Cat on a Cold Tin Roof (19 page)

“Anything's possible,” I said.

“You didn't ask me to look him up if you didn't think there was some kind of problem with him.”

“There may be,” I said.

“Well?” he said. “What kind?”

“I don't know. That's why I'm asking you.”

He grimaced. “It would help if you'd tell me what the hell you're looking for.”

“I wish I knew,” I said. “Just anything out of the ordinary.”

“Well, let's see if he's ever been arrested for anything.”

“Wiki-whatever has stuff like that for the general public?” I asked, surprised.

He chuckled. “No. But this is a police computer.” He began typing. “No, never been arrested.” Suddenly he frowned. “Now,
that's
curious.”

“What is?”

“He's got a couple of lawsuits pending against his organization.”

“His real estate company?” I asked.

He nodded. “Yeah.”

“Who's suing?”

“One of his landlords,” said Calhoun, bringing up more information on the screen. “Seems he's way behind on his rent on . . . let me see . . . seven of his offices. And it looks like he's written a couple of bouncers on a pair of leased cars, a Mercedes and a Lincoln.” He shrugged. “So much for being a tycoon.”

“Is that information up to date?” I asked.

“Within a week or two, I'd say.” He stared at me. “Does the guy owe you money?”

“No.”

“You're grinning like the cat that ate the canary.”

“Am I?” I said.

“May I assume Mr. Delahunt is the canary?”

“Could be,” I said. “How long do you plan to be here, Bill?”

“I started at eight tonight. I'll be knocking off at four-thirty, unless Bob Hess oversleeps again.”

I shook my head. “Not long enough.”

“Not long enough for what?”

“Tell you what,” I said. “Either leave Jim Simmons a note or check it out yourself when you show up tomorrow . . . but I'll bet that information you just gave me is out of date.”

“You think he owes more?”

“I think he's paid them all off.”

“Yeah?” he said, arching an eyebrow. “And why do you think so?”

“I'll tell you when I
know
so,” I replied. “Thanks for your help.”

Before he could ask me any more questions I was heading to my car, and fifteen minutes later I was walking Marlowe over to Mrs. Garabaldi's petunias.

“Yeah, Asta,” I said to him. “I think we cracked the case, and I don't even have a Nora.”

He looked at me, and his expression seemed to say:
I ain't Asta, you ain't Nick, Nora left you years ago, and nothing's as easy as you think it's going to be
.

20.

I got up at nine, walked Marlowe, opened a can of Campbell's chicken noodle soup for him, paused in the hall long enough for Mrs. Cominsky to explain that these letters were too filthy for our good, upright, honorable police force to read, and that she'd be keeping them safe and sound against the day of Final Retribution. When I gently suggested that Final Retribution rested with a higher power, she assured me that she had gone to church and told God exactly where to look for the letters.

Once away from the apartment, I got into the car and drove over to Hyde Park and started doing a little checking.

The first thing I found was that Delahunt had put his house up for sale four months ago—and had taken it off the market three days ago.

I asked a couple of rival realtors about his empire. They admitted that he'd been Mister Big in luxury real estate properties for quite a few years, but the current economy had hurt him more than most. He'd already closed four offices in the less affluent areas, and he was losing staff in some of the others, not that anyone was buying them off, but that the word being whispered on the street was that even when they made a rare sale of a million-dollar property, he was late paying his agents' commissions.

It sure as hell sounds like a mogul who was going broke until this week . . . and the only things that had changed were that his friend Malcolm Pepperidge was dead and he seemed to have an influx of money.

I ate a quick, noncommittal lunch with Sorrentino, then went back to Delahunt's home turf. His private golf club told me he'd let his membership lapse but had called them this week to say he'd be renewing it when spring rolled around. The local Republicans assumed he hadn't made any donations in the past year because he didn't like their candidates, but of course he was loyal to the core Republicans.

Every place I checked and every answer I got led me to the same conclusion: he was a formerly wealthy man who'd been hurting for cash for a couple of years and was suddenly, in the past few days, starting to drag his fallen credit rating back up by its bootstraps.

By midafternoon I'd done enough checking. I went home, popped open a beer, poured another into Marlowe's empty food bowl, turned on one of the lesser ESPN channels, and watched some girls in and almost out of bikinis play beach volleyball for a wildly enthusiastic audience who probably didn't even know the rules and certainly didn't know the participants' names. If you were a breast man you cheered for the girl on the left; if you were a leg man you cheered for the one on the right. If you liked them both, as I did, then you were a nonpartisan.

The game ended, they switched to bowling, and I switched to reading a secondhand paperback I'd bought at a local Book Nook, in which the hard-boiled hero shot a bad guy in odd-numbered chapters and bedded one or more women who looked even better than Mitzi Cramer in the even-numbered ones.

Finally it was about half an hour before I was due to have dinner with Sorrentino. I considered taking Marlowe for another walk, but as I approached him he looked up from his couch cushion and gave me one of his
don't you dare come hither
looks, so I walked to the car, almost bumped into Mrs. Garabaldi as she was coming over to discuss very current literature—like this morning's—with Mrs. Cominsky, and twenty minutes later I parked a couple of blocks from the Montgomery Inn, which specialized in ribs, celebrities, and Reds and Bengals jerseys—the ribs were for eating, the others for being impressed by.

Sorrentino was already there, and we were soon seated at a table.

“How'd your day go?” I asked.

“Same as the last few,” he said grimly. “Zip. How about you?”

I decided I couldn't hide what I knew any longer. If there was one guy besides the Brazilians I didn't want mad at me, I was sitting across the table from him.

“I'm pretty sure I know who killed Palanto,” I said.

He leaned forward. “Tell me about it.”

“I've been doing some detective work,” I said. “I didn't want to say anything before I had something concrete.”

“And now you do?”

“I think so.”

“Well?”

“I managed to trace one of the diamonds,” I said.

“Where is it?” he asked.

“In a ring on the finger of a girl who makes Pam Anderson look like a boy.”

He nodded his head thoughtfully. “Isn't it always? So was Palanto her sugar daddy? Did she knock him off?”

“No,” I said. “I doubt that she ever met him.”

“Okay,” said Sorrentino. “So who killed him?”

“There's a guy, Abner Delahunt, who lives three doors down from Palanto,” I replied. “A guess is that just about everyone on that street belonged to the same golf club and probably the same church. The guy was a realtor, had a dozen offices around town . . . but he fell on hard times, had to close a few of them, hadn't been paying his bills. Looked for sure like he was about to go down the drain.”

“And he's been paying them since Palanto's death?” asked Sorrentino.

I nodded. “And the girl's only had the ring a few days.”

“Sounds good to me,” he said. “Why the hell didn't you fill me in while you were tracking all this info down?”

“I know what you did to those kids who jumped you the other day,” I said. “Just in case this was a bad lead or a dead end, I didn't want you getting rough with the girl. I'd have had to testify, and you're my friend. I didn't want you going to jail for nothing.”

Suddenly a grin spread across his face. “And you didn't want me beating you to the diamonds.”

“That, too,” I admitted, returning his grin.

“Well, what the hell, what you have sounds good. What's our next step?”

“We pay him a visit,” I said. “If we send the cops there and he's got any of the diamonds left, they'll confiscate them and there goes our reward.”

“Makes sense,” he agreed. “Let's go now.”

“And miss the best rib dinner in the country?” I said. “Don't worry. The blonde's not going to warn him.”

“What makes you so sure?”

“Because she knows if we nail him, her ring's evidence. She's probably hoping I'll go after someone else, or that Delahunt will buy me off.”

“Or kill you.”

“I don't think it'd bother her a bit,” I said as the waiter came by and I gave him my order. Sorrentino, who hadn't looked at the menu, just said, “The same,” and a few minutes later we were gorging ourselves on two slabs of ribs.

When we were done we walked out onto the street, and Sorrentino turned to me.

“I assume we're going there to make, if not a citizen's arrest, a citizen's search, authorized or otherwise?”

“We'll play it by ear,” I said. “But remember: if we search the place without permission, we probably won't be allowed to keep what we find long enough to turn it over to the insurance company.”

He patted the slight bulge under the arm of his sports jacket. “Oh, I think they'll give us permission.”

“Just follow my lead and don't threaten anyone,” I said.

“So how the hell are we going to do this legally.”

“Theoretically I'm working for Velma,” I answered. “If I claim that you're my assistant, and we've been tipped that the murder weapon is there and we'd like permission to do a quick search for it, I'm sure that's the one thing that's so well hidden, if it's on the premises at all, that Delahunt will give us the okay and plan to trash the damned gun tomorrow if he hasn't already. And once we have permission to search the place, then if we find the diamonds, we should be in the clear for turning them in.”

“I hear a lot of ‘ifs,'” said Sorrentino.

“If you've got a better plan, tell me now so if there's anything illegal I can point it out.”

“No, we'll play it your way.”

“Okay,” I said, reaching my car. “Follow me. We'll park a few blocks away, and then you can get in my car.”

“Why?” he asked.

“You're supposed to be my assistant. It makes sense that we'd arrive together.”

He nodded. “Okay.”

We got into our cars, I drove down Interstate 71 to the Dana Road exit, went a little less than a mile to Edwards, turned right, and a couple of minutes later we passed by Palanto's house. Delahunt's was three houses down the street, and I could see that there was no “For Sale” sign on it. I drove another block, parked, waited for Sorrentino to park behind me and climb into my car, and then I circled around and parked in the street in front of Delahunt's huge Tudor.

“Something wrong with the driveway?” asked Sorrentino.

“I'm making two assumptions,” I replied. “One, that Delahunt is a murderer, and two, that he operated alone. If I'm wrong about the first, it'll be embarrassing as hell, but no real harm done . . . but if I'm wrong about the second, I don't want his accomplice to trap us in the driveway.”

He smiled. “I got to start thinking more like a cop.”

“A shamus,” I said. “If they still use that term.”

“Only in old Bogey movies, I think.”

We got out of the car and walked up the winding flagstone path to the front door. I touched the bell and heard chimes suddenly play the opening notes of “Hail, Hail, the Gang's All Here.” A moment later a middle-aged woman wearing a maid's outfit opened the door, and even in the dim light I could tell that she had a lousy dye job.

“May I help you?” she asked.

“We'd like to see Mr. Delahunt,” I said.

“I'm afraid he's not here.”

“Is Mrs. Delahunt at home?” I asked. If the maid was alone, I'd already decided to show her my license, which everyone seems to think makes me a cop, and tell her we had a search warrant.

“I'll get her,” she said. She stood stock-still, as if trying to decide whether to shut the door in our faces until she could hunt up her boss. “Won't you please come in?” she said at last.

“Thank you,” I said, and Sorrentino and I stepped into the large tiled foyer.

A moment later an elegant woman of perhaps fifty approached us. She wasn't pretty, but she sure as hell was as handsome as money, grooming, and bearing could make her.

“You wish to see me?” she said by way of greeting.

“Yes, ma'am,” I said. “My name is Eli Paxton, and this is my assistant, Mr. Sorrentino.” I flashed my license. “We came here to see your husband, but I wonder if we might ask you a couple of questions.”

“What is this about?” she demanded.

“I'll get right to the point,” I said. “This is an inquiry into the whereabouts of a certain diamond, about which we believe Mr. Delahunt may have some information.”

“I
knew
it!” she exploded. “That stupid son of a bitch!”

“I beg your pardon?” I said, genuinely surprised.

“Him and that damned bimbo of his!”

“Are you perhaps referring to a Miss Cramer?” I asked.

“I don't know her name!” she spat. “But I know that we're down to one car and one servant, and we're probably going to have to move to a smaller place, but he's got enough money to give a diamond to that blonde bitch! He thought I didn't overhear her thanking him for it on the phone!”