Dying Games (Jefferson Tayte Genealogical Mystery Book 6)

by Steve Robinson

  It was getting late. Outside, the street had been quiet for the past hour or so. He could hear the raised engine notes of several vehicles approaching, clearly in a hurry to be somewhere. A moment later his breath caught in his chest as he heard the vehicles screech to a halt. They sounded right outside. He shot to his feet as car doors opened and were slammed shut, wondering whether Tayte had worked his latest puzzle out already. The idea angered him. Then a sense of panic sent his pulse racing and he left the bathroom, heading for one of the bedrooms at the front of the house to find out.

  Tayte and Mavro had not been idle while they waited for Reese to call back with news about the Downtown address they had given him. They had been sitting in the living room, checking the newspaper archives, supposing that the suicide of a young author would be a newsworthy story. The only match they had found was in the obituaries section of the Washington Herald, which they were looking at now.

  ‘It doesn’t really add anything to the story of Gertrude Jones’s death, does it?’ Mavro said, pinching the tiredness from her eyes.

  ‘No, not much,’ Tayte agreed. ‘Apart from telling us where she was buried, and giving us a few names of the friends and family who were in attendance at her funeral. I’ll take a screenshot for my files.’

  Tayte stood up. ‘Let me refill your coffee. You look as if you could use some.’

  Mavro passed Tayte her mug. ‘Thanks. And you’re not looking so fresh yourself,’ she added with a grin.

  ‘I’ll sleep when this is over,’ Tayte said as he made for the kitchen, but the sound of Mavro’s phone ringing stopped him cold.

  He turned back to see Mavro answer it, her eyes locked on his as she spoke. He knew right away that it was Reese. He sat down again, waiting to hear the news. The call was brief, and when Mavro ended it with a firm shake of her head, Tayte’s heart sank.

  ‘I’m sorry, JT. Looks like Gertrude Jones didn’t die at home.’

  Tayte gave a heavy sigh. ‘Then I’ve just wasted everybody’s time—time we don’t have.’

  ‘Don’t beat yourself up. It was a solid hunch.’

  Tayte thumped the chair he was sitting on. ‘No, it would have been too easy. I should have realised that. Westlake wouldn’t have given us until noon tomorrow if it was that simple.’

  ‘So go and get those coffee mugs refilled and let’s find out where Gertrude Jones did die,’ Mavro said. ‘There has to be a way we can find out. We just have to keep looking.’

  Tayte’s shoulders were slumped low as he entered the kitchen. As he poured their coffees, he began to contemplate something Mavro had said earlier. Maybe why leads to where. If they understood why Gertrude Jones had wanted to end her life, then perhaps they would be in a better position to work out where she had died. There had to be a reason why she had felt so despondent. By the time Tayte went back into the living room, he thought he knew where the answer could be.

  ‘The book,’ he said, setting their drinks down on the coffee table. ‘Westlake’s clue led us to it. Maybe the answer to why Jones killed herself is wrapped up in the pages of her book.’

  ‘A book of romantic short stories,’ Mavro said. ‘Maybe that’s the reason right there. It sure wouldn’t be the first time someone killed themselves in the name of love.’

  Tayte agreed. ‘I think we need to see a copy of the book. If only to rule it out.’

  ‘I expect it’s long out of print by now.’

  ‘The Library of Congress has a copy,’ he said as he brought up the web page he still had open. His session had timed out, so he entered the search again and was soon looking at the title information. He pointed to the lower half of the screen. ‘It says here to request it in the Jefferson or Adams Building reading rooms.’

  ‘There won’t be anyone there now, of course,’ Mavro said. ‘I could call Reese. Maybe he can get someone there tonight, but as I said earlier, it could take some time and it’s already late. When do they open for business?’

  ‘Half past eight,’ Tayte said, having no need to look the information up. ‘Once you’ve had your coffee, why don’t you go home and get some rest. I want to look into the newspaper archives some more, but I can do that by myself.’

  ‘You should get some sleep, too. We’ll only have the morning to solve this. You’ll need to be sharp when the sun comes up.’

  ‘I know,’ Tayte said. ‘Just another hour or so.’

  ‘Okay. I’ll pick you up at half past seven.’

  Chapter Thirteen

  The Library of Congress was home to more than 160 million catalogued items, and with almost thirty-eight million books, it was the largest library in the world. As soon as Mavro had picked Tayte up from the safe house early the following morning, they headed for the Thomas Jefferson Building, which was located on 1st Street Southeast between Independence Avenue and East Capitol Street. It was built in the 1890s and was the oldest of the three Library of Congress buildings. In the car on the way there, Mavro had told Tayte that to save time she’d asked Reese to call ahead to set things up for them. On their arrival they had been taken through to the Main Reading Room while they waited for one of the librarians to locate the book they needed to see.

  It was a circular, domed reading room at the heart of the building, lavishly galleried and softly lit from above by high arched windows, and at ground level by the many reading lamps that lined the desks. As they sat down, they found themselves surrounded by bronze statuary on the upper level, which seemed to gaze down at them, as if to inspire and encourage their learning. Tayte thought some inspiration was just what they needed. He yawned, still waking up after another fitful sleep, despite having had three large mugs of coffee already that morning.

  ‘I’m surprised I didn’t find anything in the newspaper archives after you left last night,’ he said, ‘given that Gertrude Jones committed suicide, I mean.’

  ‘Maybe her family wanted to keep her name out of the papers.’

  ‘Maybe,’ Tayte agreed. ‘That would certainly explain it.’

  The librarian wasn’t long finding the book they had requested: Tales of Romance: A Volume of Short Stories. Tayte opened it, not at all sure what they were looking for, or whether they were even on the right track. He figured if they were, then whatever it was that they were expected to find, it had to be something that would seem obvious to them when they saw it. He turned the title page and glanced over the copyright information. When he turned the page again he saw the dedication and read it out.

  ‘For MAK. The love of my life.’

  ‘That’s nice,’ Mavro said. ‘She writes a book of romance stories and dedicates it to the man she loves.’

  ‘I wonder who MAK is? It’s not spelled like a first name, and being capitalised like that, I’d say those were someone’s initials.’

  Mavro shrugged. ‘There was no marriage certificate for Jones in your files, so we know he wasn’t her husband.’

  ‘Maybe that’s it,’ Tayte said. ‘MAK was the love of her life, but maybe her love wasn’t reciprocated.’

  ‘Maybe MAK was married, and Jones killed herself because she couldn’t have him. That could be the why we’re looking for.’

  Tayte thought the scenario they had just painted between them fitted the situation well, although it also occurred to him that MAK could have been another woman. In which case, back in 1928 when the book was published, Gertrude Jones would have had every reason to be cryptic about MAK’s identity. He turned another page and the first of the stories began. He turned another and another, and then he flicked to the back of the book, where he saw a typical acknowledgements page and an author biography. They read them both together, but neither passage sparked any conversation between them—nothing stood out enough to be of any interest. Tayte had been looking for someone with the initials MAK, or just MK, but no one with those initials was mentioned, and he soon realised it would have been pointless to be so cryptic in the dedication if the person’s name was printed in the back of the book. He wished it
was. It would have saved time trying to find out who MAK was, but Tayte knew that was just what they had to do. As always, he had to keep following the clues in the hope that they would eventually yield the answers he was looking for. He turned to the dedication again.

  ‘Let’s say for now that you’re right about MAK being a married man,’ he said. ‘If that’s the case, it’s understandable that Jones felt the need to be cautious and to only use her lover’s initials. We need to find out more about him.’

  ‘How are we supposed to do that just from his initials?’

  Tayte reminded himself again that there had to be a way to find out who MAK was, or the sick game Adam Westlake had forced him to play would be utterly futile. He didn’t believe that was the case. All the answers had been right there in the records so far. He just had to find them.

  ‘Unless Gertrude Jones was living some kind of fantasy,’ he said, ‘I think it’s safe to say that MAK was at least a friend of hers—someone who knew her.’

  Mavro smiled at the understatement as she clearly saw it. ‘In all likelihood, MAK was a very good friend.’

  Tayte nodded, still thinking. A moment later, he looked at Mavro wide-eyed and said, ‘Of course! And what do good friends do when someone they know, and probably love in this case, dies?’ He reached down into his briefcase and took his laptop out. ‘That person would, if possible, attend the deceased’s funeral. Maybe he’s mentioned in the list of attendees noted in Gertrude Jones’s obituary. Those names I saw didn’t mean anything at the time, but I took a screenshot. We’ll soon see.’

  It took less than a minute to confirm.

  ‘Mark Knight,’ Tayte said, smiling broadly. ‘There’s no middle name, but that has to be him.’

  ‘Monsieur Tayte!’

  Those two words sent a shudder down Tayte’s spine. It wasn’t so much the words themselves, but the unmistakable soft French accent of the man who had just spoken them. Tayte turned around to see the slight form of the exuberant Michel Levant pacing excitedly towards him. For reasons Tayte could not fathom, his face was full of smiles, as though he had just seen an old friend, only Tayte knew he was anything but. Levant was wearing a close-fitting ruby velvet suit that shimmered as he walked, in that effeminate way Tayte had come to loathe almost as much as the sound of the man’s thin, melodious voice. He was every bit the twenty-first-century dandy Tayte remembered him to be. He was speechless as Levant approached them.

  ‘But what are you doing in Washington?’ Levant asked with obvious surprise. He stepped closer still, as if to embrace Tayte, which got Tayte to his feet just in time to step away, bumping into Mavro as he did so.

  ‘What am I doing here?’ Tayte said, frowning. ‘I live here.’

  ‘You do? I had no idea.’

  ‘Really?’ Tayte said, utterly unconvinced.

  ‘And who is this? You have a girlfriend, I see.’

  Tayte didn’t want to get into his personal life with this man, so he just sighed and shook his head. Being rude didn’t come easily to him, regardless of whom he happened to be talking to, so he turned to Mavro and introduced her. ‘This is my associate, Ms Mavro.’ He waved his hand between the two of them. ‘Ms Mavro, this is Michel Levant.’

  They went to shake hands, but as they did so Levant leaned in suddenly and kissed the back of Mavro’s before she had the chance to object. ‘You have me at a disadvantage, mademoiselle.’

  ‘I do?’ Mavro said, almost laughing at Levant’s flamboyant gesture.

  ‘You know my first name, but Michel Levant does not know yours.’

  Mavro glanced at Tayte, who was holding on to his frown. ‘I don’t think I know you well enough.’

  ‘Perhaps not yet,’ Levant said, smiling through that sing-song voice of his, just as Tayte stepped between them.

  ‘Perhaps not ever,’ he said, able to feign politeness only up to a point where Levant was concerned. ‘We’re kind of busy here, if you don’t mind.’

  Levant’s smile dropped. ‘You don’t like me very much, do you?’

  Tayte wanted to say that he didn’t like him one bit, but he kept it to himself.

  ‘I don’t know why this is,’ Levant continued. ‘I saved your life, after all. Surely you could not have forgotten.’

  Tayte remembered the occasion only too well, but he was sure Levant had only done so to further his own cause.

  ‘Come, come,’ Levant continued. ‘Let’s have some coffee together, shall we? Forget about the past and put everything that happened in London behind us. What do you say?’

  Tayte couldn’t do that. His friend had been murdered and he didn’t want to forget about it. He didn’t want to stand around talking to this man any longer than he had to, either, but as he was there, Tayte thought he’d throw a pertinent question at him.

  ‘Do you know a man called Adam Westlake?’

  Levant pulled a face as he seemed to think about it.

  ‘Adam Peyton Westlake III,’ Tayte added, knowing a name like that would be hard to forget.

  Levant slowly began to shake his head. ‘No, the name is not familiar. But who is he? A friend of yours?’

  Tayte couldn’t hold back a derisive laugh. ‘No, he’s not. He’s been murdering people here in DC—members of my past clients’ families. But you wouldn’t know anything about that, either, would you?’

  Levant gasped, and it seemed a little theatrical to Tayte. ‘Mon Dieu, Mr Tayte! You must dislike me more than I thought. I’m here on business, that’s all. I’m hosting an event tomorrow at your National Archives Museum and—’

  ‘Yeah, I know,’ Tayte cut in. ‘I read about it in the Washingtonian.’

  ‘Well, perhaps you and your friend would like to come along,’ Levant said with a thin-lipped smile. He reached into his inside jacket pocket. ‘I have several spare tickets, and you’re most wel—’

  Tayte cut in again, blocking Levant’s hand as he began to pull the tickets out. ‘No thanks,’ he said, more than a little assertively. ‘Now, as I said, we’re very busy here, if you don’t mind.’

  Levant tut-tutted and pursed his lips. ‘Very well,’ he said. ‘Michel Levant knows when he’s not welcome.’

  He turned away and Tayte watched him go, thinking that he’d got that right. As far as Tayte was concerned, Michel Levant wasn’t welcome at all.

  He was shaking his head as he turned back to his laptop and the obituary that had given him the name of Gertrude Jones’s lover.

  ‘Remind me not to piss you off,’ Mavro said through a smile.

  ‘I’m sorry,’ Tayte said. ‘The man just gets under my skin, that’s all.’

  ‘I can see that, and I know what you were trying to do when you mentioned Adam Westlake just then, but I’m sure Reese would go nuts if he knew you’d leaked the Genie’s real name.’

  ‘Levant knows his name.’

  ‘You can’t be sure of that. So what exactly did Levant do to you in London last year—apart from saving your life, I mean?’

  Tayte could tell Mavro was teasing him with the remark. He stared up at the circular window in the cupola above them and tried to come up with an answer, but apart from a gut feeling about the Frenchman, which he knew was based on little more than a series of hunches and suppositions, he had to confess that Michel Levant hadn’t actually done anything to him. He also had to remind himself that he’d landed himself in trouble before for accusing Levant of things for which he had no proof.

  ‘I don’t know,’ Tayte said, shaking his head again. ‘He just makes me uneasy. Where I’m concerned of late, he always seems to be where the trouble is, yet he’s got an alibi or an explanation for everything. It’s all rather too convenient for my liking. Apart from the fact that he happens to be in DC at the same time Adam Westlake is murdering members of my former clients’ families, don’t you think it’s an odd coincidence that he just happened to be here at the Library of Congress this morning, right when we are?’

  ‘He couldn’t have known we’d be here.’
/>
  ‘Yes, he could. If he’s the genealogical mastermind behind these murders—if he’s the one setting us these puzzles—he’d know we’d have to come here to look at Gertrude Jones’s book.’

  ‘Okay, I can see that,’ Mavro conceded. ‘But alternatively, as he’s in town running a genealogical event at the National Archives Museum, maybe he’s just here to do some research. I’ll ask a member of staff to see whether he made any requests while he was here. Not that it will prove anything if he hasn’t.’

  ‘I shouldn’t waste your time. Knowing Levant as I do, I’m sure he’ll have asked to see something just to cover himself.’

  Tayte turned back to his laptop for a second time, reminding himself that they had to stay focused. If Levant was behind these murders, Tayte wouldn’t have put it past the man to have forced the interruption on purpose, just to slow them down. He tapped a few keys and brought up his preferred newspaper archive website.

  ‘Let’s see what we can find out about Mark Knight,’ he said. ‘Gertrude Jones might not have made the headlines back in 1930, but maybe the love of her life did.’

  He typed Mark Knight’s name into the appropriate search fields, entered 1930 for the year he was interested in, and ticked the checkbox for newspapers distributed in the District of Columbia, where he knew Gertrude Jones had lived, and Virginia, where her publisher at the time was based. Only two results came back, and his eyes were immediately drawn to the first article, which was from the DC publication, the Evening Star, dated January 1930.

  ‘Touchdown!’ he said as he began to read it. He was a big Washington Redskins fan, although he hadn’t had the opportunity to see a football game in a while.

  Mavro leaned in and read out the headline. ‘Woman’s body found in lover’s bathtub.’

  ‘That’s our guy,’ Tayte said. ‘His middle name’s Alexander, which fits with the book’s dedication to MAK.’

  The article was brief. It told them that Mark Alexander Knight was forty-six years old—a much older man than Gertrude Jones—and that he was indeed married, as previously suspected. It also stated that Mark Knight had two children by his marriage and that he’d been having an affair with the deceased, a local author whose name was not mentioned.