Read Online Unknown Means by Elizabeth Becka - Free Book Online Page A

to walk up ten stories?”
    “Not particularly, no. I’m going to think of it as my exercise for the day.”
    “Suit yourself.”
    He began to climb, and she followed. Her knees let out squeaks of protest, beginning with the first step. “The door isn’t locked?”
    “Of course not, in case of fire. And you can’t get into the penthouses from the stairwell anyway—each penthouse door is steel with huge dead bolts. You’d need a stick of dynamite to get through them.”
    Gerard, she noticed as they approached the fourth floor, did not seem put out by the exertion. His breath did not come heavy, and his pace did not slack. I need to work out more, she told herself. “Do the tenants ever use the stairwell?”

E L I Z A B E T H B E C K A
54
    “Only Mrs. Cameron on six. She’s kind of a health nut—she’ll walk up, set off the light in Frank’s office, and then call to tell him there’s no fire. It never occurs to her to let him know in advance. So then he frets, thinking maybe there is a fire and her smoke detectors aren’t working.” He snorted, passed another landing. “Frank worries a lot.”
    “Is there a camera in here? In this stairwell?”
    “One, on the first floor. We passed it when we came in. It’s motion-activated, since the stairs are hardly ever used.”
    “So tenants could move around from floor to floor up here without being on camera.”
    “And there have been tenants who have taken advantage of that little fact, believe me. Spouses often work conveniently long hours around here,” Gerard said—still not breathing heavily, damn him.
    “Like who?”
    “Geesh, don’t quote me. I don’t need to get fired here. Besides, I’m exaggerating—there was only one, and I only know about them because both couples divorced and moved out, a year ago. Besides, the camera idea was to protect from outside criminals—I imagine the designers figured there was no reason to be afraid of anyone rich enough to live here.”
    She paused on the eighth-floor landing to take a breath, unable to keep up appearances for two more floors. “They may have been wrong about that.”

    C H A P T E R
    6
    THE OFFICERS HAD ALREADY INVESTIGATED THE
    stairwell, and she did not notice anything they might have missed. No debris. No dirt, save for a light coating of dust in the corners. The freight elevator doors sat closed and silent at each floor. All the apartment doors, including Grace’s, appeared undamaged. The fingerprint powder she had left there the day before had been removed.
    “I washed that off. Did you have to cover the whole door in that stuff? Took me a half hour to clean off,” Gerard complained. He peered at a nearly invisible smudge remaining next to a hinge. “And I still couldn’t get it all.”
    A man with a neat streak. Normally she would wonder where he’d been all her life, but under his fierce glare she hoped that, wher-ever Gerard had been, he would stay there.
    The Markham crime scene had been surgical-suite clean. Was that a clue, or merely the joint result of Josiela’s talents and a very quick murder?
    “So did you get any vitally important clues after ruining my door?” he asked.
    She didn’t point out that, if the killer had entered this way, either he had a key or someone had let him in. “I see what you mean

E L I Z A B E T H B E C K A
56
    about the dead bolts. He’d have to use a bazooka to get it open without a key.”
    “There’s always Dial M for Murder.”
    She grinned in surprise. Perhaps she and Gerard had something in common besides a bent for cleaning. “The husband gives the killer his key and gets it back afterward?”
    “Or the husband gave the killer Grace’s key and he put it back in her purse before he left.”
    “But he’d have shown up on the stairwell surveillance tape.” She didn’t add that the stairwell door had been locked behind him—impossible if the killer had left Grace’s key—because she did not know which facts the police might want