On Harrow Hill

Once they’d served themselves from the wok and were seated at the table, Madeleine removed a folded sheet of paper from under her napkin and passed it across to him.

“This could be a little project for us.” Her face was bright with excitement.

He unfolded the paper and saw what appeared to be a structural diagram for some sort of shed.

“Dennis printed that out from a farm website,” she added.

He frowned at the man’s name. “What is it?”

“An alpaca shelter.”

“We don’t have any alpacas.”

“Not right now.”

He looked up from the paper.

“But we could get one,” she said. “Or two. Two would be better. They’re very social. One would get lonely.”

“How long have you been thinking about this?”

“I guess I started when I was helping the Winklers with their alpacas two years ago at the fair.” She fell silent, perhaps at the memory of how the fair had ended in disaster—the culminating horror of the Peter Pan murder case.

After a moment, she looked at him with a wistful smile. “It’s not something we need to do right away. We’d have to build that house for them first. And that could be a fun thing to do together.”

Gurney looked again at the design, then laid it in the middle of the table. “Alpacas are expensive, aren’t they?”

“That’s what everyone thinks, but when you take the pluses and minuses into consideration, they cost very little. Almost nothing.”

“The pluses and minuses?”

“I’ll let Dennis explain all that.”

“What?”

“I invited the Winklers for dinner.”

“When?”

“Tomorrow night.”

“To give us an alpaca sales pitch?”

“I wouldn’t call it that. It’s ages since we’ve gotten together. If they want to tell us about their alpacas, that’s fine with me.”

They ate for several minutes before she laid down her fork and waited for him to meet her gaze. “The alpaca idea isn’t as crazy as it sounds. And the Winklers aren’t as awful as you think. Try to keep an open mind.”

He nodded. “I’ll do my best.”

She picked up her fork. “Did you return that call from Mike Morgan?”

“I did.”

“His message sounded terribly anxious.”

“Some of that is just the way he is, but he does seem to be in an unusual situation. He actually came to the house to talk about it.”

“What does he want?”

“Help with a murder investigation in a village up north. Larchfield. Peculiar place. Peculiar crime scene. Most peculiar thing of all is that Morgan’s the police chief.”

“You don’t think he’s up to it?”

“Intellectually he may be up to it. But emotionally he’s a wreck.” He paused. “How much more do you want to know?”

“Enough so I can understand what you decide.”

“Decide?”

“About whether to get involved with his murder case.”

He didn’t respond to that.

She turned and gazed out through the French doors. “Look at the grass.”

He looked out past the little bluestone patio toward the henhouse and the old apple tree. The wet grass was glistening in the slanting evening sunlight. The only trace of the earlier snow was a cottony white patch at the base of the apple tree.

“Amazing,” she said, the expression on her face reflecting the radiance of the scene. She sighed and turned back to Gurney. “Tell me as much as you like.”

He took a moment to figure out where to begin.

“Morgan’s father was near the top of the ladder at the NYPD, and his twin brothers were both precinct commanders. There was an eight-year gap between them and Morgan, and he claimed they called him ‘the mistake.’ His father alternated between ignoring him and pointing out his deficiencies. Morgan was hell-bent on winning his family’s approval. He was great on paper, aced his promotion exams. But he had all kinds of fears, along with a disastrous way of dealing with them.”

“Drugs?”

“Women. Sometimes women who were involved in cases he was investigating. Even a potential suspect or two. Those mistakes could have put him in prison. But apparently the rush blinded him to the risk.”

“Sounds like he was fixing a low self-esteem problem by doing something that would make it worse. Like the addicts I see at the clinic. How did he get away with it?”

“No one wanted to get on the wrong side of his father, so there was a tendency to let things slide, as long as they weren’t too obvious or didn’t screw up a prosecution. But eventually one of the captains got fed up and told Morgan he needed to resign or the issue would go to the professional standards unit, with the possibility of criminal prosecution. In the end, he was allowed to stay a few more months to get to his pension-vesting date. A quiet exit.”

“Zero consequences for his actions?”

“Right.”

“And the Larchfield authorities concluded that this law-enforcement paragon would make an ideal police chief?”

“Not immediately. He told me he was hired first to head up security at their local college. A year later they chose him to replace the departing police chief. The first job seems a bit of a stretch. The second seems inconceivable. Coincidentally, the man who was just murdered was the main interviewer and decision-maker for both of Morgan’s positions.”

“Do you have a sense of why he wants you involved in the investigation?”