Under a Gilded Moon(82)
A picture that now included, he knew, the word killer. Coupled with his own face.
Chapter 34
Kerry saw the crack in the door behind her close shut just as the string quartet at the far end of the banquet hall slid into “Silent Night.” She knew without fully turning her head that little Nico would no longer be in the corner. That the Italians had run. Head cocking toward the departing footsteps, Cedric whined and lifted one muddy paw as if to ask a question.
Pinkerton. The word buzzed over the table. The nerve of the man.
You know the Pinkertons stopped Jesse James.
Yes, and we’ve used them ourselves. Sniff out the source of a strike better than any bloodhound.
“Why on earth,” George Vanderbilt asked, “would a Pinkerton man be hunting someone here at Biltmore?”
Kerry did not miss the faces of at least two of the men at Vanderbilt’s table, the flicker of fear, the defensive pushing back from the table. Perhaps that was the nature of the business world these men lived in: Vicious. Omnivorous. A stab that could come from behind any cloak.
Kerry forced herself to stare directly ahead.
The intruder, whose face looked like one of the snarling giants from the twins’ fairy-tale book, stalked forward. “I’ll keep it short, seeing as how you got family here.”
“Another thought would be,” Vanderbilt suggested mildly, “that you come back in two days, after Christmas, and tell me everything at your leisure.”
The Pinkerton man ignored this. “I got my orders to bring in a man I’ve been tracking for years. Got reason to think he’s not only here in these mountains somewhere, but more specifically”—he reared back to deliver this last—“here.”
Ferociously, the man swung his head first left and then right, as if demonstrating the kind of predator’s search he was capable of. Another rumble of comments from the guests rolled over the table.
As Kerry watched from the crack in the door, most of the family appeared more amused than concerned, as if he were providing some needed entertainment in the midst of their meal. Only the two men who’d looked so alarmed at the flash of his badge continued to pull at their collars as if breathing had become suddenly a chore.
Behind her, Cedric leaned harder against his gate. Another whine. Another muddy paw lifted. A plea.
“Be patient,” Kerry whispered. “There’ll be scraps.”
“Leblanc,” the housekeeper supplied for her employer. “The bloke’s name is Tom Leblanc. That much I heard before he barreled quite by me. Bothering a family on Christmas Eve. I said to myself, says I, What’s bloomin’ next?”
Vanderbilt held up his hand. “We do not blame you, Mrs. Smythe. Mr. Leblanc, I believe I understand your sense of urgency to be done and return home to . . .”
“New Orleans,” Leblanc thundered. “High time I got back. But first, I got me a slippery dago to catch. Name of Sal Catalfamo.”
Checking behind her and hoping the twins hadn’t heard, Kerry glimpsed Tully’s expression at the far door of the butler’s pantry, Jursey’s right below that: two identical slivers of wide-eyed confusion at the demand—and the unfamiliar name.
Turning back, Kerry saw on George Vanderbilt’s face a flash of something—the twitch of a brow, a flint strike of the eye—but then it was gone.
Vanderbilt lifted his glass of wine as the string quartet swept into “God Rest You Merry, Gentlemen.” “And the hunt for this man really needs to be conducted on Christmas Eve? Surely, Mr. Leblanc—”
“Christmas Eve and four damn years up till now!” the man bellowed.
The string quartet stuttered to a stop, the viola’s bow screeching on its strings.
“The ladies, Mr. Leblanc. Your language. What merited four years?”
Leblanc paused, letting the moment build. In the silence, only the crackle and sigh of the three fires sounded.
Leblanc lowered his voice so that the long table of diners had to lean toward him. “I’ll tell you, then, shall I?”
The hiss and spit of the logs. The guests with their jewels winking, their eyes wide on the detective.
“Right, then. I’m tracking the dago for the murder in 1890 of the police chief of New Orleans. There’s been sightings around here of a man who sounds a hell of a lot like Catalfamo. I’ll be searching your house and your stables.” He swept a burly arm. “I’ve also had a report from a reliable source with knowledge of this estate that there’s reason to connect Catalfamo with your murder here back in October.”
Afterward, Kerry was not sure if she met George Vanderbilt’s eye or just imagined she did. She did know, in that sliver of second, that she’d made a decision.
“Cedric,” she whispered as she lifted the gate. “It’s dinner.”
A scream from George’s sisters brought everyone to their feet as the Saint Bernard bounded into the room, mud flying as he paused to shake his thick coat. Wineglasses pitched forward and sterling clanked as the big dog spun to find his master. Ecstatic, Cedric leaped to his master’s side and lifted two filthy front paws to the table.
It might have been the result of the jolt of the dog’s body or the footman who’d bent with the tureen being suddenly flustered, but terrapin soup flew over the guests at George Vanderbilt’s left: soaking the bodice of one, spattering the diamond tiara of another, and sloshing the tuxedo front of Frederick Vanderbilt, turning his torso a deep, gelatinous green.