Free The Weekend Was Murder by Joan Lowery Nixon Page A

dear, sweet girl who would make a wonderful granddaughter, I should be so lucky. Opal and I think we’ve solved the crime anyway.”
    “How could you solve it already?” I asked. “The game just started. Tomorrow the detective will give all of you the coroner’s report and the medical examiner’s report, and you’ll find out more about the suspects and what motives they might have. You haven’t even visited the scene of the crime.”
    Mrs. Bandini shrugged. “We have our own way of detecting. The pretty girl didn’t murder him. Pretty girls are never the murderers. They always fall in love with somebody, or somebody falls in love with them. And the shy girl didn’t commit the murder. Shy people don’t commit murders. They quietly write ‘I wish he was dead’ in their diaries, and that’s as far as they go.”
    “Randolph isn’t the murderer,” Mrs. Larabee chimed in “because someone hit him on the head. Why would someone hit him on the head if he’s the murderer? It makes no sense. Only the murderer would go around hitting people on the head.”
    Mrs. Bandini took control of the conversation. “They want us to think Arthur Butler murdered Mr. Pitts, because it’s an old cliché that the butler did it, only some of us will say, ‘Ah ha! That’s in there just to trick us, so we’ll say he couldn’t have done it, only he really did do it.’ They’re not going to trap us that way.”
    “I didn’t follow all that,” I told her. “If you want to go over it again—”
    “It doesn’t matter,” she said. “The nephew is the murderer.”
    Mrs. Larabee nodded enthusiastically. “It has to be. He’d inherit. Who else would inherit? Nobody.”
    “I wouldn’t vote too soon,” I told them. “You’ve gotuntil midnight tomorrow to make up your minds, and Mrs. Duffy might have a few surprises for you. Mystery writers do that to keep you off balance, so solving the crime won’t be too easy.”
    Mrs. Larabee made a little face of disgust. “This is supposed to be realistic. So if Mrs. Duffy wants to be realistic, then she’d have the murderer be the nephew. He’d inherit. Who else would inherit?”
    I couldn’t argue with that, and I needed some verification from Mrs. Bandini. “Do you remember when I came screaming out of the elevator?”
    “Which time?”
    “Uh—the first time.”
    “Of course. For your sake, dear, we’ll forget the second time.”
    “Mrs. Bandini, did you get a good look at the man I ran into?”
    “Yes, indeed,” she said.
    I remembered the hit men who’d come into the health club, and the detailed descriptions of them that Mrs. Bandini had given Detective Jarvis when he was investigating Mr. Kamara’s murder. “Could you give me a description of him?” I asked.
    She smiled. “The man eats well and takes his vitamins, or he would have gotten a broken bone or two out of that collision.”
    “But did you—?”
    “I’m getting to that,” she said. “He was wearing brown slacks and a cream-colored guayabera shirt, which was probably bought in Mexico, unless he got it at Walter Pye’s men’s store, which carries a nice qualityand sometimes has them on sale. He has light-brown hair, he’s about five feet ten and a half, and I’d guess that he’s around forty-five or forty-six.”
    “Did you see what direction he’d been coming from?”
    “From the elevator,” she answered. “He got off the elevator to the right of yours just a minute or two before yours landed.”
    I glanced at Fran and must have looked as excited as I felt, because Fran cautioned, “That still doesn’t prove anything.”
    “He’s over there with Team Number Ten,” Mrs. Bandini said.
    “Why don’t we talk with him?” Fran asked. “Just chat with him?”
    “Thanks, both of you,” I said, and began to turn away, but Mrs. Bandini grabbed my arm, and Mrs. Larabee grabbed Fran’s.
    “Not so fast,” Mrs. Larabee said. “
We’re
supposed to question
you
.” She looked at Fran.