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“So what do you think? Do you want to go upstairs and consummate our impending marriage, or would you rather go to dinner?”
“What kind of dinner? The diner? Pino’s? The Grille?”
“Anywhere you want.”
“I’ll take the Grille. I should change into something nicer.”
“Cupcake, those pants aren’t coming off until I take them off.”
“Okay, then, I guess I’m ready to go. Your car or mine?”
“We’ll take my car. Your cars have a twenty-four-hour expiration date.”
•••
The Grille is a relatively new restaurant on Hamilton. Previously too expensive for me, but apparently Morelli wasn’t watching his budget tonight. It’s cozy inside with dark brick walls and polished wood floors. White linen tablecloths and candles on the tables. Morelli ordered a steak and baked potato and a glass of red wine. I did the same.
“It looks like your stomach is feeling better,” I said.
“Yeah, I’ll tell you about that later. I have lots of other news for you. Stanley Pooka hasn’t stopped talking since we took him into custody. Some of it is nonsensical babbling, but a lot of it is good. As you know, his research was rejected for funding, and he was passed over for tenure. I think he didn’t have a good grip on things before that and that helped push him over the edge. He talked a lot about his obligation to cleanse the ground Kiltman was built on. He said the amulet told him to contaminate it with plague.”
“Did the amulet tell him to shoot Getz?”
“No. He thought of that all by himself. Getz went into the cellar to check on some extermination work and he went nuts over the fireworks. At that point in time Pooka didn’t have any other place to work. His apartment was filled with flea cages. So he shot Getz.”
“Makes sense to me,” I said. “What about Linken?”
“Basically the sam
e thing. Linken was at Zeta the day of the Getz viewing to discuss a fraternity scholarship program. Someone mentioned the flea problem in the cellar, and Linken wanted to check on it. Pooka was incensed because he was forced to walk across campus and let Linken into the cellar. Linken took one look at the fireworks and threatened to bring endangerment charges against Pooka.”
“So Pooka shot him.”
“Yeah.”
“Wouldn’t it have been easier just to move the fireworks operation?”
“Pooka started moving some of it. From what we can tell from the incinerated van, he had some firecrackers and blasting powder in the back. The thing is, I think Pooka was finding it easy to shoot people. Bang! Problem solved. He wasn’t all that logical by the time he shot Linken. His mental health wasn’t helped by the fact that he was injecting himself with a concoction that hasn’t been completely analyzed. It contained blood and a hallucinogen and God knows what else. It was supposed to make him immune to the plague.”
“Oh boy.”
“He said he shot Mintner because Mintner was nosy. He caught Mintner trying to break into the cellar, chased him outside, and shot him.”
“No one noticed?”
Morelli gave a small head shake. “We’ve interviewed a lot of people and no one noticed. It was like that sort of thing happens all the time at Zeta parties. There was a band playing and everyone was drinking and no one noticed.”
“The band was pretty good,” I said.
“Yeah, I know the band, but the drummer is no Brian Dunne.”
“That’s what Lula said!”
“Anyway, we found Pooka’s gun, and it all checks out.”
“That’s great. You’ve solved your murders.”
“The best part is coming up. Pooka had been obsessed with Unit 731 for a long time. Especially the use of plague as a military weapon. If you search back through his papers and computer history, it’s all there. He also had a history with a third-rate biotech lab in Maryland. He’d worked there off and on while he was in grad school, and he knew they kept some unsavory and illegal things in their freezers. Things like a couple rats that were supposedly infected with plague.”
