Sharon Green - To Die For

She turned then with a coffee mug in each hand, and the direct way she looked at him told Mike immediately that she was lying. People who had no experience with lying always seemed to do that, look straight at you to show how sincere they were being. So something had happened, even though he couldn’t imagine what it might have been.

“Thank you,” he said as she set one of the mugs down in front of him, then headed toward the refrigerator for milk or cream. “Coffee usually helps me to think, but right now my thoughts aren’t cooperating. They insist on centering around how foolish Saxon was, especially for a supposedly experienced detective. If he’d had enough sense to think the thing through, he might not be dead now.”

“What do you mean?” Tanda asked, coming back with a creamer and sitting in front of her own coffee. “What didn’t he think through?”

“I mean, Ms. Grail, that he didn’t stop to remember that four people had been killed.” Mike spoke gently but stared straight at her, refusing to release that bright gray gaze. “When four people are stabbed to death by someone, that someone isn’t a person you want to fool around with. You can tell yourself they don’t know what you know, or that you can handle them if they find out—and that’s probably what Saxon did. He told himself those things, and ended up just as dead as the first four. If he’d gone to the police first thing, he might still be alive.”

Tanda’s gray eyes had widened, and she looked as though she ought to be biting her lip. Mike hadn’t enjoyed frightening her, but everything he’d said was the truth. He couldn’t force her to tell him what she knew, but if she didn’t speak up she had to understand and believe that she could end up like her brother. Indecision flashed in those eyes, and then she was staring at him in a totally different way.

“But if Roger had gone to the police, isn’t it possible he would have just put more people in danger?” she asked, leaning forward with the intensity of her feelings. “The police are just human beings, after all, and they can be killed as easily as anyone. Instead of one new body you could have had four or five, and most of them your own people.”

“But don’t you see that couldn’t have happened?” Mike countered just as intensely. “It’s possible to kill one person to keep a secret, but when a dozen people know, it’s no longer a secret. It would have been written down, put in the computer, mentioned to people on the phone…Once a secret is shared in that many ways, it’s no longer a secret that can get you hurt or killed. Sharing a secret keeps everyone alive.”

Mike knew he was repeating himself, but if it made Tanda Grail rethink her position, he was willing to say the same thing a hundred times. And she was thinking things through again. He could see that in her expression as she gazed down at the table and then she looked directly at him again.

“I hope you’re right,” she said, the words earnest. “I’d never be able to stand it if I caused the death of someone else. And I wasn’t being entirely truthful with you a minute ago. I discovered something I hadn’t expected, and although I’m sure it means something, I don’t know what.”

“Why don’t you tell me about it anyway,” Mike urged with a smile. “I can put my department to work on it, and that way we ought to come up with an answer.”

“I certainly hope you can,” she agreed, finally letting go of the creamer. “It occurred to me that my brother’s body was found only half a mile away from here. It might have been true that he was there to meet someone, but he also might have been there to go somewhere. To test the theory, I took Robby to the spot and gave him the scent from the shirt Don was wearing when he died.”

“Do you mean to say the dog actually found a trail to follow?” Mike demanded. “But it’s been a good week, not to mention that it’s rained at least once. How could there be anything left?”

“Are you asking if Robby only pretended to find a track?” she countered with a smile, clearly amused by Mike’s disbelief. “If he did, he’s better at pretending than anyone you care to name. He brought me here to the house, to the cellar stairs in back, and I found that the lock on the doors had been cut open. Apparently Don did come to the house that night, but not to see me. He came to leave something.”

She took a key from her jeans pocket and held it up, showing him the something she meant. Mike reached for it and she gave it to him, but looking at it more closely didn’t help.

“I can’t tell what this is a key to, and you don’t know either, do you?” he asked, getting her head shake to confirm his guess. “Well, as I said, I’ll get my people working on it. There are expert locksmiths who can tell you exactly what a particular key is for, and we’ll consult one of them. After that we’ll at least know what to look for.”

“It doesn’t seem to be a car key, a house key or a safe-deposit-box key,” she said, watching as Mike put it carefully in a small evidence bag and then into his inside coat pocket. “That leaves personal safes, strongboxes, secret caches or diaries.”

“Or one of ten thousand other things,” Mike returned with a faint sound of amusement. “I know you’re hoping it’s one of the things you mentioned. For that matter I hope the same, but let’s not set ourselves up for disappointment. This key could just be a duplicate to a lock box that has important business papers. Your brother might have simply wanted it in a safe place no one knew about.”

“So he came in the dead of night, on foot, to leave it?” she countered with a sound of disbelief. “He probably used the metal cutters from the shed out back, but he still also broke in. And you want me to believe he did all that for business papers, and it was only coincidence he was murdered right after that? Really, Lieutenant Gerard, if that’s what you believe, you ought to be back on foot patrol.”

“You’d make a tough boss, Ms. Grail,” Mike said with a smile for her indignation. “As a matter of fact, I don’t believe that the key is unimportant, but that doesn’t stop the matter from still being a possibility. People have been known to do stranger things at stranger times. And please call me Mike.”

“Only if you call me Tanda,” she conceded, not quite ready to appreciate his practical outlook, and then she smiled. “All right, Mike, you believe the key is nothing and I’ll believe it’s an important clue. That way at least one of us will be right, and you’re here for another reason anyway. Do you have more questions, or have you learned something you think I should know?”

“I haven’t learned anything myself, yet,” he answered. “On the way out here I noticed a convenience store a couple of miles up the road and stopped, but the clerk doesn’t remember seeing Saxon in there two days ago. That means either he didn’t stop, or he didn’t do anything to bring himself to the woman’s attention if he did stop. If that was where he saw whatever he saw, he didn’t ask any questions about it.”

“But if he saw it then, he couldn’t have understood what he was seeing,” Tanda pointed out. “I mean, he didn’t tell me about it when he got here, he only mentioned it last night. That should mean it’s more likely he saw whatever-it-was yesterday, while he was looking around.”

“And that, in turn, means we’ll have to trace his movements, but it can’t be done until tomorrow,” Mike agreed. “On Sunday everything closes up. The only thing I can check on right now has to do with you and your brother. Can you handle a few more personal questions?”

“I can handle all the questions in the world, if that will find the person who killed Don,” she answered. “What did you want to ask?”