“Alternative to what?”
“We’re going to have to move him back.”
“Oh, God,” Kate moaned.
“Well, we can’t leave him in the fridge,” Maggie said with great practicality. “That door really is broken, and sooner or later Francis is going to make an unwelcome reappearance. At best, keeping him in the refrigerator would have only given us a day or two. I’ve turned the temperature up as cold as it will go—”
“Maggie!”
“But sooner or later we’re going to have to move him. What with the door breaking, I opt for sooner.”
Kate glared at the refrigerator, as if it were somehow responsible for her current dilemma. “Where to?”
“Back to his apartment. I wouldn’t be surprised if that’s where he was killed.”
“But then why bring him here?”
“You tell me, Katy,” Maggie said. “What time did you get home?”
“Not till after seven. And I didn’t go into that bathroom until just before you got here—I use the one off my bedroom. I don’t know when Francis left work. I didn’t see him after our big fight in the lunchroom.”
“But he must have been killed sometime before, say, six thirty. Do you know where he lives?”
“Quite close, actually. In the old Carlysle Building, not more than five blocks away.”
“Then he was probably killed sometime between five and six thirty.”
“How do you know—no, don’t answer that,” Kate begged. “Do I even want to know how we’re going to carry the body five blocks to his apartment building without someone noticing?”
“Got a trunk?”
This was not what she’d envisioned doing twenty-four hours ago, Maggie thought as she hauled the steamer trunk into the service elevator at the Carlysle Building. Her heart was pounding, both from exertion and from nerves, and her abraded palms were sweaty
. She was supposed to be on vacation, playing with little Chrissie, providing moral support for Kate as she finished up her messy custody hearing. Brian had brought the suit for nuisance value alone—he’d never had a chance of winning, until now.
She shoved the steamer trunk against the wall with a grunt and punched the elevator buttons, trying to catch her breath. Carting a very heavy dead body all over Chicago in a steamer trunk left something to be desired. She was strong and sturdy, but one hundred and fifty-plus pounds challenged even her energy level. Her legs were aching, her back throbbed, and sweat was pouring into her eyes. Luckily, her denim jumpsuit looked more utilitarian than designer with its zippers zipped and the sleeves rolled down. Tucking her thick blond hair under an old baseball cap helped, and she’d even gone so far as to pilfer ashes from Kate’s fireplace to smudge her light complexion. Up close, she wouldn’t have passed muster—she’d look like a kid dressed up as a tramp on Halloween. But if God were merciful, no one would see her up close.
The Carlysle’s security was wonderfully lax. She’d caught the back door as someone was leaving and had made it to the elevator without anyone accosting her. In moments she was at the service entrance to Francis Ackroyd’s apartment on the seventh floor of the building. She leaned against the wall to calm her nerves and catch her breath, and she hoped to God that no one would see her as she picked the lock.
Lockpicking had never been one of her major talents, she thought ten minutes later as she still struggled with Ackroyd’s back door. It was a good thing there were only two apartments to a floor, and that the other inhabitants didn’t feel like taking out their garbage at this hour. She’d gone through two credit cards, a barrette, and a toothpick, but not until she kicked the door in a sudden temper did it open. It had been unlocked all the time.
The apartment was dark, pitch black—only the streetlights illuminated it. If she had any sense at all, she thought, dragging the steamer trunk into the kitchen, she’d leave the lights off, dump Francis onto the floor, and run like hell.
But she had no sense. If there were blood anywhere in the apartment, that’s where she should dump the corpse. But there was no way she could find bloodstains in the dark. She was damned well not going to be alone in an apartment with a dead body and no lights.
At least, she hoped she was alone. That unlocked door meant one of two things. One—the less preferable—was that someone was in the apartment at that very moment, hiding from her, ready to jump out with the same gun that had finished off poor Francis. The second and far more pleasant possibility was that Francis had been killed in the apartment and taken out the back way, and the killer had left the door unlocked.
To hell with it, she thought. He’d find her in the dark just as well as in the light, and she’d just as soon see the killer. She crossed the room and flicked on the light.
It was a glaring intrusion, bright and jarring, and she almost flicked it off again—until she saw the small, barely congealed pool of blood on the quarry-tiled floor of Francis’s upscale kitchen.
The next few minutes were ones she didn’t savor. She put her brain on automatic pilot, remembered to breathe through her mouth, and left Francis Ackroyd on the floor of his kitchen, his head near the pool of blood.
She’d pulled on gloves, silly white cotton gloves that Kate had unearthed from a bottom drawer. She flicked off the light, plunging the apartment into darkness once more, and tiptoed past the body. “Sorry, Francis,” she whispered, and hauled the empty trunk after her, being careful to latch the service door behind her. A moment later, she was in the elevator and gone, out onto the street, where she abandoned the trunk in a pile of old furniture and refuse that was waiting for the dawn trash pickup. It was a chance, but one worth taking. She’d been lucky so far. But she couldn’t drag a steamer trunk around Chicago without attracting attention, and by the time they found Francis’s body the trunk would be long gone. She moved back toward her car with a marginally lighter heart.
The kitchen at Francis Ackroyd’s apartment stayed dark for no more than forty-five seconds after Maggie had shut the door behind her. The light flickered back on, and a tall, dark figure stood in the doorway, staring down at the late Francis, staring back at the closed door. He moved forward into the light, and his dark, fathomless eyes looked down at the corpse at his feet.
“Well, well, Maggie,” Randall Carter said in a low, meditative voice that held no surprise at all. “What have you been up to?”