“Even though you are ‘the’ Diana of this club?” Prescott said, sucking up in an entirely unctuous way.
Chidra Persaud waved off his concern with a good-natured laugh. “Not worth a flogging or a stoning to challenge his beliefs. I busied myself with paperwork for the day.”
“Who was the sixth man in the party?” I asked. “Did Paul have a partner to shoot with?”
“He did,” she said. “Another club member staying in one of the cottages on the river. He actually enjoys fly-fishing more than shooting. My manager will have all the names and contacts for us in an hour or so, as I mentioned.”
“Did Paul know him?”
“Not before that morning. He’s a young West Coast guy. Runs a tech start-up,” Persaud said. “Paul was happy to have him along, but he seemed far more interested in getting to know the prince from Dubai.”
“Your office must also have a log with contact information for all the participants.”
“Oh, yes,” Persaud said.
The two agents were making notes of the conversation.
“You want to see the cottage where Paul stayed?” Persaud asked.
“I do,” Prescott said.
“Good. And I thought it would be useful for Karl to tell you as many specifics about the day as he can.”
“Yes,” Prescott said.
“In order to hunt for certain species in Montana, one has to hire an outfitter,” Persaud said. “The Jansens have made their living for quite a long time that way—as outfitters—before I set up the preserve. They know many more hunters—more visitors—than I do. Isn’t that right?”
Karl Jansen gave her a nod.
“Wait a minute,” I said. “Does that mean that there are hunters who come here—who come on your land to shoot—but they don’t stay with you?”
“That’s right,” Persaud said. “But they can’t do that without paying Karl or Junior—or someone with their kind of credentials.
“Why don’t you tell them the rest, Karl? We all had coffee together that morning, and then I stayed behind. I think it makes sense for you to tell them the reason for the hunt, and what you saw and heard on the way.”
Karl Jansen shuffled the rifle to his left side. “Hard for me to talk about, ma’am, but I’ll try.”
“Do your best,” she said.
Someone had died that day. We might as well start with that fact.
“Six of you went out,” I said. “Was it that day—or Sunday—when one of the men was killed?”
“Sunday morning,” he said. “Saturday we were all just fine.”
It wasn’t Paul Battaglia, nor was it Karl Jansen, who was on the short end of the arrow.
“Who was the victim of the murder?” I asked.
“It wasn’t no murder, lady,” Jansen said, his steel-gray eyes meeting mine. “It was Frank who took the arrow. My nephew. My sister’s boy.”
“I’m so sorry,” I said. “I had no idea.”
Frank was in the family business too. An outfitter. A hunting guide. And if he had any secrets, they’d died with him two weeks ago.
“I’m sorry,” Persaud said. “I should have told you that.”
I thought it was bitchy of Chidra Persaud not to have given us the heads-up that it was Jansen’s nephew who’d been killed, before introducing us to him.
“Who had the weapon?” I asked. I didn’t know what else to call it. “Who fired?”
“The Arab. The guy they told me was a prince,” Jansen said. “Never held a bow in his hand before.”
“Had they fought about anything?” Prescott asked. “Had there been any disagreements the day before? Or during the evening?”
“Nothing I heard. Frank wasn’t the sort of man who disagreed with anyone. He just liked to be off by himself in the woods.”
“You didn’t see it happen, then, did you?” I asked.
“No, ma’am. I was a ways away.”
“Then how do you know it wasn’t inten—?”
“Accidents happen, Ms. Cooper,” Jansen said, stepping away from us, moving toward the door. “Sooner or later, everybody dies.”
THIRTY-SEVEN
“Are you warm enough, Alex?” Persaud asked.
She and Jansen were ahead of us, walking down a trail toward a row of cottages that looked like miniature versions of the main house. I was ten feet behind, with James Prescott.
“Plenty warm. Thanks for the gloves.”
She turned her head and kept to the trail.
“What’s our timetable here?” I asked Prescott. “There’s something you haven’t told me.”
“I didn’t have time to think about much from the moment I got the call last night about the phone records,” he said. “Chidra offered to make the trip. The old guy—Jansen—has never left this corner of Montana. Refused to get on a plane and come to us. I thought he might know something.”
“Is your office backing us up?”
“Background going full speed ahead on everyone,” Prescott said. “Looking for links wherever we can, and we’ll have the guest names in an hour or so. You heard that.”
“Do you know what kind of case Battaglia thought he was building by coming out here?” I asked.
“If I did, I might not have dragged you out of bed. Let today play out and maybe we can figure what he walked into.”
If Prescott knew more than he was telling me, he had buttoned it down pretty tight.
“Tell them to run Persaud’s phone system from this end, too,” I said. “I just made a call to Catherine—”
“Without asking me?”
“Correct,” I said. “There’s a master phone pad in the living room, and undoubtedly one in Chidra’s bedroom or office, too. She knew I’d been on the phone in the guest room when I went in to use the bathroom. Your tech guys need to check the last few months of her records—these phones, New York, whatever else you can get.”
He didn’t like taking direction from me, but he had no choice. “Next time you can divert her, I’ll call.”
“You’ll be lucky if you have any cell service out here,” I said. “You might send Frist or Fisher into town.”
“They’re going to go over the cottage more thoroughly after she shows it to us,” he said.
“That’s fine.”
Persaud was already in Cottage 3—there was a large black number painted on the door panel—when Prescott and I caught up to her.
“This is where Paul stayed,” she said. “Quite by himself, I can assure you.”
“Why can you assure us?” I said, scanning the ceiling for signs of a minicamera and ending up with eyes on the kitchen counter. “Is it because you have video surveillance mounted in each cabin? Or maybe cameras in the microwave?”
“How funny you think you can be, Alex,” she said. “Look around. No one has stayed here since Paul left.”
The cottage had obviously been cleaned up and turned over. Sanitized. I left it to the two agents to snoop more thoroughly than I could.
“What next?” Prescott asked.
I followed Chidra Persaud outside, where Karl Jansen had waited for us.
“We’ll go on ATVs from here,” she said. “So you can see what Paul was after. Maybe get a sense of what he was doing.”
A pair of ATVs—two-seaters—were waiting in a garage between the fourth and fifth cottages. I climbed on to ride behind Persaud, while Prescott doubled up with Jansen.