“Would you mind playing the end of the tape again?” Irene asked. “There was something going on — I remember now that I wanted to stay and ask Phil about it.”
“Yes, I think I know what it was, but I’m just not sure what it means.” He told her his theory of the alarm on the watch. He had just finished when Elena came back into the room.
“I didn’t want to get into this in front of Seth,” she said, “but there’s something important on that tape.”
“The alarm on the watch?” Frank asked.
Startled, she said, “You already know about the watch?”
“Until now, guesswork. Why don’t you tell me the rest of it?”
34
Thursday, July 13, 10:15 A.M.
Chief Ellis Hale ’s Office
“A watch?” Chief Hale asked in disbelief. “You think he was killed over a watch? What was it, a solid gold Rolex?”
Until that moment Frank thought Hale had been softening a little. He had been unsettled by the story of the fire at Lefebvre’s condo. He had listened almost patiently when Frank explained that the person who had stolen the florist’s license plate had probably set the fires in the garage and on the staircase.
“No, sir. A model of a Time Masters watch called Time Master Three.”
“A Time Master?” he scoffed.
“The watch in the evidence box for the Randolph case.”
“You believe Lefebvre was killed over a watch like that? Before I was briefed about the one in the box, I’d never heard of them. How many of them can there be?”
“I spoke to the manufacturer today. The answer is, over a seven-year period, about sixty-five thousand, mostly in California. Not as big as Timex or Rolex, perhaps, but too many to track their owners down one by one. Although—”
“Why would I want to find any of them?” Hale interrupted.
“They can be programmed so that the alarm makes a particular sound — part of a musical scale.
“Harriman—”
“Humor me, sir.”
“What the hell have I been doing so far?” he groused, but waited.
“I want you to take a look at this.” Frank plugged in the AV cart he had rolled into the chief’s office — over an aide’s objections concerning the potential ruin of Hale’s carpet — then put the Logan tape into the VCR. To his relief, both the VCR and television worked — never a given with the aging department equipment. The tape was cued up to the moment just before the watch sounded. He explained to Hale where he had obtained the tape. “You’ll hear the sound I’ve told you about. I want you to notice Seth Randolph’s reaction to it.”
Hale watched in brooding silence. Frank rewound the tape and played it again. Then he waited.
“Could be a coincidence,” Hale said. “Something else in the room — or someone else — could have upset the boy.”
“But not Lefebvre. You saw how the boy turned to him.”
Hale frowned.
Frank told him about Lefebvre’s notes and what Elena Rosario had said about Lefebvre’s attempts to discover the identity of the owner of the watch.
“And the reason she didn’t come forward? Or Matt Arden? For God’s sake — if she didn’t know any better, he did!”
“They didn’t think they would be believed.”
“Nonsense!”
Frank met his stare.
Hale lowered his eyes, frowning.
“The watch supposedly left in the evidence box by Lefebvre had signs of wear on it, but it had never been worn by Lefebvre. Lefebvre wore an old Omega inscribed to him from his sister. I know about that because Ben Sheridan took cadaver dog teams up to the mountains a couple of days ago and found Lefebvre’s watch near the wreckage of his plane.”
“Maybe he had two watches—”
“You don’t believe that, do you? I checked on it anyway. Dale Britton did the original examination of the Time Masters watch. He was vague about the alarms — said the watch made ‘various patterns of musical notes.’ I suppose he was more interested in clues about the man who wore the watch — so he used the wear marks on the band to figure out where it had been fastened and took some measurements. That allowed him to estimate the size of the man’s wrist. I’m sure the idea was that, if Lefebvre was caught, they could prove it fit him.”
“Well? What of it?”
“It’s too bad Lefebvre wasn’t arrested before he reached Seth Randolph’s room. Maybe he would have been shown to be innocent then and there, and lived. Ben gave the watch he found to the coroner, but being a forensic anthropologist, he couldn’t let it go without making every possible observation about it that he could. I called him late last night and asked him to look at his notes on the watch — especially the size of the metal wristband.”
“That wouldn’t be accurate,” Hale said. “A metal band can stretch.” He pulled on the segments of his own
