“You’re implying premeditation.” MacTeague was trying to look at all the angles. “Nobody would carry around a piece of dental floss that long unless he figured to have some use for it.”
“Not necessarily,” Regina disagreed. “I’m not saying he killed Faith Venable on the spur of the moment, but the dental floss doesn’t prove it was premeditated, either. A normal length would do the trick. Lots of people carry dental floss around with them. Why, even Mr. Cabot had some with him the other night.”
“Do you have a piece with you now?” MacTeague asked Cabot.
“Yes.” Still looking disdainful, Cabot produced it.
MacTeague took it and handed it to Regina. “One more time,” he instructed her. “To make sure you can do it with a piece this short.”
Regina went through the procedure again. It left no doubt. An ordinary piece of floss was just long enough to be pulled through the door. “Convinced?” she asked when she was back inside again.
“Convinced.” MacTeague nodded.
“I don’t see how all this brings you any closer to proving Dwight Venable’s innocence,” Cabot said impatiently. “And that’s what I hired you for. I’d like to see some results!”
“I think I have some results for you, Mr. Cabot,” Regina said softly. “You see, I know who the real murderer is.”
They both stared at her.
“'Who?” MacTeague said finally.
Regina laid it on them.
CHAPTER NINETEEN
Laid in the Grave!
“Dr. Karl Enright?”
MacTeague had repeated the name after Regina. Cabot remained silent, his face impenetrably stony. Now MacTeague was obviously waiting for Regina to explain.
She explained. “One. Yesterday, in his office, Enright pulled that trick with the dental floss on me. Two. His name appears on the list which, according to Dwight Venable, his dying sister indicated had the murderer’s name on it. Three. Just before she died in her brother’s arms, after the bit with the list, Faith Veable chanted a mantra. At first I thought it was her own mantra. But when I determined that it wasn’t, I realized that she’d chanted the mantra of the murderer. The mantra she chanted went like this; ‘AHHH-HHH—LOO—OO-OO’,” Regina keened softly.
Cabot looked startled.
“That mantra,” Regina finished triumphantly, “is the same one I heard Dr. Karl Enright chanting the other night! It’s his mantra!”
“What about motive?” MacTeague raised the question.
“It was a sex crime!”
Cabot snorted.
“I can’t prove it,” Regina admitted. “But Dr. Enright is a really sick lecher. My guess is that he tried to seduce Faith that night in my apartment and failed.”
“That wouldn’t be any reason to kill her," Mac-Teague pointed out.
“It might be if he’d been trying to make her all along and she kept rejecting him. The cumulative effect on his ego just might have pushed him off the deep end. Remember, she told me on the phone that she wanted to come up to my place because there was someone she was trying to avoid. From personal experience I can tell you there’s no man a girl would be more likely to want to avoid than Dr. Karl Enright!”
“It’s circumstantial,” MacTeague said thoughtfully. “But it’s strong. We just might have a case.”
“You have no case at all.” Cabot’s voice was icy.
“Why do you say that, Mr. Cabot?”
“Because, as you’d have learned if you’d taken the trouble to find out why the police dismissed him as a suspect, he has an unimpeachable alibi! He was in his office at the time of the murder, and I was there with him, having my dentures adjusted.” Calvin Cabot looked contemptuously at Regina. “Your irresponsible charge against Dr. Enright is completely unjustified,” he told her. “And,” he added to MacTeague, “it merely substantiates my doubts about this girl’s ability.”
“That’s not fair,” MacTeague answered. “She may be wrong about Enright, but the lab tests prove she’s right about the locked door. That’s a big break- through, Mr. Cabot. I think Regina deserves credit for it.”
“I don’t!” Cabot said curtly. “I want her oil the case, MacTeague! And that’s final!”
“I’m sorry, Cabot.” MacTeague purposely omitted the “Mister,” just as Cabot had done to him, and was rewarded by seeing his client’s face go red with anger. “I don’t let customers dictate personnel policy to me.”
“Either you fire this girl, or I’ll take ATOMICS off the case altogether,” Cabot threatened.
“You can’t. I have your retainer", and you signed a contract. It’s ironclad. I know, because I had it written that way.”
“My lawyers will see about that!” Cabot slammed out of Regina’s apartment.
“I’m sorry, Angus,” Regina said in the silence that followed. “I really thought I had it sewed up.”
“Well, tomorrow is another day.” He kissed her lightly on the cheek and left.
After moping around the apartment, Regina curled up in an armchair with an Agatha Christie whodunit. She figured maybe she’d find some ideas there. She was just at the part where the suspiciously nervous valet—whom she’d decided was the murderer—was murdered himself when her phone rang.
“Good evening, my dear.” It was Dr. Karl Enright.
“What do you want?” Killer or not, Regina still couldn’t stand him.
“I’m concerned about that sore tooth of yours. You left so abruptly yesterday that we never did finish with it. It just happens that I’m in the neighborhood and I thought I might drop by and — ahh — have another look.” He laughed insinuatingly.
“You’ve seen all you’re going to see!” Regina told him firmly. “I wouldn’t let you treat my pet goldfish! And he’s been dead three years!”
“Well, if that’s your attitude—”
“Just a minute!” On impulse, Regina stopped him from hanging up. “I want to ask you something.”
“Why not ask me in person, my dear?”
“Maybe if I get the right answer,” Regina crooned, playing the game, “I’ll think of another question to ask you in person.”
“Now that’s more like it, my sweet. What is it you want to ask?”
“Where were you the night Faith Venable was murdered?”
“What--?” The question obviously took Dr. Enright by surprise. He tried to cover up with a nervous laugh. “I was in my office treating Calvin Cabot,” he said just a little too quickly. “Tricky thing, his dentures. He had to come back the next night so I could finish up.”
“The night after the murder?”
“That’s right. I remember because he tied up my phone for almost an hour.” Dr. Enright babbled on. “He was making arrangements with some funeral director about Faith’s body. It was creepy. He got into all kinds of details about embalming and everything. He seemed to know more about it than the mortician did. Kept insisting he wanted to be sure the body would keep. Now what difference would that make? When you’re dead, you’re dead.”
“Did he make any other arrangements?” Regina asked.
“He had the remains shipped to his place in the Adirondacks. I guess she was buried there.”
“I guess so,” Regina said doubtfully. She fell quiet for a moment, thinking.
Dr. Enright broke into her thoughts. “Now about that other question you’re going to think of, my dear,” he said in the slithering tones he mistook for sexy. “What say I drop by so you can ask it?”
“That won’t be necessary. I can ask it over the phone right now. It’s just this:” Regina took a deep breath. “Why don’t you drop dead?!” She slammed the phone down.
But she didn’t go back to Agatha Christie. What Enright had told her kept nagging at her mind. Why had Cabot been so concerned about embalming Faith’s body? Why had he had it shipped to the Adironclacks when there were so many graveyards close at hand?