The Readaholics and the Poirot Puzzle (7 page)

Hart tugged at me and I stepped back, finding myself pressed up against him for a moment. “Sorry,” I said, flustered.

He gave my waist a quick squeeze and for a moment I thought—hoped?—he was going to turn me around
and fold me into his arms. But he released me and stepped back. He was investigating a murder, I reminded myself, and I was a suspect. At least on paper.

I drew in a long breath to regain my equilibrium. “So,” I said, relief flooding through me, “he fell?”

Hart was shaking his head before I finished speaking. The humidity had made little curls stick up all over his head. “Not without help.” He stood beside the wall. “This wall is waist high on me and nine or ten inches wide. No way could someone trip or stumble, even drunk, and fall over accidentally. But look at this.” He used a pen to point at faint grooves and scrapes that were lighter than the surrounding masonry. “These happened recently. My money's on tonight. I've got to get a crime scene team up here.”

He herded me away from the wall and made a call. Waiting, I shivered and wrapped my arms around myself again. The breeze raised goose bumps on my bare arms, and my beginning-to-dry hair flapped around my face. I was cold, miserable, worried, and even a little sad. I hadn't liked Gordon—he'd been a grade-A jerk in many ways—but no one deserved to be heaved off a roof into a Dumpster, to lie there broken until he quit breathing.

When Hart hung up, I stayed quiet as he shepherded me downstairs. He gave me a supervised moment with Derek, sequestered in a booth. He looked pale and ill, hunched over the table and holding his temples as if his head would explode if he let go. He didn't notice me at first.

“I can wait for you, Derek,” I said when he looked up, bleary-eyed. “I can drive you home.”

He started to shake his head, thought better of it, and said, “Go home, Amy-Faye.” His voice was drained of all emotion, expressionless. “Just go home.”

“I'd rather wait and drive—”

“Go.”

I hesitated, but then nodded. “I'll call you tomorrow.”

He didn't say anything and after another moment of hesitation, I let Hart pull me away.

“I wouldn't call him too early,” Hart said.

My gaze flew to his face. Why? Were they planning to arrest Derek?

“He'll have the mother of all hangovers,” Hart explained.

He ushered me out to the parking lot. It was choked with police cars and vans, including a K-9 vehicle, an ambulance—too late—and the coroner's van, which left as I watched. Tree limbs shivered with the wind's gusts and sent eerie shadows chasing one another across the gravel. Raindrops beaded on the hood of my van. My limbs suddenly felt heavy and it was all I could do to hold my eyelids open. Reaction. Exhaustion.

“Want me to have someone drive you home?” Hart asked, eyeing me with concern. “I'd do it myself, but I can't—”

“It's okay,” I said. “I'm good.”

He laid his hand against my cheek. “You're not good.”

“Well, maybe I've been better.” His hand felt good, big and warm, and I put mine over it for a moment.

“We'll talk tomorrow.”

I knew he'd have hugged me if there weren't so many cops and official folks around.

I bit my lip and nodded.

“Come to the station when you get a chance so we can make your statement official. I may have a few more questions once I talk to Derek and Kolby Marsh.” He opened the van door, closed it when I got in, and banged the side as I started it up. I watched him return to the pub and walk under the now sagging E
LYSIUM
B
REWING
G
RAND
O
PENING
sign.

I couldn't make myself leave. Not until I knew Derek was okay. I sat in the van and cranked up the heat, which dried me out eventually. The windows steamed over. I turned the van off until the chill got to me again and I turned it back on. Over the next hour, a handful of pub employees trickled out, having been interviewed by the police, I assumed, until only Derek's car and the police vehicles, including Hart's Tahoe, were left in the parking lot. The rain started again, a gentle
tinking
on the van's roof. Finally, Derek came out, escorted by a uniformed officer. They walked to a police car and for a heart-stopping moment I thought Derek was under arrest. I started to open the van door. Then,
when the officer let him into the front passenger door, I realized he was giving Derek a ride because he was drunk. Good idea. Should I offer to drive him? No, he'd already told me he didn't want me to stick around; I didn't want him to think I was mother-henning him. Letting the police car have a thirty-second head start, I pulled out after them and started for home.

A
night's rest and Saturday morning's brilliant sunlight brought perspective. It also brought a loud and insistent knocking on my door. Eight twenty-two. Derek? The police? I sat bolt upright, flung back the sheets, and stumbled to the front door in the oversize “Run, Ralphie, Run” CU T-shirt I used as pajamas. Conscious of my scanty attire, I peered out before opening the door. Brooke stood on the stoop, clad in Athleta yoga gear with her dark brown hair in a high ponytail, holding a steaming cup in either hand. Coffee. I'd have opened the door for a zombie or a chain-saw-wielding maniac bearing coffee. I undid the locks.

Before I even had the door all the way open, she was saying, “I heard about Gordon. Did you really find the body? Are you okay? Here, I thought you could use this.” She thrust the coffee at me and came in when I stood back. She gave me a hard, coffee-juggling hug. “Are you okay?”

I was touched by her concern. I nodded and took the first, sublime sip of coffee. There's nothing quite like that first taste of coffee in the morning. “Thanks. I'm okayish. Better than last night. On your way or already done?” I indicated her yoga togs.

“Done. That's where I heard about Gordon's murder—Susan Marsh was there, spilling the beans to everyone. Apparently, Kolby got home at one a.m. and woke her to tell her all about it and the grilling he got from the police. Tell me everything.”

“Let me get dressed.”

She followed me back to the bedroom and plopped onto the unmade bed. My room was unabashedly girlie with pale lemon walls and lots of white eyelet in the curtains, ruffled bed skirt, and accent pillows. The framed family photo identical to the one in Derek's office hung near my dresser, the blond maple one I'd had since childhood. Two garage sale bedside tables bracketed my full-size bed, the one on my side holding a ceramic lamp made by my college roommate, a clock, and my to-be-read pile of books, including the latest Louise Penny, Michael Connelly, Catriona McPherson, and Nancy Pickard novels, and two well-worn classic Dick Francis paperbacks, the “comfort” reads I reread when I felt stressed. A seven-foot-tall bookcase held many of the books the Readaholics had read, a shelf of classic mysteries, and diet books, reference, and miscellaneous others. I'd grown up in a house that was wall-to-wall books, so I prided myself a bit on keeping my book habit under control and only having one bookshelf in my bedroom.

I told Brooke about last night as I put on a clean T-shirt and denim skirt, and then brushed my teeth and hair. The latter was all wonky, since I'd fallen into bed with it still damp last night, and I wet my brush to
smooth out the kinks. Giving up, I reached for a ponytail elastic.

“I'm so sorry you had to go through that,” she said as I twisted my thick hair into a messy topknot. “It sounds awful. I'm sorry Gordon's dead, of course, especially like that, but he was kind of a jerk. He cornered me last night, you know, tried to kiss me.”

I spun around from the bathroom mirror. “No way! With Troy there?”

Brooke shrugged one shoulder with the casual “What can you do?” attitude of a beautiful woman who was always getting hit on. “I think he was drunk. He was weaving when he walked.”

“Where was this?”

“On the third floor. I'd gone up to use the bathroom up there because the one on the main level was, you know—”

“What time was it?”

“Um, a little after seven? The big party was just kicking off and I wanted to use the bathroom before it got icky—you know how they get when there's a crowd—so yeah, a bit after seven.”

That was before the fire, and after the last time I'd seen Gordon. “The police might want to know,” I said. “I think they're trying to put together a timeline.”

“Like Hercule Poirot,” Brooke said, getting up and beginning to straighten the bedclothes automatically. “Making the list of who was where when, and what time they last spoke to Ratchett.”

“Quit,” I said.

She stopped midpillow plump. “Oh,” she said, realizing what she was doing. “Habit. Sorry.”

Brooke had never been such a neatnik until she married Troy, and his overbearing mother, Miss Clarice, took to dropping by unannounced to criticize Brooke's housekeeping.

“Detective Hart wants me to sign my statement this morning,” I said. “We could go together.”

“I'm not going like this,” Brooke said, indicating her skintight lavender capris. “I'll call him later. I'd better get home and shower. You're sure you're okay?” Her green eyes searched my face.

“Shoo,” I said, with a grateful smile.

•   •   •

There was no hint of a smile on Derek's face when I arrived at his duplex fifteen minutes later. It was a narrow house in an area of similar 1940s–era shotgun-style houses, and his door was only five feet away from his neighbor's door. They shared a rickety veranda with house wrens nesting in the eaves in four places, if the white streaks down the wooden siding and on the veranda floor were any indications. I'd stopped for bagels and coffee on the way, but Derek didn't reach for either when he opened the warped screen door to me. His pale face had the same flat affect as last night, and his dark auburn hair stuck up like a hedgehog's quills. From the muddy circles under his eyes, I guessed he hadn't slept at all.

“The police think I did it,” he said once I was inside and had forced him to take one of the coffees. I trekked
back to the kitchen with its cheap white appliances and cherry-dotted wallpaper that had probably gone up when Air Supply was in the Top Ten.

“I'm sure they don't,” I said, smearing cinnamon cream cheese on a wheat bagel. “They've only just started their investigation.”

“Yeah, well, you should have heard them grilling me last night. Where? When? Lay it out for us again. Account for every minute of my time. Were we fighting over money? Did I follow him to the roof? Did he take a swing at me? Was it self-defense? If I got mad and lost my temper, I should just tell them. Perfectly understandable, your hard-ass boyfriend said.”

“Hart's not my boyfriend,” I said automatically, inwardly a bit angry at Hart over what seemed like an unnecessarily harsh interrogation. I saw the fear beneath Derek's veneer of control. I sat at the round kitchen table, pushing aside a stack of beer brewing magazines, what looked like financial documents, and a pizza box with two petrified slices of pepperoni left in it.

He took a carton of orange juice from the fridge and glugged from it. Wiping the back of his hand across his mouth, he said bitterly, “I can hardly wait until they hear about the partnership insurance.”

My fingers tingled with cold, despite the warm bagel I was holding. “What insurance?”

“We were both insured—Gordon and me—for a cool one mil. He insisted on it, actually—said it was a standard clause in all his contracts. A lot of the start-ups he
underwrote were highly dependent on the ideas and entrepreneurship of a single individual and he said the insurance mitigated the risk of losing that key person. It was a five-year-term policy, just long enough for the pub to either succeed or tank. I argued for a similar policy on him.”

I chewed a bit of bagel while I processed this. Not good. Even a doting sister like me could see that Derek had a million reasons to do away with Gordon, the investor who was going to yank his financial rug out from under the pub. “You didn't tell them?”

“I wasn't thinking clearly last night,” Derek said. Leaning against the counter, he ran a hand down his stubbled face. The refrigerator compressor kicked on with a metallic whine that said Derek would need to buy a new fridge before long.

“You were loaded.”

“Can you blame me? Everything went wrong. Everything!” He opened a drawer just so he could slam it closed.

“Hart suggested maybe it was sabotage. Is there anyone who would want to ruin the pub? Or hurt Gordon or you?”

“Well, obviously someone wanted to hurt Gordon,” Derek pointed out. “I mean, not to sound ugly, but who didn't want to hurt Gordon? I certainly did—well, you saw me punch him. Those weirdo women from last night looked like they wouldn't have minded clawing his face off. Then there's Susan, Kolby, his sister—”

“Why his sister?” I asked, intrigued by new information.

“She and her husband blame Gordon for their daughter's death. She died three months ago. Car accident.”

“I don't see—”

“She was drunk, well, over the limit anyway. Just barely, from what Gordon told me.”

“I still don't see how that's Gordon's fau—”

“She got that way at Moonglade, his nightclub in Grand Junction.”

“Oh.”

“He hosted a twenty-first-birthday party for her and a bunch of her college buddies.”

“Oh,” I said again. It sounded as though Gordon had been trying to be nice. How tragic.

“Other than that—” Derek shrugged. “I must admit the thought crossed my mind. Not for real,” he added hastily when I choked on a bite of bagel. “Just, you know, in the way you think, in the heat of the moment, how things would be better or easier or whatever if someone was . . . gone. I would never have actually
planned
something.”

Something.
Murder
. I totally knew Derek didn't have it in him to cold-bloodedly plot to murder someone, not even Gordon, but I remembered the fury with which he'd gone after his partner on the roof. Had he been up there with him last night? Had Gordon said something that sparked another fight? Had— I made myself stop thinking along those lines.

“Why were your clothes wet?” I asked.

“What?” His brows drew together in puzzlement.

“Last night, when I came upstairs to get you and
you were drunk, you were only wearing your boxers because your slacks were wet. So was your hair. Why?”

“Not because I was up on the roof pushing Gordon off!” he yelled. “What do you think I am?”

“Chill,” I said, exasperated with his histrionics. There was a good word for Al.
Dramatics, hysterics, over-the-top emotionalism.
“I don't think for one minute that you killed Gordon. I just want to know what you told the police about being wet.”

Still glowering, Derek said, “I had to go out to my car. I'd promised Troy Widefield I'd give him a six-pack of the new lager I'd developed here”—Derek had a pretty sophisticated brewing operation in what should have been the guest bedroom where he made small batches of new recipes—“and I got drenched going out to get it.”

“That's okay, then,” I said, relieved. “I'm sure Troy will confirm that for the police.”

Derek squirmed. “Brooke and Troy had left by the time I got back inside and went looking for him. I took the lager up to my office. Drank most of it before starting on the vodka.”

No wonder he looked so ill.

“I'm in trouble, aren't I?” His hazel eyes, so like mine but with longer and darker lashes, which was completely unfair, were shadowed with worry.

“You should maybe get a lawyer,” I said, rising. I tossed my empty cup into the trash can under the sink. “I'd call Doug, but—”

“I've already got one. One of my basketball buddies is a lawyer. No one you know.” He paused, and almost
gulped. “I'm scared, A-Faye. What if they arrest me? Who will run the business? Even if I don't get convicted, the pub will go bust and I'll be bankrupt. If they do convict me—”

“Shh.” I wrapped my arms around him and hugged tightly. He was stiff at first, but then he crumpled in and buried his face in my hair. “It's not going to come to that,” I said.

He squeezed me for a moment, and then broke away. “Big sister will take care of it, huh?” he said with the ghost of a smile. “Make the bad policemen leave her baby brother alone?”

“Something like that,” I said, glad to see him attempt some humor. I punched his shoulder. “Get dressed, go to work, and get the pub cleaned up. No moping.”

“I don't mope.”

“You mope.”

“This may look like moping, but it's actually a hangover,” he said, gesturing to his drawn face with its bloodshot eyes and stubbled cheeks. “A freaking hellacious hangover like I haven't had since my frat days.”

“Whatever.” He didn't need sympathy. He needed someone to kick him in the butt and keep him from awfulizing about how bad the situation might get.

“I can't go to Elysium. The cops have it sealed off as
a crime scene. They said maybe tomorrow.” His shoulders slumped.

“Oh. Well, go hang with the folks, then. Mom'll feed you pie. Rhubarb's good for hangovers.” I had no idea if that was true, but it sounded plausible.

His eyes brightened at the thought of Mom's strawberry rhubarb pie. “What are you going to do?” he asked.

“Work. And figure out who really killed Gordon.”

He snorted gently as if I'd said I was going to design a time-travel machine or come up with a Middle East peace plan. “Yeah, well, thanks,” he said.

I kissed his scratchy cheek, trying not to recoil from his morning breath, and left.