The Profiler's Daughter (Sky Stone Thriller Series) (44 page)

“What did you see when you looked out your mother’s kitchen window?” she asked.

Raj offered a lopsided grin. “The Himalayas.”

An image floated in Sky’s mind: snow-capped peaks against an infinite blue – a soothing vista, as though someone had laid a cool hand to her forehead. Sky made a mental note to visit Nepal, maybe climb Mount Everest.

But first things first.

With the green golf pencil, she drew an arrow from Porter Manville’s name and scribbled the words ‘Texas – bluebonnets in bloom’.

Raj smashed almonds against a cutting board with a tapered chef’s blade and paused to study Sky’s face. “You have a hungry look,” the butler observed.

He sprinkled almonds into the rice and Sky’s mind drifted without intent, from the Steinway in Manville’s conservatory to Alexei’s comments on the origins of narcissism. Infant’s lack of early attachment to the mother, Alexei had been vehement on that point. Maternal attachment was vital, any disruption could result in grave psychological disturbance.

Sky tossed the golf pencil on the table with disgust. God, had it come to this? Why was she allowing herself to veer off into the nebulous territory of Freudian analysis?

Trust your instincts
, the stranger’s voice countered in her head.

The electronic police siren of Kyle’s ringtone jarred Sky from her thoughts and she took the call.

“Darling? I’m sorry about Teddy. Are you okay?”

“I want you to check a license plate for me, Kyle.” Sky repeated the number the stranger had given her.

“Does this have anything to do with Teddy’s death?”

“I don’t know.” Sky heard her voice waver. “How did Teddy – ” She couldn’t bring herself to finish the sentence.

Kyle said, “Unofficially? Teddy died from blunt force trauma.”

“What does that mean?”

“Hit and run, according to Vanessa Hatcher.” Kyle paused. “Vanessa said it was quick. Broken neck. But that’s unofficial. We’ll know more after the autopsy. Where are you?”

“Beacon Hill. My grandmother’s place.”

“Good. Stay there.” Kyle sniffed. “By the way, some suit was looking for you at the station today. Lawyer named Vox. Gave me his card. You know him?”

Sky asked for the number and Kyle rattled it off.

“Well?” he said. “What’s a lawyer want with you?”

“I’ll tell you later,” she hedged. Vox was most likely Jasper Cleveland’s lawyer, the one the convicted serial killer had mentioned in the letter from Cedar Junction. Sky felt too tired to explain it to Kyle. “Anything else?” she said.

“Yeah,” he exhaled heavily into the phone. Kyle was smoking. “You still got that dog?”

“Yes.”

“What’s she doing?”

“She’s under the kitchen table chewing the tail on my old sock monkey.”

Kyle grunted. “This thing with Teddy is fucked up.”

“The timing is too coincidental,” Sky blurted. “Go to Manville’s place, look around the property. Teddy was there tonight, I’m sure of it. Be careful, Manville has some kind of state-of-the-art security sys–”

“Darling,” Kyle interrupted. “Teddy was a gambler. He played with bad men. Owed money all over town. Some bookie made an example of him, that’s my guess. I’ll run that license plate tomorrow. You have a nice cup of warm milk and get some sleep. That’s an order.”

Sky hung up.

The stranger was right. Again. Her credibility with Jake and Kyle was nonexistent. Jake accused her of being a spoiled brat. Now Teddy was dead.

Sky was on her own.

“Does Izzy still get up early?” she asked Raj.

“I take a tray to her room at seven o’clock every morning. The
Boston Globe
, neatly folded, one poached egg, three strips of lean bacon, and two fresh buttermilk biscuits with black tea.” Raj killed the burner flame and filled a blue and white Spode ramekin with kheer. “For one so small, your grandmother has a hearty appetite.”

“How’s that spider on the portico?” Sky said. “Still weaving her web?”

“She grows larger by the day.” Raj handed Sky the ramekin and a gleaming silver spoon.

She took a mouthful of the creamy rice and closed her eyes. Spicy warmth radiated to her very fingertips and she gobbled the rest.

Raj dropped another dollop in her bowl and gave Sky a chiding grin. “Your grandmother will be delighted to see you.”

“You think so?” Sky didn’t think so. But she didn’t much care. Taking the pan from Raj’s hands, she devoured the contents.

Then she set the pan on the floor and let Tiffany lick the pot clean.

CHAPTER FORTY- ONE

Sky was dreaming.

She was climbing a mountain in the dark, the eerie path was obscured by fog. A child’s hand was in hers, a little girl with glowing blonde curls. The girl was singing a nursery rhyme, one two, buckle my shoe, when she slipped from the cliff’s edge. Sky grabbed for the tiny hand but the child was gone.

Sky bolted upright in bed, fully awake. She hugged her knees and waited for her chest to quit heaving. The child in her dream was Molly Payne.

Beside her, Tiffany’s quivering legs brushed the pillow with a muted growl.

Tiffany was dreaming, too.

Was she chasing a butterfly? A sparrow? Or was Tiffany running from something horrible, something from her past?

Sky laid a hand gently on the brindle belly and looked around her old room.

It was little more than a cubby, just big enough for a trundle bed and an old Biedermeier nightstand. Milk paint saturated the porous walls in uneven shades of clotted cream. An Aubusson rug of faded rosebuds covered the bleached floorboards. Watered silk draped from the ceiling, creating an inverted V-shaped canopy over the bed. Sky had the sensation of nesting in a cocoon.

A tapestry hung on the wall. Izzy called it her "Fishing Lady" picture. Sky studied the elaborate needlepoint.

Stitched by the architect’s aunt – or so the story went – it showed a female reclining in the center of a pastoral scene. She wore a flowing eighteenth century gown of pale blue and held a fishing pole in her right hand. In the background was the very spot on Beacon Hill that the Winthrop mansion now occupied. But this scene had been stitched in the late seventeen hundreds, before the house had been built. Dogs chased, rabbits hopped, lovers strolled, geese waddled, a fawn peeked out from behind a tree on the Boston Common. In the tapestry foreground, a boy in a red frock coat sat proudly on a chestnut pony.

Sky traced a finger over the embroidery, as she’d done countless times during childhood summers. But this morning she wasn’t thinking about the olden days, or playing hide and seek on Boston Common, or riding her favorite thoroughbred with her cousin Forbes. Sky was thinking about Molly Payne, baiting her yellow fishing pole on the bank of Bullough’s Pond as she listened to Nicolette’s laughter in the fog.

Sky grabbed her cell from the floor.

The nightmare lingered, filling her with longing for the reassurance of her mother’s voice. She hit Jenny’s number in Zeugma and waited.

The call didn’t go through.

Sky tried again, without luck. She suspected Jenny of not charging her cell. Or maybe her mother’s phone lay forgotten beneath a pile of rubble at the dig. Jenny was the classic absent-minded scientist; a brilliant archeologist, to be sure, but forgetful when it came to the day-to-day details of life.

“No matter,” Sky said, jumping out of the trundle bed. “We have things to do.”

The commotion caused Tiffany to open one eye.

“Time to meet Izzy,” Sky informed the dog.

Tiffany opened both eyes.

“Don’t look so worried,” Sky said. “By the time she’s through spoiling you, you won’t be fit to live with.” Isabel Winthrop had little affection for humans. Dogs were another matter altogether.

On the hall table outside her bedroom door, Sky found her coat, backpack, and her clothes, freshly laundered and neatly folded in a small pile. The sock monkey peeked out from the large pocket of the backpack like a baby kangaroo.

Sky tossed the monkey to Tiffany and carried a pair of jeans and the
OBEY
hoodie into the adjoining bathroom for a shower.

Toweling off afterwards, she eyed the high bathroom shelf, where pressed botanical studies leaned in a row. A summer project from her childhood. There were seven, in identical black wooden frames. Bridalwreath, bachelor button, rose, daisy, clematis, delphinium, and larkspur. Along the bottom of each, she’d written the Latin names in black India ink.

“Abducted at two years of age,” Sky spoke to her reflection in the bathroom mirror. Why did her parents keep the abduction from her?

Sky finished dressing and carried Tiffany down the mansion’s sweeping curved staircase. The chimes from an ancient grandfather clock on the second floor landing declared one o’clock in the afternoon.

Izzy. Up six hours already. Probably waiting to pounce.

But the first floor was quiet. No sign of Raj or her grandmother.

Sky padded down the wide central hallway to the kitchen: pale blue walls with high, dark cabinets and lemon yellow accents. A pitcher filled with brilliant red tulips, two dozen at least, sat in the middle of the kitchen island. Next to a full pot of hot coffee was a plate of buttermilk biscuits.

Sky was pouring herself a cup of coffee when the doorbell rang. She jogged to the entrance with Tiffany at her heels and peeked out a side window.

Magnus stood on the portico in a black suit, looking grim.

Sky unlocked the door and pulled it open.

“I need to talk to you.” Magnus peered past her, into the house. “Privately.”

“Nobody here but me and the dog.” Sky waved him in and led him to the kitchen. “Cup of coffee?”

Magnus nodded and took a chair.

“Any leads on Teddy?” She handed him a steaming mug and sat.

“We’re waiting on forensics. O’Toole claims Teddy was delinquent on a gambling debt, thinks it might have been a hit. What’s your take?”

Easy, she thought. Manville ran Teddy down and dumped him at Magni Park. Jake obviously hadn’t mentioned Sky’s hypothesis to Magnus. Why would he? They had Ellery’s DNA. Porter Manville wasn’t even a blip on their radar.

Sky shrugged noncommittally.

“Porter’s offered to foot the bill for Teddy’s funeral,” Magnus said.

Sky choked on her coffee. “Is that what you came to talk to me about?” she managed to croak.

“No.” Magnus drummed his fingers on the table. “First, I want to apologize.”

“For what?”

“You told me you weren’t ready to come back. You didn’t want any part of the Mercer investigation. I bullied you into it. That was my mistake.”

Sky started to protest but Magnus put a hand up. “Let me finish. Porter’s concerned about you. Says you’ve got psychological problems. Reactive disorder, I think he called it.”

“Is this some kind of joke?”

“I wish to God it were, Sky. Porter showed up at the station this morning looking like he went a round with Mike Tyson. Two black eyes and a broken nose. Claims you attacked him at his house in Weston last night. Is that true?”

Sky looked away.

“I’ll take that as a ‘yes’.”

“Is he pressing charges?”

“He filed a complaint. Filled out the forms, a description of the incident, the whole nine yards.” The Chief wrapped thick fingers around the coffee mug, it looked like a child’s toy in his hand. “Porter says this was the second time you’ve attacked him. Without provocation. He thinks you’re having some kind of breakdown. I think he may be right.”

“Porter Manville is a psychopath, Magnus. Full blown.”

A melancholy smile played on the Chief’s lips. “He warned me, said you might say something like that. Porter says paranoia isn’t uncommon in these situations. Damn it, Sky, the man knows what he’s talking about. He’s in the business. We’re sitting on it for the time being. But it goes to the prosecutor’s office unless you …” Magnus paused to give the knot of his red tie a needless adjustment.

“Unless I what?”

“Porter says he’ll scuttle the complaint if you check yourself into the hospital. Get professional help.”

“You mean the mental ward?”

“God damn it, it’s not like I’m not criticizing your work. Hell, it was
your
interview that led the team to Templeton. Case solved. Couldn’t ask for better results. Or quicker, for that matter.” Magnus shrugged. “But you attacked a civilian, Sky. Twice. And not just any civilian. Porter and the mayor are tight. Porter could make a lot of trouble. I can’t jeopardize the reputation of this department over a rogue consultant.” The Chief’s voice softened. “It’s over, Sky. No more cases. Check yourself into Newton-Wellesley. Make this go away.”

“You’re firing me?” Sky was livid. “I’m supposed to check myself into a mental hospital?” It was too ludicrous to believe. “Christ, Magnus. Can’t you forget about politics, just this once?”

“Still don’t get it, do you?” Magnus rose to his feet. He towered over her. “I had your back on that Gentile incident. You killed Benny and I went to the mat for you, happy to do it. Benny was a dirtbag. No harm, no foul. But my hands are tied on this one. You know the drill. If Porter’s complaint makes it to the prosecutor's office, the next step is an arrest warrant.” Magnus fixed her with a flinty stare. “Check into Newton-Wellesley, Sky. Don’t make me come after you.” He stalked out of the kitchen and down the hall.

A moment later, the front door slammed and Tiffany gave a half-hearted yip. She skittered across the linoleum floor and stood at Sky’s feet, blinking up at her with an anxious expression.

“It’s all right, girl. Just means I have to work fast. I’m all over this.”

Sky knew what she had to do. And it didn’t involve checking herself into some mental ward.

Tiffany squirmed and Sky realized that she hadn’t been out yet.

“Sorry, little one.” Sky grabbed a biscuit, rummaged through the garbage beneath the sink for an empty bread bag, and returned to the hallway with the dog. She slipped into an oval-shaped garden room full of potted palms and antique lawn chairs – more of a sun porch, really, because it opened onto the estate grounds.

Sky pushed the door open with an elbow and stepped outside.