Crime of Privilege

“Do you think, Jason,” I said, trying not to let Toby distract either one of us, “the Gregorys are going to support you forever?”

Jason had put bottle to glass, but he stopped in mid-pour. Droplets of wine dribbled off the mouth of the bottle and fell onto the marble table. “What’s that supposed to mean?”

“It means that after all this time, the search for the killer is still on. Whatever they may have done to try to hide you, it hasn’t worked, has it?”

Jason’s question lingered. I answered it another way. “I mean, I’m here, aren’t I?”

“And,” he said, handing the glass to his partner and then refilling his own, “I’ve told you I’ve got nothing to tell you.”

“I think you’ll have plenty to say if the Gregorys keep trying to make it seem that you’re the one who killed Heidi Telford.”

The pouring stopped again. “They’re not going to do that,” he said.

“Why not? You’re the perfect guy to take the fall. You don’t know anything about what happened that night other than Ned’s little tryst, so you’ve got nothing to say in your own defense. And where, exactly, have you been all these years? You haven’t been on the run, have you? I mean, suppose you get asked that. Do you have a record of your employment? No? Why do you suppose that is, Jason? Tell me, the money you get, it wouldn’t by any chance get transferred into your account from the Cayman Islands, would it?”

Jason continued to hold the wine bottle almost but not quite parallel to the floor. He looked stricken.

“So now that everything’s set up, what’s going to prevent them from making you the scapegoat?” I asked. “Lea

“She cares.”

“What?”

“I said, ‘She cares.’ Her family cares. Her husband cares.”

I was missing something. I struggled to sit up while I replayed that last exchange in my mind. “The au pair? You know her?”

“I know her husband. I went to Eaglebrook with him.”

Eaglebrook, a pre-prep school. A boarding school you went to in order to get into a good boarding school. An institution for the country’s elite. A place from which someone might grow up to be sensitive about his wife having once had an affair with a married Gregory.

“Who is she?”

Jason glanced at Toby. Words were not spoken, but there was plenty of message in the glance.

I was struggling to unravel that message when Toby’s booming voice brought my thoughts to a halt. “I think, Mr. Becket,” he said, “you will concede that you have no jurisdiction in this country.”

“Yes, but—”

“And that it is highly unlikely you or anyone else would be able to obtain extradition from this country for Jason, because nothing gives the French more pleasure than to fuck with the American legal system.”

I didn’t need extradition. I needed information. And cooperation. I started to say that and was cut off.

“Those things being true, or at least unrefuted by you, I think you will agree that there is little reason for Jason to continue speaking to you on this subject.”

But there was. I was almost there, within an arm’s length of nailing Peter Gregory Martin for the murder of Heidi Telford. I needed only to reach a little bit farther.

But I was not going to get the chance, because Toby the protector was not done protecting.

“Which means, sir,” he said, “your time as a guest in our home is at an end.”

It is possible my mouth hung open.

“Chambre Quatre is at the top of the stairs. I suggest you find it now or you may discover that your time as a guest in any capacity in our establishment has ended as well.”

“Then you—”

“Au revoir, Monsieur Becket.”

CAPE COD, September 2008

ROUTE 6A FROM SANDWICH TO BREWSTER HAS TO BE ONE OF the most beautiful roads in America. It runs along the north side of the peninsula, past cranberry bogs and blueberry patches and small farms, and in early fall the small farms still have honor racks filled with corn and squash and tomatoes. It passes antiques shops, country stores, esoteric museums, cemeteries with flat, vertical gravestones that might date back to the 1600s, and tiny town centers with parks and gazebos. And all along the way are large eighteenth-century homes with huge lawns and stone walls and great, leafy trees. Some of those homes have been made into i

Sandwich, Barnstable, Yarmouth, De

At 3:00 on a post–Labor Day afternoon, I did not need to be in a hurry. Many restaurants on the Cape close for the season in September. The higher-end ones may stay open until November or even December, but you never know. The folks at Captain Yarnell could have packed it in and moved on to Florida or New Hampshire or Vermont, so I was glad to see a pair of vehicles in the parking lot: a small black BMW and a rather beat-up Ford pickup truck. I parked next to them and made my way around the back of the building to the entrance to the kitchen.

It was warm, somewhere between seventy and seventy-five degrees, and the screen door was still in place. By putting my two hands around my eyes I could lean my face against the screen and look inside. Two men were working. A short Latino was in a T-shirt and full apron, peeling vegetables. A tall, dark-ski

Minutes passed before the Latino noticed me. “Hey!” he said, and his eyes grew wide.

The chef looked over. He did not stop stirring. He returned his eyes to his task. “Help you?” he called out.

“Chris Warburton?”

“That’s me.”

“I’m George Becket from the D.A.’s office. I need to talk to you.”

The job title works better some places than others. The smaller man stopped peeling and stood very, very still. Chris Warburton slowed his stirring, peered at his creation, lowered the flame beneath the pot and mumbled something to his assistant, who used a sidestep to take his boss’s place at the stove without removing his eyes from me. Then Chris came toward me, wiping his palms against each other in quick, noisy slaps.

He was a handsome man with a confident smile. He gave me that smile because he, Chris Warburton, chef of The Captain Yarnell House, had nothing to fear from the district attorney’s office, except perhaps the immigration status of his assistant.