Conundrum

by Susan Cory

  “After C.C. finally revealed that Will was planning to hit up Norman for money, using his knowledge of how Norman had built his company as leverage, the police think Norman responded by suggesting a meeting on Friday to go over the business proposition. Instead, he tasered Will in the car, drove over to Fresh Pond, injected him with that syringe of poison, then rolled his body down from the parking lot into the woods. He must have figured he’d frame me for Will’s murder by dumping the body where he knew I walked my dog every afternoon.” Her teeth locked over her lower lip.

  “Why? What did he have against you?”

  “I don’t think I was supposed to take it personally. He just needed a fall guy and I was convenient. He knew my habits. I guess that’s why he left me his Porsche—as a sort of ‘no hard feelings’ gift, a reward to enjoy if I was clever enough to wriggle out of the frame he was creating.”

  “Wow—a shrink would have a field day with this guy. So that explains Carey and Will, but what about Norman’s death? I assume that Adam did that. But why?”

  “That’s actually the most logical of the three murders. Adam admitted that he set up a meeting with Norman for Sunday afternoon. Norman must have figured that Adam wanted to shake him down for more money. He might have even killed Will partially to warn Adam off. But basically, Norman was in clean-up mode to get rid of anyone who knew about the source of his wealth. He was in his kitchen ready for Adam, with his stun gun and another loaded syringe. I’ll bet he arranged to have me there at the house so I could be framed for Adam’s murder as well as Will’s.”

  She removed the wide-angle lens and went on, “I guess he hoped to surprise Adam, like he had with Will, but Adam overpowered him, grabbed the needle, and shot him up with it—he was hoisted with his own petard. Then Adam heard me drive up, so he dragged Norman’s body downstairs, stashed it in the wine refrigerator to confuse the time of death, then drove off from the garage, figuring that no one would find Norman for another day. It makes my flesh crawl to think that I might have run into Adam if I had arrived earlier.”

  He threw her a worried look and she reminded herself to soft-pedal the truly scary parts of her story.

  “Where did Norman get this drug that he put in the syringes?”

  “The police think he was able to synthesize it himself in his lab. They found one of the components of this drug in a refrigerator there. It would have been almost impossible to detect if the police hadn’t found that first syringe with some traces of the drug still in it.”

  “What I don’t get is why Adam, as Norman’s murderer, would come back for the guy’s funeral?” Luc asked.

  “There you have me. The police are guessing that he might have been planning to search for the cassette tape. Or maybe he wanted to find out if the police suspected him. Alyssa, of course, is claiming that she had no idea about anything that Adam had been up to.”

  “Do you buy that?”

  “From Lady Macbeth? Doubtful. But unless he turns on her, it’ll be impossible to prove. I still can’t get my head around the fact that Norman killed Will and tried to kill Adam. He seemed to be such a wimp. I guess, with his inflated opinion of himself, he considered these killings to be justified. I worked for the guy for a year. I’m glad I didn’t do anything to piss him off.” She clicked on a short telephoto lens, set the tripod lower, and tilted the camera up at the house.

  “I’d never thought of architecture as such a dangerous profession.”

  “Our class was an unusually poisonous group. Most of them were just snarky and backstabbing. But then there was Carey’s death and I was convinced that one of them was actually a murderer—but I didn’t know which one. It turned out that two of them were murderers.”

  “I’ll never look at architects the same way. Is the DA going to be able to prove the case against Adam? It seems like a lot of circumstantial evidence.”

  “He’ll definitely spend time behind bars for Carey’s murder and his attack on me. They even tracked the envelope bomb to him. Norman’s tape was iffy as evidence, but that became moot when Detective Malone played it in the interview room and Adam started babbling out a confession before his lawyer could muzzle him.”

  “I like it when a sleaze bag like Adam hands the DA a confession. Just like on TV,” he looked amused, propped up on one elbow.

  “Yeah, Adam isn’t the sharpest knife in the drawer. Whether there’s a clear case to convict him of killing Norman is another matter. But, you know, I don’t care as much. Those two deserved each other. Now, Norman’s dead, Adam will be locked up for a long time, and poor Carey will get some justice.”

  “Thanks to you, Sherlock. You ended up putting the pieces together.”

  “Detective Malone did admit that they couldn’t figure out a motive for these killings until I pointed out their connection to Carey’s murder and the cover-up.You know what’s ironic about this whole thing?”

  “No, what?” He smoothed the hair back from her face.

  “I never would have been suspicious in the first place if the autopsy hadn’t turned up drugs in Carey’s system. I knew that he’d never intentionally take them. But if I’d known that his drugging had been a spiteful joke, I would never have been convinced that he’d been murdered and that I had to try to find his killer. I doubt that I would have gone to the reunion.”

  “Hmmm. So Adam’s headed to jail for killing Carey because he didn’t tell you that he pulled a prank on your friend.”

  “Yeah—ironic.” Minutes passed in silence. Iris gazed up again at the modern structure of wood and glass. “I’ve got all the shots I need.” she said, packing up her equipment into her camera bag. C.C.’s crew would be there the next week to collect their own images of it for the pages of cuttingedgedecor. Luc replanted the realtor’s ‘For Sale’ sign back by the driveway. Damn, this was one of her favorite creations.

  Chapter 45

  Four months later, Iris gazed out of the office she now shared with Ellie at Harvard’s Graduate School of Design. The slate on the High Victorian spire of Memorial Hall was a riot of colors against the approaching gloom of an October afternoon. Stacks of hand-outs, an empty can of Diet Coke, and her macbook air lay scattered across her desk.

  “I can’t believe we’re the ones giving the critiques now. It still feels bizarre.” Ellie said from her adjacent desk.

  Iris swiveled toward her co-professor. “If we can’t strong-arm some Very Important Architects to be guest critics, we’ll never be able to parlay this into a full-time gig. I hear Alyssa’s getting Richard Meier to fly up.”

  Ellie groaned and Sheba, lying at Iris’ feet, looked up with concern.

  At that moment, Iris’ cell phone twanged the guitar intro to ‘Stand by Your Man’.

  “Luc changed my ringtone,” Iris explained, then startled at the words ‘Meeker Enterprises’ on the caller i.d.

  Ellie whispered “Who?” and Iris wrote out Meeker Ent. on a scrap of paper and rotated it for her to see.

  As she recognized Barb’s voice, Iris sank back into her chair and mouthed “Barb” at Ellie.

  Ellie slid her chair closer to Iris’ desk to eavesdrop. They had both read in the previous week’s Globe about Barb taking over Norman’s company. A photo had shown her in a sleek suit, her hair newly styled, looking every inch the confident CEO.

  “Yes, I read about it. Congratulations,” As Iris listened, a smile played across her face. “You say it’ll be in the paper soon? Fantastic. That means a lot. Thanks for telling me, Barb. Bye, now.”

  “So? Tell me!”

  “She’s changing the name of the Meeker geo-thermal energy system to the Sorensen Geo-thermal energy system to honor Carey, ‘its actual inventor.’”

  Ellie nodded her head solemnly, fixing serious eyes on Iris’. Iris nodded back with eyebrows raised. This act didn’t change anything that had happened, but it shifted Iris’ world one significant notch on its axis, and everything else would need to adjust.

  “Come on. Let’s go toast
Carey,” Ellie said. They grabbed their coats and locked the office behind them.

  Out in the hall floated the laughter and excited talk of students caught up for the first time in a world of intense competition and limitless dreams.

  About the Author

  Like her sleuth, Susan Cory practices residential architecture from a turreted office. Like Iris, she has a brown belt in Karate. She even went to her own twentieth Harvard Graduate School of Design reunion, but no one was murdered. She lives in Cambridge, Ma. with her architect husband, Dan, and her bossy mutt, not a basset hound.