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SURE, IT WAS DISAPPOINTING TO HAVE TO ELIMINATE Victor Pasqual as a suspect. After all, without him, we really didn’t have any suspects.
But honestly, by that time, I’m not sure any of us cared.
We liked Victor Pasqual, and besides, we were all so relieved that Eve hadn’t lost her money, there was nothing that could have destroyed our good mood.
Well, almost nothing.
Down in the lobby, we decided to go out to breakfast before we began the long drive back to Arlington. We even included Peter (like I said, we were in good moods) on the sole condition that he stop calling us the Scooby Gang, and never breathe a word-to anyone-about the fact that for a brief moment in time, Victor Pasqual was a murder suspect.
But no sooner had we stepped out of the Pasqual Palace, onto the street, and out of the neon aura that surrounded the hotel than a curious thing happened.
I heard a car door slam and I was so wrapped up in getting all the details of the card game from Eve, I didn’t pay any attention.
I should have.
Then I would have noticed the dark sedan parked nearby, and the man wearing a ski mask who jumped out of it, darted forward, and grabbed Norman.
“Back off.”
The voice wasn’t familiar to me, but I knew in an instant that Norman recognized it. His mouth dropped open and even the green neon glow from down the street couldn’t add color to his cheeks.
Jim shot forward, but the man in the ski mask wasn’t taking chances. There was a knife tucked into his belt and he grabbed it and waved it at us. Jim was closest to the flashing blade; he had to lean back to stay out of harm’s way. My stomach went cold.
“I said, back off,” the masked man grumbled, and he tightened his hold on Norman and yanked him toward the waiting car.
Honest to gosh, I don’t know what possessed me. I knew it wasn’t wise to try to fight off a man with a weapon. I knew it was smarter just to let the man take Norman, to commit the license plate of the dark sedan to memory, and to wait about half a nanosecond once they were gone and then call the police.
But I’ve got to say, one look at that masked man holding on to our friend…
One thought about the way that knife had come too close to Jim for comfort…
Well, truth be told, I snapped.
Eve was standing next to me so I barely needed to move at all to give Doc just a little pinch on the butt.
Predictably, the dog wasn’t happy.
Doc doesn’t bark. Not exactly. The sound that comes out of that tiny body of his is more of a yap. A loud, interminable, annoying-as-not-much-else-can-be yap.
Just for good measure, Doc threw in a snarl and lunge, too.
At the same time Eve struggled to keep the dog in her arms, Jim grabbed Norman and pulled him-hard-out of the masked man’s grip.
And me? Taking my cue from Doc, I let out a scream that shook the windows of the buildings around us.
I kept right on screaming, too, until the front doors of the Pasqual Palace swung open and a couple of valets and a bellhop ran outside to see what was happening.
The masked man took one look at the commotion and ran back to his car.
And me? I was still screaming when he started up the engine and peeled rubber down the street.
“Ya pure mad dafty!”
I was pretty sure I’d just been insulted, but since Jim raced forward then hugged me tight when he said it, I didn’t hold it against him. “You could have been hurt.”
“You could have been hurt.” I pulled away long enough to look into his eyes. But only until I realized I’d missed another opportunity. By the time I untangled myself from Jim’s arms and raced to the street, the black sedan-and its license plates-were long gone.
“Wow.”
During the confrontation, I had lost track of Peter. Now he stepped out of the shadows where he’d apparently (and very wisely) scooted to stay out of harm’s way. He was slack-jawed and winded when he looked from Jim and me to where Eve was consoling Doc and Norman at the same time. “You guys… I thought you were kidding when you said you… I mean, I didn’t think you were serious when you told me… You really are investigating a murder, aren’t you?”
Call it the fallout of a shock; I started to laugh. So did everyone else but Peter. Oh, and Doc.
Doc just kept on yapping.
MY SIGH WAS AN EXACT ECHO OF EVE’S, AND THE sounds overlapped and rippled the air. It was the first noise any of us had made since we sat down to consider the current status of our case, and I looked from Jim, sitting on my right, to Norman, and from Norman to Eve, and from Eve to (believe it or not) Tyler. Notice I do not mention Peter. We hadn’t breathed a word of this meeting to him and, though it made me feel a little guilty, I knew it was the right thing to do. A man who hid in the shadows while his friends fought off a kidnapper was not good under pressure.
Because we were being careful, we’d decided to mix things up and meet at my apartment rather than at Jim’s house, and we were crammed around my kitchen table. I’d poured iced tea the minute everybody got there, and there was an open bag of thick, salty pretzels on the table. No one was eating them.
But then, kidnap attempts can have that sort of effect on people.
It was Saturday, and after driving through what was left of the night to get back from A.C., Jim had already worked the lunch crowd at Bellywasher’s and was getting ready to head back for the dinner rush. He hadn’t said a word in protest when I suggested this meeting, but I knew he was exhausted. The fact that he was such a good sport and such a good friend to Norman meant more than I can say. Not that I didn’t want to say it. But every time I thought about what a great guy Jim was, and how much he supported me and believed in me, I got all choked up.
As for Norman himself, he wasn’t saying anything-not out loud, anyway-but I could tell he was disappointed as well as worried. He’d pinned his hopes on finding out something useful from Victor Pasqual. When that portion of our investigation went bust, and now that we knew the killer was hot on our trail, Norman ’s hopes of ever living a worry-free life again had vanished.
Norman was edgy and out of sorts. He didn’t speak a word all the way back from New Jersey, and now he drummed his fingers against my oak table, tapped his foot against the linoleum, and kept looking over his shoulder to my one and only kitchen window. Seeing as how we were on the fourth floor, I’m not sure what-or who-he was keeping an eye out for; I only knew that when he didn’t see anything or anyone, he looked relieved. At least for a second or two. Then the drumming and the tapping and the looking over his shoulder started all over again.
As for Eve and Tyler… well, it should come as no surprise that I was not enamored of the idea of inviting Tyler to our little meeting, but I wasn’t (as Jim had so eloquently put it) pure mad dafty, either. It was obvious that whoever the man in the mask was, he’d been following me. First to Fredericksburg, then all the way to Atlantic City.
It was just as obvious that I’d led him right to Norman.
We weren’t taking any more chances. We had called in Tyler for muscle.
Did I feel better or worse having him there? I couldn’t deny that I felt more secure. Now if only he’d offer a little professional advice. If he had any to offer. So far, that hadn’t happened, and the only thing he’d done was plunk himself down next to Eve and pat Doc (who was sitting in her lap) in a halfhearted way I suspected was designed to win Eve over.
It was apparently working. When I got up to get the pretzels, I noticed that they were holding hands under the table.
“Not a good idea.” I was talking about Eve and Tyler, and I was talking to myself. It came out louder than I expected.
Maybe it was just as well; at least my comment pulled everyone out of the doldrums.
Doc’s ears perked up. Eve’s eyes glistened. Jim turned my way. And Norman stopped the drumming and the tapping and the looking. Thank goodness! I hadn’t realized how annoying all that noise was until it was quiet.
“If you mean traipsing all the way to Atlantic City for nothing, you can say that again.”
The comment came from Tyler and since he was the one I was thinking about in the first place (and since what I was thinking wasn’t very charitable), I wasn’t exactly pleased. I didn’t need him to remind me of the shortcomings of my investigation. I grabbed a pretzel just as Tyler did. Across the table, we stared each other down and chomped.
“You should have called me,” he said.
He was probably right. Which didn’t stop me from saying, “And told you what?” It was hard to talk with a mouthful of pretzel, so I chewed and swallowed. “That we had a suspect who maybe wasn’t a suspect so maybe we should talk to him?”
“Or I could have. Talked to him, that is.” Tyler brushed crumbs from the front of his button-front plaid shirt. Since it was the weekend, he was officially off the time clock, and he wasn’t wearing an impeccably tailored suit like usual. Or one of the dress shirts that are just a teensy bit too small so they show off the breadth of his chest.
Tyler was not the jeans and plaid shirt type.
He was still plenty intimidating.
But let me make one thing perfectly clear: that is not why I dropped my head on the table. I dropped my head on the table because I felt the weight of the investigation on my shoulders and it was too much for me. I dropped my head on the table because I was worried about Norman, and sorry about Greg. I dropped my head on the table because I saw Eve scoot her chair just a little closer to Tyler’s, and there was something in that one little movement-something so intimate-that I knew once and for all that my best friend had lost her mind. Again.
Oh, yeah, I dropped my head on the table because I knew there was trouble coming.
And I knew there was nothing I could do about it.
“We should have called you,” I groaned, agreeing with Tyler in what was probably a world’s first. “You could have saved us the cost of gas to New Jersey and then Eve wouldn’t have had to risk the money she got from pawning Doc’s collar and-”
“Oh, honey!” I looked up long enough to see Eve wave a dismissive hand in my direction. How she’d had time for a fresh manicure since we got back from New Jersey was anybody’s guess. “It’s the least I could do and you know it. Besides…” No one preens like Eve. She beamed a smile at all of us that rested just a bit longer on Tyler. “I did great at that card game. That Victor Pasqual, he’s a darned nice guy.”
“Which doesn’t mean he isn’t the killer.” Tyler ’s gaze swung to me as he said this, and the message was clear. If I was running this investigation, I was doing a mighty poor job of it.
My spine stiffened and I sat up. While I was at it, I grabbed another pretzel.
“Victor Pasqual doesn’t care about money. We all saw that.” I glanced around, taking in Norman and Jim and Eve, who I knew would back me up if I needed it. At least about this. “He tipped the waiter with a hundred-dollar bill.”
“So…” Tyler snaffled another pretzel. “That means he can’t be a killer?”
“It means he doesn’t have the motivation. If money doesn’t mean anything to him-”
“You mean if one hundred dollars doesn’t mean anything to him. That’s a far cry from three hundred thousand dollars. For three hundred thousand dollars… well, there’s no telling what a man might do for that kind of money.”
I bit my pretzel. “You weren’t there. You didn’t see him. Victor Pasqual is a really nice man.”
Tyler ’s top lip curled. It made it easier for him to trade me crunch for crunch. “Nobody that rich is ever a really nice man. How do you think he got that rich in the first place?”
“And what difference does that make?” It was Jim’s turn to get in on the action. He did it with his usual level-headed thoughtfulness. “What matters is that the man has an alibi for the night of the murder. He was out of the country. Surely the police can check that, right? You can tell if his passport was used.”
“And that’s important.” It was, too, which was why I shot a smile Jim’s way to thank him for pointing it out. “But what’s more important is that Norman didn’t recognize his voice. And he did recognize the voice of the guy in the black sedan. Victor Pasqual is not the guy.”
“But he could have sent the guy who was the guy. You know, a hired killer. That would explain why the guy back in Atlantic City was so persistent. A hired killer,” he pointed out, as if we all didn’t all watch our share of B movies and cop shows on TV, “is not going to quit. He’s going to try again. As soon as he can.”
Of course we’d all thought of this. But none of us had been callous enough to say it.
Norman ’s eyes went wide. His face went pale. The drumming and the tapping and the looking over his shoulder started again.
If my legs were long enough, I would have kicked Tyler under the table.
“This is getting us nowhere.” Once again, Jim was the calm, rational one, and I was grateful. It’s hard to be the voice of reason when you have a mouthful of pretzel. “You’ve told us, Tyler, all the things we shouldn’t have done. But what we really need to know is what we should do now. This maniac is still after Norman and-”
“We’ll take care of it.” Tyler said this like he knew what he was talking about, but I don’t think one of us there around the table believed it. Not even Tyler. So far, the police had zilch. Just like we did. “We’re following leads, we’re questioning people. We’re-”
“What leads? What people?” I had swallowed my mouthful, so I was prepared to speak again. “How can you have any leads, Tyler, when we don’t know any more now than we did the night Greg was killed? Or have you been holding out on us?” Call me naive, but I hadn’t thought of this before and, just so the notion couldn’t choke me, I grabbed another pretzel. I pointed across the table at Tyler with it. “Is there something you haven’t told us?”
“Something like mind your own business?” Tyler reached for a pretzel, too. He bit it in half. “You’ve been going around in circles, chasing your tails,” Tyler said. “You haven’t accomplished a thing. Except…” I’ve never seen a glacier. I mean not out in nature. But I know that sometimes because of the way the light hits the ice crystals, glaciers look blue.
Tyler ’s eyes are that color.
They’re just as warm.
His frosty gaze swiveled to Norman. “Except to find out your friend here is a petty criminal.”
“The statute of limitations has run out on all that stuff,” I reminded him. Though I didn’t realize I’d done it, I found myself on my feet, staring Tyler down. “None of what Norman did justifies anyone wanting to kill him. So we’d better figure out what’s going on.”
“No. What you’d better do is back off and let the professionals do what they’re supposed to do,” Tyler shot back.
“He’s right, honey.” Eve didn’t look any happier supporting Tyler than I did hearing her do it. “We’re getting nowhere and-”
“All we need to do,” Jim interrupted her, “is give Annie a chance. She’ll find the answers. She always does.”
“No, what we really need to do is just forget the whole thing.”
This comment came from Norman, and it was so unexpected, and spoken so quietly, it got all our attention. His shoulders rose and fell before he pushed back his chair and got to his feet.
“None of this is worth watching you guys tear at each other,” he said. “It won’t bring Greg back, and it won’t keep me safe. Don’t you see? You can’t do that. None of you. If someone’s out to get me… well, maybe next time I won’t be so lucky and get away.”
“We’re not going to let that happen.”
Tyler and I answered together and when our gazes snapped and met, there was one second of unspoken challenge between us. That was right before we realized we were on the same page. If we could agree about this, maybe we could find common ground on finding Greg’s killer, too.
Big points for Tyler, he let me be the one who delivered the message. I lifted my chin and fisted my hands at my sides. “We’re going to find the guy,” I told Norman. My steely demeanor may have been more convincing if pretzel crumbs didn’t dot my black T-shirt. I didn’t brush them away. “Really, Norman. We’re close. I know we are. I’ve done this sort of thing before. Tyler ’s done this sort of thing before. Plenty more times than I have.” As a sort of conciliatory gesture, I glanced Tyler ’s way. “All we need to do is reason our way through things. You know, look at everything we’ve already discovered. Think about things in a new way, from new angles.”
Tyler slapped a hand against the table. “Exactly.”
“So where do we begin?” Norman asked.
That, of course, was the hard part. But I wasn’t about to let Norman know that. Instead, I collected myself and sat back down, and, hey, if I sounded far more confident than I felt… well, Norman didn’t need to know that.
My voice cool and steady, I walked us through all we’d recently found out. “Victor Pasqual has a motive, and no opportunity, and he’s a nice guy. Three hundred thousand dollars is chump change for him. We were lucky we even got that close to him and we wouldn’t have if not for the fact that Eve pawned Doc’s collar and-”
A thought hit, and honest to goodness, I don’t know how long I sat there, my mouth agape and my mind racing. It was, apparently, long enough to worry Jim. He put a hand on my arm and leaned over so he could stare me in the face. “Annie? Are ye all right?”
I rewound my thinking process and went over it in my head again before I dared to speak, and when I did, my voice was breathy. Then again, I had a good excuse: My heart was pounding like a jackhammer. “ Norman, you won three hundred thousand dollars in a card game with Victor Pasqual.”
Norman nodded.
“It cost us twenty-five thousand dollars to get in Pasqual’s game, and the biggest winner of the night came away with…” I looked at Eve.
She shrugged. “It wasn’t me. I got all my money back and then some, but I think that li’l ol’ fellow across the table-the skinny little guy from Texas?-I think he was the big winner. At the end of the evening, he said something about his take being somewhere around fifty thousand.”
“He put in twenty-five and he left with fifty.” So far, so good. The facts were lining up with my new theory. “So when you played, Norman… back when you won the money to open Très Bonne Cuisine… how much did you have to have for a stake?”
Norman still wasn’t following, but I could tell Jim and Tyler already saw where I was headed. They leaned forward, their gazes trained on Norman.
And I did, too. Which was why I noticed that he didn’t have to think about it. Not at all.
“One hundred and fifty thousand,” Norman said.
“And where-” I could tell Tyler was about to interrupt so I shot him a look. This was my thought, my theory. I got to ask the question. “Norman, you sure didn’t make that kind of money putting dishwashing soap in a bottle and calling it a miracle cleaner. Where did you get the one hundred and fifty thousand dollars?”
“Oh.” The truth dawned, and, slowly, Norman sank back into his chair. Just like that, though, he discounted everything I’d said. “No way.” He shook his head. “That has nothing to do with what happened to Greg. It couldn’t.”
“Because…?”
I allowed Tyler this bit of a question before I took over again.
“Why, Norman? Why can’t it? Where did you get the money in the first place?”
While Norman gathered his thoughts, I reached for the legal pad and pen I had left near at hand, and when he started to talk, I took notes.
“It was back in prison,” Norman said. “You know, in Nevada. I told you all about that.” He looked around the table, confirming that we all knew the story. “My cellmate was a guy named Howard. Howard Fish. He was a crusty old goat. A small-time con who’d been in and out of the system all his life. We didn’t get along well at first. I mean, Howard, didn’t appreciate having to share his space with a first-timer like me. But after a couple months… well, Howard, he found out he had lung cancer, and I guess that sort of softened him up. He talked, I listened.” Norman shrugged. “You know how it is with older people. They like telling stories.”
“And this Howard, he told you how you could steal a hundred thousand dollars?”
I took offense at Tyler ’s question. Norman didn’t.
“It was nothing like that,” Norman said. “It was legit. Really. One day they decided Howard would be better off in the prison infirmary. He was pretty weak by then. In fact, he died just a couple days later. But right before they came for him, he told me how much he appreciated having me around when he was sick. Then he started talking about a cabin he owned up near Pyramid Lake, and Howard-he said when I got out, I should go up there and look under the loose floorboard near the fireplace. I mean, it sounded like something out of a movie, right?” Norman laughed, ill at ease. “But hey, once I was out, I wasn’t sure where to go or what I was going to do. I remembered what Howard said, and I went up to Pyramid Lake. There was the cabin, just like Howard said. And the key was under a big chunk of granite near the front door. He told me that, too. So if all that was right, I figured what he said about the floorboard was, too. I pried it up. That’s where I found the hundred and fifty thousand dollars.”
We all sat quietly, thinking of the implications, but I was the one who asked, “That was before you ran all those other scams, as Fred and Bill and all those other folks, right?”
“Well, I knew a hundred fifty thousand wouldn’t last forever, and a man’s got to make a living. I invested the money,” Norman explained. “Because I knew I wanted to do something with food. A restaurant, a gourmet shop… I was looking around, considering my options. But the money, it wasn’t adding up fast enough. So when I met some people who knew Victor and they said they could get me into a game…”
In a not-so-good imitation of a Vulcan mind meld, I stared at Norman, and when he still didn’t get it, I laid it on the line.
“The hundred and fifty thousand, Norman. Have you ever wondered where Howard got it?”
He shrugged. “Don’t ask, don’t tell. Nobody else knew the money was there and I figured someday, somebody might buy that cabin and find it. Or somebody might buy the land and knock the cabin down and find it. Either way, I had as much right to that money as they did. More, seeing as how Howard told me I could have it.”
“Yeah, but don’t you get it?” Tyler had kept silent as long as he was able. “If Howard got that money illegally-”
The truth was dawning. I could tell because Norman ’s face went from pale to ashen. Because I couldn’t stand to watch him suffer, I leaped out of my chair, checking the clock above the kitchen sink as I did. “I’ve got just enough time to hit the library before it closes,” I said. “I’ll meet you all at Bellywasher’s this evening.”
“But, honey…” I was already at the front door when Eve found her voice and called after me. “What on earth are you looking for?”
Jim knew. I could tell from the look he gave me when I turned around. Of course, Tyler did, too. Norman would figure it out himself eventually. So I told Eve, “I’m going to find out where a small-time con like Howard Fish got a hundred and fifty thousand dollars.”
THE NEAREST BRANCH OF THE ARLINGTON PUBLIC LIBRARY closes at five on Saturdays so I didn’t have much time. I raced through my research, then raced over to Bellywasher’s, copies of the microfiche pages I’d discovered in hand.
By the time I got there, though, Saturday evening dinner pandemonium had started, and I had to squeeze my way through the line outside the door. Jim was behind the bar mixing martinis. Eve was busy making sure a table of eight near the window was happy and comfortable. Tyler was nowhere to be seen.
Neither was Norman.
I pushed through the swinging doors that led into the kitchen and found Marc and Damien slammed with orders and Heidi, our one and only waitress, busy loading plates onto trays. She was frazzled and I instantly felt obligated, so I stowed my notepad and microfiche copies in the storage room where we kept the clean linens and did the only thing I could do-I pitched in and helped.
By the time there was enough of a lull for me to ask about Norman, my T-shirt was dotted with marinara and so were my hands. I grabbed a towel to wipe them clean, retrieved the papers from the storage closet, and headed out to the alley behind the restaurant where (Marc and Damien assured me) they’d last seen Norman.
Sure enough, there he was, sitting on an overturned fruit crate and admiring Jim’s motorcycle.
I didn’t waste any time.
“Who was the other guy?” I asked Norman.
I was hoping for more in return than a blank look, but since a blank look was all I got, I had no choice but to work with it.
I waved the copies under his nose. “I found an article about Howard Fish. When you knew him, he was in prison for a bank robbery.”
That got Norman ’s attention. He looked a little green around the gills. “Does that mean I’ll have to pay the money back?” he asked.
“That’s the least of your worries.” I slapped the copies down on the lid of a nearby trash can and paged through them until I found what I was looking for. “One guy-Howard-went to prison for the robbery,” I told Norman. “But see here…” I pointed, but I never gave him time to look before I forged on ahead. “Two guys. Two guys, Norman.” I stabbed a finger at the article. “Two guys were accused of the robbery. That means-”
All the green drained from Norman ’s face. “I never knew,” he breathed. “That means there’s another guy out there.”
“Yeah, and something tells me he’s looking for his money. I don’t know what the cops are going to say about you paying back this money, but I know one thing. That guy who was Howard’s accomplice, he’s convinced it’s payback time, Norman.”