by Неизвестный
Harvey’s ghost had disappeared. Kyle had yet to return. She was on her own. She decided to try going left—
“Not that way!” Kyle told her, abruptly reappearing right in front of her, his hands held out to block her path. “Someone’s coming.”
“Who is it?” she breathed.
“Too dark now, I just can’t see. Go right. Go right. Go right!” Kyle was yelling.
Miranda took a hasty right, and ran. The hedges seemed to be closing in on her, and there was no space, and no air, and no time to think or act or do anything except keep moving.
“Miranda, stop…” Kyle appeared again suddenly and Miranda stopped as still as a statue. “There is somebody on the other side of this shrub wall. They’re listening for you.”
She went very still, and very silent. Then she took a step, and listened again. Then another step, and another, her heart hammering away in her chest like a jackhammer. Every rustle of the leaves underfoot and every breath she took seemed impossibly loud in her ears. Kyle kept flitting back and forth, until finally he came back shaking his head, silhouetted in the pathway lights.
“I don’t see them anymore,”
They were at the end of a row, and the path took her around to the other side of the shrubs where Kyle had seen the person shadowing her. Now, very cautiously, Miranda peeked around the corner of the hedgerow to see what she might find.
She almost screamed when she saw the body of Daphne lying there in the dim lighting, lifeless on the ground in front of her. She swallowed it back, putting a trembling hand up to her mouth.
Daphne’s ghost stirred, quivering out of her body, and then lifting up and away to disperse in an array of blue sparks. Just like that, she was gone.
Well. They weren’t going to have any help from her.
And, so much for her being the killer. Unless she killed Harvey, and then someone else killed her?
Hmm. Interesting theory.
Still cautious that there might be someone nearby, Miranda crouched down next to Daphne’s body. She could see dark bruising around the woman’s neck and could only conclude that she’d been strangled to death.
As Miranda rose to leave, her eye was drawn to a cellphone, the corner of which was barely visible sticking out from the lowest branches of the hedges, where they touched the path. Daphne must have dropped it when she was killed, and the killer must have missed it in the low light. Miranda would have missed it, too, if she wasn’t bent down like this.
Gently pulling it free, Miranda inspected it. There was a text message on the screen, one that Daphne had been writing. Clearly, she didn’t have the time to send it before the killer had found her.
I don’t want to believe it but I think I have to, now. I think Nino is a mobster after all and wasn’t wrongly arrested. I just feel sick. How could my husband do that to me? I saw it in some paperwork in Harvey Mason’s room. The two of them must have been working to
That’s where it ended. Clearly, Daphne had found something in the papers in Harvey’s room. Something that convinced her he really was guilty.
So where were those papers now?
Hearing footsteps approaching, Miranda dashed away from Daphne’s body. She turned, and went around the corner, back the way she came.
Right into the solid chest of a tall man coming around the same corner from the opposite direction.
Screaming, Miranda began to struggle wildly but the man caught her, and held her fast.
“Miranda, Miranda it’s me.”
She had never been so relieved to hear Jack’s voice in her life.
“Get me out of here, Jack. We need to get away from this maze. Daphne’s body is on the other side of the hedge. I now know who the killer is.”
It wasn’t Daphne like she’d thought.
No. It was someone else entirely.
Chapter 7
By the time Miranda had calmed herself down, the Misty Point police had secured the scene. Officers were stationed at Harvey’s body still. Now there were others stationed at the front of the maze. Two others swept through the hedgerows with an efficiency that impressed Miranda. She was amazed at how they could do every twist and turn like that, until Jack leaned over and whispered the secret.
“They’re using GPS units.”
When she had a moment, she turned a grateful look toward Kyle.
“It’s alright,” her ghostly friend told her, as if he could read everything that was in her heart. “I understand.”
She’d been trying to silently tell him how thankful she was that he had been there to warn her, and guide her, even if he did goof up a couple of times.
She wasn’t sure what she would do without her best friend. Certainly, she wanted him to move on to his final rest, but selfishly she wanted him to stay right here with her.
Harvey Mason’s ghost reappeared, pacing back and forth impatiently, wanting his murder solved. She thought he was the biggest coward she had ever seen, even in death. Working with the Mob. Carrying on with a married woman. Fleeing from danger when he should be racing to it. What kind of police officer was he?
“Jack,” she said softly to him, “I need to tell you something about your friend Harvey.”
The man’s ghost snapped his head around, glaring at her. She didn’t care.
“You don’t have to tell me anything,” Jack responded. “I already know. All of us do.”
If it was possible for a ghost to go pale, Harvey Mason just did.
In short order, with a little consultation from Jack, the local police had everyone gathered in the lobby of the Maze Hotel. That way, they were away from the scene, and all in one place. Guests, proprietors, and workers. Everyone who could have been the killer.
Miranda talked with Jack quietly away from everyone for a little bit, with Kyle at her elbow, leaning in and nodding to everything she said. Jack agreed with her. They knew who the killer was.
“Sergeant,” Jack said to the ranking officer in the room. “Mind if I take the floor?”
The man hooked his hands in his duty belt and nodded. “It’s all yours, Detective.”
“Right. Now that we are all together, I think it’s time to discuss the murders of Daphne Bonica and Harvey Mason.” Jack’s voice lowered when he said his old friend’s name. There was no question that he was disappointed in what they had learned. With a shaky breath, he turned on those assembled. “Irving Giraldi, I believe that you killed them both.”
There was a collective gasp in the room. Veronica’s hands flew to her mouth, and she leaned into her husband Peter for support. Miranda was glad to see their marriage would survive what Harvey had done to them.
The accusation hit Irving hard.
“That’s ridiculous,” he sputtered. He waved his hands wildly and tried to move in on Jack until the uniformed police officers in the room came closer. He settled back again in a hurry. “You saw me when you first got here. I came into the hotel looking for Harvey. He was already dead at that point. Why would I do that?’
“You mean,” Jack answered him, “why would you bark a question about where Harvey was at your employer? I thought that behavior was out of sorts with your position here as groundskeeper. Most people treat their employers with more respect than that. But, you wanted everyone to remember you were looking for Harvey after he was dead. You were setting up your alibi. Just like you did when you offered to give us a tour of the maze and then led us directly to Harvey’s body. That was all misdirection to make yourself look innocent. Too bad for you that you did it in front of a police officer and a crack crime novelist. We know that trick.”
“That doesn’t prove anything!” Irving insisted. “Tell me this. Why on Earth would I have killed either of them? I’m just the groundskeeper here. What have I got against our guests?”
“Well,” Miranda said, “let’s explore that, shall we? If we begin with the death of Harvey Mason, what we found out was that he was a corrupt cop taking bribes to assist the Mob in avoiding police raids. Certai
n paperwork that was in Harvey’s room contained detailed information on police activity and upcoming raids.”
Kyle looked very smug. Miranda supposed he had a right to be. If it hadn’t been for him they wouldn’t know what the papers said, since it was only Irving and Daphne who saw them. Daphne was now dead as well, her spirit gone, and the papers she’d taken from the room had disappeared as well. Their absence was one of the clues that had led Miranda to Irving.
Harvey stared at her open-mouthed, his spirit flickering like a fading candle. “My papers. I’d forgotten about that…”
“At first,” Jack put in, “we really thought that Peter had killed Harvey in revenge for the affair that he had with Veronica. No offense, Peter.”
The man shrugged in an offhand sort of way. “I might have killed him, if I’d been given the chance. Someone beat me to it.”
“Oh, Peter,” Veronica sobbed in his arms. “I’m so sorry for what I did to us. I thought… I thought you didn’t love me.”
He didn’t answer her, but it seemed to be enough for Veronica that he was holding her.
Jack reached over and took Miranda’s hand in his. It was a silent promise that he would always tell her how he felt about her.
“But then,” Jack said to the group, “We realized that Peter wouldn’t need to steal the spare key to Harvey’s room. Someone else did that. As one of the owners for this place he would have his own key. Besides, what reason would Peter have for going in there? None. Harvey was dead. Drowned in the fountain in the middle of that maze out there. If that was all there was to it, then it would have been over as far as Peter was concerned. No. Someone else must have stolen that key. Someone who had a reason to get in there and remove evidence.”
“That would be you, Irving,” Miranda told him flatly. “I saw you in his room with Daphne. At the time, it didn’t occur to me that you would have needed some way to get in there. Groundskeepers aren’t given keys to the guest’s rooms. Housekeepers, maybe, but not groundskeepers. So it was you who stole the key.”
“You saw me in there?” he said, his mouth open. “Uh, well, that was just to comfort Daphne, you see…”
Kyle flew up in the man’s face and wagged his finger at him. “Save it, big boy. We know all about… hold on… Miranda?”
Something had come over him. He hovered back a few paces, and turned to Miranda, with a strange look on his face. She wanted to ask him what was wrong, but with all these people around, she couldn’t.
Jack was shaking his head, oblivious to the change that had come over Kyle. “I’m afraid you didn’t bring Daphne into that room to comfort her, Irving. You wanted to know what she knew. You wanted to know how far your secret went.”
“Secret?” he exploded. “What secret?”
That line from Shakespeare came to Miranda’s mind. The one about someone protesting too much. “We’ll get to your secret in a moment, Irving. See, I also thought that Daphne had killed Harvey as retribution for getting her husband arrested. She knew he was a police officer.”
Veronica gasped again, slumping in her husband’s grip. For his part, Peter’s eyes turned hard. It was obvious that neither of those two knew what Harvey Mason had really been.
It was no surprise to Irving, though.
“Miranda…” The blue light around Kyle was shaking now. “I think I know… why I felt so strange around Irving. I think I know… oh, Miranda.”
She was beginning to understand, too. It all had to do with their next bit of information.
“You see,” Miranda said to Irving even as her eyes kept flicking to Kyle, “once I realized that Harvey had been using his position within the police force to pass information to the mob, I began to suspect that it was his mob connections that got him killed. That seemed to fit with Daphne as the suspect, because of her husband being arrested. But then, she turned up dead, too.”
Kyle floated closer to Irving again. “You…”
“That’s right,” Jack said. “Harvey had Daphne’s husband arrested. He had to, because after all he was still a cop, and Daphne’s husband was a criminal. If he didn’t have Nino arrested then Harvey would have exposed his connections to the Mob. Must have been hard, playing both sides like that.” Jack paused for a moment. Shaking his head slightly he continued, “Thing is, he screwed up. By trying to keep up his act as a good police officer, he got the Mob angry at him. Daphne’s husband had information the Mob didn’t want revealed, and having one of their own informants be the arresting officer was an insult and they couldn’t let that stand.”
“You,” Kyle repeated again to Irving’s face.
“Someone from the Mob,” Jack continued, “had to come and clean up the mess.”
“You,” Kyle said, louder.
“That someone was an enforcer for the Mob.”
“You!” Kyle screamed at Irving.
“You,” Jack said at almost the same time. “Irving Giraldi. You are an enforcer for the Mob.”
Miranda sensed the change in Irving seconds before there was any physical sign that he was going to run. "Look out Jack!" Miranda yelled, but it was a second too late.
Irving bolted in the direction of the hallway leading into the hotel, probably intending to get out a back way and keep running. The sergeant from the Misty Point Police tackled him and easily held him down while another officer handcuffed him. He was restrained and sitting in a chair in no time. There was nowhere for him to run.
He was caught.
“You’ve got nothing on me!” he screamed. “Nothing!”
“Oh, yes we do,” Miranda continued. “I overheard you speaking with Daphne. You claimed to be a police investigator looking into Mob influence. I think you were trying to find out exactly how much Daphne knew. You are here doing mob cleanup work, nothing more, nothing less. As soon as Daphne saw that paperwork and began to put two and two together she knew her husband really had been with the Mob. You couldn’t let her spill that information. Not after you’d just killed Harvey to make the arrest go away.”
Kyle was agitated now. He moved here and there, back and forth, his arms flying in the air. “All this time,” Miranda heard him saying. “We couldn’t figure out why I couldn’t move on. All this time.”
Miranda understood what he meant. All this time, after solving the mystery of who had killed Kyle, he was still here. The question had been why. What was still holding him here? Now they knew.
It was because of Irving Giraldi.
Two mysteries, coming together like this, all in one place. The fact that she and Jack, and of course Kyle, had decided to come here on this particular day when these events were already playing themselves out… Well… Miranda knew the universe worked that way sometimes.
Here was the man who had killed Harvey Mason, and Daphne Bonica, and the man who had caused Kyle’s death as well. They’d caught him this time.
* * *
Miranda knew they had to wrap this up before Irving clammed up completely and asked for an attorney. “When we first met, Irving, you were so focused on my book. You know the one, The Mob’s Calling? I thought it was nice to have a fan but there was another reason you were so familiar with my book, wasn’t there?”
Irving shrugged. “No idea what you mean.”
Harvey’s ghost now joined Kyle over by where Irving was being held secure between two officers in his seat. Harvey bent down and looked Irving square in the eyes. “Huh. I kind of expected my killer to look tougher. Bigger, maybe. Guess you never know.”
With that, he evaporated away. His spirit was gone to whatever waited for him on the other side. Miranda thought that if there was any justice he’d be in for a very, very hard time of it when he got there.
“Tell him the rest,” Kyle insisted to Miranda. “Tell him the rest!”
Miranda felt the tears beginning to well up in her eyes. This was what Kyle had waited for all this time. “You murdered Daphne. She screamed loud enough to wake the dead and I’m guessing by the deep bruising on h
er neck you were panicked as you squeezed the life out of her. You took a huge risk killing her right then when there were so many police officers nearby and you could have been caught at any moment.”
* * *
He didn’t nod. He didn’t protest. He didn’t say anything. He just sat there, and in that lack of reaction Miranda could see the truth plain as day.
“I’m sure,” Jack offered, “that we’ll be able to get some fingerprint evidence off Daphne’s throat. They can do that nowadays. If you squeeze too hard you actually leave your fingerprints in your victim’s flesh. You must have known that. What were you going to do Irving? It’s not like you could leave a note saying it was suicide.” Jack stood, hands on hips, staring at Irving. Waiting for some sort of reaction. “Did you really think that you were going to get away with two murders?”
“Yes!” That finally broke Irving. “Yes, I did! Daphne wasn’t supposed to die. She was the perfect scapegoat. No one would have thought twice about it. Her husband was arrested by Harvey and she killed him as revenge… it was the perfect setup. Daphne wasn’t supposed to find out I was involved but after she’d read those papers of Harvey’s and realized… Well… she was going to rat on me… So… I had to improvise.” He glared first at Jack and the Miranda. After a few moments, he shrugged like he couldn’t care less. “Fine. I killed Harvey. I killed Daphne. You got me. I’ll go to jail. You won’t get anything out of me about the Mob, though. I won’t do it. I know my place, unlike that stupid cop, Harvey Mason!”
“You don’t need to tell us anything,” Miranda told him. “I already know it.”
“Oh? You’re such a smart lady, are you? Just how do you think you know so much?”
“Why, Irving. I already told you.” Miranda smiled sweetly at him even though what she really wanted to do was throw him off the nearest cliff. “I found out all about you in my book. The Mob’s Calling had this whole chapter on a certain mob enforcer who did cleanup for the Mob. Surely you remember that.”