I know Harry Ullman pretty well, and I trust him implicitly. If he wanted in at this precise point, I knew it was a good idea.
“Sure, Harry,” I said.
“When was the last time this Dan went mountain climbing?” he asked. “I mean, the last time you have knowledge of.”
Jessica looked startled. Too bad, because it gave Tatiana a slender opening.
“Last August, wasn't it?” she asked Jessica.
I could see Jessica's mind racing. She didn't know why Harry had asked, and the sudden change of direction had thrown her off.
“Possibly,” she said. It was the only answer under the circumstances. She was fast. She was also cool. She looked directly at Harry. “Why do you ask?”
“Just a second,” he said. “I have another question first. Would that be okay, and then you can see where I'm goin' with this?” He grinned apologetically. When Harry gets humble, I know he's on to something. “I can't think of any other way to say it.”
“All right.”
“Do either of you know of a gal named Alicia? Works on the gaming boat at Freiberg?”
Jessica and Tatiana exchanged glances. Tatiana shrugged. “No,” said Jessica. She sounded believable on that point.
“Well, this Dan dude knew her, and he went and did his mountain climbing thing with the ropes and stuff behind her second-floor apartment. Asked her to let him in, I'm told. She told him no.”
“That's bizarre,” said Jessica.
“It gets worse,” said Harry. “This Alicia had a boyfriend named Randy Baumhagen. Ever hear of him?” Both dancers shook their heads.
“Well, Randy Baumhagen got invited in by Alicia, where Dan didn't,” said Harry, “and it looks like that pissed Dan off. Dan snuck up behind him one night, and whacked him in the head with a blunt instrument.” He watched the disbelief on both women's faces. “No shit, ladies, that's what he did. Know what else he did that night?”
He got two blank looks.
“He used some pliers on Randy Baumhagen, after he was dead. He tore a hole in his neck. Sort of a signature, we think.”
“That's absurd,” said Jessica. “It's absolutely… ”
Harry used an old ploy. He looked at Hester. “You agree with me?” he asked.
“Yes I do,” she said.
“You, Carl?” he asked.
“You bet. All the evidence leads there.”
With that, Harry had established that three of the five people in the room were in agreement. It's surprising how well that can work.
“Why are you telling us this?” Jessica looked at each of us in turn.
“Because,” I said, “we think you can tell us where Dan Peale is.”
It got very quiet in that room. Neither Hester, nor Harry nor I were about to say anything at that point. We wanted Jessica to come across with some information herself, and we wanted to see what it was going to be.
“If you can't find him”-and she looked quizzically at us-“then what makes you think I can tell you?”
“To begin with, our information indicates,” I said, “that you know more about him than anybody connected with the Mansion. We've been told about your, uh, relationship with Dan Peale.”
“Long-term relationship,” said Hester. “You know we were on the third floor. Believe me, we didn't miss a thing.”
Jessica said, “All right.” Just like that. Tatiana let her cheeks puff out, and let out a long breath. She'd apparently been holding it in.
Jessica took a quick drink from her water bottle. “He and I have been lovers for years. I admit it freely, although not publicly. You do understand? He's involved in another relationship, and I would not want to embarrass him.”
“Sure.” I tried to sound encouraging.
“You must know he's into a bit of blood tasting. Not often, but we both consider it to be an intimacy enhancing act. I would like to keep that private. Many people don't understand that sort of thing.” With that, she graced us with a smile. “Especially my Aunt Bridgett.” She shrugged. “But all that aside, I have only contacted him at his office. I presume he is not there?”
“You presume right,” I said. Office?
“That doesn't surprise me,” she said.
“Why not?” asked Hester.
“Well, the night he escaped,” she said. “You knew who he was as soon as the shots were ffred. We could hear your officers calling him by name, on the loudspeakers.”
You know when, in cartoons, the little lightbulb comes on over the character's head? Epiphany city.
“They did his name over the PA systems in the cars, now that you mention it,” I said. “I heard it myself. We were calling him by name, all right. But at that time, we were spelling it P-E-E-L. Not P-E-A-L-E. We had no idea who he was, then, or where he lived.”
“Oh?”
“That's right,” said Hester. “But if he could hear, then he must have thought we had him dead to rights, and that he couldn't go home.”
“Certainly,” said Jessica. “How very silly of you.”
Shit, in a word. We'd prevented his running to the only place we were going to know where to look. His home. Silly wasn't the word for it.
“So,” said Hester, “you don't know where he is?”
“No,” said Jessica.
I got mixed signals on that one. Her head was turned more to Hester, so I didn't get a good look at her eyes. Her body was kind of levered up on one hip, and she had her hand on her ankle, pulling toward the center of her back, stretching her quad muscles. No signals or tells from the body language, that was for certain. But her voice was just a tiny bit too high. Strain from lying, or from stretching? I thought from lying.
Tatiana was just sitting with her legs straight out in front of her, pulling a perfect “L.” I looked at her squarely.
“What about you?”
“Me?” She sounded a bit surprised.
“Yes. Do you know where he is?”
“No. Why would I?” She answered as she bent forward, pressing her rib cage to the tops of her thighs. She stretched and extended her neck, so that we didn't break eye contact. A difficult read. But the nonchalant “question with a question” told me that she, too, was lying to me. It also told me she wasn't as adept at lying as Jessica. She was the weak link, all right.
I smiled at her. Flies and honey. “Now, I suppose a really good cop would say something like”-and I lowered my voice-“I dunno, 'Why would you?' Right?”
“Maybe,” she said, with a hint of a smile.
“Well, speaking as one of the cops who unintentionally misled our suspect into eluding us, I think I better ask something else instead.”
“Good idea,” she said, straightening back up into a seated position.
“So,” I said, “who would you ask if you had to find out where he was?”
It worked. Her eyes shifted to Jessica for an instant, and then back to me. I don't think she was aware she'd done it, even after it had happened. Jessica was looking directly at me, and I was pretty certain she hadn't noticed it, either.
“I can't think of anyone.”
“Okay.” I made a totally bogus check mark on my little notepad.
Jessica made a large point of pulling a watch out of the bag, and checking the time. “We really have to be getting back to work,” she said. “I can't think of anything I know about this that I haven't told you.”
