And One to Die On(65)

“Have you given any thought to the possibility that he might be the one who killed Tasheba?” Mathilda asked. “We don’t know anything about him. Even Geraldine only seems to know that he’s somebody from town.”

“I’ve thought about it,” Demarkian said impassively, “but I’ve also checked it out. It’s not feasible.”

“Why not?”

“Because all the doors on this house have automatic locks. You leave the house and pull the door shut behind you, and you’re locked out. And three different people saw the man leave by the front door.”

“Maybe he had a key.”

“Geraldine Dart says not.”

“I’m sure all the doors in the house don’t lock like that,” Mathilda said. “The French doors at the back couldn’t.”

“That’s true,” Gregor agreed, “but because of the terrain around here, those doors can only be approached through the house. You’d have to be an expert rock climber to get around to them on land even in the best of weather. Last night, the project would have been virtually impossible.”

“Oh,” Mathilda murmured, sitting down dejectedly in the nearest chair. “I suppose that leaves us with Carlton again. I wish we knew where he was. I wish we knew how he was. I keep thinking about Hannah’s scenario, you know, about him killing Tasheba Kent and then trying to escape and then getting drowned. It’s a terrible idea.”

“Mmm,” Gregor said.

He was standing next to the table with Tasheba Kent’s things on it, looking down at a set of black bangle bracelets with a pair of earrings to match. They weren’t among the more interesting items in the collection. Mathilda didn’t expect them to fetch much in the sale.

“There are much better things on that table than those,” she told Gregor Demarkian. “The cigarette holders are really valuable, especially the extra-long ones. The one with the silver inlays was the one she used in Vamp. She had it made for herself when the movie went into production and then she kept it. We think it’s going to bring in more than twenty thousand dollars.”

“For a cigarette holder?”

“Oh, yes. It may bring in even more now, after all of this. Auction buyers like mysteries and legends.”

Gregor Demarkian picked up the black cigarette holder with the silver inlays, looked it over, and put it down again. “Tell me. How was it decided, which items to put up for auction?”

“It hasn’t really been decided yet,” Mathilda Frazier said. “We’re still in negotiations. All these things on the tables are at least up for discussion.”

“Who will decide what will go and what will stay?”

“Well, I decide some of it. There are some things an auction house like Halbard’s just can’t sell. But I like most of these things. The more complete a collection like this is, even down to pieces you don’t expect are going to find a buyer, the better the auction tends to go. And sometimes you get lucky, and somebody like Richard Fenster comes in with a lot of money and a world-class obsession, and buys everything you have.”

“Do you think Richard Fenster would be interested in buying all these things?”

“I think he’d be interested in buying everything that belonged to Tasheba Kent, yes. He’s the world’s most famous collector of her memorabilia. He’d probably also be quite interested in anything belonging to Cavender Marsh or Lilith Brayne that had connections to Tasheba Kent.”

Gregor nodded. “Tell me something else now. Upstairs, in the room Cavender Marsh shared with Tasheba Kent, there are dozens of bound scrapbooks, covering every possible era in the public lives of the three of them—”

“Oh, I know,” Mathilda said. “I’ve seen them. Aren’t they wonderful? They’d bring hundreds of thousands of dollars at auction. I told both Cavender Marsh and Tasheba Kent that, and then I told Lydia Acken, because I thought she could drum some sense into their heads, but nothing worked. They just don’t want to sell those scrapbooks.”

“All right. So Cavender Marsh and Tasheba Kent weren’t quite as willing to sell their things as I thought they were at first.”

“Oh, yes they were,” Mathilda said, “or are or whatever you want to call it. Those scrapbooks were practically the only things they held out. It’s Hannah Graham that everybody is worried about.”

“Hannah Graham?”

Mathilda shrugged. “You’d have to talk to Lydia Acken to get it all straight, because I don’t really understand it, but what it comes down to is that there are bases on which Hannah Graham can sue to keep at least Lilith Brayne’s things out of the auction. I mean, Lilith Brayne was her mother. And just because her father dumped her off on a relative or something, doesn’t mean she and her mother would have been estranged if her mother had lived. That’s why we invited her here, you see. We thought if we could get Hannah to come out here and pick a few of Lilith Brayne’s things to keep, then she would be less likely to try to stop us from selling the rest.”