do is whack an intruder with a frozen sausage biscuit.”
Roy popped up from the chair. “Is there anyone we need to call?”
The other man looked at him with a confused expression. “Call?”
“Yeah, like her relatives?”
“Oh, I’ve got folks doing that. Her father’s dead, but her mom lives in Florida, retired. Diane didn’t have any kids. She has an ex-husband, but he lives in Hawaii.”
“Did you just find that out?”
“What?”
“You said you didn’t know much about Diane personally, but you know all that.”
“I just found out!” Ackerman snapped.
Roy put up his hands in mock surrender. “Okay. That’s cool.” He headed to the door. “Do you mind if I take the rest of the day off? I don’t have anything critical pending and what with everything that’s happened.”
“No, sure, go on. Get some fresh air.”
“Thanks.”
“Roy, what was it like? Finding the body?”
Roy slowly turned around. “I hope you never have to find out.”
CHAPTER 13
ROY GRABBED his jacket, waved goodbye to his secretary, and took the stairs instead of the elevator. The police had already questioned Ned, who now sat in his swivel chair with a look of terror interrupted by momentary pangs of what Roy assumed was hunger.
“Hey, Ned. How’re you doing?”
“Not too good, Mr. Kingman.”
Roy leaned against the marble reception console. “Police give you the once-over?” He nodded. “And were you away from the front at any time this morning?”
Ned eyed him a little hostilely. “Am I supposed to talk to you about this stuff?”
“Not if you don’t want to, no.”
“Guess it doesn’t matter. I don’t know that much, really.”
“So you saw Diane come in?”
“Not exactly.”
“Well, either you saw her or you didn’t.”
“I heard her.”
“Heard her? Where were you?”
“In the back microwaving my biscuit. It always gets cold before I get here.”
“What time was that?”
“Around six. I’d just come on duty.”
“But you were eating a biscuit when I came in an hour and a half later.”
“I eat like five sausage biscuits every morning, but I try to space them out. I’m a big guy: I need constant fuel.”
“Did she come up through the garage elevator or by the front doors?”
“I don’t know. Like I said, I didn’t see her.”
“Okay, so what did she say when she came into the lobby?”
“She said, ‘Hey, how you doing.’ And I called back that I was doing fine. When I got back to the front, she’d already gone up in the elevator.”
“You’re sure it was her voice?”
“Yeah, I’ve heard her lots of times. She’s usually with someone when she leaves the building, you know, for lunch or stuff, and she has a pretty husky voice for a lady.”
“But Ned, not to raise the obvious point, if you were in the back and she couldn’t see you, how do you know she was even talking to you? More likely she was saying hello to someone else coming in the building the same time as her.”
Ned looked puzzled. “I hadn’t thought of that.”
Roy continued, “The person had to be coming through the front doors. If she’d ridden up with him in the elevator from the garage she would have already said hello. And there’s only the one garage elevator, so it wouldn’t have had time to go back down and come back up with another person before Diane would’ve headed up in one of the office elevators.”
“You’re getting way over my head now, Mr. Kingman.”
“Did she routinely say hello to you when she came in?”
“Not exactly, no.”
“Does that mean she did it once, twice, every other time? Never?”
“Uh, never.”
“Did you hear another person’s voice?”
“No, but like I said, I was using the microwave. It makes some noise. And then it makes a big ‘ding’ when it’s done.”
“Yeah, I know.” Roy glanced up at the security cameras mounted in each corner of the lobby. “Did the police take the security tapes?”
“It’s on a DVD. But no, they didn’t.”
“Why not?”
“Because the DVD loaded in the central board was full from a long time ago.”
“But once it got full won’t it just record over what’s already been filmed?”
“The system here doesn’t work that way. The disk gets full, it automatically shuts down until you put a new disk in.”
“Well, don’t people check it?”
Ned looked red-faced. “I did, I mean sometimes. But nobody ever told me how to really do it the right way, and I got to the point where I thought I might screw up, so I stopped checking it.”
“Well, you got that right. You did screw up.”
Ned said in a whining tone, “But I thought the cameras were