MASS MURDER (14 page)

“Excuse me.” Giorgio spoke softly thinking she might be asleep.
“Are you all right?”

She looked up, her eyes lost in deep shadow.
She seemed to study him for a moment before turning back to the window.
The branches of the oak tree raked the window while leaves fluttered grotesquely in the shallow light outside.

“You’re with the police.”
She made it a statement rather than a question.

“I’m Detective Salvatori.
Has someone taken your statement yet?”

“No.”

“Have you been here all night?”

“Yes.
I’ve just been sitting here.”
Her reply was lazy, as if she’d been drugged or perhaps dazed by the tragedy.

“Can I get you something?
Coffee?
W
ater?”

“I don’t want anything.”
A long pause stretched between them until she sighed. “We were supposed to have a mystery tonight.
Did you know that?”

“No.”
He relaxed a bit and sat on the arm of a nearby chair. “Why don’t you tell me about it?”

“I wrote it,” she said distantly.
“A game, called
Dead to Rights
.”
She chuckled, but it caught in her throat. “It
was a play on words, you see.”

When he didn’t respond, she turned and looked directly at him.
Although her eyes were still obscured by darkness, he realized this was the woman Father Damian had been consoling in the banquet room earlier in the evening.

“Writers sell their rights.”
She emphasized the word
s
as if Giorgio were an idiot.
“But we never played it.
We never had a chance.”

“Because the body was found?”

“Yes.”
Her throat seemed to close around the word in disgust. “That stupid woman was found.
Now everyone’s running around t
rying to solve a real mystery.”

Giorgio was shocked at her lack of compassion, but chose to ignore it.
“And your mystery was never used?”

“I can’t believe it.
I worked so damned hard on it, and for what?”

“Miss
…u
h
…
”

“Levinsky.”

The name registered and he acknowledged it. “You’re the Program Chair?”

“Yes.”

“Did you know Mallery Olsen?”

“Who?”

“The woman that was killed.”

“My job was to oversee the speakers, not the agents.
I didn’t even meet her.”

“Would you have known her if you saw her?”

“Maybe.
I saw all the agents at the opening reception.
They all
had ribbons on their nametags,
but I
didn’t pay much attention.”

“You’re an aspiring writer like the rest?”

“I’m a playwright.
I’ve written several one-acts and two full-length plays.
Mostly mysteries. That’s why I volunteered to do the mystery tonight.
Arthur Wright was here from Samuel French.”

Finally, Giorgio understood her enduring disappointment.
Samuel French was the premier publisher of working plays.
Most of the scripts Giorgio had ever used in the theater came from Samuel French.
Ms. Levinsky missed her one big opportunity to impress someone important and she couldn’t stand it.
Just then McCready returned with the coffee.

“I had to heat it up in the microwave,” he apologized.

Giorgio accepted the cup. “Why don’t you go home?
You have a lot of work ahead of you tomorrow.”

McCready said goodnight and left
,
while Ms. Levinsky continued to stare out the window as if her parents had just left her at boarding school.
Giorgio decided he had little patience for the self-absorbed Ms. Levinsky.

“Ms. Levinsky, did you see anyone come into the dinner late tonight, or did anyone leave early?”

She turned as if she were being inconvenienced by the question.
“I really couldn’t say.
I was concentrating on getting set up for the game.”

“Was everyone at the conference aware of the game?”

“It was in all of our promotional materials
,
and we’d asked for special permission to use other parts of the monastery to stage it.”

“So, you weren’t sitting down and eating tonight with the others?”

“I told you.
I had last minute details to take care of.”

“And where were you taking care
of these last minute details?”

He realized his voice was beginning to take on a strident quality, but he didn’t care.

“Several places.
I was laying out clues and I
was back and forth to my room.”

This piece of news interested him.
“When did you go to your room?”

“I forgot my copy of the script.”

“Yes, but
when
did you go to retrieve it?”
he pressed her.

She took a deep breath and looked toward t
he ceiling. “Oh, I don’t know.”

Giorgio wanted to slap her.

“I think the cocktail party had just started,” she continued.
“Everyone was at the bar.”

“Which room is yours?”

“It’s at the end of the hallw
ay to the right of the stairs.”

Giorgio perked up
,
but attempted to hide his interest. “What number?”

She turned her dark eyes his way.
Shadows billowed across the window behind her like a cheap light show.
Although he couldn’t see her features well, she looked to be about thirty-five.
Long, stringy hair draped over one s
houlder
while two plump legs were stretched out on the window seat like logs on a fireplace.
She resembled Deborah Carr in
“
An Affair to Remember
”
and Giorgio pondered whether this woman could
even
walk.
Everything about her seemed incapable of movement of any kind.

“Ms. Levinsky, what is your room number?”

“Seventeen.
Why?”

His mind raced.
This woman had the room next to Olsen’s and may have been upstairs around the
time of the murder.

“Did you see anyone in the hallways or on the stairs w
hen you returned to your room?”

It seemed she understood his urgency and purposely stalled her answers.
“No.
I just popped into my room for a moment to get the script and left again.”

“Yo
u didn’t hear or see anything?”

“I heard voices.”

“Voices?
Where?”

“I was reaching into my closet
to get
my briefcase
,
and I heard someone k
nock on the door next to mine.”

“Which side?”

She looked at him with a blank expression, then her brain engaged a
nd she replied, “To the right.”

“To the right if you were looking out the door?”

“That’s right.
John Marsh had the room to the left of mine, closest to the stairs.
At first I thought it was him.
Then, I realized the voices were com
ing from the room to the right.

“Did you see who came to the room next door?”
Giorgio had to restrain himself from shaking the information out of this woman
.

“I told you.
I didn’t see anyone.”

“You’re sure it was a man’s voice?” Her eyes were drifting around the room
,
and Giorgio felt his muscles tense. “Ms. Levinsky, this is important.
Are
you sure it was a man’s voice?”

“I told yo
u, I thought it was Mr. Marsh.”

“And you’re positive it wasn’t?”

She paused.
“It sounded like him, but he was downstairs.
I didn’t really pay much attention.
I had to find another prop since one of mine had disappeared.
After all, i
t was critical to the mystery.”

“What was it that disappeared?”

“A green silk scarf.
I had it in my bag at rehearsal this afternoon, but it must have dropped out.
I had to find something else at the last minute.”

A fierce gust of wind rattled the old windowpanes
,
and a rush of cold air force
d
its way through with a low whistle.
He leaned forward, anxious to ask a follow-up question, but Swan returned with Father Daniel.
The men entered the room behind him
,
and Giorgio halte
d them with a wave of his hand.

“If you’ll
just wait over there, Father.”

Swan returned down the hallway
. T
he young monk stepped to one side, hands clasped in front of him.
Giorgio turned back to the self-indulgent Ms. Levinsky, but now she w
as focused on the waiting monk.

“Ms. Levinsky.”
He tried to get her attention.
“Where did you rehearse this afternoon?”

“The Chapel.
All the meeting rooms were filled with educational sessions.”

“And what role did
the scarf play in the mystery?”

He spoke as if to a deaf person
,
but there was a telltale ringing in his ears.
It happened every time he was about to make a discovery.
On the other hand, Ms. Levinsky seem
ed distracted by Father Daniel.

“He’s awfully good looking for a priest, don’t you think?”

Giorgio turned to locate the object of her attention.
Father Daniel stood as still as one of the statues, his face only half lit by a wall sconce.

“Ms. Levinsky, how was the scarf going to be used in your mystery?”