“Nice to see you, too.”
“Are you interested in having dinner?”
“I told you in the note I left for you this morning that I’d be home for dinner, and here I am.”
“Congratulations,” she said, getting a second dinner plate out of an overhead cabinet and laying it next to the one already on the countertop.
He gave her a narrow-eyed look. “Maybe we ought to try this again? Should I go out and come back in?”
She returned an extended parody of his look, then softened. “No. You’re right. You’re here. Get out another knife and fork, and let’s eat. I’m hungry.”
They filled their plates from the pan of roasted vegetables and chicken thighs and carried them to the round table by the French doors.
“I think it’s warm enough to open them,” she said-which he did.
As they sat down, a bath of sweetly fragrant air washed over them. Madeleine closed her eyes, a slow-motion smile wrinkling her cheeks. In the stillness Gurney thought he could hear the faint, soft cooing of mourning doves from the trees beyond the pasture.
“Lovely, lovely, lovely,” Madeleine half whispered. Then she sighed happily, opened her eyes, and began to eat.
At least a minute passed before she spoke again. “So tell me about your day,” she said, eyeing a parsnip on the tip of her fork.
He thought about it, frowning.
She waited, watching him.
He placed his elbows on the table, interlocking his fingers in front of his chin. “My day. Well. The highlight was the point at which the psychopath dissolved into giggles. A funny image occurred to him. An image involving two women he had raped, tortured, and decapitated.”
She studied his face, her lips tightening.
After a while he added, “So that’s the kind of day it was.”
“Did you accomplish what you set out to accomplish?”
He rubbed the knuckle of his forefinger slowly across his lips. “I think so.”
“Does that mean you’ve solved the Perry case?”
“I think I have part of the solution.”
“Good for you.”
A long silence passed between them.
Madeleine stood, picked up their plates, then the knives and forks. “She called today.”
“Who?”
“Your client.”
“Val Perry? You spoke to her?”
“She said that she was returning your call, that she had your home phone number with her but not your cell number.”
“And?”
“And she wanted you to know that three thousand dollars is not an amount of money you need to bother her about. ‘He should spend whatever the hell he needs to spend to find Hector Flores.’ That’s a quote. Sounds like an ideal client.” She let the dishes clatter into the sink. “What more could you ask for? Oh, by the way, speaking of decapitation…”
“Speaking of what?”
“The man in Florida you mentioned who decapitates people-it just reminded me to ask you about that doll.”
“Doll?”
“The one upstairs.”
“Upstairs?”
“What is this, the echo game?”
“I don’t know what you’re talking about.”
“I’m asking you about the doll on the bed in my sewing room.”
He shook his head, turned up his palms in bafflement.
There was a flicker of concern in her eyes. “The doll. The broken doll. On the bed. You don’t know anything about it?”
“You mean like a little girl’s doll?”
Her voice rose in alarm. “Yes, David! A little girl’s doll!”
He stood and walked quickly to the hall stairs, took two at a time, and in a matter of seconds was standing in the doorway of the spare bedroom Madeleine used for her needlework. The dying dusk threw only a dim gray light across the double bed. He flipped the wall switch, and a bright bedside lamp provided all the illumination he needed.
Propped against one of the pillows was an ordinary doll in a sitting position, unclothed-ordinary except for the fact that the head had been removed and was placed on the bedspread a few feet from the body, facing it.
Chapter 62
Chapter 63
The BCI investigation team arrived in two installments-Jack Hardwick at midnight and the evidence team an
