Page 71 of Dirty Looks

A dark purplish red was rising from beneath the collar of Geoffrey’s starched shirt and spreading up his cheeks. His breath was coming in shallow pants, and I was starting to think we might need to take a medical break.

Jack leaned forward and put his arms on the table, and Geoffrey turned his attention to him.

“We know you’re just a pawn,” Jack said. “Maybe you did it for money or prestige or your own slice of power acting as a surrogate to Robert Lidle. Who cares? It doesn’t matter. But I know we’re going to take down every one of the pawns and work our way through all the pieces until we find the chess master. And then we’re going to take him down too.”

“It’s bigger than you,” Geoffrey said. “It’s bigger than any organization. There’s no stopping it. There’s no cutting off the head. How do you cut off the head of something that rules the world? You think we had a choice but to do whatever we were told? You think it’s so cut and dry as choosing between good and evil? It’s not. It never is. Not when you understand what real power is. We’re all just mice in a cage, having our mazes designed for us. Every once in a while we’re given a piece of cheese and we congratulate ourselves on our own ability andunderstanding, when we really just took the correct path in the maze that was set out before us. And when we take the wrong path there are consequences to that as well.

“The chess pieces you so casually speak of taking down,” he continued. “They operate out of fear. Do you think jail or even death worries them? Death would be a relief. So you make your arrests and pat yourselves on the back like the good mice you are. It’s what you’re trained to do.”

“A therapist would have a field day with you,” Jack said. “But I’m going to go ahead and cut you off because you’re boring me, and like you said, we have arrests to make. You being one of them. I guess whatever happens to you in prison is up to the big cheese in the sky.”

“Got it,” Martinez said. “I’m guessing these are burner phone numbers. They all start with the same prefixes like the ones we found on Goble’s phone. We’ll send them to Doug to see if he can trace them.”

“Give us names,” Jack said. “Who do those numbers belong to? Otherwise you’re going to be hanging by yourself, and you seem like the type of guy who’d want company.”

Geoffrey sneered, and I thought he was a perfect replica of what I would have imagined a stiff British personal secretary to be.

“Mr. Goble is in charge of all security and scheduling,” Geoffrey said. “He arranged for the guard to be stationed at the incorrect gate, providing a window of opportunity for the transaction to take place. Ms. Nielsen used the prescription drugs from Ms. Kitty’s bathroom to drug several of the decanters she kept around the house. And then she lured Evie out of the house with a game of hide-and-seek, which is one of Ms. Evie’s favorite games to play.”

“And who took her once Astrid got her outside the gate?” Martinez asked.

“That I do not know,” Geoffrey said stiffly. “Someone new I suppose. Mr. Lidle was unavoidably detained in Washington, so we were late arriving in King George for the…transfer.”

“You mean Mr. Lidle was meant to be waiting for his granddaughter in one of those creepy houses so he could rape her and indoctrinate her into the club like he did with her sister.”

“Your words,” Geoffrey said. “Not mine.”

“Though I notice you’re not correcting me,” Martinez said. “That’s it? Those are the only two people you want to throw under the bus?”

“I believe I’ll exercise my right to an attorney at this point,” Geoffrey said.

“Fine by me,” Martinez said. “They can meet you at the jail. Because you’re under arrest.”

CHAPTER TWENTY

The Lidle housewould be off limits for the foreseeable future, at least until I could finish the autopsy and make an official ruling on cause of death.

Daniels and her team were going through the painstaking process of cataloguing and photographing every item in the office, as well as taking into evidence other writing samples so it could be determined whether Robert Lidle actually wrote the note we found under his head.

Lily and Sheldon had come to retrieve the body, and I’d planned to ride back with her and start on the autopsy, but there was plenty of time left for work. It had been an emotional day, and I wasn’t quite ready to jump back into another autopsy. Three in twenty-four hours was a lot, even for me. So I’d let Lily and Sheldon leave and they could get things set up in the lab.

When we stepped outside the clouds had started to move in again. “I guess it was nice while it lasted.”

Jack looked up at the sky. “Nothing to worry about. Just a quick shower. The sun is here to stay for a while.”

“Is that Farmer Jack talking?” I asked, raising a brow.

“Hey, don’t knock it,” he said. “There’s a reasonFarmer’s Almanacis a success.”

“Maybe you should take that talent to Vegas,” Martinez said, putting on his sunglasses and popping a piece of gum into his mouth. “You think we can break Astrid into giving us more names?”

“Maybe,” Jack said. “But she was as tight lipped as Geoffrey. No wonder the employees here stay forever. It’s like the Hotel California.”

“What about Molly?” I asked. “She’s been here longer than anyone. You think she knows something?”

“I think they all know something,” Jack said. “The question is to what extent. I got the impression that Molly was only here because of her loyalty to Mrs. Lidle. But she’s an observant type and her son and granddaughter work here too. Maybe they can place some names and faces. But at this point, no one is worth discounting.”

I looked to the right, to the opposite side of the pool, and saw Carson and Janet and Everett sitting together on a lounger, looking completely helpless and lost. Phin had left with the attorneys and Astrid and Geoffrey had been put in the back of squad cars and taken to be processed and booked. But we still didn’t have a killer.

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