"Or else she was expecting her visitor," he said again.
"That is entirely possible. Providing somebody knew she was back in town."
"So maybe he knew," he said.
"And maybe he's 'M.' " I told him what he wanted to hear as I replaced the bottle of rum on the shelf.
"Bingo. Making more sense now, isn't it?"
I shut the cabinet door. "She was threatened, terrorized for months, Marino. I find it hard to believe it was a close friend and Beryl wasn't the least bit suspicious."
He looked annoyed as he glanced at his watch and dug another key out of a pocket. It made no sense at all that Beryl would have opened the door to a stranger. But it made even less sense that someone she trusted could have done this to her. Why did she let him in} The question wouldn't stop nagging at me.
A covered breezeway joined the house to the garage. The sun had dipped below the trees.
"I'll tell you right off," Marino said, the lock clicking open, "I only went in here right before I called you. Could've busted down the door the night of her murder but didn't see no point."
He shrugged, lifting those massive shoulders of his as if to make sure I understood he really could tackle a door or a tree or a Dumpster if he were so inclined. "She hadn't been in here since she left for Florida. Took us a while to find the friggin' key."
It was the only paneled garage I had ever seen, the floor a gorgeous dragon skin of expensive red Italian tile.
"Was this really designed to be a garage?" I asked.
"It's got a garage door, don't it?"
He was pulling several more keys out of a pocket. "Some place to keep your ride out of the rain, huh?"
The garage was airless and smelled dusty, but it was spotless. Other than a rake and a broom leaning against a corner, there was no sign of the usual tools, lawnmowers, and other impedimenta one would expect to find. The garage looked more like a car dealership showroom, the black Honda parked in the center of the tile floor. The car was so clean and shiny it could have passed for new and never driven.
Marino unlocked the driver's door and opened it.
"Here. Be my guest," he said.
Momentarily, I was settled back in the soft ivory leather seat, staring through the windshield at the paneled wall.
Stepping back from the car, he added, "Just sit there, okay? Get the feel of it, look around the interior, tell me what comes to mind."
"You want me to start it?"
He handed me the key.
"Then please open the garage door so we don't asphyxiate ourselves," I added.
Frowning as he glanced around, he found the right button and cracked the door.
The car turned over the first time, the engine dropping several octaves and purring throatily. The radio and air conditioning were on. The gas tank was a quarter full, the odometer registering less than seven thousand miles, the sunroof partially open. On the dash was a dry cleaning slip dated July eleventh, a Thursday, when Beryl took in a skirt and a suit jacket, garments she obviously never picked up. On the passenger's seat was a grocery receipt dated July twelfth at ten-forty in the morning, when she bought one head of lettuce, tomatoes, cucumbers, ground beef, cheese, orange juice, and a roll of mints, the total nine dollars and thirteen cents out of a ten she gave the check-out clerk.
Next to the receipt was a slender white bank envelope that was empty. Beside it a pebbly tan Ray Ban sunglasses case - also empty.
In the backseat was a Wimbledon tennis racket, and a rumpled white towel I reached over the seat to get. Stamped in small blue letters on a terrycloth border was WESTWOOD RACQUET CLUB, the same name printed on a red vinyl tote bag I had noted upstairs in Beryl's closet.
Marino had saved his theatrics for last. I knew he had looked over all of these items and wanted me to see them in situ. They weren't evidence. The killer had never gone inside the garage. Marino was baiting me. He had been baiting me since we had first stepped inside the house. It was a habit of his that irritated the hell out of me.
Turning off the engine, I got out of the car, the door shutting with a muffled solid thud.
He looked speculatively at me.
"A couple of questions," I said.
"Shoot."
"Westwood is an exclusive club. Was she a member?"
A nod.
"You checked out when she last reserved a court?"
"Friday, July twelfth, at nine in the morning. She had a lesson with the pro. Took a lesson once a week, that was about the extent of her playing."
"As I recall, she flew out of Richmond early Saturday morning, July thirteenth, arriving in Miami shortly after noon."
Another nod.
"So she took her lesson, then went straight to the grocery store. After that, she may have gone to the bank. Whatever the case, at some point after she did her shopping, she suddenly decided to leave town. If she'd known she was leaving town the next day, she wouldn't have bothered going to the grocery store. She didn't have time to eat everything she bought, and she didn't leave the food in the refrigerator. Apparently she threw away everything except the ground beef, the cheese and possibly the mints."
"Sounds reasonable," he said un-emphatically.
"She left her glasses case and other items on the seat," I continued. "Plus, the radio and air conditioning were left on, the sunroof partially open. Looks like she drove into the garage, cut the engine, and hurried into the house with her sunglasses on. Makes me wonder if something happened while she was out in the car driving home from tennis and her errands…"
"Oh yeah. I'm pretty damn sure it did. Walk around, take a look at the other side-specifically at the passenger's door."
I did.
What I saw scattered my thoughts like marbles. Gouged into the glossy black paint right below the door handle was the name BERYL enclosed in a heart.
"Kind of gives you the creeps, don't it?" he said.
"If he did this while her car was parked at the club or the grocery store," I reasoned, "it seems someone would have seen him."
"Yo. So maybe he did it earlier." He paused, casually perusing the graffiti. "When's the last time you looked at your passenger's door?"
It could have been days. It could have been a week.
"She went grocery shopping." He finally lit the damn cigarette. "Didn't buy much." He took a deep, hungry drag. "And it probably all fit inside one bag, right? When my wife's got just one or two bags, she always sticks them up front, on the floor mat, maybe on the seat. So maybe Beryl went around to the passenger's side to put the groceries in the car. That's when she noticed what was scratched into the paint. Maybe she knew it had to have been done that day. Maybe she didn't. Don't matter. Freaked her right out, pushed her over the edge. She makes tracks home or maybe to the bank for cash. Books the next flight out of Richmond and runs to Florida."
I followed him out of the garage and back to his car. Night was falling fast, a chill in the air. He cranked the engine while I stared mutely out the side window at Beryl's house. Its sharp angles were deteriorating in the shadows, the windows dark. Suddenly the porch and living room lights blinked on.
"Geez," Marino muttered. "Trick or treat."
"A timer," I said.
"No kidding."
2
There was a full moon over Richmond as I followed the long road home. Only the most tenacious trick-or-treaters were still making the rounds, their ghastly masks and menacing child-size silhouettes lit up by my headlights. I wondered how many times my doorbell had gone unanswered. My house was a favorite because I was excessively generous with candy, not having children of my own to indulge. I would have four unopened bags of chocolate bars to dole out to my staff in the morning.
The phone started ringing as I was climbing the stairs. Just before my answering machine intervened, I snatched up the receiver. The voice was unfamiliar at first, then recognition grasped my heart. "Kay? It's Mark. Thank God you're home…"