Somebody Else's Music(126)
“Exactly,” Gregor said. “So Elizabeth Toliver thinks about the outhouse, not about the murder, when she thinks about that night. The only thing she ever says about the murder is that she heard somebody screaming—”
“‘Slit his throat,’” Kyle said quickly. “She told the police that at the time. She said she couldn’t recognize the voice.”
“She told Jimmy Card she couldn’t recognize it as well,” Gregor said. “But what that leaves me with, what it has left me with all along, is an investigative structure that hinges on the outhouse incident. And since the two incidents are connected in a very tenuous way—since they overlap, I should say—the suspect list is still useful. But it’s not actually a suspect list for the murder of Michael Houseman, or for the murder of Chris Inglerod Barr, either.”
“So who’s on it?” Kyle said.
Gregor held the notebook up. “Maris Coleman. Belinda Hart. Emma Kenyon. Chris Inglerod. Nancy Quayde. Peggy Smith.”
“Well, you can get rid of Chris Inglerod,” Kyle said. “At least, as a suspect in her own murder. Do you think she killed Michael Houseman?”
“No.”
“Well, you can’t think she killed herself, can you?” Kyle said.
“I can’t see Mrs. Barr doing it and managing to hide the weapon so well we couldn’t find it,” Gregor said. “No. I don’t think she killed herself. And Emma Kenyon Bligh is eliminated because she was attacked this afternoon. Of course, there is a possibility that Mrs. Bligh inflicted that wound on herself. This time, we do have the weapon. And there’s also the possibility that Mrs. Bligh was working with somebody else, possibly Peggy Smith Kennedy, and they had a falling out. But all in all, I’m inclined to think not. It’s not a crime of that character. It has too much passion in it.”
“Are you talking about what happened to Chris now, or what happened to Emma?”
“Both. Sorry. I’ve been thinking of them as one crime. The two women and the dog. And that sequence has a lot of passion in it, which is interesting, because from everything you’ve told me and everything everyone else has told me and everything I’ve read in the material you’ve given me, the murder of Michael Houseman was cold as hell.”
“And you’ve got more suspects for that one,” Kyle said. “There’s me. And Stu Kennedy. You don’t suspect either of us of murdering Chris Inglerod?”
“No. In fact, I know that neither of you did. Mr. Kennedy is not capable of pulling off something of this complexity, not unless he’s also capable of getting himself sober and straight when he has to, which, from what you’ve told me, he isn’t.”
“Not from anything I’ve ever seen, no.”
“I’d be willing to bet not, period,” Gregor said. “And as for you, you couldn’t have killed Chris Inglerod Barr because you didn’t have time. You were with me most of the afternoon. Then I left to go out to the Toliver place. You would have had to make it out there before me, kill Mrs. Barr, and get away again, all before Luis pulled into the driveway with me in the backseat. And that ignores the obvious, which is that you’d have had to know that Mrs. Barr was going to be there in the first place. So no. I don’t think you’re a serious suspect in the murder of Chris Inglerod Barr, and you’re no suspect at all in the attack on Emma Kenyon Bligh, because we were together the whole morning and I know where you were and what you did. Feeling relieved?”
“More than you know.”
“It’s not a bad suspect list for the murder of Chris Inglerod Barr,” Gregor said, “if I remember to use it for that, instead of letting the list focus my mind on the outhouse. Because the thing about the outhouse is that it was almost beside the point. Almost. Not entirely. That’s another mistake I made. First I took it too seriously, and then later for a while I didn’t take it seriously enough. There’s a big sign over there saying ‘Radisson.’ Shouldn’t we do something about that?”
“I really hate that part of the detective novel where the detective tells his sidekick a third of everything he knows and then shuts up like a clam and acts like Buddha for fifty pages while the sidekick tears his hair trying to decipher all the Zen koans. You know what I mean?”
“I know what you mean. I’m waiting for one more piece of information, and then we’ll do all the usual things that cops like to do and you can hold a press conference to announce the arrest. How’s that?”
“Okay unless somebody else ends up dead in the meantime,” Kyle said.