Nelson DeMille - Plum Island

She looked at me as if I'd lost my mind, then said, " Fredric ? He's not capable of violence of any sort."

"How do you know?"

She smiled and replied, "God knows, I gave him enough reason to take a swing at me." She added, "He just wasn't physical. He was in total control of his temper and his emotions. And why would he want to kill Tom and Judy Gordon?"

"I don't know. I don't even know why they were killed. Do you?"

She didn't reply for a second, then said, "Maybe drugs."

"Why do you think that?"

"Well… Fredric was concerned about them. They did coke."

"He told you that?"

"Yes."

Interesting. Especially since Fredric never mentioned it to me, and since there wasn't a grain of truth in it. I know what a cokehead looks and acts like, and the Gordons weren't cokeheads. So why would Tobin pin that on them? I asked her, "When did he tell you this?"

"Not long ago. A few months ago. He said they came to him and wanted to know if he wanted to score some good stuff. They dealt to support their habit."

"You believe that?"

She shrugged. "Could be."

"Okay… back to Mr. Tobin's relationship with the Gordons. You think he was the one who sought them out and cultivated the relationship."

"It seemed that way. I know in the nine months I was with him, he'd been on the phone with them a lot, and he rarely had a party without inviting them."

I thought about this. Certainly this didn't square with what Mr. Tobin had told me. I asked Ms. Whitestone, "What then was Mr. Tobm's attraction to the Gordons?"

"I don't know. Though I do know that he made it seem to everyone that it was the other way around. Funny thing is that the Gordons seemed to go along with it, as if they were honored to be in Fredric's company. Yet, when it was just the four of us a few times, you could see they considered themselves his equals. You understand?"

"Yes. But why were they playacting?"

Again, she shrugged. "Who knows?" She looked at me a moment, then said, "It was almost as if the Gordons were blackmailing Fredric. Like they had something on him. In public, he was the big cheese. In private, Tom and Judy were pretty familiar with him."

Blackmail . I let that percolate for a good half minute.

Emma Whitestone said, "I'm only guessing. Speculating. I'm not being vindictive or anything. I had a good time with Fredric, and I liked him, but I wasn't hurt when he broke it off."

"Okay." I looked at her, and we made eye contact. I asked her, "Have you spoken to Fredric since the murder?"

"Yes, yesterday morning. He called."

"What did he say?"

"Nothing more than anyone else was saying. Standard stuff."

We went into some detail about that phone conversation, and indeed, it seemed standard and pro forma.

I asked her, "Has he spoken to you today?"

"No."

"I visited him this morning.'

"Did you? Why?"

"I don't know."

"You don't know why you're here, either."

"Right." I didn't want to explain that I was out of potential witnesses after Plum Island and the Murphys and that I was off the job and had to interview people that the county PD would not think to interview. I wasn't exactly scraping the bottom of the barrel, but I was sort of working the edge of the crowd. I asked her, "Do you know any of the Gordons' friends?"

"I didn't really travel in the same circles except for when we were with Fredric. And then it was his friends."

"Wasn't Chief Maxwell a friend of theirs?"

"I think so. I could never understand that relationship any more than I could understand the Gordons' relationship with Fredric."

"I seem to be having trouble finding friends of the Gordons."

"From what I can gather, all their friends are Plum Island people. That's not so unusual. I told you — they're a tight-knit group." She added, "You'd be better off looking there than around here."

"Probably."

She asked me, "What did you think of Fredric?"

"A delightful man. I enjoyed his company." Which was true. But now that I knew he'd popped Ms. Whitestone here, I was more convinced than ever that there was no sexual justice in the world. I added, "Beady eyes."

"Shifty, too."

"Right." I said to her, "Could I ask a favor of you?"

"You can ask."

"Would you not tell him of our conversation?"

"I won't go into details. But I'll tell him we spoke." She added, "I don't lie. But I can keep things to myself."

"That's all I ask."

In Manhattan, there are not that many of these interlocking relationships as there are here. I had to keep this in mind, and I had to deal with it, and I had to adjust my style accordingly. But I'm bright and I can do that. On that subject, I asked Emma Whitestone, "I assume you know Chief Maxwell."

"Who doesn't?"

"Did you ever date him?"

"No. But he's asked."

"You don't like cops?"

She laughed. She wiggled her toes again and crossed her legs again. My goodness.

We went round and round for the next fifteen minutes or so, and Emma Whitestone had a lot of gossip, a lot of insights into people, though not much of it seemed to relate to the case. The problem was that I still didn't know what I was doing here, but it was nice being here. I should say, though, that I was a gentleman. To hit on a female officer is okay because as a peer, she can tell you to take a hike. However, with civilians, especially ones who might wind up in front of the DA, you had to be careful. You didn't want to compromise yourself or the witness. Nevertheless, I was interested.

No, I'm not fickle. I was still pining for Beth. I asked Ms. Whitestone, "Can I use your phone?"

"Sure. Right in there."

I went into an adjoining room, which was like going from the nineteenth century into the twentieth. This was the office suite of the historical society, complete with modern office furniture, file cabinets, copy machine, and so forth. I used a phone on one of the desks and called my answering machine. There was one message. A male voice said, "Detective Corey, this is Detective Collins of the Suffolk County Police. Detective Penrose asked me to call you. She's in a lengthy conference. She says she can't meet you this afternoon, and she'll call you tonight or tomorrow." End of message. I hung up and looked around the office. Under one of the desks was a pair of leather thongs, most probably Ms. Whitestone's.

I went back to the library, but I didn't sit down.

Emma Whitestone looked at me and asked, "Anything wrong?"

"No. Where were we?"

"I don't know."

I looked at my watch, then asked her, "Can we finish this over lunch?"

"Sure." She stood. "First I'll give you a tour of our house."

And she did. Room by room. Most of the upstairs was used for offices, storage, exhibits, and archives, but there were two bedrooms decorated in ye olde. One, according to Emma, was mid-seventeen hundreds, and the other was contemporary with the house, mid-eighteen hundreds. She said, "The house was built by a sea merchant who made his fortune in South America."

"Cocaine?"

"No, silly. Semiprecious stones from Brazil. Captain Samuel Farnsworth."

I pushed down on the lumpy bed. "Do you nap here?"

She smiled. "Sometimes. It's a feather mattress."

"Osprey feathers?"

"Could be. They used to be all over."

"They're making a big comeback.",

"Everything's making a big comeback. Damned deer devoured my rhododendrons." She led me out of the bedroom and said, "You wanted to see the archives."

"Yes."

She showed me into what had probably been a good-sized bedroom, and which was now filled with file cabinets, shelves, and a long oak table. She said, "We have original books and documents going back as far as the mid-sixteen hundreds. Deeds, letters, wills, legal decisions, sermons, army orders, ships' manifests and logs. Some of it is fascinating."