Jennifer Sturman - The Key

The irony, of course, was that their only successful murder was the one for which they didn’t want to be caught. Killing people should have been a lot easier when they weren’t concerned about the consequences.

Peter and I spent the rest of the morning and a significant chunk of the early afternoon making statements to the police. They seemed willing to suspend my fugitive status now they had the real killer in custody, and by midafternoon we’d said goodbye to the extended Kryzluk family and were back in Luisa’s car, heading east on the Interstate. This time Peter knew better than to order a salad at the McDonald’s drive-through.

Traffic was light, and the weather was clear, so the drive back was pleasant and relatively quick. We’d called from the road to update my friends, and they were waiting for us in my apartment. They’d also already ordered dinner.

Over the past several days I’d eaten Big Macs, pierogies, bacon, sausage, pancakes, coffee cake, various forms of fried potatoes (including several bags of salt-and-vinegar chips), enchiladas, guacamole, pad thai, spring rolls, and lasagna. At this point a normal person would probably be craving vegetables, or at least liposuction.

Fortunately, I wasn’t normal, and I’d squeezed in a number of unintended workouts escaping from the police and assorted other pursuers. Otherwise I wouldn’t have been able to do justice to the samosas and curry that arrived shortly after Peter and me.

“Anybody want a beer?” Hilary called out from the kitchen.

“You told her to say that,” Peter accused me.

I gave him my sweetest and most innocent smile.

We all took our plates into the living room, where Peter and I recounted everything that had happened since we’d last checked in.

“Was it like The Bodyguard, only you were Kevin Costner and Perry was Whitney Houston?” asked Hilary.

“And what is a pierogie, exactly?” asked Jane. She’d never lived anywhere but Boston, and her exposure to Eastern European cuisine had been limited, although she could probably discourse at length on clam chowder and baked beans.

“There’s something I don’t get,” said Emma after the topics of Kevin Costner and pierogies had been thoroughly exhausted. “Why would Andrew attack Dahlia?”

I turned to her. “That’s exactly what Peter and I were wondering. And we don’t think he did. I mean, Andrew’s small enough that he could pass for me if he was dressed in the right outfit, so he probably could have done it, but that doesn’t explain why he would do it in the first place, much less why he would try to frame me. Meanwhile, the police seem ready to blame him, given that they let me completely off the hook.”

“This Andrew person and his brother-their actions were fairly principled,” mused Luisa. “In a somewhat twisted way, but still principled. Some might even find their reason for killing Gallagher honorable given the context. But that wouldn’t extend to killing Dahlia, would it?”

“Even if it did, it still doesn’t add up,” said Peter. “Why would Andrew care if Dahlia had realized something fishy was going on with the Thunderbolt deal? If anything, he would have welcomed it. But how could he even know what Dahlia suspected?”

“Which brings us back to Jake and Annabel,” I said. “Which also brings us back to the fact that Jake tried to shoot me at the boat basin.”

“Rach, you’re practically blind,” Hilary said. “Are you absolutely sure Jake was shooting at you?”

“And if you’re practically blind, why did you assure me that you were fine to drive my car?” added Luisa pointedly.

“It was Jake at the boat basin. I’m sure of that. And it was Mark-I mean, Andrew-who rescued me from him. There’s only one possible explanation. Jake and Annabel may not have killed Gallagher, but that doesn’t mean they didn’t jump at the opportunity to make the most out of his death.” I explained my theory about the likely terms of Annabel’s prenuptial agreement. “The Thunderbolt deal had to go forward, at least if the two of them wanted to make sure they would have sufficient ill-gotten gains on which to live happily ever after. They wouldn’t want to have to work for the rest of their lives, would they?”

“Did you tell the police about this?” asked Jane.

I shook my head. “I tried, but as far as they were concerned, they had a confessed killer and his brother on the hook. They weren’t terribly interested in my theories.”

The phone rang just then-not my BlackBerry, which I’d long since given up any hope of recovering from the tourist’s backpack-but my home phone.

“Should I get that?” asked Peter. He consulted the caller ID on the handset. “It says Private Caller.”

“Why don’t we let the machine get it? Everyone I’d want to talk to is already here.”

“How sweet,” said Hilary dryly.

We could hear the answering machine from the study, and my voice inviting callers to leave a message. Then we could hear the caller leaving his message.

“Rachel, Jake here.”

His tone was friendly. Like it never would have occurred to him to frame me for murder, much less try to kill me.

“Speak of the devil,” said Jane.

“It’s been a crazy couple of days, hasn’t it? I still can’t get over the news about Mark Anders. I heard that it was you who managed to get the gun away from him at the shareholders’ meeting-nice work! I didn’t even recognize you, and then I guess I missed you after. It was quite a scene. Give me a call when you get a chance. I want to make sure you’re okay.”

“The nerve of that guy!” said Peter. This was rapidly becoming his standard response to all matters involving Jake.

“He doesn’t know that we know what we know,” I told him. “But he probably wants to find out if we do know what we know, so that he can know if he needs to worry about what we know.”

“When you put it like that, I don’t know if we know what we know,” said Luisa. She had opened both the window and the screen and was now perched on the sill, the hand with her cigarette held carefully outside.

“Luisa, you’re making me very nervous,” Jane said. “We’re fifteen flights up.”

“Actually, only fourteen. There’s no thirteenth floor,” I said.

Luisa just shrugged and exhaled a stream of smoke into the air above 79th Street.

“How do children in New York learn to count, anyhow?” asked Jane.

“While we’re on the subject of what we know, or don’t know, or wherever we were, what about the mysterious stranger in the suede jacket?” asked Emma.

“That’s right,” said Hilary. “What about Mr. Mysterious? Who is he?”

“And why does he keep showing up everywhere and then disappearing again?” asked Jane.

The intercom chose that moment to buzz.

“That had better not be Jake,” said Peter.

I got up and went to answer it.

“Miss Rachel?” said the doorman. I’d long since given up on trying to convince him to drop the “miss.”

“Yes?”

“There’s a man here to see you? He said you’d recognize him from his black eye?”

“Speak of the other devil,” I said.

“What’s that?”

“Send him up, please.”

T here were only four apartments on my floor, but their front doors opened onto a space so small that it felt full when just one of my neighbors and I chanced to be in it at the same time. This didn’t stop all six of us from rushing out to meet the mysterious stranger. We watched with great anticipation as the old-fashioned dial above the elevator began to trace its slow path from the lobby up to fifteen.

The elevator dial stopped for a long moment at three. “One would think that a person could walk up two flights of stairs,” said Luisa.