“Yes, she was. Except that I didn’t know it was a person at first. It was dark in the garage. It looked like a pile of garbage. So I went over to check it out. And there she was.”
“Dead.”
“I assumed she was dead.”
“You didn’t get down on the floor to check?”
“I could see her eyes. They were—coming out of her head. Is that the way to put it? I knew she was dead.”
“What did you do then?”
“I came back to the house and called the police department.”
“You didn’t touch the body in any way?”
“No,” Margaret Anson said. “Not at all. Not even with a single finger. I didn’t even want to look at it.”
“What about the reporters? Were there any in the road?”
“I didn’t notice.”
“What did you do after you called the police?”
“I came in here and made myself a cup of tea,” Margaret Anson said. “And then I drank it. And then I waited. And the next thing I knew, everything turned into a circus again. And here you are.”
“Do you really think that this murder and the murder of your daughter are unconnected?”
Margaret Anson stood up. “I think you’ve had enough questions,” she said. “I think I’ve talked entirely too much. I think it’s about time you left this house. You can come back when I have my attorney present.”
“We’ll need you to come down and make a formal statement,” Stacey Spratz said quickly.
Margaret Anson waved him off. “I’ll come down and make a formal statement when I have my attorney present. That should be tomorrow. I don’t have to make one today in any case, and I don’t have to come with you anywhere unless you’re arresting me on some charge. Are you arresting me on some charge?”
“No,” Mark Cashman said.
“Good.” Margaret Anson nodded to each of them in turn. “Then I think, gentlemen, that it’s about time that the three of you left my house.”
3
Back out in the driveway, Gregor could see that the road was once again so clogged with reporters that it was unpassable. While they had been talking to Margaret Anson, the work in the garage had been proceeding quickly, but the body was still lying on the concrete floor. Gregor went inside and stood over it, trying not to get in the way of Tom Royce and the uniformed officers doing routine evidence gathering. Margaret Anson had been telling the truth about at least one thing. Zara Anne Moss’s eyes were indeed protruding from her head, one of the common symptoms of death by strangulation. Gregor could see others. There was a deep welt in the part of her throat that Gregor could see. On cursory examination, there didn’t seem to be anything about this welt that was inconsistent with the idea that it had been made by a nylon athletic shoelace. The mouth was hanging open.
Gregor backed away from the body and looked around. There was no sign of clay pottery in the garage, but he hadn’t expected there to be. There was a shed-roofed box built into the side of the house near the back door. Gardening things would be kept in there. He went to the back of the garage and looked at the rear door. It was an undistinguished wooden door, and it was unlocked. He opened it and looked outside. There was more lawn and a few trees, nothing special. There was no sign of anyone having gone back and forth through it anytime recently. He shut it again and went back across the garage and through the bays to the drive.
“So?” Stacey Spratz said, when he walked up.
“So,” Gregor said, “she’s lying about why she went out to the garage. She’s never grown herbs in her life, she doesn’t even garden, and the pots for that kind of thing aren’t kept in the garage in the first place. The interesting question is why she bothered to tell that particular lie.”
“But if she’s lying, can’t we do something about it?” Stacey asked.
“What?” Gregor asked him. “She wasn’t under oath. She wasn’t even making an official statement. By the time she gets down to making that statement, she’ll probably have figured out what was wrong with what she said and changed it. And you’re not dealing with some street kid here. You’re dealing with a very rich woman who has lots of legal help. If there are discrepancies between the story she just gave and her eventual statement, she’ll just say—perfectly plausibly—that she was too upset to know what she was talking about when she first talked to us.”
“I don’t believe that woman is ever too upset to know what she’s talking about,” Mark Cashman said.