We sat in silence another few seconds.
“If there is a life insurance policy,” Rachel said, “and it’s in Nick’s name, Jacquie might have murdered him over it, if she knew it existed.”
“But if it was Sal’s policy, then Sal would be the beneficiary.”
“She might not have realized that,” Rachel said. “I wonder how she’ll cope when she finds out.”
Not well, I imagined. “She was so close to getting her hands on David’s money when he died. Just another day or two and he would have been free of me and could have married her.”
“But instead she had to go back to her old boyfriend,” Zachary said, “who was devoted but poor?—”
“And getting poorer all the time,” I nodded, “if he’d been gambling with the mob and losing.”
“And David took very good care of her.” He shot me a look. “Sorry, Gina. But I saw them come and go a lot, remember?”
Oh, I remembered. When I first met him, Zachary had been one of the doormen at the Apex downtown, where David used the penthouse as his love nest. He’d seen more of David than I had in those days.
I made a face. “Bastard.”
“I did say I was sorry. What I was getting at, though, was that she got used to a certain lifestyle. And then David died and she lost it. A hefty life insurance policy would help.”
It would. Except, of course, it wasn’t hers.
“And then there’s Mrs. Miller,” Rachel said. “If we’re right about the names, she’s his mother or grandmother, as well as his next of kin. I don’t know if that makes it more or less likely that she’d kill him.”
I didn’t, either. “People do kill their children, and he was paying rent, not living there for free, so he might not have known who she was. She might have hired someone like us to track him down after Henry died?—”
“Or she might have always kept up with him,” Rachel added, “on the sly.”
“But either way, she got him into the unit next to hers so she could be closer to him. I’ll concede that he might not have known she was his mother or grandmother or aunt, but I refuse to believe that she didn’t know. That’s too much of a coincidence.”
“He might have found out,” Zachary suggested, “and confronted her.”
I nodded. “Although that would make more sense if he’d been killed during what looked like a fight. Or if she’d been the dead one. Whoever did this shot him between the eyes while he was asleep. He didn’t even wake up when whoever it was put the gun to his head.”
Or if he had, it had been too late to do anything but accept it.
“If it was Sal,” Zachary said, “he might have put something in one of Nick’s drinks earlier that night. He might have been unconscious, not just asleep.”
That would explain Nick’s overly-peaceful look, anyway. The bedspread hadn’t even been wrinkled. It was like he had gone to bed and not moved again.
“I assume, if you had seen something like that, you would have mentioned it. Did Nick have any problems driving home? Or walking inside? Staggering or weaving or anything like that?”
Zach shook his head. “He was a little unsteady, maybe, but he’d been drinking all night, so I didn’t think anything of it.”
“Maybe Mrs. Miller left him something,” Rachel suggested. “A thermos of hot chocolate or something, in the kitchen. For all we know, she came and went in his side of the duplex all the time.”
“It’s her duplex,” I agreed. “She had a key. Everyone else who wanted to kill him would have had to pick the lock, but she could have come inside quietly.”
“Jacquie probably had a key, too. We should ask.”
“She’s going to say no whether she does or not,” Zachary said cynically. “Would either of you admit to having a key to a place where someone had been murdered?”
Rachel shook her head. So did I. “I wonder whether Sal has a key?”
“I wouldn’t be surprised,” Rachel said. “Not if they were as close as Jacquie said.”
We sat in silence again for a bit. Until my phone rang and Greg’s name flashed on the screen.
