Mrs. Griffin nodded. Her cheeks flushed red. “I don’t know what more they want from me.”
“Take heart. There are some new developments.” Harry filled her in.
“So I may not have inherited Marlowe?”
My cousin smiled. “I think we can safely say Marlowe is yours.”
That’s the thing about some people. Money doesn’t matter to them. Their own troubles don’t matter to them. What matters are those they love, human and otherwise. I looked from Harry to Mrs. Griffin. They were worth more than anything money could buy. Even the cat — I stifled a sneeze — was beginning to grow on me.
Still looking worried, Mrs. Griffin took Marlowe back to the kitchen.
“Well, as dubious as I am of the will, I’m glad the police have other suspects now.” I stretched out my arms and yawned.
“But do they?”
“It makes sense, Harry. You were right. Grogan thought he’d gained a city block when both Paul and Van Pelt died. He could have held a gun to Paul’s head and made him change the will. And after he did he poisoned Paul.”
“Yes, Jake. Perhaps you’re right.” With his red-rimmed eyes, Harry looked like he’d been on a doozy of a bender. “We’ve been chasing so many leads, I suppose I’d lost sight of our goal, which was to make sure Mrs. Griffin wasn’t falsely accused.”
Something in my cousin’s voice didn’t ring true. He pulled Paul’s ledger out of his briefcase, opened his laptop, and began searching.
“Ever hear of Herle Investigations?”
I’d settled back into a wingback and closed my eyes. They popped open. “Never. They aren’t local.”
“Website says they operate in every state.”
While that may have been true, I’d never run across any of their investigators in Pittsburgh or in Florida, where I’d apprenticed to a local gumshoe right out of college.
Harry picked up his landline and pressed speaker. In less than a minute we were talking to the investigator Paul had hired. Afterwards, we stared at each other in silence.
“So Julianne’s dead,” Harry finally said.
“Overdose,” I added. “But why was Paul looking for Julianne in the first place? I mean, sure she was family, but she’d left him in the lurch. Why did he want to find her now?”
“That, Jake, is the crux of the matter. I wonder — doesn’t Hollis University put on a big book festival every year?” Without waiting for me to answer he typed into his cell phone. “Yes, yes it does.” He opened Paul’s ledger, his finger gliding over the page. “And Paul went to it three months ago. To the same place Amelia’s City was on loan,” Harry said.
“But we don’t know if he even saw the painting.”
“Paul frequented museums. Don’t you remember the museum trip he and Mrs. Griffin took to Washington, D.C.?”
I did. It was the same weekend I’d opened, and closed, in The Moonstone, a disastrous reimagining for stage of the much loved Wilkie Collins novel. There’d been none of Mrs. Griffin’s decadent fudge brownies to soothe my pain and I’d truly suffered for it.
“Jake, you do remember?”
“Yes. But if Paul saw the painting, why wouldn’t he confront the museum? Or the Van Pelts?”
“With what? He was the one who gave the painting to Julianne. The only recourse he might have had was to track her down and ask her to share whatever money she might have made from it.”
“Do you think Paul told Margot he’d found the painting?”
Harry shook his head. “It didn’t sound like he had when we talked to her. I’m sure he wouldn’t have told her unless he had cash to give her.”
“How much is the painting worth, Harry?”
My cousin searched the provenance record.
If I’d been standing I would have staggered at the three quarters of a million dollars it was insured for. “But what does all this matter? Grogan is the killer. And maybe they’ll be able to pin Van Pelt’s death on him too.”
Harry closed his laptop. “Maybe.”
A chill ran through my body, as if Paul’s ghost was passing through me. Yesterday’s feeling of disquiet returned, but I had a rehearsal to get to.
The feeling of disquiet dogged me all night. The truth was, as much as I wanted to believe we’d wrapped up the case, it didn’t feel right to me either. To make matters worse, Beth said she was tired and canceled our after-rehearsal date. Disappointed, I declined the rest of the cast’s invitation to the late-night bar down the street and turned in the opposite direction, toward my parked Honda.
The air was heavy. Hoping to make it home before the threatening storm broke, I quickened my pace. As I passed a narrow alley a gloved hand grabbed my shoulder. I felt a hard poke in my side and swung around to see a spectre swathed in black, the glint of a blade in its hand.
Perhaps the surprise I wasn’t down on my knees from the initial blade thrust is what kept the dark phantom from plunging its knife into my chest. Perhaps it was the sound of my fellow actors calling out to me to join them after all. Perhaps it was my ready stance, honed from all those false encounters on the stage. For whatever reason, the dark wraith stepped quickly back into the alley, fading from view as if it had passed into another realm.
I must have been confused, thinking my date had arrived, as several hands supported me, moving me quickly to the light of a street lamp. I called Beth’s name.
“Take it easy, Jake,” I heard someone say. “Lucky you’re still wearing the belt.” After what seemed a few minutes a patrolman arrived, and then an ambulance. By then I felt more myself and was able to describe the strange mugging.
It was only after I got back home, after I’d removed Benedict’s belt — the one that had stopped the blade from piercing my skin — that I began to shake. I poured myself a glass of milk and drank it. It did no good. I needed something stronger. Harry’s twenty-year-old scotch came to mind. I didn’t think, in this case, he’d mind if I helped myself, so I walked the path to the mansion and let myself in the back door. I padded down the hall and retrieved the bottle from Harry’s hiding place, pouring a glass I downed without water or ice.
“Jake, what are you doing?” Harry stood in the doorway, his bat in hand.
“I had a close call,” I said, sinking into a wingback chair as I told him what had happened.
“This madness has to stop now,” Harry said, as much to himself as to me. He poured me a second glass of scotch. “You should have gone to the hospital.”
“My belt stopped the blade.” I twisted in my seat and held up my shirt for Harry to see. “I’m perfectly fine.”
“It’s a nasty bruise.” Harry pulled my shirt up higher. “Not as bad as Marlowe’s handiwork, though.”
As if he’d heard Harry say his name, an ungodly wail emanated from the bowels of the mansion. My cousin smiled. “I don’t think Marlowe likes being left out.”
Harry retrieved the annoying feline, who jumped into my lap as soon as he came into the room.
“It’s love, I think,” Harry said, sitting behind his desk.
I couldn’t answer. I was too busy stifling a sneeze.
The next day I woke to the smell of coffee and pizza.
Harry poked his head into my bedroom. “It’s eleven a.m. A lot has happened.”
I dressed and joined Harry at my kitchen table.
“I was at the bookshop this morning. We need to go back,” he said, putting a slice of microwaved pizza in front of me.
I couldn’t remember how long it had been sitting in my freezer but I ate it anyway. “Are we allowed into the shop?”
“They’ll meet us there.”
“The police?” I asked.
“I talked to Millicent’s lawyer,” Harry said.