“We have the weapon that killed your husband,” Quirk said. “A forty-caliber Smith and Wesson semiautomatic pistol.”
Mary smiled at him.
“Ohmigod,” she said. “I don’t know anything about guns.”
“It was taken by our friend Spenser here, from a man named Roy Levesque.”
“Roy had it?”
“You know Roy Levesque,” Quirk said.
“Sure, I mean of course, we went to high school together.”
“When did you last see him?” Quirk said.
“Oh, I really, really… I see so many people. All the time. I’m really a people person, I guess.”
“Levesque says you gave him the gun.”
“Roy said that?”
“Yes.”
“Why did he say that?” Mary said.
“Did you give him the gun?”
“Not to keep,” Mary said.
Mary was confused. She turned and gazed at Larson Graff, as if maybe Larson knew and would help her out with the hard questions. Larson didn’t look at her.
“Did you give him the gun? And tell him to get rid of it?” Quirk said again. There was no threat or anger in his voice. He seemed perfectly patient about it.
“I think maybe my client and I need to talk a little,” Rita said.
Quirk nodded toward the door, and Rita took Mary outside and closed the door and stayed in the hall with her for maybe ten minutes. While we waited Quirk turned to Graff.
“So, Larson,” Quirk said. “You think Levesque is telling the truth?”
“I really have no idea, Captain.”
“So what was it you were doing here?”
“I came at Mrs. Smith’s request.”
“She take you everywhere?” Quirk said.
“There’s no need for attitude, Captain. Mary is much more at ease in any situation if I’m with her.”
“You think she might have killed her husband?” Quirk said.
“My God, Captain. I don’t know anything about that.”
“Lucky she brought you,” Quirk said.
No one spoke. Russo doodled on his yellow pad. Graff fidgeted, looking hopefully at the doorway through which Mary had disappeared. Quirk sat quietly looking at nothing. Belson watched Graff watch the door. The door opened after a while and Rita brought Mary back in. They sat. Quirk waited quietly.
“Are you planning to arrest my client?” Rita said.
“We might,” Quirk said.
“We might be prepared to make a statement if there was something in it for us.”
Quirk looked at Russo.
“What are you looking for?” Russo said.
“If, and this is hypothetical, in her statement Mrs. Smith admitted to a minor crime, she would not be prosecuted for it.”
“How about the murder of her husband,” Quirk said.
“If she made a statement, it would clarify that issue, and make it moot.”
“The deal would depend on what she had to tell us,” Russo said.
“If it is useful information, do we have a deal?”
“The deal being?” Russo said.
“No prosecution for any crime she might admit in her statement.”
They then spent five minutes talking incomprehensibly about misdemeanors and C felonies and gobbledygook, while I looked at various parts of the room and found all of them equally uninteresting.
Finally Russo said, “Deal.”
Rita nodded at Mary Smith. “Go ahead, Mary. Tell them.”
“What should I tell them?” Mary said.
“What you told me in the hall.”
“Can’t you tell them for me?”
“I think they’d rather hear it from you.”
Mary sat frowning. She looked at Graff again. He didn’t look back.
“Well… please don’t all of you look at me. I get really, really, really nervous if everybody looks at me.”
Nobody said anything. No one looked away. Mary licked her lips and looked at Larson again and then at Rita. Rita nodded encouragingly. I had known Rita a long time. I knew she wanted to jump up, take Mary by the neck, and shake her like a dust mop, but to the unpracticed eye Rita’s nod looked supportive and kind.
“Well, I really… Nathan wasn’t as rich as everybody thinks he was,” Mary said.
She looked around at us. None of us spoke.
“Some kind of trouble at the bank, I think,” Mary said. “And he would always tell me even if things got bad, I’d be all right because he had so much life insurance.”
“How much?” Russo said.
“Ten million dollars.”
“A lot,” Russo said.
“And when I came in and found him.”
“Found him?”
“Dead. Really, all I could think about was that insurance companies won’t pay off on suicide.”
“Suicide?” Quirk said.
“Yes. I thought, my God, I won’t get a dime.”
“Why did you think it was suicide,” Quirk said.
“Well, I mean, really, there he was, the gun was right beside his hand.”
“Gun?”
“Yes. That gun you were talking about, the forty-something or other. The one I gave to Roy.”
“You found your husband dead?” Russo said. “With a gun by his side and you took the gun and gave it to Roy Levesque?”
“Yes.”
“And you wanted him to get rid of it?” Quirk said.
“Yes. I didn’t want the insurance company to know. I needed the money.”
Everyone in the room was quiet.
“How long had he held the policy?” Russo said.
“He said he had it since he was a small boy.”
“You check the policy?” Russo said.
“Oh, no. I really, really don’t read things like that. They’re really…”
Russo nodded and looked at Rita as he spoke to Mary.
“Most policies have an exclusion period, generally two years,” Russo said. “After that they pay off on suicide like any other death.”
Mary stared at him as if he were speaking in tongues. “I needed the money,” she said.
I saw Rita sneak a long breath of air. “Okay?” she said to Quirk.
Quirk looked at me. “You got anything to offer?” he said.
“What kind of trouble was going on at the bank?” I said.
“Oh, I really don’t know anything about that kind of thing,” Mary said. “He brought Mr. Conroy in to help fix it.”
I nodded. “You don’t know where Conroy is now, do you?”
“At the bank, I guess.”
“Just while we’re all here,” I said, “could I clean up one other little confusion? How’d you meet your husband, Mrs. Smith?”
She smiled at Larson Graff.
“Larson introduced us,” she said.
“So he knew your husband prior to your marriage?”
“Excuse me?”
“Graff and your husband knew each other before you married your husband,” I said.
“Oh, yes, of course.”
I looked at Graff and waited. He was looking alertly at the tabletop. Nobody else spoke.
“That so?” I said to Larson.
“I don’t, I guess…” He frowned at the table. “I don’t really recall.”
“You told me that you met him because he called you on behalf of his wife,” I said.
“I didn’t… I…”
Graff looked at Quirk. “I just don’t think this is about me,” Graff said.
Quirk nodded.
“Do I have to answer his questions?” Graff said.
“Nope.”
“Well then, I won’t.”
“So,” Quirk said. “Did you know Smith before he was married or not?”
“I don’t remember.”
“Mrs. Smith?” Quirk said.
“What?”
“Did Mr. Graff introduce you to your husband?”
“Yes. I told you that.”
“He says he didn’t.”
“Larson, you did, too,” Mary said. “You called me up and told me you had a rich friend that wanted to be married, and it was Nathan.”
Graff didn’t say anything.
“Larson,” Mary said. “You did.”
“Do I have to stay here?” Graff said.
Nobody responded. Graff looked around the table for a moment. Then he stood and left the room.
“Well, my God,” Mary said. “What’s wrong with him?”
“Maybe a lot,” I said.