Skeleton Key (34 page)

“Well, the idiot has probably got an ATV. That could explain it, too.”

ATV. All-Terrain Vehicle. It took a while for Gregor to translate it, and by the time he did they were in the rounded open space in front of the garage. The car sitting there, giving off waves of heat, was a Ford Taurus sedan. It was a new sedan, but as Gregor went around the back of it he could see that it was a rental, from Enterprise, one of the cheapest outfits around. Even so, if it had been his car, Gregor would have wanted to give it a better driveway.

Stacey Spratz called in their location and the phone number where they could be reached until further notice. Gregor got out of the car and looked at the house. It was a remarkable piece of architecture, and “hanging off the side of a hill” wasn't a bad way to put it, either. The thing must have been bolted into the rock. It went down a sheer cliff above a small stream, and the stream was
very
far down.

“This thing would give me nightmares,” Gregor said.

“Me, too,” Stacey said.

The front door was opened and a tall, thin, intensely well-dressed man stepped out. Gregor was interested to note that he could tell that Peter Greer was “intensely well-dressed” even though the clothes he was wearing were nominally casual—jeans, button-down shirt, sweater. The shirt was a good broadcloth, though, and the sweater was cashmere. Even the jeans looked expensive.

“Mr. Demarkian?” Peter Greer said.

“I'm Gregor Demarkian,” Gregor said.

“Mr. Greer and I have met,” Stacey Spratz said.

Peter Greer stepped back and motioned Gregor and Stacey into the house. The inside turned out to be just as spectacular as the outside had been. Just inside the door was a foyer. The ceiling of it rose two-and-a-half stories above their heads. Beyond the foyer was a living room, which also had a ceiling two-and-a-half stories tall. It also had a solid wall of windows looking out on the sheer drop and the stream below.

“This is a remarkable house,” Gregor Demarkian said.

“Yes, isn't it? Lindal Cedar Homes. That's the company that made the kit that it was built from. Custom designed, by the way. I saw an example of their work up in Salisbury and I had to have one.”

“It must have cost a lot of money.”

“I think it makes sense to spend money on where you live, don't you? After all, you're going to spend most of your time there.”

Most people spent a significant part of their time at their offices, but Gregor didn't mention it. He assumed Peter Greer worked hard enough. Starting a successful business and turning it into a player in the national market was not a hobby. He allowed himself to be led into the living room and offered a chair. The chairs, and the sofa, were all navy blue leather.

Peter Greer went to the bar built into the side of one wall and poured himself a Perrier and lime. He gestured to Stacey and Gregor, offering, but they both declined.

“So,” he said. “You've come to talk about Kayla. And to get my alibi.”

“Something like that,” Gregor agreed. “Do you have an alibi?”

“I don't know. I can't figure out what time I'd need to have an alibi for. The news reports have been very confusing.”

“Why don't you just tell me what you did on the night Kayla Anson died?”

“I worked late. I do that a lot. We have a new ad campaign ready to launch. I was checking out the print ads. We're doing some television, too—once L. L. Bean started doing television, the rest of us had to, but if you ask me, it's a pain in the ass. But I wasn't ready to look at the television stuff anyway. I just looked at the print.”

“Were you with someone while you worked?”

“I was all by myself,” Peter Greer said. “Chessy Barre would usually have been with me. She's my personal assistant.
But she'd been out all day. She had some kind of food poisoning.”

“And this was from when to when?”

“I don't know what you mean by from when to when. I got to work at eight-thirty on Friday morning. I usually do get to work at eight-thirty in the morning.”

“And you stayed at work?” Gregor asked. “All day? Without leaving?”

“Oh, no. I left at five or a little after and ran up to Subway in Watertown to get something to eat. I usually pack something from here. I hate fast food. But I hadn't intended to work late that night, so I was stuck.”

“And your office is where?”

“On the Litchfield Road, in Watertown near the Morris line.”

“And there were people who saw you at work when you left at—five?”

“Or a little after, yes. There were probably a dozen people who saw me then. We go from nine-thirty to five-thirty instead of nine to five.”

“How about when you got back? Did anybody see you then?”

“Not a soul,” Peter Greer said. “By the time I got back it was after quitting time, and they were all gone. I hear there are places in this world where people work late with joy in their hearts, but Goldenrod is not one of them.”

“Yes,” Gregor said. The FBI hadn't been one of them, either, for most of the people who worked there. “So you got back at—?”

“About six-fifteen.”

“About six-fifteen. And you stayed until when?”

“I don't remember. Eleven, eleven-thirty. Something like that.”

“And then you came home?”

“Yes.”

“Straight home?”

“Yes. There's nothing much open at that hour unless you want to go into Waterbury. And I didn't.”

“Was anybody here when you got home?”

“No,” Peter said. He finished his Perrier and went back for more. “There was a message on the answering machine, though. A message from Kayla. I didn't think anything of it at the time.”

“Did you keep it?” Stacey Spratz asked.

Peter Greer shook his head. “It wasn't a message to keep. It was mostly just hello and how are you and can we talk sometime. That kind of thing. It rather surprised me, really.”

“Why?” Gregor asked.

“Because we'd pretty much broken up,” Peter said. “I mean the whole thing was rather insane all the way along, wasn't it? She was much too young for me. I don't mean I was cradle robbing when we started seeing each other. She was eighteen, and she wasn't an unsophisticated girl. But there were—gaps. Gaps in understanding. I should have reallzed that it wouldn't work out.”

“What kind of gaps in understanding?” Gregor asked.

Peter Greer shrugged. “Gaps in understanding about work. I founded a company, and I run it. That takes a lot of time, and sometimes it means I have to take financial risks that leave me rather short of money. Kayla wasn't used to not being the center of attention and she wasn't used to not being able to do things because there simply wasn't any cash. I don't know. Maybe it was class as much as age. Do you see what I mean?”

“I see what you mean,” Gregor said. “Are you short of cash?”

“Right now? No. About three or four months after Kayla and I started dating, though, I took the company through an expansion period. It was either expand or die.”

“And you expanded.”

“Thank God,” Peter Greer said.

Gregor went to the wall of windows and looked out. He wished immediately that he hadn't. He didn't usually have a fear of heights, but this view gave him one. He retreated.

“So,” he said. “Tell me about Kayla Anson. And about
you. Where you met her. What she was like.”

“We met at the Swamp Tree Country Club,” Peter said, “which is where everybody meets everybody out here. Or at least, where everybody like us meets everybody else like us. There was a dinner dance. The club has them about once a month. Kayla was there with Margaret. Oh, and with her friend. Kayla's friend, Annabel Crawford.”

“And what was Kayla Anson like?”

Peter Greer shrugged again. “I think the tendency is to think of girls like Kayla as extraordinary—people do it with Chelsea Clinton, as well. Girls in the spotlight, so to speak, who get a lot of publicity, who have to live public lives. We like to think of them as unusual people with unusual strengths.”

“And Kayla Anson wasn't that?”

“Kayla was Kayla, that was all. She was an East Coast debutante. More intelligent than most, more grown-up than some, fairly steady emotionally and philosophically. And of course she was attractive, although she wasn't really beautiful. That's the other tendency we all have, with girls like Kayla. Even when they're plain as toast, we like to describe them as beautiful.”

“I think it's remarkable that you started a relationship—I presume a sexual relationship—with a woman you were able to look at so . . . judiciously.”

“Well,” Peter Greer said, “maybe I wasn't so judicious in the beginning.”

“What about Kayla Anson? Was she judicious about you?”

“I think she was just—bored. Bored out here. Bored with going to parties. Bored and looking for somebody or something to distract her. And I was that somebody.”

“What ended it?”

“Kayla ended it,” Peter Greer said. “One night about two months ago, right out of the blue. Although I can't really say I was all that surprised, once I thought it over. We were both just sort of marking time.”

There was a faint trilling sound. For the first few moments,
Gregor didn't recognize it as the ringing of a phone. Peter Greer did, and strode over to the end table near the couch to pick up. He said, “Peter Greer here” instead of “hello,” and then he listened.

Finally he looked up and held the phone out in Stacey Spratz's direction. Stacey was near the window wall, looking green.

“It's for you,” he said. “It's your dispatcher. She says it's urgent”

Stacey Spratz came forward and took the phone. Gregor thought he was being very careful not to look at either one of them, but that might have been nothing. That might have been Stacey still embarrassed at how badly he was taking the view. Stacey listened for a while and then grunted. He said, “Yes, yes, I understand” and “we're leaving as soon as I hang up.” Then he handed the phone back to Peter Greer and looked at Gregor.

“Jesus Christ,” he said. “There's another body in Margaret Anson's garage.”