The Unquiet Dead (6 page)

And what explained the gun and the absence of candles?

“Did the power ever go out at his house?”

Hadley looked blank, as well she might.

Rachel hastened to clarify her question.

“Did he use a lot of candles during the evening?”

Because if he had, that might explain one mystery, although it didn't account for the gun.

Hadley grimaced as an unpalatable thought surfaced. “Maybe he and Mel did? I mean, I think he tried to be discreet around Cass and me,” she said, weighing her words. “But he wasn't perfect.”

Meaning, Rachel translated, that this more than on-the-ball teenager had quickly deduced that her mother was having sex with her tutor.

Khattak cut across her thoughts.

“Why Italian lessons instead of other languages?”

“Oh, that. He was fluent in Italian because of the businesses he'd owned in Italy. He said we could pick what we wanted to learn. I would have chosen Spanish, but he didn't speak Spanish. I couldn't see the point of German or Russian, and Cass has always wanted to go to Italy. For the fashion,” she tacked on, fondly.

Khattak's face tightened with sudden knowledge. Rachel began to feel irritated. She didn't mind that the boss wanted her to look at the scene with fresh eyes and come to her own conclusions. What she minded was that she had no context for filtering the information that was coming through in dribbles from the people who had known Drayton.

Was the business in Italy significant? Did Drayton's fluency in Russian matter? Did the books on Albania suggest a financial interest in trans-European organized crime? What about the unfamiliar 9-millimeter gun? How could she make any of these deductions if she didn't have the faintest idea of what they were investigating? The dark halls of her imagination were pretty unlikely to conjure the truth from smoke.

She sighed.

“Who are Harry and Aldo?” she asked for want of anything more to the point.

Hadley gave her the quintessential teenage shrug, embodying all things from indifference to disgust. She was rubbing her shoes in the spongy grass, which when Rachel did it was a sure sign of boredom.

“Gardeners. They have a local landscaping business that's doing pretty well. They did the gardens at Winterglass and at the museum. They take on plenty of individual jobs like Chris's house as well.”

More connections to Drayton. They'd been on Nathan Clare's list, she remembered. Not on the guest list for his dinner parties, but mentioned tangentially. The Osmond brothers, like the singing group. Maybe they were Mormons too.

She wanted to scuff her own shoes.

“I guess we'll head over to Mr. Drayton's house then. Does your mum have a key?”

“Not to everything,” her daughter said, with no small measure of satisfaction. “Just the front door. She's been dying to get into his office, but I guess despite their amazing mystical connection, Chris still had his secrets.”

The bitter words stabbed at the air like fingers of lightning. They left her looking after them with her thin arms crossed over her chest, her eyes like bronze metalwork, unblinking and inscrutable.

 

5.

I took my mother's head into my hands and I kissed her.

I never felt anything so cold before …

In the car, he didn't wait for Rachel to ask. “I know nothing of Drayton's past or any businesses he might have run. I've only suspicion, Rachel. I'm not even sure I'd call it that.”

“What would you call it, then?”

“Dread.”

Rachel accepted this without knowing why. Maybe it was the hunted look in his eyes.

The day was warming up, a languid sleeve of blue draping the air with heat. As she did most days when the outdoor ice rinks were closed due to warmer than average temperatures, Rachel cursed mightily at global warming. She hadn't spent a lifetime recycling to suffer these miniature blows.

“You've known Nathan Clare for years,” she said after a while. “Haven't you ever seen this house or museum or whatever you want to call it?”

“Ringsong? I haven't. It must be newly built. We'll go there after this stop.”

This stop was Drayton's house, with its burnished aisles of flowers, the autumn grass rising vast and green, a backdrop to roses with gleaming thorns and orange-shouldered lilies that shifted against bright filaments of air.

The Osmond brothers knew what they were doing. And the back of the house, where the windows of Drayton's study broached the glassy expanse of lake, must have been even more peaceful. A place of dreams. A place to lose oneself in a solitude of light. A whimsical thought. One to be expected from a student of literature though not necessarily from a hockey-playing policewoman.

“I'll meet you in a moment,” Khattak said. “I'd like to see what the landscapers have done around the house.”

More secrets. Or a chance to size up Melanie Blessant on her own. She could take it either way.

She let herself into the house. They were too late to prevent Melanie from tinkering with the lock on the den again, but Rachel doubted she'd gained access. Drayton had fortified his study well. She was right: she found the woman mixing herself a drink in Drayton's kitchen.

“Ms. Blessant?” Rachel held up her ID. “I'm Sergeant Rachel Getty. Hadley told me you were here.”

Melanie Blessant snorted, choking on her drink. From the bleary-eyed look of her, it wasn't her first.

“Of course she did, the little rat. Anything to screw me over.”

Not the first words Rachel expected from a woman as lushly upholstered as Melanie Blessant. The photograph had given her some indication and Newhall's description of her dubious magic had confirmed it, but in the flesh the woman was something else.

She'd want to be thought of as enchantingly helpless. What else, with those pillowy lips and the white-blond hair that set off china-doll eyes? Not to mention the ridiculously high heels and deep-necked zebra print that hugged her curves. It was an excess of everything. Divine effusion in the form of expensive European scent. Shiny teeth, tiny bejeweled hands, perfectly set hair. Ropes of gold and diamonds blazed between her breasts, dangled from her ears and smothered her delicate wrists. Her makeup was subdued but still eye-catching: blue eyes rimmed with smoky liner, lips emphasized by semi-nude gloss, bronzer defining nature-defying cheekbones. Altogether too much woman, too much perfume, too much everything. Rachel's back ached at the thought of lugging around the other woman's double-barreled weight.

“I've come about the death of Mr. Drayton. I'll have to ask you for your key to his house.”

Melanie set her glass down unsteadily on the quartz countertop. Her flawless complexion hardened into a mask.

“I'm not giving you anything until I've seen his will. This was supposed to be
my
house. We were supposed to be married. Then the damn fool had to go and get himself killed.”

“Killed?” Rachel echoed.

Melanie waved her glass at the other woman.

“He fell, didn't he? He fell and he didn't even think about what that would do to me.” She yanked the bottle on the counter closer to her, possibly a plum brandy, and a potent one from the look of things.

“I'm very sorry for your loss, Ms. Blessant.”

“My loss?” Melanie snorted. “Forget my loss. What about that wedding he promised me? What about the money?”

With some effort, Rachel kept her expression impassive. Had Christopher Drayton really wanted to marry this woman? Granted, her breasts were enormous, but was that the only thing that counted with men anymore? How had he missed her mercenary nature? Or maybe he hadn't cared. Maybe a man in his late sixties was looking for nothing more than ready comfort or the sexual indulgence he had long since thought himself past.

Somehow that didn't figure with her notion of the Italian lessons. He hadn't only wanted Melanie. He'd cared for the girls as well.

Khattak tapped at the patio window. Rachel moved to let him in. She nodded at Melanie Blessant, hunched over Drayton's breakfast bar.

“Ms. Blessant, this is Inspector Khattak of Community Policing. He has some questions for you about Mr. Drayton.”

The woman ignored her, pouring herself another drink. And then she stopped cold when she saw Khattak's face reflected in the mirror that hung on the far wall of the breakfast nook. Without speaking, she performed a series of subtle motions: arranging the expression on her face, running a quick tongue over her lips, drawing in her breath to boost her décolletage, sucking in her waist. Straightening her back, she turned on her stool and extended a limp hand.

“Ms. Blessant,” he offered, as Rachel had, “I'm so sorry for your loss. I understand you and Mr. Drayton were very close.”

“Melanie, please,” she breathed. Rachel watched, amazed, as Melanie's blue eyes filled with tears. “It's been terrible,” she whispered. “I don't know how I'll manage without my sweet Chrissie.”

She glanced up at Khattak from beneath a thick fringe of lashes before continuing, “He was everything to me and my girls. My poor, sweet girls. They're absolutely devastated.”

Rachel choked back a snort of disgust. Check one for the ingenuous glamour-puss. Check two for the doting mother. Her performance went some distance toward explaining Hadley's naked hostility.

Melanie shifted onto her feet, putting an unsteady hand on Khattak's shoulder. Her fingers tested the flesh beneath his shirt. Even with her heels, she reached no higher than his collarbone, a fact she clearly delighted in.

“How can I help you, Inspector? I'd do anything for Chrissie.”

With a swift look at her shoes and a perfectly straight face, Khattak asked, “Shall we walk in the garden? It's a beautiful day for it.”

The shoes meant that Melanie would have no choice but to avail herself of the Inspector's strong arm. A sardonic grin on her face that Khattak ignored, Rachel followed them into the garden.

She listened absently as he asked the routine questions about Drayton's state of mind, the unexpectedness of his death. Melanie clung to his arm, her fingers gripping like talons. She was adamant in her denial of any suggestion of suicide. Not her Chrissie. Not when he had so much to live for. The wedding. The girls. The family they would become. He'd already prepared the house for them, both girls had their own rooms. And he'd given her a free hand in redecorating the master, paying the extravagant bills without batting an eyelash or asking her to account for any of it. If his little Mel was happy, Chrissie was happy.

She'd been planning a gala reception at the Royal York. She had a wedding planner on retainer, one of those artsy downtown photographers booked to do the pictures, florists, caterers, wedding announcements—they'd been so busy these past few weeks. Her Vera Wang gown was hanging in Chrissie's closet, along with the accompanying bridesmaids' gowns he'd simply insisted on buying for Hadley and Cassidy. It doesn't have to be Vera for them, she'd assured him. That was spoiling them too much, but Chrissie wouldn't hear of it.

“What's good enough for my Mel is good enough for her girls.”

She produced a sob on cue, turning her face into Khattak's shoulder. No tears now, Rachel noted with a wry twist to her mouth.

“Hadley said Mr. Drayton was against an elaborate wedding,” Rachel interjected helpfully. Well, pseudohelpfully, anyway.

She caught the look of malice Melanie shot her from the shelter of Khattak's shoulder.

“I was excited, can you blame me? I might have gone a little overboard. Chrissie was the type to prefer something smaller, like in his garden. He'd crown me with lilies, he said. He was romantic like that.” This time a genuine sob escaped her throat. She stared at Rachel defiantly, attempting to disown it. “That didn't mean he wasn't going to do what I wanted. Chrissie always did what I wanted. Besides, he knew I wouldn't move in with the girls until the wedding had taken place. I didn't want
Dennis
accusing me of negligence.” She spat the name of her ex-husband at them.

A negligence of the heart, perhaps.

Rachel glanced around the garden. Its vivid spires balanced against the scroll of waves that rolled and unrolled to a distant rhythm. It would have been a lovely place for a wedding, intimacy rendered sacred in these groves. In Melanie's place, she would have agreed to it. Except she could never see herself in Melanie's place. When she thought about what the future might hold, she saw only her work. Instead of the promise of love and companionship, there was the constant presence of loss. And work was the one thing that could make her forget, the one place she could do something that mattered, that healed. Even if Melanie didn't seem in need of healing.

Rachel did some quick calculations in her head. Landscaping, the Royal York, Vera Wang—it added up.

“Perhaps Mr. Drayton had some financial troubles. A wedding in his garden would have reduced the expense considerably.”

“No,” Melanie said petulantly. “He just didn't like fuss. He didn't even want to sit for our wedding photos.”

She patted down her dress, admiring herself, inviting them to admire her also, bathed in the glow of autumn light.

She pouted, an action that made Rachel think of an inquisitive puffer fish with its same moist oval of a mouth.

“I guess I don't blame him. Chrissie was nearly thirty years older than me. Maybe he didn't want everyone noticing.”

A possibility, Rachel conceded. Perhaps the contrast of so much plush flesh barely bounded by her clothes had made Drayton feel his years. The years that may have hinted at future inadequacies.

“Was Mr. Drayton in a rush to be married?”

Melanie released Khattak's arm and gave Rachel a purely woman-to-woman look. “He wasn't missing out on anything, if that's what you're asking.”