15 15 Her coffee cup was still in her hand. She carefully put it down on the table. “What are you talking about? As far as I know, when you tailgate somebody, it means you’re driving too close behind.”
“You don’t know of a place by that name, or maybe a project with that code name?”
“No. Why do you ask?”
I told her about what had happened that morning, and repeated Arbuckle’s last words. “What do you think he meant?” I asked. “Was his bunny our Bunny? And what did he mean by tailgate?”
She was impatient. “Of course he was talking about the Easter Bunny! There aren’t any other bunnies in the picture!” Then she seemed to slow her thoughts. “Tailgate? I can’t imagine what that means, but if it’s not the Easter Bunny, maybe Arbuckle was telling you that we’re wrong in thinking that it was.” She looked at me. “Maybe it’s someone else who’s doing the killing.”
And when she said that, I no longer saw through a glass, darkly. “He didn’t say ‘tailgate,’” said my voice. “He said, ‘Tell Kate,’ but he was on his last breath and I heard him wrong. He said, ‘Tell Kate.’” I looked at her, full of certainty. “And now he has told you, and you’ve understood. It’s not the Easter Bunny; it’s someone else who’s doing the killing.”
Her brow furrowed, and my own thoughts raced through the many reasons people have for killing other people.
Some of those reasons are so whimsical as to be incomprehensible: people kill just to see what it feels like; they kill to experience power or joy or sorrow or some other emotion that life doesn’t otherwise provide. They kill because God or Satan tells them to, or to save the world from aliens from outer space; they kill out of patriotic or religious or tribal fervor.
But mostly they kill for simple motives such as greed, fear, sex or its lack, and revenge. They kill to get what someone else has, to defend themselves, to get love or destroy the lover who’s left them, or to get even.
Books have been written about why people kill. One thing they agree about is that every murder involves several stories: the story of the killer, the story of the victim, the story of the two participants coming fatally together through time and space, and, if efforts are made to solve the crime, the story of the detective.
“How many lovers have you had?” I asked Kate. “How many men? How many women?”
Her dark eyes flashed. “I told you to leave my lovers out of this conversation. My private life is my own business!”
I put up a hand. “I personally don’t care if you sleep with baboons three times a day, but whoever killed Arbuckle and Susan Bancroft has a history that links him with them and with you and Joe Begay. The list of such people can’t be too long, but it might include your boyfriends past and present. How many are there?”
She lifted her chin and her voice was defiant. “A thousand!”
That was a different man every week for more than twenty years. She annoyed me. “We don’t have time for lies. How many?”
She tossed her long, dark hair. “I’m thirty-five. I had my first boy when I was fourteen and my first schoolteacher a month later. I’ve been sexually active all my life.”
“No husbands along the way?”
“None of my own. I’ve had offers but I wasn’t interested.”
“Maybe it’s just as well.”
Anger only made her more attractive, and I could see why she could have almost any man she wanted.
Then she surprised me by saying, “I’m about ready to give up this kind of life and to get married. And when I do, I’m going to be monogamous. There’ll be no more lovers in hotel rooms. We’ll have a house and a family and we’ll live normal lives.”
She must have seen something in my face as I listened, because she pushed her hair back with both hands and smiled an ironic smile. “Yes, yes. I know that you’re thinking about me and Joe and about me and you. All I can say is that I’m not married yet.”
“Not counting Joe and me,” I said, “how many men and women have you had?”
“I’m not interested in bedding women.”
“Stop dancing. How many men, then?”
“I don’t notch a tally stick.”
“Narrow it down. How many were unhappy when you left them?”
She smiled her shining smile. “All of them, I hope.”
Earlier she had resented my intrusion into her private life, but now she seemed to be almost enjoying it.
“How many of them were really angry?”
She arched a brow. “Not many. All of them knew it was just one of those things.”
“But some weren’t satisfied with a trip to the moon on gossamer wings?”
“A few. I eased their feelings when I could, and broke the relationships off when they wouldn’t be eased.” A small frown appeared on her face. “Are you thinking that some lover of mine is doing all this killing? I don’t think so.”
“You’re in the spook business and you must know people who know how to kill people.”
The frown remained. “I don’t know any who would want to do something like this!”
“Don’t look back too far. Just, say, the past four or five years. Anyone there who didn’t want it to be just one of those fabulous flights?”
“I can’t think of any.”
“How about the people who worked with you? How about Edo and Francis and Susan, for instance? Did you bed them?”
Her anger returned, but its flame was lower than before. “I told you, I don’t have sex with women. What if I did sleep with Edo and Francis? All three of them are dead, so none of them is doing this!”
“Do you make a habit of sleeping with all of the men you work with? Wasn’t one of the reasons you came here so you could make a play for Joe Begay?”
She gave a wry smile. “And I struck out. It doesn’t happen often.”
I imagined it didn’t. “Joe says that one reason he trusts you is because he worked with you earlier and you can be depended on to do your job. Who worked on that earlier mission?”
She thought for a moment. “Susan and Joe and Stephen.”
“The same Susan?”
“Yes. Susan Bancroft. In my business you work with the same people sometimes.”
“You told me that you and Susan weren’t lovers. What about Stephen?”
She made a small sweeping gesture with one hand. “As far as I was concerned, it was over between Stephen and me before that assignment. He made a play for Susan, but she had a boyfriend at home and she said no in pretty strong words.” Kate smiled a humorless smile. “Susan and I were different people, as you can tell. Anyway, Stephen was furious with Susan, and then he got badly hurt as we were coming out. We got him home and they patched him up as well as they could.” She shook her head and the light danced on her long, dark hair. “I don’t think he’s your man, unless your killer uses a wheelchair.” “Does he have a last name?”
“Harkness. Stephen was our communications guy. He may still be in the IC, sitting at a desk somewhere, but I don’t think he’s up to fieldwork anymore.”
“Anyone else I should check on?”
“Old lovers or just anyone at all?”
Her tone was almost gentle and I was aware that I had been alternating between liking her and not liking her. There had been no alteration in my body’s awareness of her beauty and sensuality.
I said, “Anyone at all who has a tie with the trade mission and who might want the members all dead. Other than the Easter Bunny, that is.”
“I thought we’d eliminated the Easter Bunny.”
I shook my head. “Arbuckle might have, but I haven’t eliminated anyone. I’m trying to add to the list before I start subtracting. Can you think of anyone who might have wanted the trade mission crew dead?”
“No.”
“I’ll settle for the names of other pissed-off lovers and of people who had ties to the mission.”
“It won’t be much of a list, because I don’t know who planned the mission or knew about it, other than some foreign assets who helped us out over there. And I think you can discount them because most of them were local and were glad to help ax Rudolph and the Scarecrow.”
“Any of them make it to your bed?”
She smiled and shook her head. “I had no time for foreign affairs, if you’ll pardon the expression. Worse luck, too. One of the boys was a good-looking lad.”
“Americans, then. Anybody who went away mad sometime in the last five years.”
“It’ll be a short list.”
I gave her pen and paper. “Write down addresses and anything else you can remember.”
She hesitated. “What are you going to do with this? Some of these guys are married with kids. I don’t want to wreck any innocent lives.”
“They don’t sound too innocent to me.”
She shook her head. “What a puritan you are. They’re men who like sex, that’s all. Hell, so do you and I. We’re not talking immorality here.” But she bent over the paper and wrote one name and then others.
When she was done, she handed the paper to me. “Here. These men didn’t want to break off with me, but none of them is a killer.”
“We’ll see.”
“I know a killer when I meet one.”
“Do you sleep with them anyway?”
She stood and came close to me. “A couple, maybe. How about you? How about changing your mind?” She leaned over me and her arms went around my neck.
I could feel the magnetic heat of her body pulling me to her.
Maybe I hesitated, but then I put my hands on her arms and pushed them away.
“No.”
“I don’t always do what I want to do.”
“Why not?”
“Not because I’m moral. Probably because I’m not but think I should be.”
She eyed me, then shook her head. “You and Joe Begay are two of a kind.”
“I call that flattery.”
She smiled a beautiful crooked smile. “I call it a mystery. Two guys like you on one little island. I guess I’ll have to start hitting the bars if I want any action.”
“You won’t have any trouble finding what you’re looking for there, but be careful. There’s a killer around and we don’t know who it is. But he knows you.”
Her hand strayed to and then from her hip, where her pistol was holstered. “Don’t worry about me. What are you going to do with that list of names? I don’t want anybody to get into trouble because of me.”
“They’re already in trouble because of you,” I said. “My truck’s blocking the driveway. I’ll bring it down and then you can be on your way.”