First Gravedigger (15 page)

“Dear me, that
is
menacing. I am all a-tremble.” With one finger he casually flipped open the folder holding the statements. He glanced at the first one, turned it over, glanced at the second. When he'd looked at no more than four or five, he closed the folder. “Yes?”

“Yes? What do you mean,
yes?
Do you understand what those are?”

He chuckled. “Of course I understand, dear boy. Don't assume everyone has the same sluggish mental processes you do.”

I stared at him. I'd just shown him I had evidence he was a thief, and he was acting as unconcerned as if I'd said it was going to rain. “Then you understand we're in a position to prosecute? You don't think we're just going to let this pass, do you? If you don't make reparation to those people you ripped off, then we will. And if
we
have to pay for your sticky fingers, then you can be damned sure
you'll
pay. And pay and pay and pay. You'll lose your pretty new gallery, do you understand that?”

Wightman was looking at me as if I were some interesting new specimen. “Feeling your power, old chap? Give a nonentity a little authority and look what happens! Your assumption of godhood doesn't suit you, dear boy. You don't have the style for it.”

“A delaying tactic, Wightman? It won't work. One way or another, those people are going to be repaid. The only question to be decided is whether you go to jail or not.”

Wightman threw back his head and brayed. “Oh, you are a jewel, Sommers! True to form in every way—predictable as a bowel movement. Now if you can bring yourself to concentrate for a full thirty seconds, I'll try to explain a few things in words of one syllable or less. In the first place, you're not going to involve the grand old name of Speer Galleries in a scandalous lawsuit. Dear me, no. Even if you did win, the name of Speer would be suspect for years among the overendowed upper classes of this country that form the backbone of our business. In the second place, you'd have to prove I resold that porcelain for personal profit at the expense of Speer's good name. Now do you really think you have the acumen to trace all that porcelain?”

There I thought I had him. “I don't have to. All we have to prove is one or two cases, and we have a lot to work from.” I wasn't sure about that, but it seemed a safe gamble. “Are you willing to risk losing your gallery on the assumption we won't be able to trace even
one
sale?”

Wightman pursed his lips in a mock pout. “Alas, no, I confess I'm not. All this is
très fade
, Sommers—but if you insist on playing your little game out to its sordid end, so be it.” He got up from his desk and walked unhurriedly over to a wall safe. From the safe he took a large envelope which he casually tossed in my direction; I had to make a fumbling catch to keep from being hit in the face. “Now
you
had better take a look,” he said, sitting back down. “Turnabout and all that.”

What was he up to? I opened the envelope and began to read the papers.

They were all signed statements from the people
I
had bilked—the ones who'd sold me valuable pieces of furniture cheaply, pieces I'd resold for personal profit.

Wightman was grinning wickedly. “You're not the only one who can hire a detective.”

He had me. God damn his smirking, conniving hide—he had me good. I'd never take legal action against him, I'd even end up paying off his victims. And he knew it. The bastard really had me.

“You went about it in a remarkably unintelligent way, Sommers, even for you.” He was really enjoying himself. “Selling most of the pieces to Speer's under assumed names. Well, really. A more inept piece of subterfuge I've never come across. My detective found it embarrassingly easy to uncover your trail. So you see, dear boy, I have more on you than you'll ever have on me. You're not exactly in a position to make threats, are you?”

Jesus Christ. God damn it to hell. “So now what?”

“I won't use the term gentlemen's agreement,” Wightman said, “because you'd never understand the meaning of the word. But I do like to think of myself as a reasonable man, willing to make concessions in the service of professional harmony.”

“Mutual blackmail,” I said bluntly.

He smiled with an aggravating blandness. “I have no objection to the term. Mutual blackmail it shall be. We both just forget this unpleasant little interlude in our lives and go our separate ways—which, I predict, will be to the top of the heap for me and the slough of despond for you. Poetic justice, I do love it so. I might point out that those statements you are grasping so fervidly in your sweaty hand are simply one of five sets. The originals and three sets of copies are in other hands, safe from any blundering derring-do you might be contemplating.”

“Wightman, I'll get you yet,” I said, sounding melodramatic even to my own ears.

Wightman blinked his eyes and then opened a drawer of his desk. He took out a small piece of paper which he silently handed me. On the paper he'd written: “I'll get you somehow, Wightman.” He took the statements from me and put them back in his safe. “As I say, Sommers, you are depressingly predictable. I can even tell you what you'll do when you get back to Pittsburgh. But I won't—life should hold some surprises, even for the likes of you.” He came back to the desk, put the folder I'd brought back into my attaché case, closed the case, pointedly handed it to me. “Now run along like a good boy and play your clumsy little games elsewhere. Try not to disturb the grown-ups. Go, Sommers. Go now.”

I banged the attaché case down on its studs and drew it hard across the surface of the Walter Gropius desk. It left four deep scratches.

“Get out!” Wightman was screeching as I left. “Get out, you aborigine!”

As I passed the reception desk, Miss Centerfold looked up. “Come back soon,” she smiled.

I remembered the last time I'd sat on a plane and tried to figure out a way to save my neck. That time it had been Charlie Bates, and I'd ended up deciding to kill him. It didn't work out that way, but the fact that I'd been able to make such a decision must mean something. Desperate situations, etc. And god knows things were desperate now.

Someday, somehow, I'd get that bastard Englishman; I swore it. But Wightman would have to wait; there were more urgent matters. Money, for one. Somewhere I was going to have to find the funds to pay off those fools who'd sold their porcelain so cheaply. I couldn't just let the whole thing drop—I'd sent Valentine to talk to them, I'd brought Peg McAllister in on it. I'd let it go too far.

Something Peg had said was bothering me. She'd claimed that the very act of asking questions would make Wightman's victims suspect something was fishy about the deals they'd made with him. If that were true about my detective and Wightman's victims, wouldn't it be equally true about Wightman's detective and the suckers
I'd
taken? Were there people out there right now thinking about making trouble for me?

The only way I could be sure I was safe was to see that those people were adequately reimbursed as well. Where in the name of heaven was the money coming from?

Horrible first thought: Sell the Duprée chair.

No. It might not be enough, for one thing. And there had to be some other way—funnel the profits from the European branches into a special fund, then think up some explanation that would satisfy Peg. Or at least keep her quiet. Because of Peg, I'd have to take care of Wightman's victims first. That meant I'd be covering up his double-dealing while my own peccadillos went unprotected. I would get him for this, yes I would, someday I would really get him.

That whole business of Wightman's having me investigated was curious. What had put him on to it? He himself had been asking for an investigation when he suddenly showed up with enough money to open his own gallery. But I'd done nothing like that. I'd simply married my money; happens all the time. But something must have started him looking.

I closed my eyes and tried to remember what I could of the statements he'd shown me. At least two of them were dated December, just last month. Wightman's investigation had been recent, then—just completed, in fact. So he probably didn't start looking until a short time ago. Not until I was investigating him.

Not until I was investigating him
. I remembered the casual way he'd taken the news that I had evidence of his chicanery, almost as if he'd been expecting it. No almost: he
had
been expecting it. He had known what I was doing, and he'd taken steps to protect himself. He wouldn't have gone looking for evidence incriminating me if he hadn't known he would need it. Someone had tipped him off.

Lieutenant D'Elia had known of Wightman's resignation the same day it happened. Since then I'd more or less dismissed the idea of a spy reporting to outsiders as too preposterous to be taken seriously. Spies within the business, yes—but an eclectic snitch? Sounded nutty, but that must be it. Somebody at Speer's was moonlighting as a pipeline-for-hire.

Who knew about my investigation of Wightman? I dismissed Nedda; she knew something was in the wind but I'd told her no details. That left only three people: Peg McAllister, June Murray, and me. I knew I hadn't tipped Wightman off, even accidentally. And Peg McAllister would shoot herself before she'd do anything to harm the business.

That left June.

It made sense. When I'd first started my investigation of Wightman's private deals, I'd sent June to the file room to dig out all the negative reports he'd ever filed, as a starting point for Valentine. In order to conduct a similar investigation of me, Wightman would've had to have access to the negative reports
I
had filed. June already knew how to go about looking for damaging evidence. She was the logical one to supply Wightman with the ammunition he'd needed.

I spent the rest of the flight back to Pittsburgh working on a plan for dealing with my oh-so-perfect secretary.

CHAPTER 10

The first thing I noticed when I got home from San Francisco was a nick in the leg of a maple Pilgrim chair I'd bought only the week before.

“How did it happen?” I demanded of Nedda. “How could you possibly have let it happen?”

She raised a lazy eyebrow at me. “I'm supposed to stand guard over your chairs? The cleaning service was here yesterday. It must have happened then.”

I was appalled. “The cleaning service? You let the cleaning service handle my chairs?”

Nedda looked amused. “What are they supposed to do—skip every room that has one of your chairs in it? They'd end up cleaning just the kitchen and the bathrooms.”

“And I suppose they sit on them and rest in between chores,” I said in disgust.

“They know better than that. This service is used to handling antiques—normally they're very careful. Earl, if you insist on keeping those chairs here instead of in the gallery where they belong, you shouldn't be too surprised when an accident happens.”

“Get a new cleaning service. A bonded one. I can't have this kind of thing. I don't know if that nick can be—”

“They're all bonded,” Nedda said with an edge in her voice. “And what makes you think the next service would be better? It'd probably be worse. The service we use is a good one, and I'm not going to all the trouble of looking for a better one just because you've cluttered up the house with more antique chairs than anyone could possibly want.”

“I want them,” I pointed out. “And I want them here. Nedda, if you'd ever take the time to look at the chairs—really look at them—you wouldn't see them as clutter.”

“Every time I turn around I stumble over one of those damned chairs,” she snapped. “Amos's porcelain, at least, doesn't take up much room. You men and your little acquisitions.”

“You don't exactly live the spartan life yourself,” I said mildly. “Come on, Nedda, it's not worth quarreling about.”

“Not so long as you get your way. Earl, I don't mind a few goodies stolen from the gallery, but you've gone too far. Who was it said moderation in all things?”

“Columbia Pictures,” I said promptly, trying for a light note. “Some guy talking to Ronald Colman in
Lost Horizon
.”

She didn't smile.

Time for the branches' quarterly reports, and I got a shock: Speer Galleries' overall profits were down. I'd expected it of the San Francisco office—Wightman's doing. And I'd put a lot of the home office money into my chair collection—all recoverable, of course. But it was the London branch that was the surprise; it showed a dip in profits that was totally unexpected. And the fault, I was angry to learn, lay in the new rare books department.

I read through the report submitted by the woman I'd put in charge. Her name was Deborah Ainsley and she'd written a wordy account of how rare books moved in long-term cycles and how we were now in the buying half of the cycle. Two years from now, she promised, the investments she was making now would pay off handsomely.

Maybe. I got on the phone and called H. L. Sprogg, the London branch manager. I asked him about the Ainsley woman's explanation of long-term cycles in the rare books trade. “Straight answer, Mr. Sprogg. Do rare books move in cycles?”

He hesitated. Then: “I don't really know, Mr. Sommers. Rare books—well, they don't seem to follow any normal rules that I can see. Also, they require a very, very specialized kind of knowledge.” He hesitated again. “That's why I was so concerned when you appointed Mrs. Ainsley to establish a rare books department.”

I remembered he'd harrumphed a little but he hadn't really said anything. “If you didn't think she was qualified, you should have told me so at the time.”

Again that hesitation. “If you'll remember, Mr. Sommers, you presented me with a
fait accompli
. You did not consult me, you informed me. I thought it extraordinary at the time to find a brand-new department established on my own turf without my being consulted. And such a specialized department at that. Mr. Sommers, I understand you have your own way of doing things over there, but here we find it best to take on a new line only after a careful study of the market and consultation with all the parties involved.” Meaning him. “I did try to suggest caution at the time.”