“You follow me now.” She turned her glistening, essentially naked back to him and led him along a corridor that branched off the entry hall. At the end of the corridor she opened a glass door into what was evidently an add-on to the original house.
From her attire, or lack of it, Gurney wouldn’t have been surprised to find a room with an indoor pool. Instead, he was engulfed in the warm, fragrant air of a tropical conservatory. An undertone of rhythmic, primitive-sounding music created an atmosphere as far removed from the Adirondacks as one could imagine.
Thick leafy plants rose toward a high glass ceiling. Beds of ferns, bordered by mossy logs with orchids sprouting out of them, surrounded a circular area with a floor of polished mahogany. Curving paths of the same mahogany radiated out from it, disappearing behind beds of jungle foliage. Somewhere amid the lush leafy things Gurney could hear the gurgling of a fountain or a small waterfall.
In the center of the open area two high-backed rattan armchairs faced each other with a low rattan table between them. One of the chairs was occupied by a dark-haired man in a luxurious-looking white bathrobe.
The mostly naked woman approached the man and said something to him, the words lost to Gurney in the rhythmic background music.
Responding to her with a loose smile, the man slid his hand slowly between her legs.
Gurney wondered if he was about to witness a live sex show. But a moment later the woman half-laughed, half-purred at something the man said and casually walked away on one of the mahogany paths through the planting beds. Just before she disappeared into the mini jungle she glanced back at Gurney, the pink tip of her tongue moving between her full lips, an image as reptilian as it was seductive.
Once she was out of sight, the man in the bathrobe waved Gurney toward the empty rattan chair. “Have a seat. Have a drink.” The voice was a rich baritone, the articulation slow and lazy, as if the man might be drunk or sedated. He pointed invitingly toward the coffee table, on which Gurney noted a bottle of Grey Goose vodka, an ice bucket, and two glasses.
Gurney remained standing where he was. “Mr. Gall?”
The man smiled slowly, then laughed. “Austen told me that a detective by the name of Gurney wanted to talk to me. He said you were Jane Hammond’s private dick.”
“That’s one way of putting it.”
“So your job is to prove that her fucking brother didn’t kill my fucking brother?”
“Not really.”
“If that’s your secret mission here, you don’t have to deny it, because I don’t give a flying fuck one way or the other. Sit down and have a drink.”
Gurney accepted the seat offer, which put him close enough now to discern in the languorous, self-indulgent face across from him the same underlying bone structure he’d noted in the fiercely determined face in the entry-hall portrait. It confirmed both the power and the limitations of shared genes.
He sat back in his chair and looked around the big glass-enclosed space. Outside it was dark now, and the interior light—coming from upward-angled halogen spotlights secreted among the plantings—cast queer shadows everywhere. When his gaze reached Peyton Gall, he found the man’s dark eyes fixed on him.
Gurney leaned forward. “I’ll tell you why I’m here. I want to find out why four people died after seeing Richard Hammond.”
“You have doubts about the official version?” Gall said this in an arch tone, as if ridiculing a cliché.
“Of course I have doubts about it. Don’t you?”
Gall yawned, refilled his glass with vodka, and took a slow sip. Then he held the glass in front of his face, peering over the top of it. “So you don’t think the witch doctor did it?”
“If you mean Dr. Hammond, no, I don’t—at least not in any way suggested by the police hypothesis. And frankly, Mr. Gall, you don’t seem to think so, either.”
Gall was squinting over the top of his glass at Gurney with one eye closed, creating the impression of a man lining up a rifle sight. “Call me Peyton. My sainted brother was Mister Gall. I have no aspiration to assume that mantle.”
His tone struck Gurney as haughty, sour, and ridiculous. It was the tone of a selfish, imperious drunk—a dangerous child in the body of an adult. This was not a man he’d choose to be in the same room with if he could help it, but there were questions that needed to be asked.
“Tell me something, Peyton. If Richard Hammond wasn’t responsible for Ethan’s death, who do you think was?”
Gall lowered his vodka glass a few inches and studied it as if it might contain a list of suspects. “I’d advise you to focus on the people who knew him well.”
“Why?”
“Because to know Ethan was to hate him.”
Despite the theatrical nature of the statement, Gurney sensed real feeling behind it. “What was the most hateful thing about him?”
Anger seemed to cut through Gall’s alcoholic fog. “The illusion he created.”
“He wasn’t what he seemed to be?”
Gall let out a short, bitter laugh. “At a distance, he was fucking godlike. Up close, not so much. So goddamn full of himself in the worst way—the bursting-with-virtue way, the I-know-best way. Fucking control-freak bastard!”
“It must have pissed you off that he changed the terms of his will at your expense.”
He was silent for a long moment. “Is that what this is about?”
“Meaning?”
“Meaning, is that what this conversation is about? You thinking that the police have it all wrong . . . that Richard, the faggot hypnotist, is innocent . . . and that I made those fucking people kill themselves? Is that what the fuck you think?”
“I don’t think you made anyone kill themselves. That seems impossible.”
“Then what the fuck are you getting at?”
“I was wondering if Ethan changed his will just to make you angry.”
“Of course he did. Saint Ethan was a puritanical prick who hated the way I enjoyed my life and was always looking for ways to punish me. ‘Do what I say, or you’ll end up with nothing. Do what I say, or I’ll take it all away. Do what I say or I’ll give your inheritance to the first little creep who comes along.’ Fucking control-freak bastard scumbag! Who put him in charge of the world?”
Gurney nodded. “Life should be easier for you now that he’s gone.”
Gall smiled. “Yes.”
“Even with the change in his will, you still end up with a ton of money. And if the police can prove Hammond was involved in Ethan’s death, the bequest to him will revert to you. You’d get fifty-eight million dollars altogether.”
Gall yawned for the second time.
Yawning, Gurney knew, was an ambiguous bit of body language, produced as often by anxiety as by boredom. He wondered which feeling was at play. “You have any plans for all that money?”
“Plans bore me. Money bores me. Money has to be watched, managed, massaged. It has to be invested, balanced, leveraged. You have to think about it, talk about it, worry about it. It’s a gigantic bore. Life’s too fucking short for all that crap. All that planning.”
“Thank God for Austen, eh?”
“Absolutely. Austen’s a boring little fucker himself, but he’s a natural planner. Pays attention to money. Takes good care of money. So, yeah, thank God for boring little fuckers like Austen.”
“You plan to keep him on, then, managing the Gall assets?”
“Why not? He can watch the bottom line, while I live the way I want to live.” He winked at Gurney. A lazy, sly, lascivious wink. “That way everybody gets to be happy.”
“Except for the four dead people.”
“That’s your department, Detective. Austen invests the Gall millions. I fuck the world’s most beautiful women. You spend your life worrying about dead people.” He winked again. “Everybody’s got a specialty. Makes the world go round.”