“It’s not there.”
“Maybe you just thought there was a piece of pipe,” Nelly said. “My dad’s wheelchair took up most of the car, so you wouldn’t have been able to see much of the floor. You might have hit one of the chair wheels and thought you hit something else.”
“I definitely saw the pipe, and there’s other evidence that proves it existed.”
“What evidence?” Sheila asked.
“This might upset you,” Robin said. “It’s Mr. Melville before we took him out of the elevator. I can tell what it shows, if you don’t want to see the picture.”
Sheila looked sick. “Please, just tell us what’s in the picture that’s so important.”
“Okay. There’s a small, circular indentation on Mr. Melville’s forehead that would match the end of the piece of pipe I saw.”
“I’m really confused,” Nelly said. “How does this pipe help us figure out who killed my father?”
“I just told you that Corey Rockwell was under arrest for killing Claire Winters.”
“Yes.”
“A couple of days ago, my investigator and I were discussing the case, and he said that Rockwell’s scheme to have Tony Clark alibi him by going back and forth in front of his window with and without a black wig took a lot of planning. That made me think about your father’s murder.
“I think you’d agree that creating a locked-room murder in an elevator stuck between floors isn’t something you could come up with on the spur of the moment. Especially when it involved a dagger with a werewolf handle made of silver. You’d have to have the knife made well in advance of using it.”
“That makes sense,” Sheila said.
“Once I figured that out, I was able to eliminate several people as suspects. Corey Rockwell was invited to come to Black Oaks just before your father was murdered. He’d probably never heard of Mr. Melville or the Black Oaks legend. Even if he researched it, he wouldn’t have had the time to get the knife made. Then there’s motive. When Rockwell arrived at Black Oaks he didn’t have a reason to want to kill Mr. Melville. He thought your father was going to finance a picture for him.
“Jose Alvarez had a motive to kill your father, but he was locked up on death row until a few days before he was invited to Black Oaks, so he couldn’t have had the knife made, even assuming that he even knew about the legend of Black Oaks.
“Then there’s the elevator. Neither Jose nor Corey Rockwell knew there was an elevator at Black Oaks until they arrived, so they wouldn’t have had any way of planning the locked cage murder.
“Victor Zelko was also locked up until the evening of the crime. We know Luther told him about Black Oaks, but would he have described the elevator in detail? And how would Zelko get the knife?
“Once I thought it out, I realized that the person who murdered Frank Melville had to have intimate knowledge of the way the elevator worked and had to know about the Black Oaks curse and Mr. Melville’s fear of it. That left you, Sheila, Mrs. Raskin, Luther, and Justin Trent.”
“I still don’t understand what the pipe has to do with anything,” Sheila said.
“It’s the key to how Mr. Melville was murdered. As soon as I measured the circumference of the knife handle, I realized that the knife couldn’t fit between the bars of the cage. That meant that the killer had to be inside the elevator when Mr. Melville was stabbed. What no one could figure out was how the killer could get out of the elevator when it was stopped between the second and third floor.”
“You got in through the escape hatch. Why couldn’t the killer get out that way?” Sheila asked.
“It’s a possibility, but I eliminated three of the people on the third-floor landing, Corey Rockwell, Zelko, and Jose. That leaves Justin Trent, and, for reasons I will explain, I’m certain he did not kill your father.
“Finally, you two didn’t see anyone running down or up the stairs.”
“So, how did the murderer get out?” Sheila asked.
“The killer was never in the elevator when it went up,” Robin answered.
“I’m confused,” Nelly said.
“You shouldn’t be, since you murdered your father.”
Nelly’s cheeks burned red with rage.
“That’s a disgusting thing to say. I loved my father.”
“You’re the only person who could have killed Mr. Melville.”