Crime Of Privilege: A Novel Part 34

"You've tried to find Jason, Peter, Leanne, I understand that. But why haven't you tried to find the rest?"

"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 conniving of the bunch. Maybe it was because of his size, I don't know, but the way he competed was to try to outsmart everyone else. And it's certainly not the Jamie I see these days, who's probably the most popular of all the Gregorys of his generation because he's making everybody a fortune." She paused. "You know about these mortgages they're giving away?"

"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 fas.h.i.+oned 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 dinner date since Marion left me.

"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 Belbonnet at the walls I had yet to decorate and wondered how long I would be here. In this room. In this office. On this job. Probably 2.5 months. Till the election. George Becket, my letter of recommendation would read, wonderful boy. Forgets to locate an occasional witness from time to time, but that's all right. He fit in just fine with Detective Iacupucci.

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 Belbonnet said the same thing. Such are the ways of people in a certain cla.s.s in a certain place. She didn't think Drew, Drake, Drexel, Duquesne, DePaul, Davidson, d.i.c.kinson, Denison.

"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.

"I went to the school library, examined yearbooks from twenty years ago, around the time a college cla.s.smate of Ned's would have been there, and was rewarded with a picture of Jason Stockover, a list of his school activities, and his home address in Cos Cob, Connecticut."

"And let me guess, that's where you went next."

"Yep."

Sure, of course. Barbara Belbonnet doing my job better than me. Or maybe for me. I still wasn't sure.

"I got there," she said, "only to find the Stockovers no longer live at that address. The family had some sort of falling out, the current owners said, and there was a divorce. They couldn't tell me where any of them went."

"Do you think the school would have a-"

She was way ahead of me. "So I drove back to Deerfield and visited the alumni office. They were so sorry, but they were not at liberty to give out addresses." She lilted the words "at liberty" as if she were imitating the Queen.

"But that didn't stop you, I a.s.sume."

"No," she agreed, "it didn't. I went back to the library, back to Jason's yearbook. I had the idea that maybe he was on the sailing team and I could find a picture of the team, see if I recognized any of his teammates, people I could contact about him. It was a long shot, I know, but there are only so many races in the northeast, and, hey, I was at plenty of them."

"Except you're older."

Barbara's recitation came to a standstill. "I'm thirty-seven, George."

"Oh."

"You're what, thirty-four? You think that's such a big difference?"

"No."

"You do, don't you?" Her chin moved, her hand moved, her leg moved, the corner of her mouth squeezed shut, and I realized that I had actually hurt her. It seemed like such a small thing. I wanted to tell her that. I wanted to tell her that I hadn't really noticed a difference, that it was one of a thousand things I hadn't noticed, that I hadn't noticed because my own life was so screwed up, such a mess, such a total disappointment, that I wasn't even aware of things that were right in front of me.

But Barbara was not waiting for my explanations. "Ned's at least two years older than I am," she said. "Which means, since Jason was in his cla.s.s, he's about two years older as well."

"Thirty-nine," I said unnecessarily.

Was there a wince? It was hard to tell in the midst of my own embarra.s.sment.

"The only problem with my idea was that the school didn't have a sailing team."

I told myself there could have been a lot of reasons for her new tone of voice. She could have been commenting on the incomprehensibility of a landlocked school not having a sailing team.

"What I found instead," she continued, "in the listing of activities beneath his yearbook picture, was that Jason had been a member of the cross-country team, the Outdoor Club, and the French Club. I asked the librarian about those things, not expecting they were going to get me anywhere, except, it turns out, Monsieur Weber, the faculty member responsible for the French Club, is still at the school."

"Great. That's great, Barbara." I may have gone overboard in my enthusiasm.

"That wasn't the end of my good luck, George. Monsieur Weber is still in touch with Jason because, it turns out, Jason is actually living in France. In a bastide." She got a shot in on me. "Do you know what a bastide is?"

I knew, but I didn't tell her.

"It's one of those fortified towns built during the Hundred Years' War, when France and England only fought when the soldiers weren't needed in the fields."

"Ah."

"They're all over the Bordeaux region, and what Monsieur Weber said was, the one where Jason lives is the most beautiful bastide of all."

A slow smile crept over her lips, enough to make me question whether my punishment was over. It was a smile of promise, one that invited me to smile along with her. "So," she said, as I watched her lips part, her teeth sparkle, her tongue flash, "I guess it's no wonder that a guy like Jason Stockover would own a bed-and-breakfast there. Don't you think?"

MONFLANQUIN, FRANCE,.

September 2008.

CARTE BLANCHE TO MONFLANQUIN.

I still did not know about Barbara. My heart told me to believe everything she said. My head told me I had to watch out, because she didn't need me; if Josh David Powell could employ a woman to stay married to me, the Gregorys could certainly insert a woman into my office. I was clearly susceptible. The cost of doing something like that meant nothing to these people. Years meant nothing. I certainly meant nothing, except as a tool. A p.a.w.n.

A denizen of the fourth circle.

Get out of town, George. Go to France.

I didn't go for any of the reasons she gave me. I went because I had Mitch's $100,000 to spend. And because I had the time to do it. That is what I told myself.

I FLEW INTO CHARLES DE GAULLE, TOOK A LONG AND EXPENSIVE taxi ride into Paris, and boarded a train south to the city of Bour-deaux, where I rented a Renault with a stick s.h.i.+ft and drove east. It was a sunny day, the air was warm enough to go without a jacket, and I was almost enjoying myself. I stopped in Saint-emilion for lunch and drank wine because I was in the heart of one of the great grape-growing regions of the world and felt I should. The bottle I had was a merlot from the Medoc region, and I was disappointed. Perhaps I ordered from the wrong chateau, or the wrong vintage, or didn't let it breathe sufficiently. Or maybe I just was not sophisticated enough to appreciate what I was having, but I did not finish the bottle.

From there on, however, the drive seemed even prettier and more interesting than it had before.

I arrived at Monflanquin late in the day. "At" because one gets to the town well before one gets into the town. It is a walled city built on top of a hill overlooking a broad valley. I had to find the motor vehicle entrance and then wend my way around and around until I got to the top, where there was a large open square flanked by homes and shops and restaurants. For all that, it was surprisingly easy to find my destination on a side street leading off the square, and, miracle of miracles, a place to park directly in front of it.

My surprises only grew from there. The address Barbara had given me was a gray stone building sharing common walls with the buildings on either side of it and housing not just a bed-and-breakfast but a gift shop on the ground floor. Inside the gift shop was a large man wearing an ap.r.o.n and shorts. The ap.r.o.n I could accept. The exposed knees, s.h.i.+ns, calves, and ankles were a shock. Then the man greeted me and I realized he was not French but English, which made the sight a little less shocking because it is a well-known fact that the English tend to do strange things when they see the sun.

I must have been dressed peculiarly for the region as well, because the first thing the bare-legged man did was greet me in my own language. He wanted to know how I was doing.

I told him I was fine and that I was interested in renting a room for the evening. He said that I appeared to be an acceptable lodger and it took me a moment to realize he had made a joke. It took another moment after that to laugh.

Barbara Belbonnet had used her cell phone to take a picture of Jason Stockover's photograph in his yearbook. While more than twenty years had pa.s.sed and the camera image of a boy in sport coat and tie had not been ideal, this large man making jokes to me was most definitely not the same person. The boy in the photo had dark wavy hair and rather delicate features masked by an expression of smugness that promised cheer to those he liked and misery to those he didn't. This fellow in front of me not only had a British accent but a bald head and a wide-open face. The accent could have been affected, the hair lost, the smugness decimated by the realities of life beyond prep school, but this man, clearly, had never had delicate features.

"All alone, are you?" He posed the question as if being alone was an exciting thing to be.

I told him I was.

"Would you happen to have a pa.s.sport?" he asked, getting out a hardcover register book and opening it to a page that contained the day's date and handwritten column markers that read nom, adresse, and nombre de pa.s.seport. The way he asked, I had the impression that not everybody who stayed there did have one. Or perhaps he was just being friendly. In any event, I handed mine over. He noted where it had been issued. "San Francisco!" he said with genuine enthusiasm. "I have had some adventures there, mon ami, I can tell you that."

"Yes," I said, not wanting to know. "Actually, I'm from Boston."

"Boston." He was busy writing things down.

"Cape Cod, really."

"You don't say. Could I have the address, please?"

I gave it to him. He transcribed and then handed back the pa.s.sport along with a key attached to a heavy bra.s.s fob that would no doubt rip a hole in my pants pocket if I tried walking the streets of Monflanquin with it. "Number four, just at the top of the stairs behind you, two flights up. Need help with your luggage?"

"No, no. I've just one bag, and I can handle it."

"D'accord, as the locals say." He smiled.

I glanced around the shop. Knickknacks, mostly. Some framed vintage photographs and some paintings that had probably hung on walls for years without being noticed until their owners died and the estates were liquidated. But there was some fun stuff, too. Carafes and winegla.s.ses and boards with comical renderings of various aspects of life in wine country. Posters and coasters and little figures made from pewter or blown gla.s.s. Chess sets with medieval warriors carrying French and English flags. Postcards, games, scarves, a display of tour books, and a rack of flamboyant sungla.s.ses.

He saw me looking at the sungla.s.ses. "Very Posh Spice, don't you think?" And I had to go through various mental synapses to realize he was referring to Victoria Beckham, formerly of the Spice Girls. "Oh, yes, very much so," I said, as if I knew what I was talking about.

I turned to go to the door, to go out to the car for my bag.

"You know," he said as my hand went to the handle, "my partner spent some time in the Boston area. Back in the halcyon days of his youth. You'll have to talk."

"Oh, good," I said. "I would like that very much."

THE PARTNERS LIVED TOGETHER on the second floor. The door to their apartment was open when I walked past with my suitcase. A short hallway led from that open door to a darkened sitting room, where a soccer game was on television. I could not see who was watching it, but I a.s.sumed someone was. I put down the suitcase and knocked.

"h.e.l.lo," I called.

There was movement. A figure appeared at the end of the hallway. A lean man, a little less than six feet tall in bare feet, wearing a T-s.h.i.+rt and jeans. A man whose hair, if not wavy, was at least still on his head.

"Yes?" he said. Like the man on the first floor, he did not bother with French.

"Are you the fellow from New England?" I asked.

He came forward, out of the darkness. It was the boy in the prep school yearbook, two decades along. I felt a surge of elation and held out my hand even before he finished telling me he was from Connecticut.

"Ma.s.sachusetts," I said.