“But you told us you’re broke,” Libby pointed out. “Don’t you need money to buy in?”
Gus rubbed his hands together. “Ordinarily, yes, but Witherspoon was going to let me in for free. To make up for the last time.”
“Nice of him,” Bernie remarked dryly.
“Yes, it was. Don’t believe me if you don’t want to,” Gus Moran said, sitting down. He noted the expression on Bernie’s face. “I don’t care.” He shook a finger at her. “But I didn’t kill him. I was out of town.” And he got up, went to his desk, and produced a boarding pass. “See?” he said, sticking it in Bernie’s face. “I was in the air over Ohio then.”
Bernie looked. “So it would seem.”
“But I’ll tell you this,” Gus continued. “You want to know who killed Darius? Who wanted him gone? You should try his partner or his receptionist. They’d be my candidates of choice.”
“Receptionist?” Bernie echoed.
“The big Swedish blonde. At the gallery. Now, she was really pissed at him. She threatened to kill him.”
“And why would she say something like that?” Libby asked.
Gus Moran ran his hand over the top of his head. “Evidently, he was sleeping with her and promised to marry her, and then he reneged, and if that wasn’t bad enough, I think she’s here illegally, and he told her he was going to call immigration. Something like that.”
“Something like that, or is that what actually happened?” Bernie asked.
“That’s what one of the baristas at Nell’s told me.” He paused. “You know, Nell’s,” Gus repeated when he saw the blank look on Libby’s and Bernie’s faces. “The coffee place on Madison. The one that has the fancy Japanese coffee brewing system.”
Both Bernie and Libby shook their heads.
“Well, anyway, I was right in back of her in the line when she got a phone call, and she answered it, and a minute later she starts screaming, ‘I’m going to kill you!’ into the phone and storms out, and then the barista and I exchange ‘What the hell was that about?’ looks, and then he tells me what he thinks is going on, which is what I told you.”
“Any chance you have this guy’s name?” Bernie asked.
Gus looked at her like she was crazy. “Why would I know his name?”
“Right.” Bernie sighed. “What does he look like?”
Gus Moran shrugged as he sat down on the sofa. “He just looks like a regular guy.”
Bernie gave up and moved on. “And Witherspoon’s partner,” she said. “What about him?”
“I got the feeling that they hated each other.”
“How come?”
“I don’t know, really.” Gus took a sip of his tea. “Just an impression. I was at the gallery a couple of times when Peabody’s name came up, and Darius made this face. You know, like he was smelling something bad. It was like he couldn’t help himself.”
“Did Darius say anything about him?” Libby asked.
Gus shook his head. “No, but Darius didn’t talk that much. He kept to himself. He was a paranoid kind of guy, but I guess in this case he was right.”
“So it would seem,” Bernie observed.
“Yeah. What is it they say? ‘Just because you’re paranoid doesn’t mean you’re wrong.’” Gus Morgan shrugged. “Funny how things work out. And let’s not forget my ex. I wouldn’t put it beyond her to kill Witherspoon and then try to frame me for it.”
“Because?” Bernie asked, thinking back to Penny. She couldn’t see her for it, but she’d been wrong before.
“I told you. She blamed him for losing all my money.” Gus Moran finished off the last of his cinnamon toast. “She really is a scary lady.”
“Funny, but she says the same thing about you,” Bernie remarked.
“Well, she’s lying,” Gus replied, his face flushing slightly. “Do you know she got up on the roof last month and tried to hit me with an apple pie when I walked out? I was lucky I wasn’t seriously injured.”
Libby giggled. “Store-bought or homemade?”
“It’s not funny,” Gus Moran snapped. “I was late for an important meeting.”
“How did she get up there?” Libby asked. “I thought the roof was alarmed?”
“It’s supposed to be,” Gus Moran replied. “But the alarm kept malfunctioning, and they had to turn it off a couple of months ago. We’re still waiting for the company to come. In fact, my dad’s threatening to sue them if they don’t get over here soon.”
Bernie and Libby exchanged looks.
“Really,” Bernie said as she glanced out the window again. It had stopped drizzling, and she saw a patch of clear sky over the river.
Libby sighed. She knew what was coming.
Chapter 22
Libby checked the time on her watch as she and Bernie walked up the short flight of stairs that led to the roof. “I don’t think we have enough time to do this,” she said.
Bernie halted on the last step and turned toward her. “We have more than enough time.”
“What if something happens?” Libby persisted.
“Nothing is going to happen,” Bernie assured her. “We’ll just look around and leave. This will take twenty minutes. At the most. And, anyway, I just want to see the roof. For my personal mental health.”
“Okay,” Libby said. There was no arguing with that, even though she would rather not do this. “I wonder why Moran senior lied about the alarm?”
“Because he wanted us out of here as fast as possible,” Bernie answered.
“Yeah,” Libby said, remembering. “He couldn’t wait to get rid of us.”
Bernie turned toward the door. She hesitated for a moment before opening it. After all, what was the worst that could happen? If the alarm had been fixed, it would go off and they’d have some explaining to do. Nevertheless, she took a deep breath before she pushed. The door groaned as it swung open, letting a blast of chilly air into the stairwell, but that was it. The only sound that Bernie heard was the sound of squabbling crows over by the shed where she’d parked the van.
Gus Moran had been correct. The alarm wasn’t working. Bernie felt the tension flow out of her body as she straightened up. “Nice view,” she said to Libby as her sister shut the door to the roof behind her. The door thudded closed, the sound drowned out by the crows. Still, Bernie waited for a minute to see if anyone had heard it and was coming up to check out what was going on. No one did.
Bernie rubbed her arms, wishing she were wearing a sweater underneath her coat, as she took in the view. The sun was going down, taking the day’s color with it, but you could still see the tugs guiding the tankers down the Hudson, now a grayish blue ribbon threading itself between its banks; as well as the treetops, some still heavy with leaves, others already bare, the birds’ nests they were hosting visible for all to see. Toward the right, Bernie saw a black storm cloud moving in their direction. The sliver of clear sky had been a teaser. It looked as if the rain wasn’t over yet. They’d just gotten a short reprieve.
Libby saw the cloud, too, and shivered. It was damp, and the wind blowing off the river made things chillier, but that wasn’t why she was shivering. It had just hit her that she really, really, really didn’t want to be up here. She just hadn’t realized how much she didn’t want to be up on the roof until now.
“We should hurry,” she said, swallowing the saliva that was building up in her mouth.
Bernie nodded. She knew the way Libby felt, because even though she wasn’t going to admit it, she was feeling the same way. Jittery. Wanting to go back down. Ordinarily, she and her sister would have split up to search the rooftop—it would be faster—but now they silently agreed to stay together.
With no rooms to break up the area, the rooftop seemed larger than it was, and the six turrets, along with the parapets and crenulated walls, served to reinforce that impression. Bernie tried to convince herself that she was standing on the roof of a small castle or chateau somewhere in France, looking down at the Loire. It didn’t wor
k.
“Okay, let’s do this,” Bernie said, plastering a fake smile on her face.
Bernie and Libby started by walking around the roof’s perimeter. Bernie ran her fingers along the edges of the roof wall. It was waist high. She imagined students from the Peabody School coming up here to sneak a smoke or a drink or to make out—now, there was an old-fashioned phrase—or just to get away from everyone and daydream about what their future was going to be.
“You know,” Libby said, pointing at the toothlike crenulations cut into the wall, “it wouldn’t be hard to fasten a rope around one of these things and rappel down from here to someone’s window.”
“Darius’s window,” Bernie said, finishing Libby’s thought for her.
Libby nodded.
“No, it wouldn’t be hard to do at all,” Bernie agreed. “Of course,” she continued, “the window would have to be open, and it has been on the chilly side for the past few weeks.”
“True, but you could get in if the windows were closed.”
“How so?”
“Think about it.”
Bernie closed her eyes and pictured the windows in Gus Moran’s place. The handles to open them were on the inside, but if a window wasn’t completely locked, you could grab one of its edges and pull. “I guess that would work as long as the windows weren’t locked.”
Libby crossed her arms over her chest. “Which they probably weren’t. After all, how often do we bother locking our windows?”
“Never,” Bernie replied after taking a minute to think about it.
“Exactly,” Libby said, bending slightly so she could get a better look at the crenulations. The odds of a rope leaving a mark on the concrete were slim, indeed. At least, she hadn’t seen anything that looked like that so far.
“But why would the murderer pick that way to enter Darius’s apartment?” Bernie asked, thinking out loud.
“Maybe this person wasn’t planning on killing Darius. Maybe he was planning on stealing something.”
“Something that he knows is there,” Bernie said.
Libby nodded. “Maybe something to do with the treasure Darius was looking for and possibly found.” She closed her eyes and visualized the scene. “So this person gets into Darius’s apartment before Darius gets there, and he’s going through Darius’s stuff. Now he’s planning to go out the same way he came in, but he can’t, because Darius comes in early. This person runs into Darius’s bedroom and hides, but Darius discovers him, and this guy has a rope, so he uses it to shut Darius up.” Libby’s voice trailed off.
“The rope Darius was hanging from was tied to the planter thingamajig,” Bernie objected, pulling the collar on her coat up and sticking her chin as far down into it as she could. “He’d have to have two ropes.”
“Minor detail,” Libby said as she bent down and picked up a brick from the small pile that was sitting in the wall’s shadow. She weighed it in her hand, then put it back down. “Good thing Penny didn’t throw one of these things at Gus Moran.”
“Yeah,” Bernie replied. “And how.” Her attention was drawn to an empty box of Oreos and a can of soda. “Well, someone’s been up here,” she noted. “And it isn’t a ghost, unless the ghost likes Oreos, that is. Maybe whoever it is just likes to come up here and look at the river. It is a nice view.”
Libby had to agree that it was. “When it’s warmer,” she said, jamming her hands in the pockets of Bernie’s raincoat. Boy, she wished she were wearing her own raincoat right now. Maybe her slicker was a bit too conspicuous, but it sure as hell was a lot warmer than Bernie’s fancy French raincoat, not to mention that it was 100 percent waterproof. She hoped she wouldn’t need it, but she suspected that she would.
“You know,” Bernie said suddenly, “there’s no reason why she would be mad at us.”
Libby didn’t need to ask for clarification. She knew who she was. After the last time they’d been here, she and Bernie had decided by mutual consent never to mention her name again, because as their mother had always said, naming things called them into existence.
“That’s true,” Libby replied. After all, they had solved her murder. Hopefully, she was resting now, preferably someplace in another dimension. Or universe. Or wherever people went after they died—if they went anywhere. Because after her last Halloween experience, Libby had become a firm believer in segregation. As in if the living stayed on their side of the wall and the dead stayed on their side, everything would be fine. It was just when they mixed that the trouble started.
“Here’s a radical idea,” Bernie continued. “How about we stop letting this place screw with our minds?”
Libby cocked her head. “Meaning?”
“Meaning that we need to get a grip on reality. Odds are the ghost that we saw on the rooftop the afternoon we were coming up here wasn’t a ghost. Odds are that, that person, and I stress the word person, was Darius’s murderer, and he was getting ready to rappel down to Darius’s window.”
“We both thought we saw a woman,” Libby protested.
“Maybe it was a guy in drag.”
Libby snorted. She would have rolled her eyes, but her eyelids felt numb.
“It could be,” Bernie insisted. She held up her hand. “Okay. Okay. Okay. I’m going a little too far.”
“Anyway, the timing is wrong,” Libby pointed out. “Darius was up in his apartment until the time he went out the window. We know that for a fact. If someone rappelled into his living room, I’m sure he would have yelled or screamed or done something. I mean, it’s not the way one would expect a person to enter your home. It would make me reach for a butcher knife, on the assumption that this person was up to no good, and there were no signs of a struggle anywhere in that apartment. Absolutely none.”
“You’re right,” Bernie conceded. “There weren’t.” And even if Libby was wrong and she was correct, so what? Bernie thought. It didn’t advance their case. It didn’t give them the name of Darius’s killer. So far the only thing being out on the roof was accomplishing was making her wish she wasn’t there.
She and Libby spent the next fifteen minutes methodically crisscrossing the roof, but aside from the empty box of Oreos, the can of soda, and a bird’s nest, they didn’t find any signs indicating that anyone had been up there. By now the wind was kicking up, and Bernie and Libby could feel spits of rain blowing in their faces.
“Well,” Bernie said to Libby, “at least now we can cross the roof off of our list.”
“Good, because it’s time to get out of here,” Libby said, looking at the sky, which was growing darker by the second. “We should leave before the deluge comes. Besides, we need to get back to the shop and start getting ready for the Blitmans.”
“Absolutely true on both counts,” Bernie agreed as she turned and hurried to the exit. She was debating about whether she should add toasted slivered almonds and cranberries to the buttercup squash or not when she got hold of the door handle and pulled it toward her.
Nothing happened.
Chapter 23
Okay, Bernie thought. She looked at the door handle and gave another tug. Again nothing happened. Could the blasted thing be stuck? she wondered. Not a big deal, she told herself. All she had to do was pull a little harder. So she planted her feet on the roof floor and yanked as hard as she could. Nothing. The damned door wasn’t budging. Not even an inch. So much for her weight training at the gym. She rubbed her fingers where the door handle had cut into them.
But if the door was stuck, what was it stuck on? She couldn’t remember anything on the landing that could be jamming it. Stay calm, she told herself. Too bad she wasn’t listening to herself. She could feel panic beginning to bubble up inside her as she kept telling herself to cool it and go to her special place. Right. Too bad she couldn’t think of one. But that sobered her up. She shook her head. One thing was for sure. This was not good. This was not good at all.
“What’s happening?” Libby asked, coming up behind her sister.
�
��I think the door is stuck.”
“You’re kidding, right?” Libby said, thinking of the Blitman party they were supposed to be catering this evening. Oh my God. She knew she should have followed her gut. What if they couldn’t get back to the shop in time? That would be horrible. They’d never get any more business. “That’s not funny.”
“Do I look like I’m kidding?” Bernie demanded, turning to face her.
Libby took in the expression on her sister’s face and decided this wasn’t her sister’s idea of a bad joke. “ ‘We’ll be fine,’ you said,” Libby told Bernie, imitating her voice. “ ‘You worry too much,’ you said. ‘You always make a big deal out of everything,’ you said.”
Bernie raised her right hand. “That one I didn’t say,” she protested.
Libby shook a finger at her. “But you thought it.”
“I’m sorry. You want to stand here arguing or try to figure something out?”
Libby took a deep breath and let it out. Boy, did she wish she had some chocolate right about now. “Okay. Let me try.”
Bernie moved aside and extended her hand palm outward. “Be my guest.”
Libby took Bernie’s place. She wrapped her hands around the door handle and pulled. It didn’t move. She pulled harder. The door stayed where it was. “Goddamn it,” she cried, cursing under her breath as she tried for a third time. It didn’t move.
“What are we going to do if we’re stuck up here?” Libby cried. “What are we going to do about the Blitmans?” She closed her eyes for a second. It didn’t bear thinking about.
“We’re not going to get stuck up here,” Bernie assured her. “That’s not going to happen. Let’s try pulling together.”
“Literally or figuratively?” Libby said.
“Both,” her sister answered.
Libby moved over so Bernie had some space. Then they both planted their feet on the Tarvia and pulled as hard as they could. The only thing they could feel moving was the door handle, which seemed to be loosening up. Not the result they were after. After the third time, they gave up. The only thing they were doing was hurting their hands.
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