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“I…I don’t understand any of this. I was told that Laura Rutherford lived here until she was a hundred in 1998 and—”
Sullivan turned when a uniformed officer came out and called to him.
“Excuse me,” said Sullivan, standing up and joining the man for a minute. They had a whispered conversation that included several glances at Gibson, who was growing more uncomfortable by the minute. She looked at her watch and was expecting a call from her mother at any moment demanding to know where the hell she was.
After the officer went back into the house, Sullivan rejoined Gibson on the steps, his features grim but otherwise unreadable.
“Problem?” said Gibson.
Sullivan took out his cigarette lighter and clicked the top back and forth like his personal fidget toy.
“We called ProEye about you. They just got back to us.”
“And they confirmed that I worked for them.”
“Yes they did.”
“I sense abutcoming.”
“But they never asked you to come out here to do an inventory on this place. They never called you at all about Stormfield. They have no idea what it is or where it is.”
Gibson caught a breath and gaped. “Who did your people talk to?”
“Fellow named Zeb Brown. He said he was your immediate supervisor.”
“He is.”
“So care to explain the discrepancy? Because one of you seems to be lying. And I’d like to know which one it is.”
“I told you. I got a call from Arlene Robinson from the Albany office—”
“There is no Arlene Robinson in the Albany office. There is no Arlene Robinson that works at ProEye, period. So let me ask you again, what are you doing here?”
Gibson looked at the old, ugly building as a number of scenarios played out through her mind.
“I got a call from someone identifying herself as Arlene Robinson a couple of hours or so after I spoke with Zeb about an unrelated case. The woman said she worked with him.”
“And you just accepted that at face value?” He held up his phone. “It took me all of five minutes to look up the history of this place.”
“Look, she knew that Zeb and I had spoken earlier and she even had numerous details of our conversation. She pretty much quoted a line that Zeb said to me this morning. So I just assumed that she worked there because how else would she know all that? And she also knew I had kids. She said that since I was local, which meant she knew I lived around here, they wanted me to come over and do an inventory of this place. She said the owner, Rutger Novak, had run out on some big debts and the creditors wanted to salvage what they could. And that’s basically what ProEye does, so I had no reason to doubt the authenticity of the call or the nature of the assignment.”
“As I already said, Rutger Novak doesnotown Stormfield.”
“I didn’t know that. Then who does?”
“The man you found in the secret room, Daniel Pottinger.”
“Then you’ve identified him?”
“Preliminarily. He had a wallet with a driver’s license. Photo matched the deceased. We’ll confirm that, of course.”
“Who is he?”
“Rich, obviously. I’ve never met him. He came here and bought Stormfield from the Turners. That’s all I know.”
“How did Pottinger die?”
Sullivan shook his head. “Can’t get into that. We’re going to need your phone records to confirm you got a call. Maybe we could trace it,ifit actually happened.”
