"You did not!"
"I did, too!"
"Good to be home," said John Raintree as he came through he dining room doors. Myles was with him. Both men were soaked. "Not as quiet as your jail though, Myles."
"Has it ever been?" Myles shook the water from his raincoat and hung it on the peg near the back door. He came up to Quill and stood close.
She looked up at him and touched his cheek. "You're soaked. Meg's got coffee on. You both should have something hot." Myles settled into the rocker, declined the expresso with a grimace, and accepted a cup of the Melitta drip.
John sat on the stool next to Doreen. "Quill, I'm not much good at thanks..."
"Neither is she," Meg said briskly. "What we want to know s how all this came down while I was getting my stomach pumped."
"Marge and Doreen," said Myles.
"Marge?" said Quill. "Doreen?"
He shot her an amused look. "What I'm about to tell you s not true. It's a guess. If it were true, I'd have to make a few arrests, for illegal hacking, unlawful entry into private data, and violation of several interstate banking laws." He stretched his long legs in front of him. "I gather that after your visit to the diner, something clicked in Marge's brain."
"It did?" said Quill. "I told her Mavis always referred to herself as a modern-day Scarlett O'Hara. Marge got this funny look in her eye."
"It would have helped Eddie a lot to know about Scarlett O'Hara," said Myles. "Even her son didn't know where Mrs. Hallenbeck hid her money, although he guessed that Mavis was concealing it for her. After you left, Marge hared off to solve the mystery of the missing three hundred thousand. She walked over to Mark Anthony Jefferson's bank. The two of them got on to the phone and into the computer, and they tracked down information that turned most of Eddie's guesses into evidence. Mavis Collinwood, as Scarlett O'Hara and with a fictitious social security number, had close to four hundred thousand dollars in a checking account in Atlanta. The only authorized signatory to the account was Amelia Hallenbeck. Incidentally, six payments averaging twenty thousand dollars each had been paid into the account by various hotel and motel insurance companies over the past eight months. This cross-checks with the information Eddie had from the Insurance Index about fraudulent claims the women had been making."
"So he knew Mrs. Hallenbeck was guilty!" said Quill. "He never said a word to me."
"He was pretty certain she was behind the tainted-meat scandal," said Myles. "And Quill, Eddie wasn't here to solve the murders. He worked for the son. His job was to stop the trafficking in the meat. And I don't blame him for keeping undercover. Confidentiality is the core of his business. Without it, he wouldn't get another assignment."
"Confidentiality," Meg said sarcastically. "Try deceit. Try ripping people off. Try bogus!"
"I knew you thought he was from L'Aperitif;" said Quill.
"Ha!"
Myles rapped the arm of the rocker for silence. "May I continue? Then Marge and Mark turned the computer on to Keith Baumer. They called the American Express Travelers Cheque operations center in Salt Lake. Mark, in his capacity as bank vice-president, convinced the Fraud Unit there of the urgency of the situation. The Fraud Unit gave them Baumer's address, and the name of the bank where he'd bought his cheques. Marge thought there was a strong likelihood the cheques would have been purchased at the bank where he ' had a checking and savings account, and she was right."
"And?" said Quill. "Baumer was in on it. I knew it!"
Myles shrugged. "My guess is he's guilty of something. Just what that is, is anybody's guess. His savings account showed regular deposits of amounts varying from three to five thousand dollars, ever since he left Doggone Good Dogs. But I have no official knowledge of this. Baumer doesn't appear to have committed any crimes here. I don't have jurisdiction anyway, so there's no way for me to follow up. I did suggest to Eddie that he have breakfast at Marge's diner this morning. It may be that Baumer was a co-conspirator with Mrs. Hallenbeck - and that Eddie can prove it after he talks to Marge. But the money must have come from somewhere else."
"What do you think, Myles?" said Meg.
Myles hesitated. "I believe that Mavis was blackmailing Baumer, just as she was blackmailing John and Tom Peterson. I don't believe in coincidence. Baumer, Marge, John, and Tom were all connected through Mavis. There are some people who are natural catalysts. Mavis was a catalyst for disaster."
"You put dough into the oven, and heat turns it to brioche," said Quill. "Mrs. Hallenbeck was the heat. Mavis was the yeast."
"Come again?" said Myles.
"Meg." Quill gestured at her sister. "She said murder's like a recipe. The same set of ingredients don't guarantee the same dish. Everyone who came into contact with Mavis ended up with a motive to murder - but only one killed her."
"Thank you, Dr. Watson," said Meg.
"You're Watson," said Quill. "I'm Holmes. If I'd had a little more time..."
"But it was Doreen, there, who provided the hard evidence in the case," John interrupted loudly.
"You did?" said Quill. "Doreen, how clever of you!"
"That there Willy Max," grumbled Doreen. "I din't call him."
"She got Dina to call the phone company and check the outgoing calls," said Myles. "Tracked the call to Rolling Moses to Mrs. Hallenbeck's room."
"Old witch!" said Doreen. "Lied and made me out a fool. Searched her room proper. Found the makin's of them stupid drinks Mavis liked."
"The mint juleps?" said Quill. "Of course! She fed them to Mavis before they walked down to the Pavilion."
"Tied the glasses and the bottles up in a Baggie and turned them over to Davey," said Myles. "Andy Bishop had them tested for Seconal right there at the hospital. I sent the glasses on to the state lab for fingerprinting. I expect that both Mavis' and Mrs. Hallenbeck's will appear all over them."
"So that's the link to the murder in the Pavilion," said Meg.
"Only piece of hard evidence we have," admitted Myles, "and it's circumstantial. There was such confusion the day of the play that no one remembers seeing Mrs. Hallenbeck going around to the back of the shed, much less pulling the hood over Mavis' face."
"Did she confess?" asked Meg.
Quill winced. Myles reached up and covered her hand with his. "Yes. She did."
"What'd she say?" Meg persisted.
Quill answered the question in Myles's eyes with a reluctant nod.
"There's nothing wrong with her intellect. That sets her apart from most murderers I've known." He grimaced. "Almost all of them are borderline intelligence. Of course, my experience has been with street crime. But she shares one characteristic with them. She's proud of the result. Confessions are easier than the public thinks. Most killers can't wait to tell you, once they know we know."
"So she boasted about it?" said Doreen.
"She wouldn't talk to me with witnesses present and until she was sure I wasn't wired. When she knew, for certain, I couldn't do anything with the confession, she told me she'd decided to kill Mavis as soon as an opportunity presented itself - a decision she'd made before she met you, Quill. "That first night, she and Mavis had planned an 'accident' on the balcony, and as we suspected, Mrs. Hallenbeck tried pushing Mavis over the edge. Mavis was a lot younger, and a lot tougher, and Mrs. Hallenbeck lost that round, as we know.