Gurney’s drive home was a journey into anxiety. He attributed it to the emotional free fall that often followed an intense encounter.
As he headed up the final stretch of road toward his barn, however, it struck him that there might be another cause: the ricketiness of his assumptions, not only about Klemper but also about the case as a whole. If Klemper’s failing had been wishful thinking about Kay’s guilt, might not his own failing be wishful thinking about her innocence? Might he and Klemper be equally blind to some more complex scenario that involved Kay in way that hadn’t occurred to either of them?
And what was the significance of Klemper’s drinking? Had he been drinking earlier in the day on the job? Or had he picked up a bottle for a few quick belts in the car on his way to Riverside? Either possibility suggested terrible judgment, great strain, or a serious drinking problem. Any of those issues had the potential to make the man an unpredictable, even explosive piece of the puzzle.
The first thing he noticed after rounding the barn was that Madeleine’s car was gone from its normal spot by the house, which jogged a half-formed memory that this was the evening for one of her board meetings, although he wasn’t sure which one.
Entering the kitchen, he found her absence momentarily comforting—relieving him of the need to immediately decide how much or how little to reveal about his Klemper meeting. It also meant he’d have some undisturbed time to himself to sort the jumbled pieces of a long day into some kind of order.
He was heading into the den for the organizing assistance of a pad and pen when his cell phone rang. He pulled it out of his pocket and checked the ID. It was Kyle.
“Hey, Dad. Hope I’m not interrupting anything.”
“Nothing that can’t wait. What’s up?”
“I made some calls, asking around about Jonah Spalter and/or the Cyberspace Cathedral. None of my own contacts knew anything, one thought maybe the name was familiar, thought something might be happening with it, but didn’t know anything specific. I was going to send you an e-mail saying, ‘Sorry, no grapes on the vine.’ But then one of the guys called me back. Told me he’d checked around and discovered a friend of his had handled a venture capital search for Jonah Spalter, the venture being a huge expansion of Spalter’s Cathedral.”
“What kind of expansion?”
“He didn’t get into that beyond the fact that it was going to cost plenty.”
“Interesting.”
“The really interesting part is that Spalter ended the capital search the day after his brother died. Called up the guy who’d been working on it, took him to lunch, cut off the whole process—”
Gurney broke in. “That doesn’t surprise me. I mean, the way that corporation was set up by their father, Carl’s share of Spalter Realty would go directly to Jonah—entirely separate from the rest of his assets, which were covered by his will. So Jonah would have come into some big real estate holdings that he’d be free to sell or mortgage. So he wouldn’t need to raise venture capital to finance whatever expansion he had in mind.”
“You didn’t let me get to the really interesting part.”
“Oh? Sorry. Tell me.”
“Jonah Spalter showed up for lunch half drunk, then got really drunk. And he quoted that saying ‘God works in a mysterious way, His wonders to perform.’ And according to this guy, Spalter kept saying it and laughing, like he found it really funny. Kind of weirded the guy out.”
Gurney was silent for a while, imagining the scene. “You said the Cathedral expansion was going to cost plenty. Any idea how much?”
“The capital search had to be for at least fifty million. The guy Jonah was dealing with wouldn’t touch any deal for an amount less than that.”
“Meaning,” said Gurney, mostly to himself, “that the assets of Spalter Realty must be worth at least that much, if Jonah was willing to cancel the search.”
“So what are you thinking, Dad?” said Kyle conspiratorially. “That fifty million could be a pretty compelling motive for murder?”
“More compelling than most. Did your contact have anything else to say about Spalter?”
“Just that he was super smart, super ambitious—but that’s nothing special, just the nature of the beast.”
“Okay, thanks. That was very helpful.”
“Really?”
“Absolutely. More I know, the better my brain works. And there’s no other way I could have come upon that revealing little anecdote. So thank you again.”
“Glad I could help. By the way, you planning to go to the Summer Mountain Fair?”
“Me? No. But Madeleine will be there. She’s helping some friends of hers who have a farm over in Buck Ridge. They bring their alpacas to the fair every year and enter them in … I don’t know … alpaca events, I guess.”
“You don’t sound too revved up about it.”
“You could say that.”
“You mean to say you’re not impressed by the biggest agricultural fair in the Northeast? Tractor pulls, demolition derbies, butter sculptures, cotton candy, hog judging, sheep shearing, cheese making, country music, carnival rides, blue ribbons for biggest zucchini—how could you not be impressed by all that?”
“It’s tough, but somehow I manage to control my enthusiasm.”
After ending the call with Kyle, Gurney stayed at his desk for some time, letting the economic facts of the Spalter case sink in, and pondering the significance of those famous lines God moves in a mysterious way / His wonders to perform.
He took the thick case file out of his desk drawer and riffled through it until he came to an index of key names and addresses. There were two email addresses for “J. Spalter”—one a Google gmail account, the other connected to the Cyberspace Cathedral website domain. There was also a physical address in Florida, with a notation indicating that it existed to serve legal and tax purposes, that it was the location where Jonah’s motor home was registered and where CyberCath was incorporated, but that the man did not actually live there. A further marginal note read, “Postal forwarding instructions redirect mail to changing series of P.O. boxes.” Apparently Jonah was on the road most of the time, maybe all the time.
Gurney sent a message to both email addresses—a message saying that Kay’s conviction was likely to be overturned and that he urgently needed Jonah’s help in evaluating some new evidence.