Skeleton Key(84)

“It’s not exactly on the way,” Stacey Spratz said.

“Make a detour. I want to check my messages. And I want to check on Bennis. I’ve left her flat for the past two days.”

“The real problem up in the Hills is that there isn’t anything, you know what I mean?” Stacey Spratz said. “There’s trees and scenery and lots of old New England, but you have to drive for an hour before you can get a decent hamburger. Or do any shopping that isn’t going to cost you like you were John D. Rockefeller. Do you think the Rockefellers have as much money as Bill Gates?”

“I doubt it,” Gregor said. Sometimes he thought Stacey must have one of those learning disorders—attention deficit disorder, one of those things—because it seemed like the only explanation for why he jumped from subject to subject the way he did.

Stacey pulled into the parking lot of the inn. Gregor tidied his stack of notes into a pile and put them up behind the sun visor on the passenger side of the car.

“You can come in if you like,” Gregor told him.

“I’ll wait in the car,” Stacey told him. “If you don’t mind. I mean, I don’t want you to feel hurried or anything like that. But you did say you wouldn’t be long. So I thought—”

“I won’t be long,” Gregor promised. “You can wait in the car.”

He got out into the crisp cold air as quickly as he could, if only to forestall the need to listen to Stacey going through yet another stream-of-consciousness philosophy. He walked across the parking lot to the inn’s front entrance. He thought it had to be the height of the lunch hour. The parking lot was full of vehicles, when it was usually at least a third empty. Women were coming and going in groups of three and four. The working women wore shirtwaist dresses and little heels. The wives wore shorts and tennis shoes and white socks. It was as if everybody was in uniform.

Gregor stopped at the front desk and found that no messages had been left for him. Then he went upstairs and walked down the long hall to his and Bennis’s room. The hall was dark as always, but dark in the way that the halls in the homes of very rich people are dark—dark because of its length and height, not because of was cramped or without ventilation. It was incredible, the way he worried at the whole concept of rich and poor now that he was here. In spite of the fact that nobody ever talked about it—that nobody even mentioned the odd extremes of wealth and poverty that seemed to be as much a part of the landscape of this place as maple trees and swiftly flowing streams—it was on his mind all the time.

He opened the door to his own room and stepped in. He called out Bennis’s name and got no response. It occurred to him that he should have checked for her car in the parking lot. It was an unusual car. He usually had a hard time missing it.

He went into the small bathroom and washed his face. He went to the bedroom and found his good hairbrush. He was feeling ragged and filthy. That was what came of riding around in cars all day. He was feeling reluctant to go back to Stacey Spratz, and the car, and the prospect of McDonald’s. He was going to have to get over that

The phone rang while he was in the bedroom. He went to the small table at the side of the bed and picked it up.

“Bennis?” he said.

“No,” a familiar voice said. “Donna. I’m glad I got you. Where’s Bennis?”

“Out driving around, I’d guess. How are you?”

“If Bennis is out driving around, does that mean you’re stuck in the hotel?”

“It’s an inn, and I’m not stuck. I’m being driven around by a police officer. Who’s expecting me downstairs at any moment. Are you all right? Is something wrong?”

“Not exactiy. I’m glad I got you. I talked to Bennis earlier.”

“And?”

“And I thought of something. With Peter, you know.”

“Peter.”

“Peter Desarian. You know Peter. Peter is Tommy’s father.”

“Yes, yes,” Gregor said. “It’s just that there’s a Peter involved in this mess up here. He was Kayla Anson’s boyfriend.”

“Well, Peter Desarian would love to be the boyfriend of some woman with two hundred million dollars. He’d probably even marry her. At the moment, however, he’s trying to stop Russ from adopting Tommy, and that means that I’ve got to do something.”

“I remember,” Gregor said. He sat down on the edge of the bed. What was it that Donna had said?

“Anyway, I talked to Bennis about this,” Donna said, “and she said that if you even heard about it you’d have a fit, but I thought I’d ask. It couldn’t hurt to ask. And I want to know why you’d have a fit.”