Quentin was waiting on the front steps of the police station, and briefed me on how this would work before we went in. They’d ask a question, I’d look at Quentin and only if he nodded yes would I answer. Even then, if I didn’t want to talk about something, I was to shake my head and he’d jump in to remind them I was there voluntarily and only to help where I thought I could.
The chief himself met us in the reception area, although he explained he wouldn’t be at the interview. We walked together to a plain room with a painted but scuffed concrete floor, white walls that had seen better days, and an ugly metal table with four metal and plastic chairs grouped around it. The chief shook hands and told us Kirby would be along in a minute.
As we waited, I looked around at the depressing décor. One wall had a dull mirror that obviously was two-way glass. There were several laminated signs taped to the walls, but none were readable from where I sat, Quentin at my side. The room made me feel like a criminal. Duh, you think that’s an accident? said my inner voice.
Just when I was getting impatient enough to speak, the door opened and Detective Kirby hurried in. “Sorry to keep you waiting,” he said, “but I was pulling together some faxed information.”
The chief left and we settled into our chairs. Over the course of the next thirty minutes, I was walked through my vague suspicions about the documents that Gabby had been trying to copy for me.
“I still don’t get it,” Kirby said. “The paintings weren’t stolen and weren’t fakes, so why would the material motivate anyone to kill the victim? You think they’re supposed to be given to the college? So who owns them now?”
“That’s a problem. I don’t know who owns them or where they are, only that there are two lists that don’t match and Larry Saylor and Gabby Flores apparently were asking the same questions.”
“And they’re dead,” the detective said, tapping his pen on the table.
Thank you for that. “May I ask if you’re looking at Mr. Saylor’s death as suspicious now that Gabby’s been killed?” I said, looking over at Quentin to see if he thought I was overstepping. He was looking at the detective curiously.
“The investigation is open. Since Ms. Flores was shot, we need to re-examine the circumstances of Mr. Saylor’s death. Now, I’d like to check out a few things, Ms. O’Rourke.” He held up several sheets of paper, presumably the faxes he had been gathering before we arrived. “You work for an art museum. Do you buy paintings like the ones you’re investigating?”
“I don’t buy anything. I’m involved in raising money and getting people to give their artwork to the museum. The curators buy art.” I was trying to read the fax sheets upside down to find out if he had made my life harder by going to Peter for information.
“Do you do this sort of consulting a lot?”
“This is the first consulting job I’ve been offered. I was flattered at first.” I sighed and when he looked a question at me, explained. “The chairman of the Devor Museum’s board recommended me for it. It seemed straightforward at the time.”
“You didn’t know any of the players before this—Saylor, Margoletti, Flores, anyone at Lynthorpe?”
“Only Geoff, the Devor contact. He’s on the board here.”
“He knows the big donor?”
“Slightly. They both graduated from Lynthorpe in the same class and they both live in California. But Geoff told me he doesn’t know Vince well.” No need to say he didn’t trust Vince.
“I don’t believe in coincidences,” the detective said.
“Neither do I,” I said. “But if you mean the two knowing each other, wealthy people tend to be recruited to alumni volunteer positions. That’s nothing unusual.”
“Okay, I hear you,” Kirby said. “At the risk of seeming to beat a dead horse, can you think back to the time period from when you got up to leave Mr. Saylor’s office until Mr. Kennedy joined you on the second floor? I know you’ve said you can’t recall anything specific, but I’m going to run you through it again and I’d like you to close your eyes and think carefully as I ask you each question.”
“I can’t see how it will help,” I said.
“Try to put yourself back into that office. Ms. Flores has left, carrying the papers. You’re sitting there. What do you hear?”
I was sitting there again, with the quiet sounds of the campus at the end of the day coming in the open window, birdsong, maybe an air conditioner somewhere, a car. “It was quiet except that the copier started up. Then, it was noisy the way these machines are, you know?”
“And was anyone speaking?”
“I thought I heard Gabby’s voice, talking with a man.”
“And you didn’t recognize his voice?”
“I hardly recognized hers. I’m sure it was a man’s voice, though.”
“And then?”
“I walked toward the stairs. The conversation had stopped. The copier was still pushing out paper and it drowned out everything at first. When I squatted down at the open door, when I saw her hand—”
I shuddered. This was getting too real.
“Yes?”
“It’s possible someone was still in the building. I’ve been trying to remember what I was thinking when I called out for help, but it’s hard. It was a jumble, you know?”
“What was it that made you think you weren’t alone?”
“I heard a sound from down the hall. At least I thought I did. But I never saw anyone. There were several women staffers leaving the building when I got there, but that was an hour before.”
“We’ve interviewed everyone who worked there that afternoon. No one noticed anything unusual except you looking for Mr. Saylor’s office. A few workers were still gathered in a room on the first floor far away from the staircase, celebrating a colleague’s birthday. Apparently, they were making enough noise to cover up anything they might have heard.” He flipped back through the pages of his notebook “Try to bring back that few minutes. You told me before about an elevator?”
“Oh, yes, I’d forgotten. I thought there was someone in the other wing of Saylor’s office suite when I arrived. It’s a long space with a handful of cubicles that I couldn’t see around. But the sound was indistinct, you know? Then, nothing until I was trying to get her to respond. It might have been an elevator door pinging as it opened or closed. I couldn’t see the elevator from where I was, inside the faculty member’s open door.”
Quentin spoke up from his side of the table. “That might be useful, don’t you think? It could suggest someone was in Mr. Saylor’s office before my client arrived, and that the killer exited the second floor by way of the elevator.”
Kirby grunted. “We’ll revisit the office and the elevator, although I expect it’s too late to find any fingerprints or other evidence.”
“My memory of the entire nightmare is getting fuzzier as time goes by.” I remembered the feel of her fingers when I touched them, though. That I’d never forget. “I was confused, and I was in a strange place, and then in shock. And now, I think I’m a target.” I knew my voice was rising. I looked over at Quentin, signaling my desire to get out of the airless room and away from the grilling.
“We don’t know that yet,” Kirby said, “although we take the chance of it seriously. Certainly the anonymous call suggests someone wants you to go away.” He sounded sincere, but not as motivated as I was to find out what had happened.
“One more thing. Please describe Dermott Kennedy’s behavior and appearance from the moment he arrived on the scene.”
“I’m not sure what you mean. Upset, shocked?”
“I mean before he understood what had happened.” The detective flicked the pages in his little notebook until he came to something that he stopped to read. “You told me that when he first approached you, Mr. Kennedy didn’t seem to know what had happened.”
“That’s right. He was coming up the stairs and when he got near the top step, he saw me, I guess, and started to say something like, ‘Oh, hi.’ He was cheerful and when I looked at him, he was smiling.”
“And then?”
“I guess my expression stopped him. He started to ask me what was wrong, but when he got close and saw…and saw his wife’s hand…” I gulped. “He dropped down next to me and began saying her name.”
“When did you first know he was there?”
“When he got near the top of the stairs.”
“And his clothes? Did you notice anything?”
I looked at Quentin. He nodded. I hoped I wouldn’t get Dermott in trouble. “Like what? He had on a sports jacket but no tie. Chinos.”
“His shoes? Leather, sneakers? Flip-flops?”
“Not flip-flops, regular shoes I think. I was focused on a bleeding woman, not on footwear.”
“One more question. Was there anything that might have been blood on his clothing? Chinos are light colored. You might have noticed, and I assume he was wearing a shirt.”
“Of course he was and, no, nothing like that. His jacket was dark, so I wouldn’t have seen blood on it, but he looked perfectly normal.”
“He had blood on his pants and his shirt when the police examined his clothes.”
“Well, sure. I mean, he got right down on the floor when he saw her. I had some blood on my sweater and on my knees, which I’m sure your officers reported. We were crouched over her, trying to help her.”
“Okay, let’s confirm what happened next. After Mr. Kennedy arrived, who was the next person on the scene?”
“Your men, two uniformed policemen. I only know the name of one, McManus. The other one was with him.”
“And they came upstairs?”
“Yes, but only after I opened the front door. They were banging on it.”
“So you went downstairs, leaving Mr. Kennedy alone with his wife?”
“Yes, but only for a minute. The cops ran up the stairs.”
I might have continued, but Quentin interrupted me smoothly, reminding the detective he had said he was finished with his questions and that my injury from the car crash was catching up to me.
“I wanted to ask you if the security cameras for the building have been checked,” I said, curiosity trumping the desire to be gone. “Wouldn’t that tell you who came into and left the building?”
“They don’t have many of them on the building and none were particularly helpful.” Kirby snorted. “Just grainy images. Probably didn’t seem like a high priority to install better units.”
With that, he stood up, signaling that the interview was over. As he walked Quentin and me toward the reception area, I started to ask him a question, but was interrupted by an oddly familiar voice. “Detective Kirby? Inspector Sugerman. Thanks for making time to see me. Hi Dani, you okay?” A hand reached out to squeeze my arm gently as I spun around. I wasn’t hallucinating. It really was Charlie.
He looked a little tired and his tie was twisted to one side, but the green eyes were twinkling a little as he registered my surprise. Before I could do more than stutter, Charlie had turned to the detective and was agreeing to meet him in his office in five minutes, as soon as he’d seen me off.
“But, how…I mean, why…?”
He laughed. “It was worth a long day and two plane changes to see your face. Seriously, though, what you’ve been telling me isn’t adding up. I had a three-day break coming to me in rotation. Weiler even blessed it. Said he wouldn’t know what to do for entertainment if you wound up in jail a continent away.”
Quentin murmured something about jail not being a likely option and I introduced them. Charlie suggested we three have dinner to go over the case and said he’d meet me at the hotel in a couple of hours. Quentin surprised me by agreeing, saying he’d use the time to sort his notes for Monday’s court case. “You’re a much better pair of dinner companions than a rerun of ‘Law and Order’ and a frozen chicken pot pie.”
I left the police station feeling more optimistic than I had in days.