The dog looked between him and the sandwich, his meaning clear — if Edison was giving up roast beef for him, the human had better eat it. He patted Edison on the back before taking his first bite. That’s when he realized how ravenous he was. The sandwich was perfect — thin-sliced beef, horseradish sauce, a freshly baked bun.
“Thank you. I know I’ve been a bear since Maeve was shot.”
“You shouldn’t blame yourself, even though you do. You can’t control what people do.” She handed him a Bundaberg root beer and pointed to a stack of papers. “Tell me about these.”
“That’s the pile for the dead. Marine-related.”
She leaned over to read the papers without picking them up. Then she looked at the door. She must be going off shift soon, so he tried to keep her talking. He never knew what to say to the other bodyguards or the policemen guarding him. Vivian and Andres were the only people he had to talk to. His small world was starting to feel like a prison.
“From what I can tell,” he swallowed a hunk of sandwich, “there’s only one suspect.”
She looked at him expectantly, because he’d solved mysteries before. Too bad he was going to disappoint her now. “Who?”
“Aquaman.”
Apparently not a big believer in superheroes, she grimaced. “And this pile?”
“Those whose fortunes changed because of each death — heirs to wealth, heirs to position or title, creditors who got paid or didn’t, people with vendettas. Mourners.”
“Don’t forget those who want to become the next king.”
“They do have an odd line of succession,” he said. “And getting Prince Timgad out of the way might help some royal candidates. All those who seem to want to be king are in that pile, too.”
“Good. What else do you have?”
He pointed to the smallest pile with his sandwich. “That pile is about the giant sub.”
“Hmm,” she said without looking at it.
He suspected she was just humoring him, but it helped. “The sub is of Swedish design, but all three known subs of that design are accounted for. It took time to track them down, but I managed. I’ve checked and checked. The Halland is in a submarine yard in Sweden being serviced, which I could confirm with surveillance cameras from the dock. The Gotland is on a war-games exercise in San Diego. The Uppland is patrolling in the Baltic Sea. They weren’t anywhere near New York at the time of the accident. But what if another sub of the same design was built, maybe by a different foreign power and in secrecy?”
“Why would they want to do that?” she asked.
“The builders? Money.” He took another sip of root beer. It had a nice gingery snap to it. “The buyers? So they could have a powerful weapon nobody knows about.”
“Would the Swedes build something like that?”
“I don’t think it was the Swedes.” He stared down at the white pages on the green felt. “I think it was—”
“The Chinese?” she interrupted.
He was so surprised he almost choked. She couldn’t have heard of the hacking. “Why do you say that?”
“Squares with the assault rifle I found next to the wreckage.”
“You never told me the gun was Chinese!”
“Just found out,” she said. “I turned it over to the police. Had to get Dirk to look up their findings because they won’t tell me anything.”
“Do the Chinese allow women to crew their subs?”
“I don’t know. Why?”
He talked around a mouthful of sandwich. “We do. Some European countries do. Canada.”
“You’re saying Aquaman’s got a girlfriend?”
“Everyone knows Aquaman is married.” He gulped down a mouthful of root beer. “To Mera, Queen of Atlantis.”
“Maybe a mermaid on the side?”
“Maybe.” He felt like he was close to something. “I did gait analysis of the swimmer who was near our sub, and it’s definitely a woman.”
She stopped looking at the door and picked up the suspicious-deaths file. “For some of these deaths, nobody ever found the bodies.”
“The plane-crash victims? Not surprising.”
“Maybe.” She skimmed the mind map he’d created linking the women to each other and to the rest of the royal family. Lots of bubbles and lines. It hadn’t really helped his analysis any. He knew he was reaching.
“Their plane went down over the Sea of Japan.” He took a slower sip of root beer. “No survivors. Black box not recovered. Small jets like that are—”
“Not interested in the crash details.” She kept reading.
He gave her space. Maybe she’d see something he didn’t. He hoped she did, since he didn’t see anything.
When she was done, she looked back up at him, as if she expected him to say something. “I’ve checked the men who stood to gain from these deaths, and—”
“What about the women?” she asked. “Did you check the women?”
“The women?” He stared at her. “The women don’t have a lot of specific motives, and they’re also dead.”
“The bride on that plane had a strong motive to kill the prince — he beat her sister to death, and she was going to have to marry him.” She sounded angry.
“That’s not in the files. Her sister’s death was listed as a burglary gone wrong. See right there?” He pointed to the cause-of-death line on the mind map, but she didn’t even look at it. “Why would you think the prince killed her?”
“I’ve heard rumors from a source here in New York,” she said. “Did you collect the same level of data on the women who died in the plane crash as you did on the men?”
“I collected some.” He felt defensive, because he hadn’t done much research on the women. He’d viewed them as collateral damage and incidental to the killer, like he and Vivian had almost been, not as the targets of the murder. “They’re about her age. Relatives, friends, people who you’d expect in the wedding party. Nothing stood out.”
“Educated women. All college graduates. One was even a doctor. Those are motives.”
“How so? Laila Dakkar was highly educated. Went to schools in Switzerland and London. Makes sense her friends would be like her.”
“Maybe a woman like that didn’t want to marry a cruel and powerful man. Maybe these women didn’t want to subjugate themselves to a system that views them as expendable brood mares.” Her words were tight and clipped.
So obvious. He was ashamed he’d never thought of that. Because he was a man, and he’d never had to think of it. No wonder Maeve dumped him. “Go on.”
“I don’t know what was going through these women’s heads when they were alive,” she said. “But these dead women have the strongest motive of anyone on your lists. They suffered under their social system, Laila Dakkar most of all.”
He wasn’t going to argue with her. She could kick his ass, and she was probably right. “But.”
“But what?”
“Those women are dead, remember?” He didn’t want to set her off.
“Your data says they’re dead, but your data could be wrong, just like they were about the first sister’s death,” she said. “Since your swimming analysis says you’re looking for women who have a motive to kill this guy, why don’t you look close to home?”
“Their plane really did crash. I checked the flight plans, the insurance claims, the statements of Japanese investigators. Surveillance shows the women boarded the plane, and the plane never came back. Records show it crashed into the ocean.”
“Just because it crashed doesn’t mean those women were still on it.”
“It’s the mostly likely explanation,” he said. “There’s no record the plane landed.”
“It’s the most likely explanation, but none of the most likely explanations are leading anywhere, right?”
“True,” Joe said. “Go on.”