People Die (10 page)
Authors: Kevin Wignall
At the end of breakfast there was one couple left at the table with him, Lenny and Dee Kaplan, well-preserved and perma-tanned, from some town in Southern California, a quiet sporty affluence about them.
When JJ asked whether they’d been there before Lenny said, “First time here in the Copley Inn.”
“Not the last,” added his wife.
“Definitely not the last. But we come to the East Coast every year around this time. It’s our way of making our children love us.” JJ smiled affably, seeing a joke coming; Dee was already holding back a giggle. “See, the grandparents move in to keep an eye on them; one week of that and they thank God they’ve got us for the other fifty-one.”
“Isn’t he terrible?” asked Dee. “Our two boys are great kids. I mean, really beautiful kids.”
“It’s true, I admit it,” Lenny agreed, like it was never in doubt. Dee was the person who’d described the Bostridge kids as beautiful too, and as it turned out hers were around the same age. Lenny and Dee were eager to bring them the next time so the four could meet, no doubt in their minds that the Bostridge children would like their own.
A little while later Kathryn came through and said to the couple like it was their regular routine, “If you’re ready to go in, I’ll bring you some fresh coffee.”
“Thanks, Kathryn, you’re an angel,” said Lenny, and then to JJ, “Join us? We always sit in the lounge and read the papers. “ JJ agreed, accepting Kathryn’s offer of more tea.
The lounge was more like a sunroom, half conservatory, the Kaplans basking like lizards in the enhanced morning sunlight and warmth, as if needing a fix of their own climate. They didn’t seem to read much but used the various stories instead as springboards for views on different subjects, stories about themselves.
At one point as Dee turned a page JJ caught a glimpse of a couple of columns and a picture of the kid from Viner’s apartment, the kind of odd grinning portraits that he guessed came from high school yearbooks and always looked as though they’d been taken in the fifties. Dee focused on the story too, reading in silence for a few minutes before saying, “How terrible.”
“What is it?” asked Lenny without looking up from his paper.
“This boy was traveling in Europe and they shot him. In Paris of all places.” She looked at JJ and said, “Have you seen it?” He took the paper from her and looked at it briefly. The picture didn’t do the kid justice, and didn’t sum up either what had happened to him; JJ was thinking how a picture of his sleek corpse would have told more truth.
“I saw something about it yesterday,” he said finally. “Paris can be a dangerous place.”
“Isn’t it terrible though? His poor family.” Her words were heartfelt, feverish with empathy, a mother with children approaching the same age where they’d go out into the world, fend for themselves.
JJ passed the paper to Lenny who’d looked up now. He looked at the article, or maybe just at the picture, shaking his head. “It doesn’t make sense,” he said, exasperated. “Kid goes on vacation and gets shot. In Europe, for God’s sake.” He looked at JJ then and said, “Maybe it wasn’t a robbery. You know, maybe there’s something we don’t know about. I mean, why would they kill him? This isn’t L.A. we’re talking about, it’s Paris. France, for God’s sake! So why would they kill him, shoot him dead, just for a street robbery?”
It was funny the way he’d come close to the truth in his need for reassurance that Paris and Europe and life in general were safer than that; funny too how shocked he’d have been at the real, increasingly pointless reason for the kid’s death.
JJ thought of him briefly, Dylan McGill, whose name he hadn’t known, of the way he’d looked in the first few moments after seeing JJ, like he was involved in some practical joke. And he thought of his family and friends asking the same exasperated questions Lenny and Dee were asking, and of the new Dylan McGill they were building between themselves.
It was like they all wanted the fundamental truth of why it had happened, of why life was like that, but there were no explanations, at least not the explanations people wanted to hear. How much would it comfort them to know that their son, brother, friend had been killed as a precautionary measure by a hitman who only moments before had sought to help him? What use was that to anyone?
And as if to back him up in his reasoning Susan Bostridge suddenly appeared, carrying a cup of coffee, and walked over to them, relaxed, graceful, like a model or ballet dancer who’d kept it into middle age. Whatever wondering she’d done about her husband’s death it looked long stored away now; she looked at peace with life, content.
“Mind if I join you?” They all responded quickly and she sat down, turning to JJ then. “How did you sleep?”
“Very well, thank you.”
“You look much better,” she said like she’d been concerned by his appearance the night before, like he’d been ill but was on the mend. Turning to Dee, she asked, “Any news?”
“We were just talking about that poor boy who was killed in Paris,” Dee said as though it was someone they’d all known.
“I saw it. Very sad.”
“I still maintain,” cut in Lenny, “that people don’t get shot places like that for no good reason. There had to be something.” Before he could expand on it again his wife threw him a glance and he crashed to a stop, looking sheepishly at Susan Bostridge then. “Me and my big mouth. Susan ...”
“Don’t be ridiculous, Lenny,” she said, smiling, unperturbed. “And I know what you mean because it’s a puzzle, it really is. But the sad truth of life today, anywhere in the world, is that people are killed for the most absurd reasons. None of us are immune.”
JJ looked on nonplussed, an expression that concealed the uneasy sensation of being the killer of both the people they were talking about.
Having put Lenny at ease again, Susan turned to him and said, “I should explain, JJ. David, my husband, was killed two years ago in Moscow.”
“Oh, I’m sorry.”
“Just another Western businessman killed by the Russian Mafia. It got less press coverage than this poor boy and maybe that’s as it should be.” She wasn’t dismissing her husband’s death, her tone touched lightly with sadness. Inexplicably though, at the same time he got the feeling she hadn’t loved him when he’d died, something in her face that was centered somewhere beyond having come to terms with it, like his death had merely tied up the loose threads of a separation that had already been completed in the heart.
And for the first time it made him wonder about the condom too. Bostridge had been wearing a condom and it made him wonder whether she’d been told about it, what she’d made of it if she had. It had never occurred to him before then how strange it was, that a dead man should be found wearing a condom that hadn’t served its purpose.
It was such a minor detail, but if she’d been told it would have opened up all kinds of speculation in her mind: that he’d been unfaithful to her, that a girl had been there at the time of the murder, had perhaps even been involved. Equally though, with a Western businessman in Moscow, it was a detail even the police could have overlooked, so possibly she never had been told.
When he tuned back into the conversation Lenny and Dee were outlining their itinerary for the day, Susan showing interest in a list of tourist spots she’d probably heard repeated and described thousands of times before. She turned to him then and said, “And what about you, JJ?”
“I’m not sure,” he said, suddenly on the spot. “I’m here to relax so I don’t really have any plans. I suppose I’ll have a look around, go for a walk.” She looked enchanted by his lack of ideas, as if she was used to people treating their few days there like a military exercise.
“The village should keep you busy for an hour or so. And the woods of course; there are plenty of marked trails. And if you don’t mind driving—”
“No,” he cut in, “I don’t want to drive anywhere today.” He wanted to stay around the place, eager to spot Holden if he was there or to let Holden find him before the frustration began to set in. “I might try the woodland walks.”
She nodded thoughtfully and said, “I’ll join you if you’d like the company? Give you some pointers.” She smiled before adding, “No extra charge.”
“I’d like that, as long as I’m not keeping you from anything.” She smiled again warmly. Lenny and Dee looked on slightly astounded, as though they couldn’t quite work out how the new guest had so easily developed an unspoken rapport with their host, something they’d probably been working at assiduously for the full week of their stay, trying to belong.
There was a rapport too, like a tacit recognition that they were the same kind of people. Yet whatever similarities lay beneath the surface, whatever commonality there was in their backgrounds, he doubted somehow that they shared the same values, the same beliefs, that they felt the same way about life. Either way, it already seemed hard to believe this was a woman he’d dreaded meeting.
She was easy enough company too as they walked through the camouflage warmth of the woods, Susan pointing out the landmarks, explaining how the leaves would peak in a few weeks. Occasionally tourists passed them and strained to hear what she was saying, apparently recognizing a voice with some authority.
At one point they reached the top of a short climb and, turning, she pointed back down to where one end of the inn was visible between the trees; a couple of other buildings and a white church steeple were apparent farther on—the hotel was closer to the village than he’d thought at first.
“Beautiful, don’t you think?” she said as they stood there. “Sometimes I think we’re the luckiest people in the world to be living here.”
Sometimes, he noted, only sometimes, when the world didn’t intrude perhaps, and asked her then, “How long have you been here?”
“Since we married, nearly twenty years. The house was always too big for us but I fell in love with it at first sight. I like that it’s an inn now.” He glanced at her quickly, gauging the way she was thinking. She looked smitten with the place, even after all that time.
“Did you turn it into an inn when your husband died?”
“No, no, six years ago,” she said. “The kids were getting bigger, David was often away on business, and I wanted to do something with myself, you know? Then one day I just saw it, saw how beautiful it would be as an inn and how I could share it with people. It became my dream.” She turned to him. “And I’ve never looked back. I like being an innkeeper.”
“I can see that,” he said, smiling, and she laughed a little like he’d seen through her, that she was playacting, living a childhood fantasy like those children who dreamt of owning toy shops or candy stores.
They didn’t mention her husband again; JJ was eager not to seem too inquisitive. Instead he asked questions about the running of the inn, keeping her on a subject she enjoyed, hoping that in the process she might mention Holden, the close family friend he still hoped was simply failing to show on the radar screens but was there nonetheless.
Once again he got nothing, and he was already beginning to think how he might proceed if Holden didn’t show at all.
It wasn’t as if he had many choices but one obvious possibility was to go down to Yale, to look for signs of him there or signs of where he might be; another was simply to give it up and get out of there.
But there was still time yet, and if Susan knew about Holden’s background and knew he was in a fix, that would even explain why she hadn’t mentioned him, particularly to a man on his own with no defined reason for being there beyond relaxing between business trips.
He didn’t get the impression she was suspicious of him, particularly since she was out walking with him but, still stung from the way Esther had deceived him, he decided to test the water, saying when he had the opportunity, “The other people at breakfast seemed lukewarm about the chap who was here before me.”
“Mr. Lassiter? Really?” It was a token effort not to be seen criticizing a guest but she gave up almost instantly, adding, “He was a little odd. Only about your age, said he was here on business but didn’t say where or what he was doing. As a matter of fact he gave me the creeps; I think the other guests picked up on it too. Why, of course they did. They seem to have taken to you though.”
“Good, I’m glad.”
“So am I. I pride myself on having a happy atmosphere among the guests.” She walked a few paces in silence and then said like an afterthought, “He’d come up from Washington. Wore a suit too.”
He wondered if she’d turned the tables and was testing him now so he deflected it by saying, “A spy perhaps, on important business.”
“Exactly,” she said, laughing. “An ice cream spy! Not a very good one though. We’re a long way from Ben and Jerry’s.” He had no idea what she was talking about but laughed anyway, guessing it was some tourist attraction, wanting to keep the light mood too, giving no indication that there was any more to him than met the eye.
When they got back to the inn he thanked her for the tour and went to his room, spending an hour or so doing nothing, a professional skill he’d developed, of shutting down and letting time pass, waiting. It was the final test; if Holden was there he’d definitely know JJ had arrived by now and would come for him.
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