And One to Die On(86)

“If someone gives you a hard time, shout. I’ll do the physical restraining myself.”

Lydia looked dubious, but she let it go. Gregor knew that he was flabby and out of shape, but he let it go, too. It had taken him a lot of work to get flabby and out of shape. He had spent years on the project. That didn’t mean he couldn’t do what he had to do in an emergency.

Since Gregor knew that this body could not have gone far, he did not send the group fanning out all over the house the way he had when they were looking for Carlton Ji last night. He sent Kelly and Hannah to search the three closets at the west end of the utility hall. He sent Mathilda and the security guard to search the three closets at the east end. The security guard was sullen and more than a little tipsy. Gregor didn’t know where he was getting his liquor, but he was certainly getting it somewhere. Maybe the poor man figured he was owed, after being knocked out and tied up the way he had been.

Gregor took the closets in the middle of the hall himself. They were both the most likely and the least likely ones. They were the most likely because they were the closest and the easiest to get to. Someone in a hurry could have taken Tasheba Kent’s body and shoved it into one of these in no time at all. They were the least likely for exactly the same reasons. Someone hoping to hide the body until it could be disposed of would be right to fear that in one of these three closets, it would be much too quickly and too easily found.

In the first closet Gregor looked in, he found nothing at all of interest. In the second, he found three black feather boas wound around hangers and hanging from a rod. He wondered if the one that had been on the table with the auction things had been the original, or at least the one from 1938, or if it had been just another copy, like these so obviously were. Gregor went to the third closet. It was empty of everything except dust.

“Oh, look,” Mathilda Frazier exclaimed, backing out of the closet she had been looking through. “One of those shoes.”

She held up what must once have been a black high-heeled shoe with a rhinestone buckle. Its sole had been cut to shreds; part of its top was missing.

“Where did you find this?” Gregor asked.

Mathilda pointed into the closet. Gregor got down on his hands and knees to look.

“You only found the one shoe?” he asked her.

“That’s right,” Mathilda said.

“Mr. Pratt,” Gregor called out, “go down to the library and see if you can find the mate to that shoe. It should be on the table with Lilith Brayne’s things.”

Kelly Pratt hurried away obediently. Gregor went on searching in the closet. This one was stuffed full of all kinds of things, mostly packed away in opaque green plastic bags. Gregor pulled out a moth-eaten old quilt and a Persian lamb coat yellow with age. Kelly Pratt returned.

“It’s not there,” he announced breathlessly. “There’s nothing at all like it on any of the tables.”

“That’s not surprising.” Gregor went left to the next closet. “Have you tried this one?”

Mathilda Frazier shook her head.

“What about the one on the other side?”

“I looked through that one, yes,” Mathilda said. “There was nothing at all in it.”

Gregor nodded and opened the third door. He was suddenly reminded of Monty Hall’s Let’s Make a Deal, a show he had only watched once or twice in his life, but that had this kind of feel. The difference was that Gregor already knew what was behind door number three.

The corpse from the television room was propped up in a back corner of the closet. It was partially hidden by a hanging dry cleaning bag with a Brooks Brothers gray wool suit inside it. When Gregor pushed the bag aside, the body slumped forward and slid to the floor.

“Oh, my God,” Mathilda Frazier squealed.

Just then the front door slammed open and Geraldine Dart and Bennis Hannaford came running in.

“Gregor,” Bennis was shouting. “We’ve got them. They’re going to work.”

Bennis ran across the foyer and into the utility hall, closely followed by Geraldine Dart. Cavender Marsh emerged from his sulk in the living room and came after them. When Bennis saw the crowd clustered around the open closet door, she strode toward it.

“Didn’t you hear me?” she demanded. “We got the lights. We dumped them next to the door as we came in. We’re going to take them right out and set them up.”

“Your timing is wonderful,” Hannah Graham said.

Bennis ignored her and poked her head through the open closet door. “What the—oh, for God’s sake.”

“We’ve been having a very interesting time while you were gone,” Gregor told her.