“Your eyes see, but they do not observe. Cast your mind back to when I opened the safe. What did you see?”
“The gold,” Rile
y said.
“And?”
“A fly.”
“Exactly. What kind of fly?”
“A fly with big wings. Almost like a dragonfly, but smaller.”
“It was a mayfly. Also called a shad fly or lake fly. An aquatic insect. It only lives for about twenty-four hours after it sprouts its wings.”
“And Mrs. Grunwald said no one had been in that room or the safe for days.”
“But someone was in that room, and in that safe, sometime in the last twenty-four hours. Someone, most probably, who came from the waterfront and tracked the mayfly larvae in with them. Someone who opened that safe but didn’t take the gold. Why not?”
Riley finished his thought. “They took something else?”
“Or they planted this gold inside.”
“But you don’t know which.”
“No, but I intend to find out. That’s why we’re going to Blane-Grunwald to see Maxine Trowbridge.”
“Do you think she planted the gold?” Riley asked.
“I think she has a dislike and fear of Werner and fond feelings for Günter. As his trusted assistant she would know many things, possibly including the combination to his home safe and the code for his security system. When you were working as Günter’s intern, what was your impression of Maxine Trowbridge?”
“I thought she was very efficient. The ultimate professional. Always appropriately dressed. Always polite. Günter trusted and respected her, but I never saw anything to indicate that the relationship went beyond the office. She worked for Werner before Günter. That was the one oddity. Working for Günter would have been a demotion of sorts.”
“Unless Werner put her in there to spy on Günter.”
“Yes. And I suppose I could see him doing that,” Riley said.
“Since he asked you to spy on me?”
“It wasn’t stated that specifically, but yes.”
“And are you spying on me?” Emerson asked her.
“I suppose I am.” Riley kept her eyes fixed on the road, looking for the bridge exit. “How did you remember the name of an Edgar Allan Poe story?”
“When the Siddhar was training me, he had me learn all of Poe’s Tales of Mystery and Imagination by heart. Along with the first five books of the Bible, the Purva of Jainism, and the tragedies of Shakespeare.”
“Just the tragedies?”
“They have all the good lines.”
“Why all that memorizing? Don’t you have a computer? Or Google?”
“?‘Wax on, wax off.’?”
“You’re quoting Karate Kid now?”
“I also memorized a lot of movies from the eighties. But the point was to exercise my mind. The material I memorized was incidental.”