“Come on. You’re not going to say she popped up in the bushes and fired?” Melrose added, “Only how did Moffit manage to get into this chic club with a yearlong waiting list?”
“Remember? He wrote in advance.”
“And you think Zane knew she shot David Moffit?”
“I do, yes. The woman and Morrissey were in the casino office. One of the two would surely have been an employee, right?” Jury turned. “I’m going to talk to Leonard Zane,” he said, moving toward the doorway. “He must have known that only someone connected to the casino would have had access to the office.”
Before he could go through the door, Melrose said, “Richard. Wait.”
Jury turned back.
“Suppose he didn’t know.”
“Who? Leonard Zane?”
“No. The shooter, Buhari. The shooting down of the Moffits in that public way was so foolhardy—why would a shooter do it? But suppose he didn’t know that’s what he was doing.”
“You mean he was drugged or in some kind of fugue state?” Jury laughed. “Come on.”
“No. He didn’t know the gun was loaded.”
Artemis Club, London
Nov. 9, Saturday night
44
Jury stared. “He was a policeman, for God’s sake—”
“It wasn’t a policeman’s gun, was it?”
“But people don’t die from blank rounds.”
“Did he know they were dead? No blood from the first wound. It was a head shot. The second, Rebecca’s, yes, but in his hurry to get in that cab, did he see blood? She didn’t die immediately, either.” Melrose shrugged. “And you’ve said things about his behavior you thought didn’t make sense, given he’d just killed two people. Really, he was acting like a man following some script.”
Acting like somebody who’s in no danger, Wiggins had said.
“He was set up, Richard.” Melrose paused. “Maybe you’re headed in the right direction.” Melrose nodded toward the stairs and the upper floor.
The gallery was as cool and remote as a monastery. Jury supposed this effect was a studied one.
On the long table rested a silver tray holding various dishes; a dinner plate on which sat the leavings from those dishes; a wineglass, nearly empty. The bottle of wine rested on a silver coaster.
Leonard Zane was not sitting behind the tray, but was up and holding a painting Jury did not remember seeing before. It was apparently meant for the space vacated by the Abasi painting of the woman whose remoteness shielded her from the cheetah and the lion. He thought of Patty Haigh.
“Mr. Zane,” said Jury.
Leonard started, his left hand slipping from that side of the painting.
“Sorry.” Jury moved quickly to help. It was a heavy picture. “That could have been a disaster.” Jury lifted the left side.
“Only to my foot,” said Leonard, laughing. The two of them heaved the painting to the bracketed hooks.
“You finally sold the Abasi?”
“I did. I was sorry to see it go.”
“Me, too.”
When the new one was straightened, Leonard said, “What do you think of this one?”
Jury stepped back and looked. “I don’t know.”
Zane stepped back too. He shoved his hands into his pockets, holding back his jacket. “I don’t know either.”
They stood for half a minute, which bothered Jury, thinking he shouldn’t be sharing companionable silences with Leonard Zane.
“How was dinner?” asked Leonard.
“What? Oh, fine. Delicious.” Jury hoped Zane wouldn’t ask him what he’d eaten, and then he wondered why he was treating this encounter like a drinks party.
“I really like this cook. Chef, I should say. I stole him from the Dorchester.”
“Shame on you.”
After another long pause, Zane said, “Is something wrong, Superintendent? You look bemused.” He laughed again. “You want to arrest me but you don’t know how to do it?”
“No, as a matter of fact, I don’t want to arrest you, and I do know how to do it. I want to talk to you. Could we sit down?”
“Of course.” Zane moved behind the polished table and shoved the tray to one side. He waved Jury into one of the two chairs opposite. “Fire away, Mr. Jury.”
“David Moffit. For an innocent man to be shot once is an unusual event; for him to be shot twice on different occasions is highly unlikely. To be shot two times in two different casinos beggars statistics, unless the same person, present at both of those events, is the shooter, or let’s say someone who orchestrated the shootings.”
“What possible motive could I have for killing David Moffit?”
“Probably none. But I didn’t say you were the person, did I?”
Zane was clearly astonished. The relief that followed was somewhat undercut by his puzzlement. “Superintendent, you have a way of speaking in riddles.”
“Sorry. I thought what I meant was perfectly clear. I don’t think you did it; I don’t think you planned it; I don’t think you caused the shooting of David Moffit.”
“But one shooting happened in Reno and the other in London. So the ‘someone’ connected to both events is me.”
“Or Maggie Benn.”
“Maggie Benn?” Zane spoke the last name as if Jury had made a mistake in pronunciation. He had certainly made a mistake in attribution, he seemed to be saying.
“Why was she there? I mean, in Reno?”
“She wasn’t, Mr. Jury. You’re confusing her with my manager there, Marguerite Banado. Marguerite said she was there to get a quick divorce from an abusive jerk. But that wasn’t the real reason. She was there to shake a habit.”
Jury was perplexed. “What are you talking about?”
“Marguerite was an addict.”
“Gambling?” When Leonard nodded, Jury said, surprised, “She’s an addict trying to get work in a casino? Why does that not strike me as a good career move?”
Leonard laughed. “Nor I. She told me about her habit one evening a couple of months after she’d started at the Metropole. I’d asked her to take over at the blackjack table because the croupier was ill. She wouldn’t do it. I knew she could, because I’d seen her helping out a kid I’d hired who was a total loss. One night after the tables had shut down, I saw her giving him a lesson. She was good, very good. She told me she was an addict after she’d refused to take over the table. I said the same thing you did: not a good job choice. But she said she’d decided either to rise above it or drown.”
“Another version of ‘sink or swim’?”
Leonard nodded. “She swam.”
“How could you be sure?”
“How? The same way you would. In your work you’ve come across hundreds of drug addicts, I expect. Me, I’m addicted to these.” He raised the hand that held the thin cigar.
“Right. And every time you light up I can taste it.”
“Ah. You, too. But you don’t light up yourself. Why? What stops you?”
Jury considered. “A promise, I guess.”
“To whom?”
“A friend.” Jury shrugged it off. “But back to Maggie Benn. How much do you know about her? Who are her friends? Does she have family? Who? Where? Do you know what her name really is?”
Leonard frowned. “I didn’t know there was a ‘really.’”
From his pocket Jury drew out the photo of Claire Howard in the unknown gallery. Wordlessly, he shoved it across the length of the table. Leonard picked it up and studied it, also wordlessly. Finally, he said, “Should I recognize this place? It looks as if a drinks party is in progress—” He brought the picture closer to his eyes. “Those are paintings …”
“Masego Abasi’s.”
“So are you telling me that he’s broken our contract? He’s showing his work in another venue?”
“I’d hardly have come about that, would I? No, this gallery’s in Kenya. You’ve probably been to it. But it’s not the place, it’s the people.”<
br />
“What people?”
“See the two women—one in white, one in black—more or less in the center of the picture?”
Leonard nodded. “Yes, but I don’t know them.”
“You’re sure? Here.” Jury picked up a magnifying glass lying on the table and handed it to him.
Leonard held the picture up once again. “I don’t recognize—wait. This blond woman looks familiar. The shooting out there—” He tilted his head toward the dark window behind them. “This looks like—” He brought the glass up to the photo once again. “No, it doesn’t.” He dropped the picture. “I don’t know.”
“It’s not Rebecca Moffit; it’s not the one who was shot. That’s her mother, Claire Howard. You don’t know her? I got the impression she knows you quite well.”
“Her mother? No. They look very much alike.” He moved to hand the picture back to Jury. “Were you trying to trick me into saying I knew her?”
“Not at all. But it’s not Mrs. Howard I’m interested in at the moment. It’s the woman she’s talking to. Look again.”
Leonard did so. He shook his head, then looked at the picture again. “Wait. She looks like Marguerite Banado.”
“That is Marguerite, Mr. Zane. She’s from Kenya. That’s her real name, I believe—Maggie Benn’s. They’re the same person. You didn’t know?”
Leonard Zane turned the cigar in his mouth and removed it in a slim stream of smoke. “I knew, Superintendent. Not immediately, but after a while, I began to suspect. Not just the physical resemblance, but … well, there are things you can’t disguise.”
When he stopped, Jury prompted. “Such as?”
“Addiction. Ever seen a recovering alcoholic around booze? You can sense a hunger there. If there’s one thing I understand, it’s addiction.”
Jury wondered what—besides cigars—his drug of choice was. He didn’t feel the need to visit that subject, however.
Leonard Zane went on: “If Maggie wanted to jettison Marguerite, I let her. She’s very good at what she does here.” He paused, frowned. “But … Kenya?”
“As Marguerite Banado, she’s been there many times. Claire Howard claims never to have been there. Yet here she is. Here they both are. How did you meet Maggie Benn?”
Leonard looked perplexed. “She came here when I was hiring staff. She’s been working for me for a couple of years. She’s very shy, withdrawn. That’s why I don’t simply have her take over the casino. Gambling bores me.”
“I’m surprised by that, especially given your career in Reno.”
“What do you mean?”
“The shooting at the Metropole, your hotel.”
“That did happen, yes, and the shooter was never found.”
“The man who was shot was really David Moffit.”
Leonard Zane lurched from his chair. “What?”
“You said you’d never seen the man before who was shot in your driveway.”
“I didn’t know everyone who passed through the Metropole. It wasn’t like this. But that fellow’s name was … it wasn’t Moffit.”
“Morrissey.”
Leonard stood with his hands in his pockets. “The man in Reno had very little money. That was the reason I didn’t cut him off.”
“He did have money. He was very rich.”
“But surely this is coincidence. There’s nothing to tie the Metropole to the Artemis.”
“Well, there’s you—and Marguerite Banado, the manager whose managing days are over.”
Leonard looked ashen as he reseated himself. “So you think—or thought—Maggie and I conspired to murder David Moffit and his wife. Why?”
“That of course was the mystery—your motive, that is. Hers was quite clear. Revenge. He’d dropped her in Reno for Rebecca Howard, and Marguerite managed to keep tabs on him over the years. That wouldn’t have been too hard, as he was a respected professor at Columbia. And of course she knew he was coming to London as he’d written some time ago to see if he could get into your club.”
“For God’s sake, though … Maggie? She wouldn’t have waited so long to get revenge, surely.”
“The thing is, now there’s another motive, money, and another person comes onto the scene.” Jury picked up the photo again.
Leonard frowned. “You mean this Howard woman? How did they get this Kenyan to do the shooting?”
“‘They’ didn’t. Marguerite did. Claire Howard probably didn’t know him. For Claire, the motive was strictly money. Maggie, on the other hand, knew Mr. Banerjee, who himself was not the shooter. He’s a Kenyan industrialist; he’s Benjamin Buhari’s brother. Buhari was the shooter. The brother, Banerjee, had taken care of Marguerite since she was a child because the girl’s mother had left them and Benjamin Buhari couldn’t manage the little girl on his own. Marguerite Banado was his daughter.”
“What?” Leonard looked away toward his wall of paintings, as if they’d offer some clue to all of this. “You’re saying she manipulated him into—”
“Shooting the Moffits is my guess. God knows how she did it, what she said to him.”
Leonard rose again and walked over to the Masego Abasi painting. He seemed to be searching for comfort. “Do you suppose they met at that gallery party?” He had turned to look again, and the look fell like a shadow across the snapshot. He picked it up, tapped his finger at the image. “She’d kill her own daughter for money?”
“We’re talking about millions here, Mr. Zane.”
“Nevertheless.”
Leonard seemed to think that word said all that needed saying.
“Where did she come from? Marguerite?”
Zane paused. “The East Coast. New York? No, from New Jersey.”
“Atlantic City, by any chance?” Where David Moffit had been refused admittance to some casino. “She met him there is my guess. Marguerite Banado was obsessed with him, and, as Maggie Benn, still was. Where is she now?”
“On the casino floor. When I leave, I have her take over.”
“You give her a lot of authority, yet I thought you said she wasn’t good enough to manage.”
Leonard shook his head. “I didn’t mean she wasn’t good enough. I’d let her manage the casino were she not so diffident. Or seeming to be.”
“Diffidence isn’t really on the menu,” said Jury, waving his arm over the silver tray before he rose. “There’s one more thing, Mr. Zane.” He pulled from his pocket a small bag and poured the half dozen stones into his hand and then across the table.
“That’s tanzanite, isn’t it?” said Zane.
“It is indeed.”
Leonard Zane’s face was blank. “I don’t understand.”
“We took two of your paintings, remember?”
He still looked blank. “Of course. I assumed you thought they were forgeries. Which they weren’t.”
“No, I didn’t think they were.” Jury braced his arms against the table. “Come on, Mr. Zane. Don’t look so puzzled.”
“Sorry, but I am.” He ran his hand over the spilled tanzanite stones before he picked one up and inspected it.
“Not the art, the frames. I assume this Inspector Buhari was helping with the smuggling.”
Leonard shook his head. “Sorry, Superintendent, but you’ve lost me. There was an Inspector Buhari in the Merelani district. I knew him slightly because I have a mine. And now you’re saying this same Buhari was the shooter? Well, he wasn’t smuggling, certainly not for me.” Leonard’s look was now somber. “The paintings you took weren’t acquired by me, either.”
“By whom, then?”
“Maggie. She asked if she could hang them with the others.”
“In plain sight, you mean.”
“In plain sight.”
“Yet she claimed never to have been in Kenya,” said Jury.
“She’s lying, and it’s a stupid lie, given I know she’s flown to Nairobi several times.” Leonard shoved the little stones about with his finger. “She told me after a while that those painti
ngs were sold. Which is why I couldn’t sell them to Miss Slocum. Is she one of yours?”
“One of my what?”
“You know what I mean. I didn’t notice immediately that one painting had been switched for another. She’s quite dexterous is Miss Slocum.”
Jury didn’t comment on this, but said, “And the extraordinary piece in your drawer, there?” He looked toward that end of the desk.
Leonard smiled slightly. “You’ve got me there, Mr. Jury. That was my own doing. Rather childish to keep it hidden among glass shards and razor blades, but—?” He shrugged.
Jury said, “I think that’s all at the moment. I should get back to my friends.”
“Of course, Superintendent.” Zane rose too. “May I venture to say I’m no longer a suspect?”
“At the moment, I’d say, not in my books.”
“Are there other books?”
“Indeed there are.” Jury laughed and held out his hand. “Good night, Mr. Zane.”
Leonard Zane shook his hand. “Call me Leo.”
Mayfair, London
Nov. 10, Sunday
45
Once settled in Brown’s Hotel, where they had gone for tea, Jury expressed dismay at Paula Moffit’s leaving London. He pulled out the little velvet box. “For some reason, David gave this to me for you. In case something happened.” The ring box left on his living-room table had reminded him once again to call Paula Moffit.
She opened the box, removed the tanzanite ring. “How beautiful. But what was he thinking, that he would give it to you? Did he have some sort of premonition?”
“I don’t know.”
“Do you know the last thing he said to me when he called?”
“You mean the night—?”
“The last night, yes.” Her face clouded over and she looked as if she wished she hadn’t mentioned this. And as she set down the velvet box, she looked as if she wished she hadn’t picked it up. “Yes. Just before he hung up, he said, ‘It’s a gibbous moon again, Mom.’”
Jury frowned. “What did he mean?”
She fell silent as the waiter poured their tea after placing the triple-tiered scone and sandwich plate between them. He left the silver pot and withdrew.
The Knowledge: A Richard Jury Mystery (Richard Jury Mysteries) Page 29
