“I left my briefcase in my office, Greg,” Carolyn said. “Go get it, please.”
Greg gave Louis a final look, then walked back to the house. He paused at the front door, watching them.
“He’s such a good little puppy,” Louis said.
“What do you want?” Carolyn asked.
“I know you were out there,” Louis said.
“Out where?”
“The cow pen.”
“I don’t know what you’re talking about.”
“Your prints were in her Bronco.”
“Whose Bronco?”
“Sam Norris’s.”
Carolyn didn’t blink. “I’ve been in her car many times. We were good friends.”
“No, you weren’t.”
Louis looked to the front door of the mansion. Greg was still there. He looked back at Carolyn.
“What’d you do with the gun, senator?”
“Gun?”
“The one you used to shoot Tink.”
Carolyn was silent.
“The one you probably were going to use to kill Sam.”
“I really have to go.”
“The bullet they scraped out of Tink’s head,” Louis said. “It was nine millimeter, a German antique. Doesn’t your husband have a thing for Nazi stuff?”
Carolyn stared at him. “You can’t prove anything,” she said.
“And you can’t control everything, senator.”
She turned away.
“Bianca Lee? You got her under control?”
Carolyn started toward the door.
“You got your husband under control, senator?”
She kept walking.
“What about Greg, senator? You got him under control, too?”
Greg was standing there at the open door, staring at Louis.
“What about Byrne Kavanagh?” Louis yelled. “How much did you pay him? And how long before he comes back asking for more? You got him under control, senator?”
Carolyn turned, and to his surprise, came down the driveway and stood in front of him.
“I think you should go now,” she said. “I think you should get off our island and leave us all alone.”
A blur of movement at an upstairs window caught his eye. Tucker was up there, looking down at them.
“Oh, I’m going home, all right,” Louis said. “I can’t wait to get out of here. But I’m not going to forget what you did. I can link you to Mark Durand through your husband’s sword. And I promise you, senator, I will find a way to link you to that German gun if I have to visit every antique dealer in this state.”
She tipped up her chin. Her expression held the same smugness he had seen on almost every face he had encountered in this place.
He leaned toward her, finger raised. “And you can tell your little puppy over there that I’m going to watch him, too. Everywhere he goes, everything he does, I’ll be watching. I’m guessing he knows exactly what happened last night, which makes him an accessory to murder. I’m also guessing that someday he’s going to get tired of you and your games and decide you’re not worth protecting anymore.”
Carolyn had gone pale. “Get out of here before I call the police and have you thrown off the island.”
“With pleasure, lady,” Louis said.
He put on his sunglasses and walked down the driveway to the Mustang.
Chapter Forty-three
When Louis arrived at Margery’s mansion, he was surprised to see Margery herself answer the door.
Louis was almost afraid to ask. “Where’s Franklin?”
“Franklin?” Margery waved a hand. “Who knows?”
“I thought for a moment he had finally become a true ghost of a man,” Louis said with a smile.
“Oh, God, no, the old thing will outlive us all.”
She linked her arm through his and led Louis into the hallway. As always, it was as warm as a hothouse, but the air grew cooler as Margery steered him out to the loggia.
Reggie was lying on the old rattan lounge, wrapped in a white terry-cloth robe and surrounded by the four pug dogs. The table next to him held a stack of newspapers and magazines, some prescription bottles, and a large bottle of Pellegrino in a silver wine cooler. Reggie put down the Shiny Sheet and gave Louis a smile.
“Louis,” he said softly, “I’m so glad you came.”
Reggie had been out of jail only two days, but already he looked better than the last time Louis had seen him. Still, he had lost his tan and a good ten pounds. With his jail buzz cut and thinner face, he bore little resemblance to the man Louis had met that first day in Ta-boo.
“Can I get you anything, dear?” Margery said, sitting on the edge of the lounge and stroking Reggie’s head.
“Franklin is making me some tomato soup.”
Margery bent over and gently pulled Reggie’s head to her breast. His face disappeared in the billowing sleeves of her caftan.
“My poor old bunny,” she said. She released him and rose with a sigh. “Will you watch him for a moment, Louis? I have to go upstairs.”
“No problem.”
“I’ll be right back, dear,” she said to Reggie. And she was gone, three of the pugs in her Shalimar wake.
“How you feeling?” Louis asked as he sat down in the chair near the lounge.
Reggie gave a small shrug. “Margery said I could stay here until I get back on my feet.”
“Thanks for letting Mel and me stay in your house. Eppie came by and gave it a good go-over. Everything’s ready for when you move back in.”
“So, you’re leaving?”
Louis nodded. “Yeah, we’re splitting this afternoon. It’s time for me to get home.”
“Mel didn’t say anything about you leaving when he was here yesterday.”
“I just decided this morning,” Louis said. “It’s time for me to get back to reality.”
Reggie nodded numbly. His stomach let out a rumble, and he looked with hope toward the archway. “I think Franklin forgot my soup,” he said with a sigh.
“Want me to go see if I can find him?”
Reggie nodded. “And tell him not to forget the dough balls.”
“Dough balls?”
Reggie gave a small smile. “When I was a boy back in Buffalo, my mother would make me Campbell’s tomato soup whenever I got sick. She used to dig out the insides of Wonder Bread and roll it into balls and put it in my soup.”
Louis rose. “Be right back.”
It took Louis a while to find the old tile kitchen in the maze of hallways, but when he finally did, it was empty. But there was a simmering pot on the stove and a silver tray. The familiar red, yellow, and blue ballooned loaf of bread was on the counter.
Louis figured Franklin had disappeared again, so he ladled some soup into a beautiful blue and white bowl and set it on a silver tray along with a linen napkin and an ornate silver spoon. He wedged a few slices of the soft white bread under the bowl and took the tray back to the loggia.
“No Franklin. But I found the soup.”
Reggie looked down at the tray as Louis set it on his lap, then up at Louis.
“You gotta do your own balls, man,” Louis said.
Reggie picked up a slice of bread, dug out the middle, and rolled it into a ball. He placed it in the soup and poked at it with the spoon. He took slow, careful sips of the soup, the swelling of his lip making him wince with each attempt.
Finally, he set the spoon down with a sigh. “I can’t even eat soup,” he said softly.
“You’ll be all right, Reg,” Louis said.
Reggie went quiet, his hand tucked under his chin as he stared out at the blue sky beyond the archways. When he turned back to Louis, his eyes were moist.
“That’s the first time you called me by my first name,” he said.
“It is?”
Reggie nodded.
The lone pug that had stayed with Reggie laid its head on his leg. Reggie stroked its ear.
“I know you think I’m ridiculous,” Reggie said.
“I don’t-”
Reggie silenced him with a hand. “That’s okay. You get used to it, you know.”
Louis’s eyes wandered to the archway, hoping Margery would appear and save him. But from what? Truth was, he had thought Reggie Kent was ridiculous. And from the start, he had wanted to distance himself from this man, like shaking his hand or just saying his first name would somehow suck him into a world he didn’t understand and wanted no part of. But this week, a lot of little worlds had been turned upside down within his larger one.