“Hi, how are you feeling?”
“Terrible. I have a headache.” She started to move her left hand, winced, tried again and saw the big bandage over the needle. “What’s this?”
“You’re in Hennepin County Medical Center,” Betsy replied, trying not to sound as if this were the fourth time she’d explained this to Susan.
“What happened? Was I in some kind of car accident? I hurt all over.”
“Not exactly. You were being taken away by someone who had put you in the trunk of his car. But you opened the trunk and fell out. Fortunately the person behind you managed to stop before she ran over you.”
Susan was staring at Betsy wide-eyed. “When did this happen?”
“This evening—well, yesterday evening. It’s Thursday morning. Very early morning.” Betsy looked at her watch. “Four-twenty in the morning.”
“I was tied up,” said Susan. “I think I remember ropes around me. Thin ropes. They hurt.” She frowned with the effort of trying to remember. “But that’s all I remember.”
“Do you remember going to the health club?”
Susan stared at Betsy. “Wow, you
are
a detective, how did you know about that?”
“I have my methods.” Including being already told twice about the health club—the third time Susan hadn’t mentioned it.
Susan looked skeptical, but said, “Three nights a week I go to my health club. I went tonight—okay, last night—and it was crowded. I had to park way in the back. I had a massage afterwards, an indulgence I allow myself once a week, so by the time I showered and dressed . . .” She stopped frowning. “I
think
it was dark out. It should have been, it was after seven.” She frowned and thought some more. “Then I was curled up in a dark place on some kind of itchy fabric that smelled of fish.” She wrinkled her nose. “That must be the trunk you told me about.”
“Yes,” agreed Betsy. This was more coherent than Susan had been the other times she’d come awake and talked. “How did you get out of the trunk?”
“I don’t know. I must have, because I’m here, and all too often women who get stuffed into the trunks of cars don’t live to tell about it.” Her expression tightened, and she asked fearfully, “Was I raped?”
“Apparently not. You had your work clothes on when you were brought in, and the only damage to them appears to have happened when you came out of that trunk.”
“Trunk. Came out of a trunk.” Susan’s mouth twisted and the line between her eyebrows became a cleft as she tried to remember. “Nope, sorry.” She moved on the bed, winced, and closed her eyes. “I feel like he beat me up.”
“You were struck on the head, and you hit it again when you came out onto the street. You’re also suffering from what Mike calls ‘road rash,’ which is scrapes and bruises from skidding and rolling on the street.”
Susan nodded. “Yep, that’s what it feels like. Especially my left elbow.” She smiled, still without opening her eyes. “Why is the human left elbow funny?”
“I don’t know.”
The door opened, and Mike was back. “How’s she doing?”
Susan opened her eyes. “Are you Mike?”
He stopped short, staring at her. “Awake for real, I believe,” he said. “Yes, I’m Sergeant Mike Malloy, Excelsior Police.”
“Why Excelsior? Did I fall out of the trunk in Excelsior?”
“No, I’m here because I’m in charge of the investigation into John Nye’s murder.”
“What does—oh.” Her eyes closed again. “You think maybe David Shaker did this to me.”
“Maybe he did,” said Betsy.
“It’s also possible that this was a random kidnapping, someone looking for a woman to take away, assault, and possibly even murder,” said Mike.
“He’s saying that because he wants the murderer of John Nye to be Godwin.” Betsy felt her fingers clench angrily around her knitting, and immediately released them. This was not the time to pick a fight with Mike.
“I’m looking at everything, trying to figure out what happened,” said Mike, also lightening his tone, and Betsy looked up at him in surprise.
It was then she saw he had a brown paper bag, grocery-store sized, in one hand. “What’s in there?” she asked, thinking it might be something to eat, or a six-pack of Diet Pepsi. She could use some of either. Maybe it was both.
Mike came to the bedside table and put the bag on it. The way he lifted it, the way it sounded being put down, there were no weighty containers of soft drinks in it.
“Evidence,” he pronounced, and opened the bag. From it he lifted numerous tangled lengths of thin rope of a shiny white nylon.
“Is this what was used to tie Susan up?” Betsy asked, reaching to take a length of the stuff from Mike’s hand.
“Yes,” he said, holding a piece himself and shaking the rest off it into the bag.
He held it out to Susan, who stared at it, then at him, shrugging and shaking her head. It set off no memories in her mind.
Betsy looked closer at her own piece. It wasn’t tangled, it was knotted. Whoever had cut it off Susan had the intelligence to cut it between the knots, so they were preserved. The long knot she was looking at was a sheepshank, an arrangement used to shorten a length of rope that was already tied at either end.
“What, you see something there?” asked Mike, alerted by the way she was looking at the rope.
“Give me another piece,” Betsy ordered.
“Sure. Here.” This was two ends tied together in a sheet-bend, a version of the square knot.
“He must have been going to untie you,” said Betsy to Susan. “Probably after you were dead.”
Susan stared at the knot in Betsy’s hand. “How do you know?”
“Because this can come undone fairly easily. Just—” She was reaching for the place in the knot to pull to make it come apart.
“Don’t!”
barked Mike. “That’s evidence, remember?”
“Oh, yes. Of course. Sorry.” She handed it back. “But now I know who did this to you, Susan.”
“You do?” She stared at Betsy.
“Certainly. Of Shaker and D’Agnosto, which one is a sailor, familiar with knots?”
“D’Agnosto!” said Susan.
“That’s why his trunk smelled of fish.” Betsy chuckled. “And that’s why you woke up the first time singing the Olympic theme song.”
“I did? Why?”
“Because he drives an Audi, and the emblem of an Audi is four interlocked rings, not unlike the Olympic symbol.” She held out her hand to Mike. “Show me all those knots, I’ll bet not one is a granny.”
Mike did. And not one was.
“I’ll grant you that if these are sailor knots, and one of your suspects is a sailor,” said Mike, “then you’ve got something. What I want to know is how come
you
know so much about knots.”
“Back in my youth, I was a Navy WAVE. For about six months, I dated a bosun’s mate. He taught me a lot of sea lore, like white work and the rules of encounter at sea—and knots.” Betsy’s eyes went distant for a few moments. “And other things.”
She came back to the present with a bump when Mike said, “I suppose you think this proves Mr. D’Agnosto murdered John Nye.”
“Oh, no,” said Betsy, surprised at him. “I think Mr. D’Agnosto tried to kill Susan because she found out he was stealing money from Hanson, Wellborn, and Smith. John Nye’s and Walter D’Agnosto’s paths never crossed.”
“Not never,” said Susan sleepily.
Betsy had the familiar feeling of her ears growing big points that swiveled around. “What do you mean, ‘not never’?”
“Well, they knew each other. D’Agnosto was the chief financial officer. Any time money entered the equation, D’Agnosto had to be notified. And you know lawyers, money is
always
part of the equation.”
Betsy thought about that. “There was that deal John dreamed up to give an executive a lucrative compensation plan. Did D’Agnosto have anything to do with that?”
“No, no, no. That had nothing to do with money coming to the firm, except the fee, of course.” She sighed, and her eyes closed. “Want to sleep now.”
“Hold on,” said Mike, reaching for the call button. He said to Betsy, “People with concussions aren’t supposed to sleep.”
“Well, what has she been doing up til now?” asked Betsy crossly.
“That was being unconscious. This is sleep.”
“Oh.” Betsy sat down and began to put her knitting away. She was pretty sure they were going to be sent away so Susan could rest, if not sleep.
“So what do you think, Susan,” asked Mike, “is Betsy right or wrong to say D’Agnosto had nothing to do with John Nye’s death?”
“I dunno,” murmured Susan.
“Come on, talk to us,” he persisted. “Did you get a look at the man who pushed you into the trunk?”
“I don’t remember,” said Susan even more softly.
Betsy asked, “Susan, tell me about that executive compensation plan John figured out. You did help with the research on it, didn’t you?”
“Mm hm,” said Susan, barely audible now.
“I think it may be important,” said Betsy.
Mike looked at her, puzzled. Betsy shook her head no, and waggled her eyebrows at him. She was trying to keep Susan awake until the nurse came, that was all. He nodded comprehension.
“Important? Not important,” Susan said. “Can’t be important.” She sounded more awake, if somewhat more fuddled. She blinked at the ceiling.
“Why not?” asked Betsy.
“The executive remun—remumeration—renumeration—wasn’ for a member of the firm. Partners share in the profits, ever’one else gets a 401-K plan. We don’ do pensions.” Her eyes had closed again.
“Golden parachute! Oh my! Um, how much did the firm charge to come up with the plan?”
The door to the room opened and a nurse came in. “Yes?” she said, going to the bed and touching Susan’s forehead.
“Well, hi, there!” said Susan, smiling up at her.
“Welcome back, Ms. Lavery,” said the nurse. “How do you feel?”
“Sleepy. Can you send these two away so I can sleep?” She moved her head to indicate Betsy and Mike.
Mike said, “I seem to remember being taught that you don’t let people with concussions fall asleep.”
“Nowadays we do let them sleep, we just wake them up every fifteen minutes to see how they’re doing.”
“So go away,” said Susan. “Let me have my fifteen-minute nap.”
“All right,” said Betsy, turning around, bending down, to make sure nothing had fallen out of her purse or knitting bag to roll away. “Mike?”
“Yes, all right.” He said to Susan, “I’ll check back on you later today.”
“Me, too,” said Betsy, impatient now to be gone. “Come on, we’ll ride down in the elevator together. There’s something I want to ask you.”
“Jesus sufferin’ Christ,” sighed Mike, following her out.
Twenty-five
“WELL?” growled Mike in the elevator, but Betsy waited “until a nurse—a far cry from the stiffly starched, all-in-white women of Betsy’s youth; this one wore clean but rumpled crayon-blue scrubs with a pattern of goldfish printed on it—got off one floor down.
“I want to come with you while you arrest Walter D’Agnosto.”
He looked at her, pale eyebrows raised high on his freckled face. “Why should I let you do that?”
“Because he murdered John Nye, too.”
“Wait a second, you told me not three minutes ago that David Shaker was the murderer.”
“That was before Susan mentioned the golden parachute.”
“No, no, you were the one who said ‘golden parachute.’”
“Now don’t get technical. She was talking about the same thing, a method of putting aside money for an executive in case he quits before retirement.”
“All right. So?”
“Well, John Nye invented a false identity and used it to open a bank account over in Wisconsin.”
“How do you know this?” interrupted Mike, his tone sharp.
“Didn’t Charlie Nye tell you? He showed me the driver’s license, and it’s got John’s photograph on it. Anyway, John’s been stuffing the account with money, tens of thousands of dollars, deposited in irregular amounts at irregular intervals. His brother, executor of John’s estate, says he has accounted for all of John’s income—and that he definitely did not have tens of thousands of dollars to spare for a savings account in Wisconsin, so this money is coming from some secret source.”
He frowned at her. “So what are you thinking? Theft?”
“Actually, I think it’s blackmail. I think John was claiming a share of the money Walter was stealing from Hanson Wellborn.”
“How sure are you about this?” The elevator stopped at the ground floor and they got off.
“Almost positive.” Betsy looked around, got her bearings, and headed for the lobby. “I think, if he was directly involved in stealing money from the law firm, Susan would have said something—she’s been rooting into everyone’s computer accounts. He was doing something illegal; why else set up a bank account in another state under a false name? I will bet you an airline ticket to anywhere in the world you want to go that the printouts Susan had of the settlements Walter was stealing will match within days of the date, the deposits John made into that account. Come on, hurry! D’Agnosto must be in a terrible panic about now—Oh, rats!” She came to a halt so sudden Mike nearly ran into her.
“Now what?”
“I don’t know where he lives.”
“Who, Charlie?”
“Walter D’Agnosto, of course.”
“Well, for—”
“Can you find out?”
“Certainly.”
“Then do it.” Betsy hurried off again, this time to the information desk in the lobby. She stopped in front of the very young woman sitting at a computer and phone console. Betsy said to her, “Pardon me, but can you tell me if someone specific called to ask about a patient here?”
The woman behind the counter looked at Betsy with bored and tired eyes. “I doubt it.”
“It’s terribly important.”
“Who’s the patient?”
“Susan Lavery. I want to know if someone from her place of employment—Hanson, Wellborn, and Smith—called to see how she’s doing.”