Howard Engel - Dead and Buried

“Well, Chris, first of all I have to attack your assumption that the murderer has to be male.”

“What is this, quibble time? Of course he has to be male!”

“Chris, you were right when you said that a woman couldn’t get into the men’s locker room because she couldn’t get past the guard who checked on everybody going in and out. If she did manage to get by him, she’d cause a major sensation when she went through the changing-room and showers.” Here, as I might have guessed, Pete smiled again and Anna refused to encourage him. She bit down hard on a green onion for his benefit and glanced back at me. I went back to my narrative to see how it would come out.

“No, a woman couldn’t get into the sauna in the usual way, but she could if she came from the pool.”

“What?” They had all stopped playing with their coffee spoons and wine glasses.

“The sauna’s just inside the door from the pool.”

“Now hold on! You’re saying-”

“Wearing a robe and a bathing-cap, and maybe goggles, a woman might just slip through the door without raising a fuss. The lifeguard isn’t particularly watching the comings and goings from the pool area. I understand that the women’s changing-area is a mirror-image of the men’s side. So, if she knew where the women’s sauna was located, she could have hatched a plan to kill Murdo Forbes in the men’s.”

“Benny, a woman can’t just walk into the men’s sauna,” Pete said with finality. This was a crack that was going to break up his idea of the universe.

“Pete, the afternoon Ross took me to lunch, we looked into the pool. He pointed out his parents and it took me a few moments to recognize Murdo from the other swimmers. I never did pick out Biddy. Remember that these are serious long-distance swimmers. They wear identical goggles and bathing caps. In that rig and wearing one of those blue terry-cloth robes, there’s no particular visible difference between the sexes.”

“Two things,” Chris said holding up an appropriate number of fingers. “One, you are still talking premeditation, right?”

“Sure. You don’t carry a gun into the pool without some plan to use it.”

“Two, I think I know where you are heading, Benny, and I won’t buy it for a minute!”

“She had access to the Commander’s gun collection.”

“You’re saying that the old lady killed her own husband! That’s crazy! She’s not even in the picture, Benny. Why are you pulling our legs?”

“Damn it, Chris! I don’t like this any more than you do! Just hear me out, okay? Of course she loved Murdo; of course she didn’t want to kill him; of course she isn’t our usual idea of a murderer; but, she was a woman at the end of her tether. Murdo was about to cut Ross out of the family business. She knew that on Monday morning, when the board met, Caine would oust Ross with the Commander’s blessing. I’m sure she tried to move the old man to a less dramatic course of action and failed. You say she was a good wife, I say she was also a good mother, according to her lights. That’s why she took that last desperate step to ensure that Ross would get his second chance to make good in the business. There’s something else and I’ll come to that in a minute.”

“You think that Mrs. Forbes could have managed all that, Benny?” Pete asked. “A nice old lady like that?”

“Remember, Pete, that Biddy’s a tall and rather stringy woman. I’m not saying that Anna, here, could get away with it.”

“Is that a compliment or a slam?” Anna said. “That’s all I want to know?”

“How did she know that Murdo would be alone in the sauna?” Chris asked.

“Murdo’s cigars. He smoked everywhere, even in the sauna. The men in the locker room gave him a wide berth. He ignored all of the NO SMOKING signs, with a certain evil glee, I suspect.”

“So, she knew what she was doing all along. A very cool villain.”

“Until you begin to suspect Ross, Chris. She hadn’t figured on that. That spoiled everything. You arrested the very person she’d set out to protect. And now, he wasn’t just out of a job, he was facing a trial and prison. No wonder she had a stroke. She planned a tidy swift kill and executed it perfectly. Then you spoiled things by locking up her son. I’ll bet, if she hadn’t been felled by the stroke, that she would have come forward and told you everything. When I saw a friend of hers earlier, he said that in the hospital she was desperately trying to tell him something. She’s frustrated and unhappy because of the way she’s left things. And she can’t do anything about it.”

“Well, I’ll be damned!” said Chris.

“Me too,” added Anna and Pete in unison. After a minute Anna turned to glare at me. “Benny, why does it have to be Biddy? I’m still sceptical. I mean, it sounds like a good story, but what makes it more than a story? What makes you so sure?

“It has to be Biddy, Anna, because she knew that Ross was on the wagon. She knew he was in AA. She could only have learned that from Murdo just before she shot him.”

“You mean to say that they had a little family talk before she pulled the gun?”

“No, I’m suggesting that as soon as he saw her, the Commander announced his son’s latest idiocy triumphantly. He always took pleasure in Ross’s failings and here was another, from his point of view, that topped most of them. The old man had resented Ross trying to clean up the mess he’d made of the business these last few years. He was angry at Ross’s shouldering the blame for a lot of illegal things he’d been doing. To him that was the way business should be carried on. It was the way everybody did it not so long ago. Ross’s attempt to take the blame lined him up with the enemy in the old man’s eyes. The last thing he wanted from his son was to be interfered with. To the Commander, it looked like he was being undermined by everybody, Ross included. This stuff will come out when the provincial inquiry is published.”

“I’ll still be damned, but it does sound like the Commander,” Anna said. Both Chris and Pete nodded slowly in agreement. I called out to see if Lije could find us more coffee.

We were now sipping liqueurs and cappuccinos in an empty dining-room. I hadn’t notice when the other customers had left. We’d been sitting in a cloud of our own smoke for so long that the rest of the room vanished into a blur. Maybe it was the wine and the food. Anyway, Lije Swift didn’t look like he was anxious to start putting the chairs on the tables, so we relaxed and kept on talking. At least some of us kept on talking.

“Benny, you said that Biddy had another reason for killing her husband besides Ross. What was it and was it less-what shall I say? — noble than her other motive?”

“You tell me, Anna, when I’ve finished.”

“It’ll be light soon, Benny. Maybe you can skip the side-issues, just hew straight to the meat.”

“I’ll try, I’ll try. Let’s see. Pásztory was shot with the same piece that killed the Commander. In fact the gun came from his own collection. Our premier suspect, then, has to be Biddy Forbes, since we have her on the other killing. But when I look at it, it just doesn’t make sense. Biddy was interested in Ross’s future with Phidias, but not really concerned about the daily workings of any of the companies. Maybe she was in the past; I’m talking about right now. I don’t think she cared much one way or the other, just as long as there was a place for Ross at the top.

“Pete, you thought that Pásztory was killed by professionals, by out-of-towners brought in for the job, a typical contract hit. Well, I told you I don’t buy any serious involvement by Pritchett. He wanted Sangallo, where he was a silent partner, to stay as honest as an illegal toxic dumper can. He left the tough stuff to Harold Grier and Norman Caine. They could play as rough as the game required. If the mob did a job on Pásztory, you wouldn’t have found him at the fort. He would have been dumped on the railway tracks somewhere, or pushed over Niagara Falls. Leaving him at the fort was a rash, dumb idea. It meant if we found the toxic dump, we found Pásztory; if we found Pásztory, we found the dump as a bonus.