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“I’ve heard about people like that.”
“I don’t know if I’ve talked to Tyler Belbo
I told him I did.
“So I’m just sorry about the number he did on Barbara because she really could have been somebody.” Buzzy caught himself. “Not that being in the D.A.’s office isn’t being somebody. I mean, I’m obviously trying to do it myself … so to speak.”
“Yeah.”
“You still with me on that, Georgie?”
“Yeah, Buz, just as much as I ever was.”
6
.
AMESSED-UP LIFE. A LIFE AS MESSED UP AS MINE. MORE SO, because she had responsibilities beyond herself. Were those responsibilities enough for her to sacrifice me? Why not? If they led to a better job, better security, better daycare.
Still, it made no sense. Fly to California, fly to Costa Rica. What for? I had already been to those places. Why would she retrace my steps? Why would she go before I had a chance to go back?
I decided I would call her. Ask her to come in again. Meet me someplace else if she wanted.
SHE WAS WEARING A DARK blue belted sheath top that dipped very slightly at the neck and slacks that were more or less the color of oatmeal. Her purse, which was big enough to carry a notebook, a change of clothes, and a frying pan, was in her lap. She had been glad to come in. She had something to tell me and wanted to get through the preliminaries as quickly as possible.
From my seat of power on the other side of the desk I waved her into whatever she wanted to say.
“Tell me, George, of the people who were at the Gregorys’ that night, how many have you actually interviewed?”
I held up two fingers. “Not counting the woman who may or may not have been Lea
“You’ve tried to find Jason, Peter, Lea
“Who’s left?” I said. “Jamie, who’s never done anything but follow Peter around, and Ned, who had his own thing going on. Think either one of them is going to tell me anything about cousin Peter’s adventures with his date that night?”
“First of all,” she said, her hands on her purse, her back straight, her words quick, “what you’re describing is not the Jamie I know. The Jamie I grew up with was the most co
“The Gregorys?”
She made a face. It wasn’t a bad face. It probably wouldn’t have been possible for Barbara to make a bad face. “Not the Gregorys. The banks. Something about they figure housing prices are going up so fast that as soon as people move in they’ve already acquired some equity. And then apparently the banks sell off the mortgages to somebody who bundles them all up, the good and the bad, and then offers them as a commodity that other investors bid on. Which I guess is where Jamie comes in. I don’t understand how it works, but that’s why Jamie was at my parents’ party that turned out to be such a disaster for you.”
“I thought he was there to raise money for a film for that girlfriend of his.”
“Well, that was what was going on, yes. But Dad didn’t know that ahead of time. See, that crowd, they’ve all been making money hand over fist through Jamie. So he shows up at the party, everybody wants to talk to him anyhow because he’s been doing so well for them, and he’s got this glamourous actress with him so he can let it drop how he’s raising money for her next picture. He doesn’t have to ask, which you don’t do at a gathering like that. But as soon as the party was over you can bet they were all calling him, see if they could get in on it.”
“Including Pop-pop?”
“That’s what I call my father.”
“I know.”
Barbara’s shoulders lifted and fell as if she did not quite understand me. It was a quick and graceful movement, and when it was over she was done with Jamie. She turned to Ned, and asked why I hadn’t talked with him.
I explained about the eighteen-year-old au pair.
“Well, there was someone else who was there that night, too, George.”
“Ned’s children?”
“I’m talking about the gatekeeper. The guard.”
“The black kid.”
“Chris Warburton, that’s his name,” she said, chiding me. “Sound familiar?”
I shook my head, feeling more wary than excited that I was about to learn something I had not figured out already.
“He’s the chef at The Captain Yarnell House in Brewster. You know it?”
Of course I knew it, a restaurant fashioned out of an old sea captain’s home off Route 6A. I just had never been to it because it cost about a hundred bucks a person to eat there and because I had not had a di
“I’ve known Chris since he was about six years old. His father used to do my parents’ yardwork, and he’s one of the sweetest people I’ve ever met. All his life he wanted to cook, and the Gregorys gave him the chance. They sent him to culinary school. Then they made sure he got jobs until he proved to be so talented he didn’t need them anymore. I went to Chris, George.”
She went to Chris, who had spoken to Landry, and whom I had never even considered interviewing. I looked over the head of Barbara Belbo
I looked across my desk at my former dungeon-mate and wondered not for the first time how I had managed to share a room with her for so long without really knowing her. Barbara Blueblood, with the pirate husband and the Down syndrome child and the daughter who was already fourteen years old. Friend of the Gregorys, second circle, taking a leave of absence from work so she could prove something to me. Was that possible? Didn’t she need the job, the security, the life the Gregorys had provided for her when she had screwed up everything else?
“Chris confirm that Heidi was there?” I asked, half hoping that was all she was going to say.
“He remembered something about Jason Stockover, George. He remembered he wore a green hat with a white D on it.”
Cory Gregory had remembered that, too. Dartmouth or Deerfield, she had said.
Now Barbara Belbo
“Chris said he thought Jason and Ned had been friends in college.”
She wasn’t thinking Duke, whose color was blue, or Delaware, whose team nickname was the Blue Hens.
“Thing is,” she said, “I know Ned went to college at Trinity and not Dartmouth, so I figured the D must be for Jason’s prep school, and I took a chance and drove out there.” She pointed. Nice, smooth underarms. “To Deerfield. In the western part of the state.”
I nodded. I knew where it was.