Partners In Crime (20 page)

They stared at T.S. expectantly.

"Well, it's a theory," he conceded.

"The question being…" Here, Mrs. Crisp
paused dramatically and pointed to the ceiling. "Who is the
accomplice?"

"I know," Effie said importantly.

"You know?" Mrs. Crisp eyed her co-worker
suspiciously. "Or you're guessing?"

"It's an educated guess," the other woman
retorted angrily. "Let me just ask you—who keeps the financial
records around here?" When no one replied, she continued. "And
who's in charge of auditing key accounts? And who raises such a
stink whenever anyone wants to look at them. Answer me that?" She
stared at T.S. but he wasn't about to fell into her trap.

He sighed. "Who, Effie?" He'd give her that
much.

"Mr. Stanley Sinclair, that's who." She
announced this triumphantly and Mrs. Crisp looked at her in
admiration.

"Well," Mrs. Crisp said. "Who would have
thought it? It doesn't surprise me a bit, though. I’ve never liked
the looks of him. Got a face like a rat and never says thank you
when he cashes a check."

"Take my word for it, Mr. Hubbert. He's the
one." Effie nodded her head wisely and crossed her plump arms over
an abundant bosom. "I'm going to tell that Lieutenant Abromowitz
the very same thing the next time he shows his face around here,"
she declared. "But I wanted to give you a head start. On account of
I'm betting on you to figure it out before the police."

"I appreciate the tip," T.S. said
graciously. "Can you tell me anything else unusual about Mr.
Boswell or Mr. Cheswick these past few days? Anything you may have
heard from other employees? About the dead men, I mean," he
hastened to add.

"You mean like Mr. Boswell buying the
diamond necklace?" Mrs. Crisp said very self-importantly.

"Oh, ho—you didn't tell me that," Effie
accused her.

"Some things are private between a man and a
woman." The teller crossed her arms primly and perched in a
superior manner on the edge of her chair.

"Now, Mrs. Crisp," T.S. said soothingly.
"What diamond necklace? Is this firsthand knowledge you have?"

"Of course it is. I saw it with my own
eyes." She shot Effie a triumphant look.

"You mean," T.S. hazarded a guess, "Mr.
Boswell showed you this necklace?"

"He certainly did. On Thursday. He came down
to the teller's window and cashed a large check. I'm not at liberty
to say how large, but it was for $5,000."

Effie was obviously impressed. "Imagine!"
she said, eyes wide.

"I said to Mr. Boswell, "What are you
doing—running away from home?' And Mr. Boswell, who always stops to
make a joke or two, not like some people I know who were recently
murdered, said that he was on his way to buy a very special present
for a very special lady. When he returned, he came right by the
tellers' windows and showed it to me. He was very excited. Just
like a little boy. He kept asking me if I thought the lady would
like it. I told him I thought Mrs. Boswell would love it and he
started laughing and clapped me on the back and told me what a good
sense of humor I had." She sat back proudly after this speech, as
if waiting for Effie and T.S. to agree that she did, indeed, have a
good sense of humor.

"Hmmph. You might have told me that before."
Effie crossed her arms and turned away from Mrs. Crisp. "Of course,
what's that got to do with embezzling?" She was upset that she'd
been bested at providing T.S. with juicy information and she
thought hard to come up with something better. "It so happens," she
said importantly, "that I know an interesting piece of news
myself."

Mrs. Crisp was clearly skeptical and merely
snorted.

"It may not pertain directly to the
murders," Effie acknowledged, "but you should know about it anyway,
Mr. Hubbert."

T.S. suppressed a sigh and asked, "What is
it, Effie?"

"There's going to be big trouble between
Anne Marie and Quincy, I'll tell you that right now. They were
fighting like cats and dogs in the ladies' room. I was in one of
the stalls and they didn't know I was there, so I just kept real
quiet. No sense making things worse, I always say. Quincy tells
Anne Marie she's not working hard enough, Anne Marie tells Quincy
to mind her own business. Then Quincy tells Anne Marie she's
putting on airs and Anne Marie lets on as how she thinks Quincy
dresses like a cow."

"A cow?" Mrs. Crisp asked incredulously.
"There's going to be trouble now."

"I just think Quincy is jealous because of
all the attention Anne Marie was getting from certain partners, may
they rest in peace."

"Now that's not true and you know it,
Effie," Mrs. Crisp protested. "Anne Marie has never believed in
going out of her station, even as a young girl, when so many of
those other women let themselves be fooled by the young men, no
names mentioned. I was always happy just to get a man like Mr.
Crisp, of course. Anne Marie would never have a thing to do with a
partner."

Effie sat back grumpily. "Maybe. But you
have to admit that Anne Marie makes no secret about getting a
bigger salary than Quincy. And that's what Quincy really hates.
Mark my words, there's trouble ahead between those two."

Great. It was just what T.S. needed. A cat
fight on the banking floor. "Well, thanks for the warning, Effie."
He could see that he would get no other useful information from the
two of them and stood up politely. "Thank you, ladies, for stopping
by."

"Thank you!" they echoed in chorus.

"It's so exciting to be part of an
investigation," Mrs. Crisp breathed.

"Let's keep this under our hats for now.
Shall we?" T.S. suggested as he showed them to the door.

"But of course," Effie declared, as Mrs.
Crisp murmured her agreement. They chatted quietly between
themselves until they turned the corner.

T.S. stared after them and then could not
resist poking his head into the department's main entrance room.
Just as he suspected, Effie and Mrs. Crisp were racing toward the
elevators, elbowing each other in matronly haste, both eager to be
the first to spread the news.

Jimmy Ruffino, partners' valet, appeared
promptly in the doorway less than five minutes after T.S. called
down for him. He was extremely pale and looked frightened.

"Is there something wrong, Mr. Hubbert?" he
asked anxiously, twisting his hands in worry. "Have I made some
mistake?"

Good heavens, being a valet to the partners
certainly bred subservience. "No, not at all, Jimmy. I just wanted
to talk to you."

The man crept timidly into the room and sat
on the very edge of the visitor's chair, as if he might get an
electric shock if he were to actually sit back and relax. "Talk to
me about what?"

"A couple of things. I'm looking into the
murders for Mr. Hale, you know." T.S. looked him over. "Are you
feeling well?"

"Certainly, sir, it's just that… well." He
shifted uncomfortably in the chair. "I had to identify Mr.
Boswell's body this afternoon. It was a bit upsetting."

"Of course. I'd forgotten. I'm surprised you
came back to work."

"I thought Mr. Hale might need me. And I
wanted to take what I'd seen off my mind, sir, if you know what I
mean."

"I can understand that. It must have been
awful."

"A terrible sight." Jimmy shook his head.
"It looked like Mr. Boswell, but it didn't, if you know what I
mean. Puffy and pale." He shuddered. "I'd rather not discuss it, if
you don't mind, sir."

"Of course not. I didn't call you up here
for that anyway. I thought you might be able to help me in my
inquiries."

"If I can."

"Mr. Dorfen says that Cheswick and Boswell
were arguing over the past few weeks. He overheard a few intriguing
things and said you'd interrupted one fight."

Jimmy nodded. "Yes, I heard the yelling. It
was around lunch time and they were the only ones in the Partners'
Room. It was about a week ago, I guess. I went in on purpose." He
shook his head. "I've never heard such behavior in there. It was
most irregular."

"Did you hear what they were yelling about?"
T.S. asked.

"I'm afraid not, Mr. Hubbert, sir. I got the
impression it was, well..." He colored slightly and reached up to
loosen his tie. "Well, actually it seemed to be about a lady."

"A lady."

"Maybe. I could be mistaken."

"Why do you think that it was about a
lady?"

"Mr. Cheswick was yelling something like,
'It's her, I tell you. It's her.' Then I heard Mr. Boswell laugh
and Mr. Cheswick got even angrier."

T.S. considered this information. Could a
woman link the two of them in some way? He tapped his pen against
the desk, then stopped abruptly. Had they been arguing about Lilah
Cheswick? Had Cheswick heard the rumors and confronted Boswell
about his wife? Had Boswell denied them? Were the rumors true?

"Have you told the police any of this?" T.S.
asked.

"No one's inquired of me, sir. Should I
volunteer?"

T.S. thought of Abromowitz and shook his
head. "No. They say they know what they're doing." T.S. stared at
Jimmy thoughtfully. He remembered his name on the late check-out
list. "What time did you leave the night Mr. Cheswick died?"

''Right after your party…" he began to say,
then stopped and was silent.

"Right after Mr. Cheswick left the party?"
T.S. prompted.

"No, sir," Jimmy admitted. "I tried to talk
to him about a matter first. It was a mistake. He'd had too much to
drink. I should have waited. But it was the weekend and I was… very
worried about it."

"About your raise?" T.S. asked kindly.

"Yes," Jimmy bowed his head and shuffled his
feet. "He'd refused me earlier but I need the money badly and was
hoping to change his mind. Mona is very ill, you know, and the
bills are killing us. At first, I was going to ask Mr. Boswell to
intercede with Mr. Cheswick on my behalf, but when I went to find
him in the Partners' Room, Mr. Boswell was talking on the phone
with someone. He was angry and I didn't dare interrupt. I saw Mr.
Cheswick come out of the bathroom and start to enter the Partners'
Room. But as soon as he saw Mr. Boswell, Mr. Cheswick stepped
behind a door and started to listen in. He was hiding. Then I
followed him to the hallway outside of the Partners' Room and tried
to talk to him about my raise, but Mr. Cheswick just laughed at me
and walked away."

Poor Jimmy, T.S. thought. To serve a man so
faithfully and then be so completely dismissed during a time of
need. "What happened then?"

"I sat in the dark anteroom for a few
minutes and regained my composure," Jimmy said quietly. "When I
felt able to face things again, I gathered my hat and coat and
left. Mr. Boswell was gone by then and Mr. Cheswick was sitting
alone at his desk." Jimmy sighed. "I went home and told Mona. She
wasn't surprised."

T.S. shook his head sadly. "Thank you,
Jimmy. If you think of anything else, please let me know." The
valet rose and nodded, walking quietly to the door.

"Jimmy," T.S. called out. The valet stopped
and turned back to him. "I'll see what I can do about the
raise."

Jimmy stared at him quietly. "Thank you, Mr.
Hubbert."

It might have been his imagination, but T.S.
thought Jimmy's shoulders rose slightly as he marched out the
door.

T.S. waited at the office until past 6:00
P.M., hoping that Lieutenant Abromowitz might call looking for more
information and give T.S. a chance to ask questions of his own.

When the phone rang in early evening, he had
just finished jotting down his tenth preposterous theory about why
anyone would kill both partners. It was Sheila, calling from home,
her voice breathless.

"Can't talk long, Mr. Hubbert. I'm going out
to dinner in half an hour."

"Did you find anything out?" he asked
anxiously.

"Found everything out." Her voice was
confident and happy. Things must be going well between her and her
husband for a change. "Brian knew the guy who actually took the
call from the Greenport cops."

"Greenport?"

"Yeah. Orient Point's too small to have a
police department. Are you ready for the inside poop?"

T.S. grabbed a pen and a pad of paper.
"Ready."

"Number one, you can bet the murders are
connected."

"Why's that?"

"He was found floating face down in Long
Island Sound. His trousers were unzipped. His fly was open. Catch
my drift? No pun intended."

He did indeed. "What else?"

"He had a dead corsage pinned to his sailing
jacket. They think he was probably drugged first, then thrown
overboard. He was a good swimmer, you know."

"Keep going."

"They found his boat docked at Greenport
this afternoon. It's a twenty-eight-footer. You usually need two
people to sail it, but one person could do it if he knew what he
was doing. No one remembers seeing it come in. There's not too many
people around this time of year. They think it docked in the early,
early morning. There's trains and buses that leave for New York
City not even thirty yards away from the marina, so whoever brought
it in could be there and gone on the early commuter run within
minutes if they timed it right."

"What else?"

"A couple of funny things about the boat.
For one thing, there weren't any signs of a struggle. There's two
berths. One was neatly made. The other was stripped of linen and
pulled down like he'd slept in it, then thrown the linen
overboard."

"Or someone else did."

"Or someone else," she conceded. "But that's
not the weirdest thing."

"What is?"

"They found a half-empty pitcher of
margaritas on the little table in the galley. Two glasses. Both
wiped clean. But they left the pitcher of margaritas just sitting
there. Like on purpose. They wanted it found."