Death on the Diagonal - By Nero Blanc Page 0,55
formal dining room and down a long corridor of guest rooms where he jimmied one of the room locks, entered, and tested the phone line. It was dead.
Rosco repeated the process in a half dozen more rooms, and the same held true: all the lines had been disconnected. He crossed through the main lobby and stepped behind the reception desk. The reservation book was still open to the last day of operations as if awaiting the arrival of a ghostly visitor, and a doorway to the rear was still marked with a sign reading MANAGER. He glanced at the knob. The door had been forced, and the wood splintered at the jamb as though a crowbar had pried it apart. The damage was obviously recent.
He nudged open the door, stepped inside, and tested the phone line. Although it was hot, there was no fax machine in sight, leading Rosco to surmise that whoever had sent Belle the crosswords had provided their own machine. If it was Michael Palamountain, his thoughts continued, he would have had a key. On the other hand, if he wanted to make the situation appear to be an ordinary break-in, this is the ruse he might have chosen. Rosco stood studying the room. Nothing else seemed disturbed. No desk drawers had been disturbed, no cupboards ransacked. All evidence pointed toward a burglar too disappointed to hunt further.
Rosco returned to his Jeep, but as he left the inn’s empty parking lot he noticed Al Lever’s “unmarked” brown police cruiser resting on the far side of the dog area. Rosco drove around the park, stopping beside the cruiser so that the two driver-side windows were inches apart. He slid his window open, and Al lowered his. A plume of cigarette smoke escaped into the dripping morning air. Al’s dog, Skippy, jumped around in the backseat anxiously.
“Looks like Skippy has some business to attend to,” Rosco observed.
“It’s raining like hell,” was Al’s laconic reply. “Where’s Kit and Gabby?”
“Hey, I listen to the weather reports,” Rosco lied. “Who didn’t know it was going to rain all day? I left them at home. As far as I know they’re playing backgammon right now.”
“Yeah? Then what’re you doing all the way out here if you don’t have any dogs with you?”
Seeing no need to keep Al in the dark, Rosco briefed him on his reasons for being at the inn, as well as everything else he’d learned during the past few days. Al in turn brought Rosco up to date on his investigation into Ryan Collins’s homicide. One: The only fingerprints found on the murder weapon belonged to Orlando Polk, and the hoof pick had a B burned into the handle, indicating it came from stable B. However, as everyone knew, the barn manager was confirmed to have been at Newcastle Memorial at the time of the killing, which provided him with an airtight alibi. And two: According to Abe Jones’s report, there were no out-of-place fingerprints at the crime scene. Lever viewed the discoveries as confirmation of his own suspicions—that the killer was probably one of Todd Collins’s offspring. “Whoever bludgeoned Ryan Collins was angry as hell,” he concluded. “But like they say, being stiffed out of a large inheritance can produce a seriously bad heir day.”
Rosco grimaced at the play on words. “Who says that, Al—besides you, I mean?”
“You got a better motive, let me know,” was the terse response.
“You’re not ruling out Todd as the perpetrator, are you?” Rosco asked.
“I’m not ruling out anyone, Poly-crates. I’m just going with my gut. And right now, it’s pointing to the kids.”
“If I were you, Al, I’d keep remarks that refer to your waistline at a minimum.”
“Ho, ho.”
“Well, I’m going to try to catch up with Chip Collins out at The Horse With No Name,” Rosco added after a moment. “Apparently he shows up there like clockwork on Friday for the half-priced oysters.”
“Yeah, like he needs to count his pennies—or even his one-grand notes.” Then Al’s caustic tone softened as he looked at Skippy. “Bring us a doggie bag, Poly-crates, but forget the raw bar for my man Skippy, here. Fried oysters he likes . . . Rockefeller, clams Casino, whatever, but he’s not big on the sushi-style items.”
Rosco didn’t bother to ask how his former partner had ascertained the dog’s taste in seafood. For all Rosco knew, Lever hand-fed Skippy each and every meal. For such a dyed-in-the-wool curmudgeon and cynic, Al was a notorious pushover when it came to his