Matt said, “What?”
Grady filled him in. “Christopher Gilman wanted to get rid of Beckmeyer and his wife, the angel investor, so he tried to blackmail the thief into smearing Beckmeyer into oblivion—or at least out of the company. But it didn’t work.”
Niki asked, “Why not?”
Leda took the reins on that one. “Because our thief was also a murderer. Christopher thought he was just some pencil-pushing millennial schmuck, but no! This was a man who’d killed other people to cover his own ass once before—and he was prepared to do it again. It was probably easier this time. Why, you ask? Well, for one thing, his first victims were just plain unlucky. Tod was in the wrong place at the wrong time. Amanda had the misfortune of being the woman who figured out that a thief was sitting in the next cubicle over. But Christopher Gilman? Everybody hated that dude. More than a couple of people suggested that they were glad he was gone, not least of all his now-dead widow.”
Matt said, “Ouch,” and crossed his arms, settling into the chair with the grin of a man who’s stumbled across a truly excellent reality TV show.
Their hostess with the laser pointer agreed. “Ouch indeed. But if he wanted people to remember him more fondly after his death, he shouldn’t have been such a douchebag when he was alive. Now, I don’t know how much dirty business the thief actually performed for Chris Gilman, but eventually, our guy had enough of being manipulated. He lured Chris out to the hotel with… with God knows what. A promise of money or information? Perhaps.”
“But what about Kevin?” asked Grady.
Leda indicated the nearest card with Kevin’s name on it. “Kevin knew his father was hot garbage, and he’d become suspicious. That’s where Kim Cowen comes in.” She used the laser to highlight the woman’s bright orange card. “Kim was Christopher’s assistant. She was the one who handled the nitty-gritty of his day-to-day life, and she had a big-ass crush on Kevin. Kevin suspected that his dad was up to some shady shenanigans, and on that fateful day, he asked Kim where to find him.”
Niki said, “Oh no…” and covered her mouth with her hands. Through her fingers, she said, “She must blame herself.”
Leda nodded. “She absolutely does, even though she knows it wasn’t her fault.” She cast a glance at Tod’s column of cards and tried not to think about all the ways she’d twisted the events surrounding his death until she was to blame for it, in a thousand different ways. “Sometimes you can know something and still… not know it.”
But this wasn’t about her. It was about Keyes.
Once more, she swallowed hard and raised the pointer. She’d come this far. Time to bring it home. “Kim told Kevin that his dad was taking a private meeting out in Shoreline, and Kevin decided to crash it. I think he meant to confront his father, maybe even threaten him, I don’t know. I never got a good read on him, or his intentions. The important part is that he found his dad. Somewhat inconveniently, Christopher was in the process of being murdered, and since Kevin got an eyeful of it… Kevin got murdered, too. Meanwhile, the thief escaped to murder another day.”
Ben asked, “Shouldn’t we be calling this guy a murderer, not a thief?”
“Good point. Going forward, he’s Mr. Murder. You like that better?”
“I do,” Ben said happily.
Leda held the laser pointer like a gavel and pretended to bang it. “Then it’s duly entered into the record. Mr. Murder went back to his regular life, pretending that he hadn’t murdered anybody or stolen anything. And it worked! For a while, at least. Then some cop who didn’t blow up in a plane crash came sniffing around with a travel agent who was pretending to be a police consultant.”
Grady’s hand shot up. “Technically, you weren’t pretending. Technically, you were consulting—and you did a good job. You gave me fresh information to work from.”
Leda aimed the laser back at Grady, very briefly. “Thank you. I appreciate the vote of confidence.”
Niki waved her arms, trying to hustle the reveal along. “Leda… then what happened?”
“Then Mr. Murder got scared.” Leda aimed the laser at Niki, and let it linger. “Mr. Murder got scared, because we brought an extra consultant when we interviewed him, and Grady introduced her as a forensic accountant.”
“Oh my God.” Niki put her hands back over her mouth and drew her feet up onto the chair. It was only then that Leda noticed she was wearing a much smaller boot on her injured foot.
“It was bull, obviously. But Mr. Murder bought it. By sheer, stupid coincidence, he was afraid he’d been found out yet again, and he started to panic.”
“You mean, it was…”
Triumphantly, Leda declared, “Yes! It was Abbot Keyes! The guy you met in the coffee shop at the UW bookstore.”
“The Victorian orphan?”
“The very same,” Leda said with a big smile and a hearty nod. “His real name is Scott Keyes, or it used to be. He legally changed it a month or two before he got hired at Digital Scaffolding. It’s funny, I couldn’t figure out how or why I was pinging so hard on the piano keys, and on the name Scott… but there you go. He tweaked it just enough to adjust for internet searches on his name and work history, but not so far that he could be accused of trying to reboot his identity. Maybe he was tired of the Francis Scott Key jokes.”
Matt cackled, then asked, “Wait… would people seriously make those jokes?”
Leda shrugged. “I would. But we all know I’m a weirdo. Anyway, after we left him, he spiraled and got careless. He knew we’d be running down the list of people from Digital Scaffolding who might’ve had access to accounts, and he was afraid he was about to get hoisted by his own sloppy petard. That’s why he ran around town, making efforts to clean up after himself—and only making things worse in the process.
“He started with Richard Beckmeyer. Richard was the last guy Chris Gilman had a problem with. He hadn’t worked at the company long, but he and his wife had access to the financials, and they might’ve kept backup records. Apparently they hadn’t, or at least Keyes couldn’t find them in time to make off with them. But he had to look, so he broke in and nearly killed Sheila Beckmeyer in the process.”
Tiffany asked, “Wait. How many people has this guy accidentally killed, or almost killed?”
Leda paused and did the math out loud. “Accidentally? I don’t know about Tod, but maybe Tod—plus Kevin Gilman. They’re both definitely dead, and so is Janette Gilman. She was an accident, too. Kind of. Then there was Sheila, and she survived.”
“This guy’s a freaking hazard,” the bartender muttered.
“A danger to himself and others, yes,” Leda agreed. “After Sheila narrowly survived his burglary and attempted arson, he moved on to Janette Gilman, thinking she might be holding on to the paperwork, or taxes, or anything at all that might peripherally implicate him in wrongdoing. He tried to ransack her office when she wasn’t there, but she doubled back and caught him—and it all went south. Literally. She fell off a very tall and broken escalator, and that was the end of Ms. Gilman. I mean, Ms. Copeland.”