manuscript, including the opening page of Chapter Twenty-five that she had gotten mixed up with the original Mark and I had read. Benton Wesley’s theory was that Frankie’s habit was to sit up in bed reading Beryl’s book while he fondled the clothes she was wearing when he murdered her.
Perhaps so. What I did know with certainty was that Beryl never had a chance. When Frankie arrived at her door, he was carrying her leather tote bag and identifying himself as a courier. Even if she recognized him from that night when he had delivered Gary Harper’s bags to the McTigues’
house, there was no reason for her to give it a second thought–just as I had not given it a second thought until I had already opened my door.
“If only she hadn’t invited him in,” I muttered. My letter opener had disappeared. Where the hell had it gone?
“It made sense that she would,” Marino replied. “Frankie’s all official and smiling and wearing an Omega uniform shirt and cap. He’s got the bag, meaning he’s also got her manuscript. She’s relieved. She’s grateful. She opens the door, deactivates the alarm, and invites him in–”
“But why did she reset the alarm, Marino? I have a burglar alarm system, too. And I have delivery men arrive occasionally, too. If my alarm is on when UPS pulls up to the house, I deactivate it and open the door. If I’m trusting enough to invite the person in, I’m certainly not going to reset the alarm only to have to deactivate it and reset it again a minute later when the person leaves.”
“You ever locked your keys in your car?” Marino looked thoughtfully at me.
“What’s that got to do with anything?”
“Just answer my question.”
“Of course I have.” I found my letter opener. It was in my lap.
“How does it happen? In new cars, they got all kinds of safety devices to prevent it, Doc.”
“Right. And I learn them all so well I go through the motions without a thought, and next thing my doors are locked, my keys dangling from the ignition.”
“I have a feeling that’s exactly what Beryl did,” Marino went on. “I think she was obsessive about that damn alarm system she had installed after she started getting the threats. I think she kept it on all the time, that it was a reflex for her to punch those buttons the minute she shut her front door.”
He hesitated, staring off at my bookcase. “Kind of weird. She leaves her damn gun in the kitchen and then resets her alarms after letting the drone inside her house. Shows how screwy her mind was, how nervous the whole ordeal made her.”
I straightened up a stack of toxicology reports and moved them and a pile of death certificates out of my way. Glancing around at the tower of micro-dictations next to my microscope, I instantly felt depressed again.
“Jesus Christ,” Marino finally complained. “You mind sitting still, at least until I leave? You’re making me crazy.”
“It’s my first day back,” I reminded him. “I can’t help it. Lock at this mess.”
I swept a hand over my desk. “You’d think I’d been gone a year. It will take me a month to catch up.”
“I give you until eight o’clock tonight. By then everything will be back to normal, back exactly like it was.”
“Thanks a lot,” I said rather sharply.
“You got a good staff. They know how to keep things running when you’re not here. So, what’s wrong with that?”
“Not a thing.”
I lit a cigarette and shoved more papers aside in search of the ashtray.
Marino picked it up from the edge of the desk and moved it closer.
“Hey, it’s not like you ain’t needed around here,” he said.
“No one is indispensable.”
“Yeah, right. I knew that’s what you were thinking.”
“I’m not thinking anything. I’m simply distracted,” I said, reaching up to the shelf to my left and fetching my datebook. Rose had crossed everything out through the end of next week. After that it was Christmas. I felt on the verge of tears, and I didn’t know why.