The Profiler's Daughter (Sky Stone Thriller Series) (31 page)

“Manville’s from Texas. Must be a hunter,” Sky said, studying the beautiful stag’s dead eyes.

“Never been further south than Foxwoods, myself.” Teddy slipped the phone back into the pocket of his blue parka. “I was throwing the trash bag in my car when a red Lamborghini pulled into the parking lot with Manville at the wheel. Talk about cutting it close. He went into an underground garage and I figured he’d be there for a while so I drove straight to his place in Weston. Lives there by himself, as far as I can tell.” Teddy shrugged a beefy shoulder. “Pretty modest place, considering the address. Your basic ranch-style domicile. I yanked that big bag from a garbage can next to the house.” He shook his head. “Highest property values in the fucking state but they have to shlep their own garbage to the dump. Go figure.”

Sky poked around until she found an old newspaper. “Spread this out on the floor,” she instructed. “I’m taking the dog out.”

She carried Tiffany down the east staircase and directly across Watertown Street to a small park next to Dunkin’ Donuts. Trees and park benches dotted the tiny patch of green. The police officer accompanied them with a stony look on his face.

Tiffany squatted for nearly a minute and Sky marveled that a small creature could display such spectacular bladder control. Where did she keep it? Sky was reading a memorial plaque, names of Lake residents who’d lost their lives fighting the first World War, when someone shouted from across the street.

“There is a god.” Angel Butera stood next to the red, white and blue helix of Salvi’s barbershop pole wearing a brown suit and a nasty sneer. Cupping his hands around his mouth, he yelled, “Off the case, Doctor Stone?” He stepped from the curb and lumbered across the street in a graceless waddle.

It was day three of Butera’s ten-day Burglary reassignment. Magnus had orchestrated the transfer for Sky’s benefit and it was an ironic twist that Angel Butera would be back in homicide in a week while Sky was excluded.

Tiffany finished her business and Sky picked her up, hoping to make a quick exit. But Butera beat her. Panting from exertion, he stood next to the war memorial and gave the duty officer a cursory wave before locking his small eyes on Sky.

“Now you’re on the outside, looking in. How does it feel, Golden Girl?” He issued a hostile laugh and rubbed his balding buzz cut. “Where’d you get the rat?” He peered at Tiffany and the dog answered him with a snarl.

Ignoring Butera, Sky carried the dog across the street. She tried to walk faster, but every muscle in her body ached and the detective moved apace.

“My niece and Jake are talking marriage.” Butera slipped into conversational mode. “Any tips on wedding locations? I’m mulling over Gore Place, what do you think?”

Sky’s face grew hot. Butera had hit a nerve.

Not that long ago, Sky and Jake had looked in vain for a wedding spot that would satisfy both families. Izzy’s Brahmin standards and Jake’s Lake roots seemed impossible to reconcile until Sky discovered Gore Place, an early 1800’s estate barely a mile from the Lake. Forty-five acres, front gardens, north and south lawns. Plenty of room to accommodate her grandmother’s absurdly extensive guest list. ‘One of the loveliest Federal period mansions in New England,’ Izzy had declared with rare approval. The sprawling estate even boasted a small sheep and goat farm.

Marry in late July, that was their plan, two months after the baby was born. In the beginning, Sky had refused Jake’s marriage proposal, she tried to convince him that marriage was an archaic social convention. But Jake was old-fashioned in so many ways. And very persuasive. In the end, because she couldn’t resist him, she said yes. Yes.

Sky reached the other side of the street and paused in front of Kildare’s Pub to catch her breath. The chain of thoughts sparked by Butera’s dig led Sky to a startling realization: if it weren’t for the car crash, she’d be celebrating her ninth month of marriage to Jake. The baby would be nearly a year old.

Butera searched Sky’s face in the gathering dusk and smiled, happy to see that his arrow had hit its mark. He turned a lumpy brow toward the two identical stone carvings of bare breasted women on either side of the pub entrance.

“A beer sounds good. You have a nice night, Doctor.” Butera tweaked the nearest stone nipple with sausage fingers and swaggered into Kildare’s.

Teddy was lounging on the sofa when Sky got back to the office.

“You don’t look so good,” he said, straightening up. “What happened?”

Sky set Tiffany on the Persian carpet and fought the impulse to grill Teddy. He would certainly know if Jake and Theresa were talking marriage. But she couldn’t bring herself to ask. It was too humiliating.

“I bumped into Angel Butera.”

“Lake’s biggest prick.” Teddy pulled a pack of Juicy Fruit from the pocket of his blue work shirt and popped a slice in his mouth. “I’ve been looking at these jars, boss.” His eyes followed the line of vases along the top of the bookshelves. “I count twelve. Can I buy one off you? For my girlfriend, her birthday is tomorrow. At present, I have diddley squat.” Teddy pointed to the largest, a round ginger jar with eight lobes and a glaze of blue and white. “That one’s nice. Give you twenty bucks for it.”

“You’ve got a good eye, Teddy.” Sky poured kibble from the Purina bag into an old pink and blue striped McCoy bowl. “That pot is nearly five hundred years old. Wanli period.”

“No shit? It does look a little dusty, now that you mention it.”

Tiffany’s chrysanthemum face disappeared into the food bowl. Soft crunching noises followed.

“I’m taking a shower,” Sky said, pulling a Turkish towel and some clothes from the yellow gym bag. “How about grabbing us some coffee? It’s going to be a long night.”

“Sure thing, boss.” Teddy stood up and stretched. “Your phone rang while you were gone. Harlem Shuffle. Sexy beat.”

It was a quick shower.

Sky towel-dried her hair in the pink bathroom and thought about the missed call. Harlem Shuffle. That was Jake’s ringtone. Probably Theresa, calling to gloat. Sky pulled on jeans and a black sweater and returned to the office.

She was a little shaky and the bump on her head still stung. But the shower had been refreshing.

After emptying the contents of Izzy’s windflower evening bag on the desk, she pinned the pictures of Professor Fisk, Zach Rosario, Ellery Templeton and Porter Manville on the right hand side of the bulletin board behind her desk. The lab snapshot of Nicolette went on top. Along the left side, she pinned the graphs, both sets of lab pages, the scrap of paper, and the Papa Razzi napkin from the book of magic spells in Nicolette’s bedroom. The shot of the caiman tattoo went next to the polaroid of Nicolette. Below the graphs, she pinned the timeline Jake had handed out at the last meeting.

Teddy came in balancing a Dunkin’ Donuts bag over two large coffees. Under his arm was a folded newspaper. “You clean up real good, boss.” He put the coffees on the desk and handed her the paper. “Check out Section B.”

Sky finished pinning the business cards from the tattoo parlor and Professor Fisk’s lab on the bulletin board and opened the Globe to the society page.

Under a heading titled
The April Seen
was a large black and white photograph with the caption:

Skylar Winthrop Stone (Newton) and Humanitarian of the Year Porter Manville (Weston). Around 650 guests attended the Diamond Ball, a masked extravaganza held at the Four Seasons Hotel, which raised a record $1,900,000 for Boston charities.

Teddy took a noisy gulp of coffee and frowned at the photograph of Sky and Manville. “Poor slob doesn’t know what hit him. You, on the other hand. Well, if looks could kill …” Teddy bit into his powdered doughnut for emphasis.

Sky studied the picture. Unusual for the society page, not the predictable smiling heads the paper typically ran, but a full body shot. The photographer was an artist and he’d made the most of the optics. It was a portrait. And Teddy was right, the shot captured, exactly, the situation.

Manville stood ramrod straight in the impeccable black tux, his head tilted down toward Sky. A small smile played on his lips, as though he were anticipating her next fascinating move. The Balenciaga gleamed, white and frothy as whipped cream. Sky and Manville would have presented the perfect tableau of wealth and privilege had Sky not been looking directly into the camera with the eyes of an executioner.

“Shit.” Sky sipped her coffee and wondered why the editor let it pass.

She reached for the blue gift bag Manville had delivered earlier and pulled out an envelope with her name scrawled on the front. The card inside, hand written, simply said:

For the Rat Runner

Inside the bag was a small wooden box wrapped with a green satin ribbon. The stamp of a Cambridge address was burned into the wood, Brattle Street, Harvard Square. Sky untied the ribbon and opened the lid. She couldn’t help but smile.

Staring up at her with beady eyes from their individual compartments were sixteen identical chocolate mice with almond ears and tails of pink silk. Sky lifted a creature and bit into the head.

“Bittersweet chocolate. Orange center. Try one, Teddy.”

“No thanks. I’ll stick to doughnuts.” He studied the chocolate rodents. “Strange thing to give a woman if you ask me.”

“It’s perfect,” Sky said.

“Perfect, how?”

Sky thought about it for a moment. “It’s modest. Whimsical. And it shows he’s paying attention.” She dangled a second mouse from its pink silk tail. “Let’s look at his trash.”

She sat on the sofa and emptied the white bag onto the newspapers Teddy had dutifully spread out on the floor. Tiffany jumped up and arranged herself in an ungainly coil against Sky’s thigh.

Sky poked through the modest pile of trash: business letters, trade publications, a few scribbled sticky notes, three empty Starbucks coffee cups, a purple plastic DVD storage case and a travel brochure for Easter Island. “Guess he likes exotic locales,” she said.

“The guy
is
from Texas,” Teddy reminded her. “A town called Tempest, to be exact. Population, sixty thousand.” He pulled a wad of computer printouts from his pocket and spread the pages out on the sofa.

“He came to Boston in the early eighties. Graduated Harvard with a degree in chemistry. Far as I can tell, he has only one surviving relative, Olivia Porter.” Teddy made a dainty wrist movement and arched his pinky finger. “A very prominent Tempest family. The Porter name is plastered all over town. Porter Boulevard, Porter Hotel, blah blah blah. Manville’s maternal grandfather was some visionary railroad surgeon by the name of Raleigh Porter.”

There was that word again. Visionary. That’s how Professor Fisk had described Manville. Did lightning strike twice in the same family?

“Raleigh Porter founded Raleigh Porter Medical Center,” Teddy continued. “He had two daughters, Olivia and Rachel. Olivia never married. Rachel married a surgeon, a guy by the name of Drayton Manville. One son.”

“Porter Manville,” Sky said.

“Correct,” Teddy nodded. “Both parents deceased.”

“Where is Tempest?”

“Central Texas. Hour north of Austin, thirty miles south of Waco.” Teddy pointed to a thumbprint map of the state. “Tempest is an old railroad town, just off Interstate 35.” He took a bite of powdered doughnut. “Factoid,” he said, spraying particles of sugar from his mouth. “Tempest is home to more medical doctors per capita than any other place in the country.”

“Really? More than Boston?” Sky picked up the printout and read a few lines. “Employs over 900 physicians and scientists … ranked in the top fifteen teaching hospitals in the United States … seventeen additional regional clinics serving central Texas.” Sky looked at Teddy. “That’s some serious medical chops. Why would he stay in Boston after graduating from Harvard? Why wouldn’t he want to carry on the family tradition? Work in his grandfather’s medical complex?”

Teddy shrugged and got to his feet. “Who the fuck knows why anybody does anything?” He peered into the Dunkin’ Donuts bag and settled on a glazed fritter.

“Tempest has a town newspaper,” Sky read with interest. “’The Tempest Daily Telegram, serving Central Texas since 1907’." She scanned the blurb. “Owned by the same family since 1919. Fred Mayfield ran the paper from 1930 until his death in ‘89. Mavis Mayfield runs the paper, now. Fred’s fourth wife.”

“This is Nicolette Mercer?” Teddy gnawed his fritter and studied the bulletin board. “A redhead, huh? Jesus, look at all that hair. Very attractive.” He looked closer. “What’s she holding? Are those rats? God, I hate rats.”

Sky was disappointed in Manville’s office trash. She collected the letters and pamphlets and handed the pile to Teddy. “Write the names and addresses down. Generate a list. We have to start somewhere.”

She examined the purple storage case. DOC DEMO was scrawled in black marker on the front. Sky pulled the disc out, it carried a Phoenix Documentary Films label and an internet address. She slipped it into the DVD player on the small TV next to the door and pressed the ON button.

The screen brightened and a title flashed in plain white block letters against a black background: THE SCIENCE OF HAPPY. A view of a three-masted tall ship with the Bunker Hill monument in the background, then a long shot of the blue-mirrored Wellbiogen building taken from across the Charles River.

“The Science of Happy,” Sky said. “A documentary about floetazine?”

The film made an abrupt transition to the glass and mahogany Wellbiogen lobby, followed by a sustained 360º panoramic shot of a laboratory, including various closeups of file cabinets and a woman in a white lab coat looking through a microscope. An off-screen voice ordered, “Get a head shot.”

Porter Manville’s face came into sharp focus and the voice introduced the CEO. The camera pulled back, he was sitting behind a desk.

“That’s his office,” Teddy said. “See the twelve point buck on the wall behind him?”

Off-screen, a man’s voice ordered, “Angle that light.”

Manville squinted into the camera and said, “This one?”