Peter Pan Must Die (27 page)

He noted her expression and regretted having added an unnecessary twist, which he now tried to dance away from. “My point is that the likelihood of any real problem here is minuscule, but even if it’s less than one percent, I’d like you to be as far away from it as possible.”

“But again, what about
you
? Even if it is less than one percent, which I don’t really believe …”

“Me? No need to worry. According to
New York
magazine, I’m the most successful homicide dick in the history of the Big Apple.”

His tongue-in-cheek boast was supposed to relax her.

If anything, it appeared to do the opposite.

Gurney’s GPS took him into the enclave of Venus Lake via a series of agrarian river valleys, bypassing the blight of Long Falls.

Lakeshore Drive formed a two-mile loop around a body of water that he estimated to be about a mile long and a quarter-mile wide. The loop began and ended in a postcard village at the foot of the lake. The Spalter home—an inflated imitation of a colonial farmhouse—stood on a formally landscaped multiacre property at the head of the lake.

He made a complete circuit of the road before stopping in front of Killington’s Mercantile Emporium, which—with the meticulous rusticity of its facade and window display of fly-fishing equipment, English teas, and country tweeds—appeared to Gurney to be about as authentic a representation of rural life as a scented-candle catalog.

He took out his phone and called Hardwick for the third time that morning, and for the third time was shunted into voice mail. Then he called Esti’s cell, also for the third time, but this time she picked up. “Dave?”

“Any news from Jack?”

“Yes and no. He called me at eleven forty-five last night. Didn’t sound very happy. Apparently the shooter either had a trail bike or an ATV. Jack said he could hear him in the woods near the road at one point, but that was the closest he got. So, no progress there. I think he was going to spend time today trying to track down the guys who testified against Kay.”

“What about the photos?”

“The Gurikos autopsy photos?”

“Well, those, too—but I meant the trail-cam photos. Remember the flashes we saw up in the woods after the shots hit the house?”

“According to Jack, the cameras were shattered. Apparently the shooter put a couple of bullets in each one. As for the Gurikos and the Mary Spalter autopsy stuff, I’ve got phone queries out. May have replies soon, fingers crossed.”

The next call he made was to his own home landline number.

At first there was no answer, and the call went into voice mail. He was starting to leave a panicky
Where the hell are you?
message when Madeleine picked up. “Hi. I was outside, trying to figure out the electric thing.”

“What electric thing?”

“Didn’t we agree there’d have to be an electric line running out to the chicken house?”

He suppressed a sigh of exasperation. “Yeah, I guess. I mean, it’s not … not something we need to deal with right now.”

“Okay … but shouldn’t we know where it’s going to be, so we don’t have a problem later?”

“Look, I can’t focus on this now. I’m at Venus Lake, about to interview the victim’s daughter. I need you to set up our phone to make a recording.”

“I know. You told me. I just leave the line open and turn on the recorder.”

“Right, that’s pretty much it. Except, I thought of a better way to handle it.”

She said nothing.

“You still there?”

“I’m still here.”

“Okay. Here’s what I need you to do. Call me exactly ten minutes from now. I’ll say something to you—ignore whatever it is that I say—then I’ll disconnect you. Call me back immediately. I’ll say something else and disconnect you again. Call me a third time and, no matter what I say, leave the line open at that point and turn on the recorder. Okay?”

“Why the extra complication?” There was a rising note of anxiety in her voice.

“Alyssa may assume that I’m recording the interview on my phone or that I’m transmitting it to another recorder. I want to kill that idea in her head by creating a situation that will convince her I’ve turned it off completely.”

“Okay. I’ll call you in ten minutes. Ten minutes from right now?”

“Yes.”

He slipped the phone into his shirt pocket and took a small digital recorder out of the car’s console box and clipped it to a very visible position on his belt. Then he drove from Killington’s Mercantile Emporium to the opposite end of Venus Lake—to the open wrought-iron gate and driveway that led up to the Spalter house. He passed slowly through the gate and parked where the driveway broadened in front of wide granite steps.

The front door appeared to be an antique salvaged from an older but equally prosperous home. On the wall beside it there was an intercom. He pressed the button.

A disembodied female voice said, “Come in, the door’s unlocked.”

He checked his watch. Just six minutes to Madeleine’s call. He opened the door and stepped into a large entry hall illuminated by a series of antique sconces on each wall. An arched doorway on the left opened into a formal dining room; a similar one on the right opened into a well-furnished living room with a weathered-brick fireplace a man could stand in. At the rear of the hall a polished-mahogany staircase with elaborate banisters rose to a second-floor landing.

A half-naked young woman came out onto the landing, paused, smiled, and began to descend the stairs. She was wearing only two skimpy bits of clothing—clearly designed to emphasize what they nominally concealed—a pink cutoff T-shirt that barely covered her breasts, and white shorts that covered almost nothing. An unexplained acronym, FMAD, was printed in bold black letters across the stretched fabric of her shirt.

Her face looked fresher than Gurney had expected the face of a drug addict to look. Her shoulder-length ash-blond hair was disarrayed and damp-looking, as though she’d recently come from the shower. She was barefoot. As she descended farther, he noticed that her toenails were painted a pale pink, matching the hint of pink on her lips, which were small and delicately shaped, like a doll’s.

When she reached the foot of the stairs, she paused, giving him the same sort of visual inspection he’d been giving her.

“Hi, Dave.” Her voice, like her appearance, was both vain and absurdly seductive. Her eyes, he noted with interest, were not the dull, self-pitying eyes of the average junkie. They were sky blue, clear, bright. But the chilly substance sparkling in those eyes wasn’t the innocence of youth. Far from it.

There is an interesting thing about eyes
, thought Gurney.
They contain and reflect, even in the effort of concealment, the emotional sum of everything they’ve seen
.

He cleared his throat and asked a perfunctory but necessary question. “Are you Alyssa Spalter?”

Her pink lips parted slightly, showing a row of perfect teeth.
“That’s the question cops on TV ask before they arrest somebody. Do you want to arrest me?” Her tone was playful, but her eyes weren’t.

“That’s not my plan.”

“What
is
your plan?”

“No plan. I’m here because you called me.”

“And because you’re curious?”

“I’m curious about who killed your father. You told me you knew who it was. Do you?”

“Don’t be in such a hurry. Come in and sit down.” She turned at the foot of the stairs and walked through the archway into the living room, moving on her bare feet with a kind of silkiness, like a dancer. She didn’t look back.

He followed her—thinking that he’d never before encountered such a remarkable combination of over-the-top sexuality and pure cyanide.

The room itself—with its enormous fireplace, leather-upholstered chairs, and English landscape paintings—provided a bizarre contrast to the Lolita-like figure who might soon inherit it. Or maybe not such a contrast after all, considering that the house was probably no older than Alyssa, and its outward appearance no more than a clever contrivance.

“Kinda like a museum,” she said, “but the sofa is nice and soft. I love the way it feels on my legs. Try it.”

Before he could choose a place to sit—anywhere but the sofa—his phone rang. He checked the ID. It was Madeleine, right on time. He stared at the screen with an expression of consternation, as though the caller were the last person he wanted to hear from, before pressing
TALK
.

“Yes?” He paused. “No.” He paused again before repeating, angrily now, “I said no!” He pressed
END CALL
, put the phone back in his shirt pocket, looked at Alyssa and erased his frown. “Sorry for the interruption. Where were we?”

“We were about to get comfortable.” She sat at one end of the sofa and gestured invitingly toward the cushion nearest her.

Instead he sat in a wing chair, separated from her by a coffee table.

She let a pouty little look come and go. “You want something to drink?”

He shook his head.

“Beer?”

“No.”

“Champagne?”

“No, I’m fine.”

“Martini? Negroni? Tequini? Margarita?”

“Nothing.”

The pouty look again. “You don’t drink?”

“Sometimes. Not now.”

“You sound so tense. You need to—”

His phone rang again. He checked the ID, confirmed that it was Madeleine. He let it ring three more times, as though intending to let it go to his voice mail; then, in an apparent burst of impatience, he pressed
TALK
. “What is it?” He paused. “This is not the time … For Christ’s sake …” He paused, looking increasingly annoyed. “Look. Please. I’m in the middle of something. Yes … No … NOT NOW!” He pressed
END CALL
and replaced the phone in his pocket.

Alyssa gave him a sly smile. “Girlfriend problems?”

He didn’t answer, just stared at the coffee table.

“You need to relax. All that tension, I can feel it over here. Is there anything I can do?”

“It might help if you got dressed.”

“Got dressed? I
am
dressed.”

“Not noticeably.”

Her lips parted in a slow, deliberate grin. “You’re funny.”

“Okay, Alyssa. Enough. Let’s get to the point. Why did you want to see me?”

The grin was replaced by the pouty look. “No need to sound so unfriendly. I just want to help.”

“How?”

“I want to help you understand the
reality
of the situation,” she said earnestly, as though that answer clarified everything. When Gurney just stared at her and waited, she switched back to the grin. “You positive you don’t want a drink? How about a tequila sunrise? I make a
fantastic
tequila sunrise.”

He reached with obvious casualness to his hip, scratched a nonexistent itch, and switched on the digital recorder affixed to his belt, awkwardly hiding the soft click under a loud cough.

Her grin broadened. “If you want to shut me up, sweetie, that’s the way to do it.”

“Beg pardon?”

“Beg pardon?”
There was a glint of cold amusement in her eyes.

“What’s wrong?” He projected as best he could the expression of a guilty man trying to appear innocent.

“What’s that cute little thing on your belt?”

He glanced down at his side. “Oh, that’s …” He cleared his throat. “That’s actually a recorder.”

“A recorder. No shit. Can I see it?”

He blinked. “Uh, sure.” He unclipped it and held it out across the coffee table.

She took it, studied it, switched it off, and laid it on the sofa cushion next to her.

He put on an anxious frown. “May I have that back, please?”

“Come and get it.”

He looked at her, at the recorder, back at her, cleared his throat again. “It’s a routine thing. I make a point of recording all my meetings. It can be very helpful in avoiding disputes later about what was said or what was agreed to.”

“That so? Wow. Why didn’t I think of that?”

“So, if you don’t mind, I’d like to record this meeting, too.”

“Yeah? Well, like Santa said to the greedy little boy, fuck you.”

He looked disconcerted. “Why is it such a big deal?”

“It’s not a big deal. I just don’t like being recorded.”

“I think it would be better for both of us.”

“I disagree.”

Gurney shrugged. “Okay. Fine.”

“What were you going to do with it?”

“Like I said, in case there was some dispute later …”

His phone rang for the third time. Madeleine on the ID. He pressed
TALK
.

“Jesus, what now?” he said into the phone, sounding thoroughly ticked off. Over the next ten seconds he imitated a man about to lose it completely. “I know … Right … Right … Jesus, can we talk about this LATER?… Right … Yes … I said YES.” He took the phone from his ear, glared at it as though it were the source of nothing but problems,
poked at a spot close to the
END CALL
button without breaking the connection, and put the still-transmitting phone back in his shirt pocket. He shook his head and shot Alyssa an embarrassed glance. “Jesus.”

She yawned, as though there were nothing more boring on earth than a man thinking about something other than her. Then she arched her back. The movement raised what little there was of her shirt, exposing the bottom of her breasts. “Maybe we ought to start over,” she said, nestling back into her corner of the sofa.

“Okay. But I’d like my recorder back.”

“I’ll hold on to it while you’re here. You can have it when you leave.”

“Fine. Okay.” He gave a sigh of resignation. “Back to the beginning. You were saying that you wanted me to understand the
reality
of the situation. What reality?”

“The reality is that you’re wasting your time, trying to turn everything upside down.”

“Is that what you think I’m doing?”

“You’re trying to turn the bitch loose, right?”

“I’m trying to find out who killed your father.”

“Who killed him? His whore cunt bitch wife killed him. End of story.”

“Kay Spalter, the supersniper?”

“She took lessons. It’s true. It’s
documented
.” She articulated the word reverently, as though it had magical powers of persuasion.