Nine Man's Murder (13 page)

“An award he coincidentally won.”

“You’re every bit as good a detective as Bryan, and you know it.”

“Bryan has awards to show for it.”

“You’re not Bryan.”

Jonas stepped back, as if struck.

“I never meant to hurt you, Jonas,” Jill said. “I just couldn’t feel the way you did.”

“What about what happened between us eight years ago?”

“That was … I was confused.”

“Sounds like you still are.”

Jonas left Jill in the hallway and entered the drawing room.

“I see you haven’t lost your inimitable charm,” he said to Bryan.

“I take it you ran into Jill.”

“Literally.”

Bryan fidgeted, stabbing the fire with the fire poker, the one they had found beside Reeve’s body the night before. “I think I can guess the topic of conversation.”

“Actually, we were talking about the Golden Glass Award.” The Golden Glass was a gold-plated trophy—shaped like a magnifying glass—awarded annually to the private investigator credited with the year’s best achievement. “And the fact that it was you who won it.”

“You didn’t want it, Jonas. You didn’t lift a finger to get it. You never even talked about it until there was speculation that I might receive it.”

You’re always looking behind, Bryan used to tell him. Not moving toward something, but away from something.

“So what are we going to do now?” Jonas asked, wrenching his thoughts back to the present. “Any ideas?”

“Right now, more questions than answers. From the very beginning certain aspects of this affair have troubled me.”

“Like the fact that two men drove us here, rather than one?”

“As a matter of fact,” Bryan confessed, “that’s one of them. What are your thoughts?”

“We don’t seem to be suffering from an overabundance of clues. I’d like to get my hands on that cigarette lighter that mysteriously disappeared from Bennett’s pocket.”

As if conjured by the mention of his name, Bennett appeared in the doorway. He still wore the stained white overalls upon which Jill had spilled wine the day before. He entered the drawing room but kept a distance from the two men.

“I just passed Jill going into her room,” Bennett said. “She seemed more upset than usual.”

“Just a spat with Bryan,” Jonas said.

“Well, Bryan, she’s still a pretty girl.” Bennett grinned. “If you need a stand-in, I’d be glad to volunteer.”

Bryan watched him coldly. “You would probably not be my first choice, Bennett,” Bryan said, “since you are the cause of my current problem.”

Bennett raised an eyebrow. “What are you talking about?”

“I’m talking about the theft of Antonio Capaldi’s ledger from the evidence locker of the downtown L.A. police station two weeks ago. There were two thieves. One—the one police believe to be the mastermind—got away. They captured his accomplice. A man in a wheelchair. I’m guessing that was Gideon. The way he’s been acting. The fact that he’s suddenly been defrocked. Priests don’t often get defrocked. But getting caught committing a felony—possibly a federal offense—will do that.”

Bennett kept eyes locked on Bryan. “What does that have to do with me?”

“I think you’re the mastermind. Those conspiratorial whispers you and Gideon have been exchanging. I’m right, aren’t I?”

“The cat’s out of the bag,” Gideon said as he wheeled himself into the drawing room. “We may as well come clean.”

But Bennett betrayed no interest in baring his soul.
“Bennett tricked me,” Gideon said. “He told me he needed my help—he didn’t say with what. I accompanied him to the police station. It turns out that Bennett is a freelance smuggler. Antonio Capaldi hired him to steal some evidence from the downtown police station.

“Bennett had a contact at the station, who left him a copy of the key to the evidence locker. Once inside the locker, Bennett stole a book—some kind of ledger—and hid it under the cushion of my wheelchair. He needed me to be the vehicle for smuggling out the book. I must have looked nervous, because they stopped me and searched the wheelchair. They found the ledger. Bennett fled.”

“The convention center hosting the psychic fair was right next door to the police station,” Bryan told Bennett. “You fled into the crowd in front of the fair. You knew you might be caught, and you didn’t want the incriminating locker key found on you. So you ducked it into the pocket of a five-year-old girl wandering in the crowd. That girl was Imogen, Jill’s daughter.”

“What does all this have to do with you?” Bennett asked.

“Everything,” Bryan said.

38

I
n the parlor
room, after breakfast, Amanda was cross-examined about her shooting of Reeve the night before.

“Did you write that note to Reeve?” Gideon asked.

“Don’t be absurd,” Amanda said.

“I’ve been thinking about that note.” Jonas addressed the group. “The person who wrote it must have left it somewhere for Reeve to find—”

“So Reeve came into Amanda’s room for what he thought would be—” Gideon flushed slightly. “— a rendezvous?”

“But how do you explain the fire poker?” Jill asked. “The one we found next to Reeve’s body?”

“Perhaps Reeve was suspicious,” Bennett suggested, “and brought it along for protection, just in case.”

“He should have been suspicious,” Bryan said dryly. “Amanda’s ‘invitation’ had been typed. But there’s no typewriter at Moon’s End, only that computer printer in the study. And if Reeve had bothered trying to print something with it—as I did this morning—he’d have discovered that its cartridge is out of ink. Amanda couldn’t have typed that note here at Moon’s End. Which means she would have had to come here with the note already printed. Can you see Amanda doing that?”

Hatter directed at Amanda his most barbed tone. “How do we know you didn’t plant that fire poker next to Reeve’s body yourself? To make it look like you killed him in self-defense?”

“You’re missing the big picture, Hatter,” Jonas interjected. “See how it all fits together. The person who planted that note for Reeve also put the gun in Amanda’s room—”

“Or so she claims.”

“That same person attacked Amanda earlier last night. He didn’t ‘botch’ the attempt, as Reeve had thought. He never intended to kill her.”

“He just wanted to shake you up,” Bryan told Amanda, “so that when Reeve entered your room at midnight—drawn there by the note the killer had left—you would be jumpy. And would use the gun the killer had planted there. Our murderer probably also provided the fire poker for Reeve to arm himself with—further ensuring that you would consider Reeve a hostile intruder.”

“You were manipulated, Mandy,” Jonas concluded, “and you behaved precisely as the killer had anticipated. He got you to kill one of his victims for him.”

“At least the deaths have all been instantaneous,” Bennett pointed out. “Reeve being shot, Carter poisoned, and Damien stabbed.” He shrugged. “They all died quickly, if that’s worth anything.”

“Maybe the note to Reeve can tell us more,” Gideon suggested. “Something we may have overlooked. May I have another look at it?”

Everyone denied having it.

“I gave it to Bennett last night,” Jill said.

“And I gave it to Hatter.”

“I put it on the cabinet in the dining room last night,” Hatter replied, “when I went for something to eat.”

Gideon started to maneuver his wheelchair.

“I’ll get it,” Jill said, passing through the doorway before Gideon had even turned to face it.

“Well, at least our list of suspects is dwindling,” Gideon said dryly. “Two are dead; and we know the murderer is someone who attacked Amanda and tried to poison Hatter. So we’re narrowing it down.”

“Aren’t you making a dubious assumption?” Hatter asked.

“Such as?”

“That the killer is one of us?”

“We searched the entire mountaintop,” Bennett insisted. “There’s no one up here but us.”

“No one alive …”

An explanation, if Hatter had intended to provide one, was forestalled by Jill’s return with a folded slip of paper.

“It was on the cabinet, where you left it,” she told Hatter, handing the note to Gideon.

“What did you mean by that remark …?” Bennett asked Hatter in a shaky voice. “No one alive?”

“Isn’t it obvious? This is not the work of any human being.”

“Oh my God,” Gideon gasped. He gaped at the note dangling from his hand. “It’s not the same note.”

39

“M
ay I?”
Jonas took the note from Gideon and read it aloud.

“Who will be next? Whose name now heads the list? Watch your step ... for the next victim has already been chosen. In fact, I have a special surprise in store for him: one he’ll never guess, though I’m sure he’ll take a stab at it.

“And then the rest of you.

“First I’ll destroy your lives . . . then your reputations. I’ll chronicle your pathetic, fruitless struggle against me—perhaps even publish it in a book and expose your incompetence for all the world to see, blackening your names forever. And no one will be around to sue me for slander.

“Time is running out. Only hours left to unmask the killer . . . and then, the deadly climax. Because before the weekend fades to black, every person at Moon’s End—except one—will be dead.”

The typewritten message was passed around for all to analyze.

“And let’s get this right on the first take this time,” Bennett suggested, “before there are more deaths.”

Bryan fixed his eyes on Bennett. “This killer is obviously someone who enjoys toying with his victims,” he observed, “like a cat toys with its prey.”

“And your point is?” Bennett asked.

“If we look around for someone deriving similar enjoyment at our expense, what do we find? You seemed to enjoy that little game with Aaron, the mute caretaker, and the mysterious noise outside.”

“Because I did,” Bennett replied. “What do you want me to do, pretend I care what happens to any of you? After what you all did to me?”

Everyone understood the reference. While working the movie set case, Bennett had been smitten with an actress named Dolores, who did not return his affection. So it was easy for Bennett’s fellow trainees to put her up to a practical joke. She allowed Bennett to “figure out” her guilt in the sabotaged stunts, then “confessed” to him in private.

“You won’t turn me in, will you, Bennett?” she’d pleaded.

Bennett had promised not to, before discovering the humiliating prank.

“Revenge is a powerful motive for murder,” Bryan pointed out.

“I came here to make fools of you,” Bennett said. “Not kill you. Besides, one of you is after me.”

“What are you talking about?”

“A week ago an anonymous note appeared in my mailbox. It said, ‘Who can piece together your little mishap at the police station? Who knows about your connection to Antonio Capaldi, because they had a connection to him fifteen years ago and have, in one way or another, never escaped his influence? Who knew you as Bennett Nash—before all of your smuggler’s aliases—and can finger you to the police, as well as to Capaldi?’”

“Bennett, you’re being paranoid,” Amanda said. “Someone is putting these ideas in your head to manipulate you.”

“And you always go along without question,” Hatter added.

They dredged up an example of Bennett’s suggestibility. Toward the end of their investigation on the set of Nine Man Morris, the detectives had been searching for a peg removed from a breakaway railing, causing Julian Hayward to fall prematurely while shooting a stunt—fortunately without injuries onto a safety mat below. Reeve had suspected Adam Burke of trying to create the appearance that Hayward had lost his balance—part, Reeve felt, of a plan to erode Hollywood’s confidence in the veteran and hasten Hayward’s replacement by Burke.

Reeve shared this theory with Bennett, who decided the missing peg would not be found far from Adam Burke—so enthusiastically that, at five o’clock in the morning, he conducted an extensive (many thought, obsessive) search for the peg, culminating underneath Adam Burke’s trailer. Though large wooden planks surrounding the base of the trailer barred access, a movable set of wooden stairs below the door concealed a crawlspace beneath the trailer. Bennett’s search under the trailer, however, produced nothing but ridicule.

“If I recall,” Jill said, “that was the same morning as …”

“As Julian’s fatal fall,” Jonas finished for her. Jill had not been in the room when they had discussed it the day before.

“I still remember that day,” Jill said. “I didn’t actually see him fall, but I remember watching the construction workers come onto the set earlier that morning to finish work on the scaffolding. Their somber gray overalls and hard hats. Funny, the details that stick in your mind. And I recall watching them work and thinking, If that scaffolding is safe enough for those three construction workers, it’s certainly safe enough for one stunt man.” Jill shivered. “Only a few hours later Julian Hayward fell from it to his death.”