Harry Dolan (15 page)

It was one o’clock when she left them. There was nothing more to be learned at Tully’s apartment. She and Carter Shan had searched it in the early morning. They had found nothing out of the ordinary, no evidence linking Tully to Tom Kristoll’s murder. No suicide note.

By one-fifteen, Elizabeth was back at City Hall. She waved at the desk sergeant in the lobby, took in the bare details of her surroundings: a janitor pushing a broom across the floor, a woman on a bench with her head bowed. She was opening the gray steel door to the stairway when she heard a voice call her name.

“Detective Waishkey.”

She turned to see the woman from the bench approaching. A woolen coat covered her figure; her hair was in a ponytail; she wasn’t wearing her glasses. It took a moment for Elizabeth to recognize Valerie Calnero.

Her face was pale. She had been crying. She said, “I need to ask you something.”

“Come up to the squad room,” Elizabeth said. “We can talk there.”

“I’d rather talk here,” the woman said. “I heard about Adrian. Did he shoot himself?”

“You should come up.”

“The news reports don’t say. They call it an apparent suicide. But I’d like to know, one way or the other.”

“I’m afraid I can’t tell you,” Elizabeth said gently. “It’s not clear yet.”

“Did Adrian kill Tom Kristoll? Can you tell me that?”

Elizabeth let the steel door close. “I don’t know,” she said.

“Because less than a week ago you came to ask me about graffiti scratched into my car. I pointed you toward Adrian. I didn’t want to—”

“I can understand why you’re upset,” Elizabeth said.

“I didn’t want to,” Valerie repeated, “but you were only going to talk to him, you said. And now he’s dead.”

“I can understand—”

“Adrian’s parents are in town now. They want to talk to Adrian’s friends. What am I supposed to tell them? Should I tell them I drove their son to suicide?”

“Valerie—”

“Or that I got him murdered? I’d like to be able to nail it down for them.” Elizabeth put her hand on the young woman’s shoulder. “Come upstairs, Valerie. I know it’s a lousy time for it, but there are things we should talk about. You might know something that could shed light on Adrian’s death. Maybe something he said, or something about the way he acted.”

Valerie Calnero’s mouth was set in a stern line. She shook her head slowly and began to back away.

“I don’t have anything to say to you.”

 

 

 

Upstairs, Elizabeth brewed some coffee and typed a report on the Adrian Tully crime scene, and another on her conversation with Tully’s family. The squad room was largely deserted. When she finished her paperwork, she took out the case file on Tom Kristoll’s murder and began to page through it.

The sound of a soft voice made her look up.

“I don’t want to bug you.”

It was Alice Marrowicz, her mousy hair in a ponytail, the sleeves of her sweater enveloping her hands.

“You’re not bugging me, Alice.”

“You were out late last night, that’s what I heard.”

She dragged a chair toward Elizabeth’s desk and sat down.

“I’m not snooping around or anything,” she said. “I want you to understand that. But I’ve heard things.”

Elizabeth closed the Kristoll file. “What are you getting at, Alice?”

“Adrian Tully.”

“What about him?”

“I heard he was found dead in a parked car by a cornfield in the middle of nowhere.”

“That’s been on the news,” Elizabeth said.

“I heard he died of a gunshot wound to the head. There was stippling around the wound. Tests turned up gunshot residue on his hand and on the sleeve of his coat. The gun was on the seat beside him. A box of ammunition in the glove compartment.”

Alice paused for breath and then continued. “So there’s every indication of a self-inflicted wound. But then there are one or two things that don’t fit. I heard, for instance, that Tully’s prints are on the gun, but not on the bullets. And not on the ammunition box either.”

She leaned forward in her chair, her voice growing more animated. “So on the one hand, it seems like a suicide,” she said. “But on the other hand, it wouldn’t be that hard to fake. If you knew him, if you were in the car with him. If you were fast with the gun. One shot to the head, point-blank. Then you put on a pair of latex gloves and wipe your prints from the gun. You remove the spent shell, put it in your pocket, and replace it with a fresh round. You roll down the passenger window, put the gun in Tully’s hand, fire a second shot out into the field. Now he’s got residue on his hand and there’s still only one spent round in the gun. You stash the ammo in the glove compartment, leave the gun on the seat. You’ve planned all this in advance, so you’ve got another car waiting nearby to make your escape.”

She looked at Elizabeth expectantly. Elizabeth obliged her with an encouraging smile.

“It’s not a bad theory, Alice. I’ve had some thoughts along those lines myself—”

But Alice was shaking her head. “You’re missing the point. It’s not my theory. I didn’t work it out. I read it in a mystery novel.”

Elizabeth’s smile faded. “What novel?”

“The question you want to ask is: Who wrote the novel?”

“All right. Who?”

“Bridget Shellcross.”

 

 

 

“It’s a cliché,” said Bridget Shellcross. “A murder staged to look like a suicide. Every mystery writer uses it sooner or later. I used it in my second book.”

The door to Bridget Shellcross’s townhouse had been answered by a woman with a pageboy haircut. She was tall and athletic and dressed for a workout; her bare arms were well toned. She led Elizabeth to a sitting room decorated with designer furniture: squarish shapes in leather with bands of dark wood and burnished metal.

Bridget rose from a divan to greet Elizabeth. She wore a stylish black suit fitted to her sprightly frame. The tall woman—whose name turned out to be Rachel Kent—left and returned with bottled water and a tray of raw vegetables and hummus. Then she slipped off to sit in a corner.

Bridget had resumed her place on the divan. “In my first book,” she was saying, “I used a different cliché altogether. One of the cops investigating the crime turned out to be the killer. No offense.”

“None taken,” said Elizabeth.

“I wrote the first one when I was twenty-three. It was based on a short story I’d done, something Tom Kristoll published in
Gray Streets.
He encouraged me to work it up into a novel.”

She shook her head thoughtfully. “Poor Tom. His death was a cliché too—another murder made to look like a suicide.” Her eyes locked on Elizabeth’s. “You think they’re related.”

“Do I?”

“Adrian Tully was under suspicion for killing Tom,” Bridget said. “That’s the gossip anyway. So maybe whoever killed Tom also killed Tully, as a way of deflecting suspicion. If you think Tully committed suicide out of guilt over killing Tom, you’ll stop looking for Tom’s real murderer. You know what that means.”

“It must mean something,” said Elizabeth.

“It means someone wants to make Adrian Tully a fall guy. There’s another cliché. How many are we up to?”

“I’ve lost count.”

“Not to mention that Tully’s death resembles a murder in a book, thus casting suspicion on the author,” Bridget said. “That’s a cliché all on its own. I suppose you’ll need to hear my alibi.”

Elizabeth lifted her shoulders almost imperceptibly. “If it’s no trouble.”

“Let’s see. You saw me at Tom’s funeral. After that, a lot of us went over to the Kristoll house to keep Laura company. I left there around five and met Rachel at Palio downtown for an early dinner.”

“Rachel didn’t attend the funeral?” Elizabeth asked.

“No. She didn’t really know Tom,” Bridget said. “After dinner, we did some shopping along Main Street, and then went to a café. Crazy Wisdom. There was a folksinger.” She turned to Rachel. “What was her name?”

“Angela something.”

“Right. She wasn’t very good. We were home by nine-thirty or so and stayed in the rest of the night.”

“The two of you were here alone then,” said Elizabeth.

“That’s right. Rachel is my only alibi for after nine-thirty. Aren’t you, Rae?”

In a tone that was light, amused, the woman answered, “Sure, Bridge.”

“Of course, she’s desperately in love with me. She’d lie for me. Wouldn’t you, Rae?”

“Absolutely.”

“But you’re not lying now, are you?”

“Nope.”

“So there you have it,” Bridget said to Elizabeth. “What else can I tell you?”

Elizabeth studied the woman in silence for a moment, then asked, “Did you know Adrian Tully?”

“I met him once or twice,” said Bridget, “at those parties Tom and Laura were forever throwing.”

“What was your impression of him?”

“I thought he was gay. But then I realized he was just socially awkward.”

“Did he ever make a pass at you?”

Bridget hesitated. “Now why would you ask me that?”

“I believe he may have had a thing for attractive older women.”

“Notice how she tempers ‘older’ with ‘attractive,’ Rae. She’s tactful,” Bridget said. “The answer is yes, he made a pass at me once. I pretended not to notice, and he went away and pouted.”

She sat up straight on the divan and planted her feet on the floor. Her tone became more serious. “Still, I don’t think he was very bright. So if I tried to lure him out to a cornfield with the promise of sex, he might have gone along with it.”

Elizabeth’s fingers brushed the arm of her chair dismissively. “I haven’t suggested any such thing.”

“No. But that’s the subtext,” Bridget said. “That’s the problem with the whole scenario: If Adrian Tully was murdered, whoever did it must have either driven out there with him or arranged to meet him there. Either way, there must have been some pretext, some reason he went along. I couldn’t tell you what it was, because I’m not the one who killed him.”

She picked up a square black pillow from the divan and held it in her lap. “I’m not the one who killed Tom either, if you want to know. Rachel is my alibi for that one too. We were here the night he died. We cooked dinner together—lasagna with eggplant and tomato-basil sauce.” In the same sedate tone she added, “I believe I was laying out the napkins and the silverware right about the time when Tom smashed into the sidewalk.”

She put the pillow down and stood. “I’m afraid I’ve lost interest in continuing this conversation,” she said. “If there’s nothing more, perhaps I could show you out.”

Chapter 16

“YOU MISSED THE SUNSET,” CASIMIR HIFFLYN SAID.

“I didn’t mean to,” said Elizabeth.

“I can sum it up for you. A few wisps of cloud, and behind them the sky glowing pink over the branches of those trees, and the pink deepening to red.”

Hifflyn lived in a sprawling ranch house shielded from the road by tall hedges. He had a flagstone deck in the back and a broad, terraced lawn. A fire burned in a shallow copper bowl set on the flagstones. Hifflyn and Elizabeth were sitting in deck chairs drawn up close to the fire.

“Have you read any of Bridget’s books?” Hifflyn asked.

“I’m afraid not.”

“I suppose one shouldn’t judge,” he said. “They’re not intended to be serious literature. Realism is not their forte. The one you’ve mentioned—with the faked suicide in a parked car by a cornfield. It doesn’t hold up, not if you look at it closely. First, you’ve got to convince your victim to drive out into the wilderness in the middle of the night.”

“Bridget mentioned that problem herself,” Elizabeth interjected.

“But that’s only one difficulty,” Hifflyn said. “Another is witnesses. Because you’re not really in the wilderness. You’re next to a cornfield. That means a farm. That means a farmhouse. In her book, I think the farmhouse was supposed to be abandoned. But still, what about neighbors? Is this supposed to be the only farmhouse for miles around? The sound of gunfire can travel far on a calm night. And to make it work, there have to be two shots, one to kill the victim, and one to get residue on his hand. If anyone hears the second shot, the whole thing breaks down.”

“We’re looking into that,” Elizabeth said. “Some of my colleagues are out there now, questioning people who live in the area.”

“Then there’s the bullet itself,” Hifflyn said. “The second bullet. When you fire it, it has to end up somewhere. In the field, probably, or—are there trees at the edge of the field?”

“I believe there are.”

“In a tree trunk, then. Either way, the bullet can be recovered. And if it is, that’s evidence of a second shot. It no longer looks like a suicide. Our murderer is out of luck.” Hifflyn added a stick of wood to the fire. “Incidentally, that’s how the crime is solved in Bridget’s book. The second bullet is recovered. The heroine’s dog fetches it from the field. Dusty or Rusty or whatever his name is. That’s the way her books always end. The dog saves the day.”

“It takes all kinds,” Elizabeth said.

“I suppose it does. If it’s not too presumptuous, I’ll suggest you try a more conventional approach. A grid search of the field with metal detectors, for instance.”

“We’ve thought of that too. I believe it’s being organized now.”

“There you are.”

The two of them fell silent. Elizabeth watched the fire crackle in the copper bowl. Then she said, “What can you tell me about Adrian Tully?”

Hifflyn took a moment to consider. “He was a quiet young man. Meek, I would say.”

“He copyedited a manuscript of yours—a short story for
Gray Streets.
This past spring.”

“You have excellent sources of information.”

“The secretary at the magazine keeps track of everything.”

“Yes, Adrian edited my story,” Hifflyn said. “But bad editing is a weak motive for murder, Detective—though in the heat of the moment it can often seem otherwise. And Adrian’s editing was good. He found a few typographical errors, questioned a few word choices. He didn’t change things for the sake of changing them.”