“Well, one of these days it won’t,” I said. “And it probably won’t last. I have another cable I can try. I’ll see you in a few minutes.”
Abigail thanked me and said good-bye.
“I’m going to take you over to Maggie and Ruby and then just run over to the library for a minute,” I said to Hercules.
He wasn’t listening. Something behind me had caught his attention. The hairs rose on the back of my neck as I turned around.
Kate was pointing a gun at me.
chapter 19
Maybe I could bluff.
“Kate, you scared me,” I said. “Could you put that down, please?”
She smiled but there was nothing warm about it. “Seeing as how I’m planning on shooting you, no, I can’t,” she said. She held out her free hand. “Give me your phone.”
Bluffing wasn’t going to work.
I handed her my cell. She turned it off and put it in her pocket.
I glanced over my shoulder. The stairs were half a hall away. “Harry will hear you if you shoot me.”
“I’m not going to shoot you here,” she said. “C’mon, I’m smarter than that. After all, I killed Kassie and no one figured out it was me—well, except for you.” She was wearing another of her long loose sweaters and her free arm hugged her midsection. “Besides, at this time of night Harry will have closed the doors at the bottom of the stairs. They’re fire doors. You could kill someone up here and no one would hear a thing. Ask me how I know.”
“You found out that Kassie was connected to the woman who owned the skincare company that made the mask you had the allergic reaction to,” I said.
“Monique Le Clair. They’d been friends since high school. Kassie told my lawyer that she had no idea where Monique was, but I knew that was a lie.”
“That morning when you were all filming the promo on the set and Kassie was on Caroline about being a helicopter parent, she mentioned Saint Barthélemy. You finally knew where Monique Le Clair was.”
“Eugenie showed you the video this morning. I walked past the door. Neither one of you noticed me.” Her eyes narrowed. “How did you figure it out? I knew it was just a matter of time before you did, but what gave me away?”
My mouth was dry. “The glass jar you dropped.” Maybe if I kept her talking Harry would wonder what was taking me so long.
Kate frowned. “I don’t understand.”
“I kept thinking about what happened. Caroline upended the bowl over Kassie’s head; the jar slipped out of your hands; Ray pulled a pot off his stove and bolted toward Caroline. I was replaying it over and over in my head and I realized that the sound of the jar hitting the floor came just a fraction of a second before Caroline tipped over that bowl. It was like a storm. You always see the lightning before you hear the thunder because light travels faster than sound.”
“She said, ‘No harm was done,’” Kate said. “She was the one who suggested putting chemicals in what was supposed to be a natural product. Kassie and her friend ruined my life and it was like it was nothing. And she was trying to do it again. She was trying to undermine me on the show, for no good reason, just because she liked to stir up trouble.”
“The show was your way to get close to Kassie. To find out what she knew. You paid Dorrie Park to drop out of the qualifying competition so you’d be in the top three.”
Kate gave a sigh of exasperation. “And she just had to go to Paris and put a whole bunch of photos online. What is wrong with people?” She gestured with the gun and I put my free arm protectively around Hercules as if it could somehow stop a bullet.
Kate noticed the gesture. “I won’t hurt him.” She seemed almost offended. “I’m not a monster. Kassie was the monster.”
“Why didn’t you tell Elias, tell everyone?”
She gave a snort of derision. “Like that would do a lot of good. Elias wouldn’t have done a thing. Do you know what Kassie’s real name is? Do you know who her father is?”
I nodded. “I do.”
“Then you know telling Elias, telling everyone, would have been a waste of time. It’s not like I had any actual proof.”
I glanced over my shoulder again.
“Mr. Taylor isn’t coming to rescue you,” she said. “And as far as he’s concerned I left a little while ago. I was on the sidewalk when you got here. I had a feeling you’d figured everything out so I came back.”
“How did you get back in the building just now without Harry seeing you?” I asked. At some point soon Harry had to wonder why I hadn’t come back out.
Kate smiled again. “There’s an alarm on the other door now. But not on the windows. Sloppy, don’t you think?”
The only thing I could think of was to keep her talking. Maybe she’d have second thoughts about killing me if she had some time to think about what she was planning on doing. “So what happened the night Kassie died?” I said. “I know you’d taken her phone earlier in the day and then pretended to find it.”
“Oh, so we’re going to do the Miss Marple thing.” Kate looked around. “Well, it’s not an English country manor house but this will have to do. Yes, I borrowed her phone. There wasn’t anything useful on it.”
“But that’s how you knew Kassie had a son.”
“I knew that was a mistake as soon as I spoke.”
“You went down to Eric’s with everyone else.” I glanced at the nearest office door. What were the chances it would be unlocked?
“Yes. Then I walked back because I didn’t feel like socializing. The thing is, when you’re quiet, people don’t notice when you’re gone.”
“Why did you come back here? Why didn’t you just go back to where you’re staying?”
She brushed a stray wisp of hair off of her face. “Because I wanted to bake. It’s what I do when things or people make me feel crazy. And by the way, I’m not crazy.”
“I know that,” I said. “You’re smart. You can think on your feet. So why did you come here to cook?”
She held up her free hand. “Because the oven in my apartment isn’t working right. You know, if it had been, I would have just gone home and Kassie might be alive now. Imagine that.” She studied my face for a moment. “How does that saying go? ‘For want of a nail the shoe was lost?’”
“For want of a nail, the shoe was lost; for want of the shoe, the horse was lost; for want of the horse, the rider was lost; for want of the rider, the battle was lost; for want of the battle, the kingdom was lost; and all from the want of a horseshoe nail.”
She nodded. “That’s it. Benjamin Franklin?”
“He often gets the credit,” I said, “but there are variations of the words in both German and French literature that go back hundred of years before him.”
“I knew you would know that.” Kate smiled. “For want of an oven a life was lost.”
Something was broken inside her.
I shifted Hercules from one arm to the other. His head was cocked to one side now and he seemed to be listening to every word Kate said. “One thing I couldn’t figure out was how did you get in that night? I knew there was some confusion when everyone left at the same time and Zach wasn’t good at keeping track of people. But how did you get past him the second time?”
“Did you know Elias has a master key so he can use that other door?”
I nodded.
She shrugged. “He should have taken better care of it. Anyone could have copied it.”
“Why didn’t you show up on the security footage the way Elias did?”
She answered my question with a question. “Did you know there’s a basement door into this building? No cameras there. Not then, anyway.”
“Somehow you drugged Kassie.” It was a detail I hadn’t been able to figure out.
“No, I didn’t,” Kate said. “Not on purpose.” Anger flashed in her eyes and the gun jerked in her hand. “Not on purpose. I’d start shaking whenever I thought about what Kassie had done to me. When Stacey first gave me those pills I . . . I didn’t want to take them, but I didn’t think I would ever be able to stop the shaking if I didn’t.”