"Very funny. And I watch the programs with you, so I know about the forty-eight hour thing. I'm delaying right now, stalling. We'll work on him tomorrow, when I'm not feeling like such a wimp. For now, with any luck, he'll have gone to bed before we get up there. Alex?"
He was lightly rubbing at her shoulders, as she'd told him more than once that they ached after a day navigating on the walker, and had even teased him that she'd soon have shoulders like a fullback. "Hmm?"
"We're doing a really good job, you know, unearthing evidence. Clues, to you. We learned a lot today. The problem with those clues is that we should be working for the prosecution. Everything we've learned just points to Dad crushing Bodkin's skull for him."
"I was wondering when you might stumble over that conclusion, my dear, no pun intended."
"Ah, that feels good," Maggie said, hunching her shoulders as he worked on her neck, as he pressed his lips against her neck. But if his touch only felt good, obviously a romantic interlude this evening was out of the question. Pity.
"It could feel better, but I suppose not."
She ignored that statement, or just hadn't heard it. Yes, definitely Maggie had to work on the swooning, grateful, can't-help-herself-but-falls-into-his-arms aspects of being a heroine. "We have another suspect, though. Three, if you want to push it to Mom."
"John, if he is aware of his wife's indiscretion, and Maureen. Yes, I have deduced that much. But attempting to include your brother-in-law may be pushing the envelope. The man sleeps the sleep of the innocent—"
"Or the tryptophan stuffed."
"True. And Maureen doesn't strike me—again, no pun intended—as the sort who could cold-bloodedly kill anyone. Your rather redoubtable mother, on the other hand ..."
"I know. She's freaking amazing, isn't she? Even in that horrible blue caftan, she commanded the room, didn't she? Or, as I used to say before I knew she actually keeps a scrapbook of our press clippings, like a normal mother—that is one scary broad. But she wasn't faking going all white and nearly fainting when she heard Bodkin was dead. Nobody's that good."
"Bringing us back to your father."
"Unfortunately, yes." Maggie leaned her head on Saint Just's shoulder. "You know what we need, Alex? We need to broaden our investigation. We need more suspects."
" 'The more the alternatives, the more difficult the choice.' "
Maggie nodded against his shoulder. "Yeah, like that. We dig up enough suspects, maybe even feed some of them to the press, and the police can't just pin it on Dad and not investigate other possibilities. We make this as hard as we can for them, right? Very good, Alex."
"I blush to say that I'm not the first to utter the words. You had me quote the Abbe D'Allainval in The Case of the Pilfered Pearls, remember?"
"Are you kidding? You're the one I gave the steel-trap brain, not me. I have at least a half dozen thick quote books in my office. I get an idea, look through them for a key word, and then steal like crazy. You don't really think I commit all that stuff to memory, do you?"
"Another illusion cruelly shattered by my pragmatic heroine," Saint Just said, pressing a kiss against her hair. "And here I thought you were a walking encyclopedia of knowledge."
"Only if I pushed a set of encyclopedias in front of me in a shopping cart. But people seem to think I have it all in my head, and ask me questions about obscure stuff I may have found, and written about, but then forgot. And they get all torqued when I don't remember. It's like walking up to comedians and demanding they say something funny. It just doesn't work that way."
"Is this going anywhere?"
"No, Alex, I don't suppose it is. I'm just saying, I'm not a genius. You, by association, are not a genius. Good, even great, but not a genius. We just do the best we can with what we've got. And what we've got right now is bupkus. That's nothing, Alex. Bupkus."
Saint Just knew he had to agree. Other than to supply even more motive that could send Evan Kelly, as Alicia had said, 'up the river to become somebody's bitch,' they really hadn't accomplished anything at all concrete a full four-and-twenty hours after the murder.
But he had learned something.
"Maggie," he began slowly, "there's more going on here than Bodkin's murder and your father's arrest. Loathe as I am to add to your burden, I believe I must tell you that I overheard your brother discussing his plan to sell your parents' home out from beneath them."
Maggie sat up straight, looking at him in the yellow light of the street lamp. "What? He's doing what?"
"Sean Whitaker is a Realtor, Maggie. Tate invited him for the holiday so that he could come into the house without being too obvious, inspect it, and then set a sale price."
"Why, that sneaky, no-good, son of a—"
"You'll want to hold onto that righteous anger a moment more, sweetings, as there's more to tell. Cynthia Spade-Whitaker, as you already know, is an attorney. She has been invited along as Sean's wife, but also to assist in preparing divorce papers Tate hopes your mother will then sign. Now, feel free to rant."
But Maggie didn't say anything. Not a single word.
"Maggie? Are you all right?"
"No," she said, her voice small. "God, what a twisted, sick family we are, Alex. Maybe Mom's right, and I've turned out to be the only normal one. And if I'm normal, sitting here, talking to my imaginary perfect hero somehow come to life, then the rest of them are freaking certifiable!"
Saint Just chuckled quietly at that bit of self-deprecating wit. "Are they, Maggie? Ready to be carted off to Bedlam in their own straight waistcoats? Your sister Erin, whom I haven't yet had the pleasure of meeting, seems to have found her own path. Granted, one that leads away from her parents."
"But she lies about why she doesn't come home. You're not normal if you can't just stand up and say, no, folks, you make me nuts, and I'm not coming home anymore."
"Really? You come back here, while longing to stay away, because you can't say the words you expect Erin to say."
"I hate when you're logical. Erin lies and hides, I try to lie, and eventually buckle. Okay, so Erin and I are maybe working out the same problem, each in our own way. But Tate? Mom and Dad have always treated him like the golden child. Tate this, Tate that, Margaret, why can't you be more like Tate—all of that. And yet he's the one trying to pull the rug out from under them."
"You once told me that Tate bought the condo for your parents as a business investment."
"And to score points with Mom and Dad by telling them they could live in it as long as they wanted. Don't forget that one, Alex. Tate's all about scoring points, keeping score."
"Like a dog with a bone, aren't you, sweetings? But to return to my hastily assembled theory, if you don't mind? He may have suffered some business reversals, Maggie. If you'll recall, he rather blanched at the idea of producing the fifty-thousand dollars necessary for your father's release from the police station last evening. Selling your parents' house may give him the money he needs. Sean mentioned a half million-dollar profit."
"So Tate's cold-bloodedly planning to kick Mom and Dad to the curb—for money? Why didn't he just come to me? He knows I have money."
Saint Just smiled in the darkness. "Would you apply to your brother for funds, if you found yourself in need?"
"Are you kidding? I'd rather eat dirt."
"Yes. And it is to be assumed that your brother feels likewise. I could pity him, except for the fact that I believe he sees your father's current difficulties as a prod to induce your mother to file the divorce papers and leave Ocean City, and her embarrassment, behind."
"He's a snake," Maggie sneered. "My mother has nurtured a snake at her bosom."
"A very poetical if rather dated turn of phrase, one common to the Regency. And here you protest that your knowledge of the era runs into and out of your mind as if it is a sieve. We will not, of course, allow Tate to succeed in his plan—both his plans—so let us put the subject of your scaly brother to one side for the nonce."