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-”