“Don’t underestimate me, senor.”
Galiano stepped back.
“I will find Lucy,” he said, regarding our host coolly. “With or without your cooperation.”
“I have cooperated fully, Detective, and I resent your implication. No one is more concerned about my daughter than I.”
A clock bonged somewhere outside the room. For the full ten count no one spoke. Galiano broke the silence.
“I keep getting caught up in one thought this morning.”
Gerardi’s face was a closed door.
“I tell you a skeleton surfaced and you show about as much interest as you would in a weather report.”
“I assume that if this skeleton has relevance to my daughter’s disappearance you will say that.” A red wash was spreading upward from Gerardi’s perfectly white collar.
“Seems you’ve also assumed a lot about your daughter’s life.”
“
Galiano did not reply.
“Obviously you do not know.”
My face felt hot with embarrassment. Correct, Mr. Gerardi. Because I was queasy and intimidated by pink spectacles.
Gerardi aligned his vertebrae even straighter than they had been. “I think it’s time you leave my home.”
He strode toward the door.
I rose and followed.
“Tell me what you really think of him.”
“He’s a pompous, overbearing, self-righteous ass.”
“Don’t hold back.”
“What sort of parent sees adolescent friendship as frivolity?” Galiano’s voice dripped disdain.
“My thought exactly. What does Daddy do to afford the Mercedes and Beshir?”
“Gerardi and his brother own the largest auto dealership in Guatemala.”
We were in the car, heading toward the ambassador’s residence.
“But he is right.” I made a print on the dashboard with my index finger, wiped it away with the heel of my hand. “We don’t know dick about that skeleton.”
“We will.”
I made another print.
“Think Lucy was as compliant as her father believes?”
Galiano turned one palm up and raised shoulders and eyebrows, a very French gesture for a Guatemalan cop.
“Who knows? Experience tells us they almost never are.”
Two more prints. Trees flashed by outside the window. Several turns, then we pulled onto a street of large homes set far back on spacious and professionally tended lots. In most cases, the only thing visible was a tile roof.
“Gerardi may have been right about one thing, though.”
“What’s that?” I asked.
“Chantale Specter.”
The ambassador and his family lived behind hedges identical to those surrounding the Gerardi place. They also lived behind an electrified fence with enormous scrolled wrought-iron gates and a matched set of uniformed guards.
Galiano angled onto the drive and held his badge to the window for guard number one. The man leaned close, then stepped to a control booth. Seconds later the gates swung in.
We made a wide sweep to the front of the house, where guard number two examined ID. Satisfied, he rang. The door opened, and the guard handed us off to a house servant.
“Mrs. Specter is expecting you.” The man looked at us without looking at us. “Please follow me.”
The setting was a repeat of the Gerardi home. Paneled study, expensive tile, furniture, and objets d’art. This time the carpet was Bakhtiari.
The encounter couldn’t have been more different.
Mrs. Specter’s hair was copper, her lips and nails Chinese red. She wore a three-piece silk pants suit the color of sunflower petals, and matching strap sandals on her feet. The filmy material flowed around her as she crossed to greet us. So did a cloud of Issey Miyaki.
