Tim opened the door, and Gregor looked through it to see the three women sitting around a medium-sized conference table, each with a cup of something in front of her.
“What have you got?” Tim demanded.
The one Gregor supposed was Maartje—because she was so obviously in a late stage of pregnancy—blushed. “Lemon Ginger herb tea,” she said. “And I have in it some honey, which is the kind you told Marcie I should have.”
“Pasteurized,” Tim explained. “You can get some bad forms of food poisoning from honey. You gentlemen want to come in here and sit down?”
“You aren’t going to do anything about what’s happening up front?” Gregor asked him.
“I’ve already been up to look once,” Marcie said. “The line’s getting longer but there’s nothing we can really do anything about yet. When I’m done here, I’ll go ahead and get it organized.”
“And you are?” Gregor asked.
“Marcie Connors. I’m a nurse and the assistant director here.”
“Marcie’s been with me since we opened,” Tim Brand said.
“Were you one of the people who found the body?” Gregor asked.
“Oh, goodness no,” the other young woman said. She would have to be Juliette. “Maartje and I found that thing. I mean, we didn’t actually go out there looking for something. We were going to just sit there and have something with ice in it. Maartje was feeling a little rocky.”
“It was the being pregnant,” Maartje said, looking embarrassed.
Gregor looked the two of them over. “So,” he said. “The two of you went out to the terrace to get some air, and—that was it? You just saw a body?”
“We were going to sit on the wall,” Juliette said. “Everybody does. You don’t have to worry about anything because nobody uses that parking lot up there. And nobody ever comes down the stairs.”
“Of course they do,” Tim said. “I had someone come down the stairs to talk to me not an hour before the two of you went out.”
“Let’s get that straight,” Gregor said. “You came out here—when?”
“Eight o’clock,” Tim said. “Almost exactly.”
“And your visitor came?”
“Right away,” Tim said. “I’d barely had a chance to sit down before I heard the footsteps on the stairs. We talked for maybe ten minutes, if that. Then she left, and I went back inside.”
“Do you know if anybody went out to the back between that time and the time when Maartje and Juliette went out?”
“No,” Tim said.
“I was in and out of the back corridor quite a bit,” Marcie said, “and I didn’t see anybody go out. And Tim was with you, Mr. Demarkian, his office is on the route—”
“We had the door closed,” Tim said.
“Oh,” Marcie said. “That’s too bad.”
“So that was eight to no more than eight fifteen, probably closer to eight ten,” Gregor said. “And Maartje and Juliette went out—”
“It was exactly quarter to nine,” Juliette said. “I checked.”
“Fine,” Gregor said. “So we had half an hour to thirty-five minutes. You went right out and headed for the wall?”
“Absolutely,” Juliette said.
“And then what?” Gregor asked.
Juliette looked confused. “Then nothing,” she said. “We went out and we were walking over to the wall and there it was. He was. I mean, it was just lying there.”
“And nobody else was there. In the bushes, or going up the stairs,” Gregor said.
“No, of course not,” Juliette said. “If someone was hanging around, I would have seen him.”
“What about the top of the stairs?” Gregor asked. “Or the space above it? Did you see anybody up there? Did you sense any movement, or hear anything?”
“Not a thing,” Juliette said.
Maartje was shaking her head. “It was very quiet,” she said. “There wasn’t even wind.”
“I think it’s frightening,” Juliette said. “That somebody could have come down into our terrace and stabbed Mr. Westervan like that and nobody even heard anything.”
“It’s more probable that Mr. Westervan was knifed up top, in the parking lot,” Gregor said, “and that he then fell over the wall up there or was pushed. There were what looked like signs of impact on the body and around it.”
“My God,” Juliette said.
“We’ll check it out,” Jason Battlesea said.
“Still, we’re looking at thirty-five minutes,” Gregor said. “That’s not a lot of time.”