Mary thought a minute. “When you left the club, is there a gatehouse or anything? Was there a guard that would see you when you left?”
“Yes, they have a gatehouse, and you give your name and the member you’re with or meeting. They don’t write it down or anything. Or call. It’s not that strict.”
“But if you don’t say a member’s name?”
“They don’t let you in, I’m sure.”
“Did you see the guard when you left?”
“Yes.”
“Talk to him?”
“No, I didn’t. Just waved.”
Mary tried to think of a question she hadn’t asked. “So you drove away, and he was fine?”
“Absolutely.” Simon’s expression fell into grave lines again.
“Did you see anybody go to the car after you?” Mary was trying to puzzle out the timeline. “We don’t know the time of death, but whoever killed him had to come pretty quickly after you left. Did you see any other cars in the lot?”
“Not that I remember. I didn’t notice. It was pretty empty.”
“Was it totally empty?”
“I don’t think so, I don’t remember.” Simon licked his lips again. “As soon as I pulled into the lot, I drove to his car. That’s all I was thinking about. Him and what I was going to say.”
“Think a minute, try to remember.”
“Remember what?”
“When you drove from the entrance of the lot to his car, did you make a direct line through rows of painted lines?”
“No, I didn’t make a direct line. I drove around the perimeter to the farthest point where he parked.”
“So you took the long way instead of going straight?”
“Yes, essentially I took the two legs of the triangle, not the hypotenuse.”
Mary could visualize it, but didn’t understand his actions. “So why didn’t you just take the hypotenuse? Was it because there were cars in your way? Close your eyes and try to visualize it.”
Simon closed his eyes, then opened them again. “I think it’s force of habit, maybe I’m a creature of habit too. Either way, I drove around the perimeter of the lot. I didn’t cut through directly, like on an angle. I’m not sure if there were cars there but if there were, there weren’t many.”
Mary didn’t say what she was thinking, which was, It only takes one. “There’s something else I don’t understand. If there was nobody else in the lot, why did Todd park in the far corner? If nobody else was there, there’s no danger of anybody bumping into his Porsche.”
Simon shrugged. “I guess that’s force of habit, too. That was his space. We all know it.”
“Did he hold other meetings in the car?”
“Sometimes, like if we went for a drink and were going to talk about something confidential, we’d talk about it in the car before we went into the clubhouse.”
“So you weren’t surprised when he suggested the car, not the clubhouse.”
“Right, I wasn’t.”
“So was this well known within the company, the talking in the car thing? And where he parks?”
“Not the whole company, but the people around Todd know.”
Mary made a note on her phone. “Do you know if he told anybody that he was meeting you?”
“I don’t know.”
“Did he say?”
“No.”
“If he told anybody, who would he tell? Who’s his friend at the firm, er, I mean the company?”
“Nobody, really. He’s a real glad-hander, like a typical sales guy. He has a lot of acquaintances but no good friend.”
Mary couldn’t relate. She had Judy. Or at least she used to. “What about outside the company?”
“Not that I know of, not since his divorce.”
“Is he dating anybody?”
“Not seriously, that I know of. He doesn’t have a problem getting dates. I think that might’ve been what happened between him and Cheryl but we never talked about it.”
“You think he cheated on her?”
“I suspect it.”
“Do you know with who?”
“I’ve no idea but there were one or two times when he wasn’t where he said he’d be. I had my suspicions but I never said anything to him. Or anybody else. I don’t run down my boss, no matter what anybody thinks.”
“Okay, that’s enough for now. I want to keep this short because they’re waiting.” Mary set her phone aside, meeting his worried gaze directly. “Here’s what’s going to happen next. Listen to me carefully.”
“Okay,” Simon said, leaning forward.
CHAPTER TWENTY
Bennie drove east in heavy traffic, encountering rain on the outskirts of Philadelphia. Drops pounded on the windshield, forcing her to slow down for safety’s sake as she turned onto the expressway. She belonged in the city with so much going on, and the time with Declan had recharged her. She even felt better after the nap. She assumed Mary was at the Roundhouse and planned to let her know she was available as soon as she got to the office.
Suddenly her cell phone started ringing, and though she hated to talk on the phone while she was driving, especially in bad weather, she would take the call if it was Mary. She slipped the phone from her bag and checked the screen, surprised to see that it was Mike Bashir calling. She hadn’t spoken with him since he’d become the president of OpenSpace, but his cell phone was still in her contacts because she used to work for him when he headed Joselton Ltd., another of Dumbarton subsidiaries. She had no idea why he was calling, especially since she had been fired, but given what was going on, there was no way she was going to pass up this call.
“Mike, how are you?” Bennie said, picking up.
“I’ve been better. I guess you heard that Todd was found dead today.” Mike sounded more tense than grief-stricken, and as far as Bennie remembered, he wasn’t the kind of guy to tense up.
“I heard, I’m very sorry about that. It was really shocking.”
“I know, it’s awful, but I’m in Scottsdale at a trade show and I got a text from Ernie, our head of Security, that police showed up at OpenSpace. They have a search warrant and they want to look at everything. There’s, like, six of them and they didn’t even give us notice. Ernie told them to stand down while we checked it out.”
Bennie let Mike talk, realizing that he didn’t know she’d been fired, which wasn’t that surprising. It had been between her and Nate, who was much higher up than Mike, plus Mike had been out of town. The right hand didn’t know what the left was doing, a problem not unique to Dumbarton, in corporate America. Bennie considered filling him in, but her curiosity was piqued, so she kept her mouth shut.
“I mean, I understand why they want to look at Todd’s personnel file or maybe look around his office, but from what Ernie’s telling me, there’s more than that. They want to search my office too. Can they do that? I don’t like that idea, if I’m not there.”
“Yes, as a general rule, the police can search the premises with the proper search warrant, and it makes sense that they would do that in connection with Todd’s death. They don’t know if it’s a suicide or murder yet, do they?”