Mark handed over a glass of chilled apple juice. “Now you’re fishing, buddy. I’ve never been to Las Vegas before the day you saw me in the hotel room, and Joanie spent the summer in Australia.”
Hannibal sipped his juice and watched Mark’s face closely. Leaning on the counter he was quite relaxed, his mind not really centered on the conversation. If he was lying, he was a pro. On the other hand, he might just feel safe standing behind the truth. That would make him just about the only innocent in this case.
“Yeah, that’s what her uncle thought too. Now don’t tell me. She e-mailed you every day, right?”
Mark adopted a smug smile and pulled open a kitchen drawer. “Yeah, she did, as a matter of fact. But of course, e-mails can come from anyplace. You’ll be more interested in these postmarks.”
With the flourish of a stage magician, Mark flipped his wrist and laid a fan of post cards on the counter in front of Hannibal. And like the mark at a carnival, Hannibal spread the postcards out with one hand, pictures toward himself, considering which one to pick out. Except this time he knew it was the magician who had been fooled. There was no longer an ounce of doubt in his mind that Mark had been dodged as easily as Langford Kitteridge had.
Hannibal soon found the card he wanted. Its glossy cover featured a picture of the Sydney Opera House. “Ah, this one’s from August 12th,” he said blandly. Mark’s brows knit as Hannibal raised the card and held it at arm’s length with the picture toward himself. He looked over the edge of the card at Mark’s now startled face “Didn’t stay for an opera today,” Hannibal said, as if reading right through the card, “but it was well worth stopping just to see this place. Love you always, your Joanie. Right?”
Mark snatched the postcard out of Hannibal’s hand. “How the hell did you do that?” “Sorry, pal,” Hannibal said. “She sent the same card to her uncle. On the same day. With the exact same message. But none of that changes the fact that court records show she was in Las Vegas at the time getting a divorce.”
“Divorce?” Mark built another bloody mary while he talked. “How can that be? I mean, Joan wasn’t married before.”
Hannibal enjoyed the sweet aroma of his apple juice before draining the glass. “Don’t feel bad. Her uncle missed her getting married twice. I figure she got somebody to send her the postcards from Australia, filled them all out, and sent them back.”
Mark swallowed most of his new drink and walked around to the couch. He stood for a while, as if he wasn’t sure sitting down was safe. “That would be an awfully elaborate ruse, don’t you think? Just to keep me from knowing she was married before? Besides, she doesn’t have any friends in Australia.”
“Well, maybe a professional contact, or a business associate.” Hannibal said. Then he froze in place staring right past Mark. The word professional had done it. A memory jumped into his mind. The only papers he found in Oscar’s bedroom were airline ticket stubs, neatly folded in the table beside his bed. In the last year, he’d flown to Canada, Japan, Russia and yes, Australia.
Hannibal lifted the yearbook onto the counter and stared down at it. “Oscar Peters was there,” he said. “Oscar, her employee. She knew him when he was just a kid, way back in Germany.”
“Really?” Mark moved back into the kitchen and reached for the refrigerator, but the book Hannibal had just put down drew his attention.
“Yeah, they went back that far. He did this for her, to deceive both you and her uncle about her having been married previously.” Hannibal opened the book and began slowly flipping the pages.
“Do you really think that was a secret worth killing for?” Mark asked, sounding uncertain for the first time. “Could she have done such a thing?”
Hannibal kept the pages turning slowly, staring down at a time most of us remember as being more innocent. “He was a real person Mark. A human being, with a past, and hopes and dreams just like the rest of us. It’s hard to avoid the fact that Joan is connected with his death.” Then he looked up. “Where is she, Mark?”
Hannibal turned the book upside down and Mark stared down into it as if hypnotized by the moving pages. Learning so much so quickly about his new bride had drained all the fight out of him. “I heard her say something about going to see Gil Donner today.”
Hannibal turned the book back around to face himself. “Wonder how she knows Gil,” he said. “Any ideas?” He had fanned past the general crowd scenes and club photos to the glamorous poses of the senior class pictures. Right that minute he hated the world that turned some of those winsome faces into selfish, hate filled or dangerous people. Then his hand fell flat onto the page just under one of the pictures and he drew in a long, deep breath. She was very lovely back then, and now he knew her deep, blood tinged auburn hair was natural. Her skin was still as creamy and clear as it had been in high school, and her eyes were just as dark. As she looked up from the page at him his mind pulled the scattered threads of the case more tightly together around her.
“It would seem that Joan and Oscar go back even farther than I suspected.”
30
Within fifteen minutes Hannibal was turning off Route One into the little mini-suburb of hotels and office buildings just north of Alexandria called Crystal City. On the way, he had called Cindy to let her know he had the case all figured out. While pulling into the access road behind the Courtyard Marriott, he mentally walked through the likely scenarios of meeting Gil, Ruth and Joan together. He tried to predict who would say what, how each would react, and how he could best separate Ruth from the other two. He was convinced that Gil and Joan were conspirators involved in the three connected murders. Ruth, he thought, was an innocent and he needed to separate her from the rest.
He grabbed the yearbook, dropped change into the meter at the curb and walked around to the front of the hotel. He spotted Ray parked a few yards away. At least no one would go in or out unobserved.
Hannibal brushed past the uniformed doorman into the chrome and steel lobby, complete with conversation groups reminiscent of the gathering of faux living rooms one finds in large furniture stores. The elevators rose up transparent columns on the other side of the lobby, and he stalked toward them with resolve. He had a plan, but just before he reached the elevators, his plan was short-circuited by a woman calling his name.
He spun to see Ruth Peters on the nearest sofa. Her soft features beamed at him as if he were a long lost family member. The woman was woefully short of family, he thought, and he couldn’t simply walk past her even if he wanted to. Working to raise a smile, he went to her and sat opposite her on the facing couch. For a moment, it was as if he was visiting her in her own living room.
“Mrs. Peters, you’re looking well today. But why are you sitting out here in the lobby?”
She touched her bluish hair and Hannibal thought she might be a little embarrassed. “I was here visiting an old acquaintance, but he has company right now.”
Hannibal thought it time to cut through some of the smoke screen. “You’re here with Gil Donner, ma’am,” he said. “You know him because years ago he was provost marshal in Berlin and your husband’s boss. His visitor is Joan Kitteridge. I now know that she knew your son back in high school.” He laid the yearbook on the glass table that separated them. Ruth eyes flared in instant recognition.
“Where did you find this?” she asked, laying her gnarled hand on the cover as if it were her son’s body. “Did you take it from Oscar’s home?”
“Actually, your husband gave it to me when I went to Germany,” Hannibal said. “I should have given it to you right away, but I thought…”
He wasn’t sure how to finish that sentence so she finished it for him. “You thought I’d want to know why Foster would part with it. That was kind of you, but I wouldn’t be surprised if you fished it out of our trash. Foster can be a cold man.”