Mister Jinnah Mysteries 2-Book Bundle. Donald J. Hauka
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wouldn’t have any idea, perhaps, who killed my husband then, would you?”
Paula Schuster spoke very carefully, choosing her words with the same precision that she worked on the flowers. Jinnah was prepared for this. The bereaved often asked such questions. It was all part of the “why did he have to die?” syndrome.
“Mrs. Schuster, I was about to ask you the same thing,” said Jinnah softly. “It is very seldom that people are murdered by complete strangers. In most cases, it is someone they know. Do you know of anyone who had sufficient motive to murder your husband?”
Paula Schuster’s fingers slowed in their elaborate dance among the leaves and petals. She frowned slightly.
“I suppose it might have been the two men who put Sam in the trunk two weeks before he died.”
Paula Schuster said this while staring determinedly into the heart of her floral handiwork. Then she looked right at Jinnah’s face. If she was hoping to see if she had prompted a reaction, she must have been gratified. Jinnah was used to anguished wails, angry questions and furious denials, but this bland pronouncement startled him. His eyes widened as his mouth contracted into a tight “O.” He couldn’t hold back a cry of surprise.
“You’re kidding!” he said. “What two guys?”
Paula Schuster continued to study Jinnah’s face like a questionable share offering. Jinnah didn’t like it. With her long nose twitching up and down as she spoke and the bags under her eyes, she reminded Jinnah of some kind of hound. A blood hound.
“You said you wanted to ask about the body in the trunk,” said Paula Schuster. “Didn’t you know it was Sam’s?”
Jinnah realized they had reached the crucial point where the conversation would either terminate or turn into an interview. He decided to force the issue and took his notebook out of his jacket pocket, pulling the pen stuck in the tight, metal coils at the top of it out and holding it firmly in his hand.
“Mrs. Schuster, there is much I don’t know. I don’t know, for instance, why the police seem to be so determined to prove your husband committed suicide. I don’t know what his business dealings had to do with his death. Neither does the public. They want answers. Are you willing to go on the record?”
Paula Schuster looked down at the flowers and plucked at a loose leaf, frowning.
“I don’t know if I should be telling you this,” she said, selecting her words carefully once again. “But two weeks before Sam died, he told me he’d been kidnapped.”
Jinnah damn near fell off the sofa. He realized he was leaning forward, anxious, hanging on this woman’s every word. Now, in a single sentence, she had changed the entire complexion of his thinking. There was far more at work here than he had imagined.
“Two men, you say,” Jinnah repeated. “Where? When?”
“The police said we shouldn’t say anything. That it would … not be helpful.”
“They tell everyone that, Mrs. Schuster. They don’t like sharing information unless it suits them, hmm?”
Paula Schuster rested her hands lightly on the flowers’ stems and stalks. She looked deeply into the heart of the leafy mass, head tilted to one side.
“It was the last Friday in April. Sam said they took him at gunpoint as he got into his car.”
“Were there any witnesses?”
“No. Sam was in the underground parking lot of the building where his office is … was. It was late afternoon. Nobody around. I think they knew that …”
Her voice trailed off. Jinnah felt the need to reassert control over the interview.
“What did they want, these two men?” he asked, quietly, but firmly.
There was a long silence as Paula Schuster’s eyes seem to sink deeper and deeper into the green bower her hands had created in the heart of the flower basket. She appeared to be groping for just the right words, as if she were looking into a pool of language that was getting murkier and murkier, fishing without success with her long, skinny fingers.
“They wanted money, Mister Jinnah,” she said at last, very slowly. “They wanted Sam to give them access to the accounts where the twenty million he’d raised to complete the Jakarta deal was sitting. They threatened … they threatened to burn him alive if he didn’t — I’m very sorry!”
Paula Schuster had been squeezing the thorny stems of the roses with both hands, driving the up-thrusting barbs unconsciously into her flesh. The blood had flowed from her fingers, mingling with the tears, smearing the bags under her eyes red as she tried to sop up the briny liquid. Then she’d rushed from the room, sobbing. Jinnah stood up and called out the doorway.
“Mrs. Schuster? Can I help? Hello?”
His words echoed in an empty house. There was no reply. Jinnah waited a moment, then shrugged and looked about the room. The mantlepiece caught his eye. The whole of its considerable length was cluttered by family photographs, cards of condolence, knick-knacks, bric-a-brac. He took a closer look. Among the cards was a wedding picture. Sam in a powder-blue tuxedo hugging his bride, encased in white lace and satin, both looking happy, healthy, maybe ten years younger. And yet, Sam was distinctly mousy. Jinnah studied the man’s face carefully. Here was a moment when Schuster should have felt supremely confident and fulfilled and he looked like — what? A scared accountant? Marriage had that affect on some men, but normally before the ceremony, not after, Jinnah thought. How could anyone describe this man as charismatic?
Jinnah was still standing near the mantle with his back to the windows when he heard Paula Schuster reenter the room. He whirled around, sheepish.
“I’m sorry,” he said. “Just looking. Are you all right?”
Paula Schuster nodded. Her face was washed and two pink handkerchiefs were wrapped around her hands, stained with blood.
“I apologize, Mister Jinnah,” she said in her flat, businesslike tone. “It’s just a scratch. Do sit down.”
Jinnah returned to the couch and sat leaning forward, taking notes. Paula Schuster abandoned the flowers and sat on a chair at a right-angle to the sofa and beside him.
“A horrible threat,” Jinnah said. “Most horrible. How did he escape?”
“He didn’t, really,” she said, looking down at her hands. “Sam said they drove around for hours, threatening him. But he refused to do what they wanted. Finally, they tied him up, shoved him into the trunk of the car and drove around some more. Sam thought maybe another hour. Then the car stopped and he thought, ‘Well, this is it.’ He really thought they would … you know, do it. But then nothing happened for the longest time. Sam waited. Then he heard someone outside, fiddling with the car. He managed to bang on the lid of the trunk loud enough to be heard. It was a tow truck driver. He used a crowbar to pry the trunk open, you see.”
Jinnah nodded. This was more like it. Information. Statements that fitted with Aiken’s facts. Something to work with. Not mirrors and shadows.
“Where had they left him, Mrs. Schuster?” he prompted.
“On the university endowment lands, in one of the parking lots. They were about to tow the car away. It was lucky for Sam.”
“Did he know these two men?”
“He said he’d never met them before. Didn’t recognize them anyway.”
“Then how would they have known about the money?”
Paula Schuster fixed Jinnah with a stare that said: “Oh, please!”
“You raise twenty million dollars, Mister Jinnah, people hear about it. There are some very bad people working in this field, you know. All they have to do is hire a couple of thugs to do their work for them, you see.”
“So you’re