Neal Rafferty New Orleans Mystery #1: The Killing Circle (A Neal Rafferty New Orleans Mystery) (4 page)

“Yes, and before that. They went through school together. But they haven't had much to do with each other for about twenty years.”

“What happened?”

“It had to do with a business deal that didn't work out, at least not for my father.”

“It did for Fleming?”

“Everything works for Fleming.”

“What kind of business deal?”

She flipped her hand indifferently. “Look, why don't you ask Fleming? After all, you're working for him.” She said it like I had warts.

“I will ask him. But just because he's my client doesn't mean I take everything he says as the gospel. There are always two sides, and I'd like to hear Garber's.”

“What's the matter, Mr. Rafferty, don't you trust your client?” She smiled at me.

I didn't answer that. “Would you tell me about the business deal?”

The smile vanished. “Sure,” she said slowly, “I'll tell you. I'd like you to know what a bastard you're working for.”

Well, whatever the motive, I wanted the story.

She stubbed out her cigarette. “About twenty years ago my father heard of a piece of property in Texas, good land for oil speculation. He wanted to buy it. He's not a man to take such long-range gambles and probably wouldn't have been interested if the information hadn't been so good. But he couldn't get a bank loan, since he had already extended himself setting up the bookstore. He must have wanted it badly because he called Carter Fleming and asked him to make the loan personally. They had been friends in college, but they hadn't seen each other socially for some years—the Garber name doesn't rate a listing in the social register.”

She paused. “So, my father called Fleming and asked for enough money to make the down payment and start drilling. Fleming wined and dined him through several business chats at his house and even went with him on a scouting trip to see the land and give his celebrated professional opinion. And he agreed that the probability of oil was high and that it was a first-rate deal. Only when the deal was just about to go through, he called my father and told him that he was having problems with some of his drilling in the Gulf and that it was going to cost him so much that he couldn't afford to make the loan. So my father lost out. He was disappointed, but he accepted it, until he found out that Fleming himself had bought the land. The sale had gone through the day he called with his bad news and apologies.”

“Does Fleming know that your father found out?”

“I wouldn't think so. Not from my father, anyway. It's not my father's style to lower himself and have a hopeless confrontation with a man like Fleming.” She was quietly enraged. “That was when Fleming started telling anyone who would listen what a great artist Stanley Garber is. Fleming isn't concerned about my father He couldn't care less. He probably doesn't even care about his books, just what they're worth.”

I nodded. I felt sympathetic and I hoped she could tell because she wasn't going to like the next question. “How long has your father been missing, Catherine?”

“Who says he's missing?” she snapped.

“My intuition. I can tell things aren't right here.”

She tried to hold on to her anger, but she couldn't. With the belligerence gone, she had become vulnerable. Her mouth trembled. She was controlling herself, but just barely. I lit a cigarette and handed it to her. The eyes that turned toward me when she took it were wounded and frightened. I didn't want to crowd her just now so I went back to my post against the desk and waited.

When she spoke, she whispered. “Mother. What am I going to do? She's so sick and he's been gone for a week.” I thought she would cry now, but with another effort her control seemed firm.

“Why haven't you gone to the police?”

She shook her head. “She won't. She says she's sure there's a good reason why he left. I disagree—he's never gone anywhere without telling us where he was going. She says we should wait.”

The corner of the desk felt like it had grown into me. I moved to the center of the room. “Any ideas where he might be?” None. “Does he leave often? To buy books?”

“No. Most of his buying is done by order forms.”

“Do you help him with the business?”

“I used to until Mother got sick. Then he hired help.”

I asked her who.

“A woman named Lucy McDermott. But she seems to have disappeared, too.”

That bit of news excited me almost as much as looking at her, but she seemed unmoved. “Is that why your mother won't go to the police? Because she thinks your father and Lucy McDermott have gone off together?”

The anger flooded back, the tide carrying her to the center of the room to confront me. “How dare you . . .”

“Get off that,” I interrupted. “If I'm going to help you, I have to try everything. And I don't believe in coincidences. Now what of it? Is that the reason? Is there even a possibility?”

She looked confused. I thought it was because I said I was going to help her, but the old man would have opted for women liking it when you get tough with them.

“No, no possibility. He wouldn't—he couldn't,” she stammered. And then emphatically, “He wouldn't do that. I know him. And I know Lucy McDermott, too,” she added in that mysterious undertone women get when they talk about other women.

I smiled. “Okay. What happened last Monday when he left?”

“Nothing happened. He went to the store.”

“How do you know he went to the store?”

“He—of course he went to the store. He left early. He said he had work to do before the store opened.”

“Did he mention the Fleming books to you, that he was expecting them?”

“Yes. He was very excited about them, that he was going to handle them. He loves old books.”

“Enough to take them?”

Her face froze unnaturally. She shifted the weight of her body as if she were about to grab me and throw me out. Then she was still. “That's what Fleming thinks, isn't it?”

“It's crossed his mind.”

“It would,” she said bitterly. “My father would never steal anything.”

“I want to take a look at the store.” She didn't look at me or say anything. “Do you have a key?”

Without a word, she left the room. I turned to the desk. There was a single picture of a younger Catherine which hadn't captured her extreme vividness and there was a picture of three Garbers together. Mrs. Garber looked a lot better in it, but there seemed to be an underlying sadness. Maybe it was just because she wasn't smiling. Stanley Garber was smiling broadly, and while his portly looks were nothing more than mediocre, he looked like a pleasant sort of person, if that means anything.

A few minutes later Catherine returned and handed me a key.

“Have you been to the store since Monday?” I asked. She shook her head and said something about not wanting to leave her mother and having called there and at Lucy McDermott's apartment several times. I asked her if her mother was okay.

“She seems to be resting well enough,” she said. I opened the door and started to leave. She stuck a hand out to touch my arm but pulled back quickly. It looked as if something was bothering her and our eyes were locked as I waited expectantly for her to say something. I waited long enough to know that something unusual had happened to me. Leaning forward, I kissed her lightly on the mouth. She didn't return it; she didn't look affronted; she didn't look surprised. She was almost as tall as I am.

5

A Different Kind of Luck

By the time I left the Garber house there were other things on my mind besides Fleming's books. Maybe my motives weren't the purest, but I wanted to find Stanley Garber. It just so happened that was the best way to find the books. Catherine's anger at Fleming and her defense of her father had left an impression on me, to say the least. But it was her mother's refusal to take action that seemed most significant; I couldn't get the idea unstuck from my brain that she was afraid Garber had gone off with Lucy McDermott.

I wasted no time getting down to the French Quarter. Garber's store was in the seven hundred block of Royal Street amidst antique shops and boutiques which lined both sides of the street. The front window of the store had Garber's Rare and Used Books written on it in gold leaf. Books whose pages looked so old and yellow that they would shatter if you tried to turn them were opened and displayed on small easels. Some manuscripts were strewn on the floor of the window, giving the effect of arranged asymmetry.

I opened the door with the key Catherine had given me, and immediately my senses were bombarded. The air was ice cold from an air conditioner that roared at me in the quiet of the room, and in the icy air there was a sickening odor. Faint but unmistakable. I found the light switch. There was a long counter to the back of the room. I looked behind it and found a couple of stacks of books. The rest of the room seemed okay, books on shelves to the ceiling, a bin of art prints. There was a door on the left side of the room. I went through it. Again, cold air, another roaring air conditioner. The light from the other room was enough that I could see that I had found Garber alright. Dead. The smell was bad so I covered my mouth and nose with a handkerchief and tried not to breathe too deeply.

Garber had been shot in the chest. His coat had been buttoned to hide most of the bloodstained shirt. It was a peculiar touch. His arms dangled loosely at his sides and his head hung over the back of the chair in an abnormal way. I looked to see what had kept him from falling. His legs were spread and the knees were braced on the side drawers of the desk. That and the arm rests had kept him in the chain I looked at his face. Death had changed it considerably. He was the same man whose picture was on the desk, but I could no longer tell if he had been a pleasant sort. He was almost completely bald; the fringe around his head was gray. He was a big man and heavier than he was in the picture. He still had on his horn-rimmed glasses, but he was wearing them on his mouth. That didn't fit with the buttoned coat. I turned on the desk lamp to have a look around before I called the police. It would have to be quick; I couldn't take the stench much longer. Books lay everywhere, some on shelves and a lot more stacked on the floor. There was a large work table at the side of the room by a window where books were being bound and repaired. I checked them quickly to see if the William Blake volumes were there. Then I checked the rest of the room. It went fast. The leather-bound books were arranged mostly in groups, some behind glass. Somehow it had been easy enough to guess that Fleming's books wouldn't be there. I went back to the desk. There were more books on it, but not Fleming's. Under one stack near the telephone I saw part of a notepad. I pulled it all the way out. Two names were written on it, Fleming and Robert André. Both names had been traced over as if Garber had been on the phone when he had written them and had continued to doodle while he talked. I slipped the pad into my coat pocket.

It was time to leave—I was getting sick to my stomach. I went back to the first room, closing the door behind me but now that it had been opened, I couldn't get away from the smell. I didn't expect to find them in here either, but I checked the room for the books. As I went over the shelves, I noticed that a section of shelves behind the counter to the right was out of alignment. I pushed on it. The shelves had been built right over a door that opened into a long narrow room running parallel with the front room. I pulled the string on the bare bulb hanging in the center More shelves, but these were filled with office supplies, order forms, catalogs, and ledgers. I pulled out the accounts payable books. Lucy McDermott's name and a Madison Street address were listed. She was certainly being paid well, three hundred dollars every Saturday for nearly a year. I put the book back and went over to the file cabinets, but there was nothing of interest, just copies of orders, brochures, and invoices. There was a toilet and sink at the end of the room. I turned the light off and closed the door securely. Shut tightly you couldn't tell there was a door there unless you happened to spot the knob in the conglomeration of books.

I closed the front door to Garber's and locked it. Garber's store was on the cornet On the other side a bricked carriageway that led to an open courtyard separated the bookstore from Royal Theatrical Supplies. The closed sign had already been hung in the door, but some lights were on and I could see a woman moving around, hanging costumes on a rack and putting things in order. I knocked. She came to the door and gave me an engaging smile while she jiggled the closed sign up and down.

I gestured at the bookstore. “Could you tell me when you last saw Stanley Garber?” I asked loudly.

She looked at me intensely through the glass and then unlocked the door. She was about forty and attractive, in a stagey way, her large features heavily made-up, her short hair dyed jet black. She wore a deeply fringed black shawl embroidered with bright colors.

“I was wondering when someone would finally come.” Her low, silky voice undulated like the fringe on the shawl. “I don't think anyone has been over there for a week.”

“You're not sure?”

She pointed at the air conditioner protruding from high up the brick wall of the carriageway. “He usually turns the air conditioner off at night, and I haven't seen any lights.”

“When last week did you see him?”

“Last Monday morning. He was standing in the doorway talking to a young man when I opened up.”

“Do you know who that was? Could you tell me what he looked like?”

“No. He had his back to me.”

“How do you know he was young?”

She smiled at me indulgently. “I could tell by his stance, the way he held himself. I notice things like that.”

I looked past her, into the shop, at the costumes and Styrofoam heads with wigs on them. My eyes came back to her jet black hair. I hadn't realized she was wearing a wig. “Of course,” I said. “Could you tell me anything else you noticed about him?”

“Sure. He was tall, taller than Garber. He had on blue jeans and a T-shirt. His hair was long, shapeless, brownish. He was holding a box. Would you mind coming inside? I'd rather not air condition the street.”