“I…what do you want me to do?”
Tyler gave a short laugh. “What do I want you to do? Nothing. You’ve done it already. You damned near spoiled everything, do you know that?”
“I don’t understand.”
“It’s really quite simple.” He took out the revolver. “You’re going to disappear.”
She took a step back. “But I…”
“Don’t say anything. Let’s not waste time. You and I are going on a little trip.”
She stiffened. “What if I won’t go?”
“Oh, you’ll be going. Dead or alive. Suit yourself.”
In the moment of silence that followed, Tyler heard his voice boom out from the next room. “Oh, you’ll be going. Dead or alive. Suit yourself.” He whirled around. “What…?”
Steve Sloane, Simon Fitzgerald, Lieutenant Kennedy, and two uniformed policemen stepped into the living room. Steve was holding a tape recorder.
Lieutenant Kennedy said, “Give me the gun, Judge.”
Tyler froze for an instant, then he forced a smile. “Of course. I was just trying to scare this woman into getting out of here. She’s a fraud, you know.” He put the gun in the detective’s outstretched hand. “She tried to claim part of the Stanford estate. Well, I wasn’t about to let her get away with it. So I…”
“It’s over, Judge,” Steve said.
“What are you talking about? You said Woody was responsible for…”
“Woody wasn’t up to planning anything as clever as this, and Kendall was already very successful. So I started checking up on you. Dmitri Kaminsky was killed in Australia, but the Australian police found your telephone number in his pocket. You used him to murder your father. You’re the one who brought in Margo Posner and then insisted she was an impostor to throw suspicion off yourself. You’re the one who insisted on the DNA test and arranged to have the body removed. And you’re the one who put in the phony call to Timmons. You hired Margo Posner to impersonate Julia, then had her committed to a psychiatric ward.”
Tyler looked around the room, and when he spoke, his voice was dangerously calm. “And a phone number on a dead man is your evidence? I can’t believe this! You set up your pitiful little trap based on that? You don’t have a shred of proof. My telephone number was in Dmitri’s pocket because I thought my father might be in danger. I told Dmitri to be careful. Obviously, he wasn’t careful enough. Whoever killed my father probably killed Dmitri. That’s who the police should be looking for. I called Timmons because I wanted him to find out the truth. Someone impersonated him. I have no idea who. And unless you can find him and tie him to me, you have nothing. As far as Margo Posner is concerned, I really believed that she was our sister. When she suddenly went crazy, going on a buying spree and threatening to kill us all, I persuaded her to go to Chicago. Then I arranged to have her picked up and committed. I wanted to keep all this out of the press to protect the family.”
Julia said, “But you came here to kill me.”
Tyler shook his head. “I had no intention of killing you. You’re an impostor. I just wanted to scare you away.”
“You’re lying.”
He turned to the others. “There’s something else you might consider. It’s possible that none of the family is involved. It could be some insider who’s manipulating this, someone who put in an impostor and planned to convince the family she was genuine and then split a share of the estate with her. That didn’t occur to any of you, did it?”
He turned to Simon Fitzgerald. “I’m going to sue you both for slander, and I’m going to take away everything you’ve got. These are my witnesses. Before I’m through with you, you’ll wish you had never heard of me. I control billions, and I’m going to use them to destroy you.” He looked at Steve. “I promise you that your last act as a lawyer will be the reading of the Stanford will. Now, unless you want to charge me with carrying an unlicensed weapon, I’ll be leaving.”
The group looked at one another uncertainly.