Good King Sauerkraut (23 page)

Warren Osterman was silent for a long while, and then his face gradually crinkled into a big smile. “By god, that's devious! Tell the military they need more weapons. Oh, how they'll love that! Ha!”

King grinned. “Thought you'd like it. It should get us off the hook quite nicely.”

“It's too early to start posing for statues,” the older man grinned back. “We still have to pull it off.”

They talked details for a while and agreed to go ahead with the plan. Then Osterman said, “You know, King, you've changed. I used to wonder who tied your shoelaces for you, but no more. You never would have thought up a move like this before. Dennis Cox might have, but not you.”

“Maybe that was the problem. I depended too much on Dennis.”

Osterman agreed. “He depended on you to develop the innovative technology, and you depended on him to take care of the business end for you. You complemented each other, but each of you reinforced the other's weak spots. When was the last time Dennis came up with a truly original design?”

King smiled ruefully. “I can't remember.”

Osterman hesitated. “This new partner of yours. Is she …”

“Original. And quick. And willing to clean up after me only to a point, I suspect. She's no Dennis, that's certain.”

The older man nodded, reassured. “It's a horrible thing to think, but you're probably better off without Dennis. If the police ever decide to arrest Mimi, that is.”

King got up and started pacing again. “That's the other thing I wanted to talk to you about. Warren—why did you tell the police the other three all wanted my job?”

Osterman's face took on a pained look. “They were looking for a motive. Once the police told me the killer had to be you or Mimi … well. I knew it couldn't be you—you're just not mean-spirited enough to go out and kill someone. So it has to be Mimi, and she probably is capable of killing. I thought if I told them about the competition for your job, I'd help head them in the right direction.”

King managed a smile; the old man had been trying to protect him. “Thanks, Warren. Unfortunately, it didn't work. Sergeant Larch made a point of telling me that sometimes people kill to protect what they have, not just to gain something more. I'm still a suspect.”

Osterman groaned.

“And there's something else. If Mimi did kill Dennis and Gregory, are we supposed to go on working with her as if nothing has happened? How do you think I feel, right there in the apartment with her?”

“Things were rough this morning?”

“She was still asleep when I left. She didn't get in until late.”

“Do you want to move back to the other apartment? Or into a hotel?”

King made a show of considering the suggestion. “That might not be a bad idea. Let me think about it.”

They had nothing more to talk about, so King left. Without knowing it, Warren Osterman had put his finger on a problem that King could find no immediate solution for. It would be a good move toward convincing the police of his innocence if he left the apartment for a hotel; it would look as if he were afraid to stay alone with Mimi. But at the same time, he didn't want to separate himself from the police's only other suspect. If he were going to come up with a plan for directing suspicion toward her, he wanted her where he could get at her. What worried him was the possibility that
Mimi
might move to a hotel. He'd been trying to think of a way to persuade her to stay but so far had come up empty.

King stopped in Rae Borchard's office and invited her to have lunch with him.

Warren Osterman had been right about one thing, King thought; he
had
changed, a little. He was noticing more, paying better attention. He'd had to watch various people carefully to see how his story was going over; he thought he knew every facial expression in Marian Larch's repertoire, for instance. And even though circumstances had narrowed the police's suspects down to two, he was sure he'd done nothing to point the finger of guilt at himself. He was handling it.

Earlier he would have hesitated to ask a woman like Rae Borchard out to lunch; now he wasn't even surprised when she said yes. Rae suggested a Japanese restaurant on First Avenue and said she'd meet him there at twelve-thirty. King killed time until the hour approached; he didn't want to go back to the apartment and face Mimi just yet. The thought struck him that it was one week to the day since Dennis and Gregory had died. He'd survived seven days.

Rae was waiting at the restaurant when he got there. Warren Osterman had filled her in on King's suggestion that they sell the Defense Department on the idea of a bigger gun platform, and she was all for it. Rae had mastered the art of talking and reading a menu at the same time, but King still had to jump back and forth between the two.

The food was good and the talk pleasant, touching as it did on any subject except the police investigation. Rae did drop a hint that the next time he had an idea such as the one for the expanded platform, he should come to her with it. But she did it so gracefully that King wasn't at all sure he'd been reprimanded.

She seemed to be waiting for him to bring up the subject on both their minds, so he did. When a lull appeared in the conversation, he asked, “Aren't you afraid to be having lunch with me? The police think I might be a murderer.”

Rae gave him the ghost of a smile. “Warren's convinced it's Mimi.”

“Warren was also convinced a rival company was out to kill off our entire design team, and he was wrong about that. But I'm asking what you think.”

She patted her mouth with a napkin before she answered. “I don't think you're a murderer, King. You're not a hunter. It doesn't seem to be your nature to pick out a prey and stalk it. The trouble is, I can't see Mimi killing those two men either. Dirty her hands
murdering
somebody? No. I have to think the police are on the wrong track.”

King only half believed her. She wasn't really risking anything, meeting him in a public place like this. They'd been alone together only once, the time she drove him home from the hospital; but he wasn't a suspect then. “Rae,” he said quietly, “I want you to tell me how much Mimi has been campaigning for my job. Since Dennis and Gregory died, I mean. Exactly what has she been doing?”

“She hasn't approached me at all. Warren mentioned she'd been after him about it, but he didn't go into detail.”

Again, he only half believed her. “You know she's senior partner of SmartSoft now.”

Rae stared at him, unblinking. “Yes.”

“Let me ask you this. If I'd not gone out that morning and had been killed along with Dennis and Gregory—would you have built a new design team from scratch? Or would Mimi now be in charge of the project?”

She took her time answering. Finally she said, “Mimi would be in charge.”

King nodded, as if to say
I thought so
, and let the subject drop. He didn't want to make overt accusations, only to plant suspicion. “Warren seems to have abandoned the idea of a conference here with the Defense Department. You couldn't reach all of them, was that it?”

Once more she took her time, obviously choosing her words carefully. “That's true, but there's a little more involved than that. Unfortunately, there's been a slight change of attitude in Washington. Defense knows that the New York police now believe the killer to be you or Mimi. This has, ah, put a damper on their enthusiasm, you might say.”

King's blood turned to ice. “We're going to lose the contract.”

“Not necessarily,” she said quickly. “If the police arrest one of you soon and we're able to provide a satisfactory replacement, then there's no problem.”

“Replacement. I'll bet you already have replacements picked out for both Mimi
and
me.”

She didn't even look embarrassed. “We have to be prepared for all contingencies.”

He couldn't believe it. “No. Warren wouldn't just dump me like that.”

A touch of something that might have been pity appeared on her face. “But it's not Warren's decision to make, don't you see? He's given me full authority over all these new Defense contracts—not just the EM gun platform but all the other projects as well. And I'll tell you honestly, King, that I will jettison anything or anybody that endangers any one of the contracts.”

“I see,” he said tightly.

“So it really does depend upon how quickly the police act. If they arrest, ah, Mimi … before the boys at Defense get really antsy, that is, then we have nothing to worry about. I'll simply call in her replacement and we'll get on with the job.”

“And if the police don't make an arrest?”

She spread her hands, said nothing.

King felt as if he'd been hit in the mouth with a baseball bat. No arrest meant he and Mimi both would be out. All along he'd been hoping to create such a cloud of suspicion that the police would never know for certain who was responsible for Dennis's and Gregory's deaths. But obviously that wouldn't do now. He was going to lose the opportunity of a lifetime if the police didn't make an arrest, and he was going to lose it fairly soon.
Oh Mimi, Mimi!
He didn't have much time.

The talk between Rae and him was stiff after that, and they both gave a little sigh of relief when the waiter appeared with the check. Outside, the rain had started again. Rae had brought an umbrella with her, one of the big kind that came all the way down over the shoulders. King had to scrunch down to walk under it with her, but huddling together under an umbrella did a lot to ease the tension between them. He made a bad joke and she laughed, doing her part. Along with what seemed like hundreds of other people, they were trying to get a taxi.

They'd stepped off the curb into the street, both of them waving an arm in a vain attempt to catch a cab driver's attention. A car came barreling down First Avenue, too fast, hitting every puddle and spraying the taxi-hunters with dirty rainwater. “Look out!” Rae cried, and grabbed King's arm.

She caught him by surprise; he was still off balance when the speeding car sloshed him and another man, who knocked against King in his eagerness to get out of the way. King felt himself falling … directly into the line of traffic.

A screech tore through the air as the driver of a green van stood on his brake pedal to stop in time. He missed King, but the rear end of the van slewed around on the wet street to bang into the front fender of a Porsche in the next lane. The crash was a real attention-getter; all the cars behind the two vehicles started honking their horns.

Shaken by his close call, King examined himself for damage. Other than a tear in his trousers and a skinned knee, he seemed to be all right. Then the van driver was bending over him, breathing anxiously in his face. “Did I hitcha? Did I hitcha?”

“No, no,” King assured him hastily. “You stopped in time.”

“Ohhhhh, will you
look
what you did to my cah!” a nasal voice lamented.

The van driver stood up and jerked around to face the owner of the Porsche. “Jesus, buddy, what did you want me to do? Run the guy down?”

Rae held her umbrella over King, her face chalk-white. “My god, King—I almost got you killed. Oh … can you get up?” He took the hand she offered and pulled himself creakily to his feet. She looked at his torn trousers and said, “Your knee is bleeding! Oh King—I'm so sorry!” Her face was tight and her voice high; she was more upset by what had happened than King was.

“Don't worry about it, Rae,” he said as calmly as he could, “it was just an accident.” As King looked at her anguished face, the thought suddenly came to him:
But if it had been Mimi who'd caused it instead of you
… Yes. Oh yes. He tried not to smile as the idea took hold.

“Are you sure you're all right?”

All the pedestrians around them were busy telling one another what had just happened, and the chorus of honking horns was growing louder as the traffic backed up behind the two stopped vehicles. The van driver and the owner of the Porsche were engaged in a spirited shouting match. “Let's get out of here,” King muttered.

He took Rae's arm and they melted into the crowd. No one noticed when they went down into the first subway stop they came to and made their escape.

Mimi was at the apartment. “What happened to you?” she demanded, staring at King's rain-soaked clothing and the tear in his trousers.

“An accident,” he said shortly and headed toward his room.

She followed. “What kind of accident?”

King told her what had happened and closed the bedroom door firmly in her face. He cleaned off his scraped knee and put on dry clothing. He glanced in the mirror; one good thing, the bruises on his face were faint now, almost unnoticeable. He flopped down on the bed to think.

If he were the victim of an “accident” that Mimi seemed to have caused, would that be enough for the police to arrest her? It would have to be a near-fatal accident, and there couldn't be any doubt as to Mimi's involvement. How could he arrange that? And he'd need a witness. Marian Larch would be ideal.

Rae Borchard was only partly right about him. Never before in his life had he set out to get someone; but he could learn to be a hunter if that's what it took to survive. He had changed, and he could change even more. In a way he was lucky that the only other suspect was Mimi Hargrove; if it had been someone he liked, such as Gale Fredericks, he wasn't at all sure he could go ahead with it no matter how much he'd changed. But it was Mimi, good old thorn-in-the-side, double-crossing Mimi. Mimi, who wanted his job so badly she could … kill for it?

The police were still thinking in terms of deliberate murder, bless their one-track little minds. All right: if they wanted a murderer, he'd give them one. He was damned if he'd see his own life ruined because of two stupid mistakes he'd made. But whatever he was going to do, he'd better do it fast; the people in Washington weren't going to wait forever.