“Glad I made the decision to keep the place private,” Gillette said, rising to stack stew bowls in the dishwasher. “After you and your mom moved to Richmond, I even began doing most of my shopping in Heissen’s Dome, about an hour’s drive north of here—people know my face, maybe my name, but not where I live.
“Jack, these people after my girl, it’s doubtful they’ll find her here since she’s not been part of the area for years. So tell me, Rachael, you believe in your heart of hearts that Senator Abbott’s siblings murdered him, then have tried to murder you twice?”
Rachael said simply, “There is no one else.”
“They acted so quickly. Tell me about them.”
“Most of what I know is from Jimmy since I was only with them three times before he died. Their names are Laurel and Quincy. They’re brother and sister and they give sharks a bad name. Jimmy told me that right after his election to his first Senate term, Laurel managed to oust Quincy from the CEO position of the Abbott corporation. They’re quite diversified, but their primary interests are in commercial real estate development worldwide—malls, skyscrapers, those sorts of projects.
“The fight between Laurel and Quincy was real nasty, Jimmy told me. But the old man—his father, Carter Blaine Abbott—came down on Laurel’s side. She ran things after Carter Abbott loosened his grip on the reins five years ago.
“Fact is, I think Laurel and Quincy are equally grasping, condescending, and arrogant. I can also see the two of them joining forces to remove the bigger threat—their brother—probably right after he told them about killing Melissa Parks and that he was going to come clean, resign his Senate seat, go to the cops, the press.”
“Laurel Abbott,” Gillette repeated slowly. “Didn’t she marry some Greek shipping magnate? What’s his name?”
“Stefanos Kostas. Now there’s a guy who’s suffering from ego inflation. He thinks he’s slick and stunning, that women can’t resist him. Jimmy said he was unfaithful even after he proposed to Laurel. The way he looks at women—me included—it made me want to go take a shower.”
“I’ve seen photos of him,” Gillette said. “He’s quite the fashion plate, looks smooth and tough, quite a combination. So you weren’t interested, huh?”
Rachael shuddered. “If a shower weren’t available, I’d go for a hose. They’ve got two boys, both off at Standover, this fancy prep school in Vermont. Stefanos owns a Greek island, Scorpios, but he spends most of his time here.”
“Tell us about Quincy,” Jack said, joining Gillette at the counter. “No, Rachael, you stay put. My head feels fine, so does my leg. I make good coffee. It’s so good some say it’s a gift.”
She laughed. “Okay, Quincy. He’s a clotheshorse, spends a couple months a year in Milan having new threads made for himself while he struts in and out of La Scala. He’s divorced, three times now, and from a snide comment Laurel made once, I gather his alimony payments could feed a small country for a week. He’s as self-centered and arrogant as Laurel, and wears a ridiculous toupee, like Donald Trump’s. One night it nearly slid onto his steak and mushrooms, and no one said a word.”
“Old man Abbott wanted Laurel to run the empire. So Quincy’s notas smart as she is?”
Rachael thought about that. “It’s not brains, really. They’re both smart, but he doesn’t have the force of will, the personality for it. He does what she tells him to do. With Quincy, I think he’d have trouble finding the jugular vein, whereas Laurel was born sucking blood from it.”
Jack said, “So Quincy can do the war dance, but he can’t take the scalp?”
“That’s it. Another thing: he’s extraordinarily sexist, and since being outsharked by his sister, Jimmy said he’d gotten more vicious toward women. I heard him say to Jimmy once that a woman is at her best on her knees with her mouth well occupied.”
“Whoa,” Jack said.
Gillette said, “Tell us more about Laurel.”
“She knows where all the skeletons are buried, knows which buttons to push. She’s the real deal when it comes to getting what she wants. She’s a closer, no scruples at all. All of that’s according to Jimmy, of course.”
Gillette said, “Doesn’t sound like there’s much affection there.”
“No, there isn’t. I asked Jimmy about that, all the sniping beneath the civility, all the public pretense, and he said it had been like that for so long he couldn’t remember if it had ever been any different.”
Gillette continued. “I read the other day in the
“So Jimmy told me,” Rachael said. “You can bet that burns Quincy to his heels.” She sighed, ate a cracker, then twisted the bag closed. “Proof. Where am I going to find proof?”
“We will,” Jack said with no hesitation at all.
She gave him a grin. “Do you know Uncle Gillette’s a computer hound, maybe even as good as Agent Savich? You told me he was amazing, Jack.”
Gillette did a double take. “Agent Savich? You mean FBI Special Agent Dillon Savich?”
Jack nodded.
“I’ve read about him, read several of the protocols he developed for the FBI. He adapted that facial recognition program from Scotland Yard. I’d really like to see it in action.”
Jack laughed. “Do you happen to have a name for your computer, Gillette?”
“A name? No, I hadn’t considered that. Hey, I’ve got three computers.”
“It’s a question to ponder,” Jack said. “Savich has only the one laptop—MAX or MAXINE—it’s transgender, changes sex every six months or so.”
Gillette laughed so hard he spilled coffee onto the floor. And what a floor it was, Jack thought, nicer than his, and that burned him since he’d selected the Italian tiles and laid them himself. He looked down at the various shades of gray with lines of milky white snaking through the marble squares.
“I wonder why I never read anything about MAX,” Gillette said, hiccupped once, then leaned down to wipe the coffee off the floor. “Or MAXINE.”
“I’ll have to see if I can get you and Savich together, at least in cyberspace. Your home is incredible. I was thinking maybe it’s about the right time to do some more work on mine.”
“You already own a house? At your tender age?”
“I’m not all that young,” Jack said, “nearly thirty-two.”
“That’s thirty-one,” Gillette said. “That’s young.”
“Young enough,” Rachael said as she blew on the coffee that Uncle Gillette had just poured in the big stone mug with her name on it. “You’ve only got thirty-six months on me.”
“Thirty-six months and lots of years,” Jack said.
Rachael sneered at him. “Oh yeah? You ever spend any quality time at the bottom of a lake with only a block of concrete for company?”
“Okay, I spoke too fast, but you’ve got to admit, that little phrase sounded profound.”
She couldn’t help it, she poked him in the arm and laughed. “All right, you’re loaded with hard-nosed experience. Now, tell us about your house.”
“It’s old and needs lots of updating, but it’s mine. I’m still living in my apartment since there’s so much major work to do. My folks loaned me the down payment. I pay them ten percent interest. My dad told me to take my time paying them back, they like the interest rate too much. You built this house yourself, Gillette?”
Gillette nodded and walked to the shining silver Sub-Zero refrigerator. “After I came home from the marines—”
“Wait a minute,” Jack said, staring at the man who looked like he should have been playing polo, his valet waiting in the wings. “You’re a marine?”
Gillette nodded. “Yeah, I spent ten years in the Corps before I hung it up. I grew up here in Slipper Hollow, went to school in Parlow, couldn’t wait to go out into the big bad world. Since home appears to be embedded in our genes, I came back here when I got out. Rachael and her mom lived here until she was twelve or so, I believe, when they moved to Richmond.”
Rachael added to Jack, “My grandparents were killed in an avalanche while cross-country skiing when I was about eight. I never knew them very well, they were always bumming around. ‘Hike the world’ was their
