“Oh, yes it is,” Judith said. “You know it is. It’s always
been about Frank. Given what I’ve come to understand about
the corporate world, it couldn’t be about anybody or anything else.”
“You know?” The words were whispered as Ava collapsed
into one of the armchairs.
Judith nodded. “I didn’t really figure it out until today,
when I saw how Frank reacted to Nadia’s death. He was
truly devastated. I realized then that Nadia had in fact killed
herself. She’d taken the sleeping pills along with the gin and
committed suicide.”
“No!” Ava covered her face with her hands.
“Yes.” Judith nodded solemnly. “And you were about to
do the same thing. How, Ava? With a broken glass to slash
your wrists?”
Slowly, Ava’s hands fell away. “How did you guess?”
“There aren’t any more lethal medications around—that I
know of—and I didn’t think you could wrest Margo’s gun
away from her. You might have had better luck with Mannheimer’s rifle, though it would have caused a scene.” Judith
paused, waiting for Ava to regain some measure of calm.
“Do me a favor, will you? May I see your neck?”
Ava’s hands flew to the big collar of her blue sweater. “Oh!
How…? You couldn’t have…” She saw the determination
on Judith’s face and slowly pulled the collar down to reveal
dark bruises.
Judith nodded. “When you loaned me your clothes, you
insisted that I take the red outfit, which had a much lowercut neckline than either the blue one you’re wearing now or
the green one you wore earlier. It was a small but curious
point. Then I remembered that Friday, in the conference
room, Renie and I overheard something. We thought it was
lovemaking, but that was far from the truth. You were being
strangled by the same person who killed the others. At that
point, you suspected that Barry Newcombe was dead even
though we hadn’t yet found the body. You had a good idea
about who had killed him. Tell me, Ava,
For a long, tense moment Ava didn’t answer. At last she
got up and went to the honor bar where she took out a can
of fruit juice. “I told him OTIOSE couldn’t survive without
me. That meant he couldn’t survive, either.” Ava turned a
dreary face to the cousins, then sat down again. “I had my
informants, I not only knew the changes OTIOSE would
have to make in the future, but what WaCom and many of
the other companies planned to do to beat the competition.
Most of all, I could accomplish these goals for OTIOSE. I’d
also learned about the pending WaCom merger, and while
I didn’t tell him outright then, I’d hinted that it might come
up soon. Frank realized I was indispensable.” Ava made a
