“Laurel Abbott,” Gillette repeated slowly. “Didn’t she marry some Greek shipping magnate? What’s his name?”
“Stefanos Kostas. Now there’s a guy who’s suffering from ego inflation. He thinks he’s slick and stunning, that women can’t resist him. Jimmy said he was unfaithful even after he proposed to Laurel. The way he looks at women—me included—it made me want to go take a shower.”
“I’ve seen photos of him,” Gillette said. “He’s quite the fashion plate, looks smooth and tough, quite a combination. So you weren’t interested, huh?”
Rachael shuddered. “If a shower weren’t available, I’d go for a hose. They’ve got two boys, both off at Standover, this fancy prep school in Vermont. Stefanos owns a Greek island, Scorpios, but he spends most of his time here.”
“Tell us about Quincy,” Jack said, joining Gillette at the counter. “No, Rachael, you stay put. My head feels fine, so does my leg. I make good coffee. It’s so good some say it’s a gift.”
She laughed. “Okay, Quincy. He’s a clotheshorse, spends a couple months a year in Milan having new threads made for himself while he struts in and out of La Scala. He’s divorced, three times now, and from a snide comment Laurel made once, I gather his alimony payments could feed a small country for a week. He’s as self-centered and arrogant as Laurel, and wears a ridiculous toupee, like Donald Trump’s; if it isn’t a toupee, it should be. One night it nearly slid onto Quincy’s steak and mushrooms, and no one said a word.”
“Old man Abbott wanted Laurel to run the empire. So Quincy’s not as smart as she is?”
Rachael thought about that. “It’s not brains, really. They’re both smart, but he doesn’t have the force of will, the personality for it. He does what she tells him to do. With Quincy, I think he’d have trouble finding the jugular vein, whereas Laurel was born sucking blood from it.”
Jack said, “So Quincy can do the war dance, but he can’t take the scalp?”
“That’s it. Another thing: he’s extraordinarily sexist, and since being outsharked by his sister, Jimmy said he’d gotten more vicious toward women. I heard him say to Jimmy once that a woman is at her best on her knees with her mouth well occupied.”
“Whoa,” Jack said.
Gillette said, “Tell us more about Laurel.”
“She knows where all the skeletons are buried, knows which buttons to push. She’s the real deal when it comes to getting what she wants. She’s a closer, no scruples at all. All of that’s according to Jimmy, of course.”
Gillette said, “Doesn’t sound like there’s much affection there.”
“No, there isn’t. I asked Jimmy about that, all the sniping beneath the civility, all the public pretense, and he said it had been like that for so long he couldn’t remember if it had ever been any different.”
Gillette continued. “I read the other day in the
Wall Street Journal
that Abbott Enterprises, both international and domestic, has increased in wealth, prestige, and influence under her leadership.”
“So Jimmy told me,” Rachael said. “You can bet that burns Quincy to his heels.” She sighed, ate a cracker, then twisted the bag closed. “Proof. Where am I going to find proof?”
“We will,” Jack said with no hesitation at all.
She gave him a grin. “Do you know Uncle Gillette’s a computer hound, maybe even as good as Agent Savich? You told me he was amazing, Jack.”
Gillette did a double take. “Agent Savich? You mean FBI Special Agent Dillon Savich?”
Jack nodded.
“I’ve read about him, read several of the protocols he developed for the FBI. He adapted that facial recognition program from Scotland Yard. I’d really like to see it in action.”
Jack laughed. “Do you happen to have a name for your computer, Gillette?”
“A name? No, I hadn’t considered that. Hey, I’ve got three computers.”
“It’s a question to ponder,” Jack said. “Savich has only the one laptop—MAX or MAXINE—it’s transgender, changes sex every six months or so.”
Gillette laughed so hard he spilled coffee onto the floor. And what a floor it was, Jack thought, nicer than his, and that burned since he’d selected the Italian tiles and laid them himself. He looked down at the various shades of gray with lines of milky white snaking through the marble squares.
“I wonder why I never read anything about MAX,” Gillette said, hiccupped once, then leaned down to wipe the coffee off the floor. “Or MAXINE.”
“I’ll have to see if I can get you and Savich together, at least in cyberspace. Your home is incredible. I was thinking maybe it’s about the right time to do some more work on mine.”
“You already own a house? At your tender age?”
“I’m not all that young,” Jack said, “nearly thirty-two.”
“That’s thirty-one,” Gillette said. “That’s young.”
“Young enough,” Rachael said as she blew on the coffee that Uncle Gillette had just poured in the big stone mug with her name on it. “You’ve only got thirty-six months on me.”
“Thirty-six months and decades of nasty experience,” Jack said.
Rachael sneered at him. “Oh yeah? You ever spend any quality time at the bottom of a lake with only a block of concrete for company?”
“Okay, I spoke too fast, but you’ve got to admit, that little phrase sounded profound.”
She couldn’t help it, she poked him in the arm and laughed. “All right, you’re loaded with hard-nosed experience. Now, tell us about your house.”
“It’s old and needs lots of updating, but it’s mine. I’m still living in my apartment since there’s so much major work to do. My folks loaned me the down payment. I pay them ten percent interest. My dad told me to take my time paying them back, they like the interest rate too much. You built this house yourself, Gillette?”
Gillette nodded and walked to the shining silver Sub-Zero refrigerator. “After I came home from the marines—”
“Wait a minute,” Jack said, staring at the man who looked like he should have been playing polo, his valet waiting in the wings. “You’re a marine?”
Gillette nodded. “Yeah, I spent ten years in the Corps before I hung it up. I grew up here in Slipper Hollow, went to school in Parlow, couldn’t wait to go out into the big bad world. Since home appears to be embedded in our genes, I came back here when I got out. Rachael and her mom lived here until she was twelve or so, I believe, when they moved to Richmond.”
Rachael added to Jack, “My grandparents were killed in an avalanche while cross-country skiing when I was about eight. I never knew them very well, they were always bum ming around. ‘Hike the world’ was their motto.”
“Yes, that’s right. After you and your mom left, it was tough being here alone, but I didn’t want to leave. That’s when I tore down the house and started building this one. It was a work in progress for a long time. Been finished about three years now. I’ve enjoyed every project, Jack, and you will, too, so take your time and don’t cut corners. I made a cheesecake. Who wants strawberries with that?”
This handsome, fit man who looked like an Italian count in his pale blue cashmere V-neck, white shirt, black slacks, and butter-soft loafers, was a down-and-dirty marine? He made vegetarian stew and cheesecake and laid that incredible kitchen floor; he built this entire frigging house?
After his first bite of cheesecake, Jack said, “I have a sister who would hunt you down like a dog, so great would be her desire for you.”
“Hmm. She likes cheesecake, does she? Is she a lawyer like you?”
“How do you know I’m a lawyer?”
“The way you process information, the way you speak. It helped, too, that after Rachael called me, told me your name, I Googled you. You were second in your class at the University of Chicago. Good job. That’s a tough program. You went directly into the FBI after graduation?”
Jack sat back, folded his hand over his belly. “No, I started out in the Chicago DA’s office, stayed only a year and a half before joining the FBI. My sister was first in her class, also at Chicago, eight years before me. Plus, she’s a vegetarian. So is Savich.”
“Funny,” Gillette said, frowning at a laptop that sat next to a bowl of green apples on the long kitchen counter, “for an FBI agent.”
“Yeah, I’d have to say that most of us are predators.” Jack thought about Gillette Googling him, about the state of privacy now, and knew anyone could find out he’d made a B in Torts in his second year.
At ten o’clock that night, Rachael led Jack into her mother’s old room, which, naturally, Uncle Gillette had prepared for him.
“I was wondering, Rachael, how does Gillette make his money? It’s obvious he isn’t hurting, plus he built this house and it’s really high quality.”
“He does computer troubleshooting for several large international corporations. Exactly what this involves, you’ll have to ask him. I remember once he started talking about a tax scam he was hunting down in Dubai, and my eyes started glazing over. Go take a pain med, Jack,” she added. She raised her hand to lightly cup his face. “Thank you. You fall out of the sky at my feet, then you become my bodyguard. Add to that you’re fixing up your own house and I’ve gotta think you’re quite a miracle.”
“I like being a miracle,” he said, and stared at that sexy braid before he left her. Jack took his pill and settled between lavender-scented sheets, unconscious in two minutes flat.
As for Rachael, for the first time since Friday, she felt safe to her bones even though she knew intellectually that anyone with the proper motivation and a certain degree of skill could locate her and Slipper Hollow without much fuss.
She lay on her back on her narrow childhood bed and looked up at the high-beamed ceiling that she couldn’t see in the dark, and wondered how she was going to prove Jimmy’s brother and sister murdered him before they added her scalp to their belts.
She wanted more than anything in the world to make them pay. She’d had only six weeks with Jimmy because of them. Talk about miracles, Jimmy had been the biggest miracle in her life, and he was taken from her. After so little time. She fell asleep thinking that Jack was a pretty nice miracle himself.
SEVENTEEN
Washington Memorial Hospital
Washington, D.C.
Tuesday morning
C
hief of Neurological Services Dr. Connor Bingham said to Savich and Sherlock, “Dr. MacLean regained consciousness an hour ago. He was in considerable pain from the broken ribs and the cut in his chest, so he’s medicated, a bit on the drowsy side. Maybe all the physical stimulation, the noise and activity of the helicopter ride, helped speed his awakening. But he is by no means a normal man, as you’ll see. With his dementia, he’ll never be.
“When you speak to him, keep it short. If you have questions afterwards, I’m available.”
As a matter of course, Savich and Sherlock showed their IDs to the agent posted outside Dr. MacLean’s room, even though they knew one another.
Agent Tom Tomlin was tall and rangy, his dark eyes alight at the sight of Sherlock as he said, those eyes of his never leaving her face, “Agent Sherlock, my mom sent me a photo from the
San Francisco Chronicle.
” He reached into his jacket pocket, pulled out his wallet, and unfolded the newspaper clipping. “See, here you are standing in front of a burning house, your face blacker than mine, your clothes torn and dirty, and I can tell you’re wearing a Kevlar vest. My mom told me to ask you out. She was really bummed when I told her you were married.” He beamed at her.
Her father had sent her the same photo. Sherlock grinned. “It took forever to get all the black smoke off. And the smell. It’s still like a faint perfume.”
Savich gave Agent Tomlin a terrifying smile before taking Sherlock’s hand and leading her into Dr. MacLean’s room.
Dr. MacLean moaned. They moved to stand on either side of his bed, staring down at gray eyes darkened with confusion.
“Dr. MacLean?” Sherlock waited until the gray eyes focused on her face. “I’m Agent Sherlock and this is Agent Savich. We’re FBI. We work with Jack Crowne. Don’t worry about a thing. You’re safe. You’re protected. We won’t let anyone hurt you.”
The gray eyes, a bit blurred, blinked at them. “You’re friends of Jackson’s? I want him to marry my daughter, you know, but my wife thinks he’s too old for her. She’s a fresh-man at Columbia this fall.”
“He might make a better uncle,” Savich said. “Remember, that’s about the same number of years that separated Prince Charles and Diana. Look what came of that.”
“Maybe so. Oh my, I never had such great drugs, even back in college. I feel like flying right off this rock-hard excuse for a bed and out that window, maybe buzz the White House. Is the weather nice?”
“Yes, bright sunshine, and it might hit eighty-five today.”
“I have a real good friend who’s a pharmacist and a killer at bridge. After I buzz over his house in Chevy Chase, hopefully ruin the bridge hand he’s playing, I think I’ll fly clear to the West Coast. I don’t want to go back to Lexington—my family are a bunch of nags and doomsayers. And my wife Molly—I tried to make her listen to reason, but she’s got her own rules for reason and won’t listen to mine. Molly kept pushing me until we were on a plane back to Lexington. And then I had to come back here again—but wait now. What kind of sense does that make? Oh, I remember. There was a plane wreck—Jackson was piloting. Is he all right?”
Savich saw his sudden alarm and said, “Jack is fine now, just headaches from the concussion and some pain from a gash in his leg.”
“Good, good, he’s okay then. I’ll tell you, even with these excellent pain meds, I still feel like I’m hurting all over.”
“Understandable. You got thrown around quite a bit. There was a bomb on board the Cessna, but Jack managed to bring it down in a narrow valley. He pulled you out before the plane exploded. You are hurt all over, sir.”
Sherlock said, “Dr. MacLean, we need to ask you some questions, to try to get a better handle on all of this.”