First Gravedigger (7 page)

“You're a real friend, Earl—the only friend I ever had.” He stuck out his hand. “Goodbye, Earl.”

I shook his hand. “Goodbye, Charlie.”

He climbed into a cab. I watched his sad face looking at me through the rear window until the cab pulled around a corner and out of sight.

I risked a traffic ticket getting back to the gallery in a hurry. The guard wrote down 11:09 when I checked in. I banged on Wightman's door as I passed. “I'm back, you asshole!” A muted whinny answered me.

Then I settled down in my office to wait, hoping Wightman wouldn't be leaving soon. I got my wish. I sat there and twiddled my thumbs for
six hours
. About two o'clock my stomach started growling, but Wightman was either skipping lunch or he'd brought a sandwich with him. Another problem: lack of sleep was catching up with me, but I didn't dare let myself nod off. At a little before five I finally heard Wightman's door. I caught up with him and we checked out together. The same guard was at the door; now I had two witnesses to say I'd been at the gallery from eleven to five. I thought briefly of asking Wightman to have a drink with me to prolong the alibi but decided against it. That would have been so out of character it was bound to make him suspicious.

I stopped at a deli for something I could take with me and headed straight for the Broadmoor; I didn't want to miss the six-thirty news. I was starting my second Reuben when it came on. A sincere young woman gazed earnestly into the camera lens and intoned funereally:

Good evening. It's time for KOJW Newswatch. Our top story tonight is a murder in Fox Chapel. Amos Speer, owner of the world-renowned Speer Galleries, was found dead in his Fox Chapel home at three o'clock this afternoon
.

Wait a minute—
in
his home? Inside the house? The picture changed to show Speer's house and grounds. Then a series of confused shots of police moving around, an ambulance parked by the front entrance, two men carrying something out on a stretcher. Out. Out from the house.

Police say the cause of death was a thirty-eight caliber bullet in Speer's right temple. The body was discovered by the victim's widow, Mrs. Nedda Speer, upon her return from the Allegheny Racquet Club in North Hills. KOJW talked to Mrs. Speer
.

The grieving widow was still wearing her tennis costume, and she looked like a million bucks. Which was about what she'd cost: Nedda Speer was a good forty years younger than her husband. A man with Harpo Marx hair was interviewing her:

Shot of widow striding catlike away from camera. Back to sincere young woman in studio.

News of Amos Speer's death is expected to rock the antiques world. Speer established the headquarters of his antiques empire in Pittsburgh in 1948. Speer Galleries has branches in San Francisco, London, Munich, and Rome. Speer was seventy-five years old at the time of his death
.

He was seventy-two. They never got things like that right.

Police say the murder weapon has not been found. In spite of Mrs. Speer's belief that her husband was shot by a prowler, police are looking into the possibility that Speer's death is the work of a hired killer. We'll be back after this message
.

Well, wasn't that just wonderful. And where was Charlie Bates? There were supposed to be
two
bodies there, remember. Two bodies and the murder weapon. Instead there was one body, no murder weapon, and one very large mystery to be investigated and investigated and investigated and investigated.

Good old Charlie. Good old reliable Charlie. There was one thing about Charlie you could always depend on: If there was any way at all to screw something up, you could always count on Charlie to find it. And I'd set it up—me, Earl Sommers. Temporary insanity, that must be it. I must have been totally out of my mind to trust the matter of my very survival to good old Charlie Bates.

CHAPTER 4

A man shouldn't go around saying he's going to kill himself if he doesn't mean it. It distresses his friends, disappoints his enemies, and disconcerts the statistics-keepers. It also has a way of throwing a monkey wrench into other people's plans.

The television blithered away while I sat there alternating between cloud-nine ecstasy and snake-pit panic. Amos Speer was dead; that was the main thing. I could show up at the gallery Monday morning and go on as if Speer had never had me walking the plank at all. My aborted attempt to buy the Duprée chair for myself would not come to light, no tall man in a blue uniform would be reading me my rights, and my reputation in the antiques world would shine as pristine as ever. A definite plus, I'd say.

But then there was the other side of the ledger. Where the hell was Charlie Bates? What had happened? Charlie had pulled off the main stunt, which was getting Speer off my back. But then what? Had he looked at the blood flowing out of Amos Speer's right temple and thought
Ugh, there's got to be a better way to go than that?
Yep, it could have happened just that way. So then what? Had he just taken off to give himself time to reconsider?

And why was the body in the house? In the garden, I'd told Charlie. Maybe Speer had broken his usual pattern and skipped his Saturday session in the garden for once, but I found it hard to believe that Charlie would go into the house looking for him—even if the security alarm was turned off. It was a minor thing, but it bothered me.

The major thing, of course, was Charlie's whereabouts. If he'd just gone someplace else to finish the job—either with the gun or another way—then I could relax. But if he was wandering around out there somewhere, I could never relax. Not ever. He might be working that flabby mouth of his anyplace and god knows who'd be listening; Charlie just never knew when to shut up. Or he might show up on my doorstep again, whining
Earl, you're the only friend
, etc. He'd expect me to hide him, take care of him. Wear him like an albatross. And I'd have to do it, too.

I switched over to another channel that had a seven-thirty news program. It was mostly a repeat of what I'd already heard, the only additional information being that Mrs. Speer had said her husband was working in the garden when she left for her tennis lesson. Curiouser and curiouser. I turned off the set and reached for the phone.

Nedda Speer answered. “Hello?”

“Hi, doll.”

“Earl. I was wondering when you'd call.”

“Just now heard the news. Poor Amos.”

“Yes.”

“They don't know who did it—or why?”

“No, not a clue. It must have been a prowler.”

“Guess so. But it's weird.”

“Isn't it? A murder! Right here in this house.”

“You holding up okay?”

“I'll make it.”

“Listen, babe, one thing I want to know.”

“Ask.”

“How long a mourning period?”

“Oh, I think two months should be enough.”

“Two months, right. Want to meet tonight?”

“I don't think I'd better leave the house for a few days. I'm getting a lot of sympathy visits.”

“Call me when they stop.”

“That I will.” A door chime sounded in the background. “There's somebody now. Bye, lover, I'll call as soon as I can.”

So that part of it was okay. Oh yes, that was another little thing I had going for me. I don't show all my hand at once. Nedda Speer thought I was hot stuff and I'd been damned careful not to do anything to make her change her mind. I didn't know which I enjoyed most—screwing Amos Speer out of valuable pieces of furniture or screwing his wife. Same kind of good feeling in both.

I didn't think Nedda would be too broken up by the death of her elderly husband. She'd long since decided Amos Speer was not the most exciting man on earth, so she'd gone shopping and she'd found me. Lately Nedda had been making it clear she'd much rather have me than creaky old Amos Speer living with her in the big house in Fox Chapel. That's why I'd asked her how long she intended to observe the forms of mourning. I hadn't even had to propose.

See what that meant? If Nedda didn't change her mind, I'd end up running Speer Galleries after all. Without having to put up one red cent. It was my ace in the hole, and it looked as if I was going to get to play it.

But Nedda could change her mind; that was the danger. She wasn't a very predictable woman. Sometimes Nedda made me uneasy; and sometimes she made me feel like king of the jungle. She had a pantherlike way of
stalking
me whenever she was in the mood that I found exciting as hell. I'd been going to bed with the lady for over three months but I still didn't feel as if I had a fix on her. I saw what she allowed me to see. And one thing Nedda allowed me to see was that she liked getting her own way; she may have wanted to marry me only because she knew she couldn't. But now that there was no obstacle in the way, she might well lose interest. She might look elsewhere for suitable marriage fodder, or she might decide not to marry at all. I was going to have to play this one very carefully; Nedda Speer was an opportunity I couldn't let get away. If I handled it right, I'd have it all.

Even the Duprée chair.

Monday morning everyone was walking around in a trance. They'd had all day Sunday to absorb the fact that their fearless leader was no longer with them, and now they were beginning to wonder what that meant in terms of their own lives. Robin Coulter, for instance, glared at me with open dislike. Without Amos Speer to say go, she was wondering if she'd still be attending the Mercer auction next month.

But Peg McAllister was actually trembling when I talked to her. “It's as if someone had attacked
me
, Earl,” she explained. “Amos Speer and I were a team for thirty-four years. Now I've got this big hole in my life.”

“I'm sorry, Peg. It must be harder for you than the rest of us.”

“Thirty-four years! I've never worked for anyone but Amos Speer. I feel cut adrift.”

I looked at her curiously. “You were actually fond of him, weren't you, Peg?”

She shrugged her shoulders. “When you spend your entire adult life working with the same person, you reach a point where fondness doesn't even enter into it anymore. I was used to him. He was part of my life.” She paused. “He was
essential
.”

Peg meant essential to her life, but I couldn't help thinking we'd soon see just how essential Amos Speer was. I didn't think he'd be all that hard to replace.

Speer's office had been taken over by the police, who were evidently not buying the prowler theory. We were being called in one at a time, and when my turn came a subdued June Murray ushered me into the inner sanctum.

“Earl Sommers, Lieutenant. Lieutenant D'Elia.” Duh-LEEuh. June completely ignored another man in the room. He was leaning against the wall, arms crossed over his chest, hugging himself. When June left the Lieutenant introduced him as Sergeant Pollock. Pollock inclined his head a quarter of an inch by way of acknowledgment but said nothing.

If it hadn't been for his name, I'd have thought D'Elia was Irish—stocky, sandy-haired, clear blue eyes. We shook hands over Amos Speer's desk. D'Elia motioned me to a chair and asked for my home address.

Then he said, “Let's get the nasty part out of the way first, Mr. Sommers. Where were you at two o'clock Saturday afternoon?”

“Here. Working.” Two o'clock—about the time my stomach had started growling while I was waiting for Wightman to leave. I'd seen Charlie get into a cab a little before eleven. What had he been doing that took three hours? “You don't think it was a burglar Speer walked in on, then.”

“We don't know what to think yet,” the Lieutenant said. “But we have to check everybody. Do you have a key to the gallery or do you check in with a guard?”

“Check in with the guard. Even Mr. Speer had to check in—the insurance company insisted on it.”

D'Elia nodded. “The guard keeps records of everyone coming in and going out?”

“Yes.”

“Save me a little time. When did you check in?”

“I actually checked in twice. The first time was, oh, around ten o'clock. Then I remembered I'd left a file at home that I needed and went back for it. I got back here about an hour later.”

“Anyone else working Saturday?”

“Leonard Wightman. He was already here when I checked in the first time, and we left together. About five o'clock.”

“Did either of you go out for lunch?”

“No. I brought a sandwich with me.” Might sound funny if I hadn't.

“You're sure Wightman didn't go out?”

“I'd have heard his door. His office is near mine. But the security guard's records will tell you whether he stayed in or not.”

D'Elia paused. Then: “Is there a way of getting out of this building without being spotted by a guard?”

“None. It's tight as a drum.” Then his implication hit me. “What are you saying? That Wightman or I sneaked out—”

“Relax, Mr. Sommers. We're still grasping at straws at this stage. You're one straw. The last person I talked to is another straw. The person I talk to next will be still another. We have to check everything.”