bay. The sun was barely angling above the line of mist on the eastern horizon, just below the tree tops, so I didn’t see it, but saw the effect on the surface of the water. The air was clear enough to see the North Fork lit up along the horizon. I liked looking at it better than the images forming in my head of the table in some airless, joyless conference room where Ozzie and I would go through the monthly financials, him patiently explaining the numbers and teaching me for the hundredth time the accrual method of accounting and the difference between labor and material inventories.
“This from the archives of
“In the nose. Important distinction.”
So Ozzie had bailed out with the rest of the old TSS hands. Not surprising, since we all knew what Fontaine would do with our operation—essentially chop it up and scatter it across their organization, which was even more global than Con Globe, and probably three times the size. There might have been some nice opportunities in playing on a bigger stage, so it might not have been the smartest thing to do, but it didn’t surprise me. We’d built TSS from next to nothing, operating with relative autonomy outside the attention, and thus meddling, of corporate management. The better of our people would never stomach working for people they hadn’t chosen. They were too independent and obstinate.
Of course, Ozzie probably had a few other incentives. Probably a whole bucketful of carrots and sticks.
I asked Jackie what he did post–Con Globe.
“As far as I can tell, nothing,” she said.
“No jobs, no hobbies, no charities?”
“No nothing. If I didn’t have his address in Westbrook, and the news clip, I wouldn’t know he even lived there.”
I ask her to look up his ex-wife, admitting, to my regret, that I didn’t know her name. I probably never knew her name.
“I can find it by checking genealogical records. Or it might be on the title to his house, since they were still married when he bought it.”
“Great. I’ll wait.”
“Gee thanks.”
While I waited I tried to remember the names of the secretaries we shared. There were a lot of them, so I should have recalled at least one. But I didn’t really see the need for a secretary, so I didn’t give them much to do. There was a typing pool in the sales department that took care of my letters and I didn’t want anyone answering my phone. I was perfectly capable of saying hello all on my own.
Ozzie gave them too much to do, so it should have balanced out, but it was really too much. He was always respectful and polite, but with the exception of an ex-cop who was going to night school for accounting all of them quickly succumbed to the tidal wave of work flowing from his office.
“How does Priscilla sound?” asked Jackie.
“Like it goes with Oswald.”
“Until 2000.”
“Who got the house?” I asked.
“He did, apparently, since it’s still his address. You didn’t tell me he had money.”
“He does.”
“Well, the place cost him over five million dollars in the mid-nineties,” said Jackie. “You can triple that now.”
I switched on the light beside the pine table and pulled a yellow pad out of the magazine rack. I sat down and started to draw boxes and arrows. I couldn’t help it. Next to looking at the Little Peconic Bay, nothing worked as well to organize my brain.
“What do we do now?” Jackie asked.
“We take a trip.”
“No we don’t.”
“Just a short trip.”
“To where?”
“I’ll bet Priscilla lives in Stamford,” I said.
The line went quiet for another few minutes.
“She does. Unless it’s a different Priscilla Endicott.”
“Then that’s where we’re going. In time for the memorial.”
“You’re not going to share this theory with me, are you. What happened to full and free disclosure?”
“I’ll fully disclose on the way to Connecticut. I’ll pick you up at nine. We’ll take the ferry. Suck in a little sea air. You’ll love it.”
“You’re going to hang up on me, aren’t you? After all I’ve done.”
“You’ll love it, I promise,” I said, then hung up on her and called Joe Sullivan.
The water in the Little Peconic Bay would usually stay warm well into October, but warmth is a relative thing. That night it was plenty cold, though not enough to discourage me from stripping off all my clothes and jumping in and swimming out as far as I dared.
As more of a thrasher than a swimmer, keeping close to shore was advisable, even when I feel energetic enough to swim to the North Fork and have a beer at a bar I know off Corey Creek.
Looking at the Little Peconic was great for clearing the mind. Jumping into it even better.
Especially since it gave me the opposite vantage point, looking in at the cottage, with its screened-in porch, now lit by a single standing lamp next to the pine table on which sat a yellow pad filled with a fresh set of schematics and calculations.
I didn’t like seeing Amanda’s house mostly in the dark, only brushed by the glow of the post lamp next to her driveway. I’d seen it like that before, during the bad times when I’d lost her to the lunacies of the moment. For George Donovan, that loss was unrecoverable. How did it feel for Ozzie Endicott when Priscilla packed her bags and walked away from the big new house? Who was grief-stricken and who relieved?
Burton once told me that behind every murder was either love or greed.
Or both.
I spent most of the next morning in bed. I’d woken up later than usual, lulled by the absence of the near bark Eddie used to roust me to make breakfast.
I lay there for another hour running the numbers—the probabilities, however half-baked and ill-conceived. I missed Amanda’s warm body, though it was probably better not to have the loss of concentration, of focus. I called her to tell her that.
“I’m concentrating on fresh melon, prosciutto and a mocha latte with cinnamon sprinkled on top,” she said.
“So Burton’s feeding you all right.”
“Food, shelter and a small security detail. Fernando and Jarek are actually quite the carpenters. Eddie stays here with Isabella. She’s teaching him Spanish. He already knows ‘come eat’ and ‘no pissing on the furniture.’ But believe it or not, we’d still rather be back at Oak Point.”
I briefed her as well as I could, sticking to what I knew, and letting the theories stay theoretical. She acted as if that was good enough for her, which was good enough for me.
After hanging up I went into the kitchen and brewed a large pot of Gevalia chocolate raspberry coffee, which I drank as accompaniment to my first Camel ration. I brought the pot into the outdoor shower where I spent the next half hour pondering the plan. And as usual I failed to advance the plan, even fractionally. But I did get through
