Nine Man's Murder (12 page)

“— without the risk of Gideon revealing the information prematurely.”

“But now that Gideon is no longer a priest—” Hatter began.

Reeve skewered Gideon with his eyes. “Well, what happens now?”

“I don’t know, Reeve. They don’t exactly teach you what to do when you’re defrocked. Somehow it’s not covered in seminary.”

Hatter chuckled cruelly. “A brilliant plan, up in smoke.”

The words seemed to trigger a chain reaction in Jonas’ mind. “Unless…” All eyes fastened upon him. “Unless Reeve has a backup plan. You may have unwittingly hit the nail on the head just now, Hatter. Capaldi set his warehouse on fire. A man was killed in that fire. It was assumed that he was the warehouse foreman, though his body was burned beyond recognition. If Capaldi is after Reeve, Reeve knows he’ll never relent as long as Reeve is alive. But if he thinks Reeve is dead—”

“Of course!” Bryan finished for Jonas. “Reeve stages a ‘reunion’ and murders all the guests. He then burns the bodies beyond recognition—including that of Damien, who, like Reeve, is a large man. Capaldi will assume Reeve was one of the victims and break off the chase.”

“Then why warn his victims?” Jill asked.

“Battle of wits.”

“You’re crazy, Bryan,” Reeve said.

“Well, I don’t know about any of you,” Hatter declared, “but I don’t plan to let Reeve—or anyone else—win that battle.”

35

A
manda was too
far away to tell for sure. The moment she flipped on her room light, her hand shot to her mouth. Was it nerves, or was something there? Slowly, cautiously, she approached.

It was real, all right. Something was lying on the writing table. Something small, silver, shiny.

A handgun.

All of the guns had disappeared that afternoon; now one of them had rematerialized in her room. Who had put it here? And why?

She examined it. Three bullets inside.

W
hat was he
going to do about Gideon? Reeve wondered. Killing them all and burning their bodies beyond recognition—was that really the only way? Not that they deserved any better. After all, it was their fault he was in this predicament to begin with. If it weren’t for them, he wouldn’t have been working for Capaldi in the first place. When they exposed his planting of that ring in the stunt car, Reeve’s career as a detective was cut short. No one would hire him. It made him want to strike out at the world—one, two, one, two. But it was his ethics being questioned, not his brains. He knew all about logic: finding tangible proof for your theories. When a crime won’t yield to your theories, you resort to logic.

But look where it had gotten him. Blackballed as a detective. Fortunately, it was Antonio Capaldi who had been backing production of Nine Man Morris—one of his many money laundering fronts—and when Capaldi saw how Reeve was not afraid to take the initiative, he hired Reeve as a bodyguard, not long after graduation.

Of course, look how that turned out.

Almost midnight. Amanda had given him no sign, no acknowledgment of their impending meeting. Well, she was probably still shaken by the attack. An anxious thought: Would that prevent the rendezvous from taking place? No. He could bring her around.

She had not let Jonas look her over. Odd. Reeve had paid little heed at the time, had made no attempt to discern any marks on her neck. He regretted that now. Was it possible that she was setting him up? That there were no marks on her neck … because no one had attacked her? Because she was the murderer, luring the next victim to her lair?

After all, she was not behaving like a woman on the threshold of a tryst. And then the note itself: “Do not knock. Don’t say a word.” Exactly what it would say, if it were a prelude to murder.

No, she wouldn’t try to kill him. She needed him, to get back that daughter of hers. Or was that what she wanted him to believe, to disarm him, to take him off his guard? This killer had shown himself to be shrewd, and Amanda, Reeve knew, fit that bill. Perhaps he should ask Jill about it, to see if she’d verify the story.

Tomorrow he’d ask. For tonight, he would play along. But until he knew one way or the other, he would exercise every caution.

Now that was odd: He hadn’t noticed that before. The fireplace poker from the drawing room. Someone had propped it against the wall beside his bedroom door. Had it been there earlier? Reeve couldn’t remember.

Still, he told himself, don’t let an overactive imagination ruin what could be a promising evening.

However, a little precaution would do no harm.

He pocketed the key to Amanda’s room, wrapped his fingers around the poker, and poked his head cautiously, noiselessly, into the upstairs hallway.

* * *

H
ow long had
she been standing there, staring at the gun? Time had seemed to stop, until she heard an unexpected scratching. It sounded like … a key entering a lock. Amanda fixed her eyes on the door. A click. Someone had unlocked her door. The knob turned. As the creaking door began to creep across the floor, a silhouette inched its way into the room.

Her fears scattered in panic like wild geese startled by a gunshot. What should she do? The lights. Flip off the room light. Switch on the desk lamp. Aim it at the door. Darkness hid her from stalking eyes, but would offer no such harbor to her stalker, who would walk right into the spotlight—and the sights of her pointed gun.

A dark shadow pierced the edge of the light: a hand, armed with some kind of … rod, or other weapon. Scouting out possible danger to its owner, who had come to finish the job he had begun earlier, on the staircase.

Well, not this time.

She waited for his chest to round the door’s edge. Then she pulled the trigger.

36

T
he inn was
flooded with light and footsteps flowing toward Amanda’s room, where a circle of leaden eyes stared down at the prone body of a man. Jonas knelt and flipped it over: Reeve.

“Shot to death.”

“I found the gun here,” Amanda muttered. “Then the door creaked open. He crept in, with that … fire poker. I thought … I thought he had come to …”

Jonas turned his attention back to the corpse. From a pocket of Reeve’s sporty shirt he produced a slip of paper. The invitation to Amanda’s room.

“What happened now?” Gideon’s voice called up the stairs.

“Fill him in, will you?” Jonas asked Jill, who drifted to the head of the staircase.

“Reeve is dead,” Jill called out. “Amanda shot him … in self-defense.”

“Make sure he’s dead,” Gideon suggested.

“Jonas already did.”

“Check again. I once read a murder mystery in which a group of people are murdered one by one. It turns out that one of them is actually only pretending to be dead—and he’s the murderer.”

Jill returned to Amanda’s room. “He said—”

“I heard what he said.” Jonas indicated the body. “Be my guest.”

“Thanks, I’d rather not.”

“Hatter?”

Hatter’s examination confirmed Jonas’ diagnosis. So did Bryan’s and Bennett’s.

“I know what you’re all thinking,” Jonas said. “Carter. I wasn’t the only one to examine him. You did too, Bryan.”

“He was dead, all right,” Bryan concurred.

Amanda, who had also examined Carter’s dead body, stood apart, nodding like a marionette.

“What about Damien?” Bennett asked.

Bryan’s eyes dipped imperceptibly in fleeting homage. “You are referring, no doubt, to the fact that the knife wound through his abdomen had scarcely bled. I didn’t think I was the only one to have noticed that. But I examined him carefully, and he was dead.”

“I examined him, too,” Jonas said. “Definitely dead.”

“Absolutely,” agreed Hatter.

“I also noticed a wound on Damien’s head,” Bryan added, “which appeared to have been made by a blunt object.”

Meanwhile Jonas checked Reeve’s pockets, producing two keys. He tried both keys in Amanda’s door. Only one locked and unlocked it.

“The other is the key to Reeve’s room, I assume.” Jonas turned to Amanda. “Where’s your key, Amanda?”

“I thought I had misplaced it. For a while, with all the excitement, it slipped my mind. After the murders, I didn’t think it wise to advertise the fact.”

Jonas handed Amanda the key with which he had locked and unlocked her door. “It appears you didn’t lose it. The murderer stole it from you and gave it to Reeve. That’s how Reeve got through your door, assuming you locked it.”

“But how did the—?”

Amanda did not complete the question. Instead, she tested the key in her door lock, confirming it was indeed her room key.

The men turned their attention to Reeve’s body.

“I guess this means burying another one,” Hatter said.

37

B
ryan tossed another
log onto the fire, to beat back the morning chill. He briefly considered adding to the fire the balsa wood detonator box sitting on the mantle. The box was bone dry, as it had been when Carter had found it yesterday, and would burn nicely. But no, it was evidence of a sort. Fixed on the box, Bryan’s eyes saw nothing else; and it was only a noise from behind that freed him from the grip of thought. Jill had tried to enter the drawing room quietly, apparently craving the warmth of the fire more than wishing to avoid a confrontation with Bryan.

She was dressed simply in snug-fitting red corduroy slacks and white pullover sweater, blonde hair seeming to charm light from the fire. On Jill, even the most casual clothing looked elegant.

Bryan had dallied not so much with women as with their acceptance; after Jill, he gave them up cold turkey. He didn’t blame Jill for the breakup. He couldn’t expect her to stay with him while he went after her father. But he couldn’t just abandon his quest to avenge his family, either.

Yet after seven years of building an investigative empire, his goal of driving Paul Templar out of business began to cool in the chilling prospect of life without Jill. So Bryan tracked her down, prepared to give up the crusade. Her door was answered by an old woman who told Bryan Jill was at work.

“You must be Jill’s young man,” the old woman said.

Jill’s young man. So Jill had found someone else. And Bryan cared enough about her not to complicate her life.

He stayed away for three years. That was all he could manage. Perhaps the relationship with the “young man” had fizzled out. Bryan would keep his visit secret, however, until he knew for sure.

What he saw through the bedroom window squashed his hopes. A baby’s crib. Apparently Jill had settled down and was raising a family. There was no place in her life for Bryan.

But that did not keep him way. For five years he would “visit,” at a distance, watching Jill’s beautiful daughter grow up before his eyes. That was how he had recognized the girl two weeks ago.

Jill stood by the drawing room fire in silence.

“I’m going to help you get your daughter back,” Bryan promised.

“Just let it go, Bryan. Haven’t you done enough already?”

“I was trying to help. I didn’t know it would create a problem. I still don’t know why they took her away. Some kind of welfare fraud, is all I was able to learn. Whatever is going on, you have the authorities completely baffled.” Bryan’s tone sobered. “Look, Jill, I saw your daughter—”

“Her name’s Imogen.”

“I was at the downtown police station looking into a case, when suddenly officers brought in this five-year-old girl they had found wandering in front of the psychic fair next door, crying for her mommy. In her pocket they had discovered a key that had just been stolen from the evidence locker of that very police station. The girl was terrified. I recognized her. I thought by identifying her—”

“How did you know who she was? You’ve been spying on me, haven’t you? If you had just stayed away like I’d asked fifteen years ago … but no, you weren’t content to ruin my father. You had to take my daughter from me, too.”

Anger swept Jill from the drawing room along a collision course with Jonas in the entry hall.

“Whoa, what’s wrong, Jill?”

“Nothing, Jonas, just let me pass.”

“Bryan? Still? After all he’s done to you? I tried to warn you fifteen years ago.”

“Bryan wanted me. Whatever else you can say about him, he wanted me. With you I always felt like the Golden Glass Award.”