Killing in C Sharp Page 23

  Gethsemane led the way to room seventeen. She knocked. “Hardy? Are you there? It’s Gethsemane and Venus. We wanted to check on you, see if you felt better. Hardy?” She knocked again. “Hardy?”

  “He could have gone out.”

  “As sick as he was, I’m amazed he could stand up, never mind go anywhere.” She repeated the knocking. A guest next door stuck his head into the hall. “You didn’t notice if the guy in this room went out, by any chance?” she asked him.

  The man shrugged. “If he’s in there, he’s been quiet. Haven’t heard any noise other than your pounding.” He pulled his head back in.

  “Let’s get the manager,” Gethsemane said.

  “And if he’s taking a nap, we’ll look stupid for bothering him.”

  “And if he’s lying unconscious with a fever of a hundred and four, we’ll look stupid for not bothering him.”

  They retreated to the front desk and returned with a manager and a key. “Should I dial 999?” the manager asked as she slipped the card in and out of the electronic reader.

  “Let’s see how he is first. He may not need an ambulance.”

  The manager opened the door.

  Hardy Lewis did not need an ambulance. Hardy Lewis was plainly dead. He lay in the middle of the floor with a knife protruding out of his chest. His phone—the remains of his phone—lay smashed and scattered beside him.

  Twenty-One

  The next few hours blurred in the now-familiar ritual of going to the garda station to give a statement about a recently discovered dead body. Several of the guards greeted Gethsemane by name as she passed by them on her way to the interview room. She took it as a sign of her rising status that she only waited twenty-five minutes for someone to remember her instead of the usual ninety. She recognized the officer from the Athaneum the day she—Eamon—found Bernard’s body.

  “Inspector Bill Something, isn’t it?” She shook his hand. “We’ve met.”

  “Sutton.” He pulled out a chair and sat opposite. “You know how this works, so the floor is yours.”

  Gethsemane described finding Hardy. “He’d been so sick. I half expected to find him laid out from his illness, but stabbed? No, to save you from asking, I have no idea who’d want to stab him. He was a decent guy. Always willing to lend a hand, do the jobs no one else wanted. Poe, I can imagine someone stabbing. The line forms on the right. Kent, maybe. But not Hardy.”

  “Poe?”

  “Blue hair, cargo pants, camera, bad attitude.”

  “Have you seen Poe tonight?”

  “She’s at the Rabbit learning new slang words for drunk.”

  “You were at the pub this evening?” He flipped through his notes.

  “Sorry, no. I’m tired and upset, and I apologize for being flip. I saw Poe some hours ago. She said she planned to go to the pub. I assumed she followed through on her plan.”

  “Where did you actually lay eyes on her last?”

  “At the Athaneum.” Where her otherworldly friends had destroyed themselves to save guys like Hardy.

  “We had some calls about strange noises at the Athaneum earlier this evening.” He flipped more pages. “What do you know about that?”

  “We—myself, Venus, Ciara, and Poe—were there. Ciara and Poe were trying to capture paranormal evidence on film. We, uh, tried to help them out by making noises to trigger a spectral manifestation. No luck though.” No reason to mention Saoirse’s presence.

  “What time did you get there?”

  “Early-ish. Around five.”

  “And you and the other three women all remained at the Athaneum for how long?”

  An eternity. “A couple of hours.” She anticipated his next question. “No, none of us left. The four of us were together until Poe headed for the pub and Venus and I drove Ciara back to the inn.”

  “None of the male investigators were present?”

  “No. Ciara said they were packing. The crew is planning to leave tomorrow.”

  “That remains to be seen. You and Ms. James went to the inn to check on Hardy—”

  Gethsemane corrected him. “No, we went to Sweeney’s to drop Ciara Tierney off. She bumped her head and wasn’t feeling well and wanted to lie down. Since we were there, I decided to check on Hardy.”

  “And you saw no one near his room?”

  “Just the guy next door who complained I knocked too loudly.”

  “And you saw nothing in his room—”

  “Except him lying on the floor with a smashed phone and a knife in his chest.”

  “Did you touch anything in the room?”

  “Venus checked his pulse. I called you guys.”

  “A number you’ve memorized by now.” Sutton closed his notebook. “Any idea how to get in touch with Mr. Lewis’s family?”

  “I know how to contact his father. Go downstairs to your holding cells and speak to Aed Devlin. He’s Hardy’s dad.”

  Inspector Sutton narrowed his eyes. “Are you coddin’ me?”

  “Aed didn’t know. I mean, he knew he had a son. But he didn’t know it was Hardy. He and Hardy’s mother never married, and Aed left when Hardy was less than six months old.”

  “Devlin’s the one man who couldn’t have killed Hardy. Being locked up downstairs gives him a solid alibi.” He drummed his fingers on the table. “Niall said you had a habit of doing this.”

  “Doing what?”

  “Monkeying about in people’s investigations, bollixing them up.”

  “Bollix how?” For once, she’d stayed away from the gardaí. With her only police ally in the hospital, keeping her snooping on the down-low seemed wise.

  “You’ve taken my nice, tidy, already arrested the prime suspect case and turned it into a double homicide by person or persons unknown.”

  “You’re suggesting the two murders are connected.”

  “Not suggesting, stating. You think we’ve got two people running around the village stabbing fellas? You’re sure you don’t have any idea who might’ve stabbed them?”

  “None. And I don’t know of any connection between Hardy and Bernard.”

  “He didn’t write any nasty articles about anybody? Hardy, I mean.”

  “I don’t think he wrote. Tech was his thing. Lighting, sound, cameras.”

  “Maybe he took some dirty pictures of someone.” Sutton stood. “That’s all for now. You’ll make yourself available if we need anything else.” A statement. Not a question.

  “Before you go, have you heard how Niall’s doing?”

  “I have. Spoke to him about an hour ago. He’s coming ‘round. Seems this dose he got’s going away as sudden as it came on.”

  Relief hit Gethsemane like a gut punch. She gasped.

  “Are you all right?” Sutton asked.

  “I’m fine. I just, I’m fine.” She couldn’t force the grin from her face. She was about to ask if Niall was allowed to have non-garda visitors when the new message alert sounded on her phone.

  “I’ll let you get that.” Sutton excused himself.

  She looked at the message ID. A Virginia number. Her mother. She tapped the envelope icon. Her mother, always economical in her speech, had texted a single word in response to Gethsemane’s inquiry about Ciara’s meds: cancer.

  Dawn broke as the uniformed garda dropped Gethsemane and Venus at Carraigfaire. Venus offered to make coffee.

  “Poor Hardy.” Gethsemane collapsed into a kitchen chair. “Wonder if he lived long enough to realize the curse was broken?” Had he felt better before being stabbed or had he died miserable?

  Venus sat across from her. “Did the cops give you any idea of when he was murdered?”

  “No. Did they say anything to you?”

  Venus shook her head. “I did trick a good-looking sergeant into telling me the knife came from the inn’s k
itchen. So Aed is the only one in the clear. Anyone could have gone to the inn and stabbed Hardy, including you and me.”

  “Not me. Why would I kill Hardy?”

  “Why would anyone? He didn’t philander, steal, blackmail, bully. He didn’t keep secrets.”

  “Except the huge one about his paternity.” Gethsemane went to the study and retrieved Hardy’s envelope from the desk. She handed it to Venus.

  Venus opened the envelope and held up a photo. “Is this…?” She handed it to Gethsemane.

  Gethsemane studied the photo. A young man, barely out of his teens, sat on a bench in front of a grand piano on stage in an empty auditorium. A poster in the background announced Aed Devlin in recital. An infant slept cradled in the man’s arms. A woman whose dark hair and facial features mimicked Hardy’s stood next to them. “Aed, when he was younger than Hardy. Hardy can’t have been more than a few days old when this was taken.”

  “Poor Aed.” Venus took the photo back. “I’ll take this when I visit him at the station. What a crap way to reunite with the son you haven’t seen since before he could walk. On a metal table in a morgue.” Venus waved the photo. “But no one had motive to kill Hardy to keep this particular secret, not even Aed, who couldn’t have done it, anyway. No inheritance is at stake. And having a child out of wedlock is hardly scandalous these days.” She slipped the photo back into the envelope, then noticed something caught in one of the envelope’s seams. “What’s this?” She shook a small black chip onto the tabletop.

  “The microSD card from Hardy’s phone. It had some pictures on it he thought I might like to have.” She flipped the data card back and forth in her hand. “Why smash his phone?”

  “What are you talking about?” Venus asked.

  “Hardy’s phone. Pieces of it lay scattered around him. Why was it smashed?”

  “Maybe he tried to call for help and the killer grabbed it.”

  “Or maybe there was something on it the killer didn’t want anyone to see. A callback number or a photo or—” Her eyes widened as light dawned. “Duh.” She smacked her forehead. “Our killer wanted this—” She held the phone’s SD card between finger and thumb. “They had no way of knowing Hardy had already given it to me.”

  “That still doesn’t explain why the phone was smashed. You can take the card out without destroying the phone.”

  “Not if you’re in a hurry. Not if you care less about seeing what’s on the card than you do about keeping anyone else from seeing it.”

  “What’s on it? What pictures did Hardy think you’d want?”

  She hesitated. True, Venus could see Eamon. Also true, Eamon was gone, maybe forever if Saoirse couldn’t pull him off the card she took from Poe. Don’t think about that now. She still didn’t want anyone to know, especially anyone who might appreciate the commercial value of the evidence, that she possessed proof that ghosts existed. Venus waited for her answer. She stared at the card, then back at Venus. Why did Venus want to know? Was she afraid the pictures were of her? Was she afraid Hardy captured her shoving a trowel into Bernard’s back? Would she have had time to kill Hardy before meeting the others at the theater?

  “I didn’t kill Hardy,” Venus said. “Or Bernard.”

  “I didn’t say you did.”

  “But you thought it. Or you should have thought it. Almost anyone who was at the theater on Monday could have stabbed Bernard, and almost anyone who was in the village yesterday could have stabbed Hardy. And I certainly had reason to want Bernard dead. And if your theory is right about what’s on that thing,” Venus pointed at the SD card, “Hardy was collateral damage. I’ve been writing true crime for a while now. I know who makes a good suspect and who doesn’t.”

  With Eamon gone and Niall and Frankie out of commission…hell, she had to trust somebody. She laid the card on the table between her and Venus. “Footage of Eamon. Hardy captured high-def footage of Eamon by the orchestra pit when I—he—found Bernard’s body.”

  “Hardy wasn’t murdered for that,” Venus said. “Not even the most rabid paranormal investigator would kill a fellow believer to steal his proof. Not even Poe would do that. There’s a strange bond between these people.”

  “Speaking of Poe…” Gethsemane took a closer look at the label on the card. “This is like hers. It holds a terabyte of information. Eamon’s segment lasts a few seconds, ten at most. That leaves a lot of space to record something worth killing for.”

  “Then we should see what’s on it. And don’t look at me like that. If I was the killer, wouldn’t I have hit you in the head with the coffeepot and run off with the evidence by now?”

  “Probably.” Gethsemane pulled her phone from her bag. “Damn.”

  “What?”

  “Saoirse’s right. Mine’s crap. It won’t accept a data card this size.”

  “Use mine.” Venus pulled out her phone. A sheaf of papers fell to the floor.

  Gethsemane bent to pick them up. “What’s this?”

  “The contents of the envelope the desk clerk gave me. I stuffed them in my bag to keep the cops from asking about them, and by asking, I mean confiscating.” She unfolded the papers and slid them toward Gethsemane.

  “What’s in them?” She fiddled with the phone’s media player app.

  Venus pulled the papers back. “Didn’t get a chance to look at them. Here’s a magazine article by Bernard, written when he was still Ben Schlossberg. An interview with the CEO of a frozen food importer. Reads more like a love letter. Wonder how much the guy paid.” She set the article aside and picked up another paper. “This is—” She sat up straight. “This is interesting. Take a look.”

  Gethsemane swapped the phone for the photocopy Venus handed her. “A newspaper article about a salmonella outbreak.” Salmonella, another one of those germs that, like e. coli, spread fast and furious and often killed the weak, the old, and the young. She skimmed it. “Contaminated chicken fingers. Almost a hundred children got sick. A dozen died.”

  “Check the name of the company who imported the chicken.”

  “The company owned by the guy Bernard interviewed. Let me see that article.” She ran a finger along the pages as she scanned them. There, near the bottom of page three. “Bernard went out of his way to say the company’s food was safe. Swore he ate it. Even included a couple of recipes.”

  “Now look at this.” The final piece of paper in the stack.

  “It looks like some sort of inspection report.”

  “From the food safety inspector. I ran across a few of these back in the day when I worked for the station. The inspector cited the company for numerous safety issues, including improper food storage temperature.”

  “Which would turn chicken fingers into petri dishes.” She compared the inspector’s report to the magazine article. “Look at the dates.”

  Venus looked. “The article was written three months after the inspection.”

  “And was published one month before the outbreak.”

  “If I trusted someone who vouched for a company’s product—”

  “And that product killed my kid—”

  “I’d want to sue the company—”

  “But kill the person I’d trusted.” Gethsemane grabbed the newspaper article. “Are any of the children or parents named?”

  Venus read over her shoulder. “A few. None I recognize.”

  Gethsemane gasped.

  “What? You recognize someone?”

  “This quote, from the mother of one of the kids who died. ‘Children’s lives are at stake. We need to put these monsters away to save other children. Nothing’s more important. I’ll never rest until the children are safe. Those monsters will pay.’”

  “Where have I heard such overwhelming concern about saving children?”

  “Last night, at the Athaneum. Ciara.”

  Venus sat back in he
r chair. “Neither you nor I have kids, yet neither of us would want to see one hurt. Even Poe probably would pull one out of the path of a speeding train if it came down to it.”

  “But Ciara seemed particularly passionate about protecting Saoirse. More passionate than you’d expect someone without kids to behave.”

  “But not more passionate than a mother who lost a child. Lost a child to a preventable cause.”

  Gethsemane scanned the article again. “Is there a picture of the woman?”

  Venus pointed. “Grainy. Not close up. Can’t make out much detail. She seems to have dark hair. Says her name is Karen Rourke.”

  “This was twenty years ago. Ben changed his name to Bernard. Why couldn’t Karen Rourke change hers? What color was Ciara’s hair before it turned white?”

  “The outbreak happened in New Jersey. Ciara’s Irish.”

  “Irish people sometimes move to Jersey.” Gethsemane recalled her inability to place Ciara’s accent. “And maybe she’s not really Irish. Sylvie faked a French accent.”

  “Badly. But I see what you’re getting at.” Venus picked up her phone. “What do you think’s on this?”

  Gethsemane launched the media player. “Let’s find out.”

  The screen went black for a few seconds, then a video started. Images formed. The scene was filmed from a high vantage point. Gethsemane saw herself leaning over the orchestra pit rail. Next to her a faint, but unmistakable, semi-transparent Eamon McCarthy balanced on the rail. His feet disappeared into the brass. Down in the pit, legs protruded from under the Steinway.

  “Damn,” Venus said. “Hardy gave this to you? There’s mensch, then there’s sap.”

  She watched her friend-who-she-might-never-see-again and forced back tears. “Hardy offered me the card in exchange for exonerating Aed. Then he gave me the card anyway because he is—was—a mensch.”

  “Wait, what’s that?” Venus tapped the phone’s screen to pause the image. “There, almost off camera.”

  Gethsemane swiped to enlarge the image. She hit rewind and played it again. No mistake. At the edge of the image a woman with silver-white hair ducked behind the piano and out of the pit.