Yuri flashed Sky a self-conscious smile, he seemed embarrassed. “To be honest, I am not terribly interested in the money. It is just that career options for someone with my qualifications are somewhat limited.”
Kyle’s ringtone interrupted and Sky checked the text message: mt me our lady’s stat
“I have to go.” Sky studied Yuri’s face, memorizing the sharp features, the lank hair that just brushed the top of his shoulders. Because she knew she’d never see him again.
“Thanks for the great night’s sleep,” she said, extending her arm for a handshake. “And for saving my life.”
To Sky’s surprise, Yuri kissed her hand in the French style.
“I would like to think I have repaid the debt I owe your father. And yet …” Yuri shook his head. “The world seems to grow more dangerous by the hour. Take care, Skylar Winthrop Stone.”
Sky opened the passenger door and climbed out.
“I almost forgot,” she said, turning for a last look at Yuri. “Your thumb drive is in the white rubber rat. Can you lock my office when you leave?”
Teddy’s funeral service was breaking up. Mourners in black drifted down the church steps to the desolate drone of Highland bagpipes.
Our Lady’s Parish was the spiritual center of the Lake, her peak spire visible from all points. Teddy had been an altar boy there. Jake, too. Teddy rang the bell at the consecration, Jake carried the metal container suspended from chains. What was that called? Thurible, that was it. Hot coal and incense.
Sky parked on Adams Street and searched the crowd.
Magnus was there, lion head down, comforting a young woman, probably Teddy’s girl friend. The mayor stood beside Magnus checking his cell phone. Sky saw Jake moving through the crowd with Theresa Piranesi trailing behind him.
Cars queued up along Washington Street behind Teddy’s flower-draped hearse, preparing for the final journey to the cemetery.
Porter Manville was nowhere to be seen.
Sky slipped into the churchyard through the east entrance, beneath the gaunt verdigris angel, and joined Kyle. The detective was lingering near the bagpipe players, smoking a cigarette.
“You missed Teddy’s service, darling.” Kyle studied Sky’s face. “And what happened to your jaw? I can’t leave you alone for a minute.”
“Did the judge issue the warrant?” Sky asked. “Are you going to arrest me?”
“I wouldn’t worry about that.” Kyle tossed his cigarette to the ground and lit another.
“Why? What happened?”
“Thought you should be the first to know. Only fitting, under the circumstances …”
“What?”
“Porter Manville is now a person of interest in the murder of Teddy Felson.”
“Teddy?” Sky was confused. “Why now? Did forensics find something?”
“Negative.” Kyle shook his head. “Jake got a tip last night. Called a meeting bright and early this morning. Turns out Manville is in possession of certain papers belonging to Teddy. Jake’s on his way to get a search warrant as we speak. Bad timing, what with Teddy’s funeral. By the way,” he said, changing the subject. “Have you seen Axelrod?”
“I had dinner with him last night in Chinatown. Why?”
“The rookie was a no-show at the funeral. Very bad form. And he’s not answering my calls.”
“Exactly what papers did Manville have that belonged to Teddy?”
Kyle rubbed his close-cropped gray hair with a reluctant expression.
“What papers, Kyle?”
“Okay, okay. Were you aware that Jake hired someone to watch you while you were on Nantucket?”
“Yes. Candace told me.”
“It was Teddy,” Kyle said. “Jake was worried about you being on Nantucket by yourself so he hired Teddy to keep an eye on you.”
“My Teddy? Teddy Felson was spying on me?”
“Yeah. We were the only ones who knew about it – me, Jake, Teddy. So how did Manville get that surveillance log? That’s what Jake intends to find out.” Kyle threw his cigarette to the ground and lit another. “Teddy should never have agreed to work for you. But you know Teddy. He was a gambler.”
“Was Axelrod at Jake’s meeting this morning?”
“Yeah. He ran out before it was over, the little twerp. Haven’t seen him since.” Kyle’s cell phone rang and he took the call. It was brief.
“Molly Payne is missing,” he said. “She was riding her bike on the sidewalk. Didn’t come in when her mother called her. Mrs. Payne found the bike laying in the street. But no Molly. Kid’s probably at a friend’s house. Hey!” Kyle yelled. “Where are you going?”
CHAPTER FIFTY-FOUR
The split-level was shrouded in fog, barely visible through the grove of birches.
Sky ditched the Jeep on Hunt Club Road and approached the house on foot.
She eased the snubnose from the holster. Maybe Jake had to wait for a search warrant, but Sky didn’t. An ugly scenario was playing in her head: Manville panicked after listening to the interview with the Tempest coroner. Somehow, he’d stolen Tiffany, used the dog to lure Molly into his car.
Sky moved up Manville’s U-shaped drive with the revolver raised. She was nearly to the front steps when she saw the peacoat and the blonde boyscout haircut, the body on the ground.
Axelrod’s eyes were closed.
Sky crouched down and searched for an entry wound because he seemed to be bleeding from the mouth.
“Axelrod,” she said.
At the sound of Sky’s voice, the rookie’s eyes opened. His mouth moved and Sky put her ear to his lips.
“He’s got the girl,” Axelrod whispered. “Sorry.” His eyes drifted shut.
Sky fumbled for her cell and tried to call 911 but her phone was dead. No juice.
She kissed Axelrod on his forehead and stood up.
The front door hung open, as though Manville were expecting her.
Sky stepped through the doorway and moved directly into the kitchen, scanning the corners. It was quiet.
She pulled a Captain’s chair from the head of the massive trestle table and dropped to her knees. Reaching with an arm, she touched the front panel of the secret compartment, the place where slaves had been hidden during the Underground Railroad.
Fear made her hesitate.
Was Molly inside? Curled up like a fetus, dead?
Sky forced herself to press on the panel. It sprang open. She edged a hand inside, bracing herself for the touch of cold flesh.
The box was empty.
Relieved but confused, Sky got to her feet.
Molly was somewhere in the house, confined. Sky could feel the child’s presence. But where? Sky tried to recall the layout, Manville’s tour as he talked about the house’s history.
The wine cellar.
Manville had made such a big deal about his wine cellar at Carnivale.
He’d been on the brink of showing it to Sky during her visit that night. But Sky had spotted the green thong in the rolltop desk, and distracted Manville by playing the piano.
A dull thump issued from somewhere deep inside the walls, like a sliding door slamming shut. But the house didn’t have any sliding doors, not that Sky remembered.
She moved back to the front door and slipped into the living room.
The house was dark, the fireplace was dark, no fire.
Sky crossed the room to the archway and stepped out on the wrap-around balcony.
Below, on the black and white marble floor of the conservatory, the massive grand piano gleamed, silent.
Sky’s eyes moved to the Edwardian desk. The rolltop was open and she caught the glint of a flaxen curl dangling from the far right pigeonhole.
With pistol drawn, she descended the stairs.
She flashed back to that night. Her panic attack, her phony excuse to use the restroom. Manville had suggested the bathroom across from the wine cellar. He’d waved her toward the south wall.
Sky reached the marble floor a
nd crossed the conservatory, exited through the south door to a hallway she’d never seen before.
Bookshelves ran the length of the entire left wall, maybe thirty feet.
Across from the bookshelves, midway down the hall, was a closed door.
Sky approached, twisted the knob, nudged the door open with a foot, aiming the Smith & Wesson.
It was a small bathroom, just enough space for a toilet and half-sink. Empty.
Sky moved down the hallway. It led to the paneled room with the Lionel train set, the full bar, the regulation pool table. The room was silent, empty.
Sky retraced her steps, somehow she’d missed the wine cellar doorway.
But there was nothing. Nothing but bookshelves and the bathroom.
It didn’t make any sense.
Sky thought about the trestle table. The hidden compartment.
Did the wine cellar have a hidden entry?
She holstered the gun and began examining the bookshelves directly across from the bathroom. Starting along the baseboard, Sky ran her fingers up each case vertically, section by section, working her way across the shelves, searching for some kind of mechanism, a lever or a spring.
Nothing.
Sky stepped back and studied the books.
The shelves were packed with matching volumes, hardbound in leather. They appeared untouched and unread. Like props on a stage.
The exception was the high center shelf, half-full. An oversize volume protruded at an odd angle.
Sky reached up and yanked the book out.
The center panel rumbled back nearly a foot and slid into the wall, revealing narrow steps leading down. Into darkness.
Pulling her keys from her pocket, Sky flipped on the tiny Mag keylight and peered down, into the room.
The weak beam illuminated a matrix of round cells embedded in concrete slabs on either side of the room. Each cell the approximate diameter of a wine bottle. All cells empty. No wine.
Against the far wall, on a concrete bench, Sky saw her.
“Molly?” Sky flew down the stairs to the bench and knelt down, putting a hand to the child’s cheek and neck.
The skin was moist, cool to the touch.
Sky couldn’t tell if she was breathing.
“You never disappoint, Doctor. In that respect, you are quite predictable.” Manville’s voice boomed from the top of the stairs.
A penumbra of dull light made it impossible to read his face but Sky saw something resting in his right arm.
A shotgun.
“A thirty year old drowning in a tiny Texas town.” He laughed dryly and descended two steps. “And you found it. Well, nothin’ lasts forever. I had a good run.” His drawl was thick, he seemed to have morphed into someone else. Something about his silhouette was different. His hair. It was long, and appeared lighter in color.
“And now I will be leavin’ you two ladies. Got myself a whole new identity, Doctor. Passport, driver’s license, off-shore bank accounts. Even got a disguise. No one will give me a second look when I board my plane.”
“Why did you take Molly?”
“The little girl? Bait.” He took another step down. “I knew you’d come lookin’ for her. You lost one child. Not about to lose another one, are you? Not without a fight.” He laughed again. “Did you bring those brass knuckles?”
“Is Molly dead?”
“Nah. Sleepin’. She should wake up in six or seven hours. I’ll be long gone by then.”
An odor permeated the dead air and Sky recognized the smell of her own fear. She clenched the keys in her left hand.
“I will think of you and this child while I’m on that plane.” Manville’s velvet voice carried a note of dreamy anticipation. “And I will still be thinkin’ of you next week, as I lounge on my private beach. You and this child, no food, no water. The human body can sustain itself for a surprisingly long time, Doctor. It eats into its reserves, strips the organs themselves. Yes, I’ll be imagining you, with this child. I like to think you’ll …” he paused, seeming to look for just the right words. “The will to live is quite strong, in the end. Are you familiar with the Donner Party?”
The Donner Party.
A wagon train of American pioneers headed west for California, trapped by snow in the Sierra Nevada mountain range. Most died of disease, exposure, starvation. The survivors had resorted to cannibalism.
“You take my point,” Manville said. Sky could tell by his tone, he was smiling. “Some poor souls will do anything to stay alive. I speak from experience.”
“Why did you kill Nicolette?” Sky said, playing for time.
“Now that, Doctor, is a complicated question. Truth be told, I wanted to keep Nicolette around a while longer. Nice piece of tail, very obliging. But she started making demands, just like all the rest.”
“Like Savannah?”
“Savannah was a sweet girl, well-meaning. But I had plans and Savannah was in the way. No, Nicolette was a whole different animal. Sneaky. First she tried to convince me she was pregnant with my child. When that didn’t work, she threatened me.”
“The memory drug patent,” Sky said.
“Correct. Pulled it right off my home computer while I was in the next room, sleepin’. Admitted it, bold as brass. Said she was gonna give it to some contact, said it was worth a lot of money. Nicolette tried to bully me into marrying her. Can you imagine?”
“Where’s my dog?”
“Love to stay and chat,” Manville ignored the question. “But I gotta run. Plane to catch.” He backed up the stairs, into the hallway, the shotgun still aimed into the cellar.
Sky heard something click.
The panel jolted from the wall, Manville pulled the shotgun up, the room grew darker, it was nearly sealed.
Sky shouted, “Bo, wait!”
The intimacy of the childhood nickname made Manville pause, as Sky knew it would. A voice from long ago, something precious there.
The panel slid back into the wall and Manville moved three steps down the stairs.
“Yes, Doctor?” He peered toward Sky with genuine curiosity.
“I know why your childhood sucked. Your mother wasn’t really your mother.”
“What?” Manville’s voice rasped at the absurdity.
“Your Aunt Olivia,” Sky said. “She’s your real mother. She and Rachel went on a European tour. Without Drayton. Olivia gave birth to you in les Baux-de-Provence. They altered the birth certificate, listed Rachel and Drayton as your parents. The question is, who’s your father?”
Sky could feel Manville examining this new data against distant memory, testing its weight, finding the fit.
Slipping her right hand into the trench coat, Sky eased the Smith & Wesson from the holster.
With her left hand, she tossed the keys to the farthest corner and took aim at Manville’s twisting torso as he followed the sound. A blast from the shotgun exploded into the far wall and Sky fired the revolver twice.
Manville toppled down the stairs and hit the cellar floor.
Sky scooped Molly up from the bench with her left arm, darted around Manville’s still body, started up the cellar steps.
From behind, Sky felt his hand grab her boot.
She lost her balance, tumbled back, angling her body to shield Molly from the fall.
Sky let the child roll from her arm to the cellar floor as Manville’s fingers found Sky’s neck. She twisted, trying to free herself, but he bore down, pressed hard, squeezing her throat.
Sky couldn’t breath, she knew she didn’t have much time.
The snubnose was still in her right hand. She shoved the barrel hard against the body beneath her and pulled the trigger.
An inhuman cry erupted from Manville’s throat, the fingers loosened from around Sky’s neck.
Sky rolled off Manville’s body and scrambled to her feet.
Leaning over Molly, Sky felt with her left hand along her body, making sure the child hadn’t taken a bullet from the blind shot.
&
nbsp; Manville stirred behind her.
Sky turned, saw him come awkwardly to a sitting position, watched his arm flail toward the shotgun.
With the revolver in both hands, Sky struck a wide stance, took clear aim, and fired three bullets into Manville’s right eye.
Sirens greeted Sky as she carried Molly out of the house.
Two police cars careened down Hunt Club Road and pulled into Manville’s property, an ambulance close behind.
Jake jumped from the cruiser midway up the U-shaped drive and reached Sky. He took Molly from her arms and handed the child to an EMT.
“Axelrod.” Sky pointed to the rookie and Jake yelled for a paramedic.
Sky tried to explain where Manville’s body was, what had happened.
Jake waved a flank of armed officers into the house and the world grew silent.
Sky felt herself drifting away in the fog.
When she came to, Jake was carrying her toward an ambulance.
Uniforms swarmed the property. Squad cars, a CSI truck, and the medical examiner’s van glutted the road.
“You got here so fast. How did you know?”
“Anonymous tip,” Jake said. “Any idea who it was?”
Sky thought about Yuri’s sixth sense, his warning, the bug on her Jeep. “None,” she said, breathing in the smell of oranges and tobacco.
Axelrod lay on a stretcher a few feet away, a mask over his face. EMTs were lifting him into an ambulance as Jake settled Sky on a gurney.
“Still hate me?” Jake said.
“Yes,” Sky whispered, wrapping her arms around his neck. She couldn’t seem to keep her eyes open. “I do.”
Epilogue
“Is your baby in there? Dead?” Molly pointed to the small mound of dirt beneath the stone cherubim.
“Um hmmm.” Sky was on her knees, twisting a finger into the crusted dirt. She dropped the heart scarab Alexei had given her into the small hole and covered it with soil before placing a wreath of baby’s breath over the mound. The winged angel had been Izzy’s choice, the stone monument towered over the tiny grave, right arm raised in righteous defiance. An avenging angel, Sky decided.
The Profiler's Daughter (Sky Stone Thriller Series) Page 45
