“At the Dollhouse Inn?”
“Right.”
“So that means he must have told you that Hammond was disgusting at least a couple of days before that. You said days, right? So that would be before you made the trip to Wolf Lake. He must have told you while you were still down in Floral Park. Is that right?”
There was a silence—except for the sound of the TV.
“Angela?”
“Yeah, I’m here.”
“Did you hear my question?”
“I heard it.”
Another long moment passed.
“Angela, this is important. How did Stevie know the hypnotist was disgusting before he met him?”
“I guess someone told him.”
“The person who called him?”
“I can’t say anything about that.”
“Because Stevie warned you that you could end up dead if you said anything about it?”
“Why do you keep asking about it?” Her objection came out like a desperate whine.
“Angela, we could all end up dead unless you start trusting me and telling me what you know.”
Another silence.
“Angela, when Stevie used the word ‘disgusting’ to describe a person, what did he usually mean?”
“How could I know that?” She sounded panicky.
“But you do know, don’t you, Angela? I can hear it in your voice.”
Her silence at that point confirmed the truth, so Gurney continued. “You knew what he meant by that word, but it upset you, right?”
Her silence was broken by a sniffle. Then another. Then a swallow. Gurney waited. The dam was breaking.
“Stevie . . . was prejudiced about some things. Some people. You have to understand, he was a good person. But sometimes . . . well, he kind of had a problem sometimes with gay people. Sometimes he would say what they did was disgusting.”
“And that they themselves were disgusting?”
“Sometimes he would say that.”
“Thank you, Angela. I know it was hard for you to tell me that. Just to make sure I’m not making a mistake, let me ask you one more question. The person who called Stevie on the phone—the person who you figured told him he should go up to Wolf Lake to see Hammond—is that the person who told him that Hammond was gay?”
There was a long silence.
“This is terribly important, Angela. Is that who told Stevie that Hammond was gay?”
“Yes.”
“Did you ask Stevie why he was willing to meet with a therapist he knew was gay?”
“Yes, I did.”
“What did he say?”
“That I should stop asking questions, that it was dangerous to keep asking questions.”
“Did he tell you why it was dangerous?”
“He repeated what he said the night he got the phone call—that we could end up dead.”
CHAPTER 34
By the time Gurney reached the exit sign for Otterville, the cloud cover had thinned and pale winter sunlight was illuminating the landscape.
He debated whether to take the kind of steps he’d taken at Lake George to obscure his destination but decided it wasn’t worth the trouble. If the trackers on his car revealed that he was visiting an Otterville bungalow colony, so be it. There were good reasons to keep the whereabouts of Angela Castro a secret, but none of them applied to Moe Blumberg.
He drove through the “hamlet” of Otterville, which consisted of a derelict auto repair shop, a shuttered hot dog stand, and a two-pump gas station. A mile later his GPS directed him onto Brightwater Lane, a dirt road that brought him through the woods to an open area where a dozen or so cabins were spread out along the side of a small lake. In the middle of the clearing was a stone foundation and a few fire-blackened timbers of a building it had once supported. Parked next to it was a well-used Toyota Camry.
Gurney stopped behind the Camry. As he was getting out of his car, he heard a voice calling out. “Over here.”
It took him a moment to locate the source—a figure at a window of one of the cabins.
“Come around to the far side. The front door faces the lake.”
As Gurney reached the lake side of the cabin and was stepping up onto the covered porch, the door was opened by an old but sturdy-looking white-haired man wearing tan slacks and a blue blazer. The clothes, along with the two suitcases just inside the door, were consistent with the imminent departure Hardwick had mentioned.
“Mr. Blumberg?”
“You see, the lake’s the whole point,” the man said, as though Gurney had questioned the orientation of the porch. “So it makes sense for the cabins to face that way. You’re Detective Gorney, is that right?”
“Gurney.”
“Like the cow?”
“I believe that’s a Guernsey.”
“Right. Come in, come in. You understand I don’t have much time?”
“I understand you’re off to a warmer climate.”
“Fifties, sixties this time of year. Plenty of sun. Beats freezing my tuchus off here. Time was when the winters didn’t bother me, seemed silly all these old folks running off to Florida, places like that. Doesn’t take more than a few years of arthritis, though, before you see the sense in it. If your joints ache here, but they don’t ache there, hell, that makes the decision pretty easy, doesn’t it? To answer your question, yes, I’m Moe Blumberg. Might be confused about some things but still pretty sure about that.”
As they shook hands, Gurney took in the cabin in a few quick glances. The main room, which was all he could see from where he stood, was set up partly as an office, partly as a sitting area centered on an antique iron woodstove. The furnishings were a bit threadbare.
“Have a seat. The other detective wasn’t clear on the phone. What’s this all about?”
Blumberg made no move to sit, so neither did Gurney.
“A young man by the name of Steven Pardosa died recently in suspicious circumstances. You might have seen something about it on TV?”
“You see a TV here?”
Gurney glanced around again. “You don’t have one?”
“Nothing on TV worth the time of anyone with at least half a brain. Noise and nonsense.”
“So Detective Hardwick’s call was the first you heard of Steven Pardosa’s death?”
“He mentioned that name. But I still don’t get what this is all about.”
“Did he tell you that Steven Pardosa attended your camp thirteen years ago?”
“Something like that.”
“But you don’t remember the name, or the person?”
“I ran the camp for thirty-eight years, hundred and twenty boys every summer. The last summer was twelve years ago. You think I should remember every camper who came here? You know how old I am, Detective?”
“No, sir, I don’t.”
“Eighty-two next month. I have trouble remembering my own name. Or what day it is. Or what I came into the kitchen for.”
Gurney smiled sympathetically. “You said that the last year the camp was in operation was twelve years ago?”
“That I know for sure.”
“And Steven Pardosa was here thirteen years ago. That would be a year before you shut down?”
“That’s plain arithmetic.”
“It sounds like the camp was successful for many years.”
“That’s a fact.”
“How did you come to the decision to shut it down?”
Blumberg shook his head, sighed. “We lost our customers.”
“Why?”
“There was a tragedy. A terrible event. Everything snowballed out of control. Stories, rumors, craziness. Like that phrase—a perfect storm. That’s what it was. One year we were pure gold. The next year we were shit.”
“What happened?”