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9:10 p.m. Saturday, August 29th, 1992
BAILEY breathed a sigh of relief as Padget locked the door again behind Dobson as the lawyer finally left the dining room. It had been a tedious process taking a complete set of photos of the scene as well as taking separate samples of wine from glass, bottle, and tablecloth. And it had taken a long time to do it the way Dobson had wanted it done. The man had stood looking over their shoulders without lifting a finger to help, of course.
Thankfully Padget had been a big help. And he and Bailey had shared a silent amusement over the two of them being there undercover and the lawyer none the wiser. And now that Dobson had gone off to inform the family members that the phones were down and the police were not on the way, they could talk freely.
Bailey grabbed all the sealed and signed plastic bags off the table and held them up to Padget. “I’m sure this will all be useful in court. And Dobson as an eyewitness to everything we did as well.”
Padget lifted his handheld camera. “Hopefully none of this will be necessary, but I’m glad we took precautions. Especially after last time.” He started toward the door. “We’d better get these things put away in the safe.”
For all the good any of it would do. Bailey had little doubt Oak’s wine had been poisoned, but just as with Brandt Keener’s death, the opportunity had been there for anyone. The easy assumption would be that someone had slipped something in while the lights were out that last time, which would mean it had been one of the other diners. But that was not necessarily the case.
When they had set the table before dinner, they had put out multiple glasses for the guests, for different wines with different courses. Anyone would have had the chance to go into the dining room before the meal and add a drop of poison to one of the empty glasses, and that included Mrs. Trimble and Talia. The same opportunity as there had been the night Brandt Keener had died. Only this time it had been the wine with the main course rather than the apéritif that had been poisoned.
If Mrs. Trimble had not decided to recreate the dinner from three weeks ago, if Padget hadn’t chosen to seat everyone the same, or if Sam had not invoked the ‘ghost’ of Brandt Keener, tonight’s death might not have happened. At least in the way it had. But Oak would almost certainly have died soon, by whatever hand had taken this opportunity.
Padget paused in front of the door to the kitchen. “You didn’t say anything to Dobson about having smelled cyanide on Oak’s breath. Shouldn’t we tell him?”
Bailey shook his head. “He might not be a suspect in Keener’s murder, but I don’t trust him. And it’s usually best not to share information with anyone who’s not part of the investigation.”
Padget smiled, as he clearly knew that meant he was a part of this, and he liked the idea now. Probably because he thought a real detective was taking the lead. If only he knew. Taking a final look down at Oak’s corpse before draping a clean sheet they’d brought over it, the federal agent sobered. “I never noticed any of them grieving for Keener, and I don’t suppose anyone will mourn Mr. Oak either.”
“While neither man seemed especially lovable, isn’t that overstating it? I never knew Keener, but I thought Oak had his good points—not that I would expect tears from this crowd, but some of them will miss him, won’t they?”
Padget snorted. “The best you should hope for is that some of them aren’t actually glad the man is dead. Quill always hated him, and the family thinks he’d been helping hide assets—from them as well as from the government.”
“You’re saying those five people might’ve had a motive to murder Oak.” Bailey gave Padget a frank look. “You wouldn’t be the person who told the tabloids the details of Keener’s death, would you? Either on your own initiative or on the orders of your superiors, to stir up suspicion surrounding it?”
The federal agent’s eyes opened wide in astonishment, then he shook his head. “I don’t think I’d have dared do something like that, especially when my superiors were happy that there wasn’t a homicide investigation.”
His surprise was clearly genuine, so it was still a mystery, though likely an irrelevant one, who had leaked those details to the press. Padget raised his eyebrows with his hand on the doorknob, wordlessly asking if there was anything else to discuss while they were alone.
Bailey shook his head. “Let’s take care of these things and see how well Mrs. Trimble and Talia are holding up.” Particularly the maid, who had shot to the top of his suspect list.
Padget opened the door for him, then followed him through and locked the door behind them. No one was waiting for them in the kitchen, but on the table sat a plate piled with four wrapped sandwiches and a note held beneath it. Padget took the note with his free hand and frowned.
“Mrs. Trimble says she and Talia had to go get the new maid settled, but she’s left us these snacks in case we get hungry, and there’s hot water for tea on the stove.” He turned and waved the note in the air with a look of confusion. “New maid? The woman must be mad.”
Bailey smiled. So Sam had somehow managed to get the cook to accept her so she could become a part of the staff. “We’ve got our own work to do, so I say we leave them to it. But I must say I’m grateful for the sandwiches.” He walked over to the table and grabbed one as he held out the evidence bags.
Padget let the note drift to the table. “Well, I’m going to find out what this is all about.” Taking the bags, he whirled on his heel and headed for the staff corridor.
“Just make sure you lock everything in the safe first, will you?”
The federal agent stopped and turned, looking chagrined. “Of course. Anything else I can do?”
Bailey nodded. “I don’t know when, or even if, Dobson might get around to telling anyone outside the family about our communications having been cut off. So if you see Mr. Hope and he hasn’t heard yet, please let him know. And observe his reaction.” There. Sam had told him to leave Turner to her, so he was going to stay away from the man.
Padget blinked, but he seemed pleased. “What about Mr. Quill?”
“I’ll handle informing Quill myself.” The soon-to-be former CFO of Keener’s company looked like he’d had motive to kill both his employer and Oak. Bailey had a lot of questions he wanted to ask him. “And between the two of us we should try to keep an eye on Talia. Two people have already died.”
“You think she might kill somebody else?” The federal agent seemed to think she was the most likely murderer.
“I’m fairly convinced there’s a killer among us, but we can’t say for sure who it is, and we certainly can’t say whether they might kill again. But I really don’t want to see another murder, do you? So we’ll try to be extra vigilant.”
Padget nodded soberly. “Good luck with Quill.” And then he turned again and left the kitchen.
Left alone with his sandwich, Bailey started eating it as he followed the federal agent at a leisurely pace. He needed time to think. As a lowly footman, he wasn’t in a position to interrogate a guest. With the police coming tomorrow though, time was running short, and one certain way to convince Sam to leave before the authorities arrived would be catching the killer. Surely she would be willing to leave it to the police to assemble the actual evidence as long as the truth had been exposed. And whether or not Quill was the murderer, the man had to know something that would shed some light to help them solve the mystery.
Bailey reached the back stairs and began climbing the steps slowly as he chewed. He had to question Quill closely, even if it would be awkward. The man might complain, but to whom? Dobson could fire Bailey, but that was all. The difficulty would be how to convince Quill to talk—the CFO could refuse to answer any questions if he chose, and Bailey had no way to press for them. He had to take care.
Finishing his sandwich, he stuffed the wax paper Mrs. Trimble had wrapped it in into his pocket and stepped out onto the second floor. He went up to Quill’s door and swallowed the final remnants of his snack before knocking. He waited, then had to knock again.
The door finally swung open and revealed Quill looking cross. As usual. “What do you want? And why didn’t you say who you were?”
Bailey nodded. “You’re right, Mr. Quill. Since it seems there’s a murderer on the premises, you’d better not open your door until you know who’s on the other side. That’s kind of why I’m here. To tell you that the phones are down and we haven’t been able to contact the authorities to get them out here. We may have to wait for the ferry, which means the police may not arrive until tomorrow evening.”
Quill squinted and pursed his lips. “I must say, that’s quite unacceptable.”
“I thought you might be relieved. There was little love lost between you and Mr. Oak, so the police will probably want to ask you a lot of intrusive questions. I imagine that’ll be unpleasant.”
“Are you accusing me of murder? The impertinence.”
Bailey shook his head. “Not at all, sir. I’m just talking about what it’ll be like when the police start their investigation. Everybody knows Mr. Oak and you had your problems.”
“I don’t have to explain myself to you.”
“Of course not, sir. But you will have to satisfy the police, is all I’m saying.”
Quill glared at him. “Is that a threat? Or an attempt at blackmail? I don’t have anything to hide. I’ve never made a secret of how I felt about Oak. He was a miserable toad and a mediocre accountant. I loathed the man, but if I were going to murder him because of that, I would’ve strangled him years ago. I’m not sad he’s dead, but I didn’t have a reason to kill him.”
Bailey lifted his eyebrows to express his doubt. “If he wasn’t a good accountant, why would Brandt Keener have hired him?”
“Because the man had no morals. Brandt wanted someone like that, someone who would skirt the law, so he shouldn’t have been surprised to find out Oak had been stealing from him. Brandt ended up getting exactly what he asked for.”
“I don’t know. Maybe he wasn’t all that clever, seeing how he got caught, but you could just be jealous. I heard a bit about what Mr. Keener put in his will.” And it had clearly accused Quill of incompetence, but Bailey didn’t need to say the words to get the point across.
Indeed, Quill was almost trembling with anger now. “You listen to me. I’m extremely good at what I do, or I’d never have risen to the top of my profession or kept my position at Keener Corporation.”
“If that’s the case, why would Keener retire you and order an audit on top of that?”
The man’s snort was explosive. “That’s Brandt getting back at me because I was too ethical for his liking.” He took a couple deep breaths and seemed to calm down some. “It’s true. Early on in my job, when the company was still small, I did fail to take advantage of some legitimate tax breaks we should have benefited from. Brandt never let me forget it, either, though I never made that mistake again.”
Bailey considered that. “So you started out being too scrupulous and cost the company money?”
Quill jerked his head in acknowledgment. “At least I didn’t defraud the government.” He left unsaid the accusation that that’s exactly what Keener had been doing with his personal finances, with the assistance of Mr. Oak. “And now, please leave. I’m tired, and having Dobson fire you can wait until the morning.”
Then he shut the door firmly in Bailey’s face, in a controlled movement that avoided making any excess noise. Despite his temper, Quill wasn’t a slammer of doors. For his part, Bailey had gotten quite a bit of information from the man, though he wasn’t sure how useful it would be, or if it had been worth losing his ‘job’ over.
Looking down the hall, he stared at the door to Turner’s suite as he considered what he ought to do next. Foremost on his mind was the suspicious situation with the phones. Padget had said he’d check them every once in a while to see if they were working again, but Bailey wanted to try to find out what was actually wrong. For that, Turner would be useful, since he’d studied all these old communication technologies. Though if Bailey were to seek out the man’s help, Sam might see that as ignoring her instructions. Anyway, he wasn’t sure Turner could be trusted.
Bailey swiveled and marched down the corridor all the way to the east end of the second floor, right into Keener’s master bedroom. It was just as sterile and impersonal as Sam had described, without any personal effects. But at least there was a phone on the nightstand by the bed. Lifting the receiver and finding no dial tone confirmed that part of Dobson’s story, and there was no use taking the thing apart, as Bailey wasn’t likely to recognize a problem even if he saw it.
So he sighed, then walked back out of Brandt’s suite and down the main stairs and across the foyer to the other side of the house. The door to the parlor stood open, but Bailey ignored the family inside and continued to the study, which was conveniently empty. Picking up the phone on the desk, he found it also lacked a dial tone. If the fault was in the line, as everyone seemed to think, where would the problem be located?
Following the cord from the back of the unit to the baseboard, he found it plugged into a jack in the wall and tried to imagine where it went from there. Outside the building, most likely. Leaving the study behind, Bailey continued down the hall to the back door. He opened it onto a pitch black night, illuminated only by the light from a single bare bulb over his head. Closing the door, he walked further down the corridor to the utility room next to the garage.
There he found what he’d hoped to find, a flashlight. Returning to the back door, he opened it and stepped out into the night to continue his search.
Bailey used the bright beam to examine the exterior wall of the house until he discovered the cord which had to come from the phone in the study, and he followed that to where it joined with several others in a junction box. It was closed but not locked, so he looked inside, but all the wires and their connections were alright as far as he could tell.
Shutting the box, he lifted the beam of his flashlight to see where the phone line climbed the utility pole. Only it didn’t. Just above the box, somebody had snipped the wire. If that had been all that had been done, it would’ve been easily fixed, but they’d snipped the line again much farther up—then whoever it had been had taken that length of cord from where it had been stapled to the pole, taken it away altogether.
Someone really didn’t want them to call the police. Perhaps they merely wanted to delay the arrival of the authorities so they could tamper with the evidence, as apparently had happened after Keener had died. Or maybe somebody had a more sinister motive for cutting off their contact with the outside world.