by Lane Stone
“Bess told me she leaves her phone downstairs because it helps her sleep better. I think Roman heard Cordy on the phone and—”
“And he was the one who called Nick Knightley, using his wife’s phone,” John said, finishing for me. “Bringing him to Lewes. I’m going to recommend she be charged with both obstruction and accessory after the fact. That’ll put the burden on her to decide what she did or didn’t know and when.” He rubbed his forehead and sighed. “But I still don’t have enough to arrest Roman Harper.”
“Let’s go back in,” I whispered. As I opened the door, I laughed and said over my shoulder, “Looks like the diurnal tides solved the case.” I sat down and went on. “Chief, I think it’s only fair that you tell them how you photographed the intertidal zone, using advances in bathymetry. My friends, Bernice and Robber…”
“You have a friend named Robber?” Cordy asked.
“Nickname,” I said. She would know who these two besties were if she had paid Marin regular visits. “Anywho, they both recommended an MBES, but Officer Statler here disagreed,” I said, pointing to her, which made her look up with a start. “She said it wasn’t necessary and guess what? She was right. As usual. The predictions of low and high tides are influenced by many factors, such as the amphidromic systems. Listen to me, I’m just droning on when we all know the principal lunar semidiurnal constituent is all that matters. Am I right or am I right?” I had talked faster and faster and now I could take a breath. They all stared. Mouths were open. No one said a word. “So that’s how the Lewes police department captured DNA from the footprints leading away from Maestro Nielsen’s and Nick Knightley’s bodies.” I stopped and beamed at John, but I had Cordy in my peripheral vision. Now was the time for her to give up the name. She must not have seen it that way because she was silent as a Basenji.
“Aw, just doin’ my job,” John said.
Lady Anthea slammed her hands onto the table. “Cordy! This is science!” Which it was, more or less, actually less. “R-e-a-l-l-y!”
I bit my lip to keep from grinning. Her brother was gone and now she could concentrate on sleuthing.
Cordy looked at her attorney. “I can give them the name. I mean, since they already know who it was.”
He held up his hand for her to wait. “Chief Turner, can we talk about a deal?”
He nodded. “It’s up to the prosecutor but I can certainly recommend it.”
“Roman Harper ran to my car!”
Chapter 41
The next half hour was spent listening to Cordy swear that although she let Roman Harper in her car she didn’t know about the murder or the attack on Sue. For the recorder she went back over the brief drive from Savannah Road, left past the Dairy Queen onto Cape Henlopen Drive. At the intersection with Kings Highway he had told her to let him out.
“What reason did he give for wanting to get in your car?” John asked.
“He said two dogs were chasing him. I believed him because he was really scared.”
“When did you learn the real reason?” John asked.
“When I found out Georg Nielsen was dead! I drove back to the beach and I saw the police cars and that white van driving in. I got out of my car and stood with everyone else on the beach. When I saw that one of the dead men was wearing a tuxedo I put two and two together. I didn’t know who the other person was until Monday.” She looked at me and said, “Now do you see why I didn’t want to stay with them this week?”
The lawyer leaned forward. “Obviously, my client would not have driven her car back to where the police were descending like locusts if she had known the truth.”
“I agree,” John said, “but you could have told me the truth instead of denying you had anyone in your car.”
“She feared for her safety,” he said. “And rightly so.”
John looked at Cordy. “Do you feel you would be safe conducting the orchestra tonight? It’ll be outdoors.”
“Yes! I want to,” Cordy said.
“I’ll have an officer stay with you,” he said as he gave the instructions to Officer Statler to make that happen.
“I’d like to see Margo,” Cordy said.
John warned her not to tell Maggie or anyone else about what had been discussed in her interview. He walked the attorney out, explaining the next steps in Cordy’s legal situation, and Lady Anthea and I waited for him in his office. “Well that’s enough to bring him in. And I think I can get a search warrant for his house, too.”
Officer Statler was back waiting for her next assignment. “Get the officer surveilling the Harper residence on the line.” She walked away and placed a call, then she said, “He’s about to call you.”
“Sue, what the hell were you talking about? Semidiurnal what?” John asked.
“It means two high tides and two low tides in a day. Most days that’s us,” I said. “When I found out he wasn’t raised near the ocean I figured I could get away with it.”
“Would any of it have made sense if we had known those terms?” Lady Anthea asked.
“About all I was saying was that the tide comes in and the tide goes out,” I explained. “And a few factors determine the timing.”
“And you know how to calculate the times?”
“Hell no. I look at the newspaper.” I didn’t mention that I had gotten the idea from Joey since it was the trick he’d used on Albert.
John’s cell phone rang. As he listened his eyes narrowed and he asked, “Have you seen the wife? Or the daughter?” The answer from the person on the other end made his jaw clench. “Stay in position and keep me updated.” He hung up and yelled to an officer at a nearby desk. “Call a meeting.”
Lady Anthea and I stood to go.
“What’s going on?” I asked.
“Roman Harper hasn’t been out of his house since last night. The curtains are drawn. No one has so much as come out onto the balcony. We believe his wife and daughter are in there, too,” he said.
“Are you concerned about a hostage situation?” I asked.
“Yeah,” he answered. “Is it out of the ordinary for none of the three to be seen?”
Lady Anthea and I shrugged. She said, “Should we ask Margo Bardot to call on Bess?”
John shook his head. “I think we know which side she’s on and it’s not on the side of the angels, meaning us. I don’t want to go in there with a search warrant until I know the situation inside that house.”
My hand shot up and they looked at me. “I’m imitating Roman and Ty at the senior drivers’ class. Remember what Charles Andrews said when they raised their hands to speak?”
“It doesn’t bear repeating,” Lady Anthea said.
“I know how we can get Roman to come outside,” I said. “I’m going to find out if So-Long is at Buckingham’s today. Today is his regular day for a pickup.”
“I have the answer to that,” Lady Anthea said. “Mr. Andrews telephoned and said So-Long and So-Lo would be, and I quote, sheltering in place today.”
“Then he needs to bring him here.”
John looked skeptical. “How are you going to talk him into that?”
“Easy. We’re giving him the opportunity to be a hero with his new love.”
* * * *
There was no time to spare, so I telephoned Charles Andrews from John’s office. “Finally!” The guy had his own signature way of answering the phone. “It’s about time.”
“Huh?”
“I haven’t heard from the police, but you’ll do. At least if I tell you, it’ll get to our young police chief.”
To increase my odds of a favorable reply to what I really wanted, I let him go on.
“The thing is, the oboist says he and Beaut, the deceased, had gone to Nectar for lunch. Beaut wanted him to let her make an announcement before their big number. What was it? Oh, yeah, it was something about The O
cean, Our Original Opus.”
I heard a woman’s voice in the background say, “Isn’t that lovely?”
She had no idea.
I was so excited to tell John and Lady Anthea what I’d learned that I almost hung up without asking for his help getting Roman Harper to come out of his house. The look on John’s face told me what he thought of the amount of information I was sharing, but I wanted Charles to know both the extent of the danger and the importance of the request.
“I love that guy!” I said when I hung up.
“What’s his secret?” John grumbled.
“He gave us proof that Nick Knightley was Cordy’s hacker. We’ve been assuming he was but now we know it. At some point he told Beaut about the symphony, but he used its original title. I think she wanted to tell the truth at the concert tonight.”
“Unfortunately, that might have gotten her killed,” John said.
“Sue, didn’t you say that Cordy was going to tell Bess or Margo that she was the composer of Symphony by the Sea?” Lady Anthea asked.
I nodded. “I know she told Margo from something Margo said in my office. What I don’t get is why it would matter to anyone other than Cordy or Georg Nielsen?”
“As beloved as Cordy is to her fans, an original composition by Maestro Nielsen would have been much more valuable,” Lady Anthea said.
I shook my head at the craziness of that. “They did say that they wanted to use it for friend-raising for their seventieth anniversary next year. And by the way, the Bath Symphony Orchestra is seventy this year.”
“That’s lovely, dear,” she said.
John chuckled and called someone in to type. I told the young officer—I think he was about twelve years old—word for word what Charles Andrews had said.
“Did the oboist tell Beaut that she could speak tonight?” Lady Anthea asked when we were finished.
“He asked Margo,” I said.
“Wait, why would she ask the oboist, rather than Cordy?” Lady Anthea asked. “She’s the concertmaster, and their leader when they are onstage.”
“I’ll bring him in,” John said. “What did Andrews say about helping out?”
“He agreed!” I said.
“How did you manage that?” Lady Anthea said.
“Now and then there’s a fool such as, well, him.” I said, paraphrasing Elvis.
“That’s one connection made,” he said.
“I just thought of another,” I said. “Margo tried to rearrange the timeline in lies she told me. She said she’d told Nick how valuable the score was and that led him to hack Cordy’s computer, but the hack took place last summer. Nick went to work for the PSO four months ago. Then she said, what was it—something about Nielsen meeting with them. He had the music at that meeting. I have a question for her.” I picked up my phone and thumbed, Was Nick in the meeting you had with Maestro Nielsen?
We didn’t have to wait long. An assistant librarian? Hardly. But I saw them talking in the hallway.
“Maestro Nielsen would have sent the music to the PSO librarian, who would have given it to Cordy,” Lady Anthea said. “Nick would have seen it then. So we’ve connected Knightley and Nielsen after the hack occurred and after the sale or whatever it was to Nielsen. And we haven’t connected Roman Harper with either.”
“I’m not so sure about that. When Bess came to the police station with Beaut, she said something about how Cordy treated Nick, and how she made him angry. Something about someone with his skills didn’t like being condescended to,” I said.
“But he didn’t hack her computer in revenge. The computer attack came before she made the comments.”
“I know, but it sounded like Bess knew about the hacking. Her comment made me think she was connecting Nick to the hacking of Cordy’s computer.”
* * * *
Shelby was rested up and behind the desk. Peace reigned at Buckingham’s. Lady Anthea and I were in line at the Dairy Queen. “I think Operation Get Off My Lawn should be taught at law enforcement academies,” I said.
The police waited on Bayview Avenue in an unmarked car. Officer Statler was keeping us informed on her cell phone and she had chuckled at the plan. We had taken the traditional request that someone get off the property owner’s lawn and upped it to something that would really infuriate Roman Harper.
“I see Mr. Andrews and his friend,” Officer Statler said. “Looks like the dog wants to stop. Mr. Andrews is pulling him along.”
“Yeah, that’s my fault. We fed So-Long apple slices. He needs to go to the bathroom,” I said. “Badly, but he’s got to wait until he gets in front of the Harpers’ house.”
“He’s almost there,” she said. “Cloossseerr.”
Then there was cheering in the car. “Good dog!”
“The officer is in place,” she said. A surfer dude, actually Wayne from the Delaware River and Bay Authority police department, strolled by with a camera attached to his sunglasses. “Sue, can you hear his transmission?”
“Yes,” I answered. We sat at one of the picnic tables to enjoy our soft ice cream. Since Operation Get Off My Lawn was my idea I thought we should have been invited to wait in the unmarked car, but I agreed with John that if you’re about to arrest a billionaire who has been pushed to the edge you need to operate by the book.
“The balcony door is opening,” Wayne whispered into his mic. “Wait for it.”
Roman Harper stood on his balcony, pointing at Charles Andrews. “Get off my lawn!” He went back inside, closing the sliding glass doors so hard I heard the bang.
“The wife’s checking the door,” Wayne reported. “She looks okay. Front door opening.”
“Let’s go,” John said.
“What’s happening?” Lady Anthea asked.
“Officer Statler left her phone in the car so I don’t know.” We got up from the bench and walked to the end of Savannah Road and looked down Bayview. John was handing Roman Harper something, which I knew to be a search warrant. The driving instructor was beaming at Charles Andrews. Her champion had a poop bag and was cleaning up after the true hero of Operation Get Off My Lawn.
Chapter 42
More than a million companies, fifty percent of the nation’s publicly traded entities, were incorporated in Delaware due to our business-friendly tax system and state legislature, and ease of incorporation. We have lots of corporate attorneys, but that’s not who Roman Harper needed on Friday afternoon. His law firm was one of Washington, DC’s largest, but since the crime had been committed in Delaware they had to scramble. They would, they advised Mayor Betsy Rivard, be handling “communications,” or what I would call public relations. I had just hung up with her.
John stopped by Buckingham’s and we, along with Lady Anthea, stood at the reception desk. Shelby had gone home to catch up on sleep she missed last night and Mason and Joey had so many grooming postponements they left, too. We’d all meet back up at the concert. Even Abby was tired.
“I have bad news,” he said.
“Then I don’t have to tell you.”
“How do you know already? Did Officer Statler call you?”
“I thought only the mayor knew,” I said.
“Mayor Rivard? How does she know?” he said. “Wait, what is your bad news?”
I told him about the team of consultants Kirk, Black & Weiss had deployed. “They’ll be here around eight o’clock tonight. What’s your bad news?”
“We didn’t find the gun at Roman Harper’s house,” he said.
Lady Anthea nervously tapped her pearl necklace. “Sue, I hate to ask, but are you absolutely sure that it was Roman Harper who attacked you? The Harpers are patrons of the arts. They are compared to the Medicis.”
“I am sure and Cordy identified him as the man who she drove off with.” I didn’t want to look at John in case there was doubt on his face, too. “Ho
w would he know the number for Nick Knightley’s burner phone if he didn’t know him? And I don’t mean know him well enough to recommend him for a job. The purpose of a burner phone for most people who have one is to not be identified or located, so you would only give that number out to certain people. That’s one connection between those two.”
“Roman could have used his computer skills to get that telephone number. Locating my brother was child’s play to him,” Lady Anthea said.
I wasn’t giving up so easily. “Second, Bess said that a lot of young people in IT think he’s a god. Since Nick was a hacker, it makes sense that he would have felt that way about Roman. And he did!”
“Was that how he looked at him on Sunday—like he thought he was his idol?” John asked.
“I meant the disillusionment on his face when Roman shot him,” I said. “Lady Anthea, have you spoken with Margo?”
Lady Anthea nodded and looked at her watch. “Now that they have Cordy back, the concert will begin at seven o’clock as planned.”
“The sun will set around seven thirty, so they should be playing Symphony by the Sea when it does,” I said, studying my hands on the desk.
John reached over and lifted my chin and smiled at me. “When is the semidiurnal event?”
“Ha ha,” I said.
“The stage has been erected and they were testing the sound system when I drove by,” he said. “And I saw Alex Whittle loading their luggage into the bus.”
“So they’re leaving right after they perform?” I asked.
He nodded and leaned heavily over the desk. “That means we’ve run out of time to look for Roman’s bitcoin transactions. That was a long shot anyway.”
“Dana said there are other digital currencies, too,” I said, hating being the bearer of bad news. “And the FBI would have had to look into all of them. Want some good news? I might have an idea for how to get Roman to incriminate himself.”
“Do I want to hear it?” he asked.
“Do you?”
“Nah. It’s going to be harder to talk to those musicians after the concert, so I need to go back over the statements concerning Beaut’s death in case anything needs clearing up.”