Dead Men's Tales (Olivia Grant Mysteries Book 2) (22 page)

I turned the light on again and looked at the garment more closely. Trench-coat tan, with all the required epaulets and flaps, its belt dangled from only one of the loops meant to hold it. The right-hand pocket bulged, and I put my hand inside. I came up with the object of my desire. The videotape.

I almost shouted out loud at the sight of it. I had been right! Carl had hidden the videotape in our office after all. And very cleverly at that, by simply leaving his entire raincoat on Brad's coat rack. I felt pretty clever for having doped it out. Brad would be so proud of me. I returned to his desk, picked up the phone, and dialed his number again.

This time I left a message: "Brad, I found the videotape, and you'll never guess where." Pause to let him speculate fruitlessly.

"I found it in your office. In the pocket of a raincoat hanging on your coat rack. Luck had nothing to do with this. I reasoned that Carl had hidden it somewhere in here
before
I started to search. Now I'm going home to play it on my machine. Call me, or come over and see it for yourself."

I hung up the phone, turned off his light again, and put on my coat. The tape didn't fit in either my coat pockets or my handbag, so I hung the bag over my left shoulder, as usual, tucked the tape under my arm, picked up my set of keys, and got ready to leave.

Yet, something still nagged at me. Try as I would, I couldn't picture Powell and Ziegler working together. Both seemed like loner types, needing to be the boss. Nor could I picture them as homosexual lovers. Ziegler had a wife, and Powell struck me as the kind of man who flirted with everything in a skirt. He probably made out with most of them because of his good looks. If Powell had an accomplice, it would likely be a woman.

Amanda.

Yes. Powell never denied a relationship with someone in Hammond's company, only denied he had a motive for murder. Carl told me Amanda had a boyfriend before Brad came along, and maybe she didn't care for Brad at all, just kept him on the string to keep informed of his investigation.

Wait a minute. Amanda did the diamond buying. Why had I forgotten that important piece of the puzzle? Compared to Amanda, Ziegler had as much clout in the company as a telephone repairman. Amanda bought the diamonds and could easily falsify invoices or anything else. So what if she didn't smoke? Powell, her accomplice, did.

My face got warm. My scalp tingled as if my hair had become charged with electricity. That was it! Finally, I knew I'd made the right connections. I felt like jumping up and down and clicking my heels. Not that I could, being nothing like Gene Kelly or Donald O'Connor. Brad would be so surprised. I considered calling his voicemail again but decided to wait until I saw him. I might have to break my news to him gently. He might not want to believe in Amanda's guilt. Their affair could have blinded him to the truth.

I turned off the light and locked the door behind me. As I passed the ladies' room, something seemed different. I told myself to stop being paranoid about the place, but then I remembered I hadn't turned off the switch in there, and now no light spilled from under the door. My heart pounded. I knew without a shadow of a doubt that the murderer was hiding in there again, just as he had before.

I quelled my urge to run madly down the hall away from him, telling myself I was behaving like an idiot, and there was no one there. Reason told me the cleaning people probably turned off the light. But I hadn't heard the cleaning people, I argued. How could I, reason answered. I'd been busy making noise in Brad's office. In that case, why hadn't the cleaning people come in to clean
his
office?

By that time, I had reached the corner where I had to turn to go toward the elevators, but I couldn't make myself go there, punch the button, and wait. I wouldn't be a victim if I could help it.

I glanced around, dropped my keys into my coat pocket, pulled off my shoes and stuffed them under my arm, and turned toward the stairs. I knew how to get out without using the elevator. I opened the stairway door as quietly as I could and stepped inside. The concrete enclosure provided even less light than the main corridor, but I crept down, feeling the cold metal of the stairs through my nylons. Down, down I circled, occasionally glancing up to see if anyone followed me, praying that Parry had left her gallery back door open as usual. If not, I'd be trapped there, and not even screaming would help me.

Luckily, the gallery door opened to my touch, and I made a silent prayer of gratitude. I ignored its squeak and hurried inside. I tried to lock it behind me, and that's when I discovered that Parry's bad habit wasn't her fault at all. The lock didn't work, there being no bolt in the face of the door. Either she hadn't reported the problem to the building management, or the lack of security at her fire door didn't trouble her. Personally, I'd vote for the latter. Who would steal paintings or prints by unknown artists or the piles of junk some sculptor palmed off on an unsuspecting public as art? I couldn't visualize a burglar turning them into quick cash.

Of course, the door to the main lobby would be locked, I felt sure, but I had no intention of trying to get out that way. I headed for the large double doors at the back where deliverymen entered, the same door Brad and I had used a few days before. I tiptoed silently through the various rooms. But I didn't get there.

A loud male voice said, "Stop, or I'll shoot."

I know it's a cliché, but I can't help it. I'm trying to be honest here, and that's what the man said.

I whirled around and saw James Powell about fifteen feet from me, holding a gun in his right hand. I figured he was perfectly serious about shooting me. He'd probably shot Carl.

"What do you want?" A stupid question but all I could think of. When I was a child, I always played dumb when I found myself in trouble and had to face my mother. My motto was, "Don't admit anything until you know for sure she has all the facts."

"I want that videotape."

"What videotape?"

"Don't play games with me."

I stalled. "How did you get here?"

"I've been following you, waiting here in your building. I figured Novotny gave it to you."

"Then why did you kill him?"

"I thought he still had it then."

He'd just confessed to the murder! Why, oh why, hadn't I put a recorder in my pocket that night? I'd been lugging the thing all over California, and now, when I needed it, I'd left it upstairs.

"I don't have it." I felt foolish because maybe, even in the dim light, he could see the thing tucked under my arm.

He walked toward me. Any minute now he'd realize I had the tape and take it from me before I could stop him. And then what? I figured he'd kill me anyway. What was one more murder?

I backed up slightly and stood near the end of the wall. Another room with artwork loomed at my left. Could I duck in there before he got off a shot?

I don't know where all that bravery came from. Upstairs a few minutes before, I'd been as scared as a child in Disneyland's Haunted Mansion. Perhaps anger overcame the fear. I hated that he had killed Carl for no reason. I hated giving up the videotape that I'd been clever enough to find. I admit, I didn't care much for dying, but if death was inevitable, I might as well try to salvage something from it besides an obituary on an inside page of the
Chronicle
. If I could hide the tape, it might still bring him to justice.

I dropped my shoes and purse, ducked, and ran. Through that room and left around the next corner into another. He'd be right behind me if he knew which way I turned the second time, but maybe he didn't. I looked around wildly. That room held nothing but paintings, not even a chair to hide the tape under.

I waited and listened, heard footsteps to my right. I dashed for the next left turn into another room. That one held sculptures. Shapeless mounds of decorated orange plastic, duct tape-covered cantilevered creations and monster things made of pieces of steel presumably from old automobiles. I called them products of the John DeLorean School of Modern Art. I also saw the perfect hiding place: a wooden bed frame under which sat a pile of bricks. What the artist intended, I feared to imagine, but I didn't hesitate. I plunged the videotape into the mound on the floor where, unless you looked closely, it instantly became just another brick.

The footsteps came nearer, and by the time I straightened up and dashed for the next room, I felt him behind me. I heard the crack of a shot, but it was not as loud as the one I'd heard on Monday. Maybe he used a silencer.

But he missed me. Then another shot, this one pinging into the metal sculpture, the bullet hole undoubtedly improving it.

I sprinted for the back doors again but again had to change directions. I wondered how long the game of hide-and-seek could last. My luck was bound to run out sooner or later. Finding myself back in the sculpture room again, I stopped and crouched behind one of the ugly orange things, trying to slow down my thumping heart, hoping he wouldn't see me or hear me breathing like a steam engine. He came into the room, and I closed my eyes. I tried to curl myself into my original fetal size and waited. Seconds turned into hours.

"I know you're in here," he said. "Give me the tape, and nothing will happen to you."

Yeah, right.

I didn't move. I said mental good-byes to Brad and Samantha and wondered if I'd see both Stephen and Carl in heaven and have a lot of explaining to do.

I heard running footsteps and then Brad's voice. "Put it down, Powell." His voice was so hard and menacing, I hardly recognized it.

I opened my eyes and uncurled from my position. Then I looked up and saw them both. Powell stood between Brad and me, his face a mask, his gun pointed in my direction. Brad had his own .38 out, and Powell froze and slowly lowered his weapon to the floor.

"Good," Brad said. "Now kick it away." Powell complied, and the gun went sailing across the slick floor and landed near the far-right wall.

"It's all over, Powell. You're gonna get a long prison term for embezzlement. If they don't convict you of murder first."

Powell, who when I first met him looked capable of having inspired the word "macho," now sounded like a schoolboy caught in a lie. "You can't pin that on me. I didn't murder anyone."

I spoke up, angry at his deception. "Oh, yes you did. You admitted to me just a few minutes ago that you killed Carl Novotny."

"I didn't admit it. It's your word against mine, because I didn't do it. Amanda killed him, just like she did Hammond." I glanced over at Brad, but if it came as a surprise to him, his face didn't reveal it.

Powell kept talking. "I told her not to. I said if we waited for the right time, we could walk away with enough money to last the rest of our lives. But no, she had to go and kill him. Same with Novotny. She did it, not me."

"You bastard!" The voice belonged to the woman in question, and in a moment, she came out of the shadows and into the room where one of the overhead lights bounced off her shiny black hair and the cream-colored suit she wore. She might kill people, but she sure had style.

She also had a weapon. I hadn't seen her do it, but she apparently picked up Powell's from the floor, because when I looked toward where I'd seen it last, it was no longer there.

"Now you drop it," she told Brad.

When he set his on the floor, Powell found his voice again.

"Amanda, what are you doing here? I can handle this without you."

"I noticed." The sarcasm in her voice was as thick as cold molasses.

Brad said, "You followed me here?"

"Of course. I've kept as close an eye on you as you have on me. When I saw you come tearing out of your apartment tonight, I decided it was time to act."

She turned back to Powell. "And I'm just in time, it appears, to keep you from sending me to the gas chamber, you lying son-of-a—"

"So what if I—" Powell argued. "I mean, it doesn't matter what he thinks. Now that you're here, we can—"

Amanda turned to Brad. "I didn't plan to kill Harry. His accusations about the missing diamonds took me by surprise, and I just reacted." She looked toward Powell. "But you… You killed Novotny in cold blood, and it wasn't necessary."

"We needed the tape," Powell insisted. "You told me Novotny said it had the proof, and he was blackmailing you."

"I could have handled him. I let him think I needed the tape, but I didn't."

I couldn't help interrupting. "What about the auditors? When they look over the books, they'll find out what you've done and discover the diamond thefts."

She gave me a look that said I had the intellectual capacity of bacteria. "Numbers can be made to lie. Now that the board has made me president, I could have manipulated the audit. Novotny didn't even know for sure I killed Hammond. He just wanted to be promoted, to show his ex-wife he wasn't a failure after all."

She uttered a quick laugh, and then her anger returned, intensified. She looked at Powell as if she could cause lightning to strike him with a single thought. "You spoiled it all because you couldn't wait and trust me."

Powell slowly moved toward her. "When I told you how we could change the invoices, you leaped at the idea, just as eager as I was. We were going to retire to Fiji. I've got the tickets. We can leave tonight."

"You still don't get it, do you?" Her voice became almost a snarl. "I could have had everything, not just a piece of it. The whole company, not just some of the diamonds." She backed away from him. "Don't come any closer. I'm not on your side any more. I'm not running away. I have what I want right here."

"But Novotny…" Powell pointed to me. "She knows I killed him."

Amanda's voice turned silky sweet. "Well, you did, didn't you?"

Powell caught on at last. "You mean you're going to stay here and just deny everything, blame it all on me?"

"No,
you
don't have to stay. You can leave right now. I won't stop you."

"I need the money. You've got that somewhere. I can't get to it without you."

"What do you want, Jim? Your money or your life?"

Throughout the conversation, Brad had been silent and watchful, and I wished he'd do something. I still had the feeling I wouldn't live to eat another Dove Bar because in the movies, when the bad guys started telling you what they did and how they did it, it meant they didn't think you'd live long enough to use the information.

Finally, Brad came forward. "Nobody's going to get away. I called the police from my car before I came in. They should be here any minute."

That information turned Powell into a madman. He leaped at Amanda and tried to wrestle the gun away from her. Brad vaulted after him but was too late. The gun went off. Powell jerked backward and clutched at his stomach before he sank heavily to the floor.

I turned my head away, hoping I wouldn't be sick again. I stared instead at Amanda.

She seemed surprised at what she'd done, and Brad used her moment's hesitation to step in and take the gun from her hands.

She looked up at him, her facial expression changing to one of softness and vulnerability. An Academy Award performance, all right.

"Brad, darling, help me. I didn't mean to kill him. It was an accident. You know that. You'll tell them it was self-defense. He tried to kill me."

Brad dropped the gun and kicked it away, not needing it to keep Amanda under control. "Maybe, but what about the others?"

"You heard Jim. He admitted he killed Novotny."

"But you killed Hammond."

"We quarreled. Actually, he threatened me." I could tell she was improvising as she went along.

"He went crazy when he found out about the diamonds. He choked me. I only wanted to stop him, to buy time to get away. I saw the box of statues… I didn't hit him hard, but the statue…so heavy and sharp…" She lifted her pale, perfect face close to Brad's and even got a tear to glisten in her eye. "I should have called for help. I know that now. I was frightened. I panicked."

Brad waited until she finished and let another beat go by.

"And what about me? A moment ago you planned to kill all of us. Because as long as one of us remains alive, your story is worthless."

"Not you," she pleaded. "I would never kill you. I love you. We can go to Fiji together. Is that what you want?"

"I want justice. Hammond and Novotny are both dead. Someone has to pay for that."

"Not me. You don't mean me. You love me."

"Maybe I do, but I'm not going to play the sap for you. I'm sending you over."

Shweetheart
. He should have said
shweetheart
.

Then the police arrived.

* * *

The next afternoon, I poured coffee for Brad, brought it into his office, and sank into the chair in front of his desk. "I liked being a private investigator," I told him.

He took a sip before answering. "You did good, but—"

"Admit it," I said. "You didn't know Amanda killed Harry Hammond before I did."

"Of course I did. Why do you suppose I hung around her? I needed proof, tried to find a chink in her armor."

"You could've fooled me. I thought you were trying to find a chink in her underwear."

"Olivia!" He tried to sound shocked. "What a suggestion." Yet, he couldn't help grinning.

"And I'm the one who found the videotape."

"But who left the office door unlocked so Novotny could leave it there?"

Like he'd done it deliberately to make things easier for me.

His statement made me think of Carl. "I hate to think he could blackmail anyone."

"If Amanda had known Hammond's briefcase held an incriminating tape, she could have taken it with her after she killed him, just like the napkin, and Carl would be alive today."

"Carl said he found the briefcase in the reception area, not the room where Harry was killed."

"I figure he lied about that, didn't want to admit to you that he'd removed it from the murder scene. Like Amanda said, he only wanted a promotion. When he saw what the videotape contained, he could have turned it over to the police, and they would have arrested her, but where would that leave him? Ziegler would have taken over the company in her place. Instead, he forced her to make him her executive assistant. Then, after he established himself as next-in-command, he might have turned her in anyway."

"I can't believe he'd do something like that."

"We'll never know for sure. At any rate, he paid for his mistakes."

I heard the outer door open and got up to see who entered. Rose Hammond.

"Rose, what brings you here? Are you all right?"

"I'm fine. I wanted to bring a check for Brad, to pay him for finding Harry's murderer."

"You could have put it in the mail."

"No, I wanted to do it in person."

"Well, come inside then." I waved her toward Brad's office.

He got up and came around his desk to take her hand. "Come in. Sit down."

"Just for a little while." Rose sat, opened her alligator handbag, and brought out a check. She handed it to him.

Brad glanced at it briefly, set it down on his desk, and thanked her. "I'm glad we could help."

"You're too modest." She turned to look at me. "You too. Don't tell me you didn't help a lot in the investigation, involve yourself in everything. You even put your life in danger."

"Not really." I affected modesty. "I actually…" I didn't want to say "enjoyed it," but I had to admit I'd had the most exciting time of my life.

"I hope this tragedy will serve one good purpose anyway. To renew our friendship. I've missed you."

"I've missed you too." I meant it.

She stood up, dropped my check on the desk, and put her arms out to me. We hugged. "I'll call you soon." Then she shook hands with Brad and left.

I plopped down in the chair and picked up the check. The number itself wasn't that large, but some nice zeros followed. I waved it in Brad's face.

"So are you going to sit around your house being rich?" he asked.

"No. Like it or not, as I said, I should become your partner. I think I'm ready."

"But what about your charity work, your bridge teaching, travel?"

"Oh, I'll still do my charity work and play bridge, but compared to this business, the rest is a little boring."

"You'll have to come in every day, learn a lot, work hard."

"I like hard work when it's really interesting."

"Besides, it's so erratic: chicken today, feathers tomorrow. And even when we get clients, sometimes they don't pay on time, or at all."

"I have an independent income." I waved the check again. "And a nice cushion besides."

"Worst of all, it can be dangerous."

I leaned back in the chair and smiled. "Don't be shy, Brad. Tell me what you
really
think."

He burst out laughing, leaned across the desk, and gave me a high five.

The outer door opened again, and a young woman came in.

"The employment agency sent me. I'm Tiffany."

I saw a tall Barbie doll who was as beautiful as Amanda Dillon but blonde. She was also skinny. Where were all those obese children I kept hearing about? Tiffany looked as if she threw up for a hobby.

As I said good-bye and walked out the door, I winked at Brad. "Don't forget my number."

* * * * *