04 A Jade in Aries by Tucker Coe

Author:Tucker Coe [Coe, Tucker]
Language: eng
Format: epub
Published: 0101-01-01T00:00:00+00:00

14

I LEFT THE PARTY A little after one. Except for Bruce Maundy, none of my suspects had yet departed; in fact, I was almost the first to leave. Jerry Weissman had attempted to distribute his coffee and cookies about an hour before, with very limited success, and the party I left was almost exactly the same as the party I’d arrived at three hours before. The same volume level, the same arrangements of standing conversational groups, the same chipper superficial chatter. I had expected, as the drinks were consumed, that some sort of change would take place, toward more happiness or toward some kind of trouble, but it hadn’t happened and it looked now as though it wouldn’t. If these people were most of them wearing masks, the masks seemed to be very securely in place; drink alone wouldn’t dislodge them.

It was still snowing, as lazily and steadily as before. Walking the four blocks to where I’d parked my car, I tried to visualize Jamie Dearborn at that party. How would he have behaved? How would he have talked with the differing groups, with each of my differing suspects? That he would have disappeared in there like a minnow in a school of minnow I had no doubts, but what specific kind of minnow would he have been?

Jamie Dearborn had been clubbed to death, in a time-honored tradition, by a brass candlestick, a part of the décor of the top-floor bedroom in which the body had been found. I tried to visualize each of my suspects wielding that candlestick, and at first I could see none of them doing it. But then, as I thought about them further, I could see every one of them swinging that shaped piece of brass at Jamie Dearborn’s head.

Stewart Remington judiciously.

Bruce Maundy enragedly.

Cary Lane hysterically.

David Poumon coldly.

Henry Koberberg agonizedly.

Leo Ross irritably.

There is no type of human being which is a killer type; all men can kill, given the proper impetus.

If only I had met Jamie Dearborn in life, I would know better what kind of impetus he would be likely to give, which of the six he would be most likely to rub the wrong way.

The only one of them who had said anything against Dearborn was Koberberg, who had claimed Dearborn was generally disliked for being unpleasant in some way about his successes in life. Did that make Koberberg my prime suspect? Or, since he had talked about his feelings so plainly, did it make him my least likely suspect?

I had to know more, and I wasn’t even sure where to do my looking.

Tomorrow I would visit Cornell again.

I suddenly wondered who would get Jammer and the three houses if Cornell, too, were to die. I would have to remember to ask him about that tomorrow.

And where would I find out Stewart Remington’s current financial condition? I didn’t know, but it was probably worth looking into.

I reached the car, my head full of notes and questions. I cleared accumulated snow from the windshield, unlocked the door, and slid in behind the wheel.

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