“Dinner—where and what time?”
“At Richard’s chalet. Five thirty—is that okay? We eat early in the winter.”
He looked at Madeleine.
She nodded. “Fine.”
Jane’s eyes brightened. “I’ll let the chef know. He’s limited these days, but I’m sure he’ll manage something nice.” She sneezed, applied her now-crumpled tissue to her nose. “Richard’s chalet is easy to get to. Stay on the lake road. It’s just a half mile or so around the tip of the lake, on the forest side of the road. There are three chalets. The first two are unoccupied. Richard’s is the third. If you come to the boathouse or to Gall House, where the road ends, you’ll know you’ve gone too far.”
“Gall House?”
“The Gall family residence. Of course, the only one living there now is Peyton. Peyton and . . . his guests.”
“Guests?”
“His lady friends—although they’re not really ladies and not really friends. No matter. None of my business.” She sniffled. “It’s a huge, depressing stone house, looming up out of the woods, right at the base of Devil’s Fang—with a big ugly fence around it. But I really don’t think you’ll get that far. You can’t miss the chalet. I’ll make sure the outside lights are on.”
“Good,” said Gurney, starting to feel restless. Questions were accumulating in his mind that he wasn’t comfortable asking just yet.
CHAPTER 15
The drab winter light coming through the suite windows didn’t so much illuminate the space as cast an ashen pall over it. Madeleine stood, her arms crossed over her breasts, while Gurney moved from lamp to lamp, switching them on.
“Does that fireplace work?” she asked.
“I imagine so. Would you like me to get a fire going?”
“It would help.”
At the hearth Gurney found a neat pile of firewood, some kindling, half a dozen waxy fire-starter bricks, and a long-stemmed butane lighter. He began to arrange the materials on the iron grate in the firebox. He found the task a simple respite from the issues on his mind, which were not simple at all. As he was about to apply the lighter to the kindling, his phone rang. The screen told him it was Rebecca Holdenfield.
To take the call or not to take it—that was the question. He still hadn’t reached a decision about their proposed meeting at the Cold Brook Inn; but maybe she had information that could nudge the decision one way or the other.
He took the call.
She told him that she now planned to be in Plattsburgh for at least two days that week—from the following morning until the evening of the day after that.
He promised to get back to her as soon as his schedule became clearer—which could happen later that evening, once he’d met with Hammond—and ended the call.
Madeleine frowned. “What does she want?”
He was taken aback by her tone. He felt his own frustration rising. “What’s that supposed to mean?”
Madeleine said nothing, just shook her head.
He paused. “Ever since yesterday morning, there’s been something going on with you. Do you want to tell me about it?”
She began rubbing her upper arms with her hands. “I just need to get warm.” She turned and walked to the bathroom doorway. “I’m going to soak the cold out of my bones.” She went in and closed the door behind her.
After several long seconds, Gurney went to the hearth and lit the kindling. He watched for a few restless minutes as the flames flickered and grew.
When the fire was well established, he went to the bathroom door, knocked and listened, but heard only a heavy stream of water. He knocked again, and again there was no response. He opened the door and saw Madeleine reclining in the huge claw-foot tub as the water gushed down between her feet from a pair of oversized silver faucets. Wisps of steam rose from the surface of the water. A film of condensation was forming on the tile wall next to the tub.
“Did you hear me knock?”
“Yes.”
“But you didn’t answer.”
“No.”
“Why not?”
She closed her eyes. “Go out and close the door. Please. The cold air is coming in.”
He hesitated, then shut the door, perhaps a bit more firmly than was necessary.
He put on his ski jacket and hat, picked up the big key to the suite, went downstairs through the reception area and out under the portico into the frigid air.
He thrust his hands into his jacket pockets and started walking along the narrow lake road with no destination or purpose in mind beyond a desire to be out of the lodge. Wolf Lake, now the color of deeply tarnished silver in the deepening dusk, stretched into the distance on his left. The spruce forest on his right appeared impenetrable. The lower spaces between the trees were filled with interlocking tangles of spiky branches.
He inhaled long, deep, cold breaths as he walked, in an effort to clear out the toxic jumble. But it wasn’t working. There were too many details, too many eccentric personalities, too much emotional confusion. Barely thirty-two hours ago his only concern was an oddly behaving porcupine. Now he was grappling with mysteries buried under impossibilities.
Never had Gurney felt so completely stymied by the basic questions in a case. And he couldn’t get Bowman Cox out of his mind—the man leaning forward over the Formica table in the diner, flecks of spittle at the corners of his mouth, insisting on Hammond’s responsibility for the death of Christopher Wenzel.
Gurney passed by an extended clearing in the forest with three impressive log-and-glass chalets set comfortably apart from each other. He walked on and soon came to a large structure occupying the space on his left between the road and the water. In the dusky light it took him a minute to identify it as a cedar-shingle boathouse. Given the moneyed history of the estate, he imagined the boathouse might be sheltering a fleet of vintage Chris-Craft runabouts.
As his attention shifted to the jagged prominence of Devil’s Fang, black against the gunmetal clouds, a slight movement caught his eye, little more than a speck in the sky. A bird was slowly circling above the desolate peak—perhaps a hawk, but at that distance in the failing light it could as easily have been a vulture or an eagle. He regretted leaving his binoculars in his duffel bag.
Thinking of things he wished he had with him, the flashlight in the glove box—
His train of thought was broken by the sound of an approaching car. It was coming from somewhere on the road behind him, and it was moving fast, faster than made sense on a narrow dirt and gravel surface. He stepped quickly away from the road toward the spruces.
Seconds later a gleaming black Mercedes hurtled past. A hundred yards or so farther along the road it slowed, its headlights illuminating a tall chain-link fence. A motorized gate was in the process of sliding open.
One or more windows of the car must have been rolled down, because Gurney could now hear shrieks of female laughter. A burly man emerged from a small security booth by the gate and waved the car through. He returned to the booth and the gate slid shut. There was a final shriek from the receding car, then nothing.
Nothing but the absolute silence of the wilderness.
CHAPTER 16
By the time he got back to the lodge the grandfather clock in the reception area indicated it was a quarter past five. When he went upstairs to the suite, he half expected that Madeleine would still be soaking in the tub, immersed in the preoccupation she was unwilling to discuss. But he found the bathroom empty, a wet towel draped over the end of the tub.
The lights were on in the main room, just as he’d left them. The fire he’d started was still burning. Warren Harding was still projecting an image of scowling respectability.