The Profiler's Daughter (Sky Stone Thriller Series) (41 page)

The eyewitness account. He wanted that pink folder.

Sky finished the Chopin with an exaggerated flourish and smiled. “Did I hear you say this house is prairie style?”

“Yes.” Manville gave a thoughtful nod across the conservatory.

“That’s interesting,” Sky said, “because I spent a lot of time on the prairie when I was a kid. And I never saw a house like this.”

Manville strolled over and leaned against the piano with his arms folded against his chest. “You’re good,” he said with sincerity. “You’re
very
good.”

“I could play it in my sleep. It’s a recital piece,” Sky admitted. “Grandmother insisted on lessons. Prelude in E Minor. Not my favorite, really. I prefer his twenty-fourth. The Storm?”

“I wasn’t talking about your piano skills.” He began to twist a lapis cufflink clockwise with thumb and index finger. It was the closest thing to a nervous tic that Sky had observed.

“I find it interesting,” he said, “that you haven’t mentioned the child.”

“What child?”

“The child at Bullough’s Pond. The night of the murder.” He cocked his head. “Fishing?”

Sky studied the gold fonts on the Steinway logo above the piano keys and forced herself to stay motionless.

Manville knew about Molly. It wasn’t in the papers. It wasn’t on the news.

A tightness gripped Sky’s chest and her heart skipped. She tried to will the fear away but it was like trying to stop an ocean wave with her fingers. Beneath her feet, the marble floor grew spongy and unsubstantial. A bead of sweat slid between her breasts.

Sky forced her head up and looked at Manville. He appeared unaware of any change in his guest.

“You’re rather remarkable, Doctor. I confess I’ve never met anyone quite like you.” His fingers continued to worry the lapis cufflink. “Artist, musician, rat runner, homicide. Seems there’s no end to your talents. I’ve never said this to anyone before, but I believe I’ve met my match.”

Sky slid off the bench with the dog in her arms and faced him across the Steinway.

Manville’s face seemed to alter before Sky’s eyes. The prominent brow darkened, the jaw grew sharp. Hollow cheeks gave him a skeletal aspect and Sky tried to analyze the situation, tried to review the last few minutes because she needed to pinpoint the exact moment of transformation.

Was it the pink file? The aborted family discussion? The rolltop desk? The Chopin? The mention of Molly?

Her mind raced and her breathing grew shallow. She tried to pretend that all was well and forced herself to look at Manville straight on.

Pale eyes gazed back at her with pinpoint pupils.

“I’m not really hungry, Porter. I think I’ll be off.” Sky croaked the words and leaned down to pick up the backpack. She cleared her throat. “Long day tomorrow. Shopping with Grandmother. I have so much time on my hands now that I’m off the case.”

“Not hungry?” A dark humor registered on the gaunt features. “I can’t let you leave.” His eyes darted to the backpack. “You haven’t seen the wine cellar.”

“I’m feeling a little sick.” Sky held Tiffany in her left arm and slipped the backpack over her right shoulder. “I need to use your bathroom.” She reached a trembling hand into the right pocket of the London Fog. It was a generous pocket lined with satin fabric, allowing her to manipulate the phone without detection. Sky felt for the redial button and pressed the number one last time.

Seconds later, she detected a faint but persistent ring.

The phone was somewhere in the conservatory.

Manville’s head jerked in the direction of the west wall and the amused smile faded. Shoving a hand in the pocket of his khakis, he headed toward the rolltop and Sky heard the soft jangle of metal on metal.

At the last moment, Manville hesitated. He stood in front of the desk with a key ring in his hand and gave Sky a remote stare.

He keeps the phone in the rolltop, she thought. With the green satin thong.

They contemplated each other across the conservatory while dust motes floated in the glow of the chandelier. Piercing and unrelenting, the sound of the phone bit through wood and dead air and Sky could swear she heard Nicolette’s voice.
Help me.

“Take that call, Porter.” Sky sauntered to the stairway but she could sense Manville’s reluctance to let her out of his sight.

He’s torn, she thought. Me or the phone. Which will he choose?

“I need to take this call.” Manville waved Sky toward the south wall. “There’s a bathroom across from the wine cellar.” He jabbed at the desk lock with a key.

“I’ll use the black tiled bathroom on the second floor.” Sky tried for a casual attitude as she hit the conservatory steps. “The one with the pink fixtures.” She wore a frozen smile and paced herself up the staircase. Her right palm slipped on the banister rail, wet from sweat. The odor of sulfur permeated the air and Sky’s mind shot to Madame Tatiana’s caravan, the psychic’s warning:
Do not venture into strange territory.

She reached the top of the stairs and forced herself along the balcony. Her knees felt disconnected and she moved with a jerky rhythm past the pastoral paintings.

“Wait!” Manville called from the room below. “I’ll go with you.”

Sky slipped through the velvet curtain and ran across the living room.

Teddy was right. She was a fool to come alone.

Fear fueled every nerve and she could hear Manville’s wing tips scraping up the conservatory stairs. Sky hurried past the fireplace and reached the foyer but she could hear labored breathing from the living room. Manville was closing in.

“Don’t leave, not yet,” he said in a breathless Texas drawl.

With her peripheral vision Sky saw his body move into the foyer. Slipping the backpack from her shoulder, she held it by a strap and swung hard in a wide arc, aiming at his head.

The backpack made contact and Manville grunted, pulling back with a hand to his face.

Sky yanked the door open and darted to the Jeep. She poured Tiffany and the pack into the passenger’s seat and fumbled in the trench coat pocket for her keys. Turning the ignition, she glanced over her right shoulder and saw Manville in the open doorway holding a blood-streaked handkerchief to his face.

Sky slammed the Jeep in gear and floored the gas pedal. She careened around the U-shaped driveway and glanced in the rear view mirror. Manville was heading for the garage.

The Lamborghini.

She could never outrun the sports car, she knew that.

Sky pulled out of the drive onto Hunt Club Road and risked a left. At the next intersection she hung a right and drove fifty yards until she spotted a familiar flat tree stump glowing ghostly white.

The access trail she remembered from her walks with Arbella was just past that stump, hidden from the main road. The trail meandered through brush, all the way to the rear of the yellow Colonial mansion where Sky had spent so many mind-numbing afternoons with the Friends of the Ballet.

Sky pulled off the road into the rutted gravel path and steered the Jeep behind a grove of wild saplings. She rolled the window down and killed the engine, listening in blackness for the Lamborghini’s high squeal.

But the sports car didn’t appear. There was no traffic of any kind on the road. Manville must have gone in the other direction.

Forcing herself to sit in the dark another ten minutes, Sky called Teddy repeatedly on her cell, but all she got was the PI’s recorded message. She texted Kyle:
Have new info – meet me @ Tommy Doyle’s – 25 min

Sky started the engine and backed onto the dark road.

“Bless you, Arbella.” She sent this prayer of thanks to Izzy’s long departed King Charles spaniel and reached to stroke Tiffany’s belly.

Then she headed east, toward the city.

CHAPTER THIRTY-SEVEN

Tommy Doyle’s Irish Pub was a Lake watering hole across the street from Sky’s office building.

The walls boasted a thousand pieces of Irish memorabilia crammed together in an egalitarian free-for-all. A patron’s eye was as likely to catch the rough hewn
BLACKSMITHING
sign as it was to land on a framed reprint of the gaunt figures in Watts’
The Irish Famine.
Plaques celebrated Murphy’s Irish Stout and Harp Lager, antique road signs pointed toward Killarny and Kilcock, an image showed the cobbled streets of Dublin’s medieval Temple Bar district, a newspaper proclaimed the kidnapping of Derby-winning Shurgar, the racehorse with the distinctive white blaze.

A pictorial history of the Irish in Boston could be found on these walls – if you were willing to look hard enough. Passage to New York Harbor, Irish clam diggers on a Boston wharf, a series of framed newspaper advertisements for jobs in Boston circa 1883, each ad ending in ‘Positively No Irish Need Apply’.

Sky ignored the large ceramic frog holding a WAIT TO BE SEATED sign and headed for the only available table. She’d chosen Tommy Doyle’s primarily because Jake hated the bar – the owner had fallen hard for Sky after a single date, years ago, and Jake’s memory was long.

Sky sat down and waited for Kyle beneath a massive framed photograph of James Joyce. The legendary writer wore a fedora wildly askew and held a heavily ringed hand at a rakish angle, but his spectacled face bore an expression Sky always interpreted as archetypal Irish gloom.

A slim server appeared – a former love interest of Kyle’s from Dublin – wearing black apron, Doc Martens and a black pixie haircut.

“Hello, Adine,” Sky greeted her. The women shared a brief history of double dating, back when Kyle was between wives.

“Sky.” Adine’s voice carried a strong Irish inflection. “I’m glad to see you back in the Lake. The place needs some dressing up. I was sorry to hear about …” she shrugged wordlessly and put a hand on Sky’s shoulder. “Are you alone, then?”

“I’m meeting Kyle.”

“Ah. Detective O’Toole.” A bemused look rippled across Adine’s smoky eyes. “Still married to that whiny bitch, is he?”

Sky nodded. “But I don’t think she’s happy.”

“No?” Adine gave a dismissive sniff. “Well, some women are never happy, are they?” The server looked around the bar before leaning in to whisper in Sky’s ear. “Rocco Piranesi may rule the Lake but his daughter Theresa is a wicked cunt.” She pulled back and resumed a normal tone. “What might I get you while you’re waiting for Himself?”

Sky ordered ginger ale to calm her stomach. During the drive to town she’d gone over and over the evening’s events, but she still wasn’t sure exactly what Manville had had in mind. Was his attention sexual? The way he’d touched her when she’d first arrived, that was the touch of an interested man. But the remark about meeting his match, what did it mean? The panic attack made things so difficult to tease out.

Sky watched Adine take orders at the next table and texted Teddy. No response. It wasn’t like him.

Tiffany dozed on the chair next to her, curled up on the London Fog. It was Trivia night in the bar and the crowd erupted with intermittent groans or applause, mostly college students and working professionals letting off steam. Tiffany slept through it all.

“I can resist anything but temptation, darling – so what’s the new information?” Kyle sat down at the table clutching a Harp Lager with a head of foam thick as whipped cream.

“I went to Manville’s place.” Sky related the evening’s discoveries. As she neared the end of her story, her voice took on a breathless quality that she couldn’t seem to control so she decided to omit the part where she attacked Manville. Why distract the detective with incidentals?

“Let me get this straight.” Kyle took a thoughtful swig of beer. “You called me from a cozy evening with the Masters’ tournament over a thong and a ringing phone? Wait!” He cupped an ear. “I think I hear the DA laughing his ass off.”

“What about this?” Sky handed him the heart trinket. “It’s jewelry from Nicolette’s cell.”

“Cell phone jewelry?” Kyle poked at the charm in his palm. “Didn’t know there was such a thing. God help me if my wife finds out. Our credit cards are maxed. You found this at Manville’s place?”

“Not exactly. It was in his garbage.”

Kyle snorted. “Teddy knows better. So do you.” He shoved the charm across the table toward Sky like a game piece. “Can’t use it. Worthless.”

“Yes, as evidence. But with the thong? And the phone? It establishes a relationship. A sexual relationship.”

“So what?” Kyle belched. “How does it follow that he killed her?”

“Manville was lying when he said he didn’t know Nicolette well. He’s a
liar
,” Sky stressed.

“People lie about sex all the time. Besides, aren’t there sanctions against fraternization with students?” Kyle blinked at Sky over his wire rims. “I seem to recall Professor Fisk’s wife mentioning that.”

“But Manville lied during a murder investigation.” Sky’s protest woke the dog.

“Your old boyfriend lied, too. Or have you forgotten?” Kyle leaned over the table and scooped up Tiffany. “For some inexplicable reason this beast is growing on me. She’s got attitude.” He held the Shih Tzu in the crook of his arm and rubbed her ears. “Can I give this dog to my wife? Something to keep her company when she gets back from the Berkshires? Maybe she’ll quit busting my balls.”

He doesn’t care, Sky thought. He’s hardly listening.

Kyle absently inspected the memorabilia on the wall next to their table, like he was marking time. Something caught his eye and he pointed to a small photograph dwarfed by the James Joyce portrait above it, a grainy newspaper shot of a smiling man in a top hat. Reading the caption aloud, Kyle said, “Newly elected Mayor James Michael Curley boldly announces in 1914: ‘The day of the Puritan has passed. The Anglo-Saxon is a joke. A new and better America is here.’"

Smirking at Sky, Kyle raised the Harp Lager in a toast. “Here’s to the Irish takeover of Boston. May your Anglo-Saxon ancestors continue to roll over in the family mausoleum.”

Kyle studied Sky for a response and grew sober. “Sorry, darling. You know how this place affects me – me Irish heritage and all that.”

The detective’s indifference bewildered Sky, but she decided to press on anyway. She described the setup with the phony pink folder. “Manville wanted that eye witness testimony, Kyle. I could see it in his face.”