The Profiler's Daughter (Sky Stone Thriller Series) (25 page)

Manville cleared his throat. “Who, exactly, is your grandmother?” The tone of condescension was gone.

“Isabel Winthrop.”

“Winthrop?” He pulled his hand from Sky’s breast. “As in the Winthrop Fleet?” His face seemed to rearrange itself as he spoke. The pale blue eyes opened a bit wider, the jaw softened. “As in the town of Winthrop? Winthrop House at Harvard?” He backed off a fraction of an inch. “That Winthrop?”

“Umm hmm.” Sky blinked up at him in mock self-reproach. “I sort of fibbed. I know Tuffy Pickman. And I know you.” She touched his chest playfully with a gold tipped index finger. “My cousin Forbes says you’re smart as hell. Says you’re underwriting the Diamond this year.”

“My company, yes.” Manville gave a self-effacing shrug as he refolded the handkerchief. “I’m afraid you’ve got me at a disadvantage, Miss …”

“Stone.” Sky switched the champagne glass to her left hand and offered him the limpest of wrists. “Skylar Winthrop Stone.”

Manville squeezed Sky’s arm as they shook hands. The energy the man transmitted was disquieting and Tiffany released a soft growl.

“Porter – you don’t mind if I call you Porter?”

“I insist.”

“I’d love to ask you a few questions about your work.” Sky kissed the dog. “You do some kind of drug research?”

Manville nodded.

“Could we go somewhere, gee, I don’t know, a little more private?” She tilted her head and batted her eyelashes.

“You read my mind, Miss Stone.” Manville stuffed the handkerchief in the tux pocket. “I know just the place.”

He escorted Sky to the other side of the ballroom, where the Romanians had created three intimate alcoves out of tall screens. A curtain was pulled across the entrance to each, giving privacy to the partiers inside even as Carnivale raged around them.

Sky opened the paisley curtain of the first alcove a fraction of an inch and peeked in.

A voluptuous female in a pink Venetian half mask stood upright, her back against her partner’s body. Her masked companion ripped the bodice of her pink satin gown down to the woman’s waist, revealing milky white breasts and pink, erect nipples.

Sky closed the curtain. “Taken,” she informed Manville.

In the next alcove, a man in a horned goat mask, tux pants bunched around his knees, coupled with a naked blonde on a long divan, Sky opened the curtain just as the woman released an orgasmic groan.

“Full,” Sky said.

A laughing couple darted past them and escaped into the third alcove.

“Pity,” Manville said.

Sky wasn’t so sure. “Maybe you could show me the auction room? Grandmother gave me a rather large check. And strict instructions to bid. But I don’t really know what I’m doing. This is my first charity ball.”

“With the greatest pleasure.” Manville took her elbow. “I believe the tables are set up in the Winthrop Room.” He laughed at the coincidence and guided Sky toward the ballroom exit.

A man in a baggy black suit emerged from a knot of masked revelers and called out, “Porter, how about a picture?” He aimed his camera and snapped a series of shots. “Thanks, pal.” The photographer saluted Manville and disappeared into the crowd.

Sky spotted Kyle standing near the door. The gold
David
face was looking directly at her, Sky could swear the mask was frowning. She motioned him with the barest shake of her head to stay away as she walked past him through the exit on Manville’s arm.

The Winthrop Room was just as Sky remembered, coffee-colored walls and lush drapes in a pattern of soft gray birds. Floor-to-ceiling windows showcased the lights of downtown Boston, softened by the falling snow.

“Tell me your heart’s desire,” Manville said. “I’ll do the rest.” He ushered Sky to the first bank of tables. A glossy promotional photograph showed a smiling couple running along a white beach against a turquoise ocean and azure sky. A pad of bidding sheets and a gold pen rested on the table.

“Two weeks on Turtle Island,” Manville read the description, “miles of empty white beach, acres of rainforest, fields of yellow grass. A horizon of sapphire sea traces the curve of the earth's edge.” He winked at Sky. “Fiji. I’ve been there. A lovely place for lovers.” His pale eyes searched for Sky’s reaction. “No? Onward.”

They strolled to the next table, and the next, and the next, Manville reading each descriptor for Sky as though she were a child. A limited edition print of the eighteenth hole at Pebble Beach. A platinum period-style Tiffany tiara studded with round diamonds. Two hours with a Swedish masseuse. A diamond-encrusted Chopard watch with a pink leather band. A massive, hand-thrown wassail bowl with a dozen matching, hand-thrown goblets. A ride for two in a hot air balloon shaped like an ice cream cone. And on and on and on.

They were turning to the final bank of tables when Sky saw something that made her gasp. On a stand-alone card table, illuminated by an overhead spotlight, was a chess set. Someone had cleverly arranged two wrought iron chairs across from each other at the table, as though inviting players.

“Superb German twelfth century type, Henri Mossier of Paris,” Manville read. “One side in copper, the other in silver.”

Sky recognized the set at once because it had belonged to her grandfather.

The members of the court were detailed miniature sculptures cast in metal. The mournful kings, each sitting on a throne clutching a scabbard between his knees. A lion reclined along the top of each kingly chair, giving extra height to the pieces. Whip’s words came back to Sky, ‘The king needs that height, honey, it makes him feel better about himself. But, really, his queen has all the power.’

“Do you play?” Manville asked.

“Not well.” Sky picked up the silver king and looked for a mark she’d made as a child. Yes, there it was, on the bottom, in crudely drawn black letters, the word ‘Sky’. She’d favored the shiny silver chess pieces over the duller copper ones and had branded them hers, as a child would. Whip had indulged her.

“Care for a game?” Manville’s tone was playful but Sky felt the undercurrent of a challenge.

“On two conditions,” she said. “First, you must let me sketch you. It’s just a hobby, really. I’m not very good. And you must tell me about your work.”

“Agreed.”

Manville pulled a chair out and waited for Sky to sit. “What’s this?” He stood behind her, she could feel the pressure of his finger on her left shoulder blade, tracing the outline of the tribal fairy tattoo.

“A present to myself, my twenty-first birthday,” she confided.

“Remarkable.” Manville seated himself across the table and smiled, as men had smiled at Sky her entire adult life.

Sky smiled back, she was genuinely pleased, her first goal of the evening finally met. She had Manville’s attention.

“You like tattoos?” she probed.

“I like yours.”

Sky ripped off the top sheet of the bidding pad and picked up a cloisonné pen from the table. “I
was
going to put the tattoo on my lower back, so you could see it when I wear my bikini. My boyfriend talked me out of it, said he didn’t want a tramp stamp on his woman.”

She watched Manville’s face for any trace of discomfort at the subject of tattoos. But his smile actually broadened.

“The gentleman won the battle?”

“Yes,” she confessed. “But I’m afraid he lost the war. We aren’t together now.” Sky placed the bidding sheet face down on the pad, a clean white surface for the sketch. “I put my next tattoo exactly where I wanted it. But I’m such a boring subject. I want to know about your work. Pharmaceuticals, such a fascinating field.” She clicked the cloisonné pen and tested the ink. Black.

“We have a number of products in the pipeline.” Manville was studying the copper king, turning the piece this way and that. “I’m working on a memory drug. And we’re moving toward human trials on a new antidepressant, we’re pretty excited.”

Sky started sketching. She blocked out the head shape, oval with a strong jaw line. “What’s the drug, if you don’t mind my asking?”

“R-floetazine. Trade name is Primil.” Manville set his king on the board.

“I’ve heard of Primil. It’s popular. I have friends who take Primil.” She drew the heavy ridge of his brow and added a single strong stroke for the hawk nose.

“Yes, quite right, it’s not technically a new drug. It’s a bit of a complicated story.” Manville flanked with his knights. The horses’ heads were down, ready to charge into battle, but the riders appeared diffident. “A drug makes it through animal and human trials, gets FDA approval. Boom, problems arise.” He paused. “Are you familiar with isomers, Miss Stone?”

Sky shook her head and sketched the wide mouth, the thin lips.

“I’ll give you the abbreviated lecture, I promise.” Manville grinned at her and crossed his arms in a manner that suggested he’d given this speech many times. “Pasteur discovered that most man-made chemical compounds exist at the microscopic level as twins, called isomers. Chemically identical, but mirror images of each other. In many drugs, one isomer is good, but the other isomer is bad.”

Manville held up his right hand. “The good isomer fits the body’s chemical receptors like a key fits into a lock.” He interlaced the fingers of both hands in a gesture of illustration. “The good isomer fights illness. But the bad isomer does not fit the receptors. The bad isomer wanders through the body, making trouble. Ever heard of the 1960’s drug thalidomide?”

“Children born with deformed legs and arms,” Sky said. She’d seen the pictures. Stubs or flippers where limbs should have been, children completely normal in every other respect.

“Correct,” Manville nodded. “Thalidomide’s good isomer treated morning sickness. The bad isomer caused horrible birth defects. We weren’t able to separate the good twin from the bad twin until the last couple of decades. So, the government regulators let us market drugs with both isomers, as long as the side effects weren’t too terrible. Primil was just such a drug. The good isomer increased serotonin, lifted depression. But in some patients, the bad isomer resulted in headaches, anxiety, tremors, sexual dysfunction –”

“Violence and suicide,” Sky interrupted, remembering Professor Fisk’s comments. “And murder,” she added, too loudly.

“Whoa!” Manville raised his hand. “That’s a question for the courts. I deal with the science, I don’t get involved with the legalities of suicide. Or murder.”

Sky stopped sketching. “I’m confused, Porter. If Primil has a good isomer and a bad isomer, wouldn’t the bad isomer be responsible for all those suicides and murders you hear about on the news?”

“I would never go on record with that statement.” Manville’s brows pulled together, the muscles around his eyelids tightened into a stony glare and Sky instinctively pulled back. This was the man she’d seen in the lab, holding the hunting knife.

In the next instant, he recovered. The velvet tone returned. “You’re quite right about one thing. Our animal studies do suggest that Primil has a good isomer and a bad isomer.”

“How did you manage that?”

“Maze studies.”

Sky had had experience with rats in mazes as an undergrad. But virtually all of her graduate research was operant, thank god. Maze work was so labor-intensive. Long live the Skinnerian operant, she was fond of saying. She beamed at Manville. “Tell me about your maze studies.”

“Pretty straightforward. Rats that drank R-floetazine explored the open parts of the maze, spent less time in the darker enclosed area. S-floetazine worked more slowly, stayed in their bodies longer.”

“S-floetazine is the bad isomer?” Sky asked. “The isomer that causes problems?” Problems like suicide and murder, she thought.

“Correct. We’ve gotten a nice treatment effect with the good isomer, we’re very pleased. R-floetazine is going to be a big drug. Just a question of how big. We're on schedule to conduct our first human clinical trial. Confidentially?” He inclined the manicured head forward and lowered his voice. “I’m in talks with Genie Pharmaceutical. Down the line, including off-label uses? It should market somewhere in the billions.” Manville drew out the last word in a bald effort to impress; even an heiress had to appreciate that much money, no?

“Billions!” Sky provided the obligatory gush, but her mind was working over the revealing admission. Murder and suicide, dismissed as mere legal problems. The deal, the money, those were the important things.

A tuxedoed waiter materialized and soundlessly positioned a wrought iron champagne stand with a copper bucket full of ice. A second waiter provided two de Montbronn crystal champagne flutes from a silver tray.

“Mrs. Winthrop’s regards,” the waiter gave Sky a discreet smile.

“Veuve Clicquot.” Manville gave an approving nod as the waiter poured from the bottle. “La Grande Dame. An exceptional vintage. Very difficult to come by, actually.”

“It’s the year I was born,” Sky confided. “Grandmother insists they keep it in stock.”

Manville lifted a gold-rimmed flute. “To Isabel Winthrop.”

Sky couldn’t bring herself to toast Izzy. But she admired the busy bubbles and breathed in the champagne’s yeasty aroma of apricots and peaches.

Stay focused, she reminded herself. Just a sip.

“You have a very dreamy look,” Manville observed. “I must show you my wine cellar sometime.” He flashed an enigmatic smile and drained his glass.

“Yes. I’d like that.” Sky allowed herself a second sip of the golden champagne and began to sketch Manville’s deep-set eyes in more detail. “You must be very smart to be the head of your company. Forbes says you have a background in chemistry?”

“That’s right.” Manville set his bishops on the board. Their mitred heads were bowed, each bishop’s palms pressed together in earnest prayer. “Coming to Boston was quite an eye-opener for this Texas boy. So many brilliant minds making so little money.” He placed two copper pawns on the chess board. “All those years in school, and what did they have to show for it? I couldn’t see it. I had things to do.”

Manville continued to place one pawn after the other in a horizontal row. “I took my B.A. at Harvard, went straight to work for a local pharmaceutical on Route 128. Spent the next seven years learning the business. Then I started my own company. By that time, you see, I knew where the best pharmacologists were.” He carefully positioned his last pawn. “And I have to give a tip of the hat to Ronald Reagan.” He looked up at Sky. “The Iron Curtain wasn’t the only wall he brought down.”