Chapter 50
“You should come to bed.” It was Madeleine’s voice.
He opened his eyes. She’d turned off all but one light and was on her way out of the kitchen with a book under her arm. The drooping position of his head on his chest had produced a sharp pain in his collarbone. As he straightened himself, he discovered a matching pain in the back of his neck. Instead of refreshing him, his doze at the table had reconstituted his worries.
His level of agitation would make real sleep impossible. But he had to do something to avoid bouncing from one Saul Steck horror scenario to another.
He could return Sheridan Kline’s phone call. The man had left that vague message for him about the Skard family. He’d already followed up on it with Hardwick, but maybe the DA knew more than Hardwick. Of course, the DA’s office would be closed. It was Sunday night.
He did have Kline’s personal cell number. Because he had it from the days of the Mellery case, it hadn’t seemed appropriate to use it, uninvited, in connection with the current matter. But right now protocol seemed less important than maintaining his sanity.
He went into the den, got the number, and made the call. He was prepared to leave a message and get a return call later, figuring that the odds were in favor of a control freak like Kline wanting phone conversations to occur on his own schedule. So he was surprised when the man answered.
“Gurney?”
“I apologize for calling so late.”
“I thought you’d call me back this afternoon at the office. Chasing down that Karnala thing was your idea.”
“Sorry, I got a little tangled up. In your phone message, you asked if I’d heard of the Skard family.”
“That’s where the Karnala thread led us. Familiar name to you?”
“Yes and no.”
“That’s not an answer.”
“What I meant, Sheridan, is that it struck me as familiar, but I don’t know why. Jack Hardwick filled me in on the fact that the Skards are bad guys with Sardinian roots. But I still can’t place where I know the name from. I do know that I came upon it very recently.”
“That’s all Hardwick told you?”
“He told me that no Skard has ever been convicted of anything. And that whatever business Karnala Fashion may be in, it’s not the fashion business.”
“So you know as much I know. What else did you call me for?”
“I’d like to be involved on a more official basis.”
“Meaning what?”
“Updates, invitations to meetings.”
“Why?”
“I’ve gotten kind of attached to the case. And so far my instincts about it have been pretty good.”
“That’s an open question.”
“Look, Sheridan, all I’m saying is, we can help each other. The more I know and the quicker I know it, the more help I can be.”
There was a long silence. Gurney’s intuition told him it was more technique than indecision on Kline’s part. He waited.
Kline emitted a humorless laugh. Gurney kept waiting.
“You know Rodriguez can’t stand you, right?”
“Sure.”
“And you know Blatt can’t stand you, right?”
“Absolutely.”
“And that even Bill Anderson isn’t very fond of you?”
“Right.”
“So you’ll be about as welcome at BCI as a fart in an elevator. You realize that?”
“I wouldn’t doubt it for a minute.”
There was another silence, followed by another chilly Kline chuckle.
“Here’s what I’ll do: I’m going to tell everyone we have a Gurney problem. Gurney is a loose cannon. And the best way to control a loose cannon is to keep an eye on it, keep it on a short leash, keep it in the corral. And the way I plan to keep an eye on you is to have you over here a lot, sharing your loose-cannon thoughts with us. How does that sound to you?”
Keeping a loose cannon on a short leash in a corral sounded to Gurney like a symptom of mental disintegration. “Sounds workable, sir.”
“Good. There’s a meeting at BCI tomorrow morning at ten. Be there.” Kline hung up without saying good- bye.
Chapter 51
For the rest of the evening, Gurney felt both energized and calmed by the conversation and its promise of ongoing involvement.
He was pleased and rather surprised to still feel the same way when he awoke at sunrise the following day. In an effort to feed that feeling, to stay within the comparatively safe and solid confines of a world in which he was the hunter and not the quarry, he reviewed the Perry file for the tenth time while he had his morning coffee. Then he called Rebecca Holdenfield’s number and left a message asking if he could drop by her Albany office that afternoon following his meeting at BCI.
Making calls, returning calls, making appointments-the activity created a sense of momentum. He called Val Perry’s number and was shunted into her voice mail. He’d barely said, “This is Dave Gurney,” when she picked up, surprising him. He hadn’t figured her for an early riser.
“What’s happening?” she asked.
Unprepared for an actual conversation, he replied, “Just wanted to touch base.”
“Oh? And…?” She sounded edgy, but maybe no edgier than usual.
“Does the name Skard mean anything to you?”
“No. Should it?”
“I was just wondering if Jillian had ever mentioned it.”
“Jillian never mentioned anything. It wasn’t like she
“Perfectly clear, several times. But some questions have to be asked, even if I’m ninety-nine percent sure what the answer’s going to be.”
“Okay. Anything else?”
“Did Jillian ever ask you or your husband to buy her an expensive car?”
“There was hardly anything Jillian didn’t demand at some point, so I suppose she must have. On the other hand, she made it clear from the time she was twelve that Withrow and I were irrelevant to her happiness, that she could always find a rich man to give her whatever she wanted, so as far as she was concerned, we could go fuck ourselves.” She paused, perhaps savoring the shock value of her observations. “I’m on my way out. Any more questions?”
“That’s it for now, Mrs. Perry. Thank you for your time.”
