At home, I brewed a pot of coffee, anticipating a long evening ahead of me. I was almost done with the written appraisal for Gil when Matt knocked at my front door.
"I did some digging into Tremain's landlord," he said. "Want to hear about it?"
I let him inside, and he stopped at the doorway between the old ATM enclosure and the large open space that contained my living room and kitchen. He spent a minute taking in the changes I'd made to what was once the bank's lobby and teller enclosures.
"I like it," he said finally. "But where's the vault?"
"Over there." I pointed to his left at the side wall. "Through that door, next to my office."
"Does that mean you trust me now?"
"About as much as a lawyer or appraiser trusts anyone." It helped that Stefan had given Matt an alibi, so while I might not trust him with personal information about me yet, at least I no longer wondered if he might have been the one to kill Tremain. I also trusted him to help with getting Emma out of jail. "We need hard evidence before we reach any conclusions. So what did you find out about Tremain's landlord?"
Matt gave the direction of the vault a longing look. "Plenty, but you promised to show me the vault."
"I didn't promise when I'd do it. Now is not a good time."
He threw himself onto a stool at the kitchen peninsula and patted his cargo pants pockets until he found his notebook. "The landlord didn't answer his phone, so I left a message. While I was waiting, I got to thinking that we never did ask Martha where she was when Tremain was killed. She had a public feud with him, after all. I swung by her office, and she told me she'd been in the hospital for a bit of minor elective surgery. She'd been expecting the police to ask her that exact question, so she'd even gotten copies of her medical records to prove where she was."
"So we can cross her off the list. What about the landlord?"
"He says Tremain was about six months behind on the rent, supposedly because of defects in the building. More likely, judging by the picky little things he was complaining about, Tremain just didn't have the money to pay."
"That sounds like a motive to me." I'd never handled landlord-tenant cases, but my ex-colleagues had told me horror stories about tenants who withheld rent over the slightest of perceived defects in their apartments. As long as Tremain was cheating his customers, why not cheat his landlord too? "We know the landlord was at Monograms the day of the murder. What if he saw everyone leave and followed Tremain back to his office to collect on the rent? They got into an argument, and Tremain ended up dead."
"I ran that scenario by him, and he just laughed. Said it would have been a lot simpler to evict them than to kill one of them. You'd know better than I do, but apparently it's harder, or at least more time consuming, to evict a dead person than a living one."
That sounded right from what little I knew about estates and landlord-tenant law. Still, people weren't always rational. In the heat of the moment, they committed crimes that would make their lives more difficult even if they were never caught. "If the landlord wasn't involved in Tremain's death, then why did he hide when the police were there?"
"That's where it gets interesting," Matt said. "The landlord had already left before the police arrived. It was maybe a couple of minutes before we all took a break from the meeting, when he realized he didn't have all the supplies he needed. While he was out, he got a call from another tenant with a true emergency repair, so he went to take care of that and never returned to Monograms that afternoon. He didn't even find out about the murder until he heard it on the news after dinner."
"I suppose he has a time-stamped receipt to give him an alibi."
"He does. But here's what's interesting. He saw two separate people enter the shop before he left. People we didn't know were there."
"I know about Wolfe," I said. "Who's the other?"
"Stefan Anderson," Matt said. "Alyse must have left the back door unlocked for her cigarette breaks, and that's how he got in. The landlord was at the top of the corridor's stairs when he saw Stefan slipping inside Monograms from the back door."
"You don't really think Stefan could have killed Tremain, do you?"
"I hope not, but I just don't know." Matt didn't seem pleased by the idea that his persistent critic was a suspect.
"I'm not offering Stefan up to the detectives as a suspect until I know whether you've got a reason to frame him. It's obvious you two have a history, and not a particularly happy one."
"Stefan's the one who's into history, not me," Matt said. "I don't have any problems with him. I completely understand why he's so disappointed in me, and I even respect his opinion. I just have different priorities than he does."
"So tell me. Why is he so disappointed in you?"
"It's a long story." He glanced over his shoulder at the door leading to my office and the bank vault. "If you're so pressed for time that we can't do a tour, you really don't have time to hear the story of my checkered past. I promise it's got nothing to do with Tremain or his murder. You can ask Stefan for confirmation, if you want."
"I will. Right after I ask him why he didn't tell me he was at Monograms around the time of the murder. I still hate to offer him up as the only viable suspect, though. Did you learn anything about the names on Tremain's client list?"
"Nothing solid," Matt said. "Not one of the politicians has a reputation for collecting antiques. Are you absolutely sure all of those people were actual clients? They might have been his dream clients, people he hoped to work with."
"I don't know exactly where Alyse got the names. I don't even know how much Alyse knew about Tremain's business dealings. If she truly didn't know about the fraudulent quilts, maybe the two of them ran their portions of the business separately. Tremain had his textile clients, and Alyse had her silver clients, and never the twain shall meet."
Matt's notebook disappeared into one of his pockets. "I'll keep looking into the politicians on the list, but I've pretty much given up on that story."
The logical part of my brain insisted I should drop the whole thing and let the police do their job. Still, I couldn't shake the feeling that I was distantly responsible for Tremain's death. Not legally, of course, but that didn't change the nagging sense of responsibility I felt for making sure the killer was caught. It was just one more thing, like my unfinished speech, to keep me from ever attaining the state of calm that might put a permanent end to my syncope events.
"There could be a politician who was connected to Tremain who wasn't a client. Wolfe said his boss is getting political pressure to keep Tremain's reputation unsullied, and Gil's getting the same thing. I wish I knew who was pressuring them, although I don't know how I'd get them to talk to me. I can't exactly subpoena them."
"They'd talk to me," Matt said. "Politicians always love free publicity."
"Not if it links them to a con man."
"That's the great thing about being an arts reporter," Matt said. "They always expect me to ask fluffy questions. I guess they don't actually read my stories."
* * *
After Matt left, it didn't take long to proofread the museum's appraisal. I printed the final version and tucked it into my quilted messenger bag with two hours left to deliver it before closing time. I even had time to stop at Stefan's gallery to find out why he'd failed to mention being inside Monograms around the time of the murder.
As I walked down Main Street, I noticed movement inside Monograms. Could the quilt thief have returned? If the theft had been related to the murder, then Tremain's killer could be inside the shop right now.
I peered through the glass door and saw Alyse puttering around the public area of the shop, dusting and rearranging the displays. Not the thief/killer then, unless Alyse had killed her partner.
I hadn't expected to be able to talk to Alyse again until the shop reopened next week, and I didn't want to miss this opportunity. Monograms' front door was locked, so I knocked on the glass.
Alyse looked up, recognized me, and hurried over to the door. She rubbed her face as she walked. Up close, I could see that Alyse's eyes were red and puffy, and her cheeks were damp.
Alyse twisted the key in the deadbolt and pushed the door open to let me inside.
"I didn't expect to see you here," I said. "Did something else happen?"
"Oh, goodness, no," Alyse said. "I couldn't just sit at home. I had to keep busy. Tremain's final arrangements are all set now, and there's nothing for me to do except wait until the service on Saturday. I thought working might distract me, but I keep thinking I need to ask Randall about something, and then I remember that I can't ask him. Not ever again. He really was a brilliant salesman. I don't know what I'm going to do without him."
I'd had plenty of teary clients in my office over the years—sometimes tears of joy in the aftermath of winning a hard-fought trial, sometimes tears of frustration over an adverse technical ruling, sometimes tears of pain or loss—and I'd never been any good at dealing with their emotions. Some of the clients had been grateful for my no-nonsense approach, and the rest I had fobbed off onto colleagues who were better at handholding while I silently gave thanks I wasn't a solo practitioner. I was on my own now since I hadn't anticipated needing that kind of backup for appraisal work.
I settled for an awkward, "I'm sorry."
Alyse nodded and turned away. "I appreciate your checking on me."
"I was in the neighborhood." I was as much of a fraud as Tremain ever was. I wasn't here to help Alyse but to get information out of her that might possibly lead to her being charged with murder.
Alyse dropped into the wingback chair next to the cupboard full of quilts. "I don't deserve your friendship. I haven't been honest with you."
One of the cardinal rules for interrogating a hostile witness was to never, ever interrupt when the person volunteered information, since it was often something the interrogator wouldn't have thought to ask about. I settled into the matching chair to Alyse's right and waited for her to go on.
"I knew he was selling fakes," she said between sobs. "I figured it out two months ago, and I've been making plans to dissolve our partnership ever since."
"How did Tremain take the news?"
"The tantrum went on for over an hour. I thought he was going to have a stroke. At one point I even thought it might be a blessing if he did. I'm not proud of the thought, but you saw what he was like."
"Even a saint would have had that thought after an hour of a grown man's temper tantrum," I assured her. "You would have done the right thing if he'd actually needed medical care."
Alyse nodded. "I just wanted to dissolve our relationship before Tremain's cons caught up with him. I was almost out too. Just one more month, and I was going to be free."
"He let you out of your partnership?"
"He didn't have any choice." She laughed through her tears. "Ironically, Randall was the one who insisted on a written partnership agreement, and he wrote it himself. There was an escape clause with sixty days' notice, no reason necessary. I think he put it in there to protect himself, and he never considered the possibility that I might want out of the deal. I gave him notice a month ago. Just one more month, and I'd have had my new place set up so my reputation wouldn't be destroyed when the truth came out about Tremain."
"And instead, you're cleaning up the mess he left behind."
"I was such a fool," Alyse said, echoing the words of Tremain's other confirmed victim, Martha McDowell.
"Anyone can get conned by a professional."
Alyse was starting to look more angry than despairing. She pulled her silver cigarette case out of her pocket. "If you'll excuse me, I need a smoke."
"Of course. I should be going anyway."
Alyse hesitated. "You know, it's tempting to just have my smoke inside here—it's my shop now, after all—but I can't make myself do it. Randall may not have cared about his textiles, and they're not worth anything close to what's on the price tags, but it wouldn't be right to damage them with the smoke. Someone worked hard to make them. They deserve some respect."
"I'm glad you care. I've seen what even small amounts of smoke can do to a quilt over time."
"I don't know why I bother, really," Alyse said. "Someone will probably just steal the rest of them like they did with the four-patch."
"Have you heard anything more about it from the police?"
She tapped her cigarette case on the palm of her hand. "Not from them and not from the insurance company either. I'm afraid Randall may have lied about getting an insurance policy, along with all the other lies." The tapping of her cigarette case increased in tempo. "Why couldn't he have waited another month to get himself killed?"