“In the corner.”
“Do we dare?”
“Under the circumstances, I can’t see how he’d begrudge us.”
Taylor went to the bar, rummaged around, came back with three brandy snifters. He passed them out, raised his and said, “Here’s to crime.” He took a sip, exhaled with satisfaction. Took another sip and chuckled.
“Feeling a little better, Mark?” Steve said.
“I was thinking about Burdett coldcocking Crumbly.”
“Wasn’t that something?” Steve said.
“I’ll say. That pudgy guy sure packed a wallop.”
“Did you see him when court broke up?” Tracy said. “Before they led Timberlaine off. He goes up to him, throws his arm around his shoulders like they were the best of pals.”
“Nothing strange in that,” Steve said.
“Why? I thought Timberlaine hated his guts,” Taylor said.
“Yeah, but they’re adversaries. It’s a special relationship. In a way, it’s more personal than being friends. A good rival, one who puts up a good fight-well, you don’t have to like the guy to respect him as an opponent.”
“Funny you should say so,” Tracy said.
“Oh?”
“I was thinking about you and Vaulding. He was a pretty good opponent, wasn’t he?”
“That he was.”
“Except now,” Taylor said. “I don’t get it. The guy was givin’ you fits for most of the trial, now he’s in here asking you for explanations like he hasn’t got a clue.”
“That’s not so surprising,” Steve said. “The man spent the whole case gearing every theory to the fact Timberlaine was guilty. He’s had just this morning to adjust to the idea he might be innocent. It’s like every notion he had was pulled out from under him. If you consider that, he’s doing fine.”
“And when you consider how fast the evidence jumped around,” Tracy said. “‘Keep your eye on the gun.’ Boy, was that ever prophetic.”
“Why’d you give it to him?” Taylor said. He jerked his thumb. “The press, I mean. Like you said, you could have pulled this off without telling him at all.”
“Which wouldn’t have been fair. If the guy’s decent enough to play ball, he should have a chance to play ball. There’s a bottom line here. Vaulding didn’t want to win if it meant convicting an innocent man.”
“Of course not,” Tracy said.
“There’s no ‘of course not’ about it. Some do. Vaulding deserves credit for not being one of them. And if this case gets him reelected, hey, it’s nice to know we got a friend in this county.”
Mark Taylor set down his glass. “Can we go now?”
Tracy held up her hand. “In a minute. Let’s finish the postmortem.”
“What more is there to say?”
“There’s a lot more to say. Look, Steve, I heard what you said to Vaulding. And I’m sure a lot of it’s true. What I want to know is, how in hell did you figure it out?”
“Oh, that was easy,” Steve said.
Tracy exhaled. She snatched off her glasses, folded them up, put her hands on her hips. “I knew you were going to say that,” she said. “Now, then, you infuriating man, at the risk of being strangled, would you tell me what you mean by that?”
“Well, I should think it’s obvious,” Steve said. “Considering the fact this all started with Timberlaine inviting us out to his mansion for the weekend, then the whole bit with the switching gun and the people changing rooms and the body on the floor of the gun room-all the elements of your basic mystery novel-well, considering all that, and considering who Martin Kessington was, the solution was obvious.”
Tracy frowned. “What do you mean?”
Steve grinned, ducked his head and moved well out of Tracy’s reach before answering.
“The butler did it.”