“So again, you were the last to talk to her.”
“No. Fay and Sheila had an argument while Sheila was getting her coat. Marion saw it.”
“Fay has assured us it was insignificant. Marion concurs.”
Fay knitted her brows innocently at me.
I said to Harros, “Are you aware that Fay and Sheila were both pursuing a guy named Simon? And that Simon was doing his best to win Sheila back?”
Harros got a hard little twinkle in his eye. “And how is it that you know this?”
He had me there. There was no point in denying the diary. We were the ones who’d given it to him, after all. “I’ve been trying to figure out what happened to Sheila, just like you.”
Harros’s twinkle turned into a small, satisfied smile. “Let me get this straight. You had talked with my daughter all night about something you’ve yet to disclose. You saw she was feeling unwell, yet did nothing. Then, once you saw for yourself that she was dead in the morgue, you broke into her apartment and stole her diary. But first you cleaned your kitchen in order to remove incriminating foodstuffs.”
“That was Fay’s idea!” Jenny objected. “If anyone had a reason to hurt Sheila, it was Fay!”
Harros shook his head. “No, it’s your role in this, Mr. Damen, as well as Miss Ingersoll’s, that needs to be explained.”
I began to see how it was with him. He was like a film director who already saw the whole picture in his head. It would not change, even if none of the actors fit their roles. “Fay and Jenny mutually decided to clean the kitchen,” I said. “It was a natural, and innocent, reaction. Fay was the one who knew where Sheila’s apartment keys were hidden. Fay was the one who stole the diary from Sheila’s bedside. We took it out of her bag.”
Fay’s hands were folded like a perfect lady. “I wanted to make sure you got it, Mr. Harros. Bill said Sheila’s computer had been broken into. I was worried the diary might be taken, too.”
“Someone had been in the apartment before us,” I said. “I’m certain the manager will identify the man as Neil Dugan of LifeScience. He took Sheila’s hard drive.”
“Again. You said someone took the hard drive. Yet you did not allow Fay to see to confirm. That someone could have been you.”
“Dugan as much as admitted it was him,” I said.
“He did no such thing. Even so, he has a legitimate claim to her work. The company is at a crucial juncture.”
“I’ll say it is.” I took a small leap of speculation. “Sheila had uncovered serious problems. Neil Dugan was trying to make sure she didn’t reveal them. If someone did — I mean, if Sheila’s death wasn’t accidental, Dugan is the man to look at.”
Harros consulted his watch. “He’ll be here in ten minutes. You may elaborate at that time.”
My brain did a little somersault. Dugan had gotten the inside track with the Harroses already. Dugan, Fay, and Marion had all thrown in with them. I could see why the first two did, but not Marion.
“Until now, we had assumed Sheila’s death was an accident, albeit not without culpability,” Harros went on. “We assumed you and Jennifer were guilty of criminal negligence in the first place, and covering up in the second. But your own words lead me to suspect otherwise. Perhaps you didn’t mean to let slip that she did not die by chance. But here you clean up evidence. You violate her privacy. Then you point the finger at others. Fay. Miss Roos. Mr. Dugan.”
A voice was reading me my rights in my head. Anything I said was being used against me. But so would silence. “I understand your grief, Mr. Harros. I understand the urge to blame someone. But you’re reaching far beyond reason. What possible motive could we have?”
“We don’t know what you were doing in that parking lot before the dinner party,” he shot back. “We don’t know what you talked to my daughter about all night. We have only your word that you did not know her before. Perhaps you are involved in ways we have not discovered yet. Or perhaps the motive is not yours. Perhaps it is Jennifer’s, and the motive is jealousy.”
“Read the diary,” I blurted. “You won’t see my name.”
“Not on the pages that still exist. But you ripped out some pages, didn’t you?”
I shook my head. It all felt like a dream. “No. This is ridiculous.” It was amazing how weak the truth sounded.
The doorbell rang. Everyone looked at one another. I forgot, for a moment, whose house we were in. Then I went to get the door.
Neil Dugan stood there, teeth exposed in a wolflike smile. My eyes did not leave his as I stood aside to let him in. He went directly to the kitchen.
The two men were tying up their garbage bags. Dugan’s tone with them was cheerful and familiar. My stomach sank a little further. What if Dugan and Harros had hired the PIs together?
“We’re done here,” said the sand-freckled one. I assumed he was Pratt. “We’ll get you a report by the weekend, Mr. Dugan.”
“Tomorrow, please,” Dugan said. He gave Pratt a little pat on the back as he and the second man went to the door. I locked it behind them, and we proceeded to the living room. Abe and George Harros had warm handshakes for Dugan. He gave Fay a little bow and a wink and took a seat next to her.
“We were just discussing the diary,” Harros said. I was standing next to Jenny, who’d squished herself to the edge of the step. Harros fixed his stony eyes on me and commanded, “Give Mr. Dugan the missing diary pages.”
“You’re letting him read your daughter’s diary?”
“He has intellectual property concerns.” Harros’s voice was firm, as repeating a reprimand to a child. “He will have access to Sheila’s notebooks and any other potential LifeScience IP.”
I couldn’t keep the desperation out of my voice. “That’s exactly the wrong thing to do. Anyway, I don’t have any diary pages, missing or otherwise.”
Dugan tsked. “You expect us to believe that?”
I nearly made a jump for him, and everyone could see it. My pulse raced. I unclenched my fists and forced myself to take a deep breath. Fighting to control my voice, I said, “You transferred her out of the MC124 program, Mr. Dugan. It’s not her work you want. It’s what she knew and you didn’t want her to know. What she was about to expose.”
Dugan drew himself up. “You have no idea what you’re talking about.”
“Sheila was not the only one. There’s at least one other person who knows about it, isn’t there?” Saying so was a real risk. But I needed to know if such a person existed, and if Dugan knew she existed. If she did, I thought it had to be Karen Harper, the woman Sheila had an appointment with before the dinner party. Her name had also appeared in the diary.
Dugan’s expression did not shift at all. But I could see his mind working. He didn’t know who I meant, but he’d be hunting right away. I wished even harder that Harros would not let him read the diary.
Harros directed a little harrumph at me. His trust of Dugan appeared to know no bounds. But Abe had been tapping his finger against his nose as I’d spoken. “What about that, Mr. Dugan? There are some things in the diary—”
“Employees can make mistakes with company IP. Inadvertently, I assure you, Abe. No serious wrongdoing on Sheila’s part. Nevertheless, in addition to finding any unreported research on the program, I also need to make certain security was not compromised.”
Mr. Harros straightened. “Neil, I give you my assurance Sheila would have done nothing to harm your company deliberately. But she was not the most, let us say, practical woman in the world. It was ideas, knowledge that excited her. She loved to share it, but she never would have done so in an improper way — not on purpose.”