Читать книгу The Pretender's Gambit - Alex Archer - Страница 12

Chapter 5

Hours later, Annja stifled a yawn and looked through bleary vision at the list of storage units and buyers she had compiled. The sorting program on the software made building that list easier, but there were still a lot of names. Benyovszky had been in business for himself for eleven years.

The diner was low-key and welcoming, worn and lived-in, filled with lots of younger regulars who worked on tablets or talked on the phone while they ate their breakfast. They wore business attire and were the smallest group in the diner. Most of the clientele was older and spoke in Russian or heavily accented English. They gathered as couples or small groups. All of them looked pensive and distracted, and Annja wouldn’t need a second guess to know what the topic of conversation was.

“Can I get you a refill?”

Annja looked up at the young waitress and nodded. Annja slid over her nearly empty coffee cup, did the same with Bart’s, and told the young woman thanks after she’d poured the fresh-brewed coffee. Annja added cream and sugar to both coffees, turning the hot liquid the color of caramel.

Bart was talking on the phone, listening mostly, and the one-sided conversation didn’t give Annja much to work with. Curiosity grew in her as she waited. Finally, Bart put the phone away and returned his attention to her.

“That was Broadhurst. He says the ME released a prelim based on the scene.”

Through the large plate-glass window behind Bart, Annja could see the reflection of the apartment building across the street. The ME’s long black vehicle had eased into the collection of police cars and crime-scene vans. Morning light filtered through the dregs of the night, bringing a sense of the new day. Traffic had increased, both vehicular and pedestrian. Passersby stopped only briefly to find out what was going on, then they got back to their day. Murder was nothing new in the metro area.

Even though she had seen such casual acceptance of murder and death before, in New York as well as countries around the globe, Annja still refused to think people could just keep moving without being touched by the tragedy.

She put those thoughts away and concentrated on Bart. “What does the ME say?”

“The victim had no defensive wounds. Looks like whoever killed Benyovszky hit him from behind with a hammer, or a similar weapon. The ME won’t commit as to what the weapon was, but she thinks death was instantaneous. At least the old guy didn’t suffer.” Bart picked up his coffee, blew on it and took a sip.

“If the first blow killed Benyovszky, why keep hitting him?”

Bart shook his head. “Anger? Frustration? Maybe fear, if the murderer was afraid Benyovszky would get back up. Don’t know. But whoever did it was thorough.”

“You said there were no defensive wounds?”

“Yeah.” Bart sipped his coffee. “Could mean that Benyovszky knew his murderer. Let the person into the apartment.”

“Then why was the lock shattered?”

Bart frowned. “I don’t have an answer for that one yet. You’re right. If Benyovszky let his killer into the apartment, that person didn’t need to break in.”

“And if the killer had broken in, Benyovszky would have had defensive wounds because he wouldn’t have trusted whoever came through that door.”

“Yeah. That line of thinking leaves us two options.” Bart counted them off on his fingers. “One, whoever killed Benyovszky panicked and left something behind, then had to break back in to get it. Or two, someone else broke into the apartment after Benyovszky was dead.”

“How much time passed between the murder and the discovery of the body?”

“ME says maybe an hour. It’s a tight window, but it’s there.”

Annja considered that, not enjoying the fact that she didn’t have answers, or at least a better idea of what had gone on in that apartment. Including where the elephant statue was and what it meant.

Lying on the table, Bart’s phone began to ring. He picked it up and glanced at the screen. “There’s only one person I almost know in Idaho.” He clicked the phone on. “This is Detective Bart McGilley of the New York City Police Department.” He turned the phone outward and leaned toward Annja.

Annja leaned forward, too.

“This is Charles Prosch. You left a message on my machine, Detective McGilley. Asking me to call you?” The speaker’s voice was old and hoarse, but held a quiet strength in the Western twang. “I don’t usually get phone calls from New York police detectives, and I haven’t been there or the East Coast in years, so you can understand how I’m curious.”

“Yes, sir. I’m calling in regards to a murder that took place last night.” Bart flipped open his notebook and took out his pen. “The victim was Maurice Benyovszky. I’d like to know how you knew him.”

“What happened?”

“Mr. Benyovszky was attacked and killed in his apartment by unknown assailants.”

“I’m sorry to hear that.” Prosch cleared his throat. “I never met Mr. Benyovszky, but he seemed like a nice guy. From what I saw on his site, he did a pretty good business. Why would you single me out from all those people?”

“An auction you were involved in finished last night.”

“The one with the elephant piece.”

“That’s right. Can you tell me about that piece?”

“I’m more of a collector than an expert, Detective. A dabbler, if you will. I buy a few things now and again, keepsakes mostly, of things I saw while I was in the Corps.”

“You were in the Marines.”

“I was. Thirty years. I did a lot of traveling, then I came back to Bonner’s Ferry where I was born and where I buried my parents. You put down roots doing something like that. I got married, but that didn’t take. She couldn’t be the Marine I was, and I don’t blame her for that. I’ve got two daughters out of it who I love, a handful of grandkids.”

Annja smiled at that. Prosch’s offspring sounded a lot closer than Benyovszky’s hand-me-down nephews. She felt a chill as the door opened and took a sip of her coffee to warm up.

“What do you know about the elephant?” Bart frowned and looked a little frustrated.

“Like I said, not much,” Prosch replied. “It’s an elephant. Looks Asian, if I’m any judge, and I could be just as wrong as I am right.”

“What’s it made of?” Bart consulted the sheet that had been printed out regarding the piece.

“Mr. Benyovszky wasn’t sure, but it looked like sandstone to me. I spent some time in Laos. As I recall, they did a lot of carving in sandstone in that area.”

“You paid a lot of money for an elephant made of sandstone.”

Prosch laughed good-naturedly. “Actually, I wasn’t going to spend that much, but I got caught up in a bidding war.”

Bart wrote that down and underlined it. “A bidding war?”

“Yeah. The other guy who wanted the elephant kept jumping my bid by a dollar. Just enough to edge me out. Kind of irritated me, and I’d talked to Mr. Benyovszky on the phone once when I called to ask him about the piece. He seemed on the up and up. So I figured I’d keep in the bidding game as long as I could, kind of drive up the price for him. Help him out. The other guy seems like he has plenty of money.”

“Do you know who the other guy is?”

“Sure. I looked him up after Mr. Benyovszky mentioned him. He’s a fella named Fernando Sequeira.”

Glancing up, Bart cocked an eyebrow at Annja.

She shook her head and mouthed, I don’t know him. But she turned her attention to her tablet PC and started looking the man up. She got a hit immediately. Fernando Sequeira was a successful businessman in Lisbon, Portugal. Scanning the links that turned up in her search, Annja also discovered that Sequeira was an amateur historian, an interest he had gotten from his grandfather.

Link me, Bart mouthed.

Annja sent the page address to Bart’s phone. While Bart continued talking, Annja searched for Sequeira’s name linked with “elephant” but didn’t pull up anything that seemed to fit with Bart’s case.

“Tell you the truth,” Prosch went on with a touch of chagrin, “I was surprised I won that elephant. I thought that Sequeira fella would swoop in at the last minute and take it. I musta waited twenty minutes for that to happen. When it didn’t, I realized I paid a lot more for that elephant than I had counted on.”

“What did you do after the sale closed?” Bart asked.

“Poured myself three fingers of whiskey, promised myself I wouldn’t stick my neck out like that again and figured I’d get hold of this Sequeira fella and see if I couldn’t get most of my money back. He was interested up to a point.” Prosch paused and his voice turned a little harder. “Unless Mr. Benyovszky and this Sequeira fella were working together to set me up. That what happened?”

“I don’t know, Mr. Prosch. For right now, I’d hang on to your money. Nobody seems to know where that elephant is.”

“Is that so? Well, now that does make a body curious, don’t it?”

Bart grinned. “It does indeed. Hang on to my number if you will, Mr. Prosch.”

“Oh, trust me, I will, Detective.”

“I’ll call back if I have any more questions, and if something turns up on your end, I’d appreciate hearing from you.”

“You will. Count on it.”

Bart broke the connection, laid his phone on the table and glared at it. “So I got a guy out in the wilds of Idaho who hasn’t been to New York in years, and I got a guy in Lisbon, Portugal, who were both interested in that elephant.” He wiped a hand over his mouth and smothered a yawn, but his eyes still glowed with bright interest. “How many others were bidding on that thing?”

Annja checked the list. “Eight people.”

“But they all bailed early.”

“They did.”

“And we still haven’t found the thing.” Bart knotted his hand. “I hate mysteries.” He looked up at her. “I know you enjoy them, but I could live without them. Give me a case where I catch a perp red-handed and just have to fill out the paperwork. Those are the investigations I like.”

Annja knew that wasn’t true. Bart McGilley was clever and knowledgeable. Those were things that underpinned their friendship. They loved puzzles and mystery shows. She didn’t offer to argue the point at the moment.

An Asian man entered from the street and the way he didn’t fit in caught Annja’s attention immediately. Bart tilted his head slightly, shifting his gaze to the man, as well.

The man wore a dark gray suit and a long jacket. On his head he had a black woolen cap. A shade under six feet tall, he looked thin for his size, but his shoulders were broad and he moved with economical grace as he strode toward their table.

Bart shifted slightly so that he could get to his service weapon more quickly, but the nonchalant look on his face never waned.

The Asian man stopped a few feet short of their table, just out of arm’s reach, and smiled slightly at them. “Good morning. I do not mean to trouble you.” His accent held a note of British English in it. “My name is Nguyen Rao. I have come about the elephant Mr. Benyovszky had for sale on his website. Do you have the elephant?”