He got on the elevator, seeming not to want to share what his weekend had been like. Finally he said, “It’s over. That’s the best I can say about it. How ’bout you?”
“Better than yours, from the tone of your voice.” Sam let the elevator door close before she could say anything else.
She knocked on the door of Lt. Angel’s office.
“Danny. Good. Come on in. Tell me what you have on Kane/Jordan.”
“It gets curiouser and curiouser.”
“Wouldn’t have thought you were the Alice-in-Wonderland type, Danny. Although now that you mention it, you do resemble the Red Queen sometimes.”
“Thanks for the compliment. If that’s a compliment, which I don’t think it is. And how the hell do you know about Alice in Wonderland?”
“Five daughters, remember? Ask me anything about Disney princesses, Alice, Hermione. I‘ve read it all.” He sighed. “Not one super hero or G.I. Joe.”
“At least with Hermione you got Harry Potter.”
“Yeah, a fucking wizard. But that’s not what you have for me, is it?”
Danny set her coffee cup on his desk and summarized what Amanda had told her. “She may have been wrong to withhold telling us she was there but she’s right about one thing — there are too many similarities to the Webster case for coincidence. And all those coincidences wrap it up neatly. Also like last year.”
She finished off her coffee and pitched the cup in the trashcan. “We’re being led by our noses to see Amanda St. Claire as the perp. Why the similarities to the Webster case, I haven’t figured out yet, but I will.”
“She has a motive.”
“Weak, according to the folks I’ve talked to but, interestingly, established publicly in front of half the Bullseye staff.”
“You think one of them is our perp?”
“I think Kane wanted an audience to establish she had a reason to hate him. I don’t like the time element either. The guy across the street says she was there less than ten minutes. I don’t think she could have done what was done in ten minutes. Add a left-handed perp who brought down a six-footer and the image it paints for me isn’t Amanda St. Claire.”
“Okay, for the moment, let’s accept what you say is true,” Lt. Angel said. “That still leaves her lying about being there. Why?”
“I think she saw something and is too scared to tell me. Maybe the murderer or someone she knew. I’m not sure. I wish she’d trust me enough to talk to me honestly.”
“Let me think about this for a while. Got anything else?”
“A few odds and ends. The guy who saw Amanda there also saw a ‘classy car,’ as he described it. Silver, he thought, or gray, probably a BMW. Liz Fairchild, who owns the gallery where Kane showed his work, has a silver BMW and was on the eastside that night. She was evasive about where she was, even intimated that she might have been a little drunk. I think she was at Bullseye, too.”
“Could Amanda have seen her? Maybe that’s who she’s trying to protect. I imagine they’re acquainted.”
“Yeah, they are. The Fairchild Gallery represents Amanda. Maybe they’re each protecting the other.”