in the months before her death, and if she told you anything that might be of use to us in learning what was on her mind toward the end of her life.”

“Did you talk to our parents? Is that how you heard of me?”

“No. I found a picture of you and Nellie among her belongings. They are in a storeroom, since apparently neither you nor your parents wanted them. Blair knew it was you in the picture. I found out your address from a poet friend of mine.

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