“That was all. She did fall asleep then.”
“Yair. Well. Go thou and do likewise. Thanks for a tough job.”
“I’m not kidding. It was. I wish you’d stayed there, yourself!”
“So do I. ’Night.”
Chapter thirty:
Shotgun and hatchet
It was a rough jaunt. Night flights are usually smoother than day flying but that thunderstorm was chasing us all the way to the Bluegrass. The bumpy trip may have contributed to my gloom. When they pulled the ramp over to us at Lexington, the mercury was pole-vaulting up over the ninety mark. And I had cold feet.
If I didn’t hurt anyone but myself it wouldn’t be so bad to canter around investigating a couple of grisly homicides in an entirely different direction from that taken by the duly constituted authorities. But if I was putting another person’s life in danger, and there seemed to be better than an even chance I was doing just that, then I had to consider the consequences. I did so, hence my gloom.
It was all so lucid, way they figured it. Roffis stabbed in a scuffle because he tried to prevent Tildy and Dow from taking her belongings with her, en route to Rio and a divorce cum marriage. Auguste’s being given the compact to say he knew nothing about the guard’s death. Tildy’s subsequent turndown of her Casanova. His resulting suicide.
If I hadn’t known about the wax spots and the finger marks — which weren’t fingerprints — on Tildy’s bedroom door, if it wasn’t for being trailed and shot at by someone who couldn’t have been Dow L., I might have accepted Hacklin’s view. As it was, I couldn’t shake off a conviction that the killer was still up and about, that there’d be another murder if I didn’t find the answer, but sudden.