A Draw of Death (Helen Binney Mysteries Book 3) (14 page)

"Doesn't it make you nervous, staying in a place where someone was just brutally murdered?"

Art shrugged. "Not really. This is Wharton, after all, not some big city. No one has any reason to kill me. Not like they did for Mr. Rezendes. I mean, I worked for the man, and I admired his poker skills and business acumen, but he wasn't a very nice person. There's a reason why he left Hollywood to move to a quiet little town no one's ever heard of on the far side of the continent. If you dug deep enough, I bet you'd find that it wasn't just because of his deal with the new casino in Springfield."

"Do you think someone from his past followed him here to kill him?"

"Have you seen any of his television appearances?" Art said. "The man was the opposite of Will Rogers: he
always
met men he didn't like, and the feeling was mutual. He taunted and humiliated every single big-name Hollywood actor who claimed to be a good poker player."

If Art was right, then maybe there were better suspects than Stevie and the construction crews. That would put Tate's mind at ease. "I hope you told Detective Peterson about Vic's enemies."

"I did," Art said. "I'm not sure he believed me, though. Kept fobbing me off on a newbie. Detective Almeida."

"As long as someone in the department has the information, you've done everything you can."

There was nothing else Helen could do right now either since the cat had been found, and she no longer had an excuse to poke around the grounds. She would have liked to have seen just how invisibly Marty had installed the cameras, although she supposed it didn't much matter if they hadn't been operational at the time of the murder.

Helen turned to leave, and her glance fell on the area where Marty had last seen Vic's cat. There was a tortoiseshell Maine coon cat sitting there, watching her and Art with unblinking green eyes.

"Does Vic's cat have a twin?"

"No. Why?"

Helen pointed. "Perhaps Vic should have called it Houdini instead of Broadway."

Art took a step toward the cat, but Helen reached out an arm to stop him. "It doesn't seem to like you. Why don't you let me try to catch it?"

"Whatever," he said. "I'll go back and see if I can figure out how it escaped. You can let yourself into the house if you catch it. The front door's unlocked."

If Helen were a better person, she wouldn't have been so happy to see the cat. It would be safer indoors, but it had been given its pill, after all, and now she had an excuse to roam the grounds and look for clues.

The cat might like Helen more than it liked Art, but it liked being outdoors even more. It maintained at least a six-foot distance at all times, retreating whenever Helen approached and then inching forward again if Helen stepped back. Eventually it tired of the game and leaped up to the top of the six-foot wall and trotted off toward Freddie Wade's property.

There were shouts on the other side of the wall as Vic's fans caught sight of the cat and gave chase. If they followed it all the way to the end of the property, they'd see that the wall didn't encompass the whole property. There was no way she'd catch the cat before that happened, but she could warn Art to keep all the doors locked in case the fans and the reporters made their way onto the property.

At the front door, Helen knocked just to be polite and then let herself in.

The foyer had a cathedral ceiling and a sweeping marble staircase to the left, leading up to a balcony that overlooked the floor below. Running under the balcony was a short, wide hallway that led to what appeared to be a formal living room, although the furniture was draped with canvas to protect it from the renovations. About halfway down the right wall of the foyer was a pair of pocket doors, crisscrossed with police tape. That had to be the scene of the crime.

Thanks to the high-quality, full-color video cameras, the view into that room on Sunday afternoon had been stomach-churning. The dark blood spatter had contrasted starkly with the pale purple walls. It had to be even worse in person.

Helen knew better than to open the doors. If she ever crossed a police line without written permission from the police department and without Tate standing beside her when she did it, he would make good on his promise to let her rot in jail. No amount of exotic wood offerings would ever change his mind.

And yet, she found herself mere inches from the doors, drawn by the challenge of the police tape. She had never liked being told what she couldn't do, even when it was for her own good.
Especially
when it was for her own good.

Before she could do something foolish, the sound of footsteps coming down the stairs stopped her in her tracks. Helen turned to see Nora, dressed in jeans and the same sweater as yesterday, but with a different exquisite scarf loosely tied around her neck.

Nora dropped down to sit on the third step from the bottom. "Can't resist meddling with other people's business, can you? Just like in the governor's mansion where you influenced your husband's decisions. If it had been up to you, there wouldn't be casinos in Massachusetts, would there?"

"I wasn't enthusiastic about the idea, no." And not just because the legislation's failure would have reflected badly on Nora. The possibility that Nora would have either lost her job or been forced to relocate to some more gaming-friendly area of the country, far away from Helen and her then husband, had only been a bonus. "But Frank was a big boy by the time we married. He made his own decisions, and he made them based on rational arguments. He didn't let personal considerations influence him."

"Good thing most politicians aren't like that, or my job would be a lot harder," Nora said. "But I doubt you came here to reminisce about the good old days."

"I'm looking for Art."

Nora's eyes flickered in the direction of the taped-off doors behind Helen. "I can tell you one thing. He's not in there. Art would never cross the police tape. No sense of adventure. I tried to get him to go out bar-hopping with me Saturday night, but he said he was too tired, and he just wanted to go to bed."

"It's probably just as well," Helen said. "He's not going to get much sleep over the next few nights. I came to warn him to expect a horde of trespassers. The cat was leading Vic's fans along the front wall toward the neighbor's yard. Once the fans and reporters realize the gates are more for decoration than actual security, there will be people setting up camp in the front yard."

"I should have demanded hazardous-duty pay for taking on this job instead of volunteering for it," Nora said.

"I didn't think you did anything unless you were paid," Helen said. "Were you and Vic friends?"

"Hardly." Nora tugged on her scarf and looked away for a moment. Apparently deciding there was no harm in explaining, she continued, "I'd met him a few times, but I'd never actually been his handler. I thought I was being so sharp taking this gig, when I was actually being played. I've always wanted to go to the spa over in the next town, so when Vic invited me to stay here on Saturday night so we could work out some issues for my employer, I figured it was the perfect opportunity. My transportation costs would be picked up by my employer, and I could check in at the spa on Sunday when the rates drop. No matter how annoying Vic was, I thought getting a deal on the spa treatments would make up for it. It didn't work out that way, of course. Vic was more of a jerk than ever, I cancelled the spa reservation too late to get a refund, and now I'm stuck here waiting for your bumpkin detectives to sort through all of Vic's enemies and figure out who finally snapped and killed him."

Helen found herself in the odd position of wanting to defend Detective Peterson's reputation, just because it was Nora who was insulting him. Nora might be right about Peterson's skills, or lack thereof, but it was unfair to lump Detective Almeida in with him. The new detective might well be a real asset to the department, assuming Peterson didn't undermine her training by teaching her all of his bad habits.

In any event, now wasn't the time for Helen to do an about-face on her opinion of the local homicide squad. In other circumstances, she would have been perfectly happy to disagree with Nora on whatever topic came up, but right now it was important to keep the conversation as friendly as it could be. Nora probably knew more than she realized about the murder, certainly more than Peterson had gotten from her, and Helen was desperate enough for information that she'd even be nice to Nora. Within reason.

"Who do you think the police should be focused on?"

"It could have been anyone." Nora held up one hand as if to fend off an attack. "Before you ask, no, it wasn't me. I didn't have any reason to want him dead. Vic was annoying, but that's all in a day's work."

"I was wondering about that," Helen said. "Who sent you here, anyway? Even Vic couldn't afford your rates, and I wouldn't have thought an event as minor as a speech at a small-town library would be worth anyone else paying for your time."

"Normally it wouldn't have been. But there were rumors that Vic had lost his edge. My employers needed to know if that was true. They had a lot invested in him. They sent me to find out, under the pretense of being his PR person for the library event. Not everything the media say about him is true, but he did like having an entourage."

"Were the rumors correct?" Helen asked. "Had Vic lost his edge?"

She shrugged. "I guess it doesn't matter now. But, yeah, it was pretty obvious he was having short-term memory problems. He had trouble remembering anything about his fellow players. It didn't matter so much if all he forgot was their names—he was never any good with names, from what I've heard—but he absolutely needed to know how his opponents played in the past, whether they were risk-takers or not, what their tells were, that sort of thing. It was getting to the point where, on bad days, he couldn't even remember how the bidding had gone on the current hand."

Helen knew only too well how that kind of memory lapse felt. At least she wasn't on display, with people constantly testing her recall and recording her failures. "Your employer must not have been happy about that."

"They don't know yet," Nora said. "I was planning to make my report by email on Sunday before I left for the spa, but then Vic died, and his memory lapses weren't all that important. I figured I'd wait to give the report in person on Monday morning, but the local cops had other ideas."

"Why would they care if you talked to your employer?"

"Oh, they didn't care if I talked to him. I just couldn't do it in person. You know how the cops on television glare at witnesses and tell everyone not to leave town? Turns out, they really do that. Or at least the ones here do." Nora huffed in frustration. "I really should have left Saturday night when I realized I needed to give my employer some bad news. I told Vic I was leaving then, but I'd really been looking forward to the spa, so I let myself be convinced to stay."

That sounded reasonable, but the equally likely scenario was that Nora was lying about her relationship with Vic and her reasons for being here. Nora wouldn't even consider it lying, just spinning the truth. It was what she did for a living, after all.

Helen was certain she hadn't let her skepticism show, but Nora was good at her job, which required her to be able to read people.

Nora shook her head emphatically. "It wasn't like that. I swear, Vic and I weren't romantically involved. He was just a job and not a very appealing one. There are at least six bedrooms in this place, and I thought maybe I could salvage the spa reservation if I didn't make an overly hasty decision to go home. That's all there was to it."

"So you were right here in the mansion when he was killed?" Helen had always known the woman was tough, but tough enough to be unfazed by a close brush with murder? "I don't remember seeing you here on Sunday."

"I was here, but not anywhere near the crime scene. My room is way over there." Nora pointed back over her shoulder to her right, away from the scene of the murder. "I sleep pretty soundly, especially when I'm out late."

"So you weren't actually here all evening?"

"Are you kidding?" Nora said. "Vic went to his room at some ridiculously early hour, which I'm told is his usual routine, and I'm more of a night owl. I couldn't stand the quiet here, so I went out to see if there was any night life in Wharton."

"I don't suppose you found any," Helen said. "Not this time of year. It's a little busier in the summer with the tourists."

"All I found was a bar with an open-mic comedy event and that only went to 2:00. I stayed until closing and then came back here and crashed until midmorning or so. When I got up, Art told me Vic had locked himself in the poker room, which was fine by me. I don't much like grape juice or grape Pop Tarts, which are about the only breakfast foods Vic ever has in the kitchen, so I went out for breakfast."

That meant Nora didn't have an alibi for 4 a.m. That didn't mean anything. It would have been more surprising if she did have one for that hour. Most people didn't. Of course, most people hadn't been right here in the house when Vic had been killed.

Could Nora have had a reason to kill Vic? She obviously took her career seriously, and she'd been responsible for him at an event where he'd called someone's sainted mother stupid. Did Nora care about her job enough to want to kill the person who caused a relatively small black mark on her record? If she was the killer, it would explain her willingness to stay in the house where a murder had just happened. The killer wouldn't consider the house unsafe, since she'd know there was no risk to her. Unlike Art, Nora didn't have to stay right here in the house. Peterson might not have wanted her to return to Springfield, but "don't leave town" was considerably broader than "don't leave the mansion." Even if Nora couldn't reactivate her reservations at the local spa, there were plenty of B&Bs in the area, most of them desperate for guests this time of year.

"If your job here is done, why are you still here?" Helen said.

"Not everyone is as intent on getting rid of me as you are. Some people actually like having me around."

"I'm sorry." Helen hated having to apologize to the obnoxious woman. "I didn't mean it that way. I was just wondering how you coped with staying in a place where a murder had just happened. Doesn't it bother you?"

"Why should it?" Nora said. "I can't think of anyone—other than you, perhaps—who wants to kill me. I'm good enough at my job that most people don't even notice me. If I went to a local inn, I'd have to deal with all the people who want to ask me about Vic. As long as I stay here, I've got the gates between me and them."

"You could handle a couple of cub reporters and dozens of over-excited fans in your sleep."

"Sure, but if I tell them my story, I won't be able to sell it. As it is, I may not be able to anyway." Nora nodded at the doors with the police tape. "I could make some real money if the cops would let me use the cameras in Vic's poker room. They're good enough quality for a feed to a television talk show. So far, though, the best I've been able to do is a few radio interviews by phone. If the case isn't solved soon, this whole trip will have been a huge waste of my time. It won't take long before a new story replaces this one, and then my story will be worthless."

"Maybe you should find the killer yourself." Helen certainly wasn't going to rush to judgment, possibly making things worse for Stevie, just so Nora could score a television appearance.

Nora stood up. "Actually, I hear solving crimes is more your thing these days. Too bad I chose the wrong person to befriend back when you and your husband were in the governor's mansion."