Skeleton Key(50)

“You’d never know that the Methodists are discussing holding blessings for same-sex marriages,” Bennis said.

Gregor got his coat out of the little well behind the two front seats.

“I’ll see you for dinner at the inn. I think we’re going around and looking at lab work. At any rate, I don’t think we’re staying here. You ought to try to stay out of trouble.”

“You ought to get a driver’s license. Although I don’t think you’d really be safe. Are you sure you don’t want me to come in with you? Just to make certain that somebody’s here?”

“Somebody’s here.” The tiny white house with the sign in front of it that said RESIDENT TROOPER had a driveway. Gregor pointed down the flat cut of it to the garage at the back, in front of which a state police car was parked in full view of whoever wanted to look. “The rest of them will be here in a few moments, I’m sure. Unless they’re already here and parked somewhere out of sight. To make sure we don’t all get caught doing this.”

“You make it sound like you’re about to rob a bank.”

“We’ve been very lucky to avoid all the media nonsense that’s going on out there,” Gregor said. “They haven’t caught up to you at the inn. They haven’t caught up to me. It isn’t going to last forever. You might try being careful with yourself this afternoon.”

“I’m going to the mall. There’s a new one in Waterbury. Gregor, do you know the JonBenet Ramsey case?”

“Yes.”

“Do you know who did it?”

“Yes.”

“And you’re not going to tell me who it is? Why not?”

“For the same reason that the Denver police aren’t making an arrest. They know who did it, too. They just can’t prove it. Cases like that aren’t really all that difficult, Bennis. They’re sort of standard operating procedure. Every police detective anywhere who deals with homicide on a regular basis has half a dozen like it in a drawer some--where, all of them officially unsolved. You have to be careful with them. More careful with them than you are with the others.”

“Why?”

“Because juries want to bring back convictions in child murder cases. They don’t like findings of not guilty when a child is dead. Even if the defendant doesn’t look to be guilty. Even if they don’t think the defendant is guilty. They want to convict somebody. What’s got you started on JonBenet Ramsey?”

“I don’t know,” Bennis said. “I was wondering about this, I guess. About Kayla Anson. I was wondering if you knew who had killed Kayla Anson.”

“I’ve only just got here, Bennis. I don’t even know who the suspects are.”

“Her mother.”

“Who, as far as I know at the moment, was sitting with you at the time that the murder occurred, making conversation about lesbian painters in Paris in the twenties. Why are you in such a hurry to convict Kayla Anson’s mother?”

“I’ve met her. Never mind. Are they all going to be there today, all the police officers from all the towns?”

“I don’t know. But you’re not going to be.”

Gregor opened the car door and climbed out. There was a jack-o’-lantern on the tiny clapboard house’s front stoop. It was the only sign of Halloween on Caldwell green. He leaned back into the car and gave Bennis a chaste peck on the lips. It was the best he could do. Contorted into that particular physical position, it was all he could do to get his lips properly puckered.

“Go to the mall,” he said. “I’ll talk to you later. Nothing is going to go on for the rest of today but procedure. You’d be bored if you were here.”

“I know.” She gave him a peck on the cheek to go with the one he had given her on the lips. “Take care of yourself.”

“My biggest problem is going to be finding myself some decent food.”

Gregor stepped back out of the car. He slammed the door shut after himself. Bennis rolled down her window and stuck her head out.

“I’ll talk to you later,” she said.

Then she drew her head back into the car and rolled the window up again. A moment later, the car was moving away from the curb and out onto the narrow country road. What did it say about this place that even its main roads were narrow?

Gregor put his coat over his shoulders and went up to the resident trooper’s front door.





2


The resident trooper’s name was Stacey Spratz, and he was very young. Gregor had noticed that the night before, when they had met for the first time under Bennis’s watchful eye. It hadn’t been much of a meeting. Gregor had been too tired, and strung too tight, to be much help, or even to make much sense. All he and Stacey had been able to accomplish was to make it clear that, yes, Gregor would not mind looking into this particular case if the law enforcement agencies involved wanted him to—and no, Gregor did not charge fees for his work, although he did appreciate it if the people he helped out gave a donation to Foodshare or Mother Teresa’s Missionaries of Charity. This business about not paying him always held people up. They had contingency funds in their budgets for this kind of thing. Why wouldn’t he want to get paid? Gregor always found himself going into a long, convoluted explanation of something that should have been very simple. To be legitimately paid, he needed a private detective’s license. He had no intention of getting a private detective’s license.