“It’s easy to make it sound ridiculous. But I wasn’t chasing the smell of money. Open doors and open hearts led me here. My clients found
“Still, you have a lot at stake.”
Mellery nodded. “Apparently that includes my life.” He stared into the sinking fire. “Can you give me any advice about handling tonight’s phone call?”
“Keep him talking as long as you can.”
“So the call can be traced?”
“That’s not the way the technology works anymore. You’ve been watching old movies. Keep him talking because the more he says, the more he may reveal and the better chance you may have of recognizing his voice.”
“If I do, should I tell him I know who he is?”
“No. Knowing something he doesn’t think you know could be an advantage to you. Just stay calm and stretch out the conversation.”
“Will you be home tonight?”
“I plan to be-for the sake of my marriage, if nothing else. Why?”
“Because I just remembered that our phones have another fancy feature we never use. The trade name is ‘Ricochet Conferencing.’ What it lets you do is bring another party into a conference call after someone has called you.”
“So?”
“With ordinary teleconferencing, all the participants need to be dialed from one initiating source. But the Ricochet system gets around that. If someone calls you, you can add other participants by dialing them from your end without disconnecting the person who called you-in fact, without them even knowing you’re doing it. The way it was explained to me, the call to the party to be added goes out on a separate line, and after the connection is made, the two signals are combined. I’m probably botching up the technical explanation-but the point is, when Charybdis calls tonight, I can dial you into it and you can hear the conversation.”
“Good. I’ll definitely be home.”
“Great. I appreciate that.” He smiled like a man experiencing momentary relief from chronic pain.
Out on the grounds, a bell rang several times. It had the strong, brassy ring of an old ship’s bell. Mellery checked the slim gold watch on his wrist.
“I have to prepare for my afternoon lecture,” he said with a little sigh.
“What’s your topic?”
Mellery rose from his wing chair, brushed a few wrinkles out of his cashmere sweater, and set his face with some effort in a generic smile.
“The Importance of Honesty.”
The weather had remained blustery, never gaining any warmth. Brown leaves swirled over the grass. Mellery had gone to the main building after thanking Gurney again, reminding him to keep his phone line free that evening, apologizing for his schedule, and extending a last-minute invitation. “As long as you’re here, why don’t you look over the grounds, get a feel for the place.”
Gurney stood on Mellery’s elegant porch and zipped up his jacket. He decided to take the suggestion and head for the parking lot by a roundabout route, following the broad sweep of the gardens that surrounded the house. A mossy path brought him around the rear of the house to an emerald lawn, beyond which a maple forest fell away toward the valley. A low drystone wall formed a demarcating line between the grass and the woods. Out at the midpoint of the wall, a woman and two men seemed to be engaged in some sort of planting and mulching activity.
As Gurney strolled toward them across the wide lawn, he could see that the men, wielding spades, were young and Latino and that the woman, wearing knee-high green boots and a brown barn jacket, was older and in charge. Several bags of tulip bulbs, each a different color, lay open on a flat garden cart. The woman was eyeing her workers impatiently.
“Carlos!” she cried.
She sighed philosophically at the ineptitude of servants, then beamed benignly as Gurney approached.
“I believe that a flower in bloom is the most healing sight on earth,” she announced in that tight-lipped, upper- class Long Island accent once known as Locust Valley Lockjaw. “Don’t you agree?”
Before he could answer, she extended her hand and said, “I’m Caddy.”
“Dave Gurney.”
“Welcome to heaven on earth! I don’t believe I’ve seen you before.”
“I’m just here for the day.”
“Really?” Something in her tone seemed to be demanding an explanation.
“I’m a friend of Mark Mellery.”
She frowned slightly. “Dave Gurney, did you say?”
“That’s right.”
“Well, I’m sure he’s mentioned your name, it just doesn’t ring a bell. Have you known Mark long?”
“Since college. May I ask what it is that you do here?”
“What I do here?” Her eyebrows rose in amazement. “I live here. This is my home. I’m Caddy Mellery. Mark is my husband.”
Chapter 13
Although it was noon, the thickening clouds gave the enclosed valley the feeling of a winter dusk. Gurney turned on the car heater to take the chill off his hands. Each year his finger joints were becoming more sensitive, reminding him of his father’s arthritis. He flexed them open and shut on the steering wheel.
He remembered once asking that taciturn, unreachable man if there was pain in his swollen knuckles. “Just age, nothing to be done about it,” his father had replied, in a tone that prevented further discussion.
His mind drifted back to Caddy. Why hadn’t Mellery told him about his new wife? Didn’t he want him to talk to her? And if he left out having a wife, what else might he be leaving out?
And then, by some obscure mental linkage, he wondered why the blood was as red as a
Gurney’s eagerness to get home was intensified by hunger. It was midafternoon, and his morning coffee from Abelard’s was all he’d had all day.
While too much time between meals made Madeleine nauseous, it made him judgmental-a state of mind not easy to recognize in oneself. Gurney had discovered some barometers for assessing his mood, and one of them was located on the westbound side of the road just outside Walnut Crossing. The Camel’s Hump was an art gallery that featured the work of local painters, sculptors, and other creative spirits. Its barometric function was simple. A glance at the window produced in him, in a good mood, appreciation of the eccentricity of his artistic neighbors, in a bad mood insight into their vacuity. Today was a vacuity day-fair warning, as he turned up the road toward hearth and wife, to think twice before voicing any strong opinions.
The residue of the morning flurries, long gone from the county highway and lower parts of the valley, was present in scattered patches along the dirt road that rose through a depression in the hills and ended at the Gurney barn and pasture. The slaty clouds gave the pasture a drab, wintry feel. He saw with a twinge of annoyance that
