I dont know anything about it, she said.
As far as I can tell, Jill, you dont know anyone and youve never done anything. Why would Rojack make up a story about Wilfred Pomeroy?
Rojacks a creep.
Who could think up a name like Wilfred Pomeroy? I said.
Who cares about Pomeroy? Jill said. Why are you bothering me with all these creeps?
There were two well-groomed young women in tailored suits sitting on the next couch. They both wore very high heels and they both were sipping Gibsons. Everything about them said, We have MBAs.
This is called detecting, I said. Im trying to find out who murdered your stunt double, in the hopes that I can dissuade him, or her, from murdering you.
Hawk had leaned back in the couch and crossed his feet on the cocktail table. He held the single-malt scotch in both hands and rested it on a point above his solar plexus. He was examining the two MBAs with calm interest, the way one examines a painting. Her?
Could be a her, couldnt it?
Why would any woman want to kill me? I dont even know any women.
You know Wilfred Pomeroy?
No.
One of the MBAs had become aware of Hawks gaze. She kept looking back at him in covert ways: pretending to glance out the window, casually surveying the room. She murmured something to her friend, who leaned forward to put her drink down and peeked at Hawk from under her bangs. Hawk continued to examine them without any reaction to their behavior.
And Rojacks lying? I said.
Yes, Jill said. She had some wine.
But you have no idea why he would tell lies like this?
No.
I leaned back and rested my head against the back of the couch and drummed my fingers lightly on the tops of my thighs. Jill had some wine.
Hawk said, Hard to imagine why anyone want to harass her, isnt it?
I rolled my head a little to the left so I could look at Hawk.
Hard, I said.
Susan met her? Hawk said.
Yes.
She has motive, I said.
Jill was savoring her wine. She seemed capable of not hearing any conversation she didnt want to hear.
Are you a detective too? she said to Hawk. Hawks smile was radiant. He shook his head. Well, what do you do?
Mostly what I feel like, Hawk said.
But, I mean, do you protect people all the time? Again the big smile from Hawk.
Nope, he said. Sometimes Im on the other side.
Jill looked at me. I shrugged.
I didnt say he was nice. I said he was good.
I dont think either one of you is very nice, Jill said. Her voice was very small and girlish.
Maybe, Hawk said to me, we should can this job and protect those two.
He nodded at the MBAs. Jill looked at them.
I could show you some things that those two tight asses dont know between them.
Good to know, Hawk said.
Chapter 16
IN the morning I headed west on the Mass. Pike I with the sun gleaming off the new snow and the temperature in the low thirties. I felt good. Id looked up Waymark on the map and it was there. It was as close as Id gotten to a clue in this whole deal. For the first time since Id met Jill Joyce, I knew where I was going.
Waymark was in the Berkshire Hills, maybe two hours and twenty minutes west of Boston. There was a high gloss of rustic chic in the Berkshires, Tanglewood, Stockbridge, Williamstown Theater Festival; and there were enclaves of rural poverty where the official town mascot was probably a rat. Waymark was one of those. Driving into the east end of town after a long winding climb out of the valley, I saw a small house with a porch sagging across the length of the front and a discarded toilet bowl with a ratty Christmas tree stuck in it. In the next lot was a trailer, set on cinder blocks, its front yard fenced with bald tires, wet in the ground to form a series of half-circles, black against the snow. Two brown cows, their ribs showing, stood silently at a
wire fence and gazed at me as I rolled by, and in a yard next to a convenience store a milk goat was tethered to the wheel of a broken tractor.
Beside the convcnicnce store, which advertised Orange Crush on an old-time sign that rose vertically beside the door, was a tall narrow two-story house with roofing shingles for siding. The shingles were a I:ulcd mustard color. Like a lot of the houses out here, it had a full veranda across the front. The veranda roof sagged in the middle enough so that th snow melt dripped off in the middle and puddled in front of the broken front step. There was a sign don in black house paint on a piece of one-by-ten pin board. TUNNYS GRILL it said. In front, on what onc might have been a lawn, a couple of cars were parked nose in. I pulled in beside them. The space hadnt been cleared, merely rutted down by cars parkin and backing out. I could see where some of them ha gotten stuck and spun big hollows with their rea wheels. The dark earth below had been spun up ont the snow, mixing with exhaust soot and litter. nosed in beside a vintage 1970 Buick and parked an got out. From Tunnys Grill came the odor of winter vegetables cooking-cabbage maybe, or turnips. I walked across the buckling wooden porch and in through a hollow-core luan door that was probably intended to go on the closet in a housing develolment ranch. It was not meant to be an outside door and the veneer was blistering and the color had fade to a pale gray brown. When I pushed it open the coarse smell of cooking was more aggressive.