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The assistant chief shook his head. “So if the duck was Frank’s last meal, it means he was killed before eight thirty p.m. on Saturday, otherwise the food would have been completely digested. He wasn’t killed Sunday after ten a.m., like we’d assumed. Dr. Batra, are you sure that Crawford died between midnight and eight a.m. on Saturday?”
“Pretty sure, sir,” she said. “It’s still possible that Crawford killed Flynn, but not probable.”
The assistant chief sighed. “That would have been too easy.”
“Wait,” Connor muttered. “How did Mr. Flynn pull the cord on Sunday morning if he was dead on Saturday evening?”
“That is a damn good question,” Kit said, crossing her arms over her chest. “Alicia, you were a little doubtful at Mr. Flynn’s scene yesterday morning. You said something about expecting him to still have been in rigor.”
Alicia was nodding. “Yes. I was surprised he’d completed rigor in twenty-four hours at his age. I mean, the room was cold, but not literally an icebox. If he died Saturday night, he would have been dead around thirty-eight hours. That makes the completion of rigor much more likely.”
Kit looked at Connor, then Sam. “If this is true, if he died Saturday night, this means someone had opportunity and access to Mr. Flynn’s room to pull the cord for him on Sunday. He was found Monday morning.”
“And they took Miss Shearer’s knife,” Navarro added. “And stole Mr. Dreyfus’s coins. Whoever killed Frank had repeated and unfettered access.”
“The call’s definitely coming from inside the house,” Connor said grimly.
Sam had grown pale. “Is Miss Georgia in danger? Miss Eloise? Benny’s gone and they were Frankie’s only other friends. The ladies don’t have family. No one is watching out for them. I’m going to stay at Shady Oaks with them.”
Of course he would. Sam Reeves was too kind for his own good.
“Let’s come back around to that,” Kit said quietly.
Sam’s chin lifted. “You can’t tell me not to.”
“No, I can’t. And even if I could, you wouldn’t listen anyway.” Making a note to request additional guards around the retirement facility, Kit turned her attention to Navarro. “Now the mess in Mr. Flynn’s apartment makes sense. His killer was looking for something, and they gave themselves time by pulling the cord. Maybe evidence Mr. Flynn had collected. What could that have been? Maybe proof he’d been gathering of Crawford’s embezzling? And did his killer find what he was looking for?”
“All those destroyed photos,” Ryland murmured. “And broken ceramic pieces. They emptied every canister and carton in the pantry and cut into the frozen meals.”
“What about Frank’s car?” Navarro asked. “Have we checked that? Maybe whatever the killer was looking for is there.”
“We found his car in Shady Oaks’s lot,” Ryland said. “It had been searched as well. The seats are a mess, all slashed. We examined it but didn’t find anything.”
“So who within the Shady Oaks staff has unfettered access to the facility?” the captain asked. “Who can get in and out of the exterior doors and into the residents’ apartments?”
“Some of the nurses and nursing assistants have master door keys,” Kit said, “but I don’t think they have unlimited access. Miss Evans does, as did Kent Crawford and Archie Adler, the IT guy, who we still haven’t talked to. It could have even been someone in housekeeping or the main kitchen. We have to take a very close look at Mr. Dreyfus and his coin collection. We don’t know who knew about it.” She looked at Sam. “Do we? Did you hear any of the staff talking about it?”
Sam shook his head. “I visited Benny in his apartment a few times and I never knew there was four million dollars’ worth of coins in his safe. Why didn’t his family take them when he started to slip?”
Kit sighed. “He’d lost his wife and was losing his memories. They didn’t want to take anything more from him.”
Sam nodded sadly. “I can see that. But still. Four million dollars? How was the safe locked? A key? A handprint? A combination?”
Smart question, Kit thought. Sam was good at asking smart questions.
“His daughter Carla said it used to be a combination dial lock,” she said, “but they installed a safe with a biometric lock when he started to slip. She said she took the most valuable coins away at the beginning of his dementia, but he noticed and flipped out. He said that she was stealing his autonomy. So she upgraded the safe. I looked it up—the safe retails for twenty grand. Weighs about fourteen hundred pounds. And opens with a fingerprint and a combination. Carla said that if he forgot the combination, he’d call her and she’d come over.” She sighed. “Benny’s father’s coins were in the collection. He’d smuggled them out of Germany in 1939. She said those were the super valuable Roman coins. Benny had added most of the early American coins.”
“I don’t know who knew about them,” Sam said. “If Georgia and Eloise knew, they never let on. The safe looked like a cabinet. It even matched the existing woodwork.”
“Carla had it custom made to do so.” Kit glanced across the room at the IT guy, who looked like he felt very out of place with the brass. “But Georgia knew that Benny collected pretty things. We need to find out who else knew. Jeff, have you found anything on the servers we can use?”
Jeff cleared his throat nervously. “I have a few things so far. First, everything on the server is buried under layers of encryption—much more than I’m used to seeing for normal personnel files—so it’s been slow going even though we’ve put several people on it. But we have cracked the key-card logs and I have them right here on my screen. Your theory about the time of Mr. Flynn’s death makes sense.” He glanced at the screen of the laptop on the table in front of him. “Someone using a master key card entered Mr. Flynn’s apartment at seven thirty-five on Saturday evening.”
Sam let out a slow breath, his shoulders slumped. “Frankie left Eloise’s birthday party right about that time. Like I said, he didn’t like duck confit so he ate a little bit and went back to his apartment for a ‘real dinner.’ Maybe he surprised his intruder.”
Kit wished she could reach out and pat his hand. Or something. She hated seeing him so sad. “Jeff, does the log show when someone exited?”
“No, just when they entered. But here’s the thing. At seven fifty-five, so twenty minutes later, Mr. Flynn’s card was used to enter Miss Shearer’s apartment.”
