I 've Heard That Song Before

81

What are you doing here?” I asked Vincent Slater as I scrambled to get up from where I had been sitting on the floor. “How did you get in?”

“How did I get in? I cannot describe to you the indignity of your asking how I got in. After thirty years of having a key to my own office in this house, after all the years I have spent protecting Peter, including protecting him from prosecution, I arrived here earlier this evening to find that the locks had been changed.”

“What do you mean, protecting Peter from prosecution?” I screamed. “Peter is innocent!”

“No, he is not. He was sleepwalking the night Susan disappeared. He didn’t know what he was doing. I’m sure of that.”

“You believe that!”

“His father must have known what happened,” Vincent replied. “That’s why he paid off the maid. I have the shirt; it has blood on it. That’s why I know that he must have done it. You know, Kay, you really had me fooled. At first I thought you really loved Peter, and that you would be good for him. But then you hired Greco, the very man who had located Maria Valdez, whose testimony about a bribe from Peter’s father will put another nail in Peter’s coffin. Weren’t you really hoping that Greco would dig up more evidence, so you could bury Peter once and for all? I know you would have given the shirt to Greco, so that’s why I kept it. Admit it. You married Peter to get your hands on his money. Now that you’re carrying his child, you’ve got a lock on it. Or, is it really Peter’s child?”

I was too dumbfounded to even respond.

“Or is it the child of the man to whom you’ve given a key to my office? I just saw someone coming into the house through my office. He left the door open, and that is how I came in. I came back for two reasons: one, because I had to tell you what I thought about your humiliating me by changing the locks, without even a warning.”

“And the second reason?” I asked scornfully.

“The second reason,” he replied with equal scorn, “is that, if by some remote possibility, I am wrong about Peter having killed Susan, you were inviting disaster this evening by flaunting that page from People magazine in the library. I just can’t fathom why you did that. I don’t know what significance that page has, but I suspect it must have some. Why else would Grace have kept it?”

“Vince, you just told me you saw a man come into this house through your office. Who was it? That door should have been locked.”

“It was dark, and I couldn’t tell who it was. But I think you know damn well who it was. Where is he now-in your bedroom?”

“No, I’m right here. Kay, you shouldn’t have left the new keys in the kitchen drawer.”

Startled, we both turned and looked in the direction from which the voice had come. Richard Walker was moving toward us, a pistol in his hand.