I knew where Angela
lived.
Perhaps that might be the
one mistake she had made if there was a mistake to be made. I had to
admit, I was beginning to think she was more involved in Al’s affairs than she
admitted, even to the point where I suspected she might be helping him. Ten
million, or even a small slice of that was a big incentive.
Perhaps Al had settled a
score with Joe on her behalf for Cathy, in exchange for help in his plans.
It was probably naive of
me to think she would still be there, in now what seemed to be the final card
being played, but I was ever the optimist.
I knocked on the door.
Jennifer Jones answered
it. I’ll be honest; I was surprised to see her at Angela’s.
“Harry, what are you
doing here?” If I was not mistaken, her tone was tinged with a little annoyance,
and a small measure of shock.
“I could ask the same
question. What are you doing here?” After the momentary surprise of
seeing her in the doorway, I noticed she had one hand behind her back. I was ot sure then why it mattered.
“I was just having tea
with Angela, so do come in. You came at the right time.”
She stood to one side,
opening the door. I passed by her, and she closed the door behind us,
after a quick glance out into the street. I think, at that moment I
realized that she had been expecting someone else.
That sound of the door
closing sounded very final, and I knew then something bad had happened in this
place. When I stepped into the room off the passage from the front door,
I had two sensations, the first, an off smell, one I would associate with
death, and the other, the sensation of an object prodded into my back.
A gun.
“Don’t stop now,
Harry. Move forward, and don’t give me any trouble.”
I moved further into the
large room, and at the end of the table adjacent to the kitchen, I saw Angela,
gagged and bound in a chair. I turned and Jennifer had a gun pointed at
me, what looked like the same gun Angela had handed me in the Outtel basement.
“I’m not sure I
understand,” I said.
“Look in the kitchen.”
A few more steps, I stood
at the kitchen entrance and on the floor was the body of a man. It looked
like Al. I moved closer and knelt down to see if there was a pulse.
It was Al, with a bullet hole in his forehead, and he looked very, very dead.
And although this looked
exactly like the body I’d seen in the Outtel basement, I was equally sure that
body hadn’t moved from Outtel to here, a few days later. This body was
still warm.
I stood and looked at
her. “Did you kill him?”
“No. Why would I?”
“You have a gun in your
hand and I suspect it has been recently used?”
“Then that’s on
Angela. I found the gun, and the body here when I arrived.”
“What about Miriam Walters?
They were not having an affair were they? She was an embezzler, whether it was for Al or
Joseph or both I guess we’ll never find out. Did you kill Miriam?”
“No. Her death, I
believe Sykes said, was a suicide.”
“I looked at the gun in
her hand. Where did you get that weapon?”
“Like I said, it was here
when I got here.”
“And why is Angela tied
up?”
“I found her like that.”
“How did you get in?”
“The door was unlocked.”
“Didn’t you think that
was unusual?”
She shrugged. “I didn't think about it at the time.”
“Angela will corroborate
this if I talk to her?”
“I doubt she’ll tell you
the truth.”
“You have the gun, what
harm could it do to ask a few questions.”
Jennifer shrugged, “It
won’t help her in the end.”
© Copyright Charles Heath 2018
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