up her bike. “It’s a real long story. You might read about it in the papers one day.”
CHAPTER 98
MACE HAD LEARNED from her sister that as soon as the Captain had been arrested, the office elevators had been reprogrammed so they would not stop at the fourth floor. The construction workers had not been happy about having to haul their stuff up the stairs, but that was just the way it was. Public safety trumped aching backs.
Mace slowed her Ducati as she drew close to the area. She figured that no one had worked late in the building or come in too early ever since Roy had discovered Diane Tolliver’s body in a refrigerator. But still she scanned the building façade looking for signs of anyone being on-site. Her other concern was the possibility of a cop car posted somewhere close by.
Satisfied that the area was clean of surveillance, she parked her bike a block over from the building and made it the rest of the way on foot. She entered the garage. There were no cars parked there. The garage elevators were dead ahead.
Seconds later she entered the lobby, scooted behind the security console, and reached the entrance to the stairs. She paused for a moment, studying the door to the broom closet. She reached for the knob, her other hand in her pocket, and then ripped it open. The only thing that flopped out was a mop.
She made her way up the stairs and reached the fourth floor. Mace crab-walked across the room so as to keep below the window line and reached the small cubby area where the toilet and refrigerator were located. The length of chain was right where she had dropped it when she and Roy had been chased through the building.
She picked it up and eased over to the refrigerator. It was a big, older Amana model with the refrigerator part up top and a smaller freezer unit with its own little door down below. Using her penlight she could see several small rust stains on the white enamel skin of the appliance. She looped the chain around the fridge and held it tight. The stains were right where the chain touched it. She opened the fridge door. There were some plastic containers of food, a few cans of soda, and a battered gray lunch pail.
Roy had told her what the Captain had said about the chain. Roy had dismissed it as the construction guys protecting their food. Mace had initially thought that too. But not now. Now the chain made sense for a far different reason. They couldn’t have the Captain stumble on the body over the weekend while he was looking for some chow. So they’d locked him out and Diane Tolliver’s body in.
She hadn’t been murdered on Monday morning. She’d been killed on Friday night, probably right after she sent Roy that e-mail when she returned from her dinner with Meldon. And the fridge wasn’t the only reason Mace thought this. Now the autopsy results started to make sense. She gazed at the microwave next to the fridge. The microwave. She remembered Roy telling her…
She slipped back down to the lobby and from there into the little room behind the security console. She saw the microwave perched on one shelf. She tried to turn it on. Nothing happened. It was broken. She hurried back up to the fourth floor, pulled out her phone, and called Roy.
“Hey,” he said. “That Tyler is something else. We’ve been playing ball all this time and the kid is still running circles around me.” He paused. “Wait a minute, I thought you went to bed? Where are you calling from?”
“Diane wasn’t killed on Monday morning. She was killed on Friday night.”
All she got after that was silence.
“Roy, did you hear me?”
“Mace, where are you!”
“On the fourth floor of your office building.”
“What! Are you crazy?”
“Did you hear what I said?”
“Yes, I did, and I feel like somebody just hit me with a two-by-four. Why do you think she was killed on Friday night?”
“Think about what was in her stomach.”
“The autopsy report said steak, veggies, potatoes, stuff like that.”
“Exactly.”
“But you found all that food in her town house garbage can.”
“It’s also the exact food she had on Friday night at Simpsons when she had dinner with Meldon. And Lowell Cassell’s report said that there was a strong smell of garlic in the gastric contents. I knew something was bugging me about that. I searched her kitchen and found