Cheating at Solitaire by Jane Haddam Page B

twits. The whole lot of them I’m working with. Well, you know, not the crew, those people. Those people are very competent. I like American film crews. They’re always very professional. Which is a lot more than you can say for American actresses, if that’s what you want to call this lot, which I don’t, as a matter of fact, but there’s nothing I can do about it. They’re all first-class twits, and if it hadn’t been for the money, I’d have walked out months ago. The money and Kendra Rhode. I found the body.”
    It was liked being in a tornado. Gregor felt a little breathless. It didn’t help that Donna had gone back to draping her ribbon, openly listening, but diligently plying pins.
    Gregor tried to piece it together. “I know who Kendra Rhode is. You can’t be romantically involved with her, can you? She isn’t the sort of person I’d expect you to be romantically involved with.”
    â€œBe serious,” Stewart said. “I’ve got better taste and a better mind, and Kendra Rhode doesn’t get romantically involved with anybody, any more than she drinks and drugs like the people she clubs around with. But she’s there. On Margaret’s Harbor. She came out about a week and a half ago and opened this big house her family has there so that she could give a New Year’s Eve party. That’s when the murder happened. On the afternoon of New Year’s Eve. There was a big storm.”
    â€œA nor’easter,” Bennis said. “I heard about it. Boston was closed.”
    â€œDamned near all of New England was closed,” Stewart said. “I’d never seen anything like it, not even in Scotland, and it snows in Scotland. That’s how we found the body. Weweren’t looking for a body. We thought there’d been an accident in that ridiculous purple truck of his. Why is it that so many Americans seem to work at looking like bad jokes from the Daily Mirror? At any rate, we went looking for the truck, and we found it, and there he was—”
    â€œWho’s we?” Gregor asked.
    â€œDr. Falmer. Annabeth Falmer. She—”
    â€œShe’s a historian, I know,” Gregor said. “Tibor gave me a book of hers about the abolitionist movement. So, let’s see, we’ve got you, this Arrow whoever person—”
    â€œNormand,” Donna said.
    â€œKendra Rhode. Annabeth Falmer. Anybody else I should be worried about?”
    â€œThere are the rest of the twits,” Stewart said. “Marcey Mandret. Oh, and this real estate woman who’s making a completely nuisance of herself, named, I kid you not, Bitsy Winthorp. But they don’t matter. That’s not what I want from you. I want you to come up to Margaret’s Harbor and prove that Kendra Rhode did it.”
    â€œKendra Rhode,” Gregor said.
    â€œMaybe not directly, because she’d never get her hands dirty,” Stewart said, “but she did it. I have no idea how to explain this to anybody who hasn’t met her, but she did it. I’ve got pictures.”
    â€œYou’ve got pictures of Kendra Rhode committing a murder?”
    â€œBe serious,” Stewart Gordon said. “As soon as this nice woman takes the pins out of me, I’ll show you. I need you to come up to Margaret’s Harbor and do something about what’s going on, or she’s going to get away with it, and she gets away with too bloody much.”
    2
    Stewart Gordon didn’t have proof that Kendra Rhode had murdered somebody, or had somebody murdered, but Gregor wasn’t expecting that. In a lot of ways, Stewart was the simplest man he had ever known, even simpler than Father Ti-bor, for whom simplicity was a religious necessity. Stewarttwas not religious to the point of being antireligious, but he was also a moralist of the straightforward and uncompromising kind. Intelligent and Educated people may have given up the