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“Not a bit,” Tom says.
Grinsted turns and picks up his coffee cup and drains it. He speaks not to his visitors on this warm and charming spring morning, but to the empty cup, as if to a microphone. “Two city detectives show up at my house on Sunday morning while I’ve still got sleepy-dust in my eyes to ask if I’m killing people because of the late and lamented—by me, among others—Alan Duffrey. Who I just about tore my guts out defending. And they’re not joking.”
He turns to them, not laughing now but smiling. Tom will tell Izzy later that he remembers that smile from being cross-examined by Grinsted. Which was an unpleasant experience.
“And what has led you to that amazing idea, Officers?”
“Why don’t you let us ask the questions, and then we’ll let you get back to your Sunday morning,” Izzy says. “Assuming the answers are satisfactory, that is. If they’re not, you may have to accompany us downtown.”
“Unbelievable. Un-fucking-believable. All right, ask away.”
“Let’s start with May third,” Izzy says. “That was a Saturday. Where were you between the hours of, let’s say five and seven PM?”
“Really?” Still with the smile, now accompanied by raised eyebrows. “Doyouremember where you were on a Saturday three weeks ago?”
The kitchen door bangs open, and Mrs. Grinsted joins them. She has a coffee pot and two cups on a St. Pauli Girl tray. Also cream and sugar. “He was here, I should think. We watchAntiques Roadshowon Saturday afternoons or evenings. Streaming is convenient because you can watch any old time. Russ usually gets takeout. Whateverhefeels like. I am rarely consulted. Coffee?”
“No, thank you,” Tom says. “Of course, we usually expect spouses to offer alibis.” He gives her his own smile, which is considerably more friendly than Grinsted’s sharklike grin. “Just sayin.”
Izzy: “What about the next afternoon? Sunday the fourth?” The day the winos were killed.
Grinsted says, “Oh my Jesus. Wait, I might actually have something on that.” He goes into the house, tightening the belt of his robe and once again muttering, “Unbelievable.”
“Doyouhave any memories of that Sunday?” Tom asks Mrs. Grinsted. “It was a chilly one, looked like rain, not like now.”
“I went to church. I go every Sunday. Russ doesn’t attend. I believe he was in his study, prepping a case or expecting somebody, but I can’t really say.”
“Does your husband own a firearm, Mrs. Grinsted?”
“Oh yes, we both have guns. I have a Ruger .45 and Russ has a Glock 17. They are for home protection. My husband is a criminal lawyer who often has bad people for clients. Sometimes he brings them home.”
Both weapons are bigger than the gun used on Mike Rafferty, andmuchbigger than the gun used on the woman and the winos. But they will have to check those weapons, if Grinsted cannot provide any alibi stronger than a wife who doesn’t seem especially crazy about him. Still, they have next to nothing… except for Holly Gibney’s deductions, which Izzy trusts, and knows that Tom does, too. Up to a point, anyway.
Grinsted comes back with his own appointment book. He flaps it at them. “At two o’clock on that Sunday, Jimmy Sykes came over to fix my desktop computer. It kept crashing. I was hoping he could come on Saturday, but he was fully booked. Look.”
Tom looks. Izzy writes down the name. “He’s your IT guy?”
“Yes. He re-booted it or something, so I could do some casework.”
“More like so you could play online blackjack,” Mrs. Grinsted says.
Grinsted turns his thin smile away from Izzy and Tom and onto his wife. “Be that as it may, do you remember Jimmy coming in on Sunday?”
“Yes, but not which Sunday.”
He taps the square for May 4th. “Here it is, dear one.”
This provokes an eyeroll from Mrs. Grinsted.
Tom says, “You didn’t just happen to jot that appointment down on that particular date before you came out here, did you?”
“I’d resent that if it wasn’t so ridiculous.”
“Here’s an easy one,” Izzy says. “May twentieth, last Tuesday. Let’s say between six and ten PM. Home with your wife, I suppose. Maybe watchingMasterpiece Theatre.”
“I was playing poker. Not online, with friends.” But for the first time, Russell Grinsted seems unsure.
His wife, however, doesn’t. “He wasn’t here, but he wasn’t playing poker, either. If you ask him for the names of the men he was playing with, he’d be in real trouble, because they’d tell you he wasn’t in the game. Russ isn’t a killer, but heisa cheater. Last Tuesday night he was with his chippy.”