by John Farrow
“Secret service? CIA?” Till suggests.
“Or an unknown version of which she could never reveal. Legitimate or not. Which might have been a false front anyway.”
“For what purpose? If it’s the latter?”
“To kill her, I suppose. Or one of her friends.”
The others consider this, and Tills steps back, having exhausted what he can offer.
Special Agent Hartopp’s report is more elaborate. While his people have perused the entire list of donors attending the cocktail party, nothing about them jumped into plain view. Country club folk with deep pockets. “Theoretically, an upper tax bracket, although every last one of them successfully avoids exorbitant taxes.”
Hammond objects to the content of that information. “Personal stuff like that is supposed to stay confidential.”
Hartopp glares back at him and the trooper shrugs, backing down.
“Nothing significant there,” Hartopp carries on. “We put special emphasis, obviously, on the three names the boy provided. Same deal. This is what’s interesting. One guy, his name is Ben Havilland-Clegg—a mouthful, right? I haven’t said it all yet. His full name is Bennington Orion Marshall Havilland-Clegg. Good luck finding the space on a check to sign all that. And he does sign checks. He is a philanthropist, not only with respect to Dowbiggin. Throat cancer a couple of years ago. An ongoing problem for him. Ben, for short, an alum, has been contributing for years to Dowbiggin, and years before that his father did the same. Our Ben is an inheritor of riches. He doesn’t run anything or make anything or work himself. He lives off the family’s extensive trust.”
“I’d like that job. That’s nice work,” Hammond rhapsodizes.
“Here’s where it gets interesting,” Hartopp goes on. “A year and a half ago, no longer than that, the other two names on our list start contributing to Dowbiggin. They are men of means who have no connection to the college of which we’re aware. That’s fine as far as it goes. Good stuff happens. Conversely, Ben has lowered the amount he gives from what he used to contribute. The annual contribution that the endowment is now short from Ben, the other two make up for to the dollar, and no more. Those two gentlemen, Hanson Parker and Al McBride, have no history of being generous to charities.”
He glances at Hammond as though daring him to challenge his knowledge.
“I hate to stain your innocence,” Hartopp continues, while staring down the state trooper. “A suspicious mind might want to believe that Ben got his friends onto the donors’ list with his own money.”
“I, for one,” Cinq-Mars attests, “have a suspicious mind.”
“Okay. Why do that?” Hammond asks.
No answer is immediate in the air. “I think it’s our job to find that out,” Hartopp comments. “All we know is, being on the list of donors gets all three into the cocktail party. It brings all three up to Holyoake. For what it’s worth, we haven’t been able to link them together. They come from different cities, different backgrounds. Hanson Parker is in the financial services industry in New York City these days. Initially, he worked in the diplomatic corps. I’m told that he’s a bright man. Al McBride owns a network of tire shops in Tennessee and Kentucky, expanding into western North Carolina and Virginia. He sells a lot of tires, especially for trucks. The youngest of the three, probably the least bright, he’s second in wealth.”
“He could contribute to a lot of universities between here and his old Kentucky home,” Till muses.
“Do you have pictures of these guys?” Cinq-Mars inquires.
“Thanks to the almighty Internet, of course we do.”
He shows their faces on his tablet and the officers commit them to memory. They receive copies onto their own mobile devices. Cinq-Mars adds, “I have a few other e-mail addresses to forward these to.”
Hammond wants to know who he has in mind first.
“I’ll keep that to myself.”
“I thought we were into universal peace and love by now. All set for another Woodstock. I thought we were sharing.”
“Trooper, there are matters you can know about and things that you can do that other people cannot know about or do. You get to know about them and do something about them because you carry a badge. Am I right?”
“Aren’t you always? What’s your point?”
“There are things I can know and do now because I no longer have a badge.”
“How’s that? Like what?”
“I’ll put it another way. There are things you can know and do that won’t get you into anything other than hot water. Maybe boiling oil. There are things in life you’d rather not know about if it can be helped.”
The trooper checks with Chief Till to see if he gets this riddle, and apparently he does. “This is an ignorance-is-bliss type thing?”
“That’s the type of thing it is,” Cinq-Mars sums up, and Special Agent Hartopp goes ahead and sends copies of the photographs to Caroline, Anastasia, and Kali who are already at the party, unknown to Hammond and Till, preparing for their guests. Bringing in civilians would be a liability to the officers if they knew about it. This is not the case with Émile, while Hartopp knows he can easily wiggle free from any culpability.
“One more thing,” Hartopp instructs them. “This may prove significant down the road. My people located the charoite. The wholesale distributor, on Amsterdam Avenue in New York, didn’t know it was radioactive until he was informed of that fact by one of his clients, a jeweler. He did the right thing. He took the stones off the market. Ordered back the stock he’d sent out. This is way before we made contact, so he’s on the up and up. He knows who bought the stones from him previously, including one who made a significant second purchase for smaller charoite stones. That jeweler hasn’t indicated he’s sending anything back. We’ll be speaking to him, of course, to see who his client or clients are who have such a demand for charoite gemstones.”
They are each impressed.
Till, though, nurtures a lingering doubt. “Honestly, Émile, do you really think our bad guys are at the party?”
“I like our chances. Think about it. If—and this is not the only big if—if our bad guys are donors, they have to show up at the party, otherwise they’d be missed. If their cover is to come here as donors, they have to follow through. Besides, they may have planned that all of us would be hot to trot for Vernon Colchester by now. We’ve led them to believe we are. They think they’re in the clear. If it’s them, or if it’s not them, they’ll show.”
“All right,” Till agreed. “Let’s party.”
“Gentlemen,” Cinq-Mars announces, “have fun. If we’re missing the boat here, barking up the wrong tree, some cliché like that, at least the drinks are on Dowbiggin.”
TWENTY-FOUR
They arrive in the midst of a throng.
A technique utilized for this event, when much is at stake to keep donors happy and, by extrapolation, generous, is to invite a select group of cohosts and guests to be on hand early. The party, then, is in full swing and lively by the time the larger contingent arrives at the appointed hour. From the outset, the room is boisterous.
Laughter and cheery voices echo off the stained-glass windows.
Émile Cinq-Mars withdraws to the sidelines to peruse the gathering. While elegant, the room is formal and austere, one that would serve equally well for funerals. The vaulted ceiling is high, the dark mahogany dominates, the sense of age-old privilege remains wholly intact. Life-sized portraits of early presidents and benefactors point to the future by drawing attention to the past, yet the atmosphere is energized by an abundance of living, breathing young people. Many are working as servers, others as articulate representatives of the graduating class, on hand to illustrate the virtue of their elders’ munificence. The cocktail party constitutes an exercise in unabashed ego-stroking, and the attendees, like kittens being petted, purr with delight.
The first person with whom Émile Cinq-Mars speaks is Professor Edith Shedden. She crosses the room to confr
ont him, and notes, “Ominous. The cavalry has breached our defenses.”
“If that’s a euphemism for barbarians at the gate, then yes, we’re here. Please don’t blow my cover.” He says this with a smile, to imply that he doesn’t care what she does with her knowledge.
“My lips are sealed,” she vows, with a smile. “Are you here for our protection or do you hope a murderer will leap from behind the curtains to confess his sins? Will he beg to be arrested?”
“Stranger things happen. Keep your eyes peeled and your ears alert.”
“You almost sound serious.”
“I almost am. I’m that desperate.”
She gives him about twenty seconds of her time which apparently is more than enough. “I’ve done my bit here, Detective. You may not know this: The attention I’ve paid to you has increased your standing in our rather insular community. Our guests are wondering about the newcomer. Either you are a contributor of high standing or an academic of great renown. Whichever it is, you are now an entity who must be met. Not to mention, a few of our diamond dowagers, as we call them, will have noticed by now that you are tall, handsome, and a stranger, with the face of a renegade academic, or a hermit crab billionaire. What shall I say when the wags inquire?”
Émile smiles again. “Professor, my expertise in life doesn’t add up to a hill of green beans. I expect to fail any academic test going. Better to paint me as a man of means. Let’s see if I can pull that off. I’ve had little practice.”
“Oh, just condemn the President of the United States for every problem on earth and you’ll do fine.”
“I’m in trouble then. The cost of gas is so cheap in the States I can’t find anything worthwhile to complain about while I’m down here.”
“Cheap! Now you’re behaving like a misfit. That works, too. See? You can’t lose. Have a good day, Mr. Cinq-Mars. Good luck with your work here. I’ll get back to mine.”
They formally shake hands before parting. As she moves on, he’s feeling a trifle guilty for revealing secrets about her that she had wanted protected. Hopefully, those remarks will remain where they lie now, although his experience in life suggests otherwise. People’s stuff seeks the light, and breaks through at inconvenient times.
He continues his study of the room. Eighty are present, and while that’s not a significant crowd, people are knit tightly together making it difficult to pick out individual faces across the broad bay of humanity. Caroline, smiling, swinging a tray, tracks him down to ask if he’d like a drink.
“Whiskey, Caro, neat. The best available, if you please.”
“Like I know the difference.” She’s teased him in the past for being a lush, and as she leans into him to whisper he’s expecting more such commentary. Instead, her voice is urgent and insistent. “Find Anastasia. Like now.”
Caroline dashes off and he goes on the hunt for her friend. Anastasia is probably pushing the boundaries of her job here. Not merely serving drinks and canapés, she’s doling out wit, wisdom, and favorable impressions of Dowbiggin along the way. Émile spots her from a distance, at her back, and draws closer while trying not to make it appear that she is the object of his intentions. Before he arrives, the girl turns, clutches an empty glass on the tray to keep it from toppling, and in the same motion indicates the bar. They’ll cross paths there.
She’s emptying her tray and simultaneously imparting her order to the bartender as Émile comes up behind her a second time. Spinning around again, Anastasia offers a mock smile, and states, “Check out what I’m wearing.” She lowers the serving tray.
The necklace. An identical facsimile to the one that adorned Addie Langford both before and after her death. If he was standing on a rug, Émile can imagine it yanked out from under him. As it is, he feels the floor give way, and he’s floating.
“Where the hell did you get that?”
“Here, is where. Why, is my question.”
“All right then, how did you get it?”
A charge shoots through him. An invitation to the party was placed between the fingers of the dead girl—cynical and challenging enough—and now a signal of the murderer’s presence has been put on display. Instinct tells him that this is not a diversion, rather that a challenge has been laid down, and redoubled. Worst case, it’s not a challenge at all, but a serious threat.
“This thing arrived in the kitchen inside a chocolate box with my name on it. With a decorative bow. A card inside. I kept it, it’s in the back. The message explains that the necklace was found on campus and may belong to someone at this party. I’m to wear it—me, specifically—to see if its owner responds. That answers where I got it and how, Mr. Cinq-Mars. My questions still stand. Why? And why me?”
He realizes that his cover may have been blown. That he has now been identified.
That might be the whole purpose of the necklace this afternoon.
Anticipating delivery of her drink order, the coed turns away from him. Cinq-Mars appears to be waiting on something. The answer to her question, perhaps. They hope to present a posture to the room that suggests they may not actually be talking to each other.
“It’s possible, Anastasia, that you’ve been marked. You may have been identified as the next target. A choice has been made and they might want us to know it. Or want us to think that way. More likely, someone is trying to identify who takes an interest in you now. My anonymity may already be compromised, as of this moment. C’est la vie. Something else is curious. The three people we’re tracking make a point of not communicating with one another. They don’t acknowledge one another’s existence in public. I’m wondering if perhaps they chose to identify their quarry without a word passing among them. You know?” She doesn’t know. He’s mainly talking to himself now. “If true, that sets up an interesting possibility.”
“I wear the necklace around the room and killers get to see that I’m the chosen one? Something like that?”
“Maybe exactly that.”
“Lovely. I’m a marked woman for perverts. How sick is that?”
“Not to worry. Nothing’s going to happen. I won’t let it.”
“No, I mean, it’s sick. That means good. They have targeted someone who’s out to get them.”
“All right, then. Sick. Don’t be overconfident. They seem to know more about the people up against them than the other way around. Be careful.”
“Here’s your drink, sir.” It’s Caro, and he turns to receive his glass. “Everything okay?” she whispers.
“Have you seen the one called Bennington et cetera et cetera, the one with the double-barreled last name?”
“Turn straight around. Sixty degrees on your left, toward the back of the room.”
He’s had junior officers who would not have been that precise or quick with directions. “Thanks. I won’t turn to look just yet. Bye.”
“Bye,” Caro says.
“You go, too,” Cinq-Mars advises Anastasia.
Loaded up, the young woman heads off. Cinq-Mars keeps his back to the room, sips, and recognizes that the drink is Laphroaig. Without turning or going the way that Caro indicated, he heads off in a nearly opposite direction from his quarry, intending to circle around.
The party has grown festive as more people arrive, although here and there through the crowd he picks up inklings of conversation that have to do with recent dire events. While the mood is far from somber, it’s not thoroughly jovial, either.
About a hundred and twenty people are present now and he wonders what the bar bill will be for that.
Cinq-Mars passes the youngest of the three persons of interest, a tire mogul from Kentucky. Chief Till, comfortable in his civilian duds, chats in the mogul’s vicinity to an elderly matron with diamonds around her neck. They discuss the value of an older building, such as the one they’re standing in, during modern times.
“Irreplaceable,” she contends.
“Invaluable,” he calculates.
Cinq-Mars smiles as he entertains the thought that
they might both be referring to themselves.
He physically bumps into Kali, the other of Caro’s friends working on his scheme. She passes him a canapé. Realizing that he’s famished, Émile takes two. Walks on, munching. He smiles, nods, keeping up a cheerful front, his look suggesting that he has a destination in mind. He does not appear to be in search of a conversation to join just yet and that helps him avoid being drawn into any. He passes Hammond, who has his eyes on Émile’s target as well, yet stands twenty yards away.
Émile presses on.
Through a shift of bodies, a convergence of interests, a dispersal of hangers-on, Émile discovers that the man he’s after, Bennington Orion Marshall Havilland-Clegg, is now engaged in discussion with the president of the Dowbiggin School, Joshua Palmerich. As he approaches, he catches the president’s eye.
“Émile Cinq-Mars.” Palmerich lights up. “How are you?”
“Very well, Mr. Palmerich. Yourself?”
“Tip-top. May I introduce Ben Havilland-Clegg, one of our most ardent and faithful alumni. A third-generation alumnus. Ben, this is Émile Cinq-Mars, one of our newest contributors. His niece is graduating this year. Mr. Cinq-Mars has expressed his appreciation by making a significant contribution to our general endowment.”
“Wonderful, wonderful, that’s much appreciated, Mr. Cinq-Mars—am I saying that correctly? I’m not familiar with the name.”
Palmerich didn’t say it correctly either, and Cinq-Mars repeats his name for the benefit of both men. “It’s French. I’m French-Canadian.”
“I thought I detected a slight accent. Congratulations, sir, on your niece’s success.”
He seems about to pull away, disinterested in continuing with their introduction. Or perhaps he wants to leave Palmerich to his duties. Émile, though, hopes to snag him for a minute more. “Sorry to have interrupted,” he jumps in. “You two were quite engaged.”
“That nasty business on campus,” Palmerich says in his silky, cordial, official voice, “of which you are, no doubt, aware. We don’t wish to seem callous, and yet we were reviewing scenarios that might allow us to recover from our sordid circumstance.”