Skeleton Key(97)

“We met at the Swamp Tree Country Club,” Peter said, “which is where everybody meets everybody out here. Or at least, where everybody like us meets everybody else like us. There was a dinner dance. The club has them about once a month. Kayla was there with Margaret. Oh, and with her friend. Kayla’s friend, Annabel Crawford.”

“And what was Kayla Anson like?”

Peter Greer shrugged again. “I think the tendency is to think of girls like Kayla as extraordinary—people do it with Chelsea Clinton, as well. Girls in the spotlight, so to speak, who get a lot of publicity, who have to live public lives. We like to think of them as unusual people with unusual strengths.”

“And Kayla Anson wasn’t that?”

“Kayla was Kayla, that was all. She was an East Coast debutante. More intelligent than most, more grown-up than some, fairly steady emotionally and philosophically. And of course she was attractive, although she wasn’t really beautiful. That’s the other tendency we all have, with girls like Kayla. Even when they’re plain as toast, we like to describe them as beautiful.”

“I think it’s remarkable that you started a relationship—I presume a sexual relationship—with a woman you were able to look at so . . . judiciously.”

“Well,” Peter Greer said, “maybe I wasn’t so judicious in the beginning.”

“What about Kayla Anson? Was she judicious about you?”

“I think she was just—bored. Bored out here. Bored with going to parties. Bored and looking for somebody or something to distract her. And I was that somebody.”

“What ended it?”

“Kayla ended it,” Peter Greer said. “One night about two months ago, right out of the blue. Although I can’t really say I was all that surprised, once I thought it over. We were both just sort of marking time.”

There was a faint trilling sound. For the first few moments, Gregor didn’t recognize it as the ringing of a phone. Peter Greer did, and strode over to the end table near the couch to pick up. He said, “Peter Greer here” instead of “hello,” and then he listened.

Finally he looked up and held the phone out in Stacey Spratz’s direction. Stacey was near the window wall, looking green.

“It’s for you,” he said. “It’s your dispatcher. She says it’s urgent”

Stacey Spratz came forward and took the phone. Gregor thought he was being very careful not to look at either one of them, but that might have been nothing. That might have been Stacey still embarrassed at how badly he was taking the view. Stacey listened for a while and then grunted. He said, “Yes, yes, I understand” and “we’re leaving as soon as I hang up.” Then he handed the phone back to Peter Greer and looked at Gregor.

“Jesus Christ,” he said. “There’s another body in Margaret Anson’s garage.”





PART THREE





PART THREE





One



1


To call what was going on in the road outside Margaret Anspn’s house a circus would be to make it sound more dignified than what it was. What was going on in the road outside Margaret Anson’s house was a form of lunacy. Gregor Demarkian had never seen anything like it, not even in the days after the Monica Lewinsky case started to go nuclear—and that, at least, had involved a president of the United States. It was hard to tell what it was people thought they were doing here. Vans that had been politely in the road only a few hours ago were now parked up on the grass. Reporters who had stayed where they belonged on the public pavement were now creeping up the long gravel drive, only to be turned back by one or another of the state police sentries who had been posted to deal with just such a problem. There were police everywhere, more police than Gregor had seen in one place since coming to Connecticut. Some of them were state police and some of them belonged to the Washington Police Department. Their cars were everywhere, parked on the sides of the drive, crammed into the roundabout in front of the barn. Their uniforms were the one consistent feature of the landscape.

Stacey Spratz pulled carefully into the drive, waving at the sentry there to make sure he understood that they were official and therefore allowed to pass—but instead of passing he found himself stopped, and the car beginning to rock.

“What the hell,” he said.

Gregor could see what was happening. There were two people nearly plastered to the window at his side. There were people everywhere.

“We’re being rocked,” he said. “From the back.”

Stacey Spratz looked into the rearview mirror. Gregor turned around in his seat. There were two men back there, leaning against the left side of the car and pushing. Every time they surged forward, the car swayed and shuddered.