Diana Killian - Murder On The Eightfold Path

A.J. thought that was one possibility, but more likely Dora’s hostility and aggressiveness had made her a bad candidate for blackmail, regardless of her financial standing.

“What did he say when you recognized him?”

Dora laughed that edged laugh. “His first instinct, believe it or not, was to pretend I’d made a mistake.”

Not the brightest bloke, Elysia had been right about that. Not even a very developed sense of survival if he’d thought he could possibly get away passing that old line off on Dora. Why hadn’t he just told her his puppy ate his homework and been done with it?

Dora said, “Then he tried to suggest that we should… relive old times.” Her eyes were hard as onyx as they rested on Elysia.

Elysia said mildly, “Well, he would, wouldn’t he? That’s exactly the sort of thing he’d try if cornered. He was a lover not a fighter.”

“He was a user. A liar, a cheat, a-” Dora was on another roll.

A.J. interrupted, “Did you ever hear anything about Massri being involved in the theft or smuggling of Egyptian antiquities?”

Dora didn’t answer for a moment, her gaze on her empty glass. “There were rumors. Nothing overt. It was more a suggestion that he was lazy and not doing his job properly. He was lazy.”

“Apparently it was more than a rumor. He was fired from his position at the SCA.”

Dora’s eyes narrowed. “How do you know that?”

A.J. lied. “I contacted the SCA directly.” She thought it would be better if Dora didn’t know that their own relationship with the police was anything beyond adversarial.

“Well, I’m not surprised.” The teakettle was whistling in the kitchen. Dora rose to get it.

“She has the wherewithal to commit murder.” Elysia kept her voice low.

“The wherewithal?”

“The you-name-it. The gumption, the means, the motive.”

“But she’s got an alibi. Plus…”

“Plus what?”

A.J. opened her mouth, but Dora poked her head out of the kitchen. “Milk? Honey? Lemon?”

“Honey and lemon,” A.J. said.

“Milk,” Elysia said.

Dora disappeared, but her voice floated back to them. “Were you really going to marry him?”

Elysia’s smile was odd. “No,” she returned. “My experience was somewhat different from yours, Dora, but no.”

Dora reappeared with two mugs, which she set on the piles of paper on the long table.

“When was the last time you saw Massri?” A.J. asked.

“Months ago.” She seemed definite on that point. “After I turned him over to the DHS, I decided it was out of my hands.”

“There’s a colorful character,” Elysia commented as they left Dora’s and walked back to where they had parked the SUV.

A.J. snorted. “Boy, if that isn’t the pot calling the kettle black-as the Bard would say.”

Elysia gave her a cool look. “I do think she was telling the truth, though. At least as far as she understands it.”

A.J. agreed. “It seems unlikely that if she had killed Dicky she’d keep talking about how he got what he deserved and how angry she was with him.”

“Mmm.” Elysia said thoughtfully, “Perhaps. She doesn’t strike me as a particularly wise woman.”

“True.” A.J. remembered her impression that Dora might have impulse control issues. “She did seem a little headstrong.”

“If someone is running some kind of blackmail scheme I can’t imagine why they’d kill Peggy Graham and leave Dora running loose. I’d kill Dora, given a choice.”

A.J. said, hoping to discourage that line of commentary, “First of all, we don’t know for sure that Peggy was killed. It’s still very possible she committed suicide. Secondly, if Dora wasn’t being blackmailed, then she didn’t have much in the way of ammunition. Thirdly, Dora seems like a woman well able to take care of herself.”

“She does. Very true.”

“If Peggy really was killed, she must have had possession of damaging information. Dora, well, she knew Dicky was a rat, but there’s no law against being a rat, and however much a misery she made his life, she wasn’t really threatening the business enterprise because she didn’t really know anything.”

“Dora was working to have Dicky thrown out of the country. Had she succeeded, that would have been a disruption to the business plan.”

“True, I guess. Although there was still Cory. Besides, Dora didn’t succeed in having Dicky deported.”

“We need to find Cory,” Elysia remarked.

A.J. gave her an uneasy glance. “One thing. I thought her expression changed when we mentioned Dicky was fired from the SCA. She sort of hesitated.”

“I noticed that,” agreed Elysia.

“Maybe it was just surprise, but what if it was something else? After all, her field is archeology. What if all those artifacts and objets d’art in her apartment aren’t replicas? What if she was involved in some antiquities smuggling scheme with Dicky and he double-crossed her?”

Elysia looked delighted. “Pumpkin, that’s very good. In fact it’s brilliant. You’re beginning to think like me. Just because Dicky was a blackmailer doesn’t mean he was killed because of his blackmailing.”

“But we keep coming back to the problem of that alibi of Dora’s.”

“It is annoying.”

“Yes. I don’t think it’s an easy one to break. You can’t really rush out of a salon with those little foils on your head or hair full of glaze and not expect someone to notice.”

“Perhaps she has a twin sister. I remember once on an episode of 2-”

“I really doubt that’s the solution. Besides, knowing Jake, he probably checked.” A.J. considered their interview with Dora. “Come to think of it, why wasn’t she able to get Dicky thrown out of the country?”

“Perhaps he was here legally. Some people do enter the country legally. I did.”

“It would be one of the only honest things he did,” A.J. said.

“Mara Allen on line three,” Emma said briskly over the intercom.

A.J. blinked at the phone as the call rang through. She picked up on the second trill.

“A.J.,” Mara greeted her in that carefully modulated, super-serene voice. “I was wondering if you were free for lunch?”

“Of course.” A.J. answered automatically, her gaze sweeping her day planner.

“Wonderful. Why don’t I meet you at Butterfly Bistro on Main Street at, say, eleven thirty?”

“I’ll see you then,” A.J. said cheerfully. In fact she was more curious than cheerful, and her curiosity was tinged with wariness. But at least now she might finally hear exactly what was behind these weird rumors of buyouts and takeovers.

The morning flew by. A.J. taught her Itsy Bitsy Yoga class, her Yoga for Kids, put together an ad for hiring a masseuse, and before she knew it, it was time to leave for her lunch meeting with Mara.

She opened her office door and found Suze and Emma Rice hovering.

“What’s up?”

“What did Mara Allen want?” Suze demanded in a stage whisper Lily could probably hear through the hallway walls.

A.J. threw a meaningful look at Lily’s closed office door and Emma said, “She’s upstairs teaching Attila the Hun Yoga.”

A.J. bit her lip. It would be highly inappropriate to laugh at such disrespect. It wasn’t easy to keep a straight face, though. She said truthfully, “I don’t know what Mara wants. I guess I’ll find out at lunch.”

“I know exactly what she wants,” Suze said. “She wants Sacred Balance.”

“You can’t sell to her,” Emma said. “I’ve seen those commercials of hers on late night TV. She’s like… like…”