had.” He told himself that this was true, albeit somewhat minimized.
“Sounds like you were drunk.” Her voice was more questioning than assertive.
“Maybe. But… I’m not sure.”
“You think you were drugged?”
“It’s one of the possibilities I’ve been considering. Even though it doesn’t make any sense. Anyway, I’ve been checking the place out, and all I know for sure is that there’s something wrong about the whole situation-and the hundred-thousand-dollar offer is almost certainly baloney. But what I actually called to say is that I’m just leaving Manhattan and I should be home in about two and a half hours. I’m really sorry I didn’t call earlier.”
“Don’t race.”
“See you soon. Love you.”
He nearly missed the last exit from the Harlem River Drive to the GW Bridge. With a quick glance to his right, he swerved into the exit lane and onto the ramp, triggering the blare of an indignant car horn.
It was too late to call Kline. But if Hardwick was indeed back on the case, he might know something about the Karnala inquiry and Kline’s phone-message reference to the Skard family. With a little luck, Hardwick would be awake, would answer the phone, and be willing to talk.
All three turned out to be true.
“What’s up, Sherlock? You couldn’t wait till morning to congratulate me on my reinstatement?”
“Congratulations.”
“Apparently you got everybody believing that Mapleshade grads are dropping like flies and everybody in the world has to be interviewed-which has created this huge manpower crunch that forced Rodriguez to bring me back into it. Almost made his head explode.”
“I’m glad you’re back. I have a couple of questions.”
“About the pooch?”
“Pooch?”
“The one that dug up Kiki.”
“The hell are you talking about, Jack?”
“Marian Eliot’s curious Airedale. You haven’t heard?”
“Tell me.”
“She was out working in her rose garden with Melpomene tied to a tree.”
“Who?”
“The Airedale’s name is Melpomene. Very sophisticated bitch. Somehow Melpomene manages to untie her rope. She wanders over behind the Muller house, starts rooting around in back of the woodshed. By the time Old Lady Eliot gets over there to retrieve her, Melpomene’s got a pretty good hole going. Something catches Old Lady Eliot’s eye. Guess what?”
“Jack, for Christ’s sake, just tell me.”
“She thought it was one of her gardening gloves.”
“For Christ’s sake, Jack…”
“Think about it. What might look like a glove?”
“Jack…”
“It was a decomposed hand.”
“And this hand was attached to Kiki Muller, the woman who supposedly ran off with Hector Flores?”
“The very same.”
Gurney was silent for a good five seconds.
“You got the wheels turning, Sherlock? Deducing, inducing, whatever the hell you do?”
“How did Kiki’s husband react to this?”
“Crazy Carl? Trainman under the tree? No reaction at all. I think his shrink has him so zapped on Xanax he’s beyond reaction. Fucking zombie. Or he’s putting on a hell of an act.”
“Is there any cause or approximate date of death?”
“She only got dug up this morning. But she’d definitely been in the ground awhile. Maybe a few months, which would put it back to the time of Hector’s disappearance.”
“What about the cause?”
“The ME hasn’t put it in writing yet, but based on my observation of the body I’d be willing to take a guess.”
Hardwick paused. Gurney clenched his teeth. He knew what was coming.
“I’d say her death might be related to the fact that her head was chopped off.”
Chapter 46
Arriving home well after midnight, Gurney got so little sleep that night that it hardly felt like sleep at all.
The next morning over coffee with Madeleine, he attributed his restlessness to his suspicions regarding “Jykynstyl” and to the growing intensity of the Perry case. Without saying so, he also attributed it to the metabolites of whatever chemical he’d been dosed with.
“You should have gone to the hospital.”
“I’ll be okay.”
“Maybe you should go back to bed.”
“Too much going on. Besides, I’m too wound up to sleep.”
“What are you going to do?”
“Work.”
“You know it’s Sunday, right?”
“Right.” But he’d forgotten that it was. His confusion was scaring him. He had to do something to focus his mind on something concrete, a path to clarity, one foot after another.
“Maybe you should call Dichter’s office, ask if he can fit you in today.”
He shook his head. Dichter was their family doctor. Dr. Dichter. The silliness of it almost always made him smile, but not today.
“You said you might have been drugged. Are you taking that seriously enough? What kind of drug are you talking about?”
He wasn’t going to raise the specter of Rohypnol. Its sexual associations would trigger an explosion of questions and concerns he didn’t feel capable of discussing. “I’m not sure. I’m guessing it was something with blackout effects similar to alcohol.”
She gave him that assessing look of hers that made him feel naked.
“Whatever it was,” he said, “it’s wearing off.” He knew he was sounding too casual, or at least too eager to move to another subject.
“Maybe there’s something you should be taking to counteract it.”
He shook his head. “I’m sure my body’s natural detoxing process will take care of it. What I need in the meantime is something to focus on.” That thought led him directly back to the Perry case, which led him to the call he’d made to Hardwick the previous evening, which led him to the sudden realization that their discussion of Melpomene and Kiki Muller’s decomposing hand had caused him to forget why he’d called Hardwick in the first place.
A moment later he was back on the phone to him.
“Skard?” rasped Hardwick unhappily. “Yeah, that name came up in connection with Karnala Fashion. By the way, it’s Sunday fucking morning. How urgent is this?”
Nothing with Hardwick was easy. But if you played the game, you could make it less difficult. One way to play was to escalate the vulgarity.
“How about a shotgun-to-your-balls level of urgency?”
For a couple of seconds, Hardwick was quiet, as if considering the number of points to award for artfulness of
