years. She knew his likes and dislikes, the details about his health and his frailties. And Alberta was one of the beneficiaries in David’s will. With David Mintzer dead, she stood to benefit. Even if David left her a fraction of his estate, the business interests owned by Mintzer were so vast that the value of the inheritance would still be immense.
But was a big cash payoff enough to motivate Alberta Gurt to murder her employer? Maybe.
While I found Alberta a pleasant and likeable individual, I also found the growing pile of circumstantial evidence against her very troubling. For instance, she’d mentioned a nephew named Thomas she was very fond of, a young man David had come to know and help. He’d even made Alberta’s nephew a beneficiary in his will. This “Tommy” was, by Alberta’s own admission, a troubled youth who’d paid his debt to society, straightened out his life, and entered the military, where he certainly would have learned how to handle a rifle. That would explain the rifle shells.
So…could Alberta and her nephew have plotted cold-blooded murder together? Could Alberta’s “Tommy” have been the shooter on the Fourth of July? And when the nephew made his mistake and killed Treat Mazzelli, did Alberta try again to kill David tonight? She could have easily slipped a little MSG cocktail into his “Fizzy Friendly” anti-hangover elixir.
Now that I thought about it, the woman had been surprised and agitated when Matt and I came upon her in the kitchen. In fact, she’d been at the sink, washing out a tumbler, which she’d subsequently dropped. Was she destroying the evidence, cleaning the very glass she’d used to serve the poison cocktail to David?
I thought back to the night of the shooting. About how David came down with a migraine before the fireworks display—yet he told Madame that he didn’t recall ingesting any of the foods that exclusively caused him to suffer migraines. Could someone have added MSG to something David had ingested? Maybe it was someone he trusted? Someone like Alberta Gurt?
And there was another thing that continued to bother me. Why had Alberta been dressed so well last night? She’d had on makeup and jewelry too, but she hadn’t come to the party. She’d apparently just been spending the night alone in her room.
I played the scene back in my head. Now that I thought about it, the television had been off when she opened the door to her bedroom suite. Yet, before she’d opened it, I’d heard voices talking. Could those voices have been Alberta and her nephew? Could she have been hiding him when I knocked? Or had she simply turned the TV off before coming to the door?
Just when I thought I had everything tied up in a neat little package, I remembered the flipper prints in the sand. I didn’t yet have an explanation for those—or the mysterious trespasser. Who was the frogman I’d spotted on Bom’s beach and followed out to his boat? And what the hell had he been up to, swimming back and forth to a boat with its running lights turned off?
The whole business brought to mind one of my dear old dad’s adages: Cookie, anyone who’s got to operate in the dark is probably up to no good.
Then there was Jacques Papas and his suspicious ten percent deal. Did Papas know about David’s allergy? He’d been at the Fourth of July party. And he’d given David a ride home. And I couldn’t forget Marjorie Bright lurking in the trees and at Bom’s party. I still remembered her less than “neighborly” tone. If anyone had a death wish for David, it was the acid Ms. Bright. But how would she have known about David’s allergy? As my head began to spin, I realized Mike Quinn was right. Rich men definitely made more enemies than waiters.
I sighed. Well, I thought to myself, at least I know one thing for certain…“Someone tried to kill David tonight.”
“What!” said Matt.
I squeezed my eyes shut. It was late and I was tired. I’d let my guard down and muttered the last dregs of my thoughts. Or…maybe it was just Freudian. Maybe I was feeling tired and alone, and I wanted Matt to help me. Either way, I knew I was stuck now. Or so I told myself. I had to spill everything to Matteo, and I did, recounting the shooting of Treat Mazzelli, the frogman footprints, the sighting of an actual frogman outside Bom’s home earlier in