“It’s Peggy Meeker. I got your e-mail, and I just e-mailed you back. Then I thought I should call you in case you might need to know this right away.” Her voice was racing with excitement.
“What is it?”
“You wanted to know about Edward Vallory’s play, plot, characters, whether anything was known about it. Well, you’re not going to believe this, but I called the English department at Wesleyan, and guess who’s still there-Professor Barkless, who taught the course.”
“The course?”
“The English course I took. The Elizabethan-drama course. I left a message, and he got back to me. Isn’t that amazing?”
“What did he tell you?”
“Well, that’s the really, really amazing part. Are you ready for this?”
There was a call-waiting beep on Gurney’s phone, which he ignored. “Go ahead.”
“Well, to begin with, the name of the play was The Spanish Gardener.” She paused for a reaction.
“Go on.”
“The name of the central character was Hector Flores.”
“You’re serious?”
“There’s more. It gets better and better. The plot, which was partially described by a contemporary critic, is one of those complicated things where people wear disguises and people in their own families don’t recognize them and all that kind of nonsense, but the basic story line”-there was another call-waiting beep-“which is pretty wild, is that Hector Flores was sent away from home by his mother, who killed his father and seduced his brother. Years later Hector returns, disguised as a gardener, and to make a long story short, he tricks his brother-through more disguises and mistaken identities-into cutting off his mother’s head. It was all pretty much over the top, which is maybe why all the copies of the play were destroyed after the first performance. It’s not clear if the plot was based on some ancient variant of the Oedipus myth or if it was just a piece of grotesquerie cooked up by Vallory. Or maybe it was somehow influenced by Thomas Kyd’s Spanish Tragedy, which is kind of emotionally over the top, too, so who knows? But those are the basic facts-straight from Professor Barkless.”
Gurney’s brain was racing faster than Peggy Meeker’s breathless voice.
After a moment she asked, “You want me to go through that again?”
Another beep.
“You said it was all in an e-mail you sent me?”
“Yes, all spelled out. And I put in my professor’s phone number, in case you want to call him directly. It’s so exciting, isn’t it? Does it give you, like, a whole new perspective on the case?”
“Maybe more like a reinforcement of one of the existing perspectives. We’ll see how it plays out.”
“Right. Okay. Let me know.”
Beep.
“Peggy, I seem to have a persistent caller here. Let me say good-bye for now. And thank you. This could be very helpful.”
“Sure, glad to do it. Great. Let me know what else I can do.”
“I will. Thank you again.”
He switched to the other call.
“Took you long enough to answer. Question mustn’t be too fucking urgent.”
“Ah, yes. Jack. Thanks for getting back.”
“And the question is…?”
Gurney smiled. Hardwick made a fetish of brusqueness, when he wasn’t too busy making a fetish of vulgarity. “How sure are you about the location of every individual at the reception during the time Jillian was in the cottage?”
“Sure enough.”
“How do you know?”
“The way the cameras were set up, there were no blind spots. Guests, catering staff, musicians-they were all on tape, all the time.”
“Except for Hector.”
“Except for Hector, who was in the cottage.”
“Who you think was in the cottage.”
“What’s your point?”
“Just trying to sort out what we know from what we think we know.”
“Who the fuck else would be in there?”
“I don’t know, Jack. And neither do you. By the way, thanks for the heads-up on that rehab jam-up.”
There was a long silence. “Fuck told you about that?”
“You sure as hell didn’t.”
“Fuck’s that got to do with anything?”
“I’m a big fan of full disclosure, Jack.”
“Full disclosure? I’ll give you full fucking disclosure. Dickbrain Rodriguez took me off the Perry case because I told him that chasing down every fucking Mexican illegal in upstate New York was the biggest fucking waste of time I’d ever been assigned to. First of all, no one was going to admit working there illegally, evading taxes. And they sure as hell weren’t going to admit having any contact with someone wanted for murder. Two months later, on my day off, I get called into an emergency manhunt situation for a couple of idiots who shot a gas-station attendant on the thruway, and somebody at the scene tells Captain Marvel that I smelled of alcohol, so I get jammed up. The little fuck had been dreaming of ways to get me on the wrong foot. Now he’s got his opportunity. So what does he do? Little fuck sticks me in a fucking dump rehab full of crackhead scumbags. Twenty-eight miserable fucking days. With scumbags, Davey! Fucking nightmare! Scumbags! All I could think about for twenty-eight days was killing little Dickbrain Captain Fuckface, tearing his fucking head off! That enough full disclosure for you?”
“Plenty, Jack. Problem is, the investigation went off the rails, and it needs to start over from scratch. And it needs to have people assigned to it who are more interested in solving it than they are in messing each other up.”
“Is that a fucking fact? Well, good fucking luck, Mr. Voice of Fucking Reason.”
The connection was broken.
Gurney put the phone down on top of the case folder. He became aware of the clicking of Madeleine’s knitting needles and looked over at her.
She smiled without looking up. “Problems?”
He laughed humorlessly. “Only that the investigation needs to be completely reorganized and redirected, and I have no power to make that happen.”
“Think about it. You’ll find a way.”
He thought about it. “You mean through Kline?”
She shrugged. “You told me during the Mellery case that he had big ambitions.”
“I wouldn’t be surprised if he imagined himself president one day. Or at least governor.”
“Well, there you go.”
“There I go where?”
She concentrated for a minute on an alteration in her stitching technique. Then she looked up, seemingly bemused by his failure to grasp the obvious. “Help him see how this connects to his big ambitions.”
The more he pondered it, the more perceptive her comment seemed. As a political animal, Kline was super-sensitive to the media dimension of any investigation. It was the surest route to the center of his being.
Gurney picked up his phone and called the DA’s number. The recorded message offered three options: call again between 8:00 A.M. and 6:00 P.M. Monday through Friday, or leave a name and phone number to receive a return call during business hours, or call the emergency twenty-four-hour number for matters requiring immediate assistance.
Gurney entered the emergency number in his phone list, but before making the call he decided to devote a little more time to structuring what he was going to say-first to the screener, then to Kline if the call was passed through-because he realized it was crucial to lob exactly the right grenade over the wall.
The needles stopped clicking.
“Do you hear that?” Madeleine leaned her head slightly in the direction of the nearest window.
“What?”
“Listen.”
“What am I listening for?”
“Shhh…”
Just as he was about to insist that he could hear nothing, he heard it: the faint yipping of distant coyotes. Then, again, nothing. Only the lingering image in his mind of animals like small, lean wolves, running in a loosely spaced pack, running wild and heartless as the wind through a moonlit field beyond the north ridge.