Chat - Archer Mayor [70]
Chapter 16
Lester Spinney craned over his steering wheel to better appreciate what he was approaching—a huge, modern, spread-out house crowning a slight rise, overlooking the southern narrowing of Lake Champlain below, and New York’s Adirondack Mountains off in the distance. The driveway had already prepared him for something—off Route 7 somewhere south of Shelburne Village, it cut through a sheltering copse of trees and extended a quarter mile before revealing this monster house—but he still hadn’t expected the total package of the view. The lake looked almost like a planned part of the landscaping.
He pulled to a stop in the immaculately plowed parking area near the four-car garage—he suspected that the driveway was heated—and slowly climbed out from behind the wheel.
The building’s front door opened, and a woman in her mid-twenties greeted him with a wave. “Hi. Are you Agent Spinney?”
“Yes, ma’am.”
She burst out laughing. “That would be my mother. I’m Wendy. Come on in. Dad’s in the office.”
Spinney grabbed hold of a box from his backseat, containing a laptop and the hard drive with all the Steve’s Garage data that Rob Barrows had sent him days earlier, and crossed the asphalt to the girl at the door. He stuck out a couple of fingers from under the box in greeting. “Lester’s my name,” he said. “Glad to meet you.”
She carefully squeezed his fingers and pointed down a long hallway. “Wendy Leppman-Gartner, officially, that is. My pleasure. Go right on down there. Last door on the left. It’s open. Would you like some coffee or something?”
He looked over his shoulder as he started off. “Nope. Thanks. All set.”
Halfway through his journey, the hallway opened up to a truly enormous vaulted room, with wooden beams overhead and a far wall constructed solely of glass. He suddenly felt there was nothing, aside from the building’s own heat, separating him from the wide-open spaces he’d admired on the drive in.
He blinked against the glare, noticing a figure shifting on the couch in the middle distance.
“Hello?” he asked cautiously.
“I’m the wife,” came the cheerful reply. “Sandy Gartner. Sandra Stillman Gartner, MD, if you’re taking notes, which would be a neat trick, given your load. Just keep on going. John’s all set up for you.”
Nodding at the shape, which by now had assumed an elegant slimness, Lester marched on, disappearing into the dark hallway beyond.
At the end, as promised, he found another room, lower-ceilinged and slightly darkened by broad wooden blinds that still allowed for the view, along with a man—tall, patrician, and lean like his wife—who rose from an imposing cherrywood desk and crossed the floor to relieve him of his box.
“Agent Spinney?” he echoed his daughter, placing the box on a corner of the table and shaking hands. “I’m John Leppman. Delighted to meet you.”
Spinney looked around quickly. The wood motif of the blinds was carried throughout the room, including the ceiling and a parquet floor, making the half-hidden wall of glass an anomaly in what would otherwise have been a good Hollywood stand-in for an ancient, manly British lord’s study.
“Wow,” he said.
His host laughed. “Yeah—a little over the top. Have a seat. I think I heard Wendy offer you a drink already.”
“Yes, sir.”
“John, please.” Leppman indicated a chair next to his own, both of which faced a bank of oversized computer screens, hard drives, printers, and assorted other paraphernalia. Leppman set about removing Lester’s paltry equipment and connecting it to his own, speaking as he did so.
“I gather Tim Giordi steered you my way. Terrific guy.”
“Actually, it was Chief Giordi and my boss, Joe Gunther,” Lester admitted.
“Right. Gunther.” Leppman nodded as he worked. “Famous name. Good to work for?”
“The best.”
Leppman laughed. “There are no recorders running, Agent Spinney.”
Lester protested, “No, no. Really. And call me Lester, or Les. Doesn’t matter.”
John Leppman quickly finished up and settled into the seat beside Lester’s, making the latter feel as though the room should now take flight toward some galaxy