The Profiler's Daughter (Sky Stone Thriller Series)

by Steffen, P. M.

  “I bumped into Angel Butera.”

  “Lake’s biggest prick.” Teddy pulled a pack of Juicy Fruit from the pocket of his blue work shirt and popped a slice in his mouth. “I’ve been looking at these jars, boss.” His eyes followed the line of vases along the top of the bookshelves. “I count twelve. Can I buy one off you? For my girlfriend, her birthday is tomorrow. At present, I have diddley squat.” Teddy pointed to the largest, a round ginger jar with eight lobes and a glaze of blue and white. “That one’s nice. Give you twenty bucks for it.”

  “You’ve got a good eye, Teddy.” Sky poured kibble from the Purina bag into an old pink and blue striped McCoy bowl. “That pot is nearly five hundred years old. Wanli period.”

  “No shit? It does look a little dusty, now that you mention it.”

  Tiffany’s chrysanthemum face disappeared into the food bowl. Soft crunching noises followed.

  “I’m taking a shower,” Sky said, pulling a Turkish towel and some clothes from the yellow gym bag. “How about grabbing us some coffee? It’s going to be a long night.”

  “Sure thing, boss.” Teddy stood up and stretched. “Your phone rang while you were gone. Harlem Shuffle. Sexy beat.”

  It was a quick shower.

  Sky towel-dried her hair in the pink bathroom and thought about the missed call. Harlem Shuffle. That was Jake’s ringtone. Probably Theresa, calling to gloat. Sky pulled on jeans and a black sweater and returned to the office.

  She was a little shaky and the bump on her head still stung. But the shower had been refreshing.

  After emptying the contents of Izzy’s windflower evening bag on the desk, she pinned the pictures of Professor Fisk, Zach Rosario, Ellery Templeton and Porter Manville on the right hand side of the bulletin board behind her desk. The lab snapshot of Nicolette went on top. Along the left side, she pinned the graphs, both sets of lab pages, the scrap of paper, and the Papa Razzi napkin from the book of magic spells in Nicolette’s bedroom. The shot of the caiman tattoo went next to the polaroid of Nicolette. Below the graphs, she pinned the timeline Jake had handed out at the last meeting.

  Teddy came in balancing a Dunkin’ Donuts bag over two large coffees. Under his arm was a folded newspaper. “You clean up real good, boss.” He put the coffees on the desk and handed her the paper. “Check out Section B.”

  Sky finished pinning the business cards from the tattoo parlor and Professor Fisk’s lab on the bulletin board and opened the Globe to the society page.

  Under a heading titled The April Seen was a large black and white photograph with the caption:

  Skylar Winthrop Stone (Newton) and Humanitarian of the Year Porter Manville (Weston). Around 650 guests attended the Diamond Ball, a masked extravaganza held at the Four Seasons Hotel, which raised a record $1,900,000 for Boston charities.

  Teddy took a noisy gulp of coffee and frowned at the photograph of Sky and Manville. “Poor slob doesn’t know what hit him. You, on the other hand. Well, if looks could kill …” Teddy bit into his powdered doughnut for emphasis.

  Sky studied the picture. Unusual for the society page, not the predictable smiling heads the paper typically ran, but a full body shot. The photographer was an artist and he’d made the most of the optics. It was a portrait. And Teddy was right, the shot captured, exactly, the situation.

  Manville stood ramrod straight in the impeccable black tux, his head tilted down toward Sky. A small smile played on his lips, as though he were anticipating her next fascinating move. The Balenciaga gleamed, white and frothy as whipped cream. Sky and Manville would have presented the perfect tableau of wealth and privilege had Sky not been looking directly into the camera with the eyes of an executioner.

  “Shit.” Sky sipped her coffee and wondered why the editor let it pass.

  She reached for the blue gift bag Manville had delivered earlier and pulled out an envelope with her name scrawled on the front. The card inside, hand written, simply said:

  For the Rat Runner

  Inside the bag was a small wooden box wrapped with a green satin ribbon. The stamp of a Cambridge address was burned into the wood, Brattle Street, Harvard Square. Sky untied the ribbon and opened the lid. She couldn’t help but smile.

  Staring up at her with beady eyes from their individual compartments were sixteen identical chocolate mice with almond ears and tails of pink silk. Sky lifted a creature and bit into the head.

  “Bittersweet chocolate. Orange center. Try one, Teddy.”

  “No thanks. I’ll stick to doughnuts.” He studied the chocolate rodents. “Strange thing to give a woman if you ask me.”

  “It’s perfect,” Sky said.

  “Perfect, how?”

  Sky thought about it for a moment. “It’s modest. Whimsical. And it shows he’s paying attention.” She dangled a second mouse from its pink silk tail. “Let’s look at his trash.”

  She sat on the sofa and emptied the white bag onto the newspapers Teddy had dutifully spread out on the floor. Tiffany jumped up and arranged herself in an ungainly coil against Sky’s thigh.

  Sky poked through the modest pile of trash: business letters, trade publications, a few scribbled sticky notes, three empty Starbucks coffee cups, a purple plastic DVD storage case and a travel brochure for Easter Island. “Guess he likes exotic locales,” she said.

  “The guy is from Texas,” Teddy reminded her. “A town called Tempest, to be exact. Population, sixty thousand.” He pulled a wad of computer printouts from his pocket and spread the pages out on the sofa.

  “He came to Boston in the early eighties. Graduated Harvard with a degree in chemistry. Far as I can tell, he has only one surviving relative, Olivia Porter.” Teddy made a dainty wrist movement and arched his pinky finger. “A very prominent Tempest family. The Porter name is plastered all over town. Porter Boulevard, Porter Hotel, blah blah blah. Manville’s maternal grandfather was some visionary railroad surgeon by the name of Raleigh Porter.”

  There was that word again. Visionary. That’s how Professor Fisk had described Manville. Did lightning strike twice in the same family?

  “Raleigh Porter founded Raleigh Porter Medical Center,” Teddy continued. “He had two daughters, Olivia and Rachel. Olivia never married. Rachel married a surgeon, a guy by the name of Drayton Manville. One son.”

  “Porter Manville,” Sky said.

  “Correct,” Teddy nodded. “Both parents deceased.”

  “Where is Tempest?”

  “Central Texas. Hour north of Austin, thirty miles south of Waco.” Teddy pointed to a thumbprint map of the state. “Tempest is an old railroad town, just off Interstate 35.” He took a bite of powdered doughnut. “Factoid,” he said, spraying particles of sugar from his mouth. “Tempest is home to more medical doctors per capita than any other place in the country.”

  “Really? More than Boston?” Sky picked up the printout and read a few lines. “Employs over 900 physicians and scientists … ranked in the top fifteen teaching hospitals in the United States … seventeen additional regional clinics serving central Texas.” Sky looked at Teddy. “That’s some serious medical chops. Why would he stay in Boston after graduating from Harvard? Why wouldn’t he want to carry on the family tradition? Work in his grandfather’s medical complex?”

  Teddy shrugged and got to his feet. “Who the fuck knows why anybody does anything?” He peered into the Dunkin’ Donuts bag and settled on a glazed fritter.

  “Tempest has a town newspaper,” Sky read with interest. “’The Tempest Daily Telegram, serving Central Texas since 1907’." She scanned the blurb. “Owned by the same family since 1919. Fred Mayfield ran the paper from 1930 until his death in ‘89. Mavis Mayfield runs the paper, now. Fred’s fourth wife.”

  “This is Nicolette Mercer?” Teddy gnawed his fritter and studied the bulletin board. “A redhead, huh? Jesus, look at all that hair. Very attractive.” He looked closer. “What’s she holding? Are those rats? God, I hate rats.”

  Sky was disappointed in Manville’s office t
rash. She collected the letters and pamphlets and handed the pile to Teddy. “Write the names and addresses down. Generate a list. We have to start somewhere.”

  She examined the purple storage case. DOC DEMO was scrawled in black marker on the front. Sky pulled the disc out, it carried a Phoenix Documentary Films label and an internet address. She slipped it into the DVD player on the small TV next to the door and pressed the ON button.

  The screen brightened and a title flashed in plain white block letters against a black background: THE SCIENCE OF HAPPY. A view of a three-masted tall ship with the Bunker Hill monument in the background, then a long shot of the blue-mirrored Wellbiogen building taken from across the Charles River.

  “The Science of Happy,” Sky said. “A documentary about floetazine?”

  The film made an abrupt transition to the glass and mahogany Wellbiogen lobby, followed by a sustained 360º panoramic shot of a laboratory, including various closeups of file cabinets and a woman in a white lab coat looking through a microscope. An off-screen voice ordered, “Get a head shot.”

  Porter Manville’s face came into sharp focus and the voice introduced the CEO. The camera pulled back, he was sitting behind a desk.

  “That’s his office,” Teddy said. “See the twelve point buck on the wall behind him?”

  Off-screen, a man’s voice ordered, “Angle that light.”

  Manville squinted into the camera and said, “This one?”

  “Yes, sir,” the off-screen voice answered. “That camera, very good. You are a natural. Did your people mention that we must run a light check in each room? If you will just bear with us. Nice suit, by the way.”

  The DVD went blank.

  “What happened?” Teddy said.

  “I don’t know.” Sky pushed the rewind button and they watched the same footage a second time. It went blank at the same spot. Sky let it run, maybe it was a temporary black out.

  But the rest of the DVD proved empty.

  “Riveting footage,” Teddy scoffed. “A real Bobby DeNiro.”

  “Check out the website. Phoenix Documentary Films.” Sky ejected the disk and slipped it into the purple case. “Let’s look at his garbage.”

  She untied the large black bag and poured the contents over the newspaper. The gamey smell of rotting organic matter was so powerful that Tiffany woke from her postprandial nap. The tiny Shih Tzu sat up and sniffed approvingly.

  “Dude, that’s nasty.” Teddy put a hand over his nose.

  Sky slipped on a pair of latex gloves and sifted through the miniature land fill. Coffee grounds, egg shells, banana peels, wet paper towels, a Blue Ribbon Barbecue menu, discarded finger carrots, three half-filled bottles of Perrier, an empty light bulb package, a discarded hair brush, half a yellow onion, take-out. Sky sniffed the box. Pad Thai.

  She lifted a soggy stack of magazines smeared with bacon grease. “Let’s see what Mr. Manville reads in his spare time.” She carefully separated the publications and read each title. “Accounts of Chemical Research. Biochemical and Molecular Medicine. Vibrational Spectroscopy.”

  Teddy yawned loudly and sat on the sofa’s heavily padded arm.

  “Look.” Sky held up a sporting magazine. “World’s premier hunting publication.”

  A spotted leopard graced the cover, crouched in tall grass. Dramatic feline eyes looked directly into the camera.

  “That cat doesn’t look too worried,” Teddy observed.

  Sky opened the magazine to a photograph of two men dressed in hunting garb, smiling over the body of a dead leopard. The spotted cat was posed, spread eagle, over a large mound of sand. Sky held the page up for Teddy’s inspection.

  “It’s a sin to kill an animal that beautiful.” Teddy’s handsome features twisted with disgust.

  Sky noticed something sticking from the bottom of the magazine. She carefully peeled an envelope from the wet page and blotted it with a Dunkin’ Donuts napkin.

  “It’s a letter,” she said. “An unopened letter to Mr. Porter Manville.”

  The envelope was pale ivory and carried an air of refinement despite being damp and stained with coffee grounds. Sky studied the crabbed script; the compressed letters suggested an older writer, maybe someone with arthritis.

  “So?” Teddy said. “Who’s it from?”

  “Olivia Porter. Peachtree Drive, Tempest, Texas.” Sky got up from the sofa and retrieved a silver letter opener from her desk. “Postmarked a week ago.” She drew the letter opener along the gummed flap and gently opened the swollen envelope. The liner carried a delicate pattern of Florentine lilies in scarlet and gold.

  Sky read aloud to Teddy:

  Dearest Bo,

  The bluebonnets are in bloom, spring is full upon us. And you are certainly busy, the Boston Globe reports that you are working on yet another patent. I do wish you luck, and hope your deal with Genie holds. I keep up with your victories, you know. Did you enjoy the lug of ruby reds and the pecan pralines I sent at Christmas? You adored both as a child.

  Dover has taken ill. We had to hire a new ranch hand just before calving season, which makes things especially difficult. Mother Nature cannot be manipulated and Dover knew those heifers like the back of his hand. I hope we don’t lose too many calves. I nearly had to dip into principal to pay off an equipment loan last year and you know what that does to my nerves.

  I shook up a few board members at the hospital the other night, had to remind them who the majority stock holder is, ha ha. You should have seen the looks on their faces. Those good old boys do surely hate to see a woman on top.

  It is lonely in this big house and I am haunted by the specter of death. I hope eternally that you might relent and visit. Dear boy, I have come to regret the things I said in anger so many years ago. My sister tried her best. But I spoiled you and I take full blame. You are all I have. We are two of a kind, Bo. Surely you feel the connection. There is something I must tell you before I die. Please come home. All is forgiven.

  Love forever,

  Aunt Olivia

  “All is forgiven,” Teddy repeated. “Wonder what it means.” He flicked a crumb from his leg. “Manville must’ve tossed it away by mistake. The letter, I mean.”

  “It was no mistake,” Sky said. She gave the letter a second read. “I don’t think Bo opens any of Aunt Olivia’s letters.”

  “What are ruby reds?”

  “Grapefruit,” Sky said.

  “Shit. And I thought chocolate mice were weird.”

  The longing and sorrow in the letter made Sky think of her grandmother. “I wonder how long it’s been since Porter Manville’s been home,” she mused.

  Tiffany sniffed the air and jumped awkwardly from the sofa into the middle of the garbage pile. Coffee grounds and egg shells scattered in all directions.

  “I’m hungry, Teddy.” Sky felt a sudden burst of energy. “I’m hungry for real food.” She slipped Aunt Olivia’s letter into the ivory envelope and climbed on the library foot stool. “Call downstairs and see if Carmine has an open table. My treat.” She reached up and dropped the letter into the Wanli-period pot.

  “Yes, boss.” Teddy pulled his cell out and punched a number. “Guess this means my girlfriend won’t be getting that vase, huh?”

  “Sorry, I’m kind of attached.” Sky wrestled a rib bone from Tiffany’s mouth and finished sorting through what remained of the garbage. There was nothing more to be had, so she wrapped the newspapers up and threw everything back into the black bag.

  “Carmine says come down, says he’s making his world-famous manicotti formaggio, just for you.” The PI tossed the end of an uneaten fritter in the trash. “You really should keep the curtains drawn, boss. You never know who’s looking.” Teddy walked to the window and lowered the blinds.

  Sky rummaged through the yellow gym bag and handed Teddy the blue velvet drawstring pouch. “Here. For your girlfriend. Consider it partial payment for your services.”

  Teddy pulled out an earring and frowned. “These are big. Are
they zircs? My girl is very picky.”

  Sky smiled. “They’re vintage. She’ll love them, I promise.”

  It was a relief to be rid of Izzy’s heavy diamond drops. Sky emptied the ruby-colored Diamond Ball tote and lined it with her Obey sweatshirt.

  “Grab those pictures from the bulletin board,” she instructed Teddy. “Get the graphs and scraps of paper, and the timeline, too. Put everything in that folder. I’ll fill you in on the case while we eat.”

  She placed Tiffany carefully into the bottom of the tote. The dog scratched briefly at the sweatshirt and bedded down with a contented snort.

  Angel Butera’s insinuation hovered in Sky’s thoughts as she slipped the tote over her left shoulder. News of the pregnancy was a sure sign that Jake was lost to her – and then Jake, pushing her off the case. Which meant he was free to pursue Ellery without resistance. Now Sky had to tolerate Butera’s snide comments?

  Theresa Piranesi was right about one thing: Sky didn’t really belong in the Lake. She wasn’t one of them. She’d taken the office years ago because it was close to the police station, a five minute drive. But now …

  Sky had second thoughts about going downstairs to eat. Who knows who she’d run into? Suddenly she felt like a trespasser in her own neighborhood.

  “Maybe we should order in, Teddy.”

  “And break Carmine’s heart?” He shook his head. “No way. I can’t be held responsible. Carmine has connections.”

  Sky peeked into the tote. Tiffany vibrated with the rhythm of sleep, supremely unaware that the coordinates of Sky’s world were shifting by the hour. The sight of the tiny creature cheered Sky and she reconsidered. Why squander mental resources agonizing over Jake? Or Angel Butera?

  “Porter Manville is priority number one,” she said, thinking out loud. “We need to find his link to Nicolette Mercer.”

  “You’re the boss,” Teddy shrugged. “Just tell me what to do.”