Peter Pan Must Die (26 page)

So he drove on, conflicted, coming eventually to the turn-off for his hilltop property. He drove slowly because deer had a way of leaping out of nowhere. He’d hit a fawn in the not-too-distant past, and the sickening feeling was still with him.

At the top of the road he stopped to let a porcupine move out of the way. He watched as it waddled off into the high grass on the rise above the barn. Porcupines had a bad reputation, earned by chewing up just about everything, from the siding on homes to the brake lines on cars. The farmer down the road had advised shooting them on sight. “They’re a world of trouble and good for nothing.” But Gurney had no heart for that, and Madeleine would never tolerate it.

He put the car back in gear and was about to head up the grassy lane to the farmhouse when something bright caught his eye. It was in one of the barn windows—a gleaming point of light. It occurred to him that perhaps a light in the barn had been left on—maybe by Madeleine when she last fed the chickens. But that bulb was relatively dim, with a yellowish cast, and this light in the window was sharp and white. As Gurney peered at it, it grew more intense.

He switched off his headlights. After sitting there mystified for a few more seconds, he picked up Hardwick’s heavy metal flashlight from the passenger seat without turning it on, got out of the car, and walked toward the barn—guided through the darkness by that strange point of light, which seemed to move as he moved.

Then he realized with a touch of gooseflesh that the light wasn’t in the barn at all. It was a reflection—a reflection on the window of a light somewhere
behind
him. He turned quickly, and there it was—a powerful light gleaming through the line of trees along the top of the ridge behind the pond. The first thought that came to mind was that it was a halogen searchlight mounted on an ATV.

In the barn behind him, perhaps in response to this illumination, the rooster crowed.

Gurney looked again at the ridge—at the swelling, brightening light behind the trees. And then, of course, it was obvious. As it should have been from the first instant. No mystery at all. No strange vehicle
probing the high forest. Nothing out of the ordinary. Just a full moon rising on a clear night.

He felt like a fool.

His phone rang.

It was Madeleine. “Is that you down by the barn?”

“Yes, it’s me.”

“Someone just called for you. Are you on your way up?” Her voice was distinctly cool.

“Yes, I was just checking something. Who was it?”

“Alyssa.”

“What?”

“A woman, by the name of Alyssa.”

“Did she give you a last name?”

“I asked her for that. She said you’d probably know her last name, and if you didn’t, there wasn’t much point in talking to you anyway. She sounded either stoned or crazy.”

“Did she leave a number?”

“Yes, it’s here.”

“I’ll be right up.”

Two minutes later, at 10:12 p.m., he was standing in the kitchen with his phone, entering the number.

Madeleine was at the sink island in her pink and yellow summer pajamas, putting away a few pieces of silverware left in the dish drainer.

His call was answered on the third ring—by a voice that was both husky and delicate. “Could this be Detective Gurney calling me back?”

“Alyssa?”

“The one and only.”

“Alyssa Spalter?”

“Alyssa Spalter, who was left at the altar, just wearing a halter.” She sounded like a twelve-year-old who’d been at her parents’ liquor cabinet.

“What can I do for you?”

“You want to do something for me?”

“You called here a little while ago. What do you want?”

“I want to be helpful. That’s all I want.”

“How do you want to help?”

“You want to know who killed Cock Robin?”

“What?”

“How many murders are you involved in?”

“Are you talking about your father?”

“Who do you think?”

“Do you know who killed your father?”

“King Carl? Course I do.”

“Tell me.”

“Not on the phone.”

“Why not?”

“Come see me, then I’ll tell you.”

“Give me a name.”

“I’ll give you a name. When I get to know you better. I give all my boyfriends special names. So when am I going to meet you?”

Gurney said nothing.

“You still there?” Her tone was wandering fluidly back and forth between clarity and intoxication.

“I’m here.”

“Ah. That’s the problem. You need to come
here
.”

“Alyssa … you either know something useful, or you don’t. You’re either going to tell me what it is, or you’re not. Up to you. Decide now.”

“I know everything.”

“Okay. Tell me about it.”

“No way. Phone might be tapped. Such a scary world we live in. They tap everything. Tippety, tippety, tap. But you’re a detective, so you know all that. Bet you even know where I live.”

Gurney said nothing.

“Bet you know where I live, right?”

Again, he said nothing.

“Yeah, I bet you do.”

“Alyssa? Listen to me. If you want to tell—”

She interrupted with an exaggerated, slurry seductiveness that might have been comical in other circumstances. “So … I’ll be here all night. And all day tomorrow. Come as soon as you can. Please. I’ll be waiting for you. Waiting just for you.”

The connection was broken.

Gurney laid his phone down and looked at Madeleine. She was studying a fork she was about to put in the silverware drawer. She frowned, turned on the water in the sink, and began scrubbing it. Then she rinsed it, dried it, examined it again, seemed satisfied, and placed it in the drawer.

“I think you were right,” said Gurney.

The frown came back, but now it was directed at him. “About what?”

“About the young woman being stoned or crazy.”

She smiled humorlessly. “What does she want?”

“Good question.”

“What does she
say
she wants?”

“To see me. To tell me who killed her father.”

“Carl Spalter?”

“Yes.”

“Are you going to see her?”

“Maybe.” He paused, thinking about it. “Probably.”

“Where?”

“Where she’s living. The family house on Venus Lake. Out by Long Falls.”

“
Venus
as in the goddess of love?”

“I guess.”

“And
venereal
disease?”

“I suppose.”

“Nice name for a lake.” She paused. “You said ‘the family house.’ Her father’s dead and her stepmother’s in prison. Who else is in the family?”

“As far as I know, no one. Alyssa’s the only child.”

“Quite a
child
. You’re going there alone?”

“Yes and no.”

She looked at him curiously.

“Maybe with some simple electronic backup.”

“You mean you’re going to be wired?”

“Not like on television, with a van full of electronics geeks and satellite equipment sitting around the corner. I’m thinking a low-tech substitute. Are you going to be home tomorrow or at the clinic?”

“I’m working in the afternoon. I should be here most of the morning. Why?”

“What I’m thinking is this. When I get to Venus Lake, before I go into the house itself, I could call our landline from my cell phone. When you pick up and confirm that it’s me, you just switch on the recorder. I’ll leave my phone on, in my shirt pocket. It may not transmit everything with ideal clarity, but it’ll provide some record of what’s said in my meeting with her, which might turn out to be useful.”

Madeleine looked doubtful. “That’s fine for
later
, to prove whatever you want to prove, but … it’s not exactly protection while you’re there. In the two minutes Alyssa was on the phone with me, I did get a strong impression that she might be nuts. Dangerously nuts.”

“Yeah, I know. But—”

She cut him off. “Don’t tell me how many dangerously nutty people you had to deal with in the city. That was then, this is now.” She paused, as if questioning the reality of the then/now distinction. “How much do you know about this person?”

He thought about it. Kay had said plenty about Alyssa. But how much of it was true was another question.

“How much do I know about her
for sure
? Almost nothing. Her stepmother
claims
she’s a drug addict and a liar. She
may
have had sex with her father. She
may
have had sex with Mick Klemper to influence the outcome of the investigation. She
may
have framed her stepmother for murder. She
may
have been stoned out of her mind on the phone with me just now. Or she
may
have been putting on a bizarre act—for God only knows what reason.”

“Do you know anything positive about her?”

“I can’t say that I do.”

“Well … it’s your decision.” She closed the silverware drawer a little more firmly than necessary. “But I think that meeting with her in her house by yourself is a terrible idea.”

“I wouldn’t do it if we couldn’t set up the phone thing for protection.”

Madeleine nodded ever so slightly, somehow managing to convey with that restrained gesture a clear message:
It’s far too risky, but I know I can’t stop you
.

Then she added something, aloud. “Have you made that appointment yet?”

He realized that she’d switched subjects, and that the segue itself was fraught with meaning, which he pretended not to grasp. “What appointment?”

She stood there by the sink, her hands resting on the rim of it, fixing him with a patient, disbelieving stare.

“Are you talking about Malcolm Claret?” he asked.

“Yes. Who did you think?”

He shook his head in a kind of helpless gesture. “There’s a limit to the number of things I can keep in my mind at once.”

“What time are you leaving tomorrow?”

He sensed another change of direction. “For Venus Lake? Maybe nine or so. I doubt that Miss Alyssa gets up very early. Why?”

“I want to work on the chicken house. I thought maybe if you had a few free minutes you could explain the next steps so I could make a little progress before I go to the clinic. It’s supposed to be a nice morning.”

Gurney sighed. He tried to focus on the chicken project—the basic geometry, how far they’d gotten with their measurements, the materials that needed to be purchased, what had to happen next—but he couldn’t wrap his mind around it. It was as if the Spalter issues and the chicken issues required two different brains. And then there was the Hardwick situation. Each time his mind went back to it, he regretted his decision to do as the man had asked.

He promised Madeleine he’d deal later with the chicken house issue, went into the den, and called Hardwick’s cell number.

Unsurprisingly—and frustratingly—it went directly to voice mail.

“Hardwick—leave a message.”

“Hey, Jack, what’s happening out there? Where are you? Let me know. Please.”

Finally realizing that his brain had reached a useless point of exhaustion, Gurney joined Madeleine in bed. But sleep, when it eventually came, was hardly sleep at all. His mind was stuck in one of those feverish, shallow, circular ruts—in which the ID and the directive,
“Hardwick—leave a message,”
kept recurring in all sorts of twisted permutations.

Gurney waited until the following morning to tell Madeleine about the power-line drama at Hardwick’s house. When he completed his much abridged rendition of the incident, she sat quietly watching him, as if waiting for the other shoe to fall.

The other shoe was the one he was afraid to drop, but felt he had to. “I think, as a precaution—” he began, but she finished his thought for him.

“I should move out of the house for a while. Is that what you were going to say?”

“It’s just to be on the safe side. Just for a few days. My feeling is that this guy made his point and isn’t likely to repeat the performance, but still … I want you to be away from any possible danger until the issue is resolved.”

Anticipating the same angry reaction she’d had to a similar suggestion he’d made a year earlier during the unnerving Jillian Perry case, he was caught off-balance by her evident lack of objection. Her first question was surprisingly practical: “How many days are we talking about?”

“I’d only be guessing. But … maybe three, four? Depends on how soon we can eliminate the problem.”

“Three or four days starting when?”

“Hopefully by tomorrow night? I was thinking maybe you could invite yourself to your sister’s place down in—”

“I’ll be at the Winklers’.”

“You’ll be where?”

“I knew you wouldn’t remember. The Winklers. At their farm. In Buck Ridge.”

It rang a distant bell in his memory.

“The people with the odd animals?”

“Alpacas. And you also remember that I offered to go there to help them take care of things during the fair?”

A second distant bell. “Ah. Yes. Right.”

“And that the fair starts this weekend?”

A third distant bell. “Right.”

“So that’s where I’ll be. At the fair with them and at their farm. I was going to go the day after tomorrow, but I’m sure they won’t mind me coming a day early. In fact, they had invited me to stay the whole week. I was going to take a few days off from the clinic. You know, we
did
discuss this when they first brought it up.”

“I have a vague recollection. I guess it just seemed so far away at the time. But that’s fine—a lot more convenient than going down to your sister’s or something like that.”

Her easy manner stiffened. “But what about you? If it makes sense for
me
not to be here …”

“I’ll be fine. Like I said, the shooter was delivering a message. He seems to know that Hardwick is responsible for stirring up the Spalter case, so it makes sense that he addressed his nasty little message to him. Besides, in the highly unlikely event that he wants to make his presence known a second time, I may be able to take advantage of that.”

Her face was full of anxious confusion, as if she were wrestling with a major contradiction.