Ice Cap (25 page)

“Can I jump out of this but keep it running, and go to another site?” I yelled to Randall, who was off in some other dark corner of the shop's back room.

He came over to me and tapped a few keys, then showed me how to get back again when I was ready. I went into Southampton Town's property records and fished around the tax maps until I had Tad's estate and the immediately adjacent properties, something I'd seen before, back when I was helping him torment his neighbors.

It took me a bit to figure out how to print it out, but I couldn't bear to bother Randall again. Now with the borders and existing structures delineated, I confirmed the location of the staff house and the storage barn. That was just the start, however. Using the satellite image, I drew the round Hamburger Hill on the tax map, along with two other large artificial mounds—one a rough square, the other S-shaped, like a fat snake. All were festooned with Tad's madcap sculptures, which were impossible to identify precisely looking down on them from above. Except for the big sprinkler on Hamburger Hill, which looked just like a sprinkler you'd have in your backyard, with three spokes sticking out from a round stand that looked far more uniform and refined from that distance.

But there was something missing, or I just couldn't make it out. I gave in and called Randall again.

“Can you identify other buildings,” I pointed to the screen, “within these borders,” and I pointed to the tax map.

He shooed me out of the chair and started working the controls, making me feel like we were in a flying saucer zinging above the property. He explained that the winter weather was both a boon and a curse. The leaves off the trees meant we could see under the canopy, but the dense snow cover smoothed out variation on the surface and hardened up shadows, reducing depth of field. I acknowledged all that without really knowing what he was talking about.

“I think that's it,” he finally said, pointing to a blob on the screen. He continued to play with the resolution until there was no more resolving to be had. I looked at it with skepticism and squinted eyes. But then, magically, it was there.

“Don't tell me those little black dots are logs fallen off the pile,” I said.

“That's nothing. The NSA satellites can see a zit on the end of your nose.”

This time I shoved him out of the command chair and took over the controls. I zoomed back out.

“Son of a bitch,” I said, pointing at the blob. “Do you see what I see?”

He leaned over me, his mass a little intimidating, his smell masculine and sweetly foreign at the same time.

“I don't.”

“Here's the staff house,” I said. “Here's the woodshed. Now, here's Hamburger Hill. What do you see, or don't see?”

“They aren't in a row?” he asked.

“Hardly. They represent points on a triangle. If Franco was going to see how Tad was doing with the woodshed, why travel forty-five degrees from the destination to get there? Focus in on the woodshed. What else do you see?”

Randall took over the controls and zoomed in on the rectangular building.

“The roof,” he said. “It's crinkly.”

“Which means what?”

“It's caved in.”

“Why has everybody missed this?” I asked. “Why did I miss it?”

“Because it was cold and snowy, and thus too difficult to walk the scene, and even if it wasn't, assumptions trip you up every time,” said Randall.

“Ain't that the truth.”

I spun around in the chair and looked up at him, miles above me. “Didn't you tell me this was all recorded and you could go back about a year and look? Can I go back to before Tad was killed, and the days after?”

He stared at me with that damn Indigenous Peoples' poker face. I wanted to tell him, Don't you know that American women of European origin can't survive without immediate emotional feedback? Do you think virtual elves are any different? Do you want to live your whole life alone in a cave?

“You can't, but I can, though not without asking,” he said. “I'm sure my friend will give me the links. It's very easy on his end. Everything's time-stamped. Write down the dates and times, and I'll give him a shout.”

I wrote down a wish list, telling Randall I would be most happy with the dates I'd circled and starred. He watched me in silence.

“I admire your persistence,” he said, taking the note. “I think I tend to give up at the first hint of resistance. Maybe that's why I spend so much time alone in the dark.”

I pretended that he hadn't read my mind and went back to studying the Buczek compound. I wondered, if Franco wasn't heading for the woodshed when he tripped over Tad's body, where was he heading? Granted, it was in the middle of a raging blizzard, but Franco had worked there long enough to know the basic lay of the land.

I traced the line from the staff house to Hamburger Hill, then extended it forward in a straight line. The trajectory took me past the pergola, which was down the hill, and directly into another odd lump on the satellite image, one hard against the property line with the neighbors to the southeast. I zoomed in and saw what I thought I saw, though I needed Randall for confirmation.

“It's another building,” he said, staring at the screen. “A little smaller than the woodshed, bigger than a bread box. You can mark it as a waypoint on your smartphone, which you can use to walk there from the road. It's only about fifty yards in. Though you might need snowshoes if this damn weather keeps up.”

“Sure,” I said. “Why not. You're amazing. Did you contact Urszula?”

Another long, suspenseful silence.

“I did,” he said. “She's a stimulating person. Thank you.”

“Don't mean to pry.”

“Yes you do.”

“Does she know you're not a dwarf? Not that there's anything wrong with dwarfs.”

“She knows my height. But I didn't tell her I'm red, white, and black.”

“Who cares about that? You're a good-looking man. Send a pic. Did she send you hers?”

“I'm glad you don't want to pry,” he said.

“What does she look like? Don't you want to know?”

“She looks like her avatar. Ears are just a little less pointy.”

I slapped him on the shoulder.

“Wow, that means she's really pretty. I knew it,” I said. “Did she tell you where she lives? New Britain, Connecticut. A hop, skip, and a jump.”

“Four and a half hours by ferry. Less than that if you drive, without traffic.”

“Could be a lot worse.”

“You missed the part about Native Americans being very private, dignified people?”

“Pshaw,” I said, my favorite word ever since I heard it from Saline Swaitkowski Lumsden, former medical student and psychiatric nurse. Proper preparation for a career in domestic service in the Buczek household?

*   *   *

I hadn't meant to call on Paulina again, but given the conversation with Saline after the funeral, it seemed essential. So as soon as I left Randall's, I headed directly for her condo. Even if I was a person who called ahead, it wouldn't have been necessary. Paulina was a homebody, and who wouldn't be with such a stunning home to be a body in?

“Jacqueline, what a pleasure,” she said, though not too convincingly. I stood on her doorstep trying to look cold and in need of immediate shelter. After a brief hesitation, she let me in.

“Sorry to bother you again, Paulina.” I wasn't. “But some new stuff came up and you're the only person who has the intelligence to help me.”

This was a manipulative thing to say, given the inflated regard she had for her own brainpower. That I was using the word “intelligence” to mean hidden information meant I wasn't lying, though that probably wouldn't stand up under divine judgment.

I sat down in a chair on the other side of the room from the Clock before she had a chance to seat me. I pulled off my coat and tried to look fixed in place. She was forced to turn another battleship of a living room chair about forty degrees so we could talk to each other without spraining our necks.

“Wasn't it a beautiful service?” Paulina said before I had a chance to start grilling her.

“It was. I love Father Dent.”

“As a priest,” she said. Just making sure.

I refused to dignify that.

“You must have been pleased with the turnout,” I said.

She obviously was. She leaned in toward me the way Saline did to deliver intimate information in a secretive way, even though we were the only people in the room.

“Did you see that the Chicago Buczeks were there? Flew into Islip. Five of them. They've done very well. Limousine service. Not as well as Tad, of course. They don't get along with the Long Island Buczeks, all of us with dirt under our nails and bad table manners.”

“But it's nice they came to pay their respects,” I said, hoping to keep things on an even keel.

“I suppose,” said Paulina.

“I wanted to ask you about Saline's medical-school career,” I said before the conversation trotted off in another direction. “What happened?”

Paulina adjusted her perch on the chair, which looked impossibly uncomfortable. Which it obviously was. This gave me some perverse pleasure watching her try to look otherwise.

“Who told you about that?” she asked.

“She did.”

“Really.”

Paulina looked offended that Saline had shared a key piece of suppressed information without her permission.

“Everyone knew the Swaitkowskis were a bunch of smartypants, including Papa, who could have been anything he wanted to but chose to take over the farm. He'd say, ‘You can't walk away from a hundred years of tradition.'”

“Sounds like Saline gave it a try.”

Paulina scrunched around in her seat and pulled at the hem of her skirt, which was at least a size too small.

“Papa's father didn't believe in educating girls. He said that every woman who graduated from college meant one less job for a man. This wouldn't be a very popular thing to say in these times.” You got that right, I thought. “So she made it as far as she could on scholarships, first to SUNY Kings County, where she majored in agriculture, which was something her father at least understood. Then to New Amsterdam, which really set off a bomb. Even then, medical school was very expensive. Papa tried to help, but he was a young man just starting out with me and little Peter, darling boy.”

The moment quivered over the vast empty pain that was our missing Pete, but she recovered just in time and went on. She leaned toward me again and lowered her voice, telegraphing the nature of what was to come.

“But then halfway through medical school, she moved back in with Papa's parents and got into bed and stayed there for an entire year. One whole year, with the shades pulled, and she didn't even eat, just drank fruit juice. I tried to get her to talk to me, but she'd just lie there. Her mother told me it was a nervous breakdown. Papa's mother died during all this, and she still didn't stir. She was such a big, strong girl, I thought she was going to wither away.”

“That's horrible,” I said. “How did she recover?”

Paulina looked around the muddled room for the right answer.

“I'm not sure. She just gradually went from eating to moving around the house to going outside. I was so busy myself in those days that I didn't keep that well in touch. Papa's father didn't know what to do with her, and with the mother gone, he had his hands full with the farm. The only thing I remember is her going to work at Tad's place, where she's been ever since.”

“Really.”

Paulina nodded. “You bet. It was a big farm back then, and he had a mess of hands. She was just one of a dozen. Wasn't till he built the big house that she started in with the housekeeping. Cooked, cleaned, did all that for Tad, who was a confirmed bachelor.”

“She told me she trained to be a psychiatric nurse,” I said.

Paulina looked amused.

“Never got to use it. Though it must've come in handy with this family,” she said.

She got up from her uncomfortable chair and walked over to a big vase sitting on the floor. It looked like it had been poured into place, its glossy sheen and gaudy colors creating a tower of gelatinous concretions. She turned it a half turn, then went back to her seat.

“There we are,” she said. “Just right.”

“Thanks for doing that,” I said. “It was bothering the heck out of me. So when did Freddy appear on the scene?”

“I don't remember, but it has to be about ten years ago, long after Saline started at Tad's. He was a hand on the farm, before it was mostly sold off. Wild drunk, was the story, but Saline made him give it up as a condition of marriage. Turned him into a better man.”

She looked around the room again, in search of irregularities only she could detect.

“And she never took to her bed again?” I asked.

Paulina tried to recall.

“If she did, I'd have known it. We talk, you know.”

Oh, yeah, I thought, you do indeed.

“How did she feel when Tad brought Zina back from Poland?” I asked. “Must have been hard after running the house all those years.”

Paulina lit up with what you could only call an evil grin.

“The first he says to Zina after they walk in the door, was something like, ‘This here's Saline. She runs this place. That ain't changing. You got issues with her, you talk to me.' Can you believe it? Though it was still a little hard, having another person to clean up after.”

And I wondered how hard it was without Tad there to discuss any issues.

“Did she ever tell you what happened the night Tad was killed? Did she or Freddy have an opinion?”

This put Paulina in an awkward situation. Two forces pulling her in opposite directions: protecting things said in confidence, and the irresistible urge to spill the beans. It was a short fight.