Despite the dim light, she must have read the look on my face.
“Not much, anyway. Okay, it was pretty awful, having to roll him over like that, but I figured it was my one chance to find out what the bastard was hiding from me, and where he was keeping it. I’d been trying for over a year, and that damned lawyer of his kept blocking everything I did.”
“But why were you still so worried about finding his hidden assets?” I asked. “You didn’t have to worry about losing out on the property settlement. All you had to do was inherit.”
Unless he’d made a will that disinherited her, of course. But I had a hard time imagining Gordon being that organized, and I suspected, from the look on her face, that she felt the same way.
“Yeah, whoever killed him did you a big favor,” I went on. “Unless you did yourself a big favor.”
“I say she looks good for it,” Michael snarled, in his best imitation of a hard-bitten PI from a noir flick. I had to pretend to cough to cover my grin, but Carol took him quite literally.
“I didn’t do it, I tell you!” she wailed.
“Give us a reason to believe you,” I said.
“You won’t believe me,” she said, shaking her head. “No one will.”
“We might if you told the truth about what you did and saw in the barn,” Michael said.
“Especially if you saw anything that would help identify the real culprit,” I said.
She looked back and forth between the two of us, the flashlight beam moving with her head.
“I saw someone taking something from Gordon’s body,” she said. “His wallet. And then he slipped out the other door, just as I came in.”
“Who was it?” I asked.
“You see!” she exclaimed. “I knew you wouldn’t believe me.”
“I didn’t say I didn’t believe you,” I said. “I just asked who you saw.”
“It was your tone of voice,” she said, pouting. “You’re using a very hostile, accusing tone of voice.”
“That’s probably because I feel slightly hostile,” I said. “After all, you just admitted that you saw someone leaving the murder scene with Gordon’s wallet in his hands and you didn’t do a thing about it.”
“Why should I?” she said. “It’s not as if Gordon ever had much in his wallet worth stealing. Probably a few dollars and his famous rubber checkbook.”
“It never occurred to you that the person you saw might have done more than steal the wallet—that he might have been Gordon’s killer?”
“Of course,” she said. “But what if the chief didn’t believe me? And what if the killer did? Do you think I want a cold-blooded killer knowing I’m the only witness who can put him away?”
“So you say nothing, and let a cold-blooded killer roam the streets while an innocent man rots in jail,” I said.
“He’s not in jail,” Carol said. “He’s out on bail.”
“No thanks to you,” I said. “I know why you didn’t tell anyone—you just wanted to get a chance to snoop in Gordon’s stuff, and you didn’t care what happened to anyone else. So who was it?”
“Who was who?”
“Who took Gordon’s wallet?” I snapped.
“I don’t know!” she said.
She took a step back. Probably because she’d seen my free hand clutch involuntarily into a fist.
“Try again,” I suggested.
“I don’t know his name.”
“Describe him, then.”
“It was that creepy little man who was helping you run the yard sale,” she said.
Creepy little man? The only men who’d been helping me, apart from Michael, were Dad and Rob, and while they both had their detractors, I couldn’t imagine anyone calling either of them a creepy little man.
“What creepy little man?” Michael asked.
“That Lionel Barrymore person,” she said.
“Barrymore Sprocket?” I asked.
“That’s the one,” she said.
“And you didn’t even bother mentioning this!” I exclaimed. “If you had, they would never have arrested Giles! Tell me exactly what you saw.”
“Meg,” Michael began. I gestured for him to be quiet. We had Carol talking; why interrupt her?
“I didn’t really see anything else,” she said.
“Meg—we really need to go back to the house,” Michael said.
“But—”
“Meg,” Michael said. “Barrymore Sprocket was helping your father count the yard sale proceeds, remember?”
Chapter 40
“Oh, great,” I said. “We’ve probably left Dad alone with the murderer.”