Final Option

others that they took casts of near the top of the driveway, but it turned out they came from a cyclist or a jogger. He was definitely shot with his own gun, but it had been wiped clean.”
    “And why do the cops say she did it?”
    “From what Elkin pieced together from their questions, the cops say that she and Barton had been fighting off and on all weekend. There’d been some sort of disagreement when they had their children and grandchildren to dinner Friday night. Saturday they had a golf outing, but Saturday night they went to a party at their country club and several people reported seeing them argue. I gather Hexter stormed out and Pamela had to get a ride home with friends.
    “Mostly the cops think it’s fishy that she waited for almost an hour before she reported the murder. They don’t like it that she called her lawyer first, or that she met them at the door dressed in a suit with not a hair out of place, just like she’d invited them to tea. They didn’t like the fact that they found her bloodstained jogging suit at the bottom of the trash can.”
    “I saw her that morning. She was so calm it was scary.”
    “Then, of course, there’s the whole issue of the gun. I guess Mrs. Hexter told the cops the morning of the murder that her husband didn’t own a gun. Turns out he did. He kept it in a desk drawer in his study. He’d had it for seven years—registered to him and everything. Mrs. Hexter claims she never knew he had it, and she never went into his study.
    “It’s easy to see the story the cops are writing. Barton and Pamela have been fighting. Sunday morning when Barton stormed out to the car to get the paper, Pamela grabbed the gun, hopped in her little golf cart and went out after him. She pulled up next to him. He stopped the car and rolled down the window to say something, and she shot him. His car drifted into the ditch, and she went after him to make sure he was dead. She wipes the gun, drops it in the car. In the process, she gets blood on herself. She gets back to the house, takes off the bloodstained clothes, takes a shower, and calls her lawyer. Slam dunk.”
    “So what does Elkin have you working on?”
    “The case is circumstantial. We’re trying to find out where it’s weak. My first instinct is to go after the gun. Elkin says that one of the maids saw it in the drawer on Friday. According to the police, no one but the family and the servants had access to it after that, and all the servants have an alibi.”
    Over the loudspeaker our table was called, and Elliott and I waded back into the restaurant and ordered more wine.
    “It’s going to be interesting,” Elliott continued, talking to me over the top of the menu. “I met Pamela Hexter at Elkin’s office this afternoon. She’s not going to do herself any good on the witness stand. She is one cool customer. She just keeps saying that they can’t convict her if she didn’t do it, but you’d think from her attitude that she’d been accused of farting in public, not murder.”
    “I think she’s shielding someone. You said that the only people who had access to the gun were the family. She’s not dumb. She’s got to know if she didn’t do it it has to be one of her children. Do any of them have alibis?”
    “I don’t know, but you can bet I’m going to find out. Do any of them seem like good suspect material?”
    “His daughter, Margot, is a king-sized flake, and she sure didn’t much like her dad.”
    Our waitress came and took our order—scalopine with woodland mushrooms for Elliott, cioppino for me.
    “You have to admit it’s a juicy case,” remarked Elliott, happily tearing into a loaf of hot bread that had materialized on the table.
    “I can’t see it that way. I’m too close. I’ve spent a lot of time with Hexter’s son this week. This is so painful for him. Besides, there were a couple of times this week I thought the handcuffs were going to be for me.”
    “You were really worried?”
    “Ruskowski accused me of having an affair with the dead man. My files and my personal bank records were subpoenaed. They came and searched my apartment. There’s nothing like having a bunch of policemen pawing through your underwear to bring home the possibility that your life can be changed by a murder investigation.”
    “Your partners would have loved that,” remarked Elliott.
    “They were in a collective swoon that my picture was in the paper this morning. If I’d been arrested there’d have