“Can I help?” Peggy asked. She looked liked she was trying to assess Madeleine’s tone.
“No, everything is just about ready. Thanks, anyway.”
“You sure?”
“Sure.”
After another querying look, she retreated with the two men to three overstuffed chairs at the other end of the room. “Okay,” she said to Gurney as soon as they were settled, “tell us the story.”
By the time Madeleine called them to the table for dinner, it was getting close to six o’clock and Gurney had related a reasonably complete history of the case to date, including its twists and open ends. His narrative had been dramatic without being gory, suggestive of possible sexual entanglements without implying that they were the essence of the case, and as coherent as the facts permitted. The Meekers had been attentive, listening with care and saying nothing.
At the table-halfway into the spinach, walnut, and Stilton salad-the comments and questions started coming, mostly from Peggy.
“So if Flores was gay, the motive for killing the bride would be jealousy. But the method sounds psychotic. Is it believable that one of the top psychiatrists in the world wouldn’t have noticed that the man living on his property was stark raving mad-capable of chopping someone’s head off?”
“And if Flores was straight,” said Gurney, “the jealousy motive would disappear, but we’d still have the ‘stark raving mad’ part and the problem of Ashton’s not noticing it.”
Peggy leaned forward in her chair, gesturing with her fork. “Of course, his being straight works with the scenario that he was having an affair with the Muller woman, and their running off together, but then we’re left with the ‘stark raving mad’ thing as the only explanation for killing the bride.”
“Plus,” said Gurney, “you’d have both Scott Ashton and Kiki Muller both failing to notice that Flores is bonkers. And there’s another problem. What woman would willingly run off with a man who’d just cut off another woman’s head?”
Peggy gave a little shudder. “I can’t imagine that.”
Madeleine spoke with a bored sigh. “Didn’t seem to bother the wives of Henry VIII.”
There was a momentary silence, broken by another of George’s guffaws.
“I guess there might be a difference,” ventured Peggy, “between the king of England and a Mexican gardener.”
Madeleine, studying one of the walnuts in her salad, didn’t reply.
George stepped into the open space in the conversation. “What about the fellow you were telling us about with the toy trains, ‘Adeste Fideles,’ and so on? Suppose he killed them all.”
Peggy screwed up her face. “What are you talking about, George? All who?”
“It’s a possibility, isn’t it? Suppose his wife was a bit of a slut and jumped into bed with the Mexican. And maybe the bride was a bit of a slut, and she’d jumped in bed with the Mexican, too. Maybe Mr. Muller just decided to kill them all-good riddance to bad rubbish, two sluts and their cheap little Romeo.”
“My God, George!” cried Peggy. “You sound pleased with what happened to the victims.”
“All victims are not necessarily innocent.”
“George-”
“Why did he leave the machete in the woods?” Madeleine cut in.
After a pause during which everyone looked at her, Gurney asked, “Is it the trail that bothers you? The scent trail going only so far, then stopping?”
“It bothers me that the machete was left in the woods for no apparent reason. It doesn’t make any sense.”
“Actually,” said Gurney, “that’s a hell of a good point. Let’s look closer at that.”
“Actually, let’s not.” Madeleine’s voice was controlled but rising. “I’m sorry I even mentioned it. In fact, this whole discussion is giving me indigestion. Can we please talk about something else?” There was an awkward silence around the table. “George, tell us about your favorite spider. I bet you have a favorite.”
“Oh… I couldn’t say.” He looked a bit disoriented, not quite here or there.
“Come on, George.”
“You heard-I’ve been warned off that subject.”
Peggy glanced around nervously. “Go ahead, George. It’s perfectly all right.”
Now everyone was looking at George. The attention seemed to please him. It was easy to imagine the man at the front of a college lecture hall-Professor Meeker, respected entomologist, font of wisdom and pertinent anecdotes.
Careful, Gurney, any judgment of him may apply to you. What are you doing at that police academy, anyway?
George raised his chin proudly. “Jumpers,” he said.
Madeleine’s eyes widened. “Jumping… spiders?”
“Yes.”
“Do they really jump?”
“Indeed they do. They can jump fifty times their body length. That’s the same as a six-foot man jumping the length of a football field, and the amazing thing is, they have practically no leg muscles. So how, you may ask, do they manage so prodigious a leap? With hydraulic pumps! Valves in their legs release spurts of pressurized blood, causing the legs to extend and propel them into the air. Imagine a deadly predator dropping out of nowhere onto its prey without warning. No hope of escape.” Meeker’s eyes sparkled. Not unlike a proud parent.
The parent thought made Gurney queasy.
“And then, of course,” Meeker went on excitedly, “there’s the black widow-a truly elegant killing machine. A creature lethal to adversaries a thousand times its size.”
“A creature,” said Peggy, coming to life, “that fits Scott Ashton’s definition of perfection.”
Madeleine gave her a quizzical look.
“I’m referring to Scott Ashton’s infamous book that treats empathy-concern for the welfare and feelings of others-as a defect, an imperfection in the human boundary system. The black widow spider, with its nasty habit of killing and eating its mate after intercourse, would probably be his idea of perfection. The perfection of the sociopath.”
“But since he wrote a second book attacking his first book,” said Gurney, “it’s hard to know what he really thinks of sociopaths or black widows-or anything, for that matter.”
Madeleine’s quizzical look at Peggy sharpened. “This is the man you said is a big authority on treating sexual-abuse victims?”
“Yes, but… not exactly. He doesn’t treat the victims. He treats the abusers.”
Madeleine’s expression shifted, as though she considered this bit of information of great significance.
For Gurney all it did was add to the list of questions he wanted to ask Ashton in the morning. And that reminded him of another open question, one he decided to ask his guests: “Does the name Edward Vallory ring a bell with either of you?”
At 10:45 P.M., just as Gurney finally dozed off, his cell phone rang on the night table on Madeleine’s side of the bed. He heard it ring, heard her answering it, heard her say, “I’ll see if he’s awake.” Then she tapped him on the arm and held the phone toward him until he sat up and took it.
It was Ashton’s smooth baritone, tightened slightly by anxiety. “Sorry to bother you, but this may be important. I received a text message a little while ago. The caller ID number indicates it came from Hector’s phone-one of those prepaid things. He got it about a year ago and gave me the number. But this text message-I believe it’s exactly the same as the one Jillian received on our wedding day: ‘For all the reasons I have written. Edward Vallory.’ I called the BCI office and reported it, and I wanted you to know about it as well.” He paused, cleared his throat nervously. “Do you think it means that Hector might be coming back?”
Gurney was not a man who revered the mystique of coincidence. In this case, however, the intrusion of the name Edward Vallory so soon after his bringing it up himself gave him an unpleasant chill.