I didn’t have time to ponder the reasons for Captain Morgo’s personality transformation. There was no reason to believe the change would be permanent. For the moment, I was just grateful that something had happened to alter her view of me. At the bridge entrance, I told Ken Macready about Captain Morgo’s request, and he turned over his VHF radio.
“There are distress calls coming in from all over the place,” he said. “Electricity is out in a lot of the county, and the governor will be declaring us an official disaster area.”
I turned off the radio as soon as I was out of sight up the footpath. If I needed it at some point, I wanted to make sure the batteries were still charged and working. As I reached the overlook parking lot, another vehicle pulled in and parked. It was Jordan Langford’s Volvo. Walking through the curtain of rain toward it, I wondered who was driving.
The power window on the driver’s side slid halfway down as I came up. It was Jordan. In the glow of the interior lights, he looked drawn. There were new pouches under his eyes, and his jaw sagged.
“We’ve got another one out there on the bridge, I gather,” he said almost apprehensively as the slanting rain peppered his windbreaker through the window.
“Yeah. It’s Robin Massey, Dennis Wheatley’s friend.”
Staring straight ahead, he was silent for several seconds.
“I knew Robin,” he said with deep sadness in his voice. “The man was a living saint. No one could have wanted to murder him.”
“Yeah, well . . . someone did,” I said.
He looked up at me for the first time. His eyes tightened as they took in my swollen face. I waited for him to say something but he didn’t. I wondered if Blair had told him about my fight.
“Any new leads on Dennis’s death?” he asked.
“It’s possible the murderer has some kind of military connection. That’s one of the things I’m trying to pin down. We also have a video recording of the people at last night’s crime scene. I’m going to take a look at it after I’ve interviewed a guy named Hoyt Palmer. He and Robin Massey were Wheatley’s roommates in their last year here.”
“What was his name?” he asked.
“Hoyt Palmer.”
“I don’t remember ever meeting him with Dennis.”
“He’s lived in Finland for the last twenty years. This afternoon, he was taken to the Groton Medical Center for possible food poisoning.”
“I don’t have to tell you this . . . but please try to move as fast as you can,” he said. “This thing could wreck the college for years to come. I can just see the tabloid coverage now . . . come home to St. Andrews and die.”
He still hadn’t asked about his own tabloid story.
“How is Blair taking it all?” I asked him.
“She’s okay,” he said. “Why?”
“Just wondering . . . I assume she knows you well enough to figure out when something’s wrong.”
“She’s fine,” he said emphatically.
Apparently, she hadn’t confided her visit to me.
My flashlight beam happened to be pointing down at the side of his car when I noticed a raw scar in the paintwork. It ran horizontally across the door and all the way to the rear fender.
“Looks like somebody keyed your car,” I said.
He nodded and said, “Who knows why? Blair saw it and pointed it out to me. I have no idea when it happened. Probably some kids.”
I remembered the two other cars I had seen with similar gouges when I arrived at the overlook parking lot and found Dennis Wheatley’s body.
“Any luck with my own little problem?” he asked forlornly.
His wounded eyes were obviously anticipating bad news.
“Yeah . . . I’ve made a little progress there.”
“You’re kidding,” he came back, his voice animated for the first time.
“No. I found the men who recorded you at the Wonderland. I’ve collected all their electronic equipment and possibly some other recorded material. I’ll take a quick look at those when I have a chance.”
“Thank you, Jake,” he said, looking up at me again with his luminous eyes. “Truly.”
“Don’t thank me yet. I haven’t done anything.”
“What happened to your face?” he asked.
“The price of progress,” I said. “But I don’t know yet who hired them to tape you or why. There’s still a long way to go.”
“You said men. There was more than one?”
“Yeah.”
“If it’s a matter of priorities, these deaths are far more important.”
“They could be connected.”
He nodded.
“Do you know a man named Bobby Devane?”
“Never heard of him.”
“Do you know anyone at the Razzano law firm?”
“The whiplash brothers?”
I nodded again.
“The older one . . . Brian. He graduated from St. Andrews about twenty years ago . . . I think Dennis Wheatley’s class. Since then, he and his brother have made a fortune in divorce work, asbestos, and workers’ comp cases. He lives farther down the lake from you at Glenwood Landing . . . one of those huge trophy houses.”
“He’s a new member of my board of trustees and has given the school a million dollars. His wife, Dawn, is a good friend of Blair’s. We’re dedicating the nanoscience learning center in his name next week. Why?”
“Because he or his brother may have paid the men who were hired to film you at the Wonderland. The other possibility is this Bobby Devane. He runs a private detective agency in Syracuse.”
I heard a crack like an artillery shell, and the massive oak tree at the end of the parking lot went over with a crunching roar, blocking the road toward campus. Jordan watched it go with almost detached curiosity.
“Do you have a direct number for Razzano?” I asked.
He pulled a cell phone out of his windbreaker pocket. Using a stylus, he punched the screen several times.
“Home okay?” he asked.
I nodded, and he wrote the number down on a notepad he pulled from the glove compartment. Shutting the window, he turned off the engine and got out of the car. While he walked down to the bridge, I headed over to my pickup.
Hearing the thin wail of sirens approaching, I watched as a white panel truck carrying the sheriff’s investigative unit arrived. Three men jumped out and began unloading equipment from the rear doors as I headed down the hill.