She added, “She hated her dead husband so much that she went back to her maiden name as soon as he was gone.”
Matt said, “Wow,” and looked like he’d very much like a bowl of popcorn for this show. “And she still died, and it was still his fault. Man, this guy sounds like a real winner.”
Leda was confused. “The dead boss, or the killer?”
“Both of them,” he said with a serious head nod of disapproval.
“Totally correct.” She adjusted her grip on the laser pointer and directed it back at her murder board. “Now, you may be asking yourself, ‘Self, why did no one make the connection between the murder of a woman at Probable Outcomes and two murders at Digital Scaffolding—even though Digital Scaffolding hired several people who’d formerly worked at Probable Outcomes?’ ”
Niki demanded to know, “Yeah, why not?”
Grady held up his hand. Without waiting to be called on, he said, “The murders occurred a couple of years apart, for one thing—and for another, we didn’t know that Keyes used to work at Probable Outcomes. He left that off his résumé, and since he’d changed his name, he wouldn’t have turned up in any cross-reference searches between the two. But the fact is, until Leda joined the conversation, we didn’t realize that we needed to look for a connection between the two cases, or the two companies.”
Leda said, “Yes. What that nice man just said. That’s why. Since Keyes had zero connection to Tod, that complicated any searches the police might’ve made for someone with a motive to kill him. No one knew whether Tod or Amanda was the original intended target. Now we do! Now we can go collect Keyes, throw him in jail, and maybe give him the chair!”
Grady cleared his throat, loudly and pointedly. “We don’t have the death penalty in Washington anymore. And when we did, it was either lethal injection or a noose.”
Leda let the laser pointer droop. With a frown, she asked, “Noose?”
“Yeah, the state used to let you choose.”
“People could choose… hanging?” she squeaked.
“Well, it didn’t happen very often.”
Leda couldn’t decide if she was relieved or disappointed. Probably disappointed. “Then he can just rot in prison for the rest of his life.”
“If we can spin all this speculation into evidence. You’ve definitely given me enough to bring him in for questioning, but don’t get ahead of yourself. There’s still a lot of work to be done before we can lock him up and throw away the key.”
Deep down she’d known this particular roadblock was coming, but it left her deflated all the same. “But you believe me, don’t you?” If he believed her, then there was still a way forward. “Don’t you?”
Everyone looked at Grady. Grady kept his eyes on Leda. “I do believe you, but I’m just one cop. You need more cops, a judge, and probably a lawyer or two to believe you, too. I think we can make it happen, though—I really do.”
“You do?”
“Yeah, and that’s why I sent a couple of uniformed officers to swing by the university and keep an eye on him before I drove out here.”
Niki turned to him. “How do you know he’s at the school?”
“I made a phone call to an administrator and got his class schedule. Right about now, he’s in a programming class that runs until seven o’clock.” Grady took out his phone and checked the screen. “Oh, hey, excuse me a minute.” He rose to his feet, then paused to address Leda. “I don’t mean to sneak out before the end of the show, but…”
She waved encouragement at him. “No, don’t be ridiculous—go! Go make sure he’s in custody! I’m done here anyway, I guess.” She checked the board, ran her eyes down all the index cards, and then nodded to herself. “Yep. That’s pretty much everything. I have solved a murder!”
More applause, led by Ben and Tiffany together. Everyone who wasn’t already standing rose to their feet, and Leda took a little bow.
“Thank you, thank you,” she said, keeping one eye on Grady as he discreetly walked away and began poking at his phone’s screen. “I’ll um… I’ll put this stuff away now, so you can open the doors. You ought to be open by now anyway. People will get restless.”
“That was magnificent! Just magnificent!” Ben’s clapping finally died down, but the big, beaming smile on his face did not. “Oh!” he barked, “Leda! Wait—did you bring those costumes? Niki said you would have them with you.”
She ceased her efforts to lift the murder board off the chairs without knocking anything loose, and let it sit back on top of the chairs. “They’re in my car. Do you want them right now?”
“I did put rockabilly down as tonight’s theme! It’s already on the flyers.”
She rolled her eyes and grinned at him anyway. “I’m not sure how ‘rockabilly’ Lucy and Ethel are, but I guess they’ll do.”
He gestured like he was wearing a dress with fluffy crinolines. “But the skirts, yes? You have the tiny waists, and the big slips, and the curly-hair wigs?”
“Yeah, yeah. All that and then some. It’ll be fine. Let me just put this away….”
Matt said, “Don’t worry about it—I’ll take care of it. You go get the dresses, and you can change in my office before we let the crowds inside.”
“Great, thank you. I really appreciate it,” Leda told him as she hopped down off the stage. “Give me five minutes, and I’ll be right back.”
But before she could make a run for Jason, Niki tugged her elbow to get her attention. “Hey, are you… is this… is everything… okay? That was pretty intense. Good,” she added, “but intense. If you want to take a minute before getting back to real life, nobody will hold it against you.”
Leda hesitated. “I love you for asking….” She looked back at the stage, being swiftly disassembled from crime-solving and reassembled for karaoke.
Niki followed her gaze and said out loud what Leda had only been thinking. “Well, they don’t know you like I do. They didn’t know Tod.”
She nodded, slowly and then more firmly. “I appreciate it. I appreciate you. But I appreciate them, too—and as far as they’re concerned, the show must go on.”
“Are you sure?”
“I’m sure.” She squeezed Niki in a fast, intense hug and turned her loose. “Now get in there and get ready to rock and roll. I’ll be back in a minute.”
Riding high on adrenaline and busily running away from some uncomfortably mixed feelings, she ducked into Matt’s office. She’d left her purse in there, and she’d need her car keys. She seized them in her fist and flinched. A halo of light flashed around her left eye.
“I know, I know,” she told it. “The headlights. I get it. Knock it off, already.” She grabbed a travel umbrella that had been sitting on Matt’s desk for a week or more and added that to her arsenal. This was fine. Everything was going to be great.
But the light kept flashing, white and cold, as she took the keys and ran out the back door, into the rainy night.