by Angie Cabot
She nodded to Sandra. “She wanted one word answers.”
I tapped my foot and tightened my lips to try not to snap at her. “I’ll allow full sentences, thank you.”
She nodded, and based on where her eyes were aimed, I wasn’t sure she was back on Earth.
“I’m right here,” I said waving my hand.
She waved back. “Oh, hello.”
Was she faking?
“Are you selling marijuana at the store?”
“Depends on how you look at it, I guess. Customers ask if I have any for sale, and I do, but Elizabeth almost fired me when I gave my friend Christa a teeny little joint, and that was for free, so yes, I take the money, but no, I don’t deliver it at the store. They meet me in the alley.”
“The alley behind the store?”
“Mm hmm.”
“Isn’t that still store property?”
“I’m pretty sure it’s city property.”
“You can’t sell drugs at the store, Morgan. You just can’t do it. I don’t care if you deliver them off the store’s property, I won’t have that in a store I manage.”
“I understand.”
“Will you abide by that policy?”
“What do the police have to do with it?”
“Policy,” I said, enunciating the word slowly. “Not police.”
“Oh, I get it.”
She had to be faking.
“Why did you plant the empty case in Diana’s bathroom?” I asked.
She blinked. “What are you talking about?”
“The athame case.”
“My athame is in my room. I showed that to you earlier.”
“How do I know it was yours?”
“Because I showed it to you.”
“But you had plenty of alone time to plant the case, and take someone else’s athame. And … wait a minute.”
“I’ll wait.”
A thought struck me upside the head, and while math is hard, I should have seen it before.
“I’ll be right back,” I said. “You two wait here.”
“The road is long, but the Earth is patient,” Morgan said.
I hurried into the drawing room. Diana was reading her J.D. Robb book.
“Where is everyone?” I asked.
“Carl and Todd are trying to get the Jeep started. Zen is upstairs in her room. Emma and Jenn are probably in their rooms as I haven’t seen either of them since they came up to get sandwiches an hour or so ago.”
“Who’s best at math?” I asked.
“Sandra.”
“Who else is best at math?”
“Carl or Balthazar.”
They were each vying for the spot of prime suspect, so I didn’t want to confide in them. Zen was implicated, too. I didn’t know who I could trust.
I looked at Diana. She’d thrown her husband under the bus. I made a snap decision to trust her. “What about you?” I asked.
“If we stay away from fractions or long division, I can usually get the right answer.”
“Okay, let me lay this out for you.” I tapped out the athames on my fingers as I talked. “Each of us got a knife in a case, right? Zen, Carl, Sandra, Morgan, you, Balthazar, and me. That’s seven knives and seven cases.”
“I’m with you so far.”
“But there are eight athames and eight cases.”
“What do you mean? Elizabeth had one, too? You think it’s suicide?”
“No. On the north wing of the house, which we checked first, Morgan, Sandra, and I all had our blades and cases. We came down, and then Carl, Zen, and I went up to check the south wing. Carl’s and Zen’s cases and athames were tossed out a window. Could have been Carl’s window, or it could have been yours. Doesn’t matter. That’s five. Right?”
“Okay.”
“Then there were two cases with athames in the Jeep.”
“Which gives us seven.”
“The eighth blade is stuck in Aunt Liz’s chest, and the case was planted in your bathroom.”
“Unless someone switched one of them on you.”
“There wasn’t time. No one had any alone time to sneak around and switch things out.”
“So there were eight blades. What am I missing?”
I scratched my head. “Sherlock Holmes would know, but I’m close. I’m really, really close to figuring this out. Someone brought an extra athame.”
“Or your aunt had eight, but only passed out seven.”
“The gift bag was empty.”
“Doesn’t mean she had them all in the gift bag. One might have been in her suitcase. Or someone else here saw her buy them, and bought an extra, but that seems like a stretch because how would they know she was going to give them as gifts?”
“You put the empty case into Zen’s room, right?”
She grinned. “Yes, I did.”
“But how did you know her case was gone?”
“I didn’t know that until you told me, but it wasn’t in sight when I went into her room, so I placed it where she’d see it, and I left it open so it was clearly missing the athame.”
“You also lied for your husband, saying you’d been together all night. Then later you gave him up. Why?”
“We all do strange things for love,” she said. “But like the song says, I’d do anything for love, but I won’t kill for it.”
“I don’t think that’s what the song says.”
“Close enough.”
“It doesn’t bother you that there’s an extra athame?”
“Seven, eight, nine, Elizabeth’s dead regardless. In my view, it just means we can’t trust anyone other than ourselves. I know I didn’t do it, but I don’t know you didn’t. I don’t think you did, but I don’t know it.”
“So you think your husband did it, but you don’t know it.”
“Motive and opportunity,” she said.
“By the same token, you had the same motive and opportunity.”
“But a knife—especially a ritual knife—is a man’s weapon, and my husband is most definitely a man.”
Chapter Nineteen
When I returned to the library, Sandra and Morgan were talking about which herbs were healthiest and which were tastiest.
“Welcome back,” Sandra said as I approached the chairs.
“Thanks.” I sat down and Morgan gave me a weird smile and starting humming a tune that sounded familiar, but I couldn’t quite place it.
“Sorry,” she said. “Sometimes old songs get stuck in my head.”
She swayed side to side as if dancing to a song only she could hear.
“Radio off,” I said.
She frowned at me. “But I’m just getting to the chorus.”
“Then pause it.”
She sighed. “Fine.”
“You can be upset with me if you like,” I said. “We have business to finish here.”
“More questions. Whatever.”
“Do you have any idea who might have killed my aunt?”
“I think I can narrow it down to four people,” she said.
“I’m listening.”
“It wasn’t you. It wasn’t me. It wasn’t Sandra. So it has to be Carl, Balthazar, Zen, or Diana.”
“Why?”
“Because they’re not here, so I can pin it on them without them arguing about it.”
“Give me something specific.”
“In the movies and TV shows they always talk about the angles to determine the height of the killer. Have we done that?”
“No.”
“Maybe we should. My dad was a geometry teacher. He’d break out his trusty protractor and do some measurements. On TV they can sometimes even tell if the murderer was left or right handed.”
“You seem more lucid,” I said.
“My brain isn’t as fogged now. Might be time to do something about that.”
“Or not,” I said.
“Life is easier when I don’t have to focus on it.”
“How many times did you steal from the stor
e?”
Her eyes snapped into focus. “What?” She narrowed her gaze. “Who’s lying about me?”
“My aunt said there were shortages when you were working.”
“Doesn’t mean I took anything. Other people work there, too, you know.” She spoke faster, and clenched her fists.
“Calm down. As I understand it, this happened a while ago. It’s not recent, and it has nothing to do with you keeping your job.”
“I don’t steal.”
“Good to know.”
“Can we call it quits now?” Sandra asked. “I drank too much water.”
“There’s a ladies room back there,” I said, pointing toward the game room. “Down the hall by the exit.”
“Thanks,” she said, and excused herself.
When she was gone, Morgan leaned forward and put a hand by her mouth. “World’s smallest bladder,” she said in a stage whisper.
“So you’re saying we can rule her out because she couldn’t stray too far from the restroom?”
Morgan laughed like it was the funniest thing she’d ever heard, but even her laugh sounded fake and forced.
Still, her comment about angles might be useful to narrow things down. Or it might not. I didn’t know what else to ask her, and if something came to mind, I knew where to find her.
“You can go now,” I said.
“Fly away to a world of butterflies and bumble bees, but don’t get squashed because all the queen’s horses and all the queen’s princesses are on vacation.”
With that, she got up, gave me a salute, turned, and walked away.
“This is Morgan on drugs,” I said under my breath. “Any questions?”
I glanced at the seat beside me, and realized Sandra had taken the journal with her.
Did it matter? Did I need it?
After a moment, I decided I definitely wanted it, so I walked through the game room to get to the ladies room. I knocked on the door.
No answer.
“Sandra? I need the journal back, please.”
No answer.
“Sandra?”
She still didn’t answer, so I tried the door knob. The door swung inward, and the lights were off with nobody in the room.
I glanced out the glass door to the patio. The tracks Zen and I made were obvious, and then I saw another set of tracks leading off the patio toward the front of the mansion.
Cold air wrapped itself around me as I stepped outside. I hunched my shoulders, pulling my arms in tight, and walked out far enough to see that Sandra’s tracks did indeed lead to the front.
No sense freezing, so I went back inside, stomped the snow off my boots, and headed toward the front entrance. When I was halfway through the library, Sandra darted across the floor, crossing by the doorway toward the stairs.
I followed her upstairs to her room.
The door was locked.
I knocked. “Sandra? I know you’re in there.”
“Go away.”
“I want the journal.”
“What journal?”
“You know what journal. Open the door.”
“No,” she said. “You’ll fire me.”
“Sorry, what?”
“If you read the journal, you’ll fire me.”
“I might fire you for stealing the journal. Have you thought about that?”
“You wouldn’t!”
“You just said I would.”
“Go away.”
“Open the door, Sandra. If you don’t open the door, I will fire you.”
Through the door, I heard the sound of a page being torn out. A moment later, she opened the door. She was chewing the paper.
“Don’t you dare,” I said.
But it was too late.
She swallowed the paper.
“You can have it back now,” she said, and handed the journal to me.
I glared at her.
She gave me a look like the cat that just ate the canary, daring me to say or do something.
I flipped through the diary and found where she’d torn the bottom third of a page out. It was toward the beginning of the journal.
“This was from September of last year,” I said.
She nodded.
“You did something wrong, and my aunt knew about it.”
“You’ll never know.”
“Sandra, if my aunt knew about it back in September and didn’t fire you for it, why do you think I’d give you your walking papers now?”
“You might not be as forgiving.”
“You think I’m meaner than my aunt?”
“I don’t know you that well.”
I closed my eyes for a moment, opened my mouth to say something, thought better of it, and just shook my head. I walked away from her, and went back to my room to read more of the diary.
Chapter Twenty
The diary didn’t give me any additional insight into the employees. Most of it was just normal day-to-day stuff, with the occasional entry about Aunt Liz’s cancer, or something silly that Clara had said.
There were a few little tidbits. Aunt Liz considered Carl to be Zen’s puppy dog. She had no respect for Diana because Todd was having an affair, and Diana either didn’t know or, worse, didn’t care. She really didn’t like Morgan. One moment Morgan was alert and doing a good job, the next she looked like she’d awakened from a long nap and couldn’t find her bearings.
Sandra must have eaten the only entry about her that mattered, so it was unlikely to be complimentary, but as it was less than a quarter of a page, it was also unlikely to be motive for murder.
In fact, anyone reading the diary would see nothing worth killing someone over. And there weren’t any other pages torn out, so the killer didn’t simply remove a bad section.
So why bother hiding the diary? The only thing that made sense was that the killer didn’t have time to read it and didn’t want to take any chances.
On that front, Zen seemed most likely as she was in the alcove where I found the journal.
While I read, Nico kept jumping on the bed, meowing, then jumping down. I shooed her away, saying, “You’ve eaten already.”
But she kept coming back until I finally followed her downstairs.
Balthazar and Carl got the Jeep started, but weren’t able to get down the drive to the main road. They shoveled the walk, and came inside laughing at some joke as I caught up to the cat.
Nico meowed.
Balthazar looked at me, then the cat. “It’s cold out there, Nico,” he said.
Nico meowed again, and ran up to the door anyway.
“All right,” he said, and opened the door. She darted outside.
“I thought she wanted fed,” I said.
He laughed. “Nope. There’s no litterbox here. You’re lucky you’re not in your sock feet, or she might have left you a strategically placed puddle.”
“She wouldn’t.”
“Nico is the most vindictive cat I’ve ever known,” he said. “She’ll be meowing to get back inside in a minute.”
“Then maybe we should wait here.”
Carl pointed toward the kitchen. “I’m thirsty. Catch you later.”
I glanced toward the kitchen and saw why he was thirsty. Zen exited, holding a glass of iced tea, and went into the dining room.
“How goes your investigation?” Balthazar asked. “Any leads?”
“I’ve ruled myself out,” I said.
“That’s a good start,” he said.
Nico meowed on the other side of the door.
“You should do the honors,” he said. “Get back on her good side.”
I opened the door.
Nico looked up at me and meowed.
“You can stay out there if you want,” I said, and started to close the door. She shot through right as I was about to pull it open again.
She raced up the stairs and disappeared down the hall.
“At least she didn’t track in more mud,” I said.
“What’s the next
step for you?” Balthazar asked.
I opened the closet, and grabbed my coat. “I need to look at the body again before it gets too dark.”
He frowned. “Are you sure you want to do that?”
“No.”
“Then put the coat away.”
“But I have to check something.”
“All right,” he said. “I’ll go with you.”
He reached over me to close the closet door, and I once again had the feeling of him looming.
I wanted to duck under his arm and run, but I froze.
He closed the door, and turned toward the back of the mansion.
“You coming?” he asked.
I took a deep breath to calm my nerves, then followed him to the back door.
He turned toward me. “Are you sure about this?” he asked.
“We can’t get the police up here yet, so we need to find out who killed Aunt Liz. Maybe the angle of the blade will tell us something.”
“You’ve been talking to Diana.” He shook his head. “She reads too many murder books. Someone can change the angle of a strike easily enough, so while maybe a professional could tell something based on angles and depth and who knows what else, but to a layperson, it’s just a knife in a woman’s chest.”
“It was actually Morgan who had the idea.”
“Wow,” he said. “I’m a little impressed then.”
“Me too.” I pointed at the door. “I need to look.”
“Might be easier to study the pictures Carl took.”
“It might be.”
“But you really want to do this.”
I nodded.
He spread his hands. “So be it,” he said, and opened the door.
Cold air blew in.
Footprints in the snow showed where Carl and Balthazar had carried Aunt Liz’s body outside, and prints in the other direction showed where they came back in.
We added to the tracks, trudging outside to a snowdrift just past the back porch.
“We put her on the far side,” Balthazar said.
“So anyone looking out wouldn’t see her?”
“It would be kinda creepy.”
Off to the right, a Nissan sat covered in snow. The servant’s parking.
I stopped at the edge of the porch and looked to the left. The next step would be down and into part of the drift. I stared at the tracks going around, and could just make out one of Aunt Liz’s shoes showing on the right side of the drift.