Killer Sudoku (22 page)

Liza and her friends met them in the lobby.

“So where is this wine cellar?” the cop asked. He waved the warrant in one hand. The other held a sealed clear plastic envelope containing Gemma’s original sudoku.

“It’s downstairs under the kitchen.” Roche was just about dancing around the police detective. “I’m sure you didn’t have to go to the effort of securing a warrant. We could have arranged—”

Janacek shook his head. “If this turns out to be for real, I want this search to be completely legit.”

They were able to bypass both Angus and the supercilious young man at the reservation desk. By now the restaurant’s wine waiter had arrived, distinguished with a little flattened pan hanging round his neck on a chain.

Kevin couldn’t resist pointing. “Do you actually use that?”

“No,” the waiter replied, “but it impresses the hell out of people with more money than taste.”

When Janacek showed him the warrant, the waiter es corted them downstairs. The restaurant’s stock of wine rested in floor-to-ceiling racks spaced out across the dimly lit room. Three of the walls were covered with wooden cabinets bearing a variety of locks.

The waiter led them to one bearing a brass plate with an engraved 235—and a combination lock.

“And this belongs to Gemma Vereker?” Janacek asked.

“Strictly speaking, the contents do,” the waiter replied. “I checked our wine book when I heard about all of this.”

The detective looked from the lock to the puzzle in his other hand. “And you think these numbers down here are the combination?”

“We think it’s worth a try,” Liza said.

Shaking his head, Janacek began to twist the dial. At the final 25, the lock clicked open. The cop’s eyebrows rose as he shot Liza an impressed look.

Roche made a little growling noise deep in his throat.

Removing the lock, Janacek opened the cabinet to reveal a racklike arrangement for bottles, but no wine. Instead, a thick manila envelope lay on the dark wood.

“Hold it,” Janacek told the bystanders, who were all craning their necks for a better look. He directed them back, put away the puzzle, then took out a pair of latex gloves and an empty plastic envelope—a large one.

After donning the gloves, he gingerly picked up the envelope. “The return address is a bank up in L.A. And it’s addressed to Gemma Vereker in New York.”

Carefully removing the contents, the detective scanned the first page. “It’s a letter from the branch manager, expressing some concern about the activity in the lady’s accounts. Seems it’s changed during her absence in New York.”

He riffled through the rest of the pages. “These are just account records. They show money coming in and going out.” Janacek stopped about halfway through, then moved quickly on to the end. “And from this point on, the money just seems to be going out—to somebody named Arthur Kahn.”

“Arthur . . .” Liza blinked. “You mean Artie Kahn? He’s Gemma Vereker’s business manager.”

Detective Janacek rattled the sheaf of papers in his hand. “From the looks of this, he’s certainly been giving her the business.”

“He can’t be that stupid. Gemma would kill him.” Liza clearly remembered Gemma’s grim expression talking about the results of successful celebrity—never being able to trust anyone. That had to go back to her younger days when her parents had mismanaged her finances until she was almost broke. Gemma had never forgiven them—and she’d be pitiless if she discovered Artie doing the same.

Then she remembered other things, like Artie’s almost cringing response when he caught up with her here at Rancho Pacificano. Gemma had been brusque—downright hostile, even—as she dismissed him with a mention of discussing business on Monday.

In fact, Artie hadn’t even known Gemma was coming to town. He’d only found out because he’d been tapped to pay for Gemma’s helicopter transport from LAX to John Wayne Airport.

Liza realized that Janacek was staring at her, obviously expecting more information. She related everything that had just gone through her head. “Artie must have been desperate when Gemma turned up so unexpectedly.”

“Quick, too,” Janacek grunted. “Ian Quirk was dead less than two hours after that reception.”

“Well, Ian always got plenty of publicity for game playing with his allergies,” Liza said. “And Artie certainly would know about Gemma’s much less publicized allergy to tumbleweeds. All he’d have to do was Google sudoku and allergies and then buy the peanut candy.”

“After that, he’d have more time to research and prepare for the other murders.” The detective frowned in thought. “I guess the more difficult ones would take more time.

He’d have to get some sort of shellfish broth to do in Mr. Terhune and trap bees to get the venom for Ms. Basset. I guess he was just lucky to find two more people with allergies.”

“Maybe not,” Liza said. “I’ve heard that the allergy rate has been soaring among people in the industrialized world.”

Janacek shook his head. “Lucky us. It certainly made his attack on Gemma Vereker look as if it were just one among a string of serial murders.”

“Except there were differences,” Liza pointed out. “You asked about Gemma’s suite being searched because of the mess. Artie must have done that, looking for whatever she had on his embezzlement.” She took a deep breath. “You can also check with Fergus Fleming about his visit earlier, asking if Gemma had left any business papers in the resort’s safe.”

That brought Janacek’s head up. “Where did you find out about that?” he demanded, then asked, “Did she?”

“I spotted Artie at the reception desk and overheard him,” Liza admitted. “And no, Gemma didn’t leave anything.”

“Well, we’ve got motive and opportunity,” Janacek said.

“And I bet we could find out something about the means, too,” Liza added.

The detective shook his head, though. “It’s all circumstantial. A good lawyer, like your friend Hunzinger, could argue it all away. We’d have to get Kahn to admit what he did. And how the hell are we going to get him to do that?”

Liza reached out a hand. “There may be a way.”

 

 

Liza’s suggestion won her a place in the police van, where technicians sat monitoring Janacek’s young partner’s voice as he spoke softly over the wire he was wearing.

“Are you receiving?” Holmes muttered for about the tenth time. That turned into whistling at the sound of footsteps clattering down the wine cellar stairs.

“You Kahn?” Holmes asked, his voice just perfect for a snotty waiter from an upscale restaurant—which is what he was dressed as.

“Yes.” Artie Kahn’s voice came from the speakers. “You called me?”

“Yeah, I did. Nice outfit, dude.”

“It lets me get in and out of here without being noticed.” Kahn tried to sound tough, but Liza could hear the nervousness in his voice, too.

“Sure, I think you’d want to do that.” Holmes dropped his bantering tone. “So, you got the money?”

“I really don’t know what this is all about.” For all Artie’s attempts to come across as puzzled, what really came across was terror.

“Yes you do, or you wouldn’t have come down here.” Holmes was very much in his bad-cop persona, or in this case, his bad bad-guy persona. “See those cabinets? Our guests can rent them to store their own wines to use in the restaurant upstairs. Gemma Vereker did that—I saw her name newly entered in our record book. And since she was dead, I figured I’d cut the lock off and maybe score a couple of expensive bottles of whatever. Instead, I found something even pricier.”

“Which locker?” Artie demanded.

“That’s what you’re paying twenty grand for,” Holmes shot back. “Have you got the money?”

“I got everything I could—fifteen thousand,” Artie said.

“You think you’re gonna freakin’ bargain with me?” The young guy’s voice took on an uglier edge.

“It’s a Sunday afternoon! The banks are closed! This is all I could collect!” No way was Artie bargaining. He sounded desperate.

“Awright, awright, I guess it will have to do,” Holmes grumbled. “It’s Number 239.”

Liza heard the sound of a cabinet door being yanked open, then a sharp intake of breath from Artie. The envelope resting in the locker came from the same bank, and Gemma’s New York address had been printed on it. But inside was just a thick wad of blank pages.

“From the glance I got, it would be pretty bad for you if this fell into the hands of the cops,” Holmes said. “Aren’t you lucky it got found by a reasonable businessman like me? I’ll leave you to it—”

She heard sudden rushing steps, then Holmes saying, “What are you doing with that bottle?”

“Making sure you stay quiet,” Artie Kahn said with all the viciousness of a trapped rat.

At the sounds of a scuffle, one of the techs leaned into a microphone, shouting, “Backup!”

An instant later, Liza heard Detective Janacek’s voice. “Put it down, Mr. Kahn. This is the police. The detective you were just about to brain is wearing a wire.”

When Janacek brought the handcuffed prisoner upstairs for questioning, Liza almost burst out, “That isn’t Artie Kahn!”

At first she really didn’t recognize the tall, thin, bald man in custody. With his Rancho Pacificano staff uniform, he could have been doing any job at the resort.

Then she looked harder, mentally adding Artie Kahn’s customary fright wig and heavy-framed glasses. Yes, this was Gemma’s manager. But without those props, he’d hardly rate a second glance.

Just as he said—he hadn’t been noticed by anyone while killing all those people,
Liza thought.

Artie’s eyes darted around all over the place as he tried to cling to some shred of innocence. “Detective, I only tried to subdue that young man. He was trying to blackmail me—”

“No, you were trying to shut me up,” young Holmes interrupted. “We’ve got you on tape.”

“And while you might have had some trouble getting into banks on Sunday, we didn’t,” Janacek joined in. “You were pretty heavily invested when this latest financial bubble burst, and you’ve been using your client’s funds to try and bail yourself out.”

“Except you were losing that money, too,” Holmes said, adding salt to the wound.

“If Gemma Vereker ever called you on it—especially given her history of management and financial foolishness—you wouldn’t just face financial ruin, but prison.” Janacek’s voice was grim.

Kahn’s eyes fastened on the detective now, his oh-so-ordinary face growing pale.

“Then there’s this odd piece of floral décor you purchased for your office last year.” Janacek gave Artie a knowing smile, but Liza knew this was the result of Buck Foreman’s computerized sleuthing. “I can’t quite believe where it was ordered from—a farm in Kansas specializing in tumbleweeds. But they have the records of sending you a dried tumbleweed—and we have the story about how your client made you put it away because she was allergic. Whatever happened to that plant, Artie? I suspect our lab people will find something on the tumbleweed under Ms. Vereker’s bed that will trace back to you.”

“Yeah,” Holmes gibed. “Plant DNA, maybe.”

“Or maybe just dust from your office basement.” Janacek was back to playing the calm, unflappable cop. “We’ve got you every step of the way for Gemma Vereker’s murder, Artie. And it’s just a matter of time until we start connecting you to the other three.”

Artie’s stooped shoulders had sagged a bit more with every fact the cops had hit him with. Then he suddenly jerked back, staring around again. “But I—you think . . .” He rose to his full height. “I want my lawyer.”

Back upstairs as Liza recounted the story of the arrest to her friends, Michael shook his head. “Kahn should have cracked,” he complained. “Caught by surprise, faced with a recording, seeing he had no way out . . . this was the psychological moment—he should have confessed everything.”

“The psychological moment for a movie script, maybe,” Kevin jeered. “That’s not necessarily true in real life.”

Liza sighed. No sooner was the crisis over than the men in her life started sniping at each other.

“As it happens, I know a lot about scripts
and
real life,” Michael flared back. He obviously had a lot more to say, except he was interrupted by the bleat of his cell phone.

“Michael Langley here. Sid! What’s up?” His face showed surprise, then horror. “You’ve got to be kidding me! So are they—what? They did
what
? Oh, please say you’re kidding me, Sid.”

His expression now reached all the way down to disgust. “So what do they want now?” Michael’s eyebrows shot up. “When? How can I—well, maybe the first three scenes. Yeah, I guess I’ll
have
to get started right away.”

Shaking his head, he turned to the others. “The lead for
The Surreal Killer
attempted to bust out of rehab this morning by jumping into a tree from his room. Unfortunately, he landed on his head—and in the hospital.”

“Are they canceling the project?” Liza asked with concern. She knew if that happened, the film might never get back on track again.

“No, the producer had the brainwave of casting a new lead. No better actor than the first choice—except she’s female.” Michael rolled his eyes. “Of course, that means a complete rewrite.”

“And they want it when?” she asked.

“Tomorrow,” he sighed. “I’ll have to come up with a few revised scenes to keep them off my back. Guess that’s life.”

“And film scripts,” Kevin cackled, but Michael wasn’t up for a fight anymore. He just leaned over and kissed Liza good-bye. “Gotta collect my stuff from the motel and head for the homestead. Take it easy,” he said to Kevin. “And it was great to see you again, Mrs. H.”

“Good-bye, Michael,” she said.

“Maybe you could get your hazmat suit into the first scene,” Liza suggested. “Then the killer opens it up to reveal—”

“Neat idea!” Michael turned back to kiss her again. “Thanks.”