She paused so long, I'd swallowed and taken a second bite before she began again.
“When I graduated from Iowa State,” she said, “I thought I had it all. Or thought I was going to get it, anyway. I don't want to be immodest, or anything, but everybody I knew sort of assumed I was on my way to the top. My parents. My professors. My roommates. Even me. You know?” She paused again.
“Sure. I know,” I prompted. To give some idea of how little of our background information we'd ever exchanged, I hadn't known until now that Hester had gone to Iowa State.
“My plan was, I was going to be a famous chemist, was going to marry some guy who was, oh, maybe an equally famous architect or something. Live in New York. Paint landscapes in my spare time.” She took a sip of her Diet Coke. “You know the sort of thing?”
“Yep,” said Harry.
“Well,” she went on, “just two days after graduation, Dad had a stroke. I missed about a year and a half in the job market, because I stayed home with Mom, and helped take care of him. No problem. Hell, for what they'd done for me, it was hardly a drop in the bucket.”
“Sure.” I took another bite of burger.
“My sister graduated a year behind me. She didn't stay home. Hey, I told her not to. No point in both of us being there.” She took another sip. “Okay, and then, when Dad died, then, there wasn't quite enough life insurance to even pay off the house mortgage. All borrowed against to help us in school, and to take one family trip. What was left was eaten up by the noncovered medical expenses. So much for teaching.” She produced a sad excuse for a smile. “He was a teacher. Math. I didn't tell you that.”
I took a drink from my Coke cup. “Doesn't pay too much,” I said. “Sue's been a teacher for almost twenty years now, and makes about what I do.”
“I dated a teacher once,” said Harry.
“My Mom taught chemistry. Same deal.” She shrugged. “More to life than money. Except, all of a sudden, my installments on my college loan came due. I got my first job with an ag chemical company. Not doing chemistry, you understand. No, I was part of a team that went all over Iowa and Nebraska, trying to tell farmers not to put too much of our products on the soil.” She took a long swig from her Diet Coke, and started rummaging around in the sack. “Had to tell 'em that, in small doses, what we sold was just fine. In larger doses, it was poison.”
“Must have been really fun.” Harry took a rattling pull on his milkshake.
“Oh, yeah. And, it paid less than teaching, let me tell you. And I finally figured out that since I was a young woman, they wanted me on the 'Responsible Usage Team' so the farmers could look at my legs while I talked.” She half giggled. “Really. I was sort of an agricheesecake girl.”
I couldn't help grinning at the image. “With your attitude?” “I couldn't bite people, we had a script,” she said.
“Anyway, I could see I wasn't going to get out of that job until my legs went. And I liked chemistry. And the real chemists made pretty good money. Well, better, anyway. I had to keep living with Mom, because I couldn't pay off the loans, and help her with the bills, and pay rent at the same time. Mom knew I hated that job, but she kept telling me that it was the responsible thing to do, so I did it. I hated myself for it, though.”
She turned on the overhead light. “I can't find all my fries… ”
“How long did you stay?”
“Three years, Carl. I'd send resumes out all the time, but the longer you've been out of school… Anyway, the only decent offer I got was from this place in California, and the money just didn't work out. It did after the first couple of years, or it would have. But I just couldn't get away. And all that time, Mom was entertaining suspicions that I was failing. That I wasn't really trying, you know?”
“Yeah,” said Harry. “I had a wife used to feel that way about me.”
“She wondered why I didn't get married. She asked me once. I said I didn't want to. It really surprised me, that she'd ask. Like she didn't know that if I got married, I'd leave and she wouldn't be able to make ends meet. A job close to home, that paid okay, was going to be the only way out, for me, anyway. So I heard about the criminalistics lab in Des Moines. I applied, and got an interview, and it wasn't too far from our house. I got the job. Better pay, and I started to make headway on my student loans.” She pulled three or four fries from the bag. “Found some,” she said brightly.
I watched her bite the ends off the little bundle of fries. “And then?”
“What bothered me was that my sister, she'd gone ahead. Like I told her to, I admit it. She got hired as a geologist with a big oil company, met an engineer, married him, they moved to Scotland to work the North Sea Oil, she even sent me and Mom tickets so we could visit.” She shook her head slowly. “We went, all right. Mom just went ape over their house, the fact that it was in Scotland, that they were friends with important people. Hell, there was even an honest-to-God still-life painter living next door.” She'd turned toward me, and now leaned back against her door. “My sister was living my ideal damned existence. My little sister had achieved my ideal life, while I stayed home and all I had accomplished was, I had disappointed Mom.”
Ouch.
“That'd be tough,” said Harry. “Really tough.”
Hester took a deep breath, and let it out slowly. “I mean, you know, good for her, and all that. But, anyway, I was really depressed. I honest to God hoped for a plane crash on the way back from Scotland. I really did. I'll tell ya, guys, I would have run to just about anywhere, just to get out of that. But, there just wasn't any place to go. No Mansion, with free rent and people like me.”
It was silent for a few seconds. I took another bite of my first burger. It was starting to cool.
“So, the reason for sharing all that garbage with you,” said Hester, straightening up, “is that those girls up there, especially Huck and Melissa and poor dead Edie… life was just not cooperating with them. And they were just looking for a place to run. Hell, probably even Toby and Kevin, for that matter.”
“Yeah.” Harry had fished out an apple turnover, and was unwrapping it.
“They're really all victims. Victims of some rich woman who can afford to provide a phony hiding place for them. And this Peale bastard. Oh, yeah, Mr. Peale. Her pet vampire. But Jessica, she's acquiring them, they're just being kept like a bunch of livestock. Peale killed Edie, and with Toby's help. That's a given. But Jessica Hunley's the one who made the whole thing possible. And that really pisses me off.”
I simply said, “Okay.” It got sort of quiet again.
“Look,” she said suddenly, “I'm saying that, if they'd had some more time for things to sort themselves out, none of 'em would be in this mess in the first place. Jessica just recruited at the right time.”
“Okay.”
“Don't humor me, Houseman.” She rummaged some more. “Did you take the salt?”
“Nope. I found some pepper, though.” I held up the little packet. “See?” I remember thinking that her fries had to be cold by now.
“Well there's a bunch of ketchup packs, but unless I squeeze 'em into my hand… ” She looked up from her search. “Do you see what I mean, though?”
“I think so. She found some people at an unstable time in their lives?”
“Part of it. It's not just that when all the expectations you've had for yourself don't come true, it's when everybody who is important to you had them for you… ” She stopped abruptly. “Shit happens, Houseman. But not at the same time or the same way for everybody. So, when it happens to you early on, you just watch others pass by, with no shit sticking to them at all. And you feel betrayed.”
“I can see that,” said Harry. “Shit really does happen. Boy, I know that.”
“And you sometimes do things to cover up the disappointment.” Hester sounded tired. “Things you normally wouldn't do, even a while later, but once you start it's almost impossible to stop, because you think you've found your… ”
“Place
?” I tried to help.
She sighed. “No, no. Guys are so dense. No, it's much more than that. It's like, you've found your accomplishment. You have to settle for a little less, but you've found it.”
“Oh. I see.”
Hester shook her head. “Oh, Houseman, eat your hamburger.”
“I do get it, though,” I said, leaning forward so the special sauce wouldn't drip on my shirt.
She sighed. “Okay. So, anyway. We agreed that we go right to our motels, and start fresh in the morning?” She was still burrowing through the sack, looking for the rest of her cold fries.
“Mmmph.” I love Big Macs, but they're kind of hard to talk through.
“Here they are!” She fished a bunch of them out, along with a wad of napkins. They'd apparently spilled from the cardboard container, and gotten in with the pile of condiments, napkins, and salt that the employee had swept into the bag. “Okay, then, you want to start with
…?”
I swallowed, and used one of the napkins to wipe some sauce off my chin. “I think with the Walworth County Sheriff's Department would be good, don't you?”
“Mmmm.” This time she was the one with the mouthful of fries.
“Got it covered,” said Harry. “Already talked to them. We got the run of the county as long as nobody fucks… oops… screws up.”
“Okay, then,” I said, “wherever we can find Jessica. We drop in, agreed?”
“Sure.” Hester took a long pull on her Diet Coke straw. “What time?”
I thought about it. “Nine-thirty? Ten?”
She looked at her watch. “Let's go for nine-thirty. We aren't going to get squared away tonight until one or so.” She was already tidying up, folding her paper napkin, and getting ready to go. I quickly took a large bite of my second Big Mac. It was cold by now, too.
“You know how to get to Fontana?” asked Harry. “Hester should be taking fifty to Lake Geneva, but we should take sixty-seven south to Williams Bay, and then back westerly to Fontana.”
I swallowed again. “Oh, sure. No problem.”
“What I was trying to say, you two,” said Hester, suddenly, “is that gathering victims at such a hard time in their lives is more despicable than recruiting people who want to get into this vampire stuff.”
“Sure.” Harry agreed. I guessed I did, too.
About thirty minutes later, Harry and I correctly turned south on sixty-seven, and watched Hester disappear down highway fifty. I wondered if her mother knew Hester had worked dope cases.
Six minutes later we were in Fontana.
The room wasn't too bad. Two queen-size beds. Shower. Sink. Toilet. Chair. TV. Even a place to hang hangers. It was cold, and the heating mechanism was integral with the air-conditioning. I turned it on, and had instant tobacco smell. Turned it off, opened a window, and tried to set the little digital alarm clock that came with the room.
Finally, Harry said, “If you'd put your fuckin' glasses on, Houseman, so you could read the dials, we could get another half hour of sleep.”
I got it set, but then picked up the phone and left a wake-up call for 08:30.
“What you do,” said Harry, “is why I divorced my ex-wife.”
I blew him a kiss. “Good night, Harry.”
TWENTY-NINE
Wednesday, October 11, 2000
09:12
I was awakened by the phone. I glanced at the clock. 09:12. I groggily wondered why the wake-up call was solate. “Yeah.”
It was Hester. “You guys like to come over here for brunch?”
“Jesus, Hester. They didn't call, and the alarm didn't go off… ”
“I'm waking you up?”
I told her she was. She, as it turned out, had taken her morning five-mile run, cleaned up, and had been wondering what was taking us so long to call her.
“Brunch?” I asked.
“What about brunch?” came from Harry in the next bed.
“You guys gotta come over here to eat,” said Hester. “Really. You gotta see this.”
That sounded really good to me. “Give us twenty minutes,” I said. I showered first, while Harry contacted a Walworth County detective named Jim Hawkins, and told him that we were going to have a bite at the Geneva Inn. He said he'd try to meet us within an hour.
I drove, while Harry navigated. All the way through a spot called Linton, on a county road, and then north on Highway 120. The real estate got progressively more upscale as we went. We turned left into a kind of obscure drive, and into the parking lot of a very beautiful hotel. Hester, it appeared, had scored big.
My favorite DCI agent met us in the lobby. It was beautifully done in light wood, natural lighting, with uniformed help who exuded confidence and capability. We continued on into the split-level dining room that had huge windows on three sides, with a fantastic view of Lake Geneva.
We sat at a table with real linen. Heavy silver. Quiet atmosphere. Elegant. Refined. Nice.
“Sleep well?” I asked Hester. She looked absolutely refreshed.
“Wonderful room,” she said. “Wet bar, Jacuzzi, balcony overlooking the lake… ”
“We,” said Harry, “are in the Bates Motel.”
“Poor dears,” said Hester.
A pretty, perky, and efficient waitress, in her twenties, offered us the breakfast buffet. We partook, as Old Knockle would have said. I never wanted to leave.
Over a great cup of coffee, we gazed out the windows at the huge homes on the lakefront. I thought I could make out a sliver of a rounded dome in the far distance, across the lake and in thick trees. As the waitress asked us if we needed more coffee, I pointed to the dome. “Is that Yerkes Observatory, do you know?”
“Yes, it is.”
“Wow,” I said. “We gotta try to get there.”
“What's there?” asked Harry.
“Enormous telescope, the biggest refractor in the world,” I said. “I'd really like to see that.”
“They have tours,” said the waitress, smiling.
“Excellent.” I shifted my gaze to the left a bit. “And that big gray building over there? That wouldn't be the courthouse, would it?”
The waitress giggled. She gestured to the enormous, pinkish gray building. “That one?”
“Yeah… ”
“That's the Hunley place,” she said.
It was a four-story building, although there didn't seem to be any windows on the fourth floor. It was absolutely huge. It made the Mansion in Nation County look like an outbuilding. Composed of a large central four-story block, with arched glass, flanked by two equally large sections with square windows, and flanked again by two wings with vast windows. I never would have thought it to be anything but a government office building or library.
“Whoa.” I was impressed. “That's not a public park, then?”
“No, that's the lawn. About three hundred yards of lakefront lawn. And it runs back to the highway at least that far. With a big stone wall, and a huge iron gate. You won't be able to miss it when you go by.”
“I'm impressed,” said Hester. “What does Mr. Hunley do, to be able to afford a four-story home like that?”
“It's Mrs. Bridgett Hunley,” said our waitress. “She's a widow. I don't think she does anything, really. My brother works for their landscaper. Full-time job, mowing that lawn and taking care of the grounds. All summer and into the fall. I'm not kidding. Every day but Sunday. Eight hours a day. Three of them working.”
As she left our table, we exchanged glances. “Holy shit,” said Harry, in as close to a sotto voce as he was capable of assuming, “maintenance on that sucker must cost close to a hundred thousand a year.”
“God bless waitresses,” said Hester. “Carl, why don't you leave a nice tip?”
About halfway through the second coffee, a thin, balding man dressed in slacks and a sweater came toward our table. Harry stood, and greeted him. “Guys,” he said, “this is Jimmy Hawkins, the best detective in this end of the state.” He introduced us.
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After the waitress brought Hawkins a cup of coffee, Harry gave him the ten-cent brief, including both murders, some details, the window peeking incident, and the disappearance of Alicia.
Hawkins listened very intently. “Glad those aren't my cases,” he said, when Harry had ffnished. “I just wish they weren't connected to my town. So, what can I do for you?”
“We need a little background,” said Hester.
“On Jessica Hunley, for instance,” I said.
Hawkins told us a lot. Jessica was something of a ffxture in the community, and a welcome one. She did lots of charity work, arts oriented, and spent a lot of time working on community projects that furthered music and dance. She was well known, and highly regarded. There was nothing, as far as he knew, that had ever indicated she might have any criminal involvement of any sort.
“Besides,” he said, “her Aunt Bridgett Hunley would have a fit if she thought Jessica was into anything that might damage the family reputation.”
Bridgett Hunley was a “mega-millionaire,” according to Hawkins. He looked very serious, and said, “I mean 'mega,' too. Really one of the wealthiest women going.”
Jessica lived with her Aunt Bridgett. We sort of knew that already. “I understand she might have taken ill recently,” I said.
“I hadn't heard that, but I'll check,” he said. “She's always struck me as being healthy as a horse.”
“And that,” I said, indicating the four-story building across the lake, “is her house?”
“Yeah, it is. Good size, isn't it? There are about a hundred places with about that much property, or more, around here,” said Hawkins. “But that's the biggest house. Well, the biggest stone house, I should say. Lots of the upper crust from Chicago, years ago, discovered Lake Geneva. People like Wrigley, and Marshall Field, and people like that. Large money. They built summer homes here.”
“That's not a summer home?”
“Not today. But it was in the twenties.” He sipped his coffee. “Today, I think Bridgett and Jessica own four or five places, in fact. But this is the main place.”
“How did they make their money, do you know?” asked Hester.
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