He wanted to talk to her. Well, actually, he wasn’t sure about that. And he wasn’t sure, if he did talk to her, what it was that he wanted to talk to her about. Then he realized that he wanted her advice, wanted her guidance out of the swamp in which he was getting mired-a swamp composed of too many shaky stories. He wanted her advice, but he wasn’t sure how to ask for it.
She cleared her throat softly. “So what are you going to do with all your money?” she asked matter-of-factly, as though they’d been discussing some related matter for the past hour. This was not an unusual way for her to bring something up.
“The hundred thousand dollars, you mean?”
She didn’t reply, which meant she considered the question unnecessary.
“It’s not my money,” he said. “It’s our money. Even if it’s still theoretical.”
“No, it’s definitely your money.”
He turned his head toward her on the pillow, but it was a moonless night, too dark to make out her expression. “Why do you say that?”
“Because it’s true. It’s your hobby, now your very lucrative hobby. And it’s your gallery contact, or your representative, or agent, or whatever she is. And now you’re going to meet your new fan, the art collector, whoever he is. So it’s your money.”
“I don’t understand why you’re saying this.”
“I’m saying it because it’s true.”
“No it’s not. Whatever I own, we own.”
She uttered a rueful little laugh. “You don’t see it, do you?”
“See what?”
She yawned, suddenly sounded very tired. “The art project is yours. All I ever did was complain about how much time you spent on it, how many beautiful days you spent cooped up in your den staring at your screen, staring at the faces of serial killers.”
“That’s got nothing to do with how we think about the money.”
“It’s got everything to do with it. You earned it. It’s yours.” She yawned again. “I’m going back to sleep.”
Chapter 32
Gurney left at 11:30 A.M. the next day for his meeting with Simon Kale, allowing himself a little over an hour for the drive to Cooperstown. Along the way he drank a sixteen-ounce container of Abelard’s house blend, and by the time Lake Otsego was in sight, he was feeling awake enough to take note of the classic September weather, the blue sky, the hint of chill in the air.
His GPS brought him along the hemlock-shaded west shore of the lake to a small white Colonial on its own half-acre peninsula. The open garage doors revealed a shiny green Miata roadster and a black Volvo. Parked at the edge of the driveway, away from the garage, was a red Volkswagen Beetle. Gurney parked behind the Beetle and was getting out of his car just as an elegant gray-haired man emerged from the garage with a pair of canvas tote bags.
“Detective Gurney, I presume?”
“Dr. Kale?”
“Correct.” He smiled perfunctorily and led the way along a flagstone path from the garage to the side door of the house. The door was open. Inside, the place looked very old but meticulously cared for, with the heat-conserving low ceilings and hand-hewn beams typical of the eighteenth century. They were standing in the middle of a kitchen that featured an enormous open hearth as well as a chrome-and-enamel gas stove from the 1930s. From another room came the unmistakable strains of “Amazing Grace” being played on a flute.
Kale laid his tote bags on the table. They were imprinted with the logo of the Adirondack Symphony Orchestra. Leafy vegetables and loaves of French bread were visible in one, bottles of wine in the other. “The elements of dinner. I was sent out to hunt and gather,” he said rather archly. “I do not myself cook. My partner, Adrian, is both chef and flautist.”
“Is that…?” Gurney began, tilting his head in the direction of the faint melody.
“No, no, Adrian is far better than that. That would be his twelve-o’clock student, the Beetle person.”
“The…?”
“The car outside, the one in front of yours, the cutesy red thing.”
“Ah,” said Gurney. “Of course. Which would leave the Volvo for you and the Miata for your partner?”
“You’re sure it’s not the other way around?”
“I wouldn’t think so.”
“Interesting. What exactly is it about me that screams Volvo to you?”
“When you came out of the garage, you came out of the Volvo side of it.”
Kale emitted a sharp cackle. “You’re not clairvoyant, then?”
“I doubt it.”
“Would you care for tea? No? Then come, follow me to the parlor.”
The parlor turned out to be a tiny room next to the kitchen. Two floral-printed armchairs, two tufted fussy-floral hassocks, a tea table, a bookcase, and a small red-enameled woodstove just about filled the space. Kale gestured to one of the chairs for Gurney, and he sat in the other.
“Now, Detective, the purpose of your visit?”
Gurney noticed for the first time that Simon Kale’s eyes, in contrast with his giddy manner, were sober and assessing. This man would not be easily fooled or flattered-although his dislike of Ashton, revealed on the phone, might be helpful if handled carefully.
“I’m not a hundred percent sure what the purpose is.” Gurney shrugged. “Maybe I’m just on a fishing expedition.”
Kale studied him. “Don’t overdo the humility.”
Gurney was surprised by the jab but responded blandly. “Frankly, it’s more ignorance than humility. There’s so damn much about this case that I don’t know-that no one knows.”
“Except for the bad guy?” Kale looked at his watch. “You do have questions you want to ask me?”
“I’d like to know whatever you’re willing to tell me about Mapleshade-who goes there, who works there, what it’s all about, what you did there, why you left.”
“Mapleshade before or Mapleshade after the arrival of Scott Ashton?”
“Both, but mainly the period when Jillian Perry was a student.”
Kale licked his lips thoughtfully, seemed to be savoring the question. “I’d sum it up this way: For eighteen of the twenty years I taught at Mapleshade, it was an effective therapeutic environment for the amelioration of a wide range of mild to moderate emotional and behavioral problems. Scott Ashton arrived on the scene five years ago with great fanfare, a celebrity psychiatrist, a cutting-edge theoretician, just the thing to nudge the school into the premier position in the field. Once he had a foothold, however, he began shifting the focus of Mapleshade to sicker and sicker adolescents-violent sexual predators, manipulative abusers of other children, highly sexualized young women with long histories of incest as both victims and perpetrators. Scott Ashton turned our school, with its broad history of success with troubled kids, into a disheartening repository for sex addicts and sociopaths.”
Gurney thought it had the ring of a carefully constructed speech polished by repetition, yet the emotion in it seemed real enough. Kale’s arch tone and mannerisms had been replaced, at least temporarily, by a stiff and righteous anger.
Then, into the open silence that followed the diatribe, from the flute in the other room flowed the haunting melody of “Danny Boy.”
It assaulted Gurney slowly, debilitatingly, like the opening of a grave. He thought he would have to excuse himself, find a pretext for abandoning the interview, flee the premises. Fifteen years, and still the song was unbearable. But then the flute stopped. He sat, hardly breathing, like a shell-shocked soldier awaiting the resumption of distant artillery.
“Is something wrong?” Kale was eyeing him curiously.