Killer Sudoku (17 page)

His eyes had a feverish glint as he thrust his face forward, every muscle stretched tight. “The last thing the deceased said was ‘Get away.’ Then she screamed.”

“Babs was trying to get the bees that were stinging her to stop,” Liza replied, removing her hand from her eye. “I got stung, too, and there’s something strange about that. I also saw bees attacking a puddle of Babs’s suntan oil. We put a towel over it.”

“I want pictures of that,” Janacek told his beanpole partner. “Then I want that bottle to go to the lab.”

The Sherlock Holmes look-alike had a supercilious expression as he got a crime-scene technician to remove the towel and take some pictures. Then he donned a pair of surgical gloves and picked up the bottle.

One of the winged insects buzzing around the puzzle made the proverbial beeline for his hand and stung him through the plastic glove. Old Sherlock lost his cool disdain, yelping in pain and dropping the bottle. It splashed some of its contents on the toe of his shoe, which immediately became another target for stings.

“You can’t tell me that’s natural,” Liza told Janacek.

He sighed and told his assistant, “Try and bag that without getting any more on yourself. I don’t suppose you’re allergic to bee stings?”

That got a scared look from the young man, and some concerned glances for Liza. She shrugged. “Where I grew up was half country. I managed to get stung by more things than I could count.”

Oliver Roche faltered a bit in his insistent shaking of his little recorder. “Er—according to my research, Ms. Basset had some insect bite issues.”

“Something else for the medical examiner to look into,” Janacek grunted, apparently finished with his initial survey of the crime scene. He took the recorder from Roche’s hand and used his free arm to make a “let’s go” gesture to Liza, Michael, and Kevin.

Liza immediately stepped over to a pile of those wonderfully plush towels, chose one, and wrapped it around herself like a mantle. “So, do I get a chance to change, or will this be a come-as-you-are interrogation?”

Janacek went for the come-as-you-are variety, so Liza handed him a couple of extra towels. When they established themselves in the Skye Room, she used the extras to sit on so that her damp suit wouldn’t soak into the upholstery on her chair. She’d thought that Janacek might be amused, but he kept his face professionally expressionless.

Even so, it seemed to Liza that the painted sky on the ceiling seemed considerably more threatening than the last time she’d been in here.

The detective set Roche’s tape recorder on the table between them, rewound, and then hit
Play
. The sound quality wouldn’t match the digital clarity of a film screening room, but it was good enough. They could hear what had been said—including Babs Basset’s last words.

“Not the clearest thing I ever heard,” Janacek said heavily. “But I definitely made out ‘get’ and ‘away.’ ”

“You couldn’t really expect poor Babs to enunciate very carefully, given the circumstances,” Liza responded, “but there’s definitely an extra syllable between the two words. There were bees all around her, and she wanted me to ‘get ’em away.’ ”

Janacek didn’t say a word, using the growing silence to see if he could squeeze anything more out of his suspect.

“I don’t know if Michael and Kevin were in earshot, but you might ask them what they heard.”

“We’re taking care of that,” Sherlock Holmes snapped, cradling his stung hand. He shut up after Janacek shot him a look.

“You should put some ice on that,” Liza told the younger man. She winced as her own sting gave a throb. “And I could use some ice for my eye.”

Janacek dispatched his minion to the reopened kitchen, and Holmes returned with two bags of ice wrapped in damp napkins.

Liza sighed in relief as she applied the ice pack to the swelling below her eye.

Then she asked, “So what do you think, Detective? Did I get impatient that the bees weren’t killing her off quickly enough, so I ran up and pushed Babs over—running into a cloud of angry bees to finish the job? Boy, I’d have to be pretty stupid to do that—especially when I knew the whole scene was on
Candid Microphone
.”

Liza smiled as Janacek’s expressionless face went downright stony. “Of course, you won’t take my word about that. But you might ask Michael and Kevin. Michael was the one who came across the bug in the first place—well before this afternoon’s round of competition.”

She glanced over at Mr. Holmes, who looked torn between keeping his ice pack on his stung hand and putting it on his suddenly steaming head. “Better yet, you might go up to my suite and look for it. My friend Mrs. Halvorsen has just about barricaded herself up in there, but I’m sure if you showed her a badge, she’d be happy to point out where the bug is.”

Her smile slipped a little. “Or maybe, if you asked nicely—or forcefully enough—Mr. Roche would actually admit to a little additional eavesdropping. By the way, Detective, what’s the statutory situation here in Newport? Anything on the books about unlawful surveillance? I mean, it’s not quite the same thing as setting up a camera in a changing room, but still, it comes across a bit . . . intrusive.”

“Thank you, Ms. Kelly.” Janacek’s voice took on a grating tone she hadn’t heard before. “You’ve given us several other things to check now.” At his glance, the tall, young detective shot out of the room—
almost glad to escape,
Liza thought.

Janacek took in a lot of air and let it out, mainly through his nose. “So what were you doing up there on the roof, Ms. Kelly?”

Liza rearranged her towel around her shoulders. The ballroom’s air-conditioning had been set for a much larger crowd than two, and she was feeling a bit chilly.

“I wanted to catch Babs alone,” she said, “and ask her about the sabotage going on here at the tournament.”

She explained how she had noticed Babs in close proximity to Will Singleton’s portfolio right before the embarrassing unveiling stunt. “Will found definite traces of tampering. I thought I might use that to bait Babs into an admission, figuring it would be her word against mine—except her words would end up on Oliver Roche’s tape.”

Janacek took in some more air, but more sharply—in the form of a snort. “You are aware that this sabotage could also include a couple of murders, and a surveillance microphone might not be much help if you decided to bait a killer.”

“Yes. Well.” Liza fumbled a second for words. “That’s why Kevin and Michael were hiding nearby.”

The detective shot a glance at the compress she was holding to her eye. “Unh-humph,” he said. “And that turned out just fine, didn’t it?”

Liza felt her shoulders slump under her damp towel. “No it didn’t,” she admitted. “That bee attack and Babs falling—I was just hoping to get her off Will’s back, and maybe scratch someone off the suspect list for the other stuff that’s happened.”

“She certainly got scratched off,” Janacek muttered. More loudly, he said, “And I’m afraid her death—and what you just told me—make your friend Mr. Singleton a stronger suspect.”

“That’s crazy,” Liza objected.

“Is it?” Janacek asked. “You yourself explained that Mr. Quirk and Ms. Basset were trying to undercut his position with the television people.”

“If that’s a serious motive, then half of Hollywood would be dead,” Liza told him.

He gave her a mild nod. “In most circumstances, perhaps. But he might need the TV deal more than you’re aware. We’re looking into his financial situation now.”

“And what about Scottie Terhune?” Liza demanded. “He’s a friend of Will’s.”

“Maybe he was in the wrong place at the wrong time and saw something he shouldn’t have. Something he might have inconveniently remembered at some point,” Janacek suggested. “Or maybe he died because he and Singleton were friendly. Killing off a friend between two enemies—would that be a logical strategy for a mind devoted to creating puzzles to fool people?”

“That’s not exactly—” Liza began.

“I guess you and Professor Conklin should be glad that you don’t appear to have any allergies,” the detective went on.

“Will is my friend,” she snapped.

“And you’d trust him with your life?” Janacek smiled when she didn’t answer. “Oh, it’s just theory, Ms. Kelly. Take Mr. Fleming. Now he’s a very pleasant gentleman, running a local business, employees who look up to him—and a wife that hated him. Now it might be a bit cold-blooded to kill two strangers before doing in your wife.”

“That wouldn’t make sense at all,” Liza objected. “It would only serve to hurt his business.”

“Or maybe Ms. Basset was behind the first two deaths, ruining his business as you say, and Mr. Fleming used the same method to do her in. Poetic justice, not to mention tangling possible motives very neatly.”

“You want to play theoretical games?” Liza said. “How about this one?” She quickly outlined Michael’s theory pointing toward Oliver Roche.

That certainly shut the detective up. He sat very silently for several minutes, just looking at Liza.

“I’m sorry,” she said. “He must be a friend of yours, judging from the way he called you so quickly.”

Janacek nodded slowly. “But it is a theory, isn’t it? That’s what happens when you have a definite lack of facts. I’m afraid my plodding colleagues and I will have to do some of that famously dull police work here. We’ve got too many motives, and too many intersections at this location to work out opportunity—”

The detective’s cell phone rang. Excusing himself, Janacek opened it. “Yeah, Doc.” He listened for a moment, then asked, “And the bottle?” Another pause. “And what did he say? Unh. Unh. Unh-huh.” Thanking the doctor on the other end, Janacek cut the connection.

Then he turned to Liza. “Some early information from the ME. Doc says it’s too close to call right now on cause of death, the fall . . . or anaphylactic shock. Ms. Basset was probably unconscious before she hit those rocks.”

That was pretty horrible, but in a way Liza felt a little better as she nodded.

“He also did some quick tests and found something that didn’t belong in that bottle of tanning goo,” Janacek went on. “He’s not entirely sure yet, but it seems to be bee venom. The doc called an entomologist friend who explained that venom usually gets into the air after a bee stings some enemy and pulls her insides out. When other bees smell the venom, they get very aggressive and sting whatever they smell the venom on—even inanimate objects.”

“Like Babs’s book,” Liza said.

“And it certainly pushes this investigation into looking at means.” Janacek settled back in his seat.

“Things that set off people’s allergies?” Liza gave him a doubtful look.

“Peanut candies aren’t too hard to get—you might even take them along with you on a trip,” the detective said. “And maybe you could pick up some shellfish juice—clam broth or the like—locally. Bee venom, though—where would you get that?”

Janacek’s lips pressed together in a thoughtful scowl. “You flew in, Ms. Kelly, as did Dr. Dunphy—yes, we know about his history with Ms. Basset. Mr. Singleton also flew from New York, but he’s been here several days making preparations . . . for the tournament,” he finished after a perceptible pause.

“Professor Conklin took a winery tour before arriving in town here,” the detective went on. “Fergus Fleming lives here on the property—as does Oliver Roche,” he added heavily. “Your friend Mr. Shepard flew here, but your—what can I call him, your estranged husband?—he drove here from L.A.”

“You can’t be thinking—” Liza began.

“This isn’t about thinking.” Janacek cut her off, back in tough cop mode. “This is about proving. And if the neighbors say your husband set up a bee trap in the backyard, or he ordered a lot of steamed clams lately, we’d really start making a case.”

“Or if you find out anything about any of the other people you mentioned,” Liza pointed out.

Janacek nodded. “Of course.”

After a quick knock on the door, Janacek’s young partner came in, his Holmesian cool completely shattered. “There’s a bunch of camera crews outside and, uh, this gentleman.”

Liza immediately recognized the short, bald, pudgy figure of Alvin Hunzinger. The guy might look like Elmer Fudd, but his legal acumen had gotten him the nickname of “lawyer to the stars.” Over the years he’d gotten a number of Markson Associates clients out of various police and judicial scrapes. Apparently Michelle had gotten wind of what had happened and dispatched him to Newport.

He immediately went into legal pit bull mode. “I trust you haven’t waived any of your legal rights.”

“And hello to you, Alvin.” Turning, Liza brought the hand with the compress away from her eye.

Alvin stumbled back. “Good God!” he blurted out. “What have they done to you?”

At first, Liza thought Alvin was trying out some lawyerly humor. That hope pretty much went down in flames when she saw Janacek and Holmes both gawking at her in horror.