He sighed and gazed out the den window.
Her expression suddenly brightened in one of those transformations that was part of her emotional wiring. “Want to take the pasture walk with me?” she asked, referring to the grassy path they kept mowed around the perimeter of the field on the slope above the house.
He screwed up his face in disbelief. “You just got back from a two-hour trek on the ridge, and you want to go out again?”
“You spend too much time bent over that computer screen. How about it?”
His first reaction went unvoiced. No, he didn’t want to waste time trudging pointlessly around that old pasture. He had urgent things to think about—the protests verging on all-out riots, the cop killing, Kline’s not-quite-believable story.
Then he reconsidered—remembering that whenever he took one of Madeleine’s annoying suggestions, the result always turned out better than he’d anticipated.
“Maybe just once around the field.”
“Great! We might even find a little creature with a limp—for you to bring to the party.”
As they reached the end of the path, Gurney suggested they go on to his archaeological project in the cherry woods above the pond.
When they reached the partly exposed foundation, he began pointing out where he’d uncovered the various iron and glass artifacts he’d catalogued on his computer. As he was indicating the spot where he’d found the teeth, Madeleine broke in with a sharp exclamation.
“Oh my God, look at that!”
He followed her gaze up into the treetops. “What do you see?”
“The leaves, the sun shining through them, the glowing greens. That light!”
He nodded. He tried not to let his irritation show. “What I’m doing here bothers you, doesn’t it?”
“I guess I’m not as enthusiastic about it as you are.”
“It’s more than that. What is it about my digging here that annoys you so much?”
She didn’t answer.
“Maddie?”
“You want to solve the mystery.”
“What do you mean?”
“The mystery of who lived here, when they lived here, why they lived here. Right?”
“More or less.”
“You want to solve the mystery of what brought them here, what kept them here.”
“I suppose so.”
“That’s what bothers me.”
“I don’t understand.”
“Not everything has to be figured out . . . dug up, torn apart, evaluated. Some things should be left alone, in peace, respected.”
He considered this. “You think the remains of this old house fall into that category?”
“Yes,” she said. “Like a grave.”
At 5:35 PM, they got in the Outback and set out for the LORA fund-raiser at Marv and Trish Gelter’s famously unique residence, located on a hilltop in the chic hamlet of Lockenberry.
From what Gurney had heard, Lockenberry was close enough to Woodstock to attract a similar crowd of artsy weekenders from Manhattan and Brooklyn, yet far enough away to have its own independent cachet, derived from the poets’ colony at its core. Known simply as the Colony, it was founded by the town’s eponymous whale-oil heiress, Mildred Lockenberry, whose own poetry was revered for its impenetrability.
Just as the value of property within Lockenberry was affected by how close it was to the Colony, the value of any property in the eastern part of the county was affected by how close it was to Lockenberry—a phenomenon Gurney noted in the postcard perfection of the nineteenth-century homes, barns, and stone walls lining the last few miles of the road leading into the hamlet. The restoration and maintenance of these structures could not be inexpensive.
Although the natural endowments of the land and buildings in the immediate vicinity of Lockenberry had been groomed and highlighted, the entire route from Walnut Crossing, winding through a succession of rolling hills and long river valleys, was, in its uncultivated and unpolished way, amazingly beautiful—with wild purple irises, white anemones, yellow lupines, and shockingly blue grape hyacinths scattered among the delicate greens of the spring grasses. It was enough to make him understand, if not feel as deeply, Madeleine’s enthusiasm for the display of sunlit leaves over his excavation by their pond.
When the GPS on the dashboard of their Outback announced that they would be arriving at their destination in another five hundred feet, Gurney slowly pulled over onto the road’s gravelly shoulder and came to a stop by an antique iron gate in a high drystone wall. A freshly graded dirt-and-gravel driveway proceeded from the open gate in a wide curve up through a gently rising meadow. He took out his phone.
Madeleine gave him a questioning look.
“I need to make a couple of calls before we go in.”
He entered the number of Jack Hardwick, a former New York State Police investigator with whom he’d crossed paths a number of times since they’d met many years earlier pursuing in different jurisdictions a solution to the sensational Peter Piggert murder case. Their unique bond was formed through a kind of grotesque serendipity—when they discovered, separately, thirty miles apart, on the same day, the disconnected halves of Piggert’s last victim. Who happened to be Piggert’s mother.
Gurney and Hardwick’s subsequent relationship had had its ups and downs. The ups were based on an obsession with solving homicides and a shared level of intelligence. The downs were the product of their conflicting personalities—Gurney’s calm, cerebral approach versus Hardwick’s compulsive need to debunk, irritate, and provoke—a habit responsible for his forced transition from the state police to his current role as a private detective. The recording on the man’s phone was, for him, relatively inoffensive:
“Leave a message. Be brief.”
Gurney complied. “Gurney here. Calling about White River. Wondering if you know anyone there who might know something that’s not already in the news.”
His second call was to the cell number Sheridan Kline had given him earlier that day. Kline’s recorded voice was as oleaginously cordial as Hardwick’s was curt. “Hello, this is Sheridan. You’ve reached my personal phone. If you have a legal, business, or political matter to discuss, please call me at the number listed on the county website for the office of the district attorney. If your call is personal in nature, when you hear the beep leave your name, number, and a message. Thank you.”
Gurney got directly to the point. “Regarding your description earlier today of the situation in White River, I came away feeling that some critical factor had been left out. Before I decide whether to get involved, I need to know more. The ball’s in your court.”
Madeleine pointed at the dashboard clock. It was 6:40 PM.
He weighed the pros and cons of making a third call, but making it now in Madeleine’s presence might not be a good idea. He restarted the car, passed through the open gate, and headed up the spotless driveway.
Madeleine spoke without looking at him. “Your security blanket?”
“Excuse me?”
“I got the impression you were touching base with the reassuring world of murder and mayhem before having to face the terrifying unknowns of a cocktail party.”
Half a mile into the Gelters’ property the driveway crested a gentle rise, bringing them suddenly to the edge of a field planted with thousands of daffodils. In the slanting sunlight of early evening the effect was startling—almost as startling as the massive, windowless, cubical house overlooking the field from the top of the hill.
6
The driveway led them to the front of the house. The imposing dark wood facade appeared to be perfectly square, perhaps fifty feet in both height and width.