Gwen’s hands were folded, clutching the latest tissue from a box the policewoman had provided, and she was staring at them with eyes raccooned with runny mascara. Otherwise she remained a lovely young woman in sweater and slacks, blonde hair touching her shoulders, a young beauty perfect enough for a Breck ad.
I touched those hands and, after a few beats, she looked up at me.
“Why?” she asked.
That was the first question, the only question, for a loved one to ask after an unexpected suicide. But the “why” here was a complicated and nasty one. This kid was dazed, staggered by the shock. She would have to know what this was about. She deserved that much and more.
But was now the time?
Pat and the lab boys would be here for hours. It didn’t matter that it was Sunday. Soldiers do battle every day of the week. Borensen’s body would be gone before the cops were, and because Pat viewed this as a homicide, that body was evidence and morgue-bound, with no pressing need for her to deal with funeral arrangements.
Of course, that hadn’t occurred to her, not yet.
She looked at me with the blue eyes large and ringed with black, and hurt and rage shimmered there and she gripped my hands now, and shouted, “Why, goddamnit? Why?”
So I told her.
I warned her first that she would not like what I had to say. And she found a ghastly little smile as she told me she could not imagine things could get any worse.
She was wrong.
But I told her anyway. I put it together like a story, the worst once-upon-a-time ever, starting with Borensen’s criminal background, from drug dealing to money laundering. I figured if she couldn’t grasp that, or refused to, I wouldn’t have to go on with my story.
When I’d completed that portion, however, she said quietly, “I’ve heard this before.”
That surprised me. “You have?”
She nodded. “My father told me he’d learned all of that about Leif. He didn’t say where he’d got it, but I assumed he’d hired detectives to... he didn’t hire you to do that, did he, Mike? You did say you knew my father.”
“No, he didn’t hire me. I believe your father learned about your fiancé’s criminal history from an old-time publicity agent who was writing his memoirs. Did you believe what your dad told you?”
She swallowed, shook her head. “No. Or, anyway, I thought he was exaggerating things. Mike, it may sound terrible, but a lot of people in theater, in show business, do use drugs. I see it all the time. It’s not my thing, but... that a struggling actor like Leif would have to have some way to make money on the side, that didn’t surprise me. And as far as what you call ‘money laundering,’ a lot of funds from shady circles back plays and movies. I’m young, Mike, but I’m not a child.”
“Understood. Did you ever talk to Leif about this?”
She shook her head again. “No. I thought it was a kind of... invasion of privacy. And after my father was gone, I didn’t feel like getting into it.”
That was a hell of a thing, wasn’t it? Borensen had been afraid Foster would poison his daughter against her fiancé with the lurid tale of a sordid past, and so the prospective son-in-law either murdered his prospective father-in-law by way of a faked suicide, or hired it done.
And it had been completely unnecessary.
“I’m not an innocent, Mr. Hammer,” she said, chin up, her smile a wrinkled little thing. “Working as an actress, a singer, even with the kind of pedigree I had thanks to Daddy, well... you meet a lot of different kinds of people in that world. You encounter a lot of different kinds of things.”
So I pressed on, telling her how her fiancé had used his car as a murder weapon, running down that publicity agent.
That turned her white as a blister.
“I thought the car had been stolen,” she said.
“So did the police,” I said.
I continued, telling her there had been a witness to the hit-and-run, a harmless Munchkin who ran a newsstand, but Leif needed him dead, too... only this witness was a friend of mine, and Leif feared my involvement. I had a reputation of settling scores where my friends were concerned. So the man she’d loved had taken steps to have me killed, as a preventative measure.
Gwen had seen the papers, of course, and knew all about the killer who’d confronted me in my office. She knew, too, that after I’d conferred with Leif about the bridal shower gig, I’d been shot at down on the street, and an innocent cab driver had been killed.
She said, “If you’re right, that means Leif used my bridal... my bridal shower to set up a bogus robbery, all for another attempt on your life? Endangering me and every one of my guests?”
“Yes,” I said.
She folded her arms to herself and shivered, though it wasn’t cold. “I wish... I wish I could argue against that. I really do. But you are very convincing, Mike.”
I touched her sleeve. “You okay, kid?”
“Feeling a little sick, that’s all.”
But it wasn’t till I told her about the recent attempt on Billy’s life that she finally lurched over to the sink and threw up.
So much for the Sunday brunch.
The cops cleared out around eight p.m. In the big echoing marble-floored entryway, Pat told me that the entrance to the library had been sealed and I wasn’t to go in there nosing around. I nodded like that meant anything.
“How’s Miss Foster taking it?” he asked.
“All right, considering I let her in on everything.”
He frowned. “You think that’s wise?”
“She has a right to know. She wanted to know.” I nodded toward the nearby stairway. “She took a sleeping pill and’s resting in a guest room upstairs. I’ll check in with her before I go.”
He was frowning, worried for the girl. “No relatives locally to sit with her?”
“She says not.”
“A place like this surely has household staff.”
“Not live-in, she says, and anyway today’s their day off.”
He sighed. “You better get the name of some friends of hers you can try, to see if anybody can come be with her. She’s been through the damn mill.”
“Yes she has,” I said. “You’ll be back tomorrow, with a fresh team?”
He nodded. “Everybody in the building has to be questioned, from residents to personnel. There’s a super with a staff of two, although only he was working today. My guess is our guy slipped in the building when the door was open while the super was taking out trash or some such.”
“The assassin had probably been here before, to meet with his client, and knew his way around. Gwen doesn’t know how lucky she is.”
“How’s that?”
“Think about it, Pat. If she’d been here, he might have taken her out, too. On the other hand, she regularly has Sunday brunch with friends, and a pro killer would do his due diligence, and know that. Killer came in, caught a freshly showered Borensen in his bathrobe and walked him down to the study, either at gunpoint or on a pretense of urgent business. Have your forensics experts look for traces of soapy water on the carpet in there, and the upstairs hallway and stairs.”
He grinned a little. “I’d almost think you were a detective, Mike.”
Then he patted me on the shoulder, and was the last of the cop crew to leave.
Upstairs in that darkened guest room, I went over and sat on the edge of the bed. Outside, the sunny day was over and the sky was rumbling with the threat of some real rain.
I whispered, “Are you sleeping?”