wasn’t on Tolly. I was thinking about how I was going to tell my children about Peter.”
“Of course.”
“Afterward, Claude asked me to dinner, as I mentioned. She’s exceedingly self-conscious about cooking in front of me, so I moseyed back here while she was preparing it.”
“By now it was what time?”
Poochie sipped her coffee. “I don’t know, some time after six. It was quite dark out. Tolly’s bedroom door was closed, and his light was off. He often likes to nap before dinner. I didn’t wish to wake him, so I left a note here on the table instructing him to join me over at Claude’s. But it was just us two girls. And an absolutely vile duck breast swimming in a tureen of something pale green. It makes me ulp just to think about it.” She reached for a biscotti, nibbling at it. “I got back here by around ten. His door was still closed. I tapped on it to ask if he’d like me to fix him something, but there was no answer. I figured he’d just overdone it in the rose garden and needed his rest, so I went to my own room and got into bed. Ordinarily, I sleep like a field hand. Tonight, I couldn’t seem to relax. I just felt a tremendous sense of unease. Finally, at around two, I got up and knocked on Tolly’s door again. That’s when I discovered he was gone.”
Des wondered if there was anything here for her. It was entirely possible that the old photographer had simply decided it was time to move on. He did float around, according to his sheet. Then again, taking off right on the heels of Pete’s murder could not be considered a wise travel plan. It was the act of a man who was either foolish or desperate. She’d checked with the trooper posted at the foot of the drive. At no point in the past twenty- four hours had Guy Tolliver left the premises. Not by way of the front drive anyhow. So wherever he’d gone, he’d been careful about it. “How about you?” she asked Bement. “Were you with Justine last evening?”
“I wasn’t up for any company. Had some things on my mind.”
Bement lit a cigarette, dragging deeply on it. “I came straight home after we closed the shop. Well, not straight home. I stopped off at the liquor store to pick up some brews, got here around six. Had to show some trooper my damned ID to get in.”
“Your mother requested that,” Des explained. “Otherwise, you’d have media people swarming around right outside your door.”
“The Kershaw brothers were leaving right when I was stopped there at Checkpoint Charlie. Probably just as well, too. If I’d run into those turds farther up the drive I might have had a few more things to say to them. I’m not real happy about them hanging around here.”
“You need to do a better job of managing your temper,” Des said, her eyes on his scraped knuckles.
“That’s what Teeny keeps telling me. I can’t change how I feel.”
“You can change how you respond.”
“When I got here Nana was about ready to head back over to Mom’s for dinner. I just jumped in the shower and stretched out and watched some hoops on TV. Drank my six. Heated up some leftovers.”
“Did you encounter Mr. Tolliver at any time during the evening?”
“I didn’t. But I stayed mostly in my room. And I crashed early, maybe ten-thirty.” Bement got up and refilled his mug from the electric coffeemaker on the counter. “Next thing I know, Nana’s waking me up and asking me to look around for him.”
“And did you?”
“Absolutely. Tolly’s an old guy. I thought maybe he had a heart attack or something. I’ve searched this place from top to bottom. I even looked in the north wing, which is closed off. The man’s not here, believe me.”
“Did you check around outside?”
“With a flashlight. There aren’t any floodlights in the rose garden. Those tools are still out there, collecting frost. He didn’t put them away. I looked around in the shed. Nothing. That’s when Nana called you.”
Poochie’s bright blue eyes moistened. “I’m terribly concerned. I can’t believe he’d just up and leave me this way. Not so much as a note.”
Des turned it over in her head. Her guess was that Guy Tolliver had cleared out yesterday under the cover of dusk, which would give him a solid twelve-hour head start by the time daylight hit. Someone-a partner-could have picked him up out on Route 156. Or, for that matter, a taxi could have. It played. The trooper at the foot of the drive could be avoided by hiking through the woods and coming out a half-mile up the road. Tolly was no kid, but he was plenty mobile. She could phone the three area cab companies. Show his picture around at the train stations in Old Say-brook and New London. Also the car rental agencies. Someone might have seen him. It played, all right. But it didn’t answer the question that kept nagging at her: Why on earth would Guy Tolliver murder Pete Mosher?
“Bement, when you looked around the house for him, did you notice anything missing?”
Bement’s eyes widened. “You mean like a painting or something?”
“Tolly would never do that to me,” Poochie said heatedly. “How dare you even suggest it?”
“I’m not suggesting anything, Poochie. But when you call a trooper, you get a trooper asking the kind of questions I have to ask.”
“Didn’t notice anything missing.” Bement thumbed his jaw reflectively. “But I was looking for him. Besides, I’m not even sure I’d be able to tell.”
“Let’s go have a look, shall we?”
The lamps were already lit in the parlor. Des stood in the middle of the cluttered room scanning Poochie’s breathtaking collection. The Picasso and Toulouse-Lautrec drawings were still there.
So was the Giacometti. The Magritte, Mondrian, Leger-all of it was intact. There were no blank spaces on the walls. No empty frames.
“You see?” Poochie said defiantly. “Tolly would never take anything of mine. Besides, there would be no point in it, would there?”
“Why not?” Des asked, glancing at her curiously.
Poochie didn’t seem to hear her. Her mind was elsewhere now. Somewhere that bothered her greatly. “He wouldn’t leave me this way,” she sobbed, wringing her hands. “Go look in his bedroom if you don’t believe me.”
Tolly’s bedroom was more Des’s idea of a luxury suite, complete with dressing room and private bath. There was a seating area with a pair of leather club chairs set before a fireplace. A huge walnut desk. An antique four- poster canopy bed, its covers neatly folded. It hadn’t been slept in. His clothes were still hanging in the dressing room. Tolly was quite fastidious about his wardrobe. His suits, sports jackets and slacks were all pressed and ready to wear, his shoes evenly spaced on the floor, all of them stuffed with shoe trees. Des pulled open the drawers of the built-in dresser one by one. She found cashmere sweaters and fine dress shirts by the dozen, silk scarves, socks, underwear.
“Look in the top drawer.” Poochie’s voice quavered slightly.
Des found a slim jewelry box filled with cuff links made of silver and of gold. There were jeweled rings and tie pins, a gold Rolex dress watch. Des also discovered Guy Tolliver’s passport in the drawer, along with his checkbook from Citibank in New York. His account carried a balance of $843.67, assuming his records were up to date. His last check, in the amount of $125, had been written in January to Salon Fodera.
All of these things Guy Tolliver had left behind.
She flicked on the bathroom light. He’d left his toiletry items behind, too. Razor and cologne, toothbrush, hairbrush. She opened the medicine chest. Very little was in there besides Band-Aids and aspirin.
“Is Mr. Tolliver currently taking any prescription medications?”
“He is not. His health is perfect.”
Des followed Poochie back into the bedroom to the walnut desk. Inside its deep drawers she found stacks of old slick magazines individually bagged in plastic for safekeeping, file folders full of contact sheets, metal strong boxes stuffed with negatives, scrapbooks, journals.
“You’re looking at the work of Tolly’s lifetime,” Poochie informed her quietly. “He’d never leave it behind. I swear he wouldn’t.”
Des nodded in agreement, all the while thinking: Not unless he had to.
“Maybe he just split for a day or two, Nana,” Bement said gently. “He could be visiting old friends in the city or whatever.”
Poochie smiled at her grandson fondly. “Bement, I know you’re trying to make me feel better, and it’s very sweet of you, but something’s happened to Tolly. That’s why I awoke in the night. I feel it.”
“Does he usually carry a lot of cash on him?” Des asked.
