Her eyes narrowed. “You need to answer my question first. Why are you here?”
Gurney had to make a decision fast, based on what his gut told him about this woman, as he weighed the potential risks and rewards of different levels of disclosure. He had little to go on. In fact, just one tiny glimpse of something that he might very well have misread. All he had was the fleeting sense that when she’d spoken the name “Carl” she’d done it with the same distaste as Paulette Purley had.
He made his decision. “Let me put it this way,” he said, lowering his voice to give it the tenor of confidentiality. “There are certain aspects of Kay Spalter’s conviction that are questionable.”
The woman’s reaction was sudden, excited, open-mouthed. “You mean she didn’t do it after all? God, I knew it!”
It encouraged him to open the door a bit wider.
“You didn’t think she was capable of killing Carl?”
“Oh, she was capable of it, all right. But she’d never have done it like that.”
“You mean with a rifle?”
“I mean from so far away.”
“Why not?”
She cocked her head, gave him a skeptical look. “How well do you know Kay?”
“Probably not as well as you do,… Miss?… Mrs.?”
“Carol. Carol Blissy.”
He extended his hand over the desk. “Nice to meet you, Carol. And I really appreciate your taking the time to speak to me.” She took his hand briefly but firmly. Her fingers and palm were warm. He went on, “I’m working with her legal team. I’ve had one face-to-face meeting with Kay and one long phone call. Our meeting gave me a good sense of her as a person, but I have the feeling you know her much better than I do.”
Carol Blissy looked pleased. She absently adjusted the neckline of the black silk blouse she was wearing. She had glittery rings on all five fingers. “When I said she’d never have done it like that, what I meant was that it wasn’t her style. If you know her at all, you know that she’s an in-your-face kind of person. There’s nothing sneaky or long-distance about Kay. If she was going to kill Carl, she wouldn’t have shot him from half a mile away. She’d have walked straight up to him and split his head with an ax.”
She paused, as though listening to her own words, and made a face. “Sorry, that was disgusting. But you do understand what I mean, right?”
“I understand exactly what you mean. I have the same feeling about her.” He paused, looked admiringly at her hand. “Carol, those rings are lovely.”
“Oh?” She looked down at them. “Thank you. I guess they are pretty nice. I think I have a good eye for jewelry.” She moistened the corners of her mouth with the tip of her tongue and looked back up at Gurney from her desk. “You know, you still haven’t told me why you’re here.”
He had to make a choice—a choice he’d been postponing—regarding how much to reveal. There were significant risks and rewards attached to various levels of candor. In this instance, the inner picture he was developing of Carol Blissy persuaded him to go a bit further than he normally would. He had a feeling that openness would be rewarded with cooperation.
“It’s a sensitive issue. Not something I could just blurt out without knowing who I was talking to.” He took a deep breath. “We have some new evidence suggesting that Mary Spalter’s death may not have been an accident.”
“Not … an accident?”
“I shouldn’t be saying this, but I want your help, and I need to be honest with you. I think the Spalter case was a double murder. And I don’t think Kay had anything to do with it.”
It seemed to take her a few seconds to absorb this. “You’re going to get her out of prison?”
“That’s my hope.”
“Wonderful!”
“But I need your help.”
“What kind of help?”
“I assume you have security cameras here?”
“Of course.”
“How long do you retain the video files?”
“A lot longer than we need to. In the old days, we had those clunky video cassettes we had to keep recycling. But the capacity of the new system is huge, and we never physically touch it. It deletes the oldest files automatically when capacity becomes an issue, but I don’t think that happens for about a year—at least not with the files from the motion-activated cameras. It’s different with the files created by the cameras that run continuously in the gym and in the nursing care unit. Those deletions happen quicker.”
“Are you the person in charge of making sure it’s all working the way it should?”
She smiled. “I’m the person in charge of everything.” Her ringed fingers smoothed an imaginary wrinkle on the front of her silk blouse.
“I bet you do a very good job.”
“I try. What is it in our video files that interests you?”
“Visitors to Emmerling Oaks on the day Mary Spalter died.”
“Her visitors specifically?”
“No. All visitors: delivery people, repairmen, maintenance crews—anyone who came onto the property that day.”
“How soon do you want it?”
“How soon do you want Kay to get out of prison?”
Gurney knew he was implying an immediacy in results that was, charitably speaking, an exaggeration, even if the video files contained the sort of smoking gun he hoped to find.
Carol set him up at a computer in a room that occupied the rear third of the bungalow. She then went to another building and emailed several large video files to Gurney’s computer. When she came back she gave him some navigation instructions, leaning over his shoulder in a way that made it hard to concentrate.
As she was about to return to the front office, he asked again as offhandedly as he could, “How do you like working for Spalter Realty?”
“I probably shouldn’t say anything about that.” She gave Gurney the kind of playful look that suggested she probably could be talked into any number of things she shouldn’t do.
“It would help me a lot to know how you feel about the Spalter family.”
“I do want to help. But … this is just between us, right?”
“Absolutely.”
“Well … Kay was terrific. Hot tempered but terrific. But Carl was awful. Cold as ice. All he cared about was the bottom line. And Carl was the boss. Jonah stayed away, because Jonah wanted nothing to do with Carl.”
“And now?”
“Now, with Carl gone, Jonah’s in charge.” She looked at Gurney cautiously. “I don’t know him that well yet.”
“I don’t know him at all, Carol. But I’ll tell you the things I’ve heard. He’s a saint. He’s a fake. He’s a fantastic person. He’s a religious nut. Is there anything you can add to any of that?”
She met Gurney’s inquisitive gaze and smiled. “I don’t think so.” She licked the corners of her mouth again. “I’m really the wrong person to ask about guys like that. I’m not what you’d call religious.”
Over the next three hours Gurney reviewed the video files from the three security cameras he considered most likely to have captured something useful—the cameras positioned to provide coverage of the parking area, of the interior of Carol Blissy’s office, and of vehicles utilizing the automated entry gate for residents.
The videos from the parking area and office were the most interesting. There was a painting contractor who got Gurney’s attention by seeming to play the role of a cartoon painter, stopping just short of stepping in a bucket of paint and falling on his face. There was a pizza deliveryman with wild eyes who seemed to be auditioning for the role of a teen-movie psychopath. And then there was a floral delivery person.