He Huffed and He Puffed (24 page)

“Dunno. But why would anyone make up a story like that?”

“No reason that I can think of. I believe Castleberry told us what he thinks is the truth. Maybe some of the details are off, but the basic stuff is probably right on target. It just all seems so incredible.”

“Yeah, tell me about it. Let's go talk to these guys about the fire.”

The two men from the fire marshal's office were poking through the monitoring room. They'd turned up a charred Energine can in the rubble, and that's what had made them say arson. The cleaning fluid was one hundred percent naphtha, which would do the job very nicely. When questioned, the housekeeper said yes, they always kept a few cans of Energine on hand; there were a couple in the cleaning supplies closet right now. Was a can missing? She had no idea; no one kept
that
close track.

There'd been a change in shifts while Marian and Ivan were grabbing a nap, but the new officers on duty had been well briefed. One of them reported that the screwdriver belonging to O'Connell, the inside security guard, had been found behind a chair near the stairway; evidently someone had just tossed it over the banister. Sorry, no fingerprints. The other thing the officer told them was that Richard Bruce had spent what remained of the night in Joanna Gillespie's room.

Marian grunted. “Nice. He's old enough to be her father.”

“Yeah?” Ivan asked. “How old is she? I've never seen her.”

“Thirtyish. He's over fifty, wouldn't you say?”

Her partner shrugged. “That's not so much difference. It happens all the time. Nothing wrong with it.”

“There's a lot wrong with it,” Marian muttered. “I've known a few father-daughter marriages.” But that was no time for a discussion of symbolic incest, for just then Myron Castleberry arrived.

The three of them went into the conference room. “I had two copies made of everything, one for each of you,” Castleberry said, handing them each three folders. “I thought it would be easier for you that way.”

Marian thanked him, getting a quick glimpse of why A. J. Strode had chosen Myron Castleberry as his executive assistant. “Have you thought of anything else you want to tell us?”

“No, I believe I covered everything, except the details of what we learned about Joanna Gillespie and Jack McKinstry. But all that's in the folders. If there's anything that isn't clear, just give me a call. I want to go home and change and then go back to the office, if you have no objection. You can imagine what it's going to be like in there today.” He stood up to go. “I almost sent those folders over by messenger. But when the time came, I felt a certain reluctance to let them out of my possession. I'm happy to say they're all yours now.”

Marian asked, “Who'll be running Strode's business interests now?”

“That will be up to Mrs. Strode.” Castleberry gave them a polite nod and left.

Ivan grinned. “Think he'll get the job?”

“Wouldn't be surprised. He's in a position to know the business better than anyone else.”

“Yeah, but can he
run
it, that's the question.”

“Oh, Castleberry could probably maintain the status quo, but he's not going to do any empire building. Or empire expanding, I guess it would be.” She opened a folder labeled
Gillespie, Joanna
. “Let's see what we've got here.”

They both read silently for a while and then looked up at the same time. “Her
parents?”
Ivan asked incredulously.

“That's what it says,” Marian replied no less incredulously.

They didn't speak again until both had finished reading all three folders. They stared at each other in silence until Marian said, “So? What do you think?”

“I think we've got three killers upstairs, that's what I think! Jesus! All three of them? And Strode was using it to get this House of Glass stock? The man was crazy—he must have been!”

“Money-crazy, at any rate. But those other three … what the hell kind of people are we dealing with here? They do whatever they want and to hell with everybody else?
Don't get in my way or I'll kill you?”

“Well, Strode was no sweetheart himself,” Ivan pointed out. “He ran over people like they weren't even there. He was just the one to bring out that old urge to kill, doncha think?”

“A very killable man,” Marian agreed. “Who chose to conduct business with three people eminently qualified to do the job. And now we've got to figure out which one did.”

“What does it matter?” Ivan muttered. “They're already murderers, all of them. If we say it's conspiracy—”

“Then we'll be sure to get the right one … and punish the other two for past sins as well? Come on, Ivan, you know we can't do it that way. One set of this evidence will have to go to the captain so he can inform the police where these earlier killings took place. If we can't nail the one who killed Strode,
then
we'll get them all on the earlier charges. But the only murder you and I have to worry about is this one, A. J. Strode's. Let the captain handle the rest of it.”

“You know what he'll do, don't you? He'll tell us to put them all under arrest.”

“So?”

“So that means we do our investigating in an interrogation room instead of here. Don't you want to keep 'em here at the scene?”

“Sure. But we're not going to have uniformed help much longer. At the end of twenty-four hours they'll all be pulled.”

“Yeah, but we've still got today. Just hold off on sending those folders over to the captain until we've had a chance to talk to our three primes. C'mon, Marian, you know damned well once they're locked up we're not gonna get shit out of them.”

She sighed. “Okay, in for a penny … we'll hold on to the folders until after we've had a shot at the big three. Which one did we decide on first? McKinstry?”

“Jack McKinstry it is.”

“Christ!” Marian suddenly cried. “I just thought of something! The finger pointers. The first mate's widow, the mercenary—”

“Yeah, yeah, what about them?”

“Their names and addresses are all in here. And Bruce and the others read those folders yesterday afternoon.”

“Oh, shit. They could have phoned somebody—”

“There's no holding anything back now. We've got to get the captain to get those people some protection. Look, you call him, tell him what's happening, tell him where they're all living. I'll go find one of the uniforms and have him take one set of the folders over right now.”

“Right,” said Ivan, heading for the phone. “And get Jack McKinstry in here. Fast.”

“And get Jack McKinstry in here fast,” Marian agreed.

One of the uniformed officers brought Jack McKinstry to the conference room and then left.

His clothing was rumpled, but Jack came in with a big smile on his face and proceeded to size up the two detectives quickly. “At last—Authority has issued its summons!” he said lightly and sat down at the conference table with them. “I was beginning to think you folks had forgotten about me. Now, what can I do to help you?”

Marian was almost amused by the way he had taken charge, or thought he had. Jack McKinstry was a good-looking man in spite of the shadows under his eyes; he had an easy charm he obviously relied on to get him out of tight spots. Marian found both their male suspects attractive, making for a nice change from the usual run of perps she had to deal with. She introduced herself and her partner. “First of all we want to know your whereabouts between the time your meeting in this room broke up and the time Mr. Strode's body was discovered. When did the meeting end, exactly?”

“Oh, it must have been close to eleven. We'd been in here for
hours
—god, how I hate this room. Then I went up to my room to finish packing. I didn't intend to spend another night in this house. I was in such a hurry to get out I got careless and dropped the suitcase on my toe. I let out a yell to wake the dead.”

“A rough weekend, we hear.”

“The roughest.”

“How long did you stay in your room?”

“Until I smelled smoke. Then I started downstairs and one of those pet gorillas Strode liked to keep around yelled up at me everything was under control and to go back to my room. So like a good little boy I went back to my room. The next thing I knew everyone was screaming that Strode had been killed and there were police everywhere you looked.” He hesitated. “Is it true, about the knives? All three of our knives were used to kill him?”

“It's true.”

Jack's grin stretched from ear to ear. “Somebody's got a nice sense of irony.”

“Any idea who?”

He pulled his chair closer to hers. “Sergeant, let's skip the games. You know as well as I do that it had to be one of the three of us.” He smiled disarmingly. “Now, I
know
I didn't kill him—but you don't. You look at me and all you see is Suspect, with a capital ‘S.' But Strode and I had nothing more to do with each other. Once Richard Bruce sold him his House of Glass shares, it was all over. None of us had any further business with Strode.”

“Not even the business of the fingerprints on the knives? Strode did have those knives taken away from you, didn't he?”

He raised an eyebrow. “So you know about that, do you? Then you know that's the way Strode was able to force Richard to sell. That's all that was about.”

“And you were going to go away and leave a knife with your fingerprints on it in A. J. Strode's possession? Mr. McKinstry,
nobody
would do that.”

“What could I do about it? They were locked up, there were guards … sure, somebody broke 'em out during the fire, but I didn't know there was going to be a fire, now did I?”

“Where are the household cleaning supplies kept?” Ivan broke in.

“Why, they're … uh, ah, I don't know—in the back of the house somewhere?”

It didn't work. He knew, and they knew he knew.

While he was still off balance, Marian asked, “Why didn't you just sell your House of Glass shares when Strode first showed you the affidavit the helicopter pilot signed? You could have ended it all right there.”

He tried to bluff. “What affidavit?”

Silently Ivan opened a folder and slid the pilot's statement across the table to him. Marian watched as Jack's tanned face slowly turned gray. “It was in A. J. Strode's computer all the time,” she said. “Your helicopter and Joanna Gillespie's parents and Richard Bruce's ship. We've got it all.”

For a long moment there was no sound, no movement. Then abruptly, violently, Jack McKinstry burst into motion. He jumped up, grabbed his chair, and in one oversized motion smashed it down on the conference table.

“Hey!” Ivan shouted. He and Marian were out of their seats in a flash.

Jack lifted the broken chair over his head and brought it down on the table again. And again. His white teeth glistened through a rictus grimace; his eyes were slits. Marian grabbed one arm while Ivan made a try for the chair. Jack was strong enough to hold them both off for a few seconds, but then they got what remained of the chair away from him. Marian could feel his body tensed as tightly as a coiled spring; his skin was covered with cold sweat. She held on to his arm and walked him around and around the conference table until gradually he began to calm down.

His breathing was shallow. “I've got to get out of here,” he managed to choke out.

They took him outside. The morning sun was shining without enthusiasm, but the air smelled unexpectedly clean. Jack wandered off the back patio on to the drive leading to the service gate, the two police detectives right with him every step. Their suspect didn't go far. Ivan was pointedly looking at his watch when Jack turned to them. “I apologize for that tacky little scene I played in there,” he said. “Something just … broke. I don't usually make an ass of myself like that,” he finished bitterly.

“Ready to talk to us now, Mr. McKinstry?” Marian asked briskly, hoping to speed him along.

“Sure, why not? You know everything anyway.”

“Not quite everything. We know the three of you forced your way into Strode's vault yesterday afternoon—”

“So Castleberry shot off his mouth, did he? Huh. I knew Richard couldn't buy him off.”

“—and we know about the power play you tried on A. J. Strode and what his counterplay was. But what we don't know is which of you killed Strode. Or whether all three of you did.”

“None of the above, Sergeant.
Two
of us did. You want your killers? Go arrest Richard Bruce and Joanna Gillespie.”

“You know that for a fact, do you? That the two of them together killed him?”

“Oh, for god's sake, Sergeant Larch, open your eyes! Those two have cozied up together and … and I don't know how they're going to do it, but they're going to blame Strode's death on me. The two of them have been trying to edge me out all weekend. You know how it is when three people are thrown together. Two always end up siding together against the third. It
always
happens.”

Marian waited out the bout of self-pity and said, “Satisfy my curiosity. Why
didn't
you sell to Strode when you had the chance?”

Jack looked straight into her eyes and smiled sadly. “It would have been like leaving a knife with my fingerprints on it in his possession.”

Marian thought that over, and nodded.

Ivan was growing impatient. “Look, Mr. McKinstry, we don't have a hell of a lot of time left. You were in your room when the fire broke out, you say. Did you see anything, hear anything?”

“No, Sergeant, I didn't,” he sighed. “Nothing more than what I've already told you. I'd love to be able to say I saw Richard Bruce creeping away from the monitoring room with an empty gasoline can in his hand, but the truth is I saw nothing.”