Kaplan tossed back her black hood and glared at him with icy blue eyes. “Sigmond and I were conducting an important undercover investigation,” she said. “We were using the vacant house as a meeting place. But when I got there last Friday, I found the door ajar. Sigmond was sprawled faceup on the floor, his head bashed in, deer chow sprinkled on his clothes—and his Palm Pilot was missing. I had to act quickly to try to apprehend his killer, so I removed the Satterfields’ keys from his pocket. Then I put him in a golf cart and dumped him into the sixth hole sand trap.”
Her testimony was instantly drowned out by a sea of gasps, protestations, a groan from Aaron, and Rachel’s piercing scream, “Oh, Mother—how could you!?”
Leland glared until the noise died down, then Cundy added, “As for the dock key—I assume the murderer has it. I think you’ll find the spare house key missing, too.”
Diane Robards, at the railing, glanced quickly at Leland with raised brow.
“There’s a safe in the clubhouse office with master house keys,” he explained. “It’s in case of fire or flood—they don’t want their costly carved doors busted in. Only Mayor Drysdale has access to the combination.”
Leland turned back to Cundy Kaplan. “Mrs. K., you’ve just admitted to meddling with evidence, moving the body, and disrupting a capital murder investigation—but you’re claiming you didn’t kill him? Exactly what was this secret project of yours, then, that got him killed?”
“It’s an investigation of an enormous real estate scam involving Gryphon Gate,” she told him. “Sigmond’s Ph.D. in sociology was a perfect front for data-gathering from inside. We had evidence that some very highly placed people were knee-deep in the mud. Though we didn’t yet have proof who the mastermind was, we were closing in. Then, unexpectedly, one of our top moles was killed.”
Diane recalled Mrs. Kaplan’s office visit—when she’d mentioned there were five murders, not four.
“You’re saying someone was murdered before Sigmond Vormeister?” she asked.
“Yes,” Kaplan replied. “Lincoln Sinclair. It was designed to look like an accident, but the stereo system that electrocuted him was tampered with by someone who had his confidence and access to his private office. We weren’t sure yet, however, that his death was tied to our investigation. The obvious suspect would be his wife, Toni.”
The wind was hammering at the front door, but everyone was quiet now, riveted to Cundy Kaplan’s report.
“When I found Sigmond’s body,” she went on, “I was sure that both deaths were related. But luckily our killer knew nothing about me. So, at dusk that evening, when the greens were closing, I took poor Sigmond’s corpse to the sand trap. Then I used the Satterfields’ fax to notify the usual suspects—and I watched, with infrared binoculars, from the bay windows overlooking the sand trap, to see who would show up.”
“The—usual suspects?” said Leland.
“Toni Sinclair, Vanessa Smart-Drysdale, the Upshaws, Senator Ned Carbury, Jerry Lynch, Lieutenant Colonel Lance McClintock—everyone who had something to lose and plenty to gain by silencing Lincoln Sinclair and Sigmond Vormeister. But my ruse didn’t expose the killer. I saw Jerry Lynch lurking in the brush and watching as Toni Sinclair turned the body over, then covered her tracks. No one else showed up. But if either of them had killed Sigmond in another location and then found the body moved, he’d have been on instant alert of a trap.”
“So you don’t think Toni did it, either?” Robards interjected.
“Leaving deer chow as her calling card?” Cundy sneered disdainfully.
“But if Lance McClintock is dead,” Leland observed, “and if Toni and Jerry are out of it, your scenario leaves us with only Vanessa Smart-Drysdale, Senator Carbury, or perhaps Lydia or Parker Upshaw as the—what did you say?—the mastermind?”
“Proverbs 11:13,” agreed Cundy. “’A talebearer revealeth secrets, but he that is of faithful spirit concealeth the matter.’ Our stumbling block was that one of those involved, an innocent, was concealing something, due to a misplaced sense of allegiance. So I hired Tiffany to hold a church service and I sent everyone invitations.”
“You hired her?” Robards interrupted. “But how could you have known that the scheduled speaker would drop out? Professor…” A howl of wind interrupted her.
“Ahmed Djibouti, my grad school colleague at Johns Hopkins, and a good investigator himself,” Cundy said. “At first we planned to have Achmed conduct the session, planting revelations from within the audience—but Tiffany was known in the community, which would seem less suspicious. It helped that she was already a seasoned freelance operative with good credentials.”
“But I didn’t know that Mrs. Kaplan was my client,” Tiffany chimed in. “I thought on the phone that it was Lincoln Sinclair’s sister, Mrs. Clancy. I only found out the truth less than an hour ago when we met over at Lydia Upshaw’s.”
“Lydia was the one concealing something?” Leland Ford correctly guessed.
“She didn’t come to the service,” said Kaplan. “She stayed home, hunting for the information in her files that might prove her husband guilty or innocent—an answer she discovered only today. Though her findings would have helped the police investigation, we knew Parker Upshaw was innocent: He was working with us.”
“Parker Upshaw? Parker Upshaw?” Diane jumped to her feet, grasping the banister in fury. She felt like screaming at the top of her lungs, which might be necessary soon if she wanted to be heard at all over the screeching storm.
Leland Ford put his hand over hers, trying to get her to focus. He could now see, only too clearly, where this all seemed to be heading.
“Mrs. Kaplan,” Diane said in frustration, “is there anyone in this whole damned sinkhole of sin who isn’t working for you?”
“My son Aaron isn’t—or he wasn’t until now,” said Cundy, looking at the shamefaced skateboarder beside her. Aaron flushed beet red.
“For some reason, Aaron naïvely believed he could do business with the devil, and I learned of it only early this morning,” said Cundy. The wind was howling so loudly now she had to yell to make herself heard. “If I had not intercepted him in the woods just then, my son might be dead right now. I have to blame myself—”
“I have to blame you, too!” Diane snapped, stepping forward to glare at Kaplan on the higher step. “You’ve withheld information and meddled with evidence from square one! Thanks to your manipulative secrecy, five people are already dead!”
“Five people are dead,” said Cundy, “because Vanessa Smart-Drysdale murdered them!”
A gasp ran through the group, followed by an awed silence in which only the whine of wind could be heard. But Diane Robards hadn’t quite finished with Cundy Kaplan.
“On character alone, Vanessa would certainly be my choice,” Diane agreed. “But you said the killer had masterminded some big land scam involving Gryphon Gate. Vanessa’s divorce cut her out of the pot financially. No motive. Furthermore—I’m sorry, Mrs. Kaplan—but I’m afraid I have trouble even imagining that a little twig like Vanessa could kill four big men and a tough, leggy brunette like Anka.”
“I believe I mentioned before that you lacked compassion,” said Cundy dryly. “Now it would appear that you lack imagination as well.”
When Robards bristled, Cundy added: “Vanessa bribed her attorney, Ned Carbury—using her body and her husband Henry’s money—to rig the land purchase of Gryphon Gate, which would make her rich. She wasn’t expecting Henry Drysdale to dump her, but at least she got a chunk of the parcel: Forest Glen. That was four years ago. She’s been in bed with Carbury ever since.
“When Lincoln Sinclair, through his computer research, found out about the scam, he should have phoned us first and blown the whistle on Carbury’s crimes. Instead, Lincoln threatened Vanessa by revealing he was working with Sigmond Vormeister to expose the whole deal and those involved. Lincoln tried to blackmail her into cutting him in for a share of the pie to keep his information quiet. Vanes
sa crossed the wires in his stereo system—and kept him quiet instead.
“Her other murders,” Cundy continued, “were managed by a stun gun and a blow to the head. But in fear that Lincoln might have revealed something to his wife, Toni, Vanessa planted deer chow on her next victims’ bodies—and suspicion on Toni.” Cundy folded her hands and added, “The rest of her crimes are quite simple.”
“But why would Vanessa kill Charles Jefferson and Anka?” said Diane, trying to pitch her voice above the racket outside. “They had nothing whatever to do with Gryphon Gate real estate.”
“I suspect Doctor Jefferson was in the wrong place at the wrong time,” said Cundy. “Vanessa’s faxes to Jefferson were intended to place more suspicion on Toni and to place the true father of her child at the site of a homicide. Instead, he arrived early and saw Anka’s lifeless body being dumped in the koi pond. And perhaps Anka—just like my son Aaron here—believed she’d found a business partner in Vanessa, a patron who could provide keys to all the houses, stolen from Henry Drysdale’s safe. Anka only had to get jewelry and information—information easy to snoop for, given her contacts with other servants—with no one ever realizing Vanessa was the final recipient. When Anka’s activities were uncovered, so to speak, by the Lynches, Vanessa had to get rid of the foolish servant before she talked.” Cundy paused and added, “But Colonel McClintock made the biggest mistake of all.”
“You mean his fight with Carbury on the golf course?” asked Leland, who had plowed through his police notes more than once. “But that would make Carbury more a suspect than Vanessa. If the senator was getting payola from her to keep his mouth shut, it’s unlikely he’d tell her that McClintock was about to blow the game.”
“He didn’t have to,” said Cundy. “McClintock made that mistake himself, in front of others at the club—and thereby signed his own death warrant.”
Diane’s brain was pounding; the air in the foyer seemed to have vanished while the wind grew more ferocious, as if all the oxygen had been sucked outside. She thought she might black out.
What was it that Lance McClintock had said at the club? Camille had told her, but Camille thought it was Ned Carbury that her husband had been talking about. According to the police records, Carbury hadn’t even been in the room at the time. But Vanessa was, Diane realized. And then it hit her:
“Give it back to the red Indians!” Diane yelled.
Everyone turned to stare at her.
“That’s it!” she said. “This land doesn’t belong to the Gryphon Gate Corporation! The papers Ned Carbury falsified were the land titles! But there were no land titles, at least, not private ownership: This was government land—Indian land!”
“A Native American sacred spring and ancient burial ground, as we believe,” confirmed Cundy. “But the records had vanished and much of the surrounding land, due to its strategic location, was converted to military use.”
“Lydia Upshaw must have noticed at once,” Rachel said. “When the Department of Natural Resources showed up with zip—an endangered frog and a marsh mallow—that doesn’t add up to a reason why land as valuable as this was never developed and was still available for practically a song. Environmentalists and ecologists embraced the whole idea because it was being preserved for natural uses. They never even guessed that there were no claims because the records had been destroyed.”
“Vanessa Smart-Drysdale lived in this region all her life,” agreed Robards, recalling her interviews. “She grew up in the Chesapeake area and knew the land inside out. Three guesses who stole the papers from the state archives at Annapolis, papers that would have proven its provenance? Who packaged Gryphon Gate, knowing that no one could ever contest the property rights without evidence?”
Rachel Vormeister had started laughing—a little hysterically, it seemed to Robards.
“Sorry,” Rachel said, standing to face the others still on the steps. “I’m a Jungian, you see—and this is all so archetypal!” When no one spoke, she said: “Gryphon Gate: It’s as mythological as its name. A gryphon—part lion, part eagle—exists only in imagination! Good God—don’t you all see what it means?” she cried in tears above the storm. “My husband was murdered for something that never existed!”
Aaron slid down the stairs, between Tiffany and Lt. Cmdr. Cindy Silberblatt, and he went up to hug his big sister. “I’m sorry,” he told Rachel, as if what she said had made any sense at all.
“I’m lost here,” Tiffany shouted. “We know Vanessa is a horrible killer. The police are here to resolve the problem. What are we supposed to do now?”
“I know what I’m supposed to do,” yelled Cindy Silberblatt. “I need to get down to the docks and secure those boats!”
Just then a gigantic crash came from the kitchen. The back hall door smashed open, and beyond it they could see the gaping hole where the wall of windows had been only moments before. Wind tore down the hall unimpeded. A heavy Bokhara runner was lifted from the hallway floor, and it was floating in the air like a serpent. The seven occupants of the entrance hall stood stupefied as china objects flew off the étagères and smashed into the walls around them. People who live in glass houses shouldn’t grow trees, thought Robards.
“The basement!” Leland hollered.
But just then they heard the awful creaking sound of a giant tree falling, falling, the roots snapping with explosive cracks like gunfire. There was another crash, right over their heads, that could only be the upper roof collapsing under the tree’s weight. Bits of plaster from the ceiling broke away and started plopping onto their heads. All the light from the entry lunette was now obliterated by leaves and branches; the front had to be blocked by the fallen tree. Leland yanked the door open—a sea of water and branches crashed into the hall, knocking him backwards.
In the racket around her Robards thought she heard herself screaming—but it was Rachel, clinging to her shoulder. Cindy Silberblatt grabbed Rachel by the arm and slapped her once, hard in the face.
“Snap out of it,” she told the pregnant woman. “Follow me—we have to get out of here before we’re buried alive.”
Right, thought Robards—a navy commander. This chick could kick butt.
Everyone followed Silberblatt back down the hall and into the garage.
Cindy disconnected the lock, but it took four of them to raise the garage door by hand, and when they did, they wished they hadn’t. The two cars parked in the garage had been blocked by the police cruiser just outside—which in turn was crushed under the trunk of an enormous cypress.
It would take a crew with buzz saws a week to clear this, Robards thought.
“I can probably squeeze all seven of us into my Land Rover,” the dockmaster yelled in Robards’s ear. “If we can make it there. It’s parked at the end of the drive.”
“But then what?” Robards screamed back. “The whole neighborhood’s a disaster zone!”
“My wheel base is high enough to clear most flooding, and the clubhouse is uphill,” Cindy said. “I can drop you there en route to the harbor and then use our Coast Guard radio to get help. They should have issued an evacuation notice hours ago!”
Maybe they had, thought Robards grimly. But the power and phone lines had been out for hours and the cells were jammed—as always in emergencies, just when they were most needed. She prayed that the families with children had thought to take refuge at the clubhouse on high ground.
Silberblatt gathered the group into an arrowlike wedge to deflect the wind. They moved in cadence through Sigmond’s dense forest of giant trees as branches crashed around them. At last they reached the main road and piled into the car. The dockmaster wasted no time, expertly weaving her way along the road, which had turned into a river of chocolate milk.
“I bet you never thought your navy experience would come in handy in a Land Rover?” Leland tried to joke. Nobody laughed.
The wind buffeted the car relentlessly as water sucked at the wheels. It seemed hours through the onslaught of rain befo
re they could finally glimpse the clubhouse clinging precariously to the hill.
Silberblatt pulled the car up front and felt a thunk under the right tire. Leland hopped out of the front seat and the wind nearly tore the passenger door off. He looked at the ground in front of the car.
“Jesus! Don’t go any farther!” he yelled to Silberblatt, staring at the mass of rubble just in front of them. “It’s the portico! The columns have collapsed!”
The elegant former portico—beneath which the residents had pulled their Jaguars and Bentleys to keep themselves dry—was now nothing but a pile of stone and mud. The clubhouse didn’t look much better: The windows that had afforded a magnificent view of the golf course and the valley were now nonexistent. Winds tore at the green velvet draperies that whipped from the gaping former windows of the Wild Goose Room. Not a creature was stirring—except the relentless storm.
By unspoken consensus it occurred to those seated in the Land Rover that the low ground might be a preferable solution. Leland crawled in again, and Cindy Silberblatt started to back out of the drive, when a blast from a car horn stopped her in her tracks. All seven passengers turned to stare as a tiny, bright red sports car came barreling by them through the water at a frightening clip. It headed downhill toward the port—directly into the jaws of the storm.
Though they could not see the driver, everyone knew the owner’s name: The car belonged to Vanessa Smart-Drysdale.
* * *
Vanessa was ready to kill somebody. She had to laugh at the trite expression. Maybe she should say she was ready to kill again!
She was fed up with goddamned Henry Drysdale! After she had pushed her redial button for about the thirty-thousandth time and he hadn’t answered, she threw her cell phone into the toilet, took the elevator down to the apartment garage, and hit the road for the beltway to the Wilson Bridge, and into Maryland. The ports had all been closed by the storm—and she had to get to that boat!
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