Page 16 of Go Now
She rang the number on his website. A woman answered.Kate introduced herself and asked to speak to Allenby.
‘He’s out on a job at present.’
‘Would you be able to give me his cell number?’
There was a pause.‘He’s likely to be up on a roof or doing something noisy.If you want to leave your number with me, I’ll be speaking to him tonight and I’ll pass your details on, for sure.’
‘Where is he at present?’
‘He’s working on my brother’s place, in Morton.’
‘Morton in…?’
‘Sorry, honey.Morton, Wyoming.He’s been there these past two weeks.’
Drat.
She was just about to return to her screen when there was a series of knocks at the door: three quick, two slow.Marcus.
‘Come in!’
He’d brought coffee and sandwiches.Kate felt a rush of gratitude towards her ever-thoughtful partner.Not for the first time, she wondered what could have happened between him and Cheryl.Why didn’t she want to marry Marcus?Assuming it was that way round.And, for some reason, she felt sure it was.Marcus was besotted with the girl.
‘What do you know?’
‘I just had another chat with Gillian, the neighbor,’ Marcus said, flopping into a tub chair and unwrapping his sandwich.
‘New Gillian.’
‘You know, apart from that name, she’s completely ordinary.She didn’t know if Ashworth had received any recent threats, he hadn’t mentioned it to her, but he did ask her if she’d seen anyone hanging around.’
‘That implies hehadseen someone himself.Any description?’
‘He asked her if she’d seen a big guy. Didn’t specify if he meant big tall, or big fat, or both.’
Kate frowned.‘And Gillian didn’t ask?’
'Gillian's a bit of a space cadet, to be honest.But Ashford's agent, Kathy Crendell, reported someone hanging around last month.Two occasions, two days apart. Standing on the opposite side of the road, wearing a front-facing ball cap which she thinks was gray or dirty white.She said she went out to challenge him on the second occasion, and he – I quote – moved pretty fast for a big guy.She reported this second visit to the cops, who said…'
‘They couldn’t do anything until or unless he committed a crime,’ Kate finished the line.
‘Yup.’
‘That moving-fast-for-a-big-guy detail… to me that implies he was big-fat, not big-tall.’
‘I kind of thought that,’ Marcus said, ‘but then, why not be precise and say he was fat?Or overweight?’
‘It’s more polite to say “big”.’
‘Forty-point-three percent of US adults are overweight.You know that?So you’d think we would’ve found a way of saying it without tiptoeing around it.’ Marcus shook his head, as he often did, when the habits of the Great American Public were under discussion.
‘BUT… here’s a thing,’ he went on. ‘Ashworth’s got an alarm on his car.It goes off all the time.Everyone in the building complains about it, according to Gillian.He has to go down to his car to reset it.He’s been in the habit of ignoring it – it shuts off on its own eventually – but he’d received so many complaints that he’d gotten into the habit of going down to sort it out.’
‘I thought you were going to suggest it was a motive for his murder.’
‘I’m sure it’s happened somewhere,’ Marcus grinned.‘The point is, it went off at about half-two on Tuesday morning. Gillian put her ear plugs in and went back to sleep.But I’m thinking, maybe the killer set it off.That would be a reason for Ashworth to open his front door in the dead of the night, which you wouldn’t ordinarily do.’
‘So potentially the killer was right outside his door and pushed him back into his apartment?’
