But this…
She heard the trowel moving in the concrete mixture, heard the telltale sounds as another brick was shoved into place.
Should she scream? Would there be any hope for her if she did?
Once the last brick went in, how much time would she have?
“She’s awake, I know it,” said a female voice.
Not Mary Vincenzo’s.
It was familiar, but it sounded different, more confident than she had ever heard it.
“Yes, she’s awake. Join us, won’t you, Genevieve?”
A man’s voice, and it was familiar, too.
She fought the panic setting in, trying to figure out the best way to play for time.
Time?
Time for what?
For help to arrive? What help? Joe was at the police station, convinced that all clues led to Jared Bigelow.
“Bennet, what a surprise,” Gen said flatly.
“Bennet? Come, come. You know my given name. Why not use it…Miss Genevieve.”
She lifted her head. The bricks that would eventually cover her face hadn’t been laid yet.
“All right, Albee,” she said. “I don’t get it. Or maybe I do. I suppose you’re furious because Jared gets the Bigelow money, even after you put up with Thorny for all those years.”
Feminine laughter rang out, and Barbara Hirshorn popped her head up behind Albee’s. “Don’t be silly.” Barbara had lost the Poe mustache she had been wearing, and though she still had on a man’s nineteenth-century suit and a black wig, her sharp features were now easily recognizable. “It’s not that at all.”
“Okay,” Gen said, frowning. “Then explain things to me. How did you do it? And why?”
“You really don’t understand anything, do you?” Barbara demanded.
“She should. After that trip to Richmond and Baltimore,” Bennet said.
How the hell had he known where she’d been? Gen didn’t ask the question, but Barbara answered it anyway.
She giggled again, as if she were the most clever creature in the world. “Your mother told me where you were, of course. I mean, who would worry about what they said to poor, meek little nobody Barbara?”
Albee Bennet had stopped laying bricks for the moment, too busy grinning at her. Beaming with pride and pleasure. “We really are very clever, Barbara and I,” he said.
“I’m sorry,” Gen said. “But I still don’t understand.”
“You don’t? You really don’t?” Bennet asked her.
“No.”
He smiled, setting his arm around Barbara’s shoulders. “Actually, taking care of Thorne the way we did was Barbara’s idea.”
“Poison in the wine,” Barbara said proudly. “My idea.”
Her mother had been the one to say it first, but they’d all agreed that, statistically speaking, poisoning was a woman’s method of murder.
“So clever,” Bennet said again.
“It was nothing,” Barbara said, blushing.
“He needed to die. It was justice, really. Just like those other two blowhards,” Bennet explained. “Best of all, there’s no way for anyone to prove that I had anything to do with it.”
“I’m sure there is a way. They just haven’t figured it out yet,” Genevieve said as confidently as she could.
Barbara just rolled her eyes. “Bennet is the genius, don’t you see? He knew Poe. He loved Poe. He can be Poe—far more effectively than I can. Once Thorne understood just how much Bennet knew about Poe, how he empathized with Poe, comprehended his work and everything about him, he would make Bennet come down for discussions. And everything Bennet said found its way into Thorne’s work. He used him! My brilliant Bennet. Thorne was horrible. He deserved to die.”
“What about Lori Star?” Genevieve demanded. “What about Sam Latham? He’s just a nice guy with a wife and two little kids.”
“Ah, yes, Sam.” Bennet sighed. “It couldn’t look as if we were only trying to kill Thorne, could it? I just happened to be on the road when I saw him pass me. I suddenly realized how easy it would be to engineer his death, so I drove like a bat out of hell to catch up. Unfortunately, he survived.”
“But someone else died that night. You killed an innocent man,” Genevieve told him. “A stranger who might not even have known the name Poe.”
Barbara gave that awful giggle again. “If he didn’t know Poe’s name, he definitely deserved to die,” she said.
“And that Lori Star…Well, I took care of her,” Bennet said. “She was so easy. So desperate for fame and fortune. I rented the boat before I donned my costume, of course. I knocked her out first, then killed her on land. It ended up being a lovely recreation, don’t you think?”
Genevieve’s skin felt as if it were crawling with a thousand bugs. “Wait a minute,” she said to Barbara. “You’re supposed to be at O’Malley’s. You called and asked me to go with you and Lou. Do you really think people won’t notice that you left?”