A String of Beads (21 page)

Jane moved along the driveway to the garage. The big door was closed, but she could
see there was a man-size door on the side, so she tried the knob. It was locked, so
she took out her pocketknife, inserted the blade into the space between door and jamb
by the strike plate, pushed to depress the plunger, then pulled the door open. Inside
she could see the sleek, rounded, gleaming shape of a Porsche. She stepped in and
read the letters across the back: Carrera. She moved along the car, and noticed that
there was a slight cloudy residue on the rear side window where the dealer’s sticker
had been poorly scraped off. The car was new. It had to cost around eighty-five thousand.

Jane slipped out and relocked the door. As she stood there she saw a car slowing down
and moving to the right slightly as it passed the driveway, as though the driver were
planning to park. She moved around the garage to the back, and saw something else
that didn’t belong, a lump under a tarp. She lifted it. This time it was a Jet Ski,
bright and gleaming. She had no idea what those cost, since she detested them. She
covered the Jet Ski again and moved along the side of the garage to watch the street.

She caught the shape of a man moving from the street into the far side of the yard
where she had entered, and, as Jane had done, stepping along the high unruly hedge
to keep his silhouette shaded by its dark opaque shape. Jane prepared to run. The
man was on the side of the yard she had come from, and that put him between her and
her car. If she went, she would have to go left for a distance, sneak across the road
into one of the yards, and run along the backs of the houses and out to the street
where her car was parked.

She pulled her black baseball cap down tight on her head with the brim low on her
forehead to shield her eyes from moonlight and the faint light pollution from neon
signs and distant streetlamps. She judged where the new man must be and stared to
the side of that spot until she saw him move into it. He stood perfectly still for
a minute or more, and then began to move again.

Jane stayed still. This man was trouble. He knew how to move in the dark without being
easily detected. He took a few silent steps, then stopped and waited. He knew that
if someone had heard him or sensed movement, then he must wait until the opponent’s
mind had determined that there was nothing there—the impression must have been false
or self-generated or unthreatening, because there had not been another to make into
a pattern.

He stepped away from the hedge to the side of the house. As he did, the light from
the dining room window illuminated him for a second. He was tall, thin, almost stork-like,
with very short blond hair.
Hello, Ike.
It was the man who had been tracking her and Jimmy in Allegheny, Technical Sergeant
Isaac Lloyd, State Police Bureau of Criminal Investigation. He didn’t stop at the
window for long, because in a moment Jane saw him appear at the rear corner of the
house. She pulled back her head and crouched on the opposite side of the garage as
he kept coming. She heard him open the smaller door of the garage and step inside.

Jane stood and moved quietly up the driveway, across the street into the yard of the
house opposite Slawicky’s. She walked along behind it to the street, stayed low as
she came around the trunk of her car and into the driver’s seat, slipped the key in,
and started the engine.

As she drove along Iroquois Street away from Caledonia, she thought about her visit
to Slawicky’s. Apparently what Sergeant Lloyd had been doing since he had lost the
trail of Jimmy Sanders in the Alleghenies was looking more closely at the people who
had some connection to the murder. Walter Slawicky, the man who had come forward to
report that he’d sold Jimmy the murder weapon, seemed to have caught his attention.
Sergeant Lloyd had just seen what she had—that the man who had implicated Jimmy Sanders
in the murder seemed to have come into some money.

15

C
helsea Schnell sat in the passenger seat of the Range Rover beside Daniel Crane, looking
out the windshield most of the time but taking an occasional glance at him when she
was sure her eyes wouldn’t meet his. He had taken her to the Escarpment tonight. It
was even better than she had imagined it would be. The restaurant was built on a flat
limestone shelf high above the Niagara Gorge in Lewiston. After the river washed over
the falls, it ran onward through another seven miles of rapids and swift water to
Lake Ontario. The river had dug a steep canyon there, three hundred feet below the
restaurant’s patio, where she and Dan had sat for dinner on this warm summer evening.
They had arrived at seven, when there was still plenty of daylight, and finished by
candlelight three hours later.

The quality of the food and wine had taken her off guard. She had only agreed to go
with him because he had kept asking and asking, and she had run out of excuses. She
hadn’t had the mental and emotional energy to brush him off again. Each of his previous
invitations had been to very nice places, but when he had offered the Escarpment,
she had finally given in. She had always wished that Nick would take her to a place
like the Escarpment just once. No, she admitted to herself, just once wouldn’t have
been what she wanted. Once she’d been there, she would have wanted to come on special
times, maybe birthdays or anniversaries. The thought of an anniversary made her feel
lonely and bereft, so she decided to distract herself.

She said, “That was such a wonderful restaurant, Dan. Thank you so much for taking
me.”

“You’re welcome,” he said. “It was my pleasure.”

She waited a few seconds, but he didn’t add anything, so she spoke again. “You were
right that I should get out of the house once in a while.”

“I knew you would like it,” he said. “You know another place that’s really nice? There’s
a great restaurant—and I mean great—right outside of Rochester, in Pittsford. It’s
been written up in a lot of food magazines. It’s where famous people go when they
come to Rochester.”

“What’s it called?”
What famous people ever went to Rochester?

“It’s called the Old Canal Inn. It’s built on the site of an eighteenth-century hotel.
The road and the hotel were there before the Erie Canal, but I guess they want people
to know it’s beside the canal. I’ll take you there.”

“I wasn’t hinting to make you treat me again. I was just curious,” she said. “After
the meal we had tonight, I can’t even think about food again for a few days.”

“I liked the Escarpment too,” said Crane. “I’ve always liked it, but tonight it was
at its best. It’s such a beautiful view anyway, but having you across the table made
it even more beautiful.” He watched her for a reaction, but didn’t detect one, so
he persisted. “I meant that, you know.”

Chelsea could feel herself getting panicky. He was trying to be nice, but being with
him made the interior of the car seem suddenly smaller. She felt an impulse to open
the car door and get out, but the car was moving. She held her discomfort in check.
“You shouldn’t be such a kiss ass. People will think you’re trying to make fools of
them.”

“Me?” said Crane. “I’d never do that to you. I do think you’re beautiful. I’m sure
you can see that for yourself in the mirror every day, but it doesn’t hurt you to
know that other people appreciate you.” He grinned. “You’re raising the property values
around here, so it’s good for everybody.”

“Always glad to help the real estate people,” she said. “Let’s talk about something
else. You’ve been careful all through dinner not to talk about work. So tell me about
your day at work. How was it?”

“Good,” he said. “Business is always good. Whenever the economy starts looking up,
people buy too much and don’t have anyplace to put the excess but storage. When the
economy goes down again, they lose their big fancy homes and have to put
all
of it in storage.”

“So they have to come to you no matter what.”

“The smart ones don’t, but they don’t matter. There are so few of them that they’re
not a big share of the market. How about your job? Are you back at work yet?”

“Not yet,” she said. “I was thinking of going back this week, but my mother asked
me to go on a little trip with her, so I told the bank I wasn’t ready. She was going
to fly to Denver to help my cousin Amelia with her new baby, and she wanted me to
go with her. At the last minute I couldn’t face it. I realized it would have been
the same thing that kept me from going back to work—lots of questions about Nick and
the investigation and what I feel, and people saying it’s too bad we weren’t married,
because then there would be insurance. It would be even worse in Denver. I’d edge
out Amelia and her baby for attention and everybody would feel bad for me instead
of good for her. I’d rather be around people who have gotten tired of talking about
it.”

“It’s not that we’re tired of talking about it. We just—”

“I am,” she said. “I should probably be ashamed of that, but it’s how I feel. I don’t
want to go through the whole story over and over again for a bunch of new people,
and relive everything to catch them up.”

“I understand,” said Crane. “You can visit your Denver relatives another time after
it’s all over.”

She glared at him, coiling herself for a fight. Nick’s murder wasn’t ever going to
be over. Death wasn’t a temporary setback. Her life had been marked forever. Saying
that sometime it was all going to fade away was stupid. As the seconds passed she
watched his face. He was trying so hard, and he had just made a small mistake trying
to comfort her. He didn’t deserve a hysterical tirade from the same woman he had just
bought the most expensive dinner in Western New York and tried to flatter and distract
for over three hours. “It’s true,” she said. “Denver will still be there when I’m
ready.” She noticed that he didn’t make the turn at Telephone Road. “I think you just
went past my turn.”

“Don’t worry,” he said. “We’ll get you there. Just a brief detour.” He kept driving,
his eyes on the road. He seemed to be speeding up.

Chelsea didn’t like the way he avoided looking at her, and she didn’t like it that
he had not asked if she minded taking a detour. She felt manipulated and trapped.
But she was determined to remain silent, and give him enough time to realize she was
irritated. Maybe then he would get around to discussing why she felt that way. The
silence went on, and she began to suspect that she was more uncomfortable with silence
than he was. “So what’s with the detour?”

“I just have to stop at my place for a minute before I swing back your way. I left
some papers at home that have to be in the office in the morning, and that’s in the
direction of your place, so I can drop them off on my way home from there. I’m sorry
to do this, but it’s payroll stuff, and it’ll save me a long trip later.”

She ran his excuse through her mind and listened to the tone of his voice for evidence
that he was lying to get her alone in a place where he could make an unwelcome move
that would only cause them both embarrassment. She couldn’t detect anything. In penance
for her suspicion she was inclined to be agreeable about this. He could just as easily
have made whatever misguided advance he’d wanted at her house. She lived there alone
now, and was always alone when he came to visit or pick her up.

Crane turned a corner onto a knot of smaller roads, and she knew that they were in
the space somewhere between the Country Club of Buffalo and the Park Country Club
because she’d once worked a night job for a caterer, but she had lost her sense of
exact location from being turned around a couple of times. The houses were all big
now, most of them long and low, with huge lawns and tall trees, all at the ends of
long driveways marked by rural mailboxes on posts, but then curving up to modern houses.

Chelsea had always hated the mailbox where she and Nick had lived, because it epitomized
for her the fact that she and Nick lived out in the sticks. She had to trudge all
the way down the gravel drive in rain or snow to retrieve a few bills and a pile of
garish ads for things she wouldn’t buy in a million years. But in this neighborhood,
the mailboxes at the ends of long driveways symbolized the ownership of a big house
on a vast piece of land.

Daniel Crane drove along the road, and then turned right into one of the driveways.
The surface looked like cobblestones, but she knew that the stones must be some modern
imitation, partly because every stone was identical and perfectly level. As he drove
along the driveway’s big curve, she caught herself trying to look ahead of the sweeping
headlights to see what came next. First thick shrubbery for privacy from the road,
then neat plantings of bright dahlias, hydrangeas, and rock roses, then the trunks
of tall pine trees, and then a lawn like a golf course. The house itself was one story,
a sprawling, plain dark brown building that she only now realized was natural wood.
There was a narrow opening between wings of the house, and through it she could see
a Japanese garden that seemed to be surrounded by glass.

Crane stopped the SUV in front of the entrance, where she could see the garden beyond
the opening by the dim light coming from the house’s interior through the glass wall.
“Just give me a few minutes.” He undid his seat belt and let it retract.

“Beautiful house,” Chelsea said.

He turned to look at her. “Want to take a look inside? I feel weird leaving you sitting
out here alone.”

She hesitated, thinking about sitting here alone in the dark while he went inside.
“Sure,” she said. She unlatched her seat belt and put her hand on the door handle,
but he was there opening the door before she could go anywhere, offering her his hand.

She was glad she’d taken it when she stepped to the pavement. Her high heels were
uncertain and a little wobbly on the stone driveway. She followed him as he opened
the front door and punched in the alarm code on the keypad on the wall. He flipped
a few switches and various parts of the house lit up.

The right side of the living room was the glass wall she had glimpsed from the front.
The light out there was from small spotlights along the edge of the roof, and it showed
her a big boulder with water trickling from a natural depression at the top, down
its side into a tiny pond and recycling to flow down continuously. There was a bed
of fine gravel raked into patterns to circle dark volcanic-looking boulders in a seemingly
random arrangement, with a few twisted evergreen shrubs. A simple wooden bench beside
the garden was where she could imagine herself sitting on a warm day reading.

Recessed lights in the living room ceiling lit floor-to-­ceiling bookcases built into
one wall filled with books and the occasional small sculpture or ceramic. Others threw
softer beams of light on a semicircular arc of couches arranged as a conversation
area around a low, round table.

But Crane was already across the room and disappearing under an arch into a wide gallery.
“Make yourself at home,” he called over his shoulder. Chelsea lost sight of him, but
had the impression that he turned to the right somewhere on his walk, and then had
the sense that his office must overlook the Japanese garden from the side.

She walked across the living room, looked through a matching arch that seemed to end
in the kitchen, where she could see gleaming stainless steel, and a couple of unlit
rooms that opened on either side of that gallery.

Chelsea stood still and stared at everything, shocked. The house looked like it belonged
to a celebrity who had incredibly sophisticated taste. The pictures on the white walls
were mostly not of anything, just beautiful colors smeared or dribbled or painted
on in stripes with so many layers that they seemed to be deep enough to fall into.
There were smaller ones, drawings or watercolors, mostly of girls, a few of them just
girls’ faces or girls not naked. She loved this house. It looked like something in
a magazine.

She walked along the bookcases identifying tall art books, architecture books, thick
collections of essays about opera, classical music, or philosophy. She had never imagined
Dan Crane was interested in any of these topics. She had an urge to take some of the
books down and look at them, but she could see that they had been arranged so precisely
that he would know if she disturbed one, and might not like it.

She heard a door closing somewhere in the distance, and then Dan’s shoes on the hardwood
floor. She looked toward the arch and saw him reappear, carrying a half-inch-thin
soft leather briefcase. “This house is gorgeous, Daniel.”

He tossed his briefcase on the nearest couch and said, “Come on. I’ll give you a quick
tour.”

“Can we start in the kitchen?”

He looked surprised. “Sure. This way.”

The kitchen was exactly as she had guessed—huge and airy, with granite counters, a
big island with sinks and overhead ventilation hood. There was a Sub-Zero refrigerator,
a nine-burner stove, a double oven. Everything was gleaming and spotless. She was
sure Dan Crane never cooked here, but someone certainly could. He led her out and
opened a door on the corridor, and she saw a big television screen and some identical
leather chairs with end tables beside each of them. “Screening room.”

As she went with him from room to room she couldn’t help wondering what it would be
like to live here. The woman who had this house would live with Daniel Crane, of course,
and that wasn’t something that appealed to her at first thought, but tonight she had
begun to think that she had judged him too soon. She had been aware from the beginning
that he had money. He owned the company where Nick had worked, so obviously he’d have
more money than Nick. What she hadn’t known before was that he had such good taste,
such a rich imagination, such an appreciation for beauty. He had a lively inner life
that she had never suspected.