We were entering the upper basement when flashlights blinded me. A gruff voice shouted, “Drop the gun.”
“No problem,” I said, placing the weapon on the concrete floor. “Dropping the gun.”
“It’s okay,” I heard A.W.’s voice shout. “They’re friendlies.”
“Is the area clear, chef?” Lee asked.
“Yes,” I said, shading my eyes. “Think your guys could lower the flashlights?”
When they did, I saw that Lee was kneeling beside Bettina. “Who did this?” she asked as I approached.
“Over there,” I said, pointing at the corpse.
“Killing him was good work, chef,” she said.
“I didn’t do it,” I said.
“Then Bettina …”
“Maybe, but there was somebody else here,” I said. “Too dark to see. Could have been Felix. The guy over there took a bullet in the back of his head. I don’t know how Bettina could have managed that.”
“We can sort that all out later,” Lee said.
While A.W. and the others wrapped Gin and Ted in blankets and led them upstairs, Lee wasted no time sending for paramedics for Bettina and arranging for her hospitalization. Then she turned to me. “You okay? You look like you’ve been through hell.”
“I, ah, fell down the stairs,” I said. “Some aches and pains, but I’m ambulatory.”
“Good. I think you should leave here now. And take your friends. A.W. can drive you.”
“The police will want to talk to us.”
“Not if they don’t know about you,” she said. “I’ll take care of it. You do not want to be involved. Neither you nor your friends. But especially not you. We’re paid to handle things like this.”
She called out to A.W. and, when he arrived, instructed him to take us away from there immediately. But before I left she asked, “What did you touch?”
“The handrail along the stairs, this.” I handed her Bettina’s pistol. “And the Stick ’em light. That’s about it.”
“You touched nothing else? This is very important.”
“The strips of duct tape.”
“The sleep masks?” she asked.
“Maybe.”
“We’ll have to collect and destroy all of that, anyway,” she said. “Now that there was no kidnapping.”
She held up Bettina’s gun. “I’ll take care of this, too. You should go now and let me summon the police. We will talk tonight.”
I nodded.
As I reached the stairs, I heard her say into her phone, “I wish to report a trespass and a fatal shooting at …”