Smoke in Mirrors

better, all things considered.
    Thomas occupied the other recliner. Wrench napped on the floor.
    Ed Stovall sat very straight in an armchair. He did not take out his notebook. This was supposed to be a private conversation, he had explained. Off the record.
    “I’m no shrink, but I think it’s safe to say that Roberta Brinks must have started out warped and then got downright nutzoid over the years,” Thomas said. “Just yourordinary, garden-variety sociopath. The kind of freak no one even notices until after she’s murdered a few folks.”
    “You still haven’t explained how you and Deke realized I might be in major trouble yesterday afternoon,” Leonora said.
    “Thomas wanted to run down a few loose details,” Deke replied. He rested one hand on Cassie’s knee.
    “I just wanted to know for sure who was blackmailing whom.” Thomas steepled his fingers. “When Deke got into Rhodes’s bank records he discovered that a couple of large transactions had been made during the past year. They were credited to a numbered account in an offshore bank. At first we assumed they were the profits Rhodes had made from blackmailing Osmond Kern.”
    “But just to be on the safe side, Thomas had me check Kern’s bank records, too,” Deke continued. “He wanted to make sure the amount of the blackmail payments matched.”
    Cassie frowned. “I take it they didn’t?”
    “No,” Thomas said. “In fact, we found no large transactions at all in Kern’s account. But we discovered a lot of smaller payments going into that same offshore account. They transferred like clockwork on the first of every month.”
    “We followed a hunch and went upstream in Kern’s bank records,” Deke said. “Those payments stretched back for years. The offshore account number didn’t appear until three years ago, though. Before that the money went into a bank in California. The account was in the name of a trust, but we were able to get a social security number off some tax records.”
    “Roberta Brinks?” Leonora asked.
    “Yep.” Thomas put a hand on top of Wrench’s head. “Osmond Kern paid blackmail, all right. For nearly thirty years.”

    “But to Roberta Brinks, not Alex Rhodes,” Cassie concluded.
    “Rhodes’s two large payments into Roberta’s offshore account this year had nothing to do with blackmail. They were to cover the cost of the two shipments of drugs that he bought from her,” Ed said.
    “But as soon as we saw the thirty years’ worth of payments to Roberta Brinks,” Thomas said, “we knew the situation was a lot more complicated than everyone assumed.”
    Leonora rested her head against the backs of the cushions. “Because it was clear that Osmond Kern had been paying blackmail to Roberta since shortly after the death of Sebastian Eubanks. And there was only one logical reason why he would do such a thing.”
    Ed nodded his head once. “Roberta Brinks knew that he had murdered Eubanks and that he had stolen the algorithm.”
    Roberta had babbled freely when Ed Stovall had arrived at Mirror House to take charge.
    Thirty years ago she had been a grad student in the English department. She had struggled hard to put herself through school. In addition to teaching classes, she had taken on a part-time job working for Sebastian Eubanks.
    “He was so paranoid at that point that he wouldn’t allow any math or science majors into the mansion,” Deke said. “But he figured an English Lit major wouldn’t understand any of his work even if she did see some of it.”
    “Always a mistake to underestimate the liberal arts crowd,” Leonora said.
    Deke nodded. “You can say that again.”
    “Roberta was there the night Kern came to see Eubanks,” Leonora said. “Kern didn’t see her, but she witnessed the quarrel and the shooting.”
    “What did they fight over?” Cassie asked.

    Ed looked at her. “As Andrew Grayson said, Kern knew enough about Eubanks’s work to recognize its potential. He claimed that, because he and Eubanks had collaborated for a while, he had a right to have his name attached to the algorithm. He demanded that it be published under both of their names. Eubanks didn’t want to publish at all. He had convinced himself that the algorithm was only the first step to more important work. He pulled out a gun. There was a struggle. Eubanks died. Afterward, Kern was stunned and confused. Roberta took charge. She told him she would take care of everything.”
    “And that’s just what