The Unkindest Cut - By Honor Hartman Page 0,62

so much that he wanted to point the finger at her?

I doubted that Lorraine Trowbridge or Veronica Hinkelmeier had any love for Paula. And Basil Dumont might have done it out of spite. Kill Avery to rid himself of a detested professional rival, and at the same time perhaps put his ex-wife behind bars for murder. I wasn’t so certain, despite Paula’s blithe assurance, that Basil really wanted her back.

So the card in Avery’s hand could be an attempt to frame Paula—if I was interpreting the card and its significance correctly, that Rachel equaled Paula and not Lorraine.

What if it was meant to identify Lorraine?

Rachel was the mother of Joseph, Jacob’s eleventh and best-loved son. Since Avery had only the one son—at least only one that I knew about—Rachel could possibly equal Lorraine in this case.

I kept coming back to the fact, however, that Rachel was Jacob’s second wife, and that had to indicate Paula, not Lorraine.

Unless Avery had been married to someone else before he was married to Lorraine.

The more I considered that solution, the more I liked it. I really hated to think of Marylou’s friend Paula as a killer. It was easier for me to cast Lorraine in that role because I barely knew her.

How could I find out whether Avery had been married three times?

I could ask either Lorraine or Paula, and they would both no doubt think I was being incredibly nosy, if not ghoulish.

Or, I thought, feeling pleased with myself, I could ask Haskell Crenshaw, Avery’s business manager. He might very well know, and I wouldn’t mind asking him a few other questions besides. He was still a contender for the role of killer, despite the clue of the diamond queen, as I thought of it semihumorously. That sounded like the title of a Nancy Drew book.

Stop it, I told myself. Focus, and stop being silly.

What about Veronica? I wondered. Could the queen of diamonds somehow refer to her?

Not as Rachel, I decided, but what about as Argine? The book had little to say about the identity of Argine. The significance of that name was probably lost. Maybe it was more likely that it was an anagram of regina. Could Veronica be considered a queen?

Queen of the bitches, I thought in a moment of sheer cattiness. Seriously, though, I doubted it referred to Veronica.

But what about Haskell Crenshaw? The term ‘‘queen’’ could be used, sometimes spitefully, to refer to a gay man.

If that was the case, though, why the queen of diamonds?

Maybe it was the first queen Avery saw in his attempt to leave a clue to his killer’s identity.

That might mean that the true significance of the card was that it was a queen, and any of the four queens would have sufficed. Avery just happened to pick up the queen of diamonds.

Pleased with this bit of reasoning, I mulled it over. Crenshaw certainly had a motive for killing Avery. That knife in the chest could be construed as an act of passion. If Avery had humiliated him both professionally and personally, it might have been more than Crenshaw could bear. Men had been driven to murder for less.

If, if, if. All I had were theories, no real, hard facts. If the card meant something, it could be any of several possibilities. Was I simply wasting my time in silly speculation?

So much for being Nancy Drew. I decided it was time for action. I might as well be downstairs playing bridge. I glanced at the clock. Only a little over an hour now before I was supposed to meet Marylou and Sophie for lunch.

I used the bathroom, then checked myself in the mirror. The bare minimum of makeup that I wore didn’t need much retouching. I was on my way downstairs moments later.

In the elevator I considered whether I should go to Deputy Ainsworth and tell him my ideas about the significance of the queen of diamonds. At first I had been really excited by the possibility that I had found an important clue to the killer’s identity. The more I mulled it over, however, the more uncertain I was that it actually meant anything. Ainsworth might think I was a complete idiot for even wasting his time on something like this.

On the other hand . . . Oh, stop it! I admonished myself as the elevator doors slid open on the first floor. Stop being so wishy-washy. When I next saw the deputy, I would tell him what I thought the card