“I know who he is,” Josh said. “I was going to talk to him, but Miriam didn’t want me to. I was going to talk to him about how I saw Brigit down on the levy on the day of the flood.”
“Did you?” Gregor asked him.
“No.” Josh flushed. “I made it up. Because it made Miriam crazy when I said things like that. Miriam always hated publicity. And she was making me crazy lately. Watching me.”
“From what I hear, you could have used watching,” Gregor said.
“You mean because of Ann-Harriet?” Josh shrugged. “It’s the kind of thing Miriam got upset about. I never did understand why. I mean, sex is sex, you get my drift?”
“No,” Pete Donovan said.
“Talk to me about tonight,” Gregor said. “How did you happen to find the body? Somebody said the greenhouse was where you kept your animals. Were you going in to look at them?”
“We only kept the animals in the greenhouse in the winter,” Josh said. “In the summer they had a place outside. The greenhouse got too warm. I wasn’t visiting the animals. I never do that at night.”
“Then why were you there?” Gregor persisted.
“Because I was asked to go,” Josh said. “We were supposed to go out to dinner, Miriam and I, and we came back from town and went puttering around doing our own stuff and then it got to be about four o’clock and I wanted to know what I was supposed to be doing. Maybe it was four thirty—”
“It was close on five,” Donovan said.
“He should know. He wears a watch.” Josh shrugged again. “If I called him at five, it probably was about four thirty. Anyway, I went wandering around, looking for Miriam and the house was empty because it’s Saturday night and the help all has the night off, they always have Saturday nights off, Miriam says in the old days you could get them where they would stay on duty for the weekends but now you can’t. Anyway, I went down to the kitchen and there was a note on the refrigerator saying she was in the greenhouse, if I wanted her I should look for her there.”
“Did she often leave notes for you on the refrigerator?” Gregor asked.
“All the time.”
“Are you sure this note was from Miriam?”
“Absolutely. I’d know her handwriting anywhere. Anyway. I found the note and then I started from the back of the house, and when I got there I found her. Just like that. She was just sort of scrunched up there on that shelf, out of reach, with her ass sticking into the air over my head. I wanted to get her down, but I couldn’t find the ladder we keep in there. It was just plain gone. And then I thought I shouldn’t get her down. She had to be dead, the way she was lying. The fact that she was there at all. She had to be dead and dumped there. I know you’re not supposed to touch anything. So I started to go call Donovan here. And that’s when I smelled it. The smoke.”
“Just smoke?” Gregor asked. “Not kerosene?”
Josh Malley thought about it. “Smoke and kerosene,” he said finally. “I was still in the greenhouse. You know that funny smell greenhouses get. That was all I could smell at first. And then there was the smoke and I went out into the conservatory to see what was going on and I smelled the kerosene. I told him about the kerosene when I called.” Josh jerked his head in Donovan’s direction.
“Did you call immediately?” Gregor asked him. “Right then?”
“Yes,” Josh said.
“It was five oh one exactly,” Donovan said.
“Fine.” Gregor didn’t wear a watch. He grabbed Donovan’s wrist and checked his instead. It was five twenty-two. “She was still here at five oh one,” he said, “that means she’s had twenty-one minutes to get where she wants to go. Is there a local airport?”
“Yes, there is. Shuttle flights to New York City and into Canada.”
“Exactly.” Gregor nodded. “That’s where we’re going to go. Go tell your state police people to put out an all-points for a nun.”
Four
[1]
IT WAS CALLED MARYVILLE International Airport and it sat on the flats east of town, a meager collection of hangars and lights that never handled anything bigger than a twenty-passenger shuttle. The international came from its ties to Canada, which were both numerous and strong. Up here, there was a lot of traffic back and forth. Americans went to Canada for the entertainment. Canadians came to America to buy cigarettes at less than five dollars a pack. Gregor thought it was Canada that changed Pete Donovan’s mind about the urgency of what they were doing. At first, although he had made the calls and contacted the authorities Gregor asked him to, he was inclined to go about his part in this adventure with due deliberation. Waiting around for him to get into the car and get the motor started and stop talking to everybody north of Albany on his two-way radio drove Gregor to distraction. Then the dispatcher said something about how lonely she was this weekend, her son had gone off to spend some time with his girlfriend in Canada, and Pete Donovan said, “Shit.”