Carol O'Connell - Mallory's Oracle

She slipped by the open kitchen door. Riker was still immersed in the sports section. She walked through her bedroom and into the bathroom to turn on the shower. She left the shower running as she opened the top dresser drawer and pulled out the old.38 Long Colt which had belonged to Markowitz and his father before him. Riker had thoughtfully confiscated her Smith & Wesson, but this would do. The holes would not be so big, but the bullets would travel as far and nearly as fast. The shower was steaming the bathroom mirror as she strapped on her shoulder holster.

Edith had no police protection. They had covered the other seance connections, but they hadn't known about Edith. Mallory thought to call Coffey, and then thought better of it. The evidence was so slender, it was better to catch the perp in the act. Coffey would never let her use Candle.

If she didn't act now she'd lose the only leverage she might ever have. The seance investors were being rounded up. It was all coming undone, and it was only one newspaper edition from common knowledge. Time, she had none to spare. SEC investigators would be working the data, running the matches. If Charles had gone to Coffey with her printouts, they'd be knocking on Edith's door within the hour.

What if Charles had gone to Edith first? What was she going to do with Charles? Maybe say, "Excuse me, would you mind turning your back while I hang old Edith out in the breeze?"

She went to the bedroom closet for her blazer. Her hand was on the door when she thought of Helen. Helen wouldn't like it if she knew her Kathy had used a little old lady to cheese the trap. That would've made Helen cry.

Well, a lot of things made Helen cry.

The first night Helen had tucked her in, Mallory had smelled clean sheets for the first time in her child's memory. And there had been clean clothes to wear that next morning. The clothes smelled of fabric-softener, and so did Helen on laundry day. On other days, Helen smelled of pine-scented disinfectant, scouring powder and floor wax. She opened the door, and Helen came out of the closet in scents of sachets and mothballs. Mallory slammed the door on Helen.

Riker knocked softly on the bedroom door. No response.

"Hey, Kathy?"

She had been moving slow and dragging, even after all the coffee she'd put away. She could be taking a nap, but he couldn't shake the feeling that he was alone in these rooms. He wandered into the den and looked at the mess of the back wall which had undergone a change of clutter style. The square computer eye was glowing blue with white type. She had left her computer running.

While she took a nap?

In a heartbeat, he was back at the bedroom door, forcing the lock and putting his shoulder to it. He was half-fallen into the empty room when he heard the sound of the shower running. He knocked on the bathroom door. "Kathy, you in there?"

The burglar guard was still padlocked. The bathroom door lock was standard apartment flimsy. He kicked the door at the midsection and it gave way. The shower stall was empty and the window was open. He put his head out into the drizzling rain. It was a fourteen-foot drop to an overhang below the window. Then she would only have to walk along that overhang to gain access to the fire escape.

Not a big believer in invisible murderers, Charles had angled the lampshade to spotlight the door. Edith's ambush preparations told him he would not have long to wait.

Markowitz had been right. The evidence was so slight, there was no other way but this to end it.

He never heard the steps approaching.

A mass of energy burst through the door, with no face, no identifiable shape to the colors and materials in the rush of flying, sprawling bulk. The lamp crashed to the floor. Its naked light bulb burned like a sun in the peripheral corner of his sight. And then all was still and quiet, and his attention was focussed on the point of the knife one inch from his left eyeball. When he could look beyond the knife, he was staring into the eyes of a serial killer.

The lamplight from the level of the floor made the body into a giant, casting its shadow up beyond the wall, which was too small to contain it, and across the ceiling. The shape blurred as he focussed again on the point of the knife, light dancing on the sharp tip, calling his attention to the matter at hand. Any movement would cost him an eye. By great effort of will, he dismissed the knife, refusing to see it anymore, looking back to the eyes of his assailant.

"What part are you playing now, Gaynor? Jack the Ripper?" Charles smiled.

The knife pulled back only a little, a fraction of an inch. Jonathan Gaynor's eyes did the wide-then-narrow dance of what's going on here? The knife came closer, all but touching Charles's eye. "Where is Edith Candle?"

Charles blinked slowly, and his smile widened into a lunatic grin. "You didn't think I'd endanger an elderly woman, did you?"

"How did you put it together?"

"You're wondering if the police could figure it out as easily as I did? They have. It was hardly challenging."

"I think you're running a bluff." The knife wavered back and forth, mimicking, in smaller degrees, the slow shake of Gaynor's head. "You never called the police. You're on your own, aren't you? You sent the note, and signed the old lady's name, right?"

"Believe what you like."

"Tell me how you worked it out."

"No, if you're going to kill me, I don't mind annoying you by taking the list of your stupid mistakes with me."

"It doesn't matter," said Gaynor, drawing the blade back an inch, hefting the weight of the hilt in his hand. "They could only have a circumstantial case. The same evidence could argue for Margot or Henry."

"Oh, sorry. I just had a chat with the police department a few minutes ago. Margot Siddon is in jail. Henry's down there now, trying to make bail for her. Not that they'll let her out. Seems she was having a bad day. She tried to kill an off-duty NYPD detective."

"You're lying, Charles."

"For the next hour or so, they'll have a score of policemen for alibis. So what now?"

"We could while away some time till Henry gets home. Or you could die in the rather boring murder of an interrupted burglary. This is New York City – unsensational corpses get stacked up like cordwood."

Never taking his eyes from Charles, Gaynor reached out one blind hand to pick up the telephone on the table next to the chair. "Dial the numbers as I call them." When the connection was made, he took the receiver and held it to his ear, waiting out the time of six rings. He put the receiver back on its cradle.

"'No answer at Henry's apartment. But then, I take it you'd rather not wait on Henry?"

"I've changed my mind," said Charles as the knife came closer. "I'll tell you how I figured it out. And maybe you could clear up a few small details for me. Deal?" as Mallory would say.

"Deal."

"Your choice of victims wasn't very clever. You might as well have signed Samantha Siddon's corpse."

"She wasn't even – "

"Now, Louis Markowitz's key was your aunt. Louis loved money motives. Of course, you knew your aunt was mentioned in an investigator's report on the Whitman Chemicals merger."

"How do you make the leap from a recent murder to a stock-market transaction in the Eighties?"

"A routine background check on your aunt footnoted an SEC investigation on the merger. All the heavy profiteers were investigated. The US Attorney's office elected not to prosecute. A few old women and a seance got lost in the bigger game of the junk bonds and broker swindles."

"What's the connection to me?"

"Your aunt tipped you off to the merger, didn't she? According to Mallory's reports, you made a modest gain that year, almost too modest. I found that interesting. But then, you could count on inheriting a fortune, couldn't you?"