Insidious (FBI Thriller 20)

Thank you, lawyer Rasmussen. Savich gave Alexander a cool look. “Is that what you think happened? He took two thousand dollars as a down payment from someone who emailed him instructions, or wrote him a note? That he has no clue who his employer is?”

Sherlock saw the pulse pounding in Alexander’s throat at Dillon’s questioning his opinion. Are you the one trying to murder your grandmother? She said, “He’s a career criminal, Alex, so there’s no way he wouldn’t do his due diligence—my bet is he knows exactly who hired him. And tomorrow morning, we may very well find out.” She cracked her knuckles and smiled.

Did Alexander look alarmed? Or angry because she’d had the nerve to call him Alex and not Alexander?

Venus dropped her bombshell. “You know, Dillon, I would very much like to meet the man who tried to shoot me. It may help if he knows who he’s dealing with. And there’s a great deal I could offer him that the FBI can’t. I’d like to be there with you tomorrow.”

“Mother, no! You with this horrible criminal? No, you can’t possibly want to do that.”

Veronica said, “I agree. Venus, this isn’t a good idea.”

Venus patted Hildi’s hand, smiled at Veronica. “You know, there’s a lot that’s happened today that I’ve never done before. I never considered that I’d actually fit in that small space between the front and backseat of the Bentley, for instance, but when MacPherson yelled for me to get down, I did. Meeting Willig should be a walk in the park compared to all that.” Her tone brooked no room for argument. Savich imagined she used the same tone to shut up opposition. The Rasmussen had spoken, and that was that.

“Good.” Savich looked at each Rasmussen in turn. “Guthrie, Hildi, Glynis, Veronica, Agent Lucy Carlyle and Agent Davis Sullivan will be speaking to you individually tomorrow morning. Please make yourselves available.”

“What about me?” Alexander moved from behind the sofa to stand in front of the fireplace, his arms crossed, stiff as a soldier.

“I’ll call you when you need to come to the Hoover Building,” Savich said. “Keep your schedule open tomorrow morning.”

“As if I have nothing better to do than wait for a cop to call.”

Sherlock gave him her patented sunny smile. “I sure hope it’s important enough for you, Alex, since someone is trying to kill your grandmother. Trust me, you’ll find the interview room quite comfortable.”

“What I want to know,” Glynis said as she walked to the sideboard to pour herself a glass of water, “is who in this family could possibly want to kill Grandmother?”

11

* * *

Guthrie poured himself a glass of gin, drank it down without pause, felt it steady him. “Savich suspects either my son Alexander or me, Glynis. And for good reason. Alexander and I were with Mother all three times before she became ill, no one else.” He turned to Savich. “You’re not really going to look anywhere else, are you? The obvious road for you is to try to nail one of us. Or both.”

Alexander’s voice snapped out sharp and impatient. “And that would be ridiculous, Father. Neither of us have any reason to harm Grandmother. There are, naturally, other answers, including the truth. There are hundreds of people, major companies, that might think they could benefit from attacking Grandmother, our family, like this. Multimillion-dollar contracts, mergers, share prices might be at stake.” He shot a look at Savich. “But looking at all of them would be difficult. And these two would need to have the intelligence and resources to look in the right place, and of course that is a big problem with law enforcement today.”

Hildi was wringing her hands. “It’s got to be an outsider, someone who hates Mother because she took over their company, fired them, or something. I know this family, and none of us would ever do anything like this, never. Dillon, both Guthrie and I have always loved our mother, and of course Alexander and Glynis love their grandmother. This—evil plot isn’t us; it can’t be us.”

A moment of hot silence, then Glynis laughed. “Wouldn’t that be something? One of us sneaking around, putting a pinch of arsenic in Grandmother’s coffee without anyone seeing us? Without anyone even knowing we were hiding behind the curtains?”

“The first two times, the arsenic was probably in my champagne,” Venus said coolly, eyeing her granddaughter. “At a restaurant.”

“Better yet,” Glynis said. “The murderer disguised as a waiter.”

The phone rang.

Veronica, sitting nearest to the phone, rose, lifted the receiver, listened, snapped out, “No comment,” and hung up. “Another reporter. At least there are no more of their vans camped outside the house. The neighbors wouldn’t allow that. They called the police and three squad cars came and shooed them away.”

Veronica said, “I was sorry to see them go. With everyone leaving, I don’t think there’s enough protection for Venus.”

Alexander said, “I understand from the officer outside that a squad car will remain here overnight, then our own private security will arrive in the morning. Grandmother will be amply protected. The guards will stick with her around the clock.”

Venus nodded her thanks to Alexander, who stood shoulders squared against the fireplace. She looked at Hildi, her artist-hippie daughter wearing her habitual tie-dyed long skirt and peasant blouse, those ridiculous pearls, so many strands, and Birkenstocks on her long narrow feet, Venus’s own feet, she realized. Hildi’s dark hair hung long and straight down her back, mixed now with strands of white that looked like an amateur attempt at highlights. Hildi had only her art and her daughter to tether her to this earth ever since her worthless husband, Elliott DeFoe, had stepped willingly out of her life years before. An abandonment that Venus, admittedly, had orchestrated, but she’d never expected her daughter to remain unattached for the decades following. It made her sad sometimes to think of Hildi alone. And then there was Glynis, in her designer clothes from head to toe, looking like a beauty queen next to a bag lady. She was divorced now, too, and adrift.

Venus smiled at each of them and said, her voice thoughtful, “Each of you is so different, but that’s what makes all of you so very interesting. I’ve loved all of you forever, tried to make you happy, tried to stay out of your lives. And I have to ask myself: Does one of you hate me enough to want me dead? Couldn’t that person wait until I drop over myself?” Venus swallowed, then to Savich’s surprise, she lowered her head in her hands and began to cry quietly.