spoke without looking at him. “Your security blanket?”
“Excuse me?”
“I got the impression you were touching base with the reassuring world of murder and mayhem before having to face the terrifying unknowns of a cocktail party.”
Half a mile into the Gelters’ property the driveway crested a gentle rise, bringing them suddenly to the edge of a field planted with thousands of daffodils. In the slanting sunlight of early evening the effect was startling—almost as startling as the massive, windowless, cubical house overlooking the field from the top of the hill.
6
The driveway led them to the front of the house. The imposing dark wood facade appeared to be perfectly square, perhaps fifty feet in both height and width.
“Is that what I think it is?” asked Madeleine with an amused frown.
“What do you mean?”
“Look closely. The outline of a letter.”
Gurney stared. He could just barely make out the distressed outline of a giant G—like a faded letter on a child’s alphabet block—imprinted on the house.
While they were still gazing at it, a young man with chartreuse hair, wearing a loose white shirt and skinny jeans, came running toward the car. He opened the passenger door and held it while Madeleine got out, then hurried around to the driver’s side.
“You and the lady can go right in, sir.” He handed Gurney a small card bearing the name “Dylan” and a cell number. “When you’re ready to leave, call this number and I’ll bring your car around.” Flashing a smile, he got into the dusty Outback and drove it around the side of the house.
“Nice touch,” said Madeleine as they walked across the patio.
Gurney nodded vaguely. “How do you know Trish Gelter?”
“I’ve told you three times. Vinyasa.”
“Vin . . .”
She sighed. “My yoga class. The one I go to every Sunday morning.”
As they reached the front door, it slid open like the pocket door of an enormous closet, revealing a woman with a mass of wavy blond hair.
“Mahdehlennnne!” she cried, giving the name an exaggerated French inflection that made it sound like a jokey endearment. “Welcome to Skyview!” She grinned, showing off an intriguing Lauren Hutton gap between her front teeth. “You look fabulous! Love the dress! And you brought the famous detective! Wonderful! Come in, come in!” She stood to the side and, with a hand holding a frosted blue cocktail, waved them into a cavernous space unlike any home Gurney had ever seen.
It seemed to consist of a single cube-shaped room—if anything so big could be called a room. Cubical objects of various sizes were being used as tables and chairs on which clusters of guests perched and conversed. Sets of cubes pushed together served as kitchen counters at each end of a restaurant-sized brushed-steel stove. No two cubes were the same color. As Gurney had noted from the outside, the five-story-high walls had no windows, yet the whole interior was suffused with a sunny brightness. The roof was constructed of clear glass panels. The sky above it was a cloudless blue.
Madeleine was smiling. “Trish, this place is amazing!”
“Get yourself a drink and have a good look around. It’s full of surprises. Meanwhile, I’ll introduce your shy husband to some interesting people.”
“Good luck with that,” said Madeleine, heading for a bar that consisted of two four-foot-high cubes, one fire-engine red, one acid green. Trish Gelter turned to Gurney, moistening her lips with the tip of her tongue. “I’ve been reading all about you, and now I get to meet the supercop in person.”
He grimaced.
“That’s exactly what New York magazine called you. It said you had the highest homicide arrest and conviction rate in the history of the department.”
“That article ran more than five years ago, and it’s still an embarrassment.”
His NYPD record was a distinction he didn’t mind having, since it occasionally had the practical value of opening a few doors. But he also found it embarrassing. “Magazines like to create superheroes and supervillains. I’m neither.”
“You look like a hero. You look like Daniel Craig.”
He smiled awkwardly, eager to change the subject. “That big letter out there on the front of the house—”
“A postmodern joke.” She winked at him.
“Pardon?”
“How much do you know about postmodern design?”
“Nothing.”
“How much do you want to know about it?”
“Maybe just enough to understand the big G.”
She sipped her blue cocktail and flashed her gap-toothed grin. “Irony is the essence of postmodern design.”
“The G is an ironic statement?”
“Not just the G. The whole house. A work of ironic art. A rebellion against humorless, boring modernism. The fact that this house and everything in it was designed by Kiriki Kilili says it all. Kiriki loves to stick it to the modernists with his cube jokes. The modernists want a house to be an impersonal machine. Pure efficiency.” She wrinkled her nose as if efficiency had a foul odor. “Kiriki wants it to be a place of fun, joy, pleasure.” She held Gurney’s gaze for an extra couple of seconds on that last word.
“Does the big G stand for something?”
“Giddy, goofy, Gelter—take your choice.”
“It’s a joke?”
“It’s a way of treating the house as a toy, an amusement, an absurdity.”
“Your husband is a playful fellow, is he?”
“Marv? Omigod, no. Marv’s a financial genius. Very serious. The man shits money. I’m the fun one. See the fireplace?” She pointed to one of the walls, at the base of which was a hearth at least ten feet wide. The flames across the width flickered in the full spectrum of a rainbow. “Sometimes I program it for all those colors. Or just green. I love a green fire. I’m like a witch with magic powers. A witch who always gets what she wants.”
Mounted on the wall above the hearth was a TV screen, the largest he’d ever seen. It was displaying three adjacent talking heads in the divided format of a cable news program. Several of the party guests were watching it.
“Trish?” A loud male voice from a corner of the room broke through the general hubbub.
She leaned close to Gurney. “I’m being summoned. I fear I have to be introduced to someone horribly boring. I feel it in my bones.” She managed to make her bones sound like a sex organ. “Don’t go away. You’re the first homicide detective I’ve ever met. An actual murder expert. I
