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“In the name of the Father, the Son, and the Holy Ghost,” he said solemnly.
He looked at the face one last time, the sad blue eyes, the half frown on the rigid mouth. Sobbing quietly, he backed to the apartment’s front door, sloshing a generous gasoline trail across the hardwood floor behind him.
The Zippo he took from his pocket had a marine insignia on it. He wiped his cheeks with a deep breath and placed the cool brass of the lighter to his forehead for a moment. Had he forgotten something?
He booted the empty gas can back toward the dining room, thumbed back the lighter’s starter, and tossed it with a deft casualness, a wi
Not a thing, he thought.
The loud basslike whump blew his hair back as a ball of flame shot back into the apartment like a meteor. The dining room went up like a pack of matches.
For another few seconds, he stared, mesmerized, at the ink-black smoke freight-training from the doorway.
Then he closed the door, took out his keys, and locked up tight.
Chapter 63
The doorman of 1117 Fifth Avenue wore a suit and hat that were the same exact hunter green as the awning.
“Can I help you, sir?” he asked as I walked into the lobby.
“Detective Be
Erica Gladstone, the murdered wife in the Locust Valley mansion, had turned out to be one of the Blanchettes. Her father, Henry, ran Blanchette Holdings, the private equity and takeover firm that made companies, and even hedge funds, tremble.
I was there to notify them of Erica’s death, and maybe pick up a lead on their berserk son-in-law.
The elevator up to their penthouse apartment had fine wood paneling and a crystal chandelier. An actual butler in a morning coat opened the front door. Behind a wall of French doors to his right, steam rose from a rooftop swimming pool – an Olympic-sized, infinite-horizon number that seemed to meld into the unspoiled, twenty-story vista of Central Park trees that lay beyond.
“Mr. and Mrs. Blanchette will be downstairs in a moment, Detective,” the sleek butler said with an English accent. “If you would follow me to the living room.”
I stepped into a silk-wallpapered chamber the size of an airplane hangar. A gallery’s worth of professionally lit paintings hung from the double-height walls above designer furniture and sculptures. I gaped at a Pollock the size of a putting green, then exchanged eye contact with a massive stone Chinese dragon that could not, no way, have fit into the elevator.
The duplex would have been the slickest, most opulent, luxury apartment I’d ever laid eyes on without the pool. And I read Architectural Digest. Well, at least every time I went to Barnes and Noble.
“Yes? Detective Be
“What’s this about?” an attractive, fiftyish platinum blond woman demanded sharply, stalking into the room behind him. She wore a makeup bib over a melon-colored silk dressing robe. Both Mrs. Blanchette’s appearance and her attitude were more like what I was expecting.
I inhaled deeply, bracing myself. There’s no easy way to tell someone that their child is dead.
“There was a shooting,” I said. “Your daughter, Erica, was killed. She died instantly. I’m terribly sorry.”
Henry’s mouth and eyes seemed to triple in size. He stared at me, confused, as he stumbled back against the edge of a mod-looking mohair club chair. His wife sank, dumbfounded, onto an antique chaise.
“What about the girls?” Henry said softly. “I haven’t seen them in years. They must be grown now. Do they know?”
“Jessica and Rebecca were murdered, too,” I had to tell him. “I’m very sorry for your loss.”
His wife gasped, her eyes filling with tears. Henry brought his hand up as if to say something, then lowered it.
“I’m afraid it gets worse still,” I said, dropping the third and final bomb in my arsenal of grief – getting it over with as quickly as I could. “We believe they were shot by your son-in-law, Thomas Gladstone. And that he’s also responsible for the string of killings that have been going on around the city.”
Mrs. Blanchette’s tears stopped like a faucet, and now I could see nothing in her face except rage.
“I told you so!” she screamed at her husband. “I told you marrying that trash would be…” She collapsed again, unable to continue.
The billionaire hung his head, staring into the Oriental carpet between his sneakers as if trying to read something in the pattern.
“We had a falling-out,” he said.
He seemed to be talking to himself.
Chapter 64
“It’s not fair, Henry,” Mrs. Blanchette wailed. “After all my… What did we do to deserve this?”
I had a hard time believing what I heard. But people handle grief in strange ways.
“Is there someplace where your son-in-law could be hiding out?” I said. “Another apartment in the city? A vacation house, perhaps?”
“Another apartment! Do you have any idea how much we paid for the Locust Valley house we bought Erica?”
In her mind, clearly, somebody like me wouldn’t have an inkling about that sort of thing. I turned to her husband.
“What was the nature of the falling-out?” I asked.
Mrs. Blanchette rose from her chair like a boxer after the bell. “What possible business is that of yours?” she said, glaring at me.
“As you can see, my wife’s quite upset, Detective,” Mr. Blanchette said, without lifting his eyes from the carpet. “We both are. Could you question us later? Maybe after we’ve had a little while to…”
“Of course,” I said, leaving my card on the sideboard. “If you think of something that might help, or you want more information – anything I can do – please call, okay?”
As I stepped out of the elevator downstairs, I spotted the green-uniformed doorman talking Spanish with one of the maids, laughing and probably flirting.
They got quiet as I walked over to them and showed him my shield again.
“Detective Be
The maid edged away, and the doorman shrugged. “Sure. I’m Petie. What can I do for you?”
“You know Erica Gladstone?” I said.
“Ever since she was a little girl.”
“What happened between her and her parents?”
Petie suddenly looked as green as his jacket. “Ah, I never heard nothin’ about that, amigo,” he said. “You’d have to ask them, you know? I just work here.”
I put a friendly hand on his shoulder. “Look, I understand the secret code – don’t talk about the tenants. Relax. I don’t need you to testify in open court. I need you to help me nail this nut job who’s going around shooting everybody. We think it’s Erica’s husband, Thomas Gladstone.”
“Chingao!” the doorman said, his eyes widening in shock. “Oh, my God! For real?”
“For real. Come on, Petie. Let’s get this guy.”
“Yeah, yeah, you bet,” he said. “Erica, okay, let’s see. She was a wild kid. Real wild. Drugs. A couple of rehabs. We’re talking before her sweet sixteen. When she’d come home from Sarah Lawrence, we had standing orders not to let her in if nobody else was home.”
“Then she seemed to straighten out. She married some blue-blood kid from her daddy’s firm, had a couple of daughters. But all of a sudden, she got divorced and took up with the second husband, the Gladstone guy. He was the pilot on the father’s corporate jet, was what I heard. The parents went ballistic, especially the Lady of the Manor, as we call her. She got Gladstone fired, and cut Erica off at the root.” The doorman shook his head knowingly. “Shooting smack when you’re thirteen is one thing, but, by God, you sleep with the help, you’re dead meat.”