to do. It’s a step, and steps have to be taken.” She slid into the car, waited for him to get in beside her. “Plus I haven’t been in the city for over three months. And never with you.”
He shot one last glance back at the window, and the dog framed in it.
“We’re going to try to shoehorn our way into a conversation with the wife of the man we think committed murder in addition to breaking and entering. Oh, and adultery. Let’s not leave that one out. It’s not exactly a pleasure trip.”
“That doesn’t mean it can’t be pleasant. You’ve thought for days about how you’re going to approach Eden Suskind. You’ve worked out approaches depending on if she’s at work or at home. You’re not the enemy, Eli. She can’t possibly see you as the enemy.”
He drove along the coast road, wound through the village. “People treat you differently, even people you know, after you’ve been accused of a crime. Of killing. They’re nervous around you. They avoid you, and if they can’t avoid you, you can see on their faces they wish they had.”
“That’s done.”
“It’s not. It’s not done until the person who killed Lindsay is caught, arrested and tried.”
“Then this is a step toward that. He’s going to come back to Whiskey Beach. When he does, Corbett’s going to talk to him. I wish we didn’t have to wait for that.”
“It’s tricky for Corbett to go into Boston on this. And he doesn’t want to pass it to Wolfe. I’m grateful for that.”
“We’ve got Suskind’s address now, his office and his apartment. We could cruise by, watch him for a change.”
“For what?”
“Curiosity. We’ll just put that on the back burner.” Switch gears, Abra decided. She could all but see the tension twisting up the muscles in the back of his neck. “You were up late with all your books last night. Anything interesting?”
“Yeah, actually. I found a couple that go pretty deep into the history of the house, the family, the village, the business. How they’re all connected. Symbiotic.”
“Such a nice word.”
“I like it. Landon Whiskey got a boost during the Revolutionary War. With the blockades, the colonists couldn’t get sugar, molasses, so no rum. Whiskey became the choice for the colonial army, and the Landons had their distillery.”
“So George Washington drank your whiskey.”
“Bet your ass. And after the war, they expanded both the business and the house. A big deal on the house, too, because Roger Landon, headstrong Violeta’s and possibly murderous Edwin’s father, who was in charge then, had a rep for being a cheapskate.”
“A good, frugal Yankee.”
“A notorious skinflint, but he put what was pretty serious money into the house, furnishings, and into the business. When he died, his son took over, and since good old Rog didn’t give it up until he was near eighty, Edwin Landon had waited a good long time to take the reins. He expanded again, everything. He and his wife, the French émigré—”
“Ooh-la-la.”
“You bet. They were the first to start holding big, elaborate parties. And one of their sons, Eli—”
“I like him.”
“You should. He built—had built—the first village school. His youngest brother fell for the schoolteacher, and they ran off together.”
“Romance.”
“Not so much. They were killed heading west to make their own fortune.”
“That’s very sad.”
“In any case Eli continued the tradition of expanding the house, the business, and the parties continued—with some scandals and tragedies thrown in—up to Prohibition. If things got lean, you wouldn’t know it by the way they lived. The twenties roared into the thirties, and the government realized they had screwed up and banning whiskey was costing them one hell of a lot. People bellied back up to the bar, in the open, and we opened another distillery.”
“The whiskey empire.”
“Through it, we’ve had art connoisseurs—and those reputed to have had affairs with artists—suicides, two who spied for the Allies, and plenty who died in various wars, a dancer who soared to fame in Paris, and another who ran away with the circus.”
“I like that one especially.”
“A duchess through marriage, a cardsharp, a cavalry officer who died with Custer, heroes, villains, a nun, two senators, doctors, lawyers. You name it, they’re probably in there.”
“It’s a long line. Most people don’t—or can’t—trace their family back that far, or have a place that’s been in that family for so many generations.”
“True enough. But do you know what’s missing?”
“A suffragette, a Playboy bunny, a rock star?”
He laughed. “We had some of the first. I didn’t come across