Seven Kinds of Death (15 page)

“Tootles doesn’t know a thing about that,” he finished. “I told Max I didn’t see any reason for her to find out.”

Constance glanced at him, then faced the road again. “You remember ‘The Gift of the Magi’? You must have read it in school.”

He blinked and shook his head. “Give me a hint.”

“Oh, it’s a lovely little story about a man and wife very much in love but too poor to buy each other Christmas presents.”

“Gotcha,” he said then. “The long gorgeous hair, the special comb or brush or something.”

She nodded. “That’s it. Max and Tootles are reenacting it, aren’t they?”

“You wouldn’t want to give me a little more than that, would you?” His voice was very dry.

She laughed softly. “Tootles messed up that artwork herself, Charlie. She had no intention of taking it on the road because she knew if any critics went to see it, they would pan most of it. She knows very well that she hasn’t done work worth showing for many years. But Max doesn’t know that, and she can’t bear for him to find out she’s not the genius he sees. She needs his respect, his adulation even, and this show could have blown it away, or so she thinks. That’s what she was so desperate to talk about, it explains the note on the invitation, the phone call, the problem she couldn’t see a solution to. Then she did, I’m afraid.”

He whistled, thought it over, and finally nodded. “I think you’ve got it. She could have been working on it ever since they started boxing up the stuff. They boxed it up by day and she messed it up at night. That explains the nutty screws. She loosened them enough to draw attention to them, not because she ran out of time. I bet Palance was supposed to find the mess on Monday when he got back from his camping trip. Wow, thumbscrews wouldn’t make her own up to it, would they?”

“Are you kidding?”

He looked at her profile, then back to the road. That was what she had on Tootles, and it was strong enough to make Tootles react. The gift of the magi, he thought, nodding at the appropriateness. Max couldn’t tell Tootles he had arranged the tour, and she couldn’t tell him that her work didn’t deserve a tour. Those poor stupid jerks, he added almost savagely.

“You know we can’t keep that under the table,” he said after another few seconds of thought. “It makes a difference, after all, in how we plot a murder. A whole block of time doesn’t need factoring in any more.”

“I know,” Constance admitted. “But I don’t know anything for certain. I didn’t actually ask Tootles, and she didn’t actually say she had done it.”

“How careful were you not to put it into words?” he asked, looking at her profile again. He saw a very small suggestion of a smile twitch her lips and vanish almost instantly.

“I don’t think I know what you mean,” she said, and turned off the road to the access street for their motel. She looked at him with a bright gaze of absolute innocence.

Her eyes widened then and she grimaced. “Damn,” she said. “Just damn. You know what we did? We left our suitcase in the sheriff’s car. My new clothes. Your toothbrush. Everything we took to New York, or bought there.”

“I imagine he’ll be around,” Charlie said. “Let’s order a pot of coffee up in our room and talk our way through this whole mess. You game for that?”

For the next hour or so, they talked, paced their room, drank coffee, made notes, talked some more.

Finally Charlie tossed down the pencil he had been chewing, and went to the window. The coffee pot was empty; his stomach was rebelling, probably not from the coffee as much as from that sandwich earlier instead of a decent lunch, he thought morosely. It was four in the afternoon.

“It’s a bigger mess than ever,” he said, watching a yellow station wagon maneuver in the parking lot; the driver had made too wide a turn and was backing up ineptly now. Charlie bet with himself that after another try or two the driver would give up on that spot and find a different one.

“Well, maybe not a bigger mess,” Constance said, as frustrated as he was, “but certainly a different mess. It seems to me that Tootles must be completely out of the running as a suspect.”

“And Max is in,” Charlie said, facing her again. “If Musselman found something on him, or the condo, he sure is in.”

Constance was digging around her in her purse; she brought out a notebook and flipped through it, then stopped. He watched silently. “Some questions I asked myself a day or so ago,” she said. “Like this one: How long would it have taken to mess up the artwork? Now it doesn’t matter if that gets answered or not; it doesn’t make any difference since she had all the time in the world. And the mystery of where Tootles went, that’s another question I can redline. I suppose directly to the barn where she loosened the screws, and finished up whatever she felt still needed doing. Hm.”

Charlie waited but when it seemed she was not going to comment beyond that uninformative
hmm
, he cleared his throat. “Well?”

She glanced at him, then back to her notebook. “Why didn’t Paul stay with Victoria? That’s so sad, and such a waste!”

“Well?” he asked. “You have an answer, don’t you?”

“Not one you’ll like,” she said. “You know when I was at the library, it was to look up Paul. I told you that, didn’t I?”

“So?”

“Let me just read the cold hard dates of various things in his life,” she said, and started to flip through the notebook again. “Here it is. In 1972, the year Tootles’s lover died in Vietnam and
Seven Kinds of Death
was a success, Paul had his first success, about ten months after hers. His first articles were very well received, and his wife left him. In 1975, he won a Chicago literary prize for his first book, and got the job he still has. Not the Pulitzer, but prestigious. Two months later, his father had a fatal stroke. In 1980 his second book was a hit, bigger than the first, and his fiancee died. In 1984 he met Victoria and started the new book that’s won so many awards now.”

Charlie was staring at her in fascination and disbelief. “You don’t buy that there’s a connection, I hope,” he said when she became silent.

“It doesn’t matter one way or the other. It’s what he believes. What Tootles believes.”

“Right,” he said, not quite snapping. “I have a question. How are you going to link all that stuff with Victoria’s murder?”

“That’s a good one,” she said and wrote it down. She looked at him with an almost vacant gaze. “Here’s another one. Who put that letter in Paul’s room for Victoria?”

“Inside job, all right,” Charlie said morosely. “Everyone, all the help, deny knowing anything about it.” He frowned. “We don’t even know if the note the police found was the same one she received that day.”

Constance nodded. “The big question is where did Victoria Leeds go that afternoon? With whom?”

Charlie turned back to the window broodingly. The inept driver was gone, the station wagon safely parked in a different slot.

“You haven’t said anything about how Musselman died,” Constance said after a few seconds.

“There’s nothing to say. Just another death, another dollar, another day. He left his Washington office, and drove out to the condo that afternoon without mentioning to anyone where he was going or why. No one gave it a thought. Next, the watchman found his body at the base of Apple-gate. It was raining hard. Period.”

She was studying his back; something was very wrong, but she could get nothing more than that. Something was wrong. He was too stiff, too distant. Sometimes a case did that to him, but not when there were still so many things that could be learned. This case was still poised at an intersection; it could take off in half a dozen different directions, not a cause for despair just yet.

Usually she could rely on her intuition to guide her in a situation that could become sticky; this time she couldn’t because she had not yet told him what she was planning, and there was no way she could tell him that, not yet. He had gone so stiff at her recitation of Paul Volte’s career, and his tragedies; that was merely a warm-up, she was afraid, of his reaction when she finally came to tell him everything. First she had to sort it through by herself, find the exactly right way to bring it up, the exactly right nuance of voice, mannerism, attitude. Meanwhile, he was distant, cool, aware that something was missing, something was wrong, and unable any more than she was to do anything about it yet.

Charlie was thinking that if he had met her with a question as soon as possible this afternoon, if he had just said outright,
what the hell are you up to?
then she would have said
what do you mean?
and he would have said he’d had a talk with Tootles, and maybe he could have mentioned her appeal for him to silence Constance, take her away. Then she would have told him what she was planning, and everything would be out, aboveboard, but now, hours later, it was becoming more impossible by the second to discuss any of that. He couldn’t explain Tootles to himself, much less to anyone else, even Constance. He could think of no way to bring up that dizzy episode with Tootles in the barn, to try to explain what he had said, what she had said, because now it would sound as if they had met to discuss Constance. Somehow the whole thing had a repellent feel to it that had not been there before. Good old Tootles, he thought sourly. He swung around then to say, “Let’s give the sheriff a call, see if he’s free to be wined and dined, and if he’ll let us have a go at everything he’s gathered to date, starting with Musselman. I keep feeling that we’re missing something, and not just our suitcases. Maybe he didn’t miss whatever it is even if he isn’t aware of it yet.”

SIXTEEN

The sheriff’s office was
forty-seven miles away, too far, he said, for them to drive and then have to drive back. He met them halfway in the little resort village of Potomac Acres. It was a pleasant drive through gentle woods alternating with lush farmland. They met the sheriff at a restaurant. He had brought a packet that included copies of the various reports he had gathered so far. No point in sitting in his office, which was not all that comfortable, he said almost abashedly; they could read the stuff back in their motel. He would have delivered the same packet to them the next day, he said, if they had asked. No one mentioned the fact that the state investigators had practically told him to go fishing, stay out of the way, get lost, let the big boys handle all this.

At their table, waiting for service, they talked about the weather, which had become hotter and muggier, a storm in the making, he said. Not until after they had placed their orders, and finally were eating, did he mention that he had started the paper hunt for any possible irregularity about the condo financing or building codes, everything he could put together.

“We’re being quiet about it,” he said over a dinner of shish kebab. “What with the shaky S and L’s, and people scared about their own banks the way they are, we don’t want any more uneasiness than necessary.” The fact that he was doing this without authorization, and without the knowledge of the state investigators, was not mentioned. “The old man’s clean as a whistle from all accounts,” he said. “John Buell is an unknown factor, he’s not even a full partner, just an employee. We’re running a routine credit check on him, but we don’t expect much to turn up. Back to the old man, never any company or personal debts that didn’t get paid on time, no financial troubles that anyone knows about, no trouble with employees, never a complaint about shoddy construction, nothing. I doubt we’ll find anything worth toting home.”

Charlie sipped his retsina and rolled the pine-pitch flavor around in his mouth; there seemed to be no liquid, just the biting taste of fumes. Constance had said no very firmly at the wine choice, and had settled for a red wine that probably was okay, he thought, but not really authentic. On the other hand, her moussaka looked better than his lamb grill. He drank more wine. He was half-listening to Bill Gruenwald tell Constance about his ex, who had split when their child was two and was first diagnosed as autistic. The child was in the hospital part of the time, at home with him part time. She was beautiful, he said.

Charlie listened, let his mind drift back to the murders, returned to listen again. No doubt, the sheriff was right about the Buell company. Everywhere they turned, they seemed to run into a wall: wrong times, no one person available for the right period, or if anyone was available, there was no motive conceivable.

“For instance,” he muttered, “no one in the house could have killed Victoria, and yet it had to be someone from inside.” And, he continued under his breath, aware that it didn’t matter what he said since no one was paying attention anyway, no one from that bunch, except Max and Johnny, could have helped Musselman off the roof. But neither of them could have killed Victoria although anyone could have left the note on Paul’s pillow. Not just anyone, he corrected. Anyone from the household, or the hired help. “And you know damn well,” he muttered, this time breaking the skin of silence that seemed to separate him from Constance and Bill Gruenwald, “whoever left the note had to have access both to the house and the stationery, and to the typewriter in the condo.” Constance and Bill Gruenwald stopped talking and looked at him. “Why roof?” he wondered out loud. “Why not the sixth-floor balcony?” He considered that: the sixth-floor unit again, but why not? Or the fifth?

“Did you check any of the apartments when Musselman took his dive?” he asked Gruenwald.

The sheriff shook his head. “No reason to,” he said. “Musselman was on the roof; he left a raincoat up there. Must have been carrying it and put it down, or dropped it.”

Charlie asked softly, “Where did he put it down. Bill? Why? Wasn’t it raining pretty hard?”

Gruenwald looked unhappy again, the way he did every time Charlie asked about that investigation. He patted his neat mustache, as if afraid it had bristled. “It was raining off and on all day. I don’t know why he wasn’t wearing it. We found it on part of the housing for the elevator shaft. Look,” he pulled a notebook from his pocket and sketched quickly. “This is the layout of the roof. Elevator housing at each end, stairs in the same housing. This end had the door open, not the deluxe apartment side, but this one by the common elevators. We figured he went up the regular elevator maybe to six and took the stairs to the roof. Maybe the rain had let up again. He put his coat down and went to the far side. And maybe he leaned over too far, or his foot slipped; like I said, there was a lot of water up there, and some mud in places. Charlie, that’s all we have on it. It seemed like enough at the time.” He took a long drink from his stein of beer and set it down heavily. “You tell me why you want the sixth-floor apartment.”

“Because you can’t tell much about a leaky roof while it’s raining if the roof is standing in water. You check the ceilings below, and wait for the water to run off, and then you bring in a licensed roofer. But if he was there to see someone, and if he was pushed, it doesn’t make much sense for him and someone else to hold a conference in the rain even if it was intermittent. Better have it indoors on the side where he was found, and that’s the sixth-, or fifth-, maybe even the fourth-floor apartment, but then it starts to get chancier to get the right kind of decision about a tumble from the police, the medical examiner. You know, the pros.” This was not quite a mocking tone, but too close. He regretted it instantly and lifted his wine again.

Gruenwald shook his head. “That narrows it down to Max Buell, John Buell, the superintendent Ditmar, or maybe one of the foremen. And none of them could have killed Victoria Leeds. Those apartments were all kept locked except when the workmen were in them, and they weren’t that afternoon, and the Buells, father and son, had left. That would mean two separate murder cases, one as cold as an icehouse.”

“Locked? Why?”

Gruenwald sighed and looked to Constance as if seeking help. She offered none. “Okay,” he said. “Locked because there were expensive fixtures in place already. And because the Buells had already started to use Six A as an office, with the table and typewriter up there, blueprints, stuff like that. Things they didn’t want anyone messing with.”

“Musselman might have had the key,” Charlie pointed out, and Sheriff Gruenwald looked chagrined. Charlie shrugged.

“You said the Buells had left. Together?”

“No. Max went to Marion’s about four thirty or so. Johnny left right after that, to drive back to the city where he has an apartment. He seldom stays at Marion’s. You know, the girlfriend.”

Suddenly Constance remembered the evening that Paul and Victoria had arrived at Tootles’s house, virtually ignoring each other. Victoria had been carrying an overnight bag, her purse over her shoulder, and a red-jacketed book with a paper sticking out. She had put down the suitcase in the foyer and had put the book on a long low table with a clutter of things on it. When Constance followed them up the stairs a little later, Victoria had had the suitcase, and her purse, but not the book.

“Do you have an inventory of Victoria’s things from Tootles’s house?” she asked, causing both men to looked surprised at the abrupt turn. “Maybe you can remember,” she said slowly. “A book with a red dust jacket. She was carrying it when she got there, and when she went upstairs she wasn’t. I just wondered if it turned up again.”

“I’m almost sure not,” Gruenwald said, after thinking for a second or two, checking off items on a mental list apparently. “What about the book?”

“I don’t know,” she said. “I didn’t see the title. There was a paper sticking out of it, notebook paper, with writing on it. I wonder if she made notes on the plane, or in the car, and stuck them in the book she was carrying. That’s all.”

“Would you recognize it again?” Charlie asked.

She nodded.

“Well,” he said. “Well. Bill, you game for a visit to Tootles’s house tonight?”

The sheriff looked resigned. He glanced at his watch. “I have a few things to do, and then with the drive over, it’ll be near ten. That’s getting pretty late.” His unhappiness was increasing moment by moment.

“We can go look for it,” Constance said. “We can let you know in the morning if we find anything. I have to talk to Tootles tonight, so we’ll be going over anyway.”

The sheriff was shaking his head regretfully. It was one thing to let them see statements, he said, and quite another for them to gather evidence themselves. He would meet them at the house. He looked at Charlie and added, “And wait, okay? Don’t start anything without me.”

His tone was pleasant, but it was not a simple request; it most definitely was an order. Charlie grinned and shrugged.

Toni was in the office that had once been a dinette, holding the phone with one hand, tracing a pattern in the wood grain of the window sill with the other, while she listened to the telephone ring in Paul’s apartment. Dusk had fallen, bringing with it a stillness in the air that was not peaceful tonight, but more like the low pressure that preceded a storm. All afternoon the humidity had been building, the oppression of the air had increased, and now this breath-holding hush that was not natural had descended. Toni was counting rings. At ten she would hang up, or maybe twelve. But at nine Paul Volte answered.

“It’s Toni Townsend,” she said in a low voice; she had planned to sound frightened, anxious, and found there was no need to pretend. She was frightened and anxious. “Paul, can you come back, tomorrow if possible?”

“What’s happened?” He sounded even more anxious.

She shook her head. “I’m sorry. I didn’t mean to scare you. Nothing really, and yet… I don’t know what’s happening. Marion wants to fire Constance and her husband, the detectives. She had a fight with Constance, I think. But I don’t really know. Anyway, that will just leave the sheriff and the state police here, and they think she did it, and I guess they’ll arrest her, or something.”

“Is Max going along with her?”

“I guess so. He can’t tell her no and make it stick. If this is what she wants, he’ll do it. Spence doesn’t want to, but they’ll make him, I know. There’s no reason for him to hold out. But the two of you could. I know if you were here to back up Spence, he’d keep them working on this. I… I’m really afraid for her, Paul. You know, she’s so smart about so many things, but she’s acting crazy about this. She’s being so dumb. I’m sure she doesn’t realize that she’s in danger. And if Constance has really found out things, this is the worst possible time to fire her. Paul, we need to have all this over, done with. Can you come?”

They talked only another minute or two; he hung up first, and before she could replace her handset, she heard the telltale click of another phone on her line. She drew in a sharp breath and closed her eyes hard; what had she said, what had he said? Her hand that had been holding the phone was wet; her mouth was dry. Finally she turned toward the door to see Spence standing there, leaning against the door frame.

“What the hell do you think you’re up to?” he demanded.

“Trying to save Marion,” she said fiercely. “If no one else cares, I do.”

Spence was studying her openly the way he might study an art object whose authenticity he questioned. He straightened and started to leave, then paused a moment. “Toni, sweetie, if I were you, I’d be awfully careful about not letting on that my ears were bigger than anyone realized. Know what I mean?”

She watched him walk away. His back was very broad and strong-looking; he kept in good shape, like someone who worked out often and regularly. She shivered and at the same moment a gust of wind blew hard against the screened window, entered the room, stirred dust, stirred her hair, made the hairs on her arms stand up; she hugged herself hard. Just the one gust blew now, and when it was gone, everything seemed even quieter than before. Her shivering increased, as if with a deep chill. Who had been listening? Not Spence. There were phones all over the house; anyone could have lifted one in time to overhear her call.

She left the office and went into the bathroom and washed her face with cold water. When she returned to the hall, she could hear the low mumble of voices from the studio—Roger, Bob, Jason, maybe one or two more from Claud’s classes. She should have gone to check out everyone instantly, she thought then. By now whoever had listened would be far from any telephone, probably. Resolutely she started to walk toward the main part of the house, the living room, and Marion. She had to tell her before someone else did, or before Marion brought it up, if she had been the one on the other phone.

Marion and Ba Ba were both reading; Spence was wandering around the room studying one piece of work after another. He stopped and put his hands in his pockets when Toni walked in. She could hear Max and Johnny talking over some business problem in the adjoining room, the television room, they called it, although no one ever seemed to turn on the set. Max and Johnny had been discussing some problem all evening. Toni drew in a deep breath and then said cheerfully, “Paul is coming back tomorrow for a day or two. I was just talking to him.”

Spence grinned at her. She lifted her chin with defiance and sat down close to Marion.
Seven Kinds of Death
was still in the center of the room, as if it had become a permanent part of the furnishings. Any day now an ashtray might appear balanced on it somewhere, or a glass with melting ice cubes.

“Did he say why?” Marion asked. “What does he want now?”

Toni shrugged and did not dare look at Spence. “He’s worried,” she said. Then swiftly she said, “I told him you were letting Charlie and Constance go and that alarms him, I think.”

“For God’s sake!” Marion exclaimed, jumping to her feet. “Why is it that everyone is taking it as a sacred duty to butt into my business? What do you mean, talking about me with Paul? Who do you think you are? Isn’t that a touch presumptuous, you little ninny?”