“About the murder?”
He nodded. “If you’ll excuse us, Mr Brentnor-”
Susan was happy to escape from Mike’s eager clutches. She allowed herself to be guided out of the courthouse and into Dullea’s car. “Where are we going?” she asked.
“Back to the scene of the crime. Isn’t that how these things are done?”
She laughed. “I’m no psychic, you know. I don’t pick up the killer’s thoughts or visions. Sometimes I notice things that others have missed.”
“That’s what I’m hoping for.”
This time as the car pulled up to the house a white-haired man came onto the front porch to greet them. He introduced himself as James Liction. “I own the place. You folks more police?”
Dullea showed his identification. “Secret Service. The victim was part of an ongoing investigation into counterfeit currency. Could I ask you if she paid her rent in cash?”
He shook his head. “Always a check, first of the month. My wife Mona was just saying what a nice tenant she was. Never any trouble. I can’t believe she was involved with counterfeiters.”
His wife a stocky woman who moved slowly, came out to join them. “Tell ’em about that suspicious-looking guy across the street, James.”
“Well, I already told Sergeant Razerwell.”
“Tell me too,” Dullea requested.
Liction shifted his gaze to Susan. “I happened to see the two of you drive in. After that a fellow parked across the street. He just sat there in his car for a long time. It was too dark to get a good look at him. When he heard the sirens coming he left quick.”
Susan remembered that Betty Quint had glanced out the front window and become upset when she saw the car. “We’re going to take another look upstairs,” Dullea told him.
James Liction shrugged. “Go ahead.” He and his wife went back inside.
The apartment was much the same as the day before, except that the door was sealed by yellow police crime-scene tape. Dullea pulled it away and used a key to enter. Inside Susan noticed signs that the drawers and closets had been searched by the police or Dullea’s people. “What are you looking for?” she asked. “More counterfeit money?”
He nodded. “A great deal of it. Before she went to work for your store, Quint was employed on the reservations desk of a major airline. Her boyfriend, a copilot on international flights, brought back several small packages of counterfeit money, all hundreds like this one. They’re often printed overseas and used as bulk payoffs for drugs.” He brought out the bill he’d shown her earlier, in its clear plastic envelope. He pointed to the lower right of the portrait where it read “Series 1996” in small print. “Notice anything wrong with it?”
She shook her head. “There’s Ben Franklin, looking the same as ever.”
“That’s what’s wrong. Beginning in 1996 the hundred-dollar bills changed significantly. The portrait is larger and off-center. There’s a new watermark and other safety features. Skillful as this job is, the counterfeiters made a fatal mistake in using the old design and dating it 1996. These bills couldn’t be passed in bulk overseas, where a suitcase full of drug money would be carefully examined by the seller, so they were smuggled into this country to be passed individually.”
“You think Susan’s boyfriend hid them here?”
“Yes.”
“And then killed her?”
Dullea shook his head. “His name was Lloyd Baker. He was found shot to death last week in the parking lot at Kennedy Airport.”
Susan sat down on the couch. “You think the same person killed Betty?”
“No, as a matter of fact, Baker’s killer is in custody. We were moving in on Betty Quint and obtaining a search warrant for this apartment. The easy answer is that she feared being caught with the counterfeit money and committed suicide.”
“She stabbed herself in the back? And where did she get the knife? She didn’t take it with her when she stepped into the shower. I was right there.”
“All right, then. If it wasn’t suicide, what happened?”
Susan recalled the scene vividly. “I don’t know. It was almost as if a shower of daggers hit her, instead of water.”
“Daggers? There was only one.”
Susan had gotten up and gone into the bathroom. She opened the cabinet that held the towels, then turned her attention to the shower itself. It was made of molded plastic, recessed into the wall. The plastic was solid and there was no clear sight line to the room’s only window, which had been closed in any event. The ceiling was smooth and unmarked, with the room’s only lights arranged on the wall above the mirror. The showerhead was normal. It had not dispensed daggers. The shower curtain was ordinary white opaque vinyl. “There were two daggers,” she called out to Dullea. “One in her back and another in the bottom of the tub.”
Susan turned on the water and couldn’t hear Dullea’s reply. Something caught her eye. She reached down and peeled it away from the bottom of the tub. It was a piece of Scotch tape, several inches long. Stuck fast near the drain, it had been all but invisible. “Look at this,” she called to him.
He came into the bathroom. “Tape. Where was it?”
“Stuck to the bottom of the bathtub. They could have overlooked it in their crime scene search.”
“What does it tell us?”
“I don’t know.” She stared around the bathroom. “You mentioned a search warrant. When were you planning to use it?”
“Last evening.”
Susan thought about it. “Someone named Roger phoned her in the car, before we arrived at my hotel.”
“I read that in your statement.”
“Maybe he was going to take the counterfeit money off her hands. With her boyfriend dead she’d need to do something.”
“You don’t just get a friend to deal in counterfeit.”
“Maybe it’s the same friend who was selling her pot. He might have been interested.”
“Roger?”
“Roger,” Susan agreed. “When she made the call from my hotel room she sounded a bit frightened of him. And she’d had other messages from him earlier. Maybe she was afraid he’d kill her for those counterfeit hundreds. Maybe he did kill her, but I’m damned if I know how.”
Susan still didn’t have a car of her own, and after Dullea left her off at the hotel she asked the room clerk where she could rent one. He directed her to a place just a few blocks away. As she was turning from the desk another thought struck her. “Do you keep a record of guests’ outgoing phone calls, with the numbers called?”
“Yes, ma’am, we do.”
“Could I see mine, please? I’ve mislaid a local number that I need.”
He brought it up on the computer and jotted it down for her. “This is the only call from your room.”
Susan glanced at it, a bit puzzled. “Yes, that’s the one. Thank you.” Dullea had told her that Betty Quint phoned Mayfield’s from her room, but the number at Mayfield’s new store ended in 6700. This number ended in 6743. Susan went up to her room and dialed it.
A woman’s voice answered with, “Store promotions.”
“Whose office is this?” she asked.
“I – it was Betty Quint’s office.”
“Sadie? Is this Sadie Shepherd?”
“Yes. Betty is-”
“I know. This is Susan Holt.”
“Oh! Miss Holt!”
Susan made a snap decision. “I’d like to speak with you after work today. Could we have a drink together?”
“I don’t know. I’m busy tonight.”
“I have to rent a car. What time do you finish up?”
“Usually five, but until the opening I can pretty much leave any time. Since Miss Quint’s death-”
“I’ll pick you up at five, Sadie. If you don’t want to go anywhere we can talk in the car.”
She was outside the store in a new Chevy when the young woman emerged, exactly on the hour. Sadie heard her beep the horn and headed over to join her in the front seat. “It’s good to see you again, Miss Holt. That was terrible news about poor Betty.”