Ellery Queen Mystery Magazine 09/01/12 (3 page)

“Peter Pan,” I
said.

“That’s Jack, my eternal teenager. I’m sorry about what happened to Miss
Sinclair, Detective, but my husband was not involved, nor was I. If you could keep
our problems out of the press, I would be
very
grateful.”

The stress
on
very
raised my eyebrows.

“A scandal could cost Jack his job and
his work is terribly important to him. If any expenses come up, I’ll be happy to
cover them.”

“I’ll see what I can do, Mrs. Milano. If I run into any expenses,
I’ll let you know. Thanks for your time.”

She walked me to the door. I half
expected her to slip me a tenner, like a bellhop.

Under ordinary
circumstances, I would have been annoyed at being offered a payoff. Not this time.
If she hadn’t offered, I would have asked.

I wanted that particular door left
open. If it turned out that I wanted to meet her husband in some secluded spot,
collecting a bribe would be a useful excuse.

But I didn’t think I’d need it.
Lying is a social skill that requires practice. Tess Milano was a handsome woman
born to a family with money. She was used to giving orders and seeing people jump.
She probably didn’t lie often enough to get good at it.

She’d told me her
story straight out, no signs of evasion. Didn’t echo questions, look away, or
stammer. Her hands were rock steady. I was fairly sure she’d told me the
truth.

Or what she believed the truth to be.

Sherry wasn’t a problem for
the Milanos because Tess bought her off. Would Sherry have taken the money? In a
heartbeat.

A quick check of her bank account would confirm the story, but I
didn’t doubt it much. Milano wasn’t the man Sherry wanted in her life, and if she
could cash out while getting rid of him, all the better.

Not the Milanos,
then.

As I walked out, Sherry’s face was on all three screens. And it occurred
to me that for the first time, she was exactly where she’d always wanted to be.
Right in the middle of things.

But not like this. Not like
this.

 
If Milano was out of the picture, that moved Rob Gilchrist
directly into my sights. A trickier business. I’d been able to beat Zina to the
Milanos because I had inside information and Milano wasn’t an obvious suspect. But
as Sherry’s current boyfriend, Rob would be at the top of the suspect list.
Approaching him openly could get me suspended, maybe fired, and I didn’t want that.
Not yet, anyway.

The problem solved itself. Rob found me first.

I was in
my office at Hauser Center when I got a buzz from the corporal on the front
desk.

“Sergeant LaCrosse? You’ve got a visitor, says he’s an old friend. A Mr.
Gilchrist?”

“Rob Gilchrist? Send him up.”

Calling us friends was a
little strong. Robbie Gilchrist was a local legend. Two years ahead of me in
Valhalla High School, he was a basketball star, a deadeye shooting guard. I played
hockey. Our sports shared the same season, so we passed in the locker room and hit
some of the same parties. We weren’t pals, but I knew who he was.

Everybody
knew who Rob was. The Gilchrists are old Valhalla lumber money. They arrived with
the timber trains that harvested the virgin forest like a field of wheat.

My
people, the Metis, showed up around the same time, fleeing a failed rebellion
against the Canadian government. In Canada, we’d been woodsmen, trappers, and
traders.
Voyageurs.

In Michigan, we became loggers, axe men, saw men,
top men. The LaCrosses and our kin did the grueling, dangerous work that made the
Gilchrists rich. When the timber was gone, the Metis stayed on, doing whatever work
came to hand.

Merchants, mechanics, carpenters.

Cops.

I hadn’t
seen Robbie in a few years. Tall and blond, he was a golden boy, blessed with looks
and the money to dress well. He didn’t flaunt it, though. He was wearing a lambskin
sport coat over a blue chambray shirt, fashionably faded jeans, no tie.
North-country high fashion.

In school, he’d been a party animal, but it hadn’t
marked him much. Only his eyes had changed. They were wary now. Haunted. Maybe by
Sherry’s death. Maybe something else.

“Dylan,” he said curtly. We shook hands
and he dropped into the chair facing my desk.

“I’ve got a huge problem,” he
said. “Can we talk off the record?”

“That depends. Are we talking about
Sherry?”

He nodded. “I could use some help.”

“What kind of help?” I kept
my tone casual. “Did you have anything to do with that?”

“No.
Hell
no!” He stiffened in his chair. “Sherry was a great kid. One of the best friends
I’ve ever had.”

“More than a friend, I think.”

“No,” he said, meeting my
eyes dead-on. “That’s my problem. We weren’t.”

“I’m not following you,
Rob.”

He took a deep breath. “How much do you know about my family,
Dylan?”

“The basics, I guess. Old money. One way or another, a third of the
county probably works for you.”

“Not for me, pal. Not even for my father. My
grandfather Asa totally controls the finances. Eighty years old and bedridden, the
old bastard won’t let go.”

He waited for a comment. I didn’t make
one.

“The thing is, the old man’s got this . . . obsession about our family
tree, Dylan. He wants to live forever. He thinks a part of him will continue on
after he’s gone. Through us.”

“Maybe he’s right. So what?”

“He’s been
pushing me hard to get married, have a family of my own. Not my two sisters, mind
you, just me. I’m the one with the name. He liked Sherry a lot. Used to watch her do
the TV news every night. She’s pretty, she’s smart. He thought we were a perfect
match.”

“But you didn’t?”

Rob took a deep breath, then faced me
squarely. “The truth is, if I wanted a mate, you’d be closer to my type than Sherry
was.”

I didn’t say anything. Just stared. “But you always dated girls. Stone
foxes . . .” I broke off. Getting it. “My God. Sherry was a front for you, wasn’t
she? They all were.”

“She was the best of them,” he admitted. “When we were
together, everybody focused on her. Thought I was the luckiest guy in the world. We
had an arrangement. I paid for her apartment, plus some pocket money. My grandfather
thought I was keeping her.”

“I guess you were.”

“But it was strictly
business,” he said, leaning forward intently. “It kept the old man pacified, kept my
inheritance intact, saved Sherry the rent. Win, win, all around.”

“Why all the
drama, Rob? Nobody hides in the closet anymore.”

“You think because the army
takes gays now, everything’s so different?”

“The army always had
gays.”

“Not my grandfather’s army. We can march down main street in Frisco or
New York, but in wood-smoke country? You grew up here, Dylan. Ten miles inshore, it
might as well be nineteen twelve. Or maybe eighteen twelve. You know it’s
true.”

“In some ways it is,” I conceded. “Did you know Sherry was
pregnant?”

“She told me. And before you ask, the answer is no. There was no
chance I was the father.”

“How did that affect your
arrangement?”

“Actually, I thought it might make things even better. We talked
about getting married. I mean, why not? Our arrangement could stay basically the
same, my grandfather would come across with my inheritance and die happy. A quiet
divorce later on. Sherry and the kid would be set for life.”

“What did she
say?”

“She said there were limits to her hypocrisy, but she didn’t rule it
out. Women in my family don’t work, and Sherry loved her job. That was a problem,
and it wasn’t the only one. When I told my grandfather about the kid, I thought he’d
be over the moon. He was. But since we weren’t married . . .”

“He wanted her
to get tested,” I finished.

Rob nodded. “He insisted. I thought there might be
a way to fake the test. Sherry said she’d look into it and that’s where we left it.
Until this morning.”

I was staring at him.

“What?” he
asked.

“You’ve told me a lot more than you had to, Rob. You could have backed
off, taken cover behind your lawyers. Why didn’t you? What do you want from
me?”

“I need your help, Dylan,” he said, leaning in. “I know I’m going to be a
suspect. The boyfriend always is. I need you to know I had no wish at all to harm
Sherry, nor any reason to.”

“You want me to control the investigation, to make
sure your private life stays . . . private.”

“I understand I’m asking for
special treatment,” he said carefully. “I don’t expect anything for free. Give me a
number.”

“Wow. Everybody’s trying to buy me off today,” I said. “It’s a damned
shame.”

“What is?”

“If you’re clear of this thing, Rob, I’ll keep your
arrangement quiet to protect Sherry. No charge. But if you’re involved in any way at
all? It doesn’t matter how much money you’ve got. It won’t be
enough.”

 
After Rob Gilchrist left, I sat at my desk, staring at the
wall. Not seeing it. Not seeing anything, really.

I’ve probably worked a
hundred homicides. I lost count in Detroit. For the most part, murder is about love,
money, or drugs. Domestic abusers blow up, a drug deal goes bad. Violence can cook
for years or explode in an instant. But none of the usual elements seemed to apply
here.

Sherry asked me to check out the men in her life, so I assumed one or
the other might be involved. But Milano had a solid alibi and Rob had every reason
in the world to want her alive and well.

According to him.

Could Sherry
have been blackmailing him about their setup? Not a chance. If he’d killed her to
keep the secret, why would he tell me about it?

No matter how I worked the
facts, I couldn’t make ’em compute. Rob was telling the truth. He hadn’t done this.
Maybe I’d been working the wrong track. Maybe Sherry’s death had nothing to do with
her love life at all.

What did that leave? A story she was working on? I had a
huge roadblock there. Zee would already be working that angle. She’d have access to
any hate mail or threats Sherry had received. Trying to get access to them through
channels could get me suspended.
If
I went after them directly.

But
there might be another way.

I had an inside connection at the station. Not
family exactly, but not far from it.

A Metis.

The first Frenchmen, the
voyageurs,
began arriving in the lake country around 1540. They came
for the fur trade. They mapped the land, built outposts, and then homes. They
brought no women with them, but human nature being what it is, a new race of beige
babies was soon playing along the lakeshore.

We are the Metis (May-tee).
Dark-haired people with natural tans and hybrid genes. Born survivors.

Max
Gillard isn’t a relative, but he’s Metis. He served in Kuwait with my Uncle Armand
and they’re still poker buddies. In the north, that’s enough of a bond to earn me a
favor.

After the war, Max hired on to WNTB-TV as a technician. He’s a head
cameraman and de facto news director now. A busy man.

He agreed to meet me for
coffee in the station cafeteria, a brightly lit room with metal chairs,
stainless-steel fixtures. We took a table in the corner, away from the other
staffers.

Max is my uncle’s age, but the years have been harder on him. He
looked hollow-eyed, burned-out.

But still formidable. He’s built like a
blacksmith: blunt fingers, a square face, sideburns going silver. He was dressed in
a white shirt and tie, but his sleeves were rolled up, revealing powerful
wrists.

“We need to keep this short,” Max said, glancing around uneasily.
“Milano called the station from New York. Says he’ll have the balls of anybody talks
to the police without clearing every word with him.”

“My uncle says you used
to run straight into shellfire to get a picture, Max. Don’t tell me you’re afraid of
a city-boy suit like Milano?”

I’d hoped to josh him along, but the glare I got
was no joke. He eyed me like a stranger.

“You don’t know, do you? About my
wife?”

“Margo? What about her?”

He glanced away, taking a breath. “She’s
got MS, Dylan. Multiple sclerosis. She’s bedridden most of the time now. The bills
are killing me. I’m working double shifts to keep from losing the
house.”

“Damn. I’m sorry, Max, I didn’t know. What about your insurance?
Doesn’t it—?”

“It covers ninety percent,” he said flatly. “Which sounds
terrific until you total up what an overnight stay in the hospital costs these days.
So, yeah, I do worry about a puffed-up city boy like Milano. I need my damn job,
Dylan. What do you need?”

“Nothing,” I said, rising to go. “I didn’t mean to
put you in the middle of—”

“Sit down, damn it,” he growled. “I’m not so
spooked I can’t help a buddy’s favorite nephew. You probably want to know about
threats? Stuff like that?”

“Did she get any?”

“By the bale. Every
station gets a steady stream nowadays. Any twit with a laptop can flame us, fire off
an e-mail that would bring down the FBI if they were on paper. The problem is,
there’s so much of it, nobody takes it seriously. I’ve already bundled the top
twenty from the past few months. I gave ’em to Redfern. Didn’t she tell
you?”

I didn’t say anything.

Max cocked his head, eyeing me. “I wondered
if Chief Kazmarek knew about you and Sherry.” He nodded. “You’re not assigned to
this case, are you?”

“I’m working it off the books.”

“I’ve covered
stories with Redfern a few times,” he said. “She seemed plenty sharp to
me.”

“Zina’s a good cop, and she’s thorough,” I said. “She’ll track down every
name you gave her. But you’re a local, Max. You know which threats were from flakes
and which were serious. I want the short list. Who should I be looking
at?”