Tuesday morning was not as bad as I expected in some respects - in others, it was worse. Several of Mrs. Balrymple's neighbors appeared - apparently in hopes of finding some item missing due to Emilio's endeavors. They were merely a minor annoyance.
David appeared shortly after opening. I wasn't sure if he'd had any sleep. He appeared entirely too hyper to have just woken up. That plus the fact that he couldn't have thought of so many questions if he'd been asleep.
And Oliver appeared close on his heels. He had questions, too.
I summoned Jonathan to join the conference - there was no way that I was letting him off the hook ... and I had one question to ask him myself.
Oliver's question was 'how?' - meaning how had Ronnie gained access to the Compound without being seen. That one was easy ... "The simple fact," I informed him, "is that anyone could have come in or gone out at almost any time without being seen." I explained about Charlie having been in and out - Jarvis hadn't been seen entering, Mrs. Arriola had left unobserved, there was nothing difficult about Ronnie slipping in - if he been out at all - or slipping out post facto. "If that isn't sufficient," I added, "there's nothing to have prevented Ronnie from simply climbing over the wall.
"But," I added, "what they couldn't count on was an opportunity to remove a bulky package like furs."
"But last night," David insisted. "We know that the maintenance room was guarded then! How did they get out?"
Which brought me back to explaining about the keys. "Ginger," I told him. "Charlie had returned his keys to Oliver. At least he left them on Oliver's desk. Ginger must have returned for her brownies and taken them then. At any rate, they were missing the next morning." I told him about the problem of opening the next morning - Charlie'd had to get Oliver's keys before he could unlock the gates. "Obviously, they went out the front gate using the key, then locked it again. No, I don't know what they did with the keys afterwards. Dumped them, I suppose. The police didn't find them."
"Brownies?" David asked. "Why, if they were committing murder, would she come back for a plate of brownies?"
"Ginger Hartley's brownies," I explained, "were always laced with grass - liberally. She wouldn't want them found ..."
"But they weren't," Oliver insisted. "I ate some!"
"With due consideration for your mental state at that time," Jonathan interjected, "I doubt that you were capable of noticing."
"But the police," Oliver insisted. "They didn't find any!"
"That's what I was explaining, Oliver," I reminded him patiently. "Ginger must have come back and gotten them. That would be when she took the keys."
"No, no, not then!" Oliver was firm. "At the station, they kept asking me to breathe into this funny machine. Every time I tried, I ... got the giggles so, instead, they took me out to the hospital for a blood-test. The doctor said that my blood alcohol was point-twelve percent. They didn't find any marijuana!"
"What the hell!" Jonathan's profanity was shocking by its rarity. "Are you sure? I didn't know that they tested for marijuana."
"Of course I'm sure!" Oliver was positive. "The doctor at the hospital was involved in some experimental tests. I was afraid they'd bust me for possession. Instead," Oliver became confidential, "one of the guys in the cell shared a joint with me. But that was afterwards," he added.
"If there wasn't any grass in the brownies," I mused, "why would Ginger come back for them?"
"Could it have been Ronnie?" David asked. "He might not have known?"
"I don't think so, my intuition ..." I was interrupted by Jonathan's snort!
"Of course there wasn't any!" he confirmed. "They wouldn't have taken the chance. The police might have noticed and that would have given them an excuse to search outside the Compound - cars, apartments, etc."
"But why would they have come back for them then?" I was puzzled!
"Elementary, my dear Daisy," Jonathan chuckled. "Because there wasn't any ... we would have noticed."
"The brownies," I giggled. "The brownies did nothing in the night time!"
Jonathan groaned loudly in mock anguish. Oliver and David were looking first at Jonathan and me, then at each other as if wondering if the events of the past week had been too great a strain for the enfeebled minds of their elders.
But that wasn't the question.
"Daisy," Jonathan was smiling one of his rare smiles, "will you marry me?"
That wasn't the question either. "We'll discuss that in a minute," I told him. "I have a question for you first. Was it only accidental that one of Mrs. Balrymple's security guards just happened to be an off-duty policeman? Or was that one of your devious schemes?"
"Now, Daisy," Jonathan began, then changed to: "Well, you did ask me to make the arrangements ... the Sergeant is an old friend of mine ... I thought . . just in case you were wrong and something did happen ..."
I almost followed his chain of reasoning ... almost ... but it didn't matter.
"Tell me," I looked him in the eye. "Just how paralyzed are you?"