Festival of Deaths(84)

“What about the force?”

Gregor shook his head. “You’ve just told me that the angles are consistent with an overhead delivery. That would give the murderer leverage. And you can’t discount the extra force inherent in extreme anger.”

“Somebody was extremely angry with Maximillian Dey and Maria Gonzalez?”

“Yes,” Gregor said thoughtfully. “I think they were.”

“Why?”

“I’ll have to check through a few things first. I just have a—feeling. Did you know Maximillian Dey had his wallet stolen the day before yesterday?”

“Yeah, I heard about it. Do you think it’s connected?”

“Not directly, no. I mean, I believe it was an ordinary pocket picking with no broader implications in and of itself.”

Jackman scowled. “You’re being cryptic, Gregor. I don’t like it when you’re cryptic.”

“Let’s go back to the tire iron,” Gregor said. “Have you looked around for it? Have you found it yet?”

“My people naturally looked around for a murder weapon,” John Jackman told him, “but we didn’t find one. And you keep saying tire iron, but we don’t know if that’s really—”

“It’s a tire iron. You’ll find it in the trunk of one of the limousines The Lotte Goldman Show drove down from New York. I believe they said there were two. Limousines, that is.”

“How could you possibly know that?”

“Because it makes sense,” Gregor said. “I take it no weapon was found in the Gonzalez case, either.”

“No, no, it wasn’t.”

“From what Elkham told me about the Gonzalez case, Maria Gonzalez’s body was moved around and nobody was ever sure where. Well, where’s the most likely place?”

“You mean in the trunk of a car,” Jackman said. “But Gregor—”

“No buts. Correct me if I’m wrong, but there doesn’t seem to me to be anywhere else her body could have gone to. And the trunk of the company limousine is not a place the police would necessarily think of to search unless there was an obvious reason for it. You didn’t search the limousines yesterday, did you?”

“No,” Jackman said.

“There, then. And the wounds are consistent with a tire iron. And the thing about a tire iron is that you can just put it back where you got it—meaning in its place in the car—and you don’t have to worry about it looking out of place. Then later, when you have a little extra time, you can dispose of it. You can throw it in the river.”

“Fine,” Jackman said. “But it’s an incredible risk to take.”

“So what? So this murderer just killed a man in the men’s room of a busy office suite. I don’t think we can accuse him of being afraid to take risks.”

“Are you sure the tire iron will still be there? In the limousine? If we look?”

“No. He might have gotten rid of it already. He might not have had time. I couldn’t say.”

“You’re using he.”

“It’s for convenience.”

“Are you trying to tell me that the murderer is one of the drivers? Do you have a reason to think—”

“Of course the murderer doesn’t have to be one of the limousine drivers,” Gregor said impatiently. “He—or she—just has to be someone with access to the vehicles, which means with access to the keys. The person who comes immediately to mind is that secretary, Sarah Meyer. I’ll bet anything she has keys to every door, box, and vehicle connected to that show. And she’s got mobility, too. She wanders around a lot. It’s part of her job. People expect it.”

“What reason would she have for killing Dey and Gonzalez?”

“Maybe there was a love triangle,” Gregor suggested. “Maybe Sarah was in love with Max and Max was in love with Maria, and Sarah killed Maria in the hopes that Max would turn to her in his bereavement, and when he didn’t she killed Max himself in a rage.”

“Not bad,” Jackman said. “But it sounds more like something on Days of Our Lives than real life.”

“All right then. Try Dr. Goldman or DeAnna Kroll. Either one of them might have something in their past they don’t want anyone to know about—”

“Saints in heaven,” Jackman groaned, “not a deep dark secret from the past.”

“Make it something in the present instead,” Gregor said. “My point is that they’ve got access, too, and mobility. And people do have reasons.”

“It helps if they have reasons that would convince a jury,” Jackman said. What’s that up there? My God. I do believe the traffic is about to get moving.”