Marcia Muller - The Tree of Death

“How many doors are wired?”

“Three. The front, the loading dock, and the courtyard outside Frank’s office.”

Kirk frowned. “What about the doors to the central courtyard?”

“Not necessary. The only way into the courtyard is through the front door. The rear courtyard, the one outside Frank’s office, opens to the parking lot, as you’ve seen. The entry is protected by the padlocked gate.”

“All right.” He doodled on his pad. “How do you set the alarm?”

“Two ways. If you’re inside, there’s a toggle switch beside each door. Flipping it sets the alarm on all three doors. From the outside you have to use a key. That does the same thing-sets all three, no matter which door you use.”

“And the keys? Who has them?”

“There are only two. Mine and Frank’s.”

“And where is yours now?”

“With me.” I patted the pocket of my skirt.

“Have you had it with you all the time period we discussed, from yesterday morning to now?”

“Yes.”

“And Mr. De Palma’s key. Where is it, do you know?”

I paused, picturing Frank’s office. “On the hook on his office wall. Frank was absentminded, so he kept both the alarm key and the key to the courtyard-gate padlock on a large ring, which he hung up when he came to work.”

“You’re certain there are no other keys?”

“Yes. When we moved in here there was quite a… discussion about who should have keys. We decided, for safety’s sake, to limit the number.”

“What about copies? Could any have been made?”

“No. It’s not the type of key locksmiths have masters for. You have to go to the manufacturer, and they’ll provide them only on the request of specified people.”

“Who?”

“Which people, you mean? Me, Frank, and our board chairman, Carlos Bautista. We would all have had to okay the request.”

“And no such request has ever been made?”

“Never.”

Kirk leaned back in the desk chair- my desk chair-and looked at me silently. “All right. Let’s go over what happened when you left last night.”

I sighed. “I went to Frank’s office and asked if he was going to lock up or if I should do it. He told me to go ahead.”

“Where were his keys then?”

“On the hook.”

“And then what did you do?”

“I set the alarm and left.”

“There was no one else on the premises but Mr. De Palma?”

“No one. They’d all left at least fifteen minutes before.”

“So Mr. De Palma was locked in here alone?”

“Yes.”

Again Kirk was silent.

“Lieutenant Kirk, I don’t see why it matters what happened last night. Frank had already arrived here before I did this morning. Whoever killed him probably came in with him.”

Kirk leaned forward, his imperturbable brown eyes on mine. “The coroner’s man estimates that Mr. De Palma died early yesterday evening, possibly as early as five-thirty.”

“Oh.” An unpleasant realization was dawning on me. The silence lengthened.

Finally I said, “He told me he was going to work on the budget last night. But he never did that. It was Vic’s job. Maybe Frank just said that to get rid of me. Maybe he was going to meet someone here and needed to get me out of the way. Maybe he let that person in, and he or she killed him.”

Kirk regarded me thoughtfully.

“Well, he could have let someone in,” I said. “All he had to do was flip the toggle switch to shut off the alarm.”

The lieutenant paged through his legal pad. “From your earlier statement, Miss Oliverez: ‘When I arrived this morning, the alarm was set. Everything seemed normal. When I passed Frank’s office I saw his keys on the hook and realized he’d arrived here first, but I decided not to bother him. I went about my business, and the others showed up maybe twenty minutes later.” “

“What, do you take shorthand?” I asked. But my mind was busy with the possibilities.

He didn’t even acknowledge the question.

“So he let someone in last night and reset the alarm,” I said. “Then that person killed him and…”

“And what, Miss Oliverez?”

And what indeed? No one could have left, not without the keys to reset the alarm.

“What did this person do after killing Mr. De Palma?” Kirk repeated.

“Well, he… he could have-” Of course! “He could have hidden in the museum until I got here this morning and then sneaked out.”

“Wouldn’t you or Mr. Leary or Mrs. Cunningham and her volunteers have seen someone sneak out?”

“Not necessarily…”I stared down at my hands. They were clasped together, white-knuckled. I closed my eyes and saw with dismaying clarity the way the alarm switch had looked when I unlocked it this morning.

“Miss Oliverez?”

I looked up at Kirk, my lips parted in panic. “Someone did leave the museum, though. Someone left between the time I set the alarm and the time I opened up this morning.”

“How do you know that?”

“When I set the alarm last night, the lock was in the down position. But, this morning, it was up. That means someone left through one of the other two doors-the loading dock or Frank’s courtyard-and reset the alarm.”

“How, Miss Oliverez?”

I stared at him, thinking hard.

“How could anyone have done that when you, by your own admission, had one set of keys and the other was inside the museum when you arrived this morning?”

“Maybe-maybe someone sneaked in and replaced Frank’s keys on the hook after I opened up.”

“Oh, now we have someone sneaking in. But is that really possible, Miss Oliverez?”

“No.” I’d gone straight to Frank’s office and seen the keys. No one could have gotten there first.

“In other words,” Kirk said, “the only person who could have set that alarm was you. We have only your word for the fact that the alarm lock was in a different position this morning-the word of a person who had, as recently as yesterday, threatened Mr. De Palma’s life.”

“I didn’t threaten him!”

“What do you call it?”

“I-I was angry… I didn’t mean-”

“You appear to be an intelligent young woman, Miss Oliverez. If you were looking at the set of facts I have before me, what would you think?”

“I…don’t know.”

“Then let me tell you.” Kirk got up and leaned across the desk. His voice was soft and level. “That set of facts strongly suggests that you killed Frank De Palma.”

Eleven o’clock that night. I leaned forward at my desk, my head on my arms like a school child at rest time. The day had been grueling, and those to come seemed no more promising.

Lieutenant Kirk had kept interrogating me for two hours, going over and over my frequent quarrels with Frank and making me demonstrate how the alarm system worked. He refused to listen to my theory that Frank’s killer had hidden in the museum all night and, frankly, I didn’t believe it myself. All the time Kirk probed into what he-referred to as my “professional jealousy of Mr. De Palma‘’ my mind returned to that one possibility-that someone had left the museum and reset the alarm without using either set of keys. When Kirk finally let me alone, his parting warning was that I should not leave town without letting him know. I felt like a character in a TV police show.

I had then had Isabel call the press people who had been turned away that morning. At four, I met with them in the central courtyard and delivered my brief statement. There was considerable grumbling about the lack of information, but they left quickly, presumably to go bother the police.

Of course, by that time my mother had heard the news. She called, full of questions and concerns. Was I all right? Did I want her to come down there?