He Huffed and He Puffed (29 page)

Ivan followed. “You're not thinking of arresting her on the basis of not being there to hear Jack McKinstry yell, are you? The captain would have us both transferred to Juvenile. She could claim you misunderstood her or she just forgot about hearing him.”

“I know. But when she sees Richard Bruce in handcuffs, she's bound to be thrown off balance a little and that would be a good time to go at her again. So …”

“So you want me to take both Bruce and McKinstry in and get the paperwork started, right? Okay. I wasn't getting anywhere with her anyway. I'll get back as fast as I can.”

“Thanks, Ivan. I'll go get his suitcase.” She turned Richard Bruce over to the one police officer left in the hallway and hurried down the stairs.

Joanna Gillespie was standing at the foot of the stairs, a police officer not far away. She looked anxious for the first time since Marian had met her. “What is it?” she asked. “What's happening?”

“We've just arrested Richard Bruce,” Marian told her. “Jack McKinstry is also under arrest.”

She didn't care about McKinstry. “What are you charging him with? You've arrested him for what?”

“For what he did to the
Burly Girl
and the thirty-seven men on board. We've made no arrest yet for the murder of A. J. Strode.”

Joanna looked past Marian up the stairs. Richard and Ivan and the uniformed officer were coming down.

Richard stopped when he reached Joanna. There was no public display of affection between the two, but they looked at each other in a way that shut everyone else out. “Don't talk to them anymore,” Richard said softly. “We have legal representation now. Don't even tell them your name until you've had a chance to talk to the lawyer. Don't say a word, Joanna.”

She nodded, not saying a word.

“Don't worry,” he tried to reassure her. “It will be all right.”

“No it won't,” Ivan couldn't resist saying. “Come on—let's go.” He and the officer took Richard Bruce out to where Jack McKinstry was waiting in a police car.

Marian went on to the television room. A black suitcase and a blue one were sitting there hip to hip, the same way Joanna Gillespie and Richard Bruce had been sitting in the window seat. She picked up the black suitcase and started out—but then stopped.

Joanna Gillespie was claiming she'd been in her room checking her blood-sugar level when A. J. Strode was murdered. But her suitcase had been right here in the television room at the time. What kind of equipment did a diabetic need for blood testing? Was it small enough to carry in a purse?
Would
she carry it around in a purse?

Marian put down Richard Bruce's suitcase and laid the blue one on its side. The suitcase was locked, but the keys were on the chain that held the luggage tag. Locked personal property at the scene of a crime; she ought to have a search warrant to be on the safe side. Marian hesitated but then opened the suitcase and started gently feeling among Joanna Gillespie's clothing, taking care not to disturb anything. Underwear, a bulky sweater, a nightgown.

And there it was.
Home Blood-Glucose Monitoring Kit
, the label said. Right there, in a suitcase that had not left the television room since shortly before A. J. Strode was murdered.

Marian sat on her heels for a few moments, thinking about that. Then she replaced everything the way she found it and ran back up the stairs to Joanna Gillespie's room. She checked the bathroom and all the drawers in the bedroom; no second kit. Back downstairs again, she took Richard Bruce's suitcase out to the police car parked in front of the house. Richard and Jack McKinstry were handcuffed in the back, and Ivan Malecki was sitting in the passenger seat in front. Marian handed the suitcase to the police officer who would be driving and watched him stow it in the trunk. She made some remark about the tight parking space and wondered if he had room to get out.

“No problem,” the officer said. “I'll just nudge that car in front of me a little and make room.”

“I really would prefer you found some other solution,” Marian said sweetly. “That's my car.”

“Ah. In that case, I'll nudge the car parked behind me.”

“Good thinking.” She gestured to Ivan to get out of the car.

“What took you so long?” he complained, following her out of earshot of the police car's two unwilling passengers.

Marian's depression had settled on her shoulders like a yoke. “Tell the captain we could do with a search-and-seizure—for Joanna Gillespie's locked suitcase.”

“We're looking for what?”

“Her kit for checking her blood-sugar level.”

It took him about two seconds to catch on. He whistled appreciatively. “If it was downstairs all the time—wait a sec. What if she's got two kits?”

Marian felt herself sagging. “I checked her room. Nothing.”

“The captain's gonna want to know if you have reason to believe it's in that suitcase.”

Marian looked him straight in the eye. “I have reason. In fact, I'm
convinced
it's in there.”

Ivan winked at her. “Right. Okay, I'll take care of it. Goddam, that'll do it, won't it? Haw.
Hours
before our deadline! The captain is going to love us.” Ivan was elated, just the opposite of Marian. “Have you got another pair of cuffs? Good. Hey, you're really drooping, kid. Buck up. We're almost home.”

She smiled at him wanly and went back into the house. Ivan climbed into the police car.

Richard Bruce had noticed Marian's depression. “Is something wrong with Sergeant Larch?” he asked curiously.

“Marian? Naw, she always gets like that when we're closing in on a killer,” Ivan answered. “Real down in the dumps. It never lasts more'n a couple of days.”

“I hope it lasts
twenty years,”
Jack McKinstry said through clenched teeth.

Ivan sighed and told the driver they were ready to go.

Marian drew aside the police officer watching Joanna Gillespie and instructed him to go into the television room and guard a blue suitcase he'd find there. No one was to come near it until Ivan Malecki got back with a search warrant. She told him he could watch television if he liked, so long as he sat with his feet on the suitcase.

Then after a moment's thought Marian took Joanna outside to the patio. Something was needed to break down the pattern of resistance the violinist had established; maybe a change of setting would help. Besides, A. J. Strode's house was beginning to make Marian feel claustrophobic. The day had a pleasant mid-afternoon look to it, with a light breeze stirring. She picked out chairs for them that allowed her to sit with her back to the sun. Joanna slumped indifferently in her chair, squinting a little at the light in her eyes.

“Have you guessed what's happened?” Marian asked her. “We've arrested Richard Bruce and Jack McKinstry for past crimes, but not you. You, we're saving for something else.”

Joanna said nothing, didn't even look at her.

“Now, you know
we
know you did it,” Marian said in her most reasonable tone of voice. “You're the one who killed A. J. Strode, and you did it without any help from Richard. He has a lot to answer for, but not Strode's murder. That's on your shoulders, Joanna. Yours alone.”

Joanna turned her head and looked at her coldly, still not speaking, heeding Richard's admonition to maintain absolute silence.

“You'll talk eventually, you know,” Marian went on. “If your lawyer's any good, he'll advise you to cooperate. You're under arrest—the charge is homicide.” Marian read her her rights. “Any questions?”

Joanna wouldn't give her the satisfaction of a reply.

But Marian wasn't ready to settle for no response. “When you do talk, I'm going to want to know more about that meeting Sunday night … when Strode showed up for the first time. It was that meeting that pushed you into an act of murder. What happened—did Strode overreach himself? He finally went too far, didn't he? Did you foresee a lifetime of being at the beck and call of a man you despised? And did you see the same thing for Richard? Must have seemed intolerable.”

Joanna slumped down farther in her chair.

Marian tried to visualize what had happened. “While you were supposed to be up in your room testing your blood sugar, you were actually downstairs breaking out the knives and starting the fire. You had to be heading toward the stairs when you saw Richard going into the bathroom. On the spur of the moment you turned the lock, quite effectively providing him with an alibi. You do know how to think on your feet, don't you? But by locking Richard in, you were cutting the list of suspects down to two. You must have been pretty sure we'd fix on Jack.”

The other woman would neither confirm nor deny it. She waved away a fly that had come buzzing in too close and stared at Marian insolently.

“Why did you think we wouldn't settle on you?” Marian persisted. “Because musicians are sensitive people who never resort to violence? Because you're a woman?” She paused. “Or because Jack McKinstry makes such a good patsy?”

Joanna's eyes narrowed, and she broke her silence at last. “You're making all this up, you know. It's a piece of fiction.”

Ah, she speaks
, Marian thought with satisfaction. “Maybe you had a different reason for locking Richard in. Richard was the one person in the house likely to go looking for you, wasn't he? With him locked safely away, you could take your time. Was that it?”

With insulting slowness, as if speaking to a retarded person, Joanna said, “I did not lock Richard in the bathroom. Nor did I kill Strode. Are you listening?”

Marian was listening, but not buying. “By the time you'd locked Richard in, the fire had taken hold. You barely made it up the stairs and were on your way to Strode's private wing when Jack burst out of his room yelling that he smelled smoke. You saw him get halfway down the stairs before one of the bodyguards shooed him back up. You went on to Strode's wing—the cameras were out of commission by then. Then you let yourself in to Strode's library. Strode was in the bedroom-dressing room part of the suite.” Marian paused. “How'm I doing so far?”

A look of disgust passed over Joanna's face.

“I wonder how you got Strode to go into the library. If you made a noise, he wouldn't have gone in to investigate by himself—not with you three in the house. Maybe he just remembered the guard hadn't checked the door to the library and went in to see to it. But for whatever reason, he did go in … and you caught him by surprise. You drove a knife into his chest before he knew what was happening. He must have fallen to the floor then, but that wasn't enough for you. What did you do, kneel down on the floor beside him? Was he already dead or only dying? You used the second knife on him, and then the third. If you'd had more than three knives, you'd have used them too. More than anything in the world, you wanted to make sure A. J. Strode never got up again.”

Joanna shifted position uneasily.

Marian leaned toward her. “How did it feel, killing a man? Correction—how did it feel killing
that
man? What did it feel like, Joanna?”

Joanna's expression was one of revulsion. “What a ghoulish thing to ask.”

Marian leaned back; time to crack through that perfect shell. “You'd have done better to stay in your room and test your blood sugar the way you said you were doing. Although that would have been a mite difficult, seeing as how your kit was downstairs in your suitcase all the time.”

Joanna didn't react immediately. Then as she understood that her story had just been blown to pieces, a flash of panic showed on her face. She disguised it quickly, but not quickly enough. Marian saw.

“Right now my partner is getting a search-and-seizure warrant,” Marian said. “If that kit is in your suitcase—and I feel damned sure it is—well, there goes your alibi, right down the toilet. Is the kit in your suitcase, Joanna?”

The other woman's breath was coming in short, shallow gasps; her eyes were darting back and forth. She made a move to get up.

“Don't bother,” Marian told her, waving her back. “I've got a cop sitting in the television room with his size-eighteen feet planted on that suitcase. You don't have a chance in hell of getting to it.”

Joanna collapsed back into her chair without making a sound, her face carefully blank. Both hands gripped the arms of her chair, the only solid things within her grasp.

Marian watched her closely. “Do you have a second kit with you? There's none in your room. What about your purse—do you carry a testing kit around with you? Joanna, show me a second kit in your purse and I'll withdraw the homicide charge right now. Where did you leave your purse? Come on, let's go look for it.” Marian stood up, waited.

Joanna didn't move, avoiding the police detective's eye. Then her head slowly began to droop forward.

“Huh. I thought so.” Marian walked around behind Joanna's chair. “But maybe I got part of it wrong,” she said to the back of the violinist's head. “Maybe Richard Bruce
was
in on it with you after all. Maybe the two of you planned it so that you'd lock Richard in somewhere. In fact, Richard could have planned the whole thing, couldn't he? Is that what happened?”

Joanna twisted in her chair and looked up at Marian. “Richard,” she said carefully, “is innocent.” Still admitting nothing.

Marian nodded, thinking that was as close to a confession as she'd ever get out of Joanna Gillespie. “I believe you. Richard has plenty of dirt on his hands, you all three have—but this dirty job is yours alone. And you're going to pay for it … alone.”

Joanna's shoulders began to heave; it had finally sunk in on her that she wasn't going to walk away from this one. Her whole body shook soundlessly as she went through some unreadable process of acceptance and adjustment.