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.