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Bert looked at his papers. “Marta Gonzalez, one of your kitchen staff, and Vincenzo Damonza, your personal chef?”
“Yes!”
“Miranda must have hired them,” Connor said. “Or one of them, at least. Probably Marta – she’s the only one who could have made sure my father got the cyanide instead of me or Lily. She would have had to serve the right dish, or she could have killed the wrong person.”
Bert looked at us over the top of his glasses. “Marta and Vincenzo – have you seen either one of them in the last week?”
“No, but I was completely out of it.” Connor turned to me. “Did you see them?”
Oh shit.
“No,” I realized. “They both took personal time. I didn’t even think about it, what with the funeral and everything…”
“They’re both listed as missing,” Bert said. “Their families haven’t seen them in the last seven days.”
“Oh my God,” I whispered.
“Miranda killed them,” Connor said.
“Well, NYPD’s implying you did. Either that or you got them out of town.”
“This is exactly what she did when I got shot last year,” Connor said. “The only guy that could have linked her to the shooter was found dead in his apartment. She had him killed to sever the chain.”
“Again, I gotta ask,” Bert said, “you got any proof of that?”
Connor had spent over a million dollars on PI’s to investigate Miranda over the last year, but not a shred of evidence had ever turned up that could link her to the murders.
Connor gritted his teeth. “No. She covered her tracks too well.”
“That’s a problem, then,” Bert said.
Johnny suddenly spoke up. “There’s a serious problem with the cops’ theory, though.”
Everybody in the room looked at him.
Bert raised his eyebrows. “Who are you?”
“My bodyguard, Johnny Inaba,” I said.
“So what’s the problem?” Bert asked.
“They’re claiming he was poisoned by cyanide, right? I was Special Forces for five years. I did plenty of black ops with guys who may or may not have been CIA agents, who may or may not have been carrying cyanide pills on them. A fatal dose of cyanide gas is almost instantaneous. A big enough dose by ingestion can kill you within five to ten minutes. But you guys had dinner for how long?”
Connor and I looked at each other. “An hour, probably,” I said.
“And did you talk afterwards?”
“Yes.”
“For how long?”
“Probably another two.”
“So two hours after he ate, he died from cyanide poisoning. But I thought the heart attack, or whatever it was, came on suddenly in the limo?”
“It did,” Sebastian agreed. “That’s what the hospital said.”
“Any dose high enough to kill him would have acted immediately. With a lower dosage, the symptoms would have shown up gradually over time. Dizziness, vomiting, headaches, stuff like that. But you guys didn’t notice anything like that, did you?” Johnny asked.
