“Huh,” the detective repeated before, thankfully, recounting the events of the morning.
“Any idea how long the guy was dead before the chef stumbled upon him?” Griffin asked when the detective had finished.
“The ME estimates about twenty minutes.”
Jesus.Marin could have walked in on the murder.And been killed in the process.He sucked in a sharp breath.
“That’s assuming the chef didn’t kill him herself and hang out there for twenty minutes,” Leslie theorized.
Both men stared at her. The detective’s face was inquisitive. Based on Leslie’s tight mouth, Griffin’s expression was likely hard.
“Don’t look at me like that. The woman is a chef. Presumably, she’s skilled with a knife,” she argued. “She could have raced back upstairs, pulled the alarm and then come back down again. Faking the whole thing about finding him.”
“Then she’s a talented actress as well as a chef,” Detective Gerkens maintained.
“Why would she do that?” Griffin wondered. “What would be the motive? Why kill someone and then pull the damn fire alarm? Why not sneak out? It makes no sense. And why is everyone assuming that Marin set off the alarm? Surely someone else had access to the penthouse.” His pulse raced to keep up with his train of thought. “Like one of the maintenance workers, for instance.”
Detective Gerkens’s face was grim. “His keys weren’t on him. We combed the boiler room and all the stairwells, but no luck.”
Griffin scrubbed a hand down his face and groaned. A young man dressed in a Marvel Comics T-shirt and shorts with a police badge hanging from around his neck, strolled up to them.
“Bad news, Detective. The hard drive housing the surveillance cameras was completely erased.”
“Why does that not surprise me?” Detective Gerkens murmured.
“Except there’s good news,” the guy added. “This security firm always backs up everything onto their cloud.”
“So why aren’t you downloading that video for me right now then, Kevin?” Detective Gerkens demanded to know.
“Well that’s the hitch; the security firm requires permission from the property owners before they can release any video. The owners are traveling out of the country. It may take a day. Or two.”
“We don’t have a day—or two,” Griffin said through clenched teeth.
“I’ll see if I can scare up a judge who’ll give us a warrant,” Detective Gerkens offered. “It’s a holiday, so it won’t be quick. In the meantime, Kevin, you get your butt to that security firm’s office and have a seat there until we hear from either the building owner or the judge.”
Kevin gave the detective a sheepish nod before sprinting out of the lobby. Griffin glanced around the crowded room, finally noticing all the somber people milling about.
Detective Gerkens followed his gaze. “With two employee deaths in less than twenty-four hours, the tenants are a little spooked,” he pointed out.
“Two?” Leslie looked from one man to the other.
“The weekend doorman died of a heart attack yesterday evening,” the detective explained.
“And how sure are we that it was an actual heart attack?” she asked.
Griffin’s pulse sped up again.Damn it.He’d forgotten about Arnold. Could Leslie be right that both deaths are connected? But how? And why? At least Marin had been at the White House when the doorman suffered his fatal heart attack. Leslie’s theory about Marin pulling the fire alarm as a distraction while she murdered Seth seemed a little out there. Even if Griffin did like Marin as the art thief, he couldn’t see her as a murderer.
Or was it that he just didn’t want to believe he’d misjudged her, especially since, the night before, he’d had his mouth and hands all over her?
“Perhaps you two should stop playing games with me and tell me what’s going on,” Detective Gerkens demanded.
Griffin exchanged a glance with Leslie.
“This may be part of an ongoing international investigation,” Leslie revealed. “Any more than that, we’re not at liberty to divulge at this time. But we will need the doorman’s body.”
“That’s going to pretty much take me all through Easter dinner to arrange,” the detective grumbled.
Leslie turned on the charm. “I don’t want you to miss dinner with your family. If you run into a problem, call this number.” She handed the detective her business card. “Sometimes a little push from the FBI is all that’s needed.”