“Poor Faith.” Regina sighed.
“She was of age. It was her money. She had every right to do with it what she chose. Cabot was stymied. You see, to convert the estate into liquid funds, there would have to be an audit. And an audit would reveal how Cabot had been milking the trust fund. So he stalled. He told Faith it would take time to arrange things. In the meantime, he came up with a desperate scheme to try to change her mind.”
“What sort of scheme?”
“He pretended to have seen the Transcendental light himself. He became one of Faith’s disciples — complete with mantra.”
Remembering Cabot chanting his mantra over Faith’s body, Regina felt nauseous. She squelched the feeling. “How come Cabot and Enright had the same mantra?” she asked.
“As I get it, there are only a limited number of mantras to be handed out. Some duplication is bound to occur. It was just a coincidence.”
“It certainly threw me off,” Regina admitted.
“Anyway,” Rodriguez continued, “once Cabot had convinced Faith of his Transcendental sincerity, he started working her over from the religious angle. He tried to convince her that instead of using the money to build meditation centers, she should really renounce her claim to it. Inner Peace, he claimed, would only be hers if she gave up the ego trip. But this approach backfired on him. Faith didn’t want to hear it. Patient as she usually was, Cabot became aware that she was going out of her way to avoid him. This really drove him frantic. And that’s where it was at on the night of the murder. When he called Faith and said he wanted to see her, she told him she was going to be busy. But he went to her apartment anyway."
“Then Cabot was the one Faith told me she wanted to avoid that night,” Regina realized.
“Right. But she didn’t avoid him. He showed up just as she was going out the door. Rather than be alone with him and have to listen to his arguments again, but too tenderhearted to hurt his feelings, Faith brought him along to your place.”
“And Cabot was the one she introduced as ‘Brother’ when I was in the shower.”
“Right again. All the disciples were called ‘Brother’. Also, if you hadn’t been in the shower, Faith might not have been killed.”
“How’s that?”
“Despite everything, I don’t think the killing was premeditated,” Rodriguez said thoughtfully. “At least he says he didn’t plan it, and there’s no reason not to believe him. What happened was that your being in the shower gave him a chance to start in on Faith again about the money. But this time she told him in no uncertain terms that she wasn’t buying it. She demanded that he speed things up so she could start in on her project. Cabot saw that she really meant it. They were alone. You were in the shower. He went into the kitchen for a glass of water and the knife was lying on the table there. So he picked it up, went back into the living-room, and stabbed her.”
“Just like that,” Regina murmured.
“Just like that. She put up a little fight, but not much. When she fell to the rug, he saw the list of names in her hand. She must have been looking at it while he was in the kitchen. On impulse, he tore his name off the top of the list and left the rest of it. He figured-—and as it turned out he was right—that the list would direct suspicion away from him and towards the people whose names were on it. Just about then, he noticed that Faith was still alive. He was about to pull the knife out and stab her again—-finish the job—when he heard the front door open. He ducked behind a drapery and that’s where he was when Dwight came in.”
“Why did Dwight run away?” Regina wondered aloud. “Why didn’t he call the police?”
“I only know why he told us he ran away. I didn’t buy it myself at first, but now I’m inclined to believe it. He panicked, but it wasn’t just that. It went deeper. As a homosexual, Dwight had tangled with the police before. I gather they’d been pretty rough with him. He’s convinced cops hate gay people, and from what I’ve seen, he’s right. He ran away because he was convinced that if he stayed the cops would pin his sister’s murder on him.”
“That’s still pretty thin,” Regina objected.
“Real-life motives usually are,” Rodriguez told her. “Anyway, the interruption gave Cabot a few minutes to think. That’s when he revised his scheme and came up with the idea of using the dental floss to lock the door behind him. He figured that if the door was locked, there’d be nobody to pin it on but you.”
“And he would have been right if it hadn't been for that voyeur,” Regina recalled. “Which shows how smart you are!”
“Sorry about that.” Rodriguez shrugged.
Regina didn’t pursue the point. Her mind had gone off on another tangent. “Instead of the bit with the list and the mantra,” she asked, “why didn’t Faith simply tell Dwight that Cabot was the killer? She could still talk a little. She said ‘the murderer’ when she pointed at the list.”
“The way I figure it, she was protecting Dwight. She knew Cabot was still there. She was probably afraid that if she mentioned his name, he’d pop out and kill Dwight too.”
“But he didn’t. At least not that night. What changed his mind?” Regina wanted to know. “Why did he bash in Dwight’s skull later?”
“For the same reason he killed Faith. You see, Dwight didn’t like Cabot. It had something to do with something that happened when he and his sister were kids. With Faith gone, Dwight was free to decide that he didn’t want Cabot managing his estate. Before her death, Faith being a softie, she’d always managed to talk him out of ditching Cabot on the grounds of sentiment. Anyway, he told Cabot he was getting rid of him that night down at his house in the Village. He told him nastily, and in no uncertain terms. So Cabot bashed his skull in when he had the chance. See, he thought the dentist had already left and he knew that Petey-Sweetie would be the patsy.”
“And so he was,” Regina reminded Rodriguez. “I told you he was innocent.”
“I called New York from the hospital. They’re letting him go.”
Regina thought of something else. “Then the reason Cabot hired ATOMICS to prove Dwight’s innocence was that if Dwight was convicted, he’d face life imprisonment and that would mean all sorts of appeals, and that would take a lot of money, and that would mean he’d have to convert some of his assets to cash, and that would mean—”
“Cabot would face an audit,” Rodriguez finished for her. “Right.”
“And Cabot was so eager to get me off the case because I was getting too close,” Regina added. “I’d come close to breaking down his alibi—not quite as close as he thought, maybe, but he couldn’t know for sure—when I interviewed Zelda and Enright. And when I figured out the dental floss trick, it was only a matter of time before I would have realized he could have picked it up from Enright. The pieces would have fallen into place. That’s why he was so afraid of me.”
They fell silent. Regina dozed through the rest of the drive. She opened her eyes as Rodriguez was pulling the Mercedes into the garage under her building.
“One thing I don’t understand,” she remarked as they walked from the car to the elevator. “Why did Dwight Venable finger Petey-Sweetie when he came out of the coma in the hospital?”
“I’ll check it out, but my guess is that Petey-Sweetie was right.”
“Right?”
“Yeah. He said that Dwight was hallucinating and must have mentioned him because he was uppermost in his mind. That’s how it goes with lovers, baby, regardless of race, religion, or gender. That’s love!”