going to light first, so he could set up his interview space accordingly. As he could have predicted, she sat on one of the sofas; he took the armchair so as to be at the optimum interviewing angle of forty-five degrees.
Pender balanced his hat on the arm of the chair and took a sip of his lemonade, which looked delicious-tall, frosty glass, sprig of mint-but tasted like heavily sweetened fusel oil. Some powdered mix: no doubt the only lemon involved in the manufacture of this beverage was the painted one on the label. He smacked his lips and forced a smile. “Just like Grandma used to make,” he said.
“How very awful for Grandpa,” she replied drily.
Sharper than she looks, thought Pender. “I guess my first question is, do you have any idea where your husband might have gone?”
“As I told the officer who took the missing persons report, treasure hunting is Tex’s hobby. Since he retired, it’s become more like an obsession. This trip was different, though. He was very secretive about the destination- said he was
“This was when?”
He started to put his glass down on the coffee table; she quickly slid a coaster under it. “Six weeks ago- middle of August.”
“Did he tell you anything at all about the expedition-whom he was meeting, how they contacted him or vice versa?”
“I told you, he said he was sworn to secrecy. I think he enjoyed that part of it-Tex is such a romantic.”
“Take a guess for me, then: how would you say your husband might have hooked up with whoever it was he was going to be treasure hunting with?”
She shrugged her narrow shoulders. “Probably one of his
“Do you have any of them around?”
“All of them-Tex never let me throw a magazine away.”
“Could you get them for me?”
“Of course.” But she didn’t move.
“Mrs. Wanger…?”
She looked up from the coffee table; their eyes met for the first time since she’d asked to see his ID. “Agent Pender, this isn’t really about the missing persons report I filed, is it?”
Gently, Pender told himself. Easy does it. “No,” he said. “No, it’s not.”
“Is Tex in some sort of trouble?”
“You might say that.” It sounded coy even to Pender. Jesus, he thought, I am so fucking out of practice.
“How bad?”
He set his glass down. “The worst.”
“What does that mean?”
“His body was identified through a fingerprint match last night.”
No reply. Thanks to the Botox, her face remained a mask, but Pender could sense something crumpling behind that rigid armature. “Mrs. Wanger, your husband has been murdered,” he continued urgently, hoping to forestall the inevitable meltdown. “That’s why it’s so important that we learn everything we can about his trip-so we can catch whoever did it.”
“You’re sure?”
Pender nodded. “I’m so sorry.”
After a long silence, marred only by the hum of the air-conditioning and the distant roar of a leaf blower, the new widow pushed herself up from the sofa. “I’ll get you those magazines you wanted,” she said dully.
“Appreciate it,” said Pender.
4
There were certain advantages to being an Apgard on St. Luke, where Lewis’s father, and his father before him, and his father before him, had run a government that distributed more per capita federal aid than any state or territory except the U.S. Virgin Islands and the District of Columbia.
The plan was for Lewis and Dr. Vogler to meet for a fifty-minute hour every weekday this week, then three times a week until further notice. But because Lewis was an Apgard, and didn’t want to be seen entering the psychiatrist’s office, Vogler had agreed that their sessions would take place at the Great House. For a house call premium, of course.
They began at the stroke of noon, facing each other in twin red leather armchairs in Lewis’s study, which was still furnished as it had been in his grandfather’s day. “What I’m hoping to accomplish in our first session,” the psychiatrist began, “is to get an appreciation of your perception of why we’re here, why you’re entering into therapy, and what you hope to get out of it.”
Lewis, who could charm the birds from the trees when he set his mind to it, flashed the shrink a shy, skewed grin. “I’m afraid the better half insisted on it.”
Vogler, a plump bespectacled man who favored bow ties and seersucker sport jackets, nodded understandingly. “Tell me about yourself.”
Lewis began, as any Apgard would, with his pedigree. “My great-grandfather was the last Danish governor of St. Luke, my grandfather and father were the first two American governors. I was born in 1968. Scorpio, not that I believe in that shit. I’m an only child. My mother died two days after my birth. Something called eclampsia-you ever heard of it?”
“I received my MD from Johns Hopkins,” said Vogler, providing a little pedigree of his own.
“I guess that means yes. Anyway, my earliest memory is being hauled around by my wet nurse.”
“Wet nurse,” Vogler echoed, blinking furiously behind his thick lenses-wet nurse stories were catnip to psychiatrists.
“Her name was Queen Charlotte. When I wasn’t sucking her titis, I was riding her big old round hip like a little white monkey. Which is what she used to call me-her little white monkey. She used to take me everywhere-to market, to the washhouse, to church on Sunday morning. I cried like a baby-well, I
“The Guv?”
“That’s what I called my father. That’s what everybody called my father. And his father before him. Anyway, the Guv declared unilaterally that my titi days were over, and I was put in the charge of his maiden sister Agneta.
“Given a choice, I’d have preferred a wicked stepmother. Auntie Aggie was of the opinion that children should be seen and not heard, and from what I could tell, she wasn’t all that crazy about seeing them, either. Or maybe she really liked children in general and it was only me she couldn’t stand. For whatever reason, she was a royal pain in the bumsie, from the day she moved into the Governor’s Mansion to the day she was raped and murdered.”
“Raped and murdered,” muttered Vogler, scribbling intently in his notebook.
“During Hurricane Eloise. You want to hear about it?”
“If you’d like to tell me about it.”
“I probably should-it was my fault.”
“Definitely, then.”
“Okay, well, I remember the rain and the wind, for sure, the bruised look of the clouds, that astonishing blue sky and the way my ears popped when the eye passed over us. Which happened twice-from what I understand, after stalling over St. Luke, the storm circled the island in a clockwise spiral and hit us a second time. I also remember how surprised I was and how strange it seemed when I looked out the window of my room on the third floor of the Governor’s Mansion and saw that Sugar Town had disappeared, swallowed up by the rising water.
“We lost phones and power the first day. On the second day we lost our water and ran out of batteries for the transistor radio, and by nightfall everybody had fled to higher ground except for Aggie, myself, Mr. Featherston, my father’s houseman, and his wife Bougainvillea, who was our cook. The Guv was in Washington, on government
