Final Option

misery.”
    “You know him. I don’t. I’m just saying he doesn’t have an alibi.”
    “What about Margot?”
    “Margot claims that she was home in bed. Her ‘life partner,’ Brooke Winkleman, claims to have been with her. I have no reason to not believe them except that Margot has a psychiatric history that would make Freud sit up and take notice. She makes no secret of the fact that she hated her dad even though he supported her completely. Did you know she’s pregnant?”
    “I heard.”
    “She told me that she’s sure her dad was going to cut her off as soon as he found out. That smells like a motive to me.”
    “Did she tell you why she hated her dad so much?”
    “I came right out and asked her. She said that when she was thirteen years old her father showed up at her eighth-grade graduation with a woman named Loretta Resch, whom he was having a relationship with at the time. Her grandmother had just died and her mother was in Palm Beach. I guess she was at an impressionable age. Talk about a troubled teenager—Margot did it all—sex, drugs, eastern religions, and two suicide attempts. Relatively speaking, she’s straightened herself out. Believe it or not, she’s doing very well in the psychology graduate program.”
    “Nothing the Hexters were capable of would surprise me.”
    “Wait until I tell you about Krissy.”
    “I’m listening.”
    “Well, you know, Elkin’s been curious about the argument that Bart and Pamela had the night before the murder. The police have made a big deal of it. Pamela has refused to discuss it, saying that it was nothing, just Bart’s usual bad temper. The other people at the party have been very close-mouthed. On Elkin’s orders, I went out to their country club this afternoon to see if any of the waiters or waitresses who worked the party overheard anything.”
    “And?”
    “And I found one little cocktail waitress who heard plenty. It seems that she was coming down with the flu and spent most of the evening in the employees’ bathroom. The john shares a wall with the members’ coat-room, where she says she overheard Bart and Krissy having a knock-down drag-out fight.”
    “Bart and Krissy!”
    “Yep. Everyone assumed that the fight was with Pamela, but by the time he got back to the table he was just blowing off steam after letting Krissy have it.“
    “Why? What did they fight about?”
    “It seems that Bart and one or two of the other men were planning to go to the smoking room for a cigar, but Hexter’d left his Cubans in his coat pocket. When he went to the coatroom to get them he practically tripped over Krissy, who was making out with some guy named Brad Cranshaw.”
    “I saw them, too!” I exclaimed. “After the funeral. I walked in on Krissy and some guy going at it on the pool table at Hexter’s house. Where was her husband?“
    “Saturday night he was in Baltimore playing polo. He didn’t get back until almost noon on Sunday. According to the waitress, Hexter was furious. Called Krissy a slut and told her that if she didn’t straighten up he was going to throw her out of her house and cut her out of his will.”
    “Really. And what did she say to that?”
    “She said a lot of things, but she ended up by telling him that she would make him sorry he’d called her a slut.”
    “Could she have killed him?”
    “Sure she could have. She lives on the property. All she had to do was walk to the end of the driveway and wait for him to get the newspaper. Fourey was still in Baltimore, and their son was spending the night with his other grandparents.”
    “No wonder Pamela’s being uncooperative. If what the police say about the gun is true—that the only person who could have taken it was a family member— then anything she says that exonerates her implicates one of her children.”
    “I’ve saved the best for last,” said Elliott with a devilish smile.
    “What?”
    “Guess who the girl in the dirty pictures is?“
    “Who?”
    “Come on, guess.”
    “I don’t know. Margot.”
    “Sick, but incorrect.”
    “Torey.”
    “Nope.”
    “Not Torey? Then who?”
    “The maid, Elena Olarte.”
     

CHAPTER 20
     
    “He was sleeping with the maid?” I demanded incredulously.
    “Not sleeping with her,” replied Elliott. “At least not as I understand it. According to Elena, the pictures were more in the nature of a business proposition.”
    “You’re kidding.”
    “I’m only telling you what she told me. It seems Elena