“A little iodine’s all it needs. I’ve had enough of doctors and hospitals.”
They got into Rinniak’s car. Before he started the engine he said, “I keep thinking I should’ve let Kelso know before we came here. I’ve worked with the man off and on for ten years, I owed him that much.”
“He wouldn’t have gone along with this.”
“No. He wouldn’t.”
“Even if he had, you heard what she said. Twice as bad for him if he’d been here.”
“You’re right. Spared him that much, at least. But he’s got to know now and it’s my job to tell him. And it should be in person.”
“You can drop me off somewhere first.”
“I said should be in person. Truth is, I don’t think I can face him right now. So I’ll do it the coward’s way and call him from Red Bluff.” Rinniak put the cruiser in gear, eased it forward. “I have kids of my own,” he said. “One of my daughters is about Ashley’s age.”
“So’s my son.”
“Then you know why I can’t face Kelso right now.”
“Yes,” Runyon said, “I know why.”
25
I spent that night going over facts and suppositions, by myself and with Tamara and Kerry. Tamara had dug up two more pieces of connected, corroborating, circumstantial evidence-all there was left to find. On Wednesday morning I went to see Irv Blaustein at Pacific Rim Insurance and had a long talk with him.
Same conclusion, down the line.
There was nothing to do then but make an appointment with Celeste Ogden and deliver the news to her.
I f anyone killed your sister, Mrs. Ogden, it was Anthony Drax.”
No visible reaction. She sat on the tufted velvet couch in her living room, her back straight, her hands palms up in the lap of her black slacks-the same posture as on my previous visit and in Dr. Prince’s office yesterday. Same expressionless demeanor, too.
“If?” she said.
“He was there the night she died and his actions indicate a certain amount of guilt, but whether he was directly responsible is open to question. If he was, it probably wasn’t a premeditated act.”
“Of course it was premeditated. On his orders.”
“If a crime was committed, it’s not likely Mathias was complicit except as a catalyst.”
“You’re not making sense. Why do you keep saying ‘if ‘?”
On the table in front of her was the file printout Tamara and I had put together, but Mrs. Ogden hadn’t opened the envelope. She wanted a verbal report first, which made this even more difficult for me.
I said, “It’s also possible your sister’s death was just what it was ruled to be, an accident.”
“I don’t believe that for a second.”
“I’m sorry, but the facts support more than one theory.”
“Will you please get to the point? Tell me why you believe Drax is guilty.”
She wasn’t going to let me ease into explanations. All right then. Facts. I told her about the Mathiases’ neighbor Mary Conti and what she’d seen at approximately ten o’clock on the night Nancy Mathias died. I gave her the information Tamara had turned up: the three-year-old BMW Z3 owned by Drax’s girlfriend, Donna Lane, was silver colored; she’d been working a flight to Dallas on the night of the murder; the car registered to Drax had been in the shop for repairs on that same date.
“There’s one more thing that points to him,” I said then. The main thing, thanks to Kerry’s sharp eye. “The last entry in your sister’s diary.”
“… You mean the question ‘why adhere’?”
“Yes. Only it’s not the question we all took it to be. She wasn’t asking herself why she should stay in the marriage.”
“What, then?”
“Let me give you the reasoning first. Your sister often worked in her study at night, paying bills, writing in her diary. We know that from the date-and-time lines on the diary entries. And from the fact that Mrs. Conti often saw lights on in the upstairs front room. That is where Nancy’s study was?”
“Yes.”
“Directly above the front entrance.”
“Yes.”
“Was her desk close to the windows?”
“Close to them, yes.”
“Her last diary entry was made at ten-oh-five P.M. That’s approximately the same time Mrs. Conti saw the stranger park his car, walk toward Nancy’s house, and vanish. Suppose your sister had just opened up the diary file to make a new entry when the doorbell interrupted her. Suppose she swung around to the windows, looked out and down. Mrs. Conti said the night-light over the front door was on. Would Nancy have been able to see who was ringing the bell at that late hour?”
“Yes, if he was standing back slightly from the door. It’s set flush in the wall; there’s no vestibule.”
“Then suppose she was surprised and puzzled enough at the visitor’s identity to turn back to the computer and type that last sentence before she went downstairs to answer the bell. If it was on and open to the diary file, it’s not unlikely she’d have done something like that under the circumstances.”
“No. It’s not.”
“But it was an impulsive act and she was in a hurry, distracted. The question she was asking was the one in her mind at the moment, and when she typed it out she used her usual brand of shorthand-but she also made a pair of typing errors that she either didn’t notice or didn’t bother to correct, and that changed the entire meaning of the sentence. She touched the Caps Lock key when she shifted to type the first letter, so that the rest of the question was in capital letters. Three words, not two. Or rather, two words and one set of initials. Her second mistake was not hitting the space bar to separate the initials from the last word. The question wasn’t ‘Why adhere?’; it was ‘Why AD here?’ AD-Anthony Drax.”
Celeste Ogden nodded stiffly. “But you don’t think he went there with the intention of killing her.”
“No, I don’t,” I said. “Drax is a smart man, and smart men don’t plan crimes where there’s a strong risk of being seen in the neighborhood, as he was seen. It’s more likely he went there to talk to her. If he did kill her, it was probably the result of tempers flaring out of control-a shove, an unintentional blow, a fall that resulted in a fatal head trauma. That kind of thing happens all too often.”
“Nancy wouldn’t have invited him upstairs. Or are you saying he didn’t push her down the stairs?”
“Not the way you mean. In that scenario he panicked when he saw she was dead and tried to cover up by making it look like an accident. Carried her upstairs and threw the body down. Found her key and locked the door after him when he left. The other possible scenario is that he did nothing except argue with her and then leave. She was upset; she went upstairs; she tripped or lost her balance and fell.”
“Is that what you think happened?”
“There’s just no way of knowing. Two things argue for the first scenario-the length of time Drax was in the house, more than half an hour, if Mrs. Conti’s memory is accurate, and the fact that he was hurrying, staying in the shadows, coat collar pulled up, when she saw him the second time, as if he was anxious to get away from there. But both could also have innocent explanations.”
Celeste Ogden got up and paced over to the windows, stood looking out at the city. It was quiet in the big sunroom, quiet in the penthouse flat. Somewhere I could hear a clock ticking, the only discernible sound. We were alone in the penthouse; Mrs. Ogden had let me in herself this time.
With her back to me she said, “Why would Drax want to talk to Nancy at that time of night?”
“It’s the kind of thing a man like him would do if he knew she was dying, knew she was angry at her husband and threatening divorce. Try to convince her to change her mind, stay with Mathias and keep quiet about her condition for his sake.”
That brought her around. “Now what are you saying? That Nancy was killed because she had a brain tumor?”
“Directly or indirectly, yes.”
“That’s insane!”
“I agree. But it’s the only reasonable explanation.”