Night Watch

by Linda Fairstein

  We walked to Madison Avenue and bought ourselves a cup of coffee and a piece of Danish. By the time we were back on the sidewalk, Peterson had called.

  Mike listened to him, took a pen out of his back pocket, and jotted down the information on the side of the brown paper bag.

  “Thanks, Loo. No APB yet. Let’s see if I can figure out what’s going on.”

  “Way to go,” I said.

  “Peterson says the make and model are right. We’re looking for RK7-622. It’s registered to a woman in Old Greenwich named Mulroy,” Mike said, then repeated the name a second and third time.

  “Jim Mulroy. The guy who buys wine for all the big restaurants.”

  “That’s the name that came up in Luc’s interview two days ago, of course. The wine maven who also wants a piece of the business. Do you know where he lives?”

  “No idea.”

  Mike called Peterson back. “Would you do a people-finder on the Mulroy woman and that address in Greenwich? See if she’s married to a guy named Jim? And I’ll take you up on your other offer. See if any departments spot the car on the road. No interception, ’cause we’ve got no reason to think anything’s wrong. Just what direction they’re headed.”

  “They’ve got an hour jump on us, wherever they’re going,” I said. “Where’s your car?”

  “I don’t have a department car this weekend. I’m off duty. Remember?”

  “Mine’s better anyway. The GPS actually works, it’s got shocks—unlike any Crown Vic I’ve ever been in—and it’s full of gas.”

  “You mind? I’ll have it back to you by the end of the day.”

  “I’m riding with you.”

  “And there I was, sure you’d be acting out your tortured soul all day, doing your best black swan for the rest of the girls in the class.”

  I handed Mike the car keys and walked to the passenger side. “I’d rather keep my tortured soul close to you.”

  “What if the day doesn’t have a happy ending?” Mike said, striking a more serious tone.

  “I need to know that once and for all. What’s the big deal if they’re just going to Greenwich for the morning? Luc could still be back in time for lunch with me.”

  We sipped our coffee and waited for Peterson to call back. Fifteen minutes later, he did.

  Mike put him on speakerphone and held a finger over his mouth, reminding me to keep quiet. “I got that vehicle going through the toll booth E-ZPass lane on the Triboro Bridge at eight-twenty this morning, Mike. Any help to you?”

  “Could be, Loo. That’s the way I’ll roll.”

  “You moving on this? You’re not even signed in.”

  “Just a favor for a friend, Loo. No worries.”

  “Last time you told me that, I practically had the Vatican coming down on my head. Stay in touch, Mike.”

  “Will do,” he said, disconnecting the call.

  “We can go to my apartment and wait, you know. It’s not like they’re up to anything nefarious. I bet Luc just wanted to get out of the city for the morning. At least we can be comfortable.”

  “What? And watch Saturday morning cartoons?” Half the Danish was in Mike’s mouth, as he washed it down with a slug of coffee. “I’m fine right here.”

  I hadn’t expected another call from Peterson quite so quickly, but about eight minutes later Mike’s phone rang. The car’s motor was running, and he was hands free, so that I could hear the lieutenant, too.

  “Did you tell me you thought this car was on its way back to Greenwich?” Peterson asked.

  “Best guess.”

  “Then it should have gone north on I-95, or over to the Hutchinson River Parkway. But instead it rung up another E-ZPass on the New York State Thruway, in Ardsley. What does that tell you?”

  “He’s going north,” Mike said. “Not to Greenwich at all. Thanks, Loo.”

  He put his coffee in the cup holder and pulled out of the parking space. “You got a map in this car?”

  “I haven’t seen a road map since GPSes were invented. Why didn’t you ask Peterson whether they went over the Tappan Zee Bridge?”

  “Because there’s no toll booth on the northbound side of the highway on that bridge. You only pay on your way south,” Mike said. “So they could be going up toward Albany, or up Route 684 toward western Connecticut. Think, Coop. Do you know anything else about this Mulroy guy?”

  “Not really. He came to dinner at the restaurant in Mougins, but it was the same night that Lisette’s body had been found. And Captain Belgarde broke up our conversation, so Jim didn’t even stay that long. He seemed like a very nice guy to me—and Luc trusts him, at least in regard to business—but I don’t know anything else about him.”

  “There’s a gas station on 96th Street and First Avenue, right before we get on the drive. Run in and buy some maps, kid, and double-down on the java. Then we’ll hit the road.”

  “You’re worried about Luc now, aren’t you?” I asked.

  “I’m not worried about anything yet.”

  I was trying to call up the things we’d been talking about while Luc and I sat with Jim Mulroy in le zinc at Le Relais last Sunday night.

  “Wait a minute,” I said. “Something else reminded me of that guy this week. Something you said, or something I heard on TV.”

  “What was it?”

  I was trying to make word associations, but they weren’t coming fast enough. “It wasn’t the baseball player named Chapman, and it wasn’t the Komodo dragon. I’m thinking Peanut Island and Nantucket and bomb shelters from the 1960s.”

  “And Mulroy?”

  “Exactly. That’s exactly it,” I said, snapping my fingers. “He was trying to sell Luc on the perfect place to store wine. It’s actually a converted bomb shelter, and it’s in some remote part of Connecticut.”

  “Way to go, babe. I want more. You gotta remember more than that.”

  “There isn’t much else he talked about.”

  “What’s the name of the place?”

  “It’s a horse farm. A really fancy horse farm. That’s part of the name.”

  We were on 96th Street. I took out cash for the road maps and large coffees as Mike pulled in past the gas pumps. He braked and I ran out to the small office, returning with supplies for the ride.

  Mike got back onto 96th Street, under the FDR overpass, and then to the Drive itself.

  “Like Derby winners? Like Secretariat or Sea Hero or Barbaro?”

  “No, no. More generic. Like Horse Tail Lane or Colt’s Neck—wait, wait. I think it’s Stallion Ridge. Stallion Ridge Cellars. I’m pretty sure that’s right.”

  “Where, Coop? Where is it?”

  “I don’t think he said. I just remember the bit about it being ideal for storing wines. Cheap prices, because it’s out of the city. It’s kept at a steady temperature of fifty-five degrees. No vibrations. Dark, subterranean, and secure.”

  I said those last three words and shivered at the image they now conjured for me.

  “Dial Mercer’s number for me. Saturday morning, ten o’clock,” Mike said. “He should be at home with Vickee and the kid.”

  The phone rang twice before Mercer picked it up.

  “Yo, Detective Wallace,” Mike said. “Am I interrupting anything?”

  “Froot Loops everywhere. Vickee’s getting Logan dressed, and I’m doing the dishes. What’s up, Mike? You checked in on Alex yet?”

  “Good morning, Mercer,” I said. “I’m doing fine.”

  “Your assignment,” Mike said, “if you choose to accept it, is to get on your computer and search for a place called—what is it, Coop?”

  “Stallion Ridge Cellars. It should be in Connecticut, Mercer. A horse farm of some sort, with a storage facility for wine.”

  “Vickee’s got her iPad hooked up here next to the kitchen counter. Hang with me a minute.”

  We were on the Triboro Bridge, taking the turnoff to the Thruway.

  “Pops right up, guys. It’s got its own website. State-of-t
he-art warehouse,” Mercer said. “Whoa. Must be the black hole of the wine business.”

  “What do you mean?” I asked.

  “Address is top secret. They don’t even give it on the site. Bragging ’cause that’s the kind of security they offer their customers.”

  “How do we find it then?” Mike asked.

  “I’m working on that. Going back and going back. Most recent article is from The Wall Street Journal. Looks like the property was sold six months ago. It used to be part of some fancy digs called Kenner Stables. The woman who owned some two hundred and twenty-six acres—her name is Patti Kenner—sold off the part with—get this—a bomb shelter. She sold about one hundred acres to a New York corporation.”

  “I’m hearin’ you, Mercer. Any chance the buyer is Gineva Imports?”

  “You’re on the money, Mike. Is that a good thing, or bad?”

  “Not so good for Luc, I’m thinking.”

  “Try looking for Kenner Stables,” I said, trying to keep my anxiety in check.

  “I’m doing that, Alex. Going back a few years,” Mercer said. “Hold it, hold it. Patti Kenner of Kenner Stables. Local newspaper. She held a fund-raiser for the volunteer firefighters at the horse farm. We’re looking outside the town of Washington Depot in Connecticut. Do you know it?”

  “Yes, yes, I do,” I said, turning to Mike. “My friend Cynthia has a place nearby. I’ve been up there dozens of times. It’s magnificent horse country, and great antiquing. Take the Thruway to 684, then onto 84 and up Route 7. We’re less than ninety minutes away.”

  “Does it give an address, Mercer?” Mike asked.

  “Just says Kenner Stables is off Route 109. There’s a picture showing a few large barns all huddled together, and a large white silo next to a smaller barn at the end, visible from the road.”

  “Great help,” Mike said. “Turn left at the white silo. How many of those do you think we’ll see?”

  “A ton of them,” I said.

  “What are you doing today?” Mike asked Mercer.

  “Whatever you need. Vickee promised we’d take Logan to the zoo on the first nice spring day, and here it is. He can’t get enough of the penguins.”

  “I’ll tell you what, Mercer,” Mike said. “Fuck the penguins. Tell Logan I’ll buy him one for Christmas. Call in every chit you got to find this Patti Kenner, and if you feel like a ride in the country, meet us at Stallion Ridge.”

  FORTY-NINE

  “I’m Patti Kenner,” the woman said. She was standing inside the gated entrance to her property, dressed in riding clothes. A tall chestnut mare from which she’d dismounted was beside her.

  “This is Alex Cooper. I’m Mike Chapman.” He displayed his shield to Kenner. “Thanks for coming out to talk to us.”

  “Happy to do it. The town police chief said your partner had called.”

  “Your place is hard to find.”

  “That’s the idea, Detective.”

  Kenner appeared to be in her late forties. She had beautiful curly black hair with touches of gray around her face and looked especially pretty when her features relaxed into a smile.

  “Not even a sign on the road?”

  “You’d have to understand my great-uncle to appreciate why. Do you want to come in?”

  “I’ll be back for the long version. We’re on our way to Stallion Ridge. The chief told us how to get there,” Mike said. “About three-quarters of the way past your white silo, on the other side of the road. Also an unmarked driveway.”

  Kenner pursed her lips and her brow wrinkled automatically.

  “This won’t get back to you, Ms. Kenner,” I said. “We can promise you that.”

  “Yes, that’s one of the entrances. There’s also a back way in, but it’s a lot harder to find—and impossible to ride on after a rough winter. It’s completely rutted most of the time.”

  “We’ve tried to get a description of what’s on the property there, but nobody seems to know. Can you help us out?”

  “Sure.” Patti Kenner took off her riding gloves and leaned against the gate. Mike got out of the car and came around to my side to listen to her.

  “My great-uncle bought the piece we’re standing on in the 1940s. He’d been very fortunate with his investments and wanted to get into the business of breeding thoroughbred horses. Land in this part of the world was incredibly cheap then, so he picked up twenty acres to begin with and, over the next decade, kept adding property on both sides of the road.”

  I looked around the countryside, which was lush after so much spring rain, with rolling green hills in all directions.

  “He wasn’t always so crazed with security. Kenner Stables contributed handsomely to the local economy over the years, employing a lot of the townspeople. Everybody knew where to find us back then.”

  “What happened?” Mike asked.

  “It was long before I was born, in the late fifties. A ring of arsonists set fire to several of the barns one night,” Kenner said, pausing for a moment.

  “I can’t think of anything worse,” I said, looking at the magnificent animal pawing the ground behind her.

  “Fortunately, because there were so many farmhands on the property, not a single horse was injured. But in all the confusion of getting the animals out of their stalls and to safety, the arsonists—who were actually horse thieves—were able to steal six thoroughbreds that night. My uncle never saw those horses again.”

  “So down came the signs,” Mike said. “And that’s why you love the volunteer firefighters.”

  She laughed and told Mike he was right on both counts.

  “Is there really a bomb shelter here?” he asked.

  “That’s on the part of the land that I sold off,” she said.

  “Tell us about it.”

  “After the time of the fire, as you might understand, my uncle was more than a bit obsessed about security. Not just the animals, but a bit paranoid about his own life, too. In 1962, a consortium of his bankers and insurance brokers were based in Hartford,” Kenner said. “They got him all fired up about a Soviet ICBM attack. They convinced him that he’d need a safe place to store all his papers—which I don’t really think was its purpose—and to protect them and their families at the same time.”

  “So he built one?” I asked.

  “Oh yes.”

  “How big?”

  “It’s a twelve-thousand-square-foot underground bunker, behind a blast wall—”

  “What’s a blast wall?”

  Mike answered. “Reinforced concrete that can withstand a bomb blast going off anywhere near it.”

  “That’s right. So there’s a blast wall and a twelve-ton steel bank vault door. If you get past that, the rest of the interior has walls that are eighteen inches thick.”

  “Well stocked?” Mike asked.

  “At the time we sold it, fifty years after it was built, the food rations and water cans were all still intact. There were even gas masks ready to go.”

  “Do you know anything about the people you sold it to?” I asked.

  “They must have more of my great-uncle’s DNA than I do,” Kenner said. “They’re so secretive they make him look like P. T. Barnum.”

  “The wine cellar idea, do you know where that came from?”

  “I was ready to sell off a lot of this land. And my son—who was getting his MBA at Columbia—actually brainstormed the proposal for some kind of entrepreneurial planning course he took.”

  “A plan to convert the bomb shelter into an upscale wine storage facility?” Mike asked.

  “Yup,” Kenner said, her dark eyes coming to life. “He won a prize for it at his graduation. I promised him a nice bonus if his vintage protection plan helped increase the price of the property.”

  “I’m sure it did,” I said.

  “Quite nicely.”

  “Do you know the buyers?” I asked.

  Patti Kenner patted the top of the white wooden gate. “Good horse fences make good neighbors,” she sai
d. “I’ve never met them, and I don’t think they’re very keen on having me come by for a cup of sugar.”

  “Haven’t you been curious to see the wine cellar?”

  “Actually, Ms. Cooper, I’ve never wanted to go near the shelter since the first time I went inside there as a kid. An underground bunker with a thick steel door that’s the only way in—and the only way out? I even got my son to put in a separate entrance when he redesigned the space. But it’s still far too spooky a place for me.”

  FIFTY

  The entrance drive to Stallion Ridge Cellars was as easy to miss as its owners wanted it to be. There was a turnoff onto a narrow dirt road with no signage and no landscaped greenery. Without the police chief’s detailed directions, we would have missed it altogether.

  Mike made the turn and began to drive along the road. He stopped twenty feet in and called Mercer, who was already on the way to meet us, to describe exactly how to find the place.

  Both sides were fenced in with posts identical to the Kenner property and probably original to the period when the farms had been developed as one.

  “You don’t want to wait for Mercer?” I asked.

  “I’m not expecting trouble, Coop. I’m just being nosy. Have you checked your cell?”

  “Every five minutes, and not a word.” I had left three more messages for Luc, trying to feign casual concern. The first was a checkin after the hour of my supposed ballet class, then having showered—wondering about a luncheon date—and the last about why there had been no contact. “Nosy about what?”

  “Why Mulroy wanted to bring Luc out here.”

  “That’s easy. Luc would be fascinated to see the wine cellar and all the great vintages that are supposed to be stored in it.”

  “Enough to miss a date with you?”

  I didn’t know how to answer that. Luc knew that he and I were walking on eggshells at this point in our relationship. “Maybe I annoyed him by surprising him with a visit last night. Maybe I annoyed him even more by slipping out this morning without saying a word.”

  “I say we crash their little party. I love a good wine tasting.”

  Off in the distance, in the direction we were headed, a small herd of horses was grazing in one of the pastures. They were all shades of palomino, and the sunlight danced off their backs as they moved away from the sound of our approach.