“Splendid,” says Naomi.
I can’t resist adding, “Wicked good.”
Oops. That stops Gatling in his tracks. He gives me a sly look. “Really?”
“My family is kind of backwoods colonial, if you know what I mean.”
He seems keenly and genuinely amused. “I believe the term is ‘Swamp Yankee.’”
“That’s us. Very swampy.”
Behind him Naomi is looking daggers, but sometimes I really can’t help myself. Besides, I can tell he likes it because he addresses his tour remarks mostly to me. Pointing out the various rooms, all of which seem to feature hand-printed wallpaper and lots of fancy doodads on the trim that he calls “flourishes,” which we have to pretend to admire. There are window boxes with upholstered seats and Indian shutters-to keep out the Indians, apparently- and various hutches and “cupboards,” which are little cubbyholes where the servants slept-and a fabulously formal dining room with an elaborate candelabra that was a gift from some king or other. In the kitchen he shows us a really enormous fireplace equipped with a number of iron doors for baking breads. I point out they’d probably work for pizza, which gets more daggers from boss lady, although Taylor Gatling continues to find me ever so amusing, to the point of admitting that some of his less illustrious ancestors were themselves “very swampy.”
Ho, ho, ho, we’re having such a jolly good time that it’s easy to forget our host is maybe guilty of ordering abduction, torture and possibly murder, and that at the very least he’d frightened Milton Bean to within an inch of his life. I for one have no intention of drinking his coffee, given his penchant for chemical interrogation. Luckily there’s no need to pretend because just as the coffee is served-our host actually fetches it himself- Naomi gives me a nudge, indicating that she’s about to drop the pretense and get down to business.
We’ve just been seated in a lovely garden overlooking the harbor. Birds are flitting about, bees are prowling the flower blossoms. It’s all very civilized. Gatling pours. “Ms. Prescott? Miss Allen? Cream, sugar?”
Leaving her cup untouched, Naomi clears her throat and says, “Actually, Mr. Gatling, I have a confession. We’re not from the Colonial Dames and we’re not here to discuss a fundraiser.”
Gatling lowers the coffeepot, gives us a tight smile and sits back in his authentic colonial chair. “Ah. And I was so enjoying this. Wanted to see how far you’d push it.”
“You know who we are?”
He shrugs, as if not the least concerned, and very pleased with himself. “Naomi Nantz, private investigator, and her trusty sidekick Alice Crane. Or maybe I should say her ‘wicked good’ assistant. You look surprised. Facial recognition software. Not the stuff you have access to. The good stuff that can identify a suspect from a drone altitude of twenty-six thousand feet. As it happens you were identified by a stationary camera that monitors every vehicle crossing the New Castle bridge.”
Naomi recovers her cool aplomb. “So you know why we’re here.”
“Haven’t a clue,” he says. “The facial recognition software doesn’t read minds. That’s an entirely different process.”
“Enhanced interrogation?”
“A misleading term, don’t you think? Could mean almost anything.”
“I’m here for the boy, Mr. Gatling. Joey Keener. I’m here to make a deal for his safe release. Whatever it takes.”
As he welcomed us into his house Gatling’s eyes had been a lively blue. Now they’re chips of gray ice. “No idea what you’re talking about.”
“We’re not wired, Mr. Gatling. Not even cell phones. Scan us if you like.”
He shrugs. “You were scanned as you came through the front door. That’s not the point. I’ve nothing to do with any person called Joey Keener.”
“You’ve been running a rogue espionage operation targeting Professor Joseph Keener. Therefore you know about his little boy.”
Gatling lifts his cup, sips rather deliberately. “If you’re asking me if I’m aware that Keener, who may well have been a traitor, had an illegitimate child with a Chinese national, the answer is yes. It would have been irresponsible not to know, since my company provides security at QuantaGate. But that’s the extent of my knowledge. Where the child might presently be located is no concern of mine, although I hope it is well, as I would hope for any child, everywhere. Children are the future, don’t you agree?”
Naomi stares out at the beautiful harbor, where seagulls hover in the breeze like some perfect mobile, as if attached by invisible wires. She turns to our host, speaking with utter calm and complete confidence.
“Here’s my offer, Mr. Gatling. If the boy is released unharmed my investigation will cease. Any intelligence we’ve gathered and developed will be destroyed. Your connection to this case, including your probable culpability in the abduction, torture and framing of Randall Shane will remain, at most, a matter of speculation, although not by me or my associates. All we require is the safe release of the child. Nothing else matters. That’s my offer, I suggest you give it due consideration.”
“You must be joking.”
“I assure you, I am not.”
“You sound like you think you’re infallible, Miss Nantz. Let me assure you of something. You’re not. You’re very much mistaken. I had nothing to do with the murder of Joseph Keener, and I have absolute proof that would stand up in any court of law.”
“If you’re referring to the items planted in Randall Shane’s motel room, those are easily refuted.”
Gatling puts the cup down and leans forward, and for the first time radiates a kind of physical menace, without so much as lifting a finger. It’s just there, palpable. This is a man who knows how to kill. “You think you know something but you don’t.”
“Please enlighten me,” Naomi says.
He twitches in his seat and for a moment I think she’s gotten to him. Then he reaches into a trouser pocket and retrieves a vibrating cell phone. Text message, apparently. Whatever he sees on the screen displeases him. He stands up and jerks his chin at the manicured pathway that leads to the exit.
“Get out,” he says, cold as the berg that sank the
He lifts the cell phone to his ear, turns away and gestures to the bruiser in the blazer, who has been lurking in the rhododendrons.
We dames know how to scurry when the scurry time is here.
Chapter Forty-Seven
For the first ten miles or so, Naomi doesn’t say a word. She’s in the back, brooding, while I ride shotgun, peeking at the side mirror to see if we’re being followed. Yes, there are many vehicles behind us, including a convoy of freight trucks, but nothing jumps out. We’ve cleared the tollbooths on 95, heading south, when I finally decide to break the silence. “That went well. We really left him shaking in his penny loafers.”
Naomi stares out the window, ignoring me. Which totally gets on my nerves.
“It was amazing, Jack,” I say. “You should have seen us. We strapped him to an antique ironing board, stuffed his mouth with an authentic seventeenth-century dish-rag and applied water. Two cups and he was begging for mercy. Confessed he had Joey locked in the servant’s cupboard. That’s why we’re heading back to Boston, to get a locksmith.”
“Hush,” Naomi says quietly. “I’m thinking.”
Nuts. Those happen to be the only two words that will stop me. When Naomi Nantz says she’s thinking she’s not kidding. Her brain is working the problem, running the possibilities, looking for a way in.
So I shut up for thirty miles.
“I believe him,” she finally says.
“Bernie Madoff? O. J. Simpson? Glenn Beck?”
She ignores me, and directs her comments to Jack. “He said he had nothing to do with the murder of Joseph
