Skeleton Key

Critical Acclaim for Jane Haddan's
Greger Bemarkian Movels

“A sophisticated style, excellent delivery, and riveting plot
make this an excellent choice for all collections.”

—
Library Journal
on
Skeleton Key

“A real winner . . . Sure to grab readers from the first page. . . . A fine entry in a a fine series.”

—
Booklist
on
Skeleton Key

“Bound to satisfy any reader who likes multiple murders mixed with miraculous apparitions and a perfectly damnable puzzle.”

—
Chicago Tribune
on A
Great Day for the Deadly

“A rattling good good puzzle, a varied and appealing cast, and a detective whose work carries a rare stamp of authority . . . This one is a treat.”

—
Kirkus Reviews
(starred review) on
Bleeding Hearts

“NOT A CREATURE STIRRING will puzzle, perplex, and please the most discriminating reader.”

—
Murder Ad Lib

“Juicy gossip abounds, tension builds, and all present are suitably suspect as Demarkian expertly wraps up loose ends in this entertaining, satisfying mystery.”

—
Publishers Weekly
on
Act of Darkness

“An absorbing, good-humored tale complete with vivid characters, multiple murders, and a couple of juicy subplots.”

—
Orlando Sentinel
on
Bleeding Hearts

“Go ahead, have this one wrapped and waiting with your name on it”

—Detroit Free Press
on A
Stillness in Bethlehem

“Haddam's usual deft writing, skillful plotting, and gentle humor… Refreshing and entertaining.”

—
Booklist
on
Bleeding Hearts

 

 

 

 

The Gregor Demarkian novels by Jane Haddam

Conspiracy Theory
Somebody Else's Music
Skeleton Key
True Believers

Available from
St. Martin's/Minotaur Paperbacks

Jane Haddam

St. Martin's Paperbacks

 

 

 

 

SKELETON KEY

Copyright © 2000 by Orania Papazoglou
Excerpt from
True Believers
copyright © 2000 by Orania Papazoglou.

Cover photograph of house by © Bret Morgan/Esto

All rights reserved. No part of this book may be used or reproduced in any manner whatsoever without written permission except in the case of brief quotations embodied in critical articles or reviews. For information address St. Martin's Press, 175 Fifth Avenue, New York, NY 10010.

Library of Congress Catalog Card Number: 99-054816

ISBN: 0-312-97865-0

EAN: 80312-97865-5

Printed in the United States of America

St Martin's Press hardcover edition / February 2000

St. Martin's Paperbacks edition / March 2001

St. Martin's Paperbacks are published by St. Martin's Press, 175 Fifth Avenue, New York, NY 10010.

10  9  8  7  6  5  4  3

To Bill DeAndrea,
July l, 1952-October 9, 1996
who gave me everything important in my life,
including Gregor Demarkian

In this book, I have given the town of Washington, Connecticut, a police department and a police station it doesn't have. What it does have is two wonderful resident troopers who have been of great help to me when my car has broken down, my tires have exploded, and I've gotten lost on all those back roads with no road signs on them. Omitting them from this book was a judgment call on my part, and I don't want them to think 1 don't appreciate their work because I haven't put them here.

When this book started, the character of Grace Feinman and the matter of her harpsichord took up much more room and was of much more importance. Grace and her instruments have moved on to another book, but I would like to thank the invaluable help I have received for all things related to early music from Peter Redstone of Peter Redstone Harpsichords in Claremont, Virginia; Claire Hammett of Harpsichord Services of London (U.K.); and especially Igor Kipnis, harpsichordist, teacher, lecturer, and tireless advocate for the harpsichord and all it can do.

SKELETON
KEY

 

 

Kayla Anson didn't know when she first realized she was being followed, but by the time she reached the Litchfield Road, the signs were unmistakable. It was seven o'clock on the evening of Friday, October 27, and the roads were awful. Three days of drizzle had been followed by three nights of below-freezing temperatures. There was patch ice everywhere, black and slick. The sky was cloudless and infinite. The moon was full. Lined up on the side of the road here and there, now that she was beyond the last little clump of houses, were harbingers of Halloween in the country: clothes stuffed with straw to look like corpses, skeletons made of plastic, jack-o'-lanterns with no candles in them, so that their faces looked like visions, etched in black. It all made her wish she had never come out tonight, on her own, even though she knew there couldn't be any-thing really wrong. Kayla Anson was nineteen and she got followed a lot. People recognized her car. People recognized her, too, from the picture that had appeared in
Town and Country
and been reprinted in the
Waterbury Republican.
Next week there would be a picture in the
Torrington Register-Citizen
and it would start all over again. “Debutante of the Year,” the captions always read, and “the beautiful legacy of a graceful tradition.” It made Kayla want to scream. She wouldn't have been a debutante at all if she had been able to go away to college this year. She would have been safely settled at Stanford if it hadn't been for Annabel. And Annabel—

Kayla slowed a little to get a look at whoever it was who was coming up behind her. For a moment there, she had started to be afraid. Once she saw the vehicle, she relaxed. It was one of those farm things with the big wheels. Kayla had never known the name of them. This one was
relatively fast, although most of them were much slower than ordinary cars. Some of them crawled along the blacktop at only a couple of miles an hour, so that traffic got backed up behind them so far it took half an hour to straighten it out after they pulled over to the side of the road. There were dairy farms all over this tiny northwest corner of the state, although a lot of them were moving out You saw stories about it every other day in the local papers. The weather was bad and the soil was rotten and the taxes were much too high. People got tired of holding on.

This particular farm vehicle was very, very fast. It had come up behind her now and was staying a single car length behind. Kayla squinted into the rearview mirror and tried to get a look at the driver. All she saw were very bright headlights and the dark shape of something vaguely human. The headlights were so bright, she had to switch the mirror into night position just to go on driving. The vehicle had that grumbly roar of something with a muffler that wasn't working properly. Kayla wished she knew what to call it. It was so much easier not to be afraid of things when they had names.

The problem with all the publicity she'd been getting about being a debutante was that it was also publicity about other things, and the other things could be dangerous. Kayla Anson, only surviving child of multibillionaire venture capitalist Robert Mark Anson and his only heir. Kayla Anson, poor little rich girl, rich girl with everything, rich girl without direction, rich, rich, rich. Once, when Kayla was seven and her father was still alive, she had been almost kidnapped on the sidewalk in front of the Brearley School in Manhattan. She had just come out of the building with her books in a book bag when the long black car pulled up to the curb. She had just turned down the street in the direction of the bus stop when the man got out and came running through the crowd of children toward her. She hadn't been afraid then, either. She hadn't even been aware of what was happening. Her best friend at the time, Linda Markman, had pulled her out of the way. The man who was chasing
her had gone careening out of control and fallen on his side. After that, everyone seemed to be jumping on him. Kayla had felt only this: that the whole thing was stupid, and that it should be happening to anyone on earth except her.

The farm vehicle was now only half a car length behind her. Kayla could finally see some things for sure. It wasn't an ordinary farm vehicle, in spite of the big wheels, because it was made by Jeep. It seemed to be a bright metallic blue. Kayla punched the buttons on her car radio and got Big D 103 FM out of Hartford. The Rolling Stones were singing “Under My Thumb,” but that was beginning to fade. What was coming up next was the Beach Boys doing “Fun, Fun, Fun.” Right up ahead of her on her left was the Victory Independent Baptist Church. The sign out front said:
HELL IS TRUTH, SEEN TOO LATE
.