embarrassing.” I lowered my voice and took a few more steps toward Horace. “But the worst part of all must be how badly you want it.”
Another step forward and my voice took on a sharper edge. “What has you hooked, Horace? Is it the drug?” I paused. “Or is it the game?”
Horace glared and jabbed Isabella with the gun. “Move another inch and she dies now.”
I turned to Fred. “Did you know he needed to feed a terrible habit when you joined him in this scheme?”
Fred smiled wickedly. “My dear boy, if it hadn’t been for Horace’s unfortunate addiction to cards, he would never have contrived such a plot. It was his inspiration, truly.”
“And you?” I asked.
“Merely an innocent bystander who happened to notice both Horace’s problem and his unique method of solving it.” He let out an exaggerated sigh. “It seemed unfair for Horace to share the spoils of Alistair’s riches by himself—especially when they were ample enough for two. So I suggested a partnership.”
“You mean,” Horace interrupted, “that you began blackmailing me for half the proceeds.”
There it was: a rift in their partnership that I could exploit. Interests in this kind of pairing were never perfectly aligned.
I made a calculated decision. “I’ll bet,” I said to Horace, “that he didn’t even help you last week when goons from the Golden Dragon showed up to demand payment—and took it out of your skin.”
Horace merely grunted in reply, but he appeared less agitated than before, so I continued. I was developing this theory as I talked, but as I listened to myself, I knew my reasoning was sound.
“No doubt it started innocently enough. Playing for money made the game more fun. And then the next step, playing in a gambling parlor, made the game even more exciting.”
Fred interrupted. “Horace got hooked on faro, the current favorite of all the gambling houses. When it got too expensive, he discovered its cheaper, Lower East Side version: penny stuss.”
“But playing for pennies must have been unsatisfying. Only larger bets gave you what you craved,” I said. “So that’s when you discovered some Lower East Side houses actually extended loans—on terms favorable to them, of course. You borrowed money from a ruthless loan shark and fell behind in your payments. You must have been desperate for money to pay off your moneylenders and get back in the game. With no legitimate way of doing that, you began to explore other means. Clearly, you already knew that Alistair funneled significant sums from his vast wealth into university funding for his research center. So you hatched a scheme to take advantage of that.”
“But I gave you money, time and again,” Alistair said to Horace. “I’d have helped you.”
“Your help would have come with conditions, though,” I said quickly before Horace could respond. “You’d have wanted him to stop playing.”
Fred added his own interpretation. “It was an interesting psychological study to observe. Horace was destroying his own life. He more or less abandoned his thesis, drove his fiancée to break off with him, and fell thousands of dollars into debt. And still, he thought of nothing but gambling. To sit at the table and place a bet gave him a rush of power. It was so intoxicating that theft led to more theft. And then one day, it led to murder.”
I was familiar with the storyline. I’d seen variations of it destroy many lives, including that of my own father. Always desperate for money to stay in the game, he usually found help in the form of a woman. But those without my father’s charm and good looks turned increasingly to crime, like Horace.
“So it was Horace who killed Sarah?” I asked, my voice quiet.
Neither answered.
“Why don’t you both walk over there to the wall?” Fred waved his weapon in Isabella’s direction.
We needed to stay apart until I had a better plan. I caught Alistair’s eye and he followed my lead: a few baby steps to suggest cooperation, but no real movement.
Alistair cleared his throat. “Horace may have killed Sarah, but Fred must have planned it. Horace simply isn’t bright enough.”
Horace grumbled, though his words were unintelligible.
I picked up where Alistair left off. “Yes, parts of the plan were quite brilliant. For example, your coercing Michael Fromley to write that letter confessing to Sarah’s murder was excellent planning. You must have forced Fromley to write the letter just before you shot him. When you mailed it in the box with real crime-scene evidence, it was utterly convincing.