Blood on the Wedding Cake

Episode 6

The Key

She stood in the corridor for thirty seconds after the call ended.

Then she did what she always did. When something shook her, she moved. Walking was thinking for Mara. Movement organized her mind in ways that stillness could not. She went through the corridor and up the stairs and into the bedroom and sat at the writing desk near the window and opened a fresh page in the small notebook she had started keeping since the night of the wedding.

Unknown caller. Male voice. Deliberate. Controlled. Not nervous.

Someone who knew about the box. Which meant either they had put it there or they knew who had. Someone who knew about Hartwell's unfinished conversation on the terrace six weeks ago. Which meant they had been there that night. Watching.

Someone who knew about the key.

She wrote the word key and underlined it twice, and sat back and looked at it.

A small old key with a two-word warning attached. Do not. Do not know what. Do not open. Do not look. Do not follow where this leads.

She reached into her pocket and touched it with her fingertips. She had taken it from the box when she photographed everything. She had told herself it was because she needed to examine it more closely. She knew that was not entirely true.

She held it up in the pale window light and looked at it properly for the first time. Brass, she thought, or something close to brass. Old enough that the finish had worn smooth in places from handling. The teeth were simple. Not a complex lock. Not safe. Something older. A door, perhaps. A chest. A cabinet.

On the tag, the two-word warning was written in black ink, the letters precise and slightly old-fashioned in style. Someone who had learned to write in a different era. Someone older.

Vincent Voss was older.

She put the key back in her pocket and looked out at the grey winter garden below and thought about that.

Eli arrived at two in the afternoon.

She heard his car on the road and watched from the window as he got out and stood for a moment looking up at the house with his hands in his coat pockets. He was alone this time. No uniformed officers. No second detective. Just Eli Crane and his notebook and the particular quality of stillness he carried around with him like weather.

He looked up, and she stepped back from the window automatically.

Then she felt irritated with herself for stepping back and moved back to the window and looked down at him, and he was already looking away, walking toward the front door, and she could not tell whether he had seen her or not.

Dorian met him in the entrance hall again. She came down the stairs at her own pace and arrived in time to hear the tail end of their exchange.

"The forensic results," Eli was saying, "are preliminary but sufficient."

"Sufficient for what?" Dorian said.

"To confirm cause of death," Eli's eyes moved to Mara as she reached the bottom of the stairs. He addressed them both equally. "Phillip Hartwell died from acute poisoning. A compound was introduced into his champagne glass at some point during the reception."

"His champagne glass," Mara said. "Not the cake."

"Not the cake," Eli confirmed. He watched her carefully. "You don't seem surprised."

"I told you last night I thought it was poison," she said. "I'm not surprised by things I already believed to be true."

"The cake was clean," he said. "Completely clean. Which means"

"Which means whoever planned this wanted the cake to be suspected," Mara said. "They wanted me standing next to it with the knife. The cake was never the method. It was the framing."

The entrance hall was quiet.

Dorian looked at her with an expression she could not read. Eli looked at her with an expression she was beginning to be able to read, which was the expression of a man who was finding it increasingly difficult to maintain a theory he had already half abandoned.

"The champagne," Dorian said. "Who had access to his glass?"

"That," Eli said, "is what we are determining. Three hundred guests. Forty catering staff. The glasses were poured at the bar and carried to guests by servers." He paused. "We are reviewing the catering staff list."

"You'll find a name that doesn't belong," Mara said.

Both men looked at her.

"A staff member added it to the list forty-eight hours before the wedding," she said. "My lawyer mentioned it this morning. A young woman from the agency. She was also the witness who claimed to have seen me near the cake table."

Eli's expression shifted. "How do you know about the witness?"

"My lawyer told me."

"Your lawyer shouldn't know about the witness yet."

"And yet he does," she said evenly. "Which perhaps tells you something about how well information is contained in this investigation."

Eli looked at her for a long moment. Then he wrote something in his notebook, and she thought that whatever he wrote was about her, but that it was no longer entirely unfavorable.

Dorian showed Eli to the formal sitting room, and Mara followed, and they sat in the arrangement of three that was becoming familiar. Dorian composed and watchful, Eli precise and economical, Mara between them, saying less than she knew and more than she intended.

Eli asked his questions methodically. The reception timeline. The seating arrangements. The bar service. Who had spoken to Hartwell during the evening, and when? Dorian answered each question with the minimum number of words required, which was his method in all things.

Then Eli asked for the room change.

"Mr. Voss," he said, not looking up from his notebook, "can you tell me about your personal relationship with Phillip Hartwell? Beyond the professional connection."

The silence lasted two seconds. Mara counted.

"He was a long-standing associate of my father's," Dorian said.

"And yours?"

"By extension."

"There was no personal relationship? Independent of your father?"

Dorian was quiet for a moment in a way that was different from his usual quiet. His usual quiet was controlled. This quiet had something underneath it.

"He was present throughout my childhood," Dorian said finally. "He was someone I trusted."

"Was," Eli said. "Past tense."

"He's dead, Detective."

"You said that before I mentioned his death."

The room was very still.

Mara watched Dorian's jaw tighten by a fraction and release. She had not seen that before. She filed it carefully.

"There was a period," Dorian said, "approximately three years ago, when my relationship with Hartwell became complicated. A professional disagreement. It was resolved."

"What kind of disagreement?"

"The kind that is none of your concern."

"Mr. Voss"

"The kind," Dorian said quietly, "that my lawyer will be happy to discuss with you in the appropriate setting." He stood. "I think we're finished for today."

Eli stood. He did not push. He wrote one final thing in his notebook, closed it, and looked at Dorian with those grey eyes that filled everything.

"One last thing," he said. He reached into his jacket and produced a photograph in an evidence bag. He held it out toward Dorian. "Do you recognize this?"

Mara looked at the photograph.

Her blood went absolutely cold.

It was the photograph from the box. The one she had found behind the panel in the dressing room. Vincent Voss and Phillip Hartwell, younger, arms around each other's shoulders outside a building she did not recognize.

"Where did you get that?" Dorian said. His voice was very quiet.

"It was found among Phillip Hartwell's personal effects," Eli said. "In a safe deposit box registered in his name. Along with several documents," he looked at Dorian steadily. "Your father's name appears in those documents quite prominently."

Dorian said nothing.

"We'll be speaking with your father tomorrow," Eli said. "I wanted to extend you the courtesy of knowing that in advance."

He left without waiting to be shown out.

Mara sat in the sitting room and listened to the front door close and thought about the photograph in the evidence bag and the identical photograph in the hidden box behind the panel in her dressing room, and what it meant that both existed.

Hartwell had kept a copy.

Someone had put another copy here.

Which meant someone had known what Eli would find in that safe deposit box and had wanted Mara to have the same information at the same time.

Someone was feeding her information parallel to the investigation.

She reached into her pocket and touched the key.

She looked at Dorian, who was standing very still by the window.

"The professional disagreement," she said carefully. "Three years ago," What was it really about?"

He turned from the window and looked at her, and she saw something in his face she had not seen before. Not coldness. Not composure. Something older and heavier than either of those things.

"It was about you," he said.

TO BE CONTINUED...