Then she saw the speedboat out on the bay, Robert Weingart at the wheel, Kermit being towed on skis in the wake.
“You lied,” she said.
“About what?”
“You told Miss Jewel to tell me they were away.”
“They were. Out on the boat. That’s what ‘away’ means. They weren’t here.”
“You had me fooled for a minute, Mr. Abelard,” she said. “I thought you might be a genuinely wicked man. Instead, you’re simply a cheap liar. Excuse me, sir, but you excite an emotion in me that I can only express as yuck.”
She began walking across the bridge, her purse on her shoulder, her dress swaying on the backs of her thighs, her shoes loud on the planks. For a moment she thought she could feel the eyes of Timothy Abelard burrowing into her back; then she went around a bend in the road bordered on each side by undergrowth and thick stands of timber. A solitary blue heron glided above her, its wings stenciled against the sky. It turned in a wide arc and landed in the shallows of a green pond that resembled a giant teardrop. Through the trees she could see it pecking at its feathers, unconcerned about her presence or the sound of her footfalls on the road or the motorboat with Robert Weingart at the wheel streaking across the bay. Somehow the sight of the bird and its ability to find the place it needed to be seemed to contain a lesson that perhaps she had forgotten. In moments, the easy rhythm of walking and the wind bending the gum trees and the slash pines had erased the exchange with Timothy Abelard from her mind, and she concentrated on trying to get service on her cell phone.
ALAFAIR WAS STILL up when Molly and I got home from the movie theater in Lafayette. She told us what had happened on the Abelards’ island.
“Abelard didn’t send a car to take you home?” I said.
“No,” she said.
“You had to walk all the way to the highway to get a cab?” I said.
“It wasn’t that far.” She was sitting at the breakfast table in the kitchen, her shoes off, a bowl of ice cream in front of her.
“Why didn’t you call me?”
“Because I didn’t want to take you away from your evening out. Because it’s not a big deal.”
I went to the telephone on the counter and picked up the receiver, then set it down again. “I suspect Abelard’s number is unlisted. Do you have it?”
“He’s just an old man. Leave him alone,” she said.
“Don’t underestimate him.”
“He’s pathetic. You didn’t see him.”
“You know the term ‘the banality of evil’? When Adolf Eichmann was captured by Israeli commandos, he was working as a chrome polisher in an automobile plant, a guy who helped send six million people to their deaths.”
“Mr. Abelard is a shriveled-up worm and should be treated as nothing
less and nothing more,” she replied. “Put it in neutral, big guy.”
“Listen to Dave, Alafair,” Molly said. “Timothy Abelard bought politicians and the law most of his life. No one is sure what kinds of crimes he may have committed. If he had you brought out to his island, it may have been for a purpose you don’t want to think about.”
Alafair set down her spoon on a napkin and looked at it. She rubbed her temple and picked up her bowl of ice cream and placed it inside the freezer. “He showed me some pictures that were taken years ago in the Canadian Rockies. In one of them, he was sitting at a table with a man who looked like Robert Weingart. Except Mr. Abelard looked twenty years younger in the photo, and Robert looked like he does today.”
“Weingart has had plastic surgery. There’s no telling how old he is,” I said. “I’ve pulled his jacket in three states. He’s been giving different birth years throughout his entire criminal career.”
“You think Mr. Abelard showed me that photo by mistake, or he had an agenda?” she asked.
“I think he had one thing only on his mind, Alafair,” I said.
“I want to take another shower,” she said.
I went to the refrigerator and took Alafair’s bowl of ice cream out of the freezer as well as an unopened half gallon of French vanilla, then got a jar of blackberries from down below and placed two more bowls on the counter. “A pox on the Abelards and a pox on Robert Weingart,” I said. “Bring Tripod and Snuggs inside, and bring in their bowls, too.”
“Dave, do you think Timothy Abelard killed those girls?” Alafair asked.
“Do I think he’s capable of it?” I said. “I’m not sure. Mr. Abelard is a shadow, not a presence. I don’t think he’s like the rest of us. But I have no idea what or who he is.”