Skeleton Key(127)

Stacey and Mark were both nervous. Stacey was more nervous than Mark.

“Is there a bar?” Gregor asked them.

Stacey pointed solemnly down the hall to their right, where a discreet little sign jutted out saying CLUB ROOM. Gregor headed for it, not bothering to check if Stacey and Mark were following. He didn’t want them in on this conversation anyway, and they knew it. They’d even honor it. It was part of the consideration you got for being a consultant

Gregor went into the club room and looked around. At first, he thought he might have been mistaken. There were dozens of people at the tables and the bar, but none of them seemed to be Peter Greer. Then he saw him, sitting off by himself at a corner table for two. He most certainly was trying to fend off intruders, because he’d picked the one spot in the room where it would be virtually impossible for anyone to join him. Gregor threaded his way through the other tables, past women still in sports clothes, past other women still dressed for the evening. All the men, except Peter Greer, seemed to be in suits.

“Do you mind?” Gregor asked, when he got to Peter’s table.

Peter looked up and shook his head no. “Not at all. I was just sitting here being morose. Have you heard about our crime at the country club?”

“No.”

“Sally Martindale, the club bursar. And a member here, which isn’t all that usual. But it was complicated. She was caught embezzling funds from the member accounts.”

“Ah. Actually, I had heard something about it. I didn’t realize that that was what you were talking about.”

“You didn’t come here to discuss Sally Martindale.”

A waiter appeared out of nowhere. Gregor asked for a plain Coca-Cola. Peter asked for a Glenfidditch on the rocks. It wasn’t what he’d had before. Whatever that was in the glass the waiter was taking away, it had been clear and bubbly.

“So,” Peter said after the waiter had left. “You were going to say.”

“Kayla Anson,” Gregor said.

“Oh, absolutely. Kayla Anson and Zara Anne Moss and Margaret. Margaret was a bitch, did you know that?”

“I had gotten that impression, yes.”

“Everyone got that impression. The woman was truly a piece of work. Even Kayla hated her, and God only knows she hated Kayla. She hated Kayla the way the Republicans hate Bill Clinton. Or worse.”

“Margaret Anson would have been the easy one. She was right there. You wouldn’t have had to get her out there. My guess is that she called you, almost as soon as Annabel Crawford called her. Because unlike Annabel, she would have known who got the money.”

“Margaret,” Peter Greer said carefully, “always had a very suspicious mind.”

“Zara Anne Moss was harder. You had to get her out to the Anson place. I think at that point, you were still trying to throw suspicion on Margaret. That was a large part of the idea from the beginning. So you called her up and you made an appointment and you said—what? That Margaret wanted to see her? That you did? That there were spirits in the garage out at the Anson place that wouldn’t be quiet until they’d been healed by a witch. She could have told somebody where she was going.”

“Did she?”

“No.”

“It wouldn’t have fit her,” Peter Greer said. “She loved to be mysterious, did you know that? She loved to make everything an enigma.”

“I’m sure,” Gregor said. “She also saw you bumping the Jeep into the back of Kayla Anson’s car, but she wasn’t really smart enough to put two and two together and figure out who you were. She might have eventually, though. So you decided not to wait.”

“I’m not very good at waiting.”

The waiter was there with their drinks. Peter picked his up off the tray without giving the waiter a chance to hand it to him, tilted his head back, and swallowed half of it Then he looked up at the waiter and said, “Why don’t you get me another one right away?”

The waiter left. Gregor said, “When you killed Zara Anne Moss, you went around to the back of the house to avoid the reporters. You came up through the woods from One-oh-nine and in through the back door of the garage. You went out that way, too.”

“Did I?”

“But the most elaborate of the three was the murder of Kayla Anson, because it had to be so carefully planned. So carefully planned that you wouldn’t be forced to do another one. You never wanted to do more than one.”

Peter finished the rest of his scotch. The waiter came back with his second. This time, Peter put the glass down in front of him and didn’t touch it

“You knew Kayla Anson was coming back from Waterbury and you knew approximately when. You knew which way she would come, because she didn’t like driving on the highway at night and if she wasn’t going to do that there really was only one way. You drove your own car out to Capernaum Road and then off onto the little dirt access road and parked. Then you walked to Faye Dallmer’s and stole the Jeep. It wasn’t far to walk. It was less than a quarter of a mlie.”