Bloodied Ivy (11 page)

I glanced up, trying my best to look bored, which wasn’t hard. “What am I charged with, Lieutenant?”

“Don’t get smart with me.” Like Amundsen, he liked to sneer. Must be something they teach them at the academy. “Remember, you’re not in New York City now.”

“I’ve been reminded of that already today,” I said lightly. I was beginning to know how Clint Eastwood feels in a new town. “You folks seem to have a real complex about New York. Am I being held without a charge?”

“Listen, goddamn it, if we want to book you, we’ll have no problem doing it. Breaking and entering, for starters. Now are you going to tell me what you were doing in Professor Markham’s house?”

“Well, I guess you’ve bullied it out of me,” I answered. “As I told Sergeant Amundsen, my employer, Nero Wolfe, and I have a client named Walter Cortland, of whom you may have heard. He’s a professor at the university, and he thinks Hale Markham was murdered. He hired us to confirm—or refute—his contention.”

“Yeah, Ed mentioned that damned Cortland.” Powers actually snarled. “I might have known. What a pain-in-the—oh, the hell with it. Listen, Einstein, if you’re working for that whiny pest, how come you didn’t just get a key to Markham’s place from him, huh?” He looked down at me with a smirk and I wondered if, like his New York Police counterpart, Lieutenant Rowcliff, he stuttered when he lost control. It was tempting to find out, but probably not worth the effort.

“He went up to Kingston for the morning and he forgot to leave me the key, Lieutenant, it’s as simple as that. Honest. Call him—he can tell you. He’s supposed to be back by about one.”

Powers fired more questions at me, but I got stubborn and folded my arms, staring straight ahead. After about half a minute, he realized we’d exhausted the conversation and stalked out, slamming the door harder than Amundsen had. I clearly was making no friends in Prescott.

Five minutes later the door opened and a square-faced, gray-haired, lanky number in a white uniform shirt and black tie pushed in. The nameplate on his pocket read
HOBSON
. “Mr. Goodwin,” he said curtly, “I am Carl Hobson, chief of police here in Prescott, and I’m here to find out precisely what the hell’s going on.” He enunciated each word, probably to underscore to me that, unlike the others I’d talked to, he
really
meant business.

I looked up at him. “Am I being charged?” I asked quietly.

“Maybe you don’t realize it, but you’re in a lot of trouble, mister,” he said, sounding like a poor imitation of James Cagney in
Mr. Roberts
. The guy must be a scream at a party. “We’ve already been around the course with Walter Cortland and his crazy notions about murder. The last thing we need is somebody waltzing in here from—”

“New York?” I offered.

He looked at me coldly with his light blue eyes and continued without missing a beat. “—who thinks he’s going to create headlines by trying to invent a murder. For your information, there hasn’t been a homicide in this community in twenty-seven years, and it’s despicable to think that someone like yourself and your publicity-hungry boss would take advantage of poor Professor Cortland’s grief over losing his friend just to generate a case—and notoriety—for yourselves.”

“I think you should talk to Mr. Cortland,” I said in an even, unemotional tone. I’d been so deadpan for the last few hours I was beginning to worry it might become a permanent condition. “He should be back in town about one o’clock.”

“You’re damn right I’ll talk to him, mister,” Hobson said, his voice rising a notch. His color did the same. “And for your sake, you’d better hope he says the right things. You’re under arrest.”

“The charge?”

“Illegal entry,” he spat. “Follow me.”

And damned if they didn’t book me. They took my keys, wallet, and other possessions and gave me a receipt for them. A polite sergeant named Pierce filled out the paperwork, set my bond at five hundred dollars, and asked me if I wanted to call an attorney.

“Thanks anyway,” I told him with a smile, “but I’m compiling a guide to jails in the eastern United States, and this will give me another entry—under the heading ‘Hamlets and Backwaters I Have Known.’” He looked up from the desk with a puzzled expression, then shrugged and somewhat apologetically escorted me down a hall to one of four small cells, none of which was occupied. “Our main customers are from the university,” Pierce said cheerfully, “usually the fraternity boys who get carried away at their parties and…you know.”

“I can guess,” I said as he held the door of one of the cells, gesturing me in. It was small but reasonably clean, with the standard fixtures—bunk, toilet, washstand, matching wooden table and chair—and actually had a window that looked out on the parking lot, where I could at least keep watch over the Mercedes.

“Pardon me, Sergeant,” I said as he started to swing the barred door shut, “but would there by any chance be a newspaper handy that I could look at?”

“I’ll check, sir,” he said, and less than a minute later he was back with that day’s
Albany Times-Union
. After thanking him profusely, I read the whole thing through twice, including the piece on how Prescott was an eighteen-point underdog against Syracuse in Saturday’s game. They’ll be lucky to come that close, I thought as I tossed the paper aside, then settled back on the bunk. Time: twelve-forty-nine.

A few minutes later, I awoke from the clank of the cell door opening and figured my watch must be lying. The face claimed it was three-ten, but of course that had to be a mistake. Sergeant Pierce had stepped into the cell, telling me to follow him.

“First, what time is it?” I asked, shaking myself.

“Uh, three-eleven,” he said with a lopsided smile. “Guess you flaked out. Maybe you can put in that book of yours that our bunks are comfortable, huh? You’re wanted in the old man’s office.” Whistling, he led the way down a hall toward the front of the building, where I hadn’t yet been. He rapped his knuckles lightly on a mahogany door with a polished metal nameplate that said
CHIEF CARL W. HOBSON
, then turned the knob and eased it open.

The chief, still wearing his uniform shirt and tie and a scowl, sat behind a large wooden desk in a nicely carpeted office. He glared at me as Pierce ushered me in. Seated off to his right, in a chair far too small for him, also glaring, was Nero Wolfe.

W
OLFE TOLD ME LATER WITH
more than a little satisfaction that my mouth dropped open when I walked in. I didn’t believe him when he said it and I don’t believe him now, but in truth, he was about the last person I expected to find in Prescott’s police station. In those first few seconds after I saw him, all I could think about was how in the hell he’d gotten there. It must have been Saul, I said to myself—he’s the only person besides myself that Wolfe’s ever trusted as his driver.

The gregarious Lieutenant Powers swaggered in seconds after I did, and he and I sat in the two other chairs that formed the rest of the arc in front of the elaborately carved mahogany desk of Carl W. Hobson, a man who obviously enjoyed the trappings of office. I took the seat farthest from Wolfe, who looked like he wanted to take a bite out of someone.

Hobson didn’t exactly appear to be at peace with the world himself. He stared at Powers for several seconds, then turned his headlights on me. “Goodwin,” he snarled. I was going to congratulate him on remembering my name more than three hours after meeting me, but before I could get the words out, he brought his palm down hard on the desk, presumably for effect. He needed to take lessons from Wolfe on desk pounding, though; his technique was all wrong.

“Okay, wise guy,” Hobson said to me with another snarl. “Your boss is here now, wanting to get you out. Suppose you fill us in on just what you were doing in Markham’s house.”

“Do I unload?” I asked, looking across at Wolfe, whom I knew was suffering for about six reasons, not the least of which was the chair he’d somehow shoehorned himself into. He nodded grimly.

“All right,” I said, leaning back and crossing one leg over the other. “I’ve told you some of this already: A Prescott professor named Walter Cortland called us in New, York on Monday…” I proceeded to give them a narrative, from Cortland’s contention that Markham had been bumped off that cliff to my trip to the campus the day before, including my visits to the classes and the bottom of the Gash, and lunch with the various faculty members. I did some editing, though, leaving out the coffee with Gretchen Frazier and the session in Elena Moreau’s office. As I talked, I watched Hobson’s expression go from dour to incredulous to unbelieving. Powers shook his head a lot, and Wolfe just went on looking grumpy. I finished by saying that Cortland was supposed to have left me the key to Markham’s place so I could have a look around, but when it wasn’t there, I let myself in. “And that’s when your boys came along,” I said to the chief, lacing my hands behind my head.

“This is ridiculous!” Hobson growled, running a hand through his hair. “My men were at the location within minutes after the professor’s body was found. There was no indication he’d been pushed or that there was a struggle. The medical report showed he died of a broken neck from the fall,” he snapped, yanking a sheet from a manila folder on his desk. “I’ll tell you what I think,” he said leaning on his elbows and his vowels. “I think you New York hotshots figure you can throw your weight around up here in what you like to call ‘the sticks,’ trying to generate some easy business for yourselves. Well, I’ll tell you both,” he went on, waving a bony and none-too-clean finger at us, “you’re not welcome here, not for a minute. And you—what have you got to say for yourself?” he asked, turning to Wolfe. “You’ve barely spoken a word since you walked in here.”

Wolfe tried to adjust himself in the chair, a physical impossibility. I was trying to recall when someone last addressed Wolfe as “you” and lived to tell about it.

“You’ve charged Mr. Goodwin with breaking and entering,” he intoned without emotion.

“That’s right, good guess.” The chief nodded and stuck out his lower lip. He was obviously pleased with himself.

“It is
not
a guess,” Wolfe growled. “I know what the charge is because Mr. Cortland told me on the telephone at a few minutes after one. He also informed me that one of your minions, this gentleman here”—he gestured toward Powers with an almost imperceptible tilt of the head—“had called him shortly after he returned home from Kingston to tell him of Mr. Goodwin’s booking. When Mr. Cortland attempted to explain that he had given Mr. Goodwin express permission to go through the house, but that he had forgotten to leave the key in a prearranged place, your officer had no interest in what he was saying and rudely cut him off.”

“Hey, wait a minute, I—”

“Lloyd, I’ll handle this.” The chief stifled Powers with a karate-chop motion of his hand. “Mr. Wolfe, you should know that from the day Professor Markham’s body was found, Cortland has been driving us nuts about this, claiming it was murder. He’s probably called here a half-dozen times, maybe more, insisting we look further into the death. But, and I stress this, he has never, not once, come up with a shred of evidence to substantiate his allegations.” He leaned back and stuck out the lower lip again.

“So in a fit of pique, both to spite Mr. Cortland and to show the New Yorkers who’s boss in your realm, you ignored him and jailed Mr. Goodwin. This despite insistence of Mr. Portland—the executor of the Markham estate—that he had approved in advance Mr. Goodwin’s entry into the house.”

“Cortland may have approved it in advance, but nobody bothered to tell us,” Hobson protested. The red in his cheeks was turning to purple. “And furthermore, how were my men supposed to know Goodwin was legitimate? After all, he got in with one of that dandy set of keys he carries. In my book—and in this town—that’s pretty damn suspicious behavior, to say the least.”

“I’ll concede that Mr. Goodwin on occasion uses questionable judgment and tactics,” Wolfe said. “But you know now that his entry into the house, however unorthodox, was made with prior approval of an authorized party, and that no damage was done to its interior. I suggest that to save yourselves possible embarrassment later, you drop the matter at this point.”

He squeezed himself out of the chair with sublime effort, rose, and motioned me to do the same, which I did. “Good day, sir,” he said.

“Wait a minute,” Hobson rasped. “You—”

“No,
you
wait a minute, sir,” Wolfe fired back in a voice that would have frozen a hot toddy. “Since you seem to harbor animus toward anyone from Manhattan, you should be more than happy to see Mr. Goodwin and me leave. And we are pleased to accommodate you.”

Hobson was standing now, too, his puss as colorful as a slice of Rusterman’s rare prime rib. The guy was trying to figure out how to keep from losing face, especially with his second-in-command in the room.

“You know, Goodwin is still in custody,” he barked. “We can keep him from leaving.”

Wolfe, who had made it almost to the door, turned slowly and fixed his gaze on the chief. “I don’t doubt that for a moment,” he said, “but such an action would be so ill-advised as to be classed as Brobdingnagian folly. I strongly suggest you consider alternatives.”

Hobson took a couple of deep breaths. You can’t blame him—Brobdingnagian throws me, too. “All right,” he said finally, in a thin voice, as if making a major concession, “I’ll do this—I’ll release Goodwin with the understanding that if he is needed for questioning, you will make him available to this department or to the district attorney’s office.”

“I assume,” Wolfe said, holding fast at the door, “that such questioning would likely relate to a felony, perhaps a capital crime, to merit Mr. Goodwin’s return here. I am unaware that you feel a crime of such magnitude has taken place.”

I could have strangled Wolfe. Hobson’s expression clearly reflected his puzzlement, and for a moment, I thought he might renege on his offer. But he was between the proverbial rock and hard place. After another deep breath, the chief abandoned his attempt to save face and told us both to get the hell out.