Page 72 of All the Devils Are Here

“They’re more like acquaintances than friends. Not especially close.”

“Can you find out if Alex Plessner ever sat on the GHS board?”

“I think so.”

“Is there anything else you can tell me about Mr. Plessner? Anything Stephen might’ve said?”

There was a pause as she thought. “I believe Mr. Plessner has a great deal of money. Mr. Horowitz said he made most of it all at once, through some speculation. I think it might’ve been venture capital.”

“Like seed money for Apple or Microsoft?”

“Something like that. Mr. Horowitz always kids Mr. Plessner about falling into a bucket of luck.”

That bucket, it seemed, had run dry yesterday, thought Gamache.

“Mrs. McGillicuddy, there’s something else I need to tell you. Alex Plessner was found murdered this morning, in Stephen’s apartment.”

There was a soft moan at the other end. The sound of a person who’d seen a lot in her long life. And had now seen too much.

Armand gave her time to absorb that news.

“What’s happening?” she whispered down the line from Montréal.

“I’m trying to find out. The apartment was ransacked. They were looking for something.”

“What?”

“I don’t know. We think it might be evidence of some sort that Stephen and Plessner found. Alex Plessner had Stephen’s business card on him—”

“Well, that’s no sur—” She’d interrupted him. And now Mrs. McGillicuddy interrupted herself. “Are you saying … That’s not possible.”

“What isn’t?”

“You were going to tell me that Mr. Horowitz gave him a JSPS card.”

“Yes.”

“I don’t believe it. You know what that card does? Anyone with it can get into Mr. Horowitz’s bank accounts, his safety-deposit boxes. His homes. As far as I know, Mr. Horowitz only gave that card to three people. You, me, and your grandmother.”

“Zora?”

“Yes.”

“Zora?” Armand repeated. “Are you sure?”

“I was there when he gave it to her. He made sure I saw.”

“At my parents’ funeral?”

“No. When you were going away to Cambridge. He thought she might need a friend one day. He was offering to be that friend.”

“She hated him.”

“Yes. But that didn’t mean he hated her.”

Armand thought for a moment. Could the card they found on Alex Plessner have been Zora’s? But no. She’d been dead for more than twenty years. And Mr. Plessner’s card was newer. Thick, sturdy. Zora’s would have been the much older, flimsier version.

He wondered what had become of Zora’s. It hadn’t been among her belongings when she died. Perhaps his grandmother hadn’t understood the magnitude, and significance, of what Stephen was offering, and had thrown it away.