The Key. Jennifer Sturman

his last minutes of life.

      “Listen,” Jake continued,“Mark, believe it or not, is already working on the revisions to the Thunderbolt materials. I don’t think anyone would miss us if we skipped out of here for a bit. And I think we could both use a change of scenery.”

      It had been a long time since I’d found myself drinking during the middle of the day, much less in the middle of the work week, but when Jake said,“To hell with it” and ordered a bourbon on the rocks, I changed my Diet Coke to a glass of Pouilly-Fuissé.

      We were a few blocks from the office in the Bar Room of the 21 Club. The red-checked tablecloths and model airplanes and other trinkets hanging from the ceiling offered a cheery counterpoint to our less than cheery moods. We’d ordered food with our drinks, but neither of us could eat much. This was, for me at least, a clear indication that I really was freaked out. Our limited food intake, however, didn’t stop us from proceeding on to a second and then a third round of drinks. Jake was sticking to the Maker’s Mark, but I was alternating the wine with Diet Coke. Each beverage provided its own unique comfort.

      “He wasn’t the nicest guy,” said Jake. “In fact, he was a total bastard. But nobody’s ever died in front of me like that. And it looked so…painful.”

      I grimaced. I didn’t want to think about the convulsions, or the wheezing, or the strange cast to Gallagher’s skin as he lay dead on his office floor, but the images and associated sound effects kept playing in my head and had a lot to do with my lack of appetite. “At least you didn’t spend the last several days joking about how much you wanted him dead.”

      “You were only joking. Somebody else must have been a lot more serious.”

      “But who?” I asked. “I mean, it’s one thing to think the guy’s a schmuck or a bastard or whatever, it’s another thing to poison his pencil.” I couldn’t get over how surreal and somewhat ludicrous death by poisoned pencil truly was. If anyone ever chose to murder me, I hoped they’d do it in a more dignified way. “Speaking of which, it had to be someone who knew about the pencil thing.”

      “And had recent access to his pencil supply,” Jake pointed out.

      “Well, there’s us,” I said. “It wouldn’t have been too hard for one of us to sneak a doctored pencil into the mug on his desk. It was just a plain old Number Two, nothing fancy. Is cyanide readily available?”

      “What makes you say cyanide?”

      I explained about the smell of burnt almonds and Agatha Christie.

      “Interesting,” he said. “I think cyanide’s a common ingredient in a lot of pesticides, but I don’t really know. Did you get a look at the pencil after the fact?”

      “No. Why?”

      “The entire tip was missing—I guess it came off in his mouth.”

      “Ugh.” I pushed my plate of untouched food even farther away.

      “Anyhow, we weren’t the only ones in Gallagher’s office lately. Dahlia’s in and out of there constantly. And she’s—she was probably in charge of his pencil supply.”

      “Dahlia? You can’t be serious.”

      “Everybody said there was something going on between the two of them.”

      I shook my head. “I don’t think so.” I told him about my conversation with her in the ladies’ room.

      “So they weren’t having an affair. But his treatment of her was pretty abusive. Maybe she just flipped?”

      “You think she’s seen Nine to Five one too many times?”

      “Huh?”

      “You know, Nine to Five? Dolly Parton, Jane Fonda, Lily Tomlin? They’re all secretaries, and they have an evil boss, and they fantasize about how they’d kill him? And Lily Tomlin’s character fantasizes about poisoning his coffee, and then she accidentally does?”

      He was looking at me strangely. “Forensic City, Agatha Christie, and Nine to Five?”

      “I have eclectic tastes.” It seemed best not to mention the Dawson’s Creek reruns.

      “I’m beginning to see that.”

      “But I still can’t picture Dahlia poisoning anyone.”

      “No, I have to admit, I can’t, either.”

      “Then who did poison him?”

      “Here’s an idea,” he said, rattling the ice in his glass. “Gallagher’s daughter must be his primary heir—he wasn’t the type to leave much to charity, and he probably made his current wife sign a pretty rigorous prenup. Naomi was in his office. If she’d been married to the guy, she must have known about the pencil thing, and she had the opportunity to slide a poisoned one into his mug when he wasn’t looking. She’d probably be psyched for her daughter to come into her inheritance early.”

      I thought about that. “Well, if she did, it wasn’t very smart of her to let half the department know that she would look so favorably on his dying. And when it comes to wives, his current wife was there, too. Annabel.”

      “What motive would she have?”

      “Gallagher’s money but no Gallagher. Sounds like a winwin to me.”

      “I bet he was worth more to her alive than he is dead.”

      “What do you mean?” I asked.

      “I became friendly with my divorce lawyer when my wife and I were splitting up, and in the process I learned a bit about pre-nuptial agreements.” He looked up with a rueful smile. “See—don’t let anyone tell you that divorce doesn’t have a silver lining—you get to meet new people and learn new things.” He was striving for a light tone, but he was only partially successful.

      “Good to know,” I said, trying to match his tone, but I felt a pang of sympathy. Regular breakups were bad enough; I couldn’t imagine how people got through a divorce. It made you wonder how people ever had the courage to get married in the first place.

      “Anyhow, what Naomi said was probably right. Annabel will likely only end up with a share of whatever Gallagher made during the course of their marriage. Anything he made beforehand was probably excluded. That’s how these things usually work. And they haven’t been married for very long—just a couple of years.”

      “Gallagher must have made at least ten million just while they were married, though. That’s nothing to sneeze at.” Ten million was enough to buy a sufficiently large apartment that I’d never trip over Peter’s boxes again. In fact, it was enough to buy each of Peter’s boxes its own apartment.

      “Not for most people. But a lot of it’s probably already spent, and as for the remainder—let’s just say, unless it was invested in something that really takes off, half isn’t going to be enough to maintain the sort of lifestyle the second Mrs. Gallagher has been maintaining for very long.”

      “But were you listening to what Gallagher was saying this morning to his lawyer?”

      “Hmm? No.” Jake shook his head as he sipped his drink.

      “About the papers being delivered, and how he was sure he’d hear from ‘her’ when they were? Maybe he was going to divorce her.”

      “In which case she’d end up with the same amount of money. Or maybe that’s not what he was referring to at all. He could have just been trying to screw Wife Number One in some new way. Or maybe another ‘she’ entirely.”

      “Could be. He sure didn’t seem like the faithful type.”

      “I still can’t get over the way he came onto you,” he said, shaking his head. “He really was a bastard.”

      “It happens.”

      “But in this day and age, and after all