I saw Rob looking around. “Someone was looking for something very specific,” he said. “How did they get in?”
“No visible signs of entry,” Singh replied.
“So someone with a key?” I said. “I don’t think so. There’s just Clive, Alex, Ben, our student, and me. I’d vouch for all of us. In any event, anyone with a key would know the combination to the security system.”
“How fast did the security company respond?”
“We were here in about six minutes,” Singh said. “I don’t know how long they waited to call us.”
“A lot of activity here for six minutes,” Rob said.
“What are you saying?” I said.
“Either you could use a new security company or someone was hiding in the store when it closed.”
“You mean the alarm went off when they left?”
“Maybe. Let’s go home,” Rob said. “There’s nothing you can do now.”
“I’d better call Clive and warn him,” I said.
“I’d appreciate it if you’d cast your eyes over Wylie’s place later, let me know if you think anything’s missing,” Singh said. “Say ten o’clock, so I can go home and have a shower.
“Sure,” I said.
The sun was just coming up when we got home, so I made breakfast for Rob. It was the least I could do. I told him my thoughts on the writing cabinet. He was very nice about it, but I knew he thought it completely unlikely. He told me I should forget the whole business and just get on with my life.
“Does Blair’s arrest not look a little too pat to you?” I asked Rob. “I mean, Blair uses an axe in front of dozens of people, including the chief of police, and then uses the same axe on Trevor? Did he think no one would remember the axe business? He’s smarter than that.”
“You’re assuming it was premeditated,” Rob said. “Maybe he went to the store to get his money back, and Trevor refused to give it to him.”
“He went to the store with an axe?” I said.
“I guess that’s why he’s charged with murder,” he said. “Maybe he just intended to scare him, and Trevor was his usual cocky self.”
“Blair’s a lawyer,” I said. “He’s gotten some pretty sleazy people off.”
“You can say that again,” Rob said. “Some of them were guilty as sin.”
“Maybe one of these sleazy types had a grudge against him and framed him for it.”
“Or maybe one of the sleazy people did the job for him,” Rob replied. “Some of them at least must feel they owe him big time.”
“The police can’t find any record of a check or credit card transaction,” I said. “I mean they can’t even prove that Blair paid for the thing. There’s that business about Trevor owing eight hundred thousand dollars to his bookie, of course. I get the impression the police think Trevor rook cash and paid off the debt.”
“Eight hundred thousand in cash?” Rob said. “Then Blair has more problems than a murder charge.”
“Meaning what?”
“Nice law-abiding people like you and me don’t have that much cash around,” he said.
“But he’s very rich.”
“If he came into your store and offered you, say, a hundred grand for something, would you accept payment in cash?”
“No,” I said. “I know that significant sums of money like that have to be reported.”
“Exactly,” he said.
“But Trevor needed cash to pay his gambling debts. Maybe he gave Blair the deal of a lifetime, at least what would have qualified as that if the cabinet had been genuine Mackintosh. It’s worth a lot more than eight hundred thousand. Blair would think it was a really great deal and pay the cash.”
“Think this through, Lara. Honest people do not keep that kind of cash around. Have you ever thought how much space that kind of money takes up? Let’s say it’s in fifties, hundreds being hard to spend sometimes. So each bundle of one hundred bills is five thousand dollars. You’d need one hundred and sixty bundles of fifties. Four hundred if it’s in twenties, which most people want. You don’t just throw that in a shopping bag and take it to your favorite antique dealer, now do you? Good deal or not, Blair had money he shouldn’t have.”
“What are you saying?”
“I’m saying he must have had a reason to have so much cash on hand, and it would tend to be an illegal one.” Rob should know, of course. Right at this moment he was running a restaurant. He knows nothing about the restaurant business. He does know about money laundering, however, and that was what he was doing, hoping, of course, to catch some bad guys doing it. He tells me he is making pots of money by laundering illicit cash, but that he still hasn’t nailed down what he calls the substantive offense, the crime, in other words, that resulted in all this money that needs to be laundered. He was given this assignment because he’s of Ukrainian descent, and apparently there were some Ukrainians in town who were interested in doing business of this sort. What do I know? I was just not entirely happy he had to consort with people like this, who in my opinion probably would kill you if you looked at them wrong. Still I was not prepared to concede the point.
“He’s a lawyer,” I said.
“And your point is?”
“I don’t know,” I said. “Maybe he has an aversion to paying income tax. Singh seems to think I’d accept cash so I wouldn’t have to declare it. Maybe Blair does that. I just think it’s all too pat. Blair has a temper, certainly, but I just don’t see him as a murderer.”
“That may be because you don’t want to.”
“Isn’t it time you got some sleep?” I said.
“Sorry, I’m coming down hard on you, aren’t I? Baldwin was the defense lawyer in a case that I worked on. I know the guy was guilty, and Blair got him off, and believe me, our streets are more dangerous as a result. I’m accusing you of bias, and I should be pointing the finger at myself.”
“I’m just in a bad mood because I missed the lock,” I said. “And for sure I’m sympathetic about how you feel about all the slime Blair got off. But you know somebody has to defend them. That’s the way our system works, even if it’s galling from time to time. Furthermore, Blair told me once about how he grew up poor, and when he wanted to go to university his grandfather took a bundle of cash out from under the mattress and gave it to him. Don’t roll your eyes! I know rags to riches is a cliche. His grandfather’s wad of cash paid for his first year of university and he was able to take it from there. His grandfather believed in cash, and maybe Blair does, too. Okay, so he has more cash than other people. I understand what you’re saying, but just having it does not make you a criminal. Surely it’s what you do with it that counts.”
“Where I come from it’s ”not only what you do with it, but where you got it in the first place,“ he said. ”But I take your point. I can’t assume because he gets slugs off he’s a slug himself. Nor can I assume that because he has cash, he was doing something illegal, or that he sank an axe into Trevor’s head. I stand corrected, or at least moderately chastised.“
“Thank you. I appreciate that concession. Now, you get some sleep, and I’ll go to the shop, and maybe we’ll have an early dinner before you head out to catch bad guys.”
“Great idea. Promise we won’t discuss Baldwin, Wylie or locks, okay?” he said.
“Absolutely not,” I said. “I still think there were two writing cabinets, though.”
“Call Ben and ask him if there was a chance someone hid out in the shop,” he said. “That idea I’m sticking to.” So I did. Ben told me that he had been in the office just before closing when he heard the bell that rings when someone enters or exits, but when he went out there was no one there. He said he looked in both showrooms but saw no one, and assumed that someone had looked in and then left right away. He was devastated to think he might have missed a thief, but I told him it could have happened to any of us. I told him I didn’t think anything much had been taken, and that was to prove correct.