Judas Cat (13 page)

Maude was coming in from lunch. He waved her away and continued to smoke his cigarette thoughtfully. What could he say about the old man that would be the truth? Altman wanted the coroner’s report published. The reason was obvious. He wanted any suspicions about Mattson’s death allayed. He would like a nice syrupy story that would make it stick. Alex pulled the sheet out of the typewriter and threw it in the waste basket. He stuck his notes in his pocket. Taking the coroner’s report, he went out to Maude’s desk and gave it to her. “You can run this,” he said, “verbatim on the front page.”

“All right, if you say so,” she said. “Where’s the story?”

“There isn’t any story. When I’ve got one I’ll give it to you.”

“You can say something, Alex.”

“What can I say? That the old man died in his sleep? He didn’t. More drivel about Addison?”

“Now you listen to me, Alex Whiting. We’ve had enough phone calls here this morning to last us a year. People want an explanation in tomorrow’s paper.”

“Maude, if I had an explanation, I’d give it to them. Altman wants me to give an explanation, too. He wants me to say the old man died a natural death, all’s right with the world. It isn’t. But at the same time it isn’t right to fill the page with a lot of suspicions I can’t prove. We’ll run the report. That’s what he wants, but the fact that we make no comment on it will tell my story the way I want it told for now.”

“All right, Alex. But why didn’t you say that this morning? I’ve saved you space. What am I going to put in it?”

“I’ll get you the doggoned ‘library jottings’.” He stopped at the door and called back: “What kind of calls came in, Maudie?”

“I can tell you when Andy bought his last pair of shoes, when he got a haircut, when he got his glasses changed. Old lady Liston wanted to know if the cat was killed humanely. She’s on another rampage. We’re doing a story for her on her Mongrel Haven.”

Glasses, Alex thought. He had not seen any at the house or in the workshop. “Anything else, Maudie?”

“Tom Ferguson wants to loan you a book on how to detect a criminal.”

“Nuts,” he said, but he was grinning when he left the office.

He could remember the smell of the library since he had borrowed his first book. No matter how many new books had been added there were always enough old ones to smell that way. It was like opening an old trunk. Miss Woods gave him a quick, vanishing smile. “I guess we shouldn’t have printed that letter last week,” he said. “Dad wouldn’t have done it. Sometimes my sense of humor is a little perverse.”

“A participle is a very easy thing to make a mistake on, Alex,” she said. “I found one the other day in George Eliot.”

She had looked for them, too, he thought. “I know, Miss Woods.”

“And I remember one in
Time
magazine and you know how literate they are.”

“Very.”

“And newspaper stories are full of them.”

“I apologize for printing the letter,” he said.

“Very well, Alex. But you don’t need to print the apology.”

“No ma’m.”

“What can I give you?”

“‘Library jottings,’” he said, “and I’d like to look at your latest
Who’s Who,
if I may.” He took the book to a table near the window and opened it to Henry Addison. Born in Webber, Massachusetts in 1859, one of two children. It listed his clubs, business affiliations and philanthropic interests. Alex copied it all into his notebook and closed the big book. What good it would do him, he had no idea. Certainly it brought him no closer to a reason for a friendship between the famous man and old Andy. Someone was mowing the grass in the town square. The smell drifted in on the hot wind. He returned the book to Miss Woods. She had her column ready for him. It had been neatly typed, waiting in her drawer for his apology.

“Thank you, ma’m. Do you know if there’s any way I could trace the stories on the paintings of a French artist, Pissarro. Where each one is, when it was purchased, where?”

“I should think I could find out from the National Galleries. I’d be glad to try, Alex.”

“Would you, Miss Woods? I’d appreciate it.”

“I can send a wire if you want me to.”

“Maybe that would be best. I’ll pay you whatever it costs.” He pocketed the jottings. “Thank you, ma’m.”

“Alex, is it true Doctor Barnard’s place was vandalized because he was helping you on Andy Mattson?”

Out already, he thought. “It was broken into this morning. We’re not sure why, yet.”

Downstairs in the town clerk’s office, he learned that the 1933 property tax had been paid by money order. The return address was 3467 Paula Ave., Chicago. He wrote it down. “Really going after this thing, aren’t you, Alex?” the clerk said, wiping the sweat from his face.

“Trying to get a history on the old man. It’s like pulling teeth. You should have a record of the deed on that property, shouldn’t you?”

“I was afraid you’d ask for that. The danged vaults are like an oven. I’d like to stick Altman in there and let him fry for a while.” The clerk was gone a few moments. He returned with a filing box and a smear of dust on his clean shirt.

“I’m sorry,” Alex said. He went over the dusty papers. The property had been deeded to Mattson by Michael Turnsby and notarized in Chicago. Mrs. Barnard had mentioned an agent, but there was no indication on the record that one had been consulted. It seemed reasonable to assume that Andy might have dealt directly with Turnsby. Hillside was a logical place for Andy to come if he intended to make toys, but why was he so secretive about it, and where had he known Turnsby? Or had he merely answered an advertisement of the property in a Chicago paper? Alex jotted down the dates of the deed and thanked the clerk. “Ever talk with the old man?”

“Nope. He wasn’t one for talking much. Just pushed his cash through the window and waited for a receipt.”

“Not even complaints about that goldenrod next to his place?”

“Nope. I don’t think he had any allergies except people.”

Waterman was not in the station when Alex went around to that wing. Gilbert said he had gone over to Mattson’s house to look for prints on his way to lunch. Alex returned to the office. The speed with which Maude snatched the librarian’s copy from him and ran it back to the composing room made him feel guilty. The one busy day in the week at the plant and he was walking around in a blue fog. He went back to the plant himself. His father and Joan were proofreading the galleys. “Is there anything I can do?” he asked.

“Just do what you’re doing,” Maude said. “But do it some place else.”

Joan looked up at him and smiled. His father winked at him. As indispensable as the fifth wheel, he thought. But he did have work to do. He went into the office and called the Addison Industries at Riverdale. He could see George Addison at three o’clock.

A
S HE CLIMBED THE
steps of the main office of the Addison Industries, he noticed the date on the foundation stone of the massive brick building, 1895. That was the real beginning of Riverdale. Before that it had probably been a lazy village like Hillside. In fifty-three years it had sprawled and tumbled over thousands of acres, attracting workers from all over the country, and contributing industries, like the tannery and the woolen mill. And what affected one, affected all of them, and all the people in the town.

At the information desk on the first floor he waited while someone came from Addison’s office to get him. He looked at the floor directory—Advertising department, 2nd floor, north; Accounting, 3rd floor, south; George Addison, 2nd floor; George Addison, Jr., 2nd floor; Henry Addison estate, 5th floor, north. … He looked from the directory to a huge map of the United States, marked with the various plants of the company and subsidiary industries, main plants in New Bedford, Wilkes-Barre, Riverdale, Chicago, Denver, Los Angeles …

“Mr. Whiting?” a boy said.

Alex followed him up the steps to the second floor and through row after row of desks. There was the sound of business machines and typewriters, and the rumble of many voices telephoning, dictating, gossiping … invoice department, sales department, export department. The executive offices were partitioned off by half-wood, half-glass panels. George Addison arose and shook hands with him across the desk. His secretary picked up her book and left the office.

“I presume you want to see me about Andrew Mattson,” Addison said, settling back in his chair and motioning Alex to one.

“Yes. I thought with the friendship between your father and him, you might be able to tell us something about him”

Addison was a pleasant-faced man—sixty, maybe. His hair was thin and greying. He had taken off his glasses when Alex came in. If he had met him on the street, Alex thought, he would not have known him from a barber, a pharmacist, a bookkeeper.

“Your mayor called me yesterday,” Addison said. “I guess it was about time for Mattson to die. Not many of us live that long, eh?”

“Not many,” Alex agreed.

“I never met the old man myself,” Addison said. “My father was very fond of him, had a great respect for him.”

“Why?”

Addison scratched his nose. “By gosh, when you put it directly, I don’t know. We never talked much about him. It was one of those things I took for granted. I remember father saying he was getting queer. But I didn’t ask him to explain. There were times when we thought he was getting a little queer himself. You know how old men are. Father was eighty-nine when he went, you know.”

“Yes,” Alex said. “He died last spring, didn’t he?”

“April.”

“Do you know if Mattson had any relatives?” Alex asked.

“Altman—that’s your mayor’s name, isn’t it?—asked me that yesterday. To tell you the truth, I don’t know a thing about him. I think my father must have come to know him away before my time. As I said, it was something we took for granted. Father had many old cronies. I recall having heard that Mattson loaned him money once.”

“That seems kind of strange to think about now,” Alex said, “when you think of the size of Addison and the simplicity of Mattson’s four rooms.”

“My father was a very simple man, for all his acumen,” Addison said.

“Did you ever work together?” Alex asked, stepping over his own lack of tact in using the word “simplicity.”

“Possibly. It’s quite possible. When father got older, he became active in a lot of pet projects, mathematical theories, mostly. He had a very keen mind for an old man. I’ve always had the notion that’s what he and Mattson talked about. It might have been my imagination, of course, but I could just see the two old boys going at it hammer and tongs. Before he went to see him, father would be busy for a week, very secretive about it all, but I saw some of his papers once—problems that would choke a horse.”

“Did you ever have the notion they might be building something?”

“No. That never occurred to me. Why?”

“No particular reason,” Alex said. “Andy had the reputation of being handy at carpentry and the like. Your father was quite an art collector at one time, I believe. I saw the collection when I was at the University. I think there’s a valuable painting in Mattson’s house—a Pissarro. I remember his work in the Addison Collection. I wondered if we could get any of their story out of that.”

Addison was thoughtful. “I’d like to make inquiries. Let me talk to the curator and let you know.” He wrote the name of the artist on a pad. “I presume the house will be impounded?”

Alex thought that it was likely.

“By the way, Mattson wasn’t broke, was he?”

“No. There was nearly two hundred dollars in cash in the house.”

Addison smiled. “This might amuse you,” he said. “My father provided twenty-five thousand dollars for him in his will, but the estate doesn’t go to probate until this week when the court convenes. Well, I thought about the old man one day and wondered if he might be hard up. I think father used to take him something now and then. So I wrote to him advising him of the legacy and offering to send him something if he needed it. He wrote me a note that would have curled my hair as to what he thought of my charity. He told me to give the twenty-five thousand to an organization for displaced persons. What do you think of that for a man of ninety-two?”

“I would be the last person in the world to underestimate Andrew Mattson,” Alex said.

“Just so,” Addison said. “I thought of the letter yesterday when Altman called. I had no intention of so disposing of the money before that, of course. In fact, I could not have done it until the will was settled. If no heirs to Mattson show up, I’ll turn the letter over to the state.”

“I wonder if the twenty-five thousand will turn up any heirs,” Alex said. Addison had not answered his direct question on the subject a moment before.

“If there are any, that will do it,” said Addison. “As they say on the radio, it works every time.”

“Do many people know of the bequest?” Alex asked.

Addison put on his glasses. “No. There was no secret about it, but the provisions of a will aren’t generally known before an estate goes to probate. Mattson might have spoken of it, but I doubt that from what I’ve heard of him.”

“So do I,” Alex said. “I guess there isn’t much else, Mr. Addison.”

“I’m afraid you don’t know much more about him than when you came.” He got up and came around the desk to walk to the door with Alex. “I wish I could be of more help.”

“Maybe we should let the old boy rest in peace,” Alex said. “But as Chief Waterman says, we don’t know enough about him to put on his tombstone.”

“Altman said his cat had scratched him up. That was a terrible thing. Cats are strange animals. I wouldn’t have one in the house, myself. They belong in a barn yard.”

“Well, thank you for your time, Mr. Addison.”

“Not at all. Thank you for coming up. By the way, if money’s needed for the funeral, tell whoever’s handling it, I’ll take care of it.”

The two men shook hands, and as though it were a signal, the boy was at his side to guide Alex out of the office.

It had been a well conducted interview, he thought grimly. Addison had conducted it. There were things he might have asked directly, for example, the business with Altman and Hershel, but he had no one’s word for that except Lou Ivantic. Hershel had not mentioned it to Waterman either. He drove to the Riverdale County Museum. It was called a museum, but it might well have been called a curiosity shop, having everything from an enormous collection of Indian arrowheads to pewter mugs said to have come over with the early French explorers. The old curator was an authority on everything that pre-dated 1900. Alex gave him the service ribbon and button he had taken from Andy’s suitcase, and waited while he checked it in a catalogue he himself had compiled.