by Cathy Ace
“I have good idea,” said Svetlana, nodding. “I sit here. I not move. Police here soon. I must trust American police. I sit very quiet.” Given her size, she couldn’t have made herself any smaller.
“Do you think there’s someone here who wants everyone dead, Uncle Bud?” asked Tom through his sobs.
“I’m not sure what to think,” replied Bud. He squeezed my arm and looked apologetically torn as he took his leave of me to return to his young charge.
I knew that Tom’s anguish and grief trumped my frustration, and inwardly praised Bud for his compassion for the poor young man, who he held close to him, their two bodies gently rocking back and forth.
I looked at my watch. Still three hours to share a room with someone who’d already killed three times and might still end up with Clemence’s death at their feet. Three hours can be a very long time indeed.
Nonet
I WALKED OVER TO WHERE Bud had rejoined Tom and whispered, “Bud, I’m sorry to do this, but we need to talk, in private. Now.” I sounded as deflated and confused as I felt, but I knew I had to tell him about the gun.
Bud looked up at me from the seat he was occupying next to Tom, who was red eyed and nosed, and still crying bitterly. Bud shrugged helplessly. “I can’t leave Tom, not like this,” he mouthed.
“You go, Uncle Bud. It’s nice that you’re here, but none of us can really do anything until the cops get here. I . . . are you sure she’s dead? Really sure?”
I touched Tom’s shoulder and bent my head to his. “I’m sorry, Tom. There’s no doubt at all. I saw her. Checked for a pulse. She’s really dead.”
“I’ll never love anyone like I loved Tanya,” said Tom through his sobs. Then he stopped and looked at Bud and me. “How’d you do it, Uncle Bud? When Jan was killed . . . after Jan was killed . . . how did you start again? I mean, you’re with Cait now. How did you do that? How could you?”
Bud blew out his cheeks, gave me a sad smile, and held Tom’s hand as he said, “When you lose a person you love, you’re right, Tom, you think you’ll never love again. But what I hope you’re able to realize—and I know it might take some time—is that love can be found where and when you least expect it, and that it can be real more than once in a lifetime. Cait knows I’ll never love anyone like I loved Jan, but I don’t think she’d want to be loved like I loved Jan. She wants to be loved as I love her, which is different. Not less. Not more. Just different.”
Tom’s expression didn’t change.
Bud realized that people could overhear what he’d meant to be a very intimate conversation. “We’ll talk about it properly when you’re ready, Tom. Promise.”
“Love’s a funny thing,” said Jimmy. “Love can make you do things you never thought you’d do. I was all set to head off for a job in New York before Madame came along. Now I’ll never leave her, not as long as she’ll have me by her side.”
Svetlana pulled her hand away from Jimmy. “Do not speak of love this way. You cannot love me. You love men, not women. I am woman. Real woman.”
“What?” snapped Jimmy. “You think I’m gay?”
Svetlana nodded her head sharply.
“I’m not gay!” Jimmy sounded astonished, rather than offended. “I’m straight. Yes, I’ve got a lot of gay friends, but—come on, because of the world I’ve always worked in, the theater, every other person I know is gay. But I happen to be straight.”
“Yes?” said Svetlana disbelievingly.
“Yes,” said Jimmy.
“You never have girlfriend,” said Svetlana quietly.
Jimmy stood very upright, towering over the woman. “Do you honestly think I’d put up with what you dole out to me on a daily basis just because I think you have a wonderful voice? Had a wonderful voice I should say, because, let’s be honest, it’s not what it once was. And I don’t mean that to be cruel, I just need you to realize that, for once, I’m going to be totally honest with you. I love you, Svetlana. Can’t you see that? I love you as a man loves a woman. Okay, I idolized you at first, but . . . oh, Svetlana, if these past hours have shown us anything, it’s that life can be horribly brief—I’m sorry, Tom—and I’m not going to go on like this. Either you accept my feelings for you, or you can find someone else to be your assistant. After this is over, we’ll be together as a couple, or I’m out of here. So there. Think on that, Svetlana Kharlamova. Think on that.”
The Diva’s mask slipped for a moment, and I saw her as an aging woman, frightened of spending the rest of her life unadored and unloved. Her terror of being murdered might have subsided momentarily, but it had been replaced by the vision of a lonely future. I wondered how she would react to Jimmy’s declaration of his feelings for her when she’d had a chance to process what he’d said.
“Stray dogs,” said Carl. It took us all by surprise. “Miss Shirley loved stray dogs. You know, human ones. Like me. I wasn’t doing anything with my life, and she kick-started me into my business with cars.”
“I wasn’t a stray dog,” said Julie Pool quietly. “I was a princess, and Jack was my prince. That’s it for me. You’re young, Tom, you’ll love again. But for me? Jack was it. He’s gone. I’m as good as dead myself. There’s nothing left for me. It’s over.” Her tone was flat. Bitter. She wasn’t being dramatic, just stating her feelings, simply.
No one spoke for a moment.
“I need to use the washroom,” said Julie. Art helped her to her feet. “I’m fine, Art. You’ve always been very kind to me, thank you. It hasn’t gone unnoticed. Jack and I always enjoyed your visits from Florida. It’s been fun working with you more closely, more often, this past year. It’s been quite a year, hasn’t it?”
Art seemed puzzled by Julie’s line of conversation, but played along. “It certainly has, and we have a lot of work ahead of us. If we’re going to open up in Macau, we’ll have to put our noses to the grindstone. At my age it’ll be a lot of work, but we’re a good team.”
“Macau?” snapped Carl. “Miss Shirley was dead set against expanding over there. And if I get her shares I will be too. It’s too much of a stretch. We’d need a bunch more investors. Times are still tough here. It’s hardly the right moment to invest a bundle over there—”
“Now, now, boys,” said Julie weakly as she teetered across the room toward the men’s room. “There’ll be plenty of opportunities for you to have all the arguments you want, and all the fights you want, when you finally find out who gets those shares. So maybe you could wait until then. Besides, some of those papers Miss Shirley was going to sign tonight make it quite clear she wasn’t as opposed to the idea of expanding into Macau as she might have led you to believe, Carl. She didn’t get where she was without being able to keep a secret or two. Tonight has shown all of us that, only too clearly. Your father always complimented her on her great poker face.” Julie disappeared behind the privacy screen as she shot this parting comment toward Carl, who pouted in her general direction.
“Can I say something, please?” It was Ian, still standing behind his bar. I wondered if he saw it as a way to remain safe, or if he was the killer and he was using it as a vantage point.
“What is it, Ian?” Bud replied.
“I feel I have to say this. The corkscrew Julie said was used to . . . you know?” Bud nodded. “Well, it might be mine. I left mine on the bar, and it’s not here now. And . . . you know . . . like the saber, it’ll have my fingerprints on it. I just wanted to say, once again, that I didn’t kill anyone. Even though I have handled . . . um . . . both murder weapons. Sorry.”
Could this young man really be a ruthless killer? Was he that good an actor? Or maybe he was a true sociopath who didn’t care that what he was doing was wrong, so he was quite easily able to act this way?
I looked at Jimmy. Could he be a triple killer? Sipping his brandy, expressing his love for Svetlana? Or was that just a diversionary tactic?
“Where was everyone when Tanya was killed?” asked Tom directly. “I want to understand what’s going o
n, so could you please all help me?”
“Okay, Tom,” said Bud gently. “We’re all here except Julie. So let’s talk it through. Who was where when Tanya was killed?”
“When was she killed?” asked Ian.
It was a very telling question.
Octet
I FELT BEST PLACED TO get the ball rolling. “Having seen her body, and her injuries, it’s obvious to me that Tanya was killed when she was inside the ladies’ room, which I believe is when you and I were standing near the window wall talking, Tom. You told me you thought she’d gone to the ladies’ a little before that, right?”
Tom nodded. “So if we were there, where was everyone else?”
“I was in the men’s room with Clemence,” said Bud.
“Yes, I saw you go there,” I replied. “Did you leave him at all before you eventually carried him out of there?”
Bud shook his head and looked at his shoes. He was annoyed with himself. “No. I stayed with him the whole time, so I didn’t see what was going on out here. He wasn’t in good shape. He was delirious, though it took me a few moments to work that out. He kept telling me that Miss Shirley wanted to kill him. I tried to get him to explain, but he couldn’t. He looked scared, said she was going to kill him, he knew it. He didn’t seem to realize it was she who was dead. It was then that I worked out what was going on, and shortly after that, he began swaying, and I had my hands full, quite literally. I managed to get him onto the floor. Then I called for help. All of that couldn’t have taken more than . . . ten minutes?”
“How long before we started talking did Tanya go to the washroom?” I asked Tom.
He shrugged helplessly, and his voice was anguished. “I don’t know. I was at the dessert table, and I didn’t even notice she wasn’t beside me until you asked me where she was. I guessed she must have gone in there, because there wasn’t anywhere else to go. She might have been gone for five minutes before we started to talk. I wish . . . I wish I’d noticed.”
“Did anyone see when Tanya went to the ladies’?” I asked.
Everyone shook their heads.
“Did anyone see anybody else go in there?”
“I didn’t even see Julie go in there, and she must have done, because she’s the one who found the body,” said Art.
“I’m pretty sure I was either helping Svetlana sort out rearranging the food, or else eating it,” said Ian.
“I did that too,” said Jimmy. “The three of us did it together.”
“I remember that when Tom and I moved away from the dessert table, you were heading back to the bar, Ian,” I said.
Ian blushed. “I don’t know. I might have done, though it would only have been for a moment. I don’t recall doing it, and I know I ate some of the white chocolate bread pudding at the table. Remember?” He appealed to Jimmy and Svetlana.
Svetlana made a face that signified concentration. “No, I not remember where you are,” she said dismissively.
Carl looked puzzled. “I have no idea where I was, or what I was doing, or which particular ten minutes you’re talking about. I could have been anywhere.”
“Hardly ‘anywhere,’” replied Art. “I was getting some fresh water, behind the bar, flushing out the jugs and letting the water run cold, and you weren’t there. So where were you?”
Carl said grudgingly, “I was looking for that egg again. Yes, while that poor girl was being killed I was hunting for a damned egg, because it’s worth a fortune and, yes, because I could do with the money. I did find this.” He pulled something out of his pocket. “Not that it’s got anything to do with anything, but I found it over there, right where Clemence is lying now. So I was over there, past the far partition, just outside the men’s room, hunting about.”
“What is it?” asked Bud, holding out his hand for the object Carl had found.
I was curious. “Is it part of the handle from the urn?”
Bud was looking at something that Carl had placed in his palm. I moved closer and took a look myself. It was a small ball bearing.
“Where’d it come from?” I asked Bud.
Holding it in his hand, Bud looked up at the ceiling. He walked to the elevator cylinder, then around it. He moved toward Miss Shirley’s body, peered at the partition, then at the privacy screen outside the men’s room, along the bottom of which lay Clemence, who was still breathing, but looking pretty sweaty.
“I can’t see anything here that it might have come from,” Bud said finally. “I’ll ask Julie if she has any ideas when she’s finished in there—she seems to know the lay of the land in this room,” he added. “Cait, I wonder, would you mind checking on her? She seems to have been in there for quite a while.”
I nodded. “Sure. Is there something we can be doing for Clemence, Bud? It feels so wrong to just leave him lying there.”
“Maybe we can keep him a little cooler with some damp cloths, but there’s nothing else we can do for him, Cait. He’s slipped into a comatose state, and the only hope for him is insulin. If they can treat him in time, they might well be able to save him. Tell you what, you check on Julie, I’ll get some cloths for Clemence. Okay?”
I managed a weak smile as I rounded the screen and pushed open the door to the men’s room. At least, I tried to, but it wouldn’t move.
“Does this door stick?” I poked my head around the screen to ask Bud.
“It hasn’t been. Can’t you get it open?” he replied.
“Only a little bit. There seems to be something heavy against it.” My heart sank as I said the words. “Oh, Bud—no!”
Bud joined me, and we both pushed the door, firmly but slowly. It opened enough for me to see Julie Pool’s protruding legs, her back wedged against the door.
When we finally managed to shove our way in, it was clear from the outset that Julie was dead. Bud checked for a pulse. He shook his head. “She’s gone too.”
“Bud, what the hell is going on here? We were all together. No one left that room other than Julie. How did she die, do you think? More of Clemence’s insulin?”
True, Julie was covered in blood, but she’d been covered in blood when she left us. We agreed that we’d already moved her, so we might as well take the chance to check her body for signs of an injury. There were no visible marks on the parts of her body we could see, not even pinpricks. There was no obvious cause of death. Her head wasn’t cracked open, as though she’d slipped or fallen. In fact, it looked as though she’d sat down with her back against the door of her own accord, or had gradually slid down it. Her little evening purse was perched on the counter, her lipstick lying next to it, still open. Her dead lips showed me she’d just applied a fresh coat.
“It might be poison,” I said. There didn’t seem to be any alternative. “But how would she have ingested it?” I considered the lipstick as a possible means of poisoning for less than a split second—it seemed to be a ridiculously unreliable way to kill someone.
“I saw her drink water she poured from a jug that a few of us have been sharing,” said Bud. The thought that several people might have drunk poisoned water was alarming.
“Do you feel okay?” I asked, panicking.
“I feel fine,” replied Bud, sounding as reassuring as possible. He looked at his watch. “It’s almost 11:00 am. We’ve all, somehow, got to get through the next couple of hours alive. I say we all sit in there looking at each other, and don’t leave until the cops arrive. You okay with that?”
It seemed the only thing to do. I nodded. “Before we go back in, there’s something you must know,” I said. “I went back in to get a good look at what had happened to Tanya, and I found a gun. It was poking out of her purse.”
“A gun?” Bud was incredulous.
“Yes, a handgun. Revolver style. Silver, with a dark grip. But I don’t know what sort, exactly. I’m not a weapons expert after all, I’m a criminal psychologist. But I know how you feel. I was surprised too.”
“How could Tanya have got it into the place? Th
ere was that metal detector thing at the entrance to the elevator.”
“I know. That was my thought exactly. I have no idea how she got it in here, but I dumped her purse on our table, and it’s there right now, hidden in her purse. I wrapped it in a napkin, in case it’s got prints on it. Though shooting someone is the one method our killer hasn’t used so far.”
“Oh, Cait. This is all such a mess—you’ve disturbed a crime scene.” Bud sounded exasperated. I blushed. “Look, we’d better get back in and break the bad news. Don’t let that gun out of your sight again, now that you’ve moved it. That’s not something we want the killer getting their hands on.”
“No one’s going to go scrabbling about in a dead woman’s purse, Bud, so don’t panic. But you’re right, I’ll hang onto Tanya’s purse from now on. Just so you know, I’m going to have to take myself off to one side, or somewhere, sometime soon. I need a bit of peace and quiet to ‘do my thing,’ okay?”
We reentered the main room.
“What’s going on?” asked Art. “Where’s Julie? How’s she doing?”
Bud squeezed my hand as he said, “I’m sorry to tell you that Julie is dead.”
Gasps. A groan from Svetlana.
Bud continued, “I don’t know how it happened. There are no signs of trauma. And we were all in here the entire time she was in there. But she is, quite definitely, dead. I suggest we all stay exactly where we are until the authorities arrive—though I do want to tend to Clemence to try to keep him a little cooler than he is. Everyone remain seated, and let’s all keep calm.”
Calm? Right!
Refrain
BUD WAS BEHIND THE BAR with Ian, getting some cloths to cool Clemence. I decided to ask the rest of the group a few questions.