Seven Kinds of Death (19 page)

“Whose work?” Tootles asked.

“Victoria Leeds’s apparently. Who else works with manuscripts?” Then he added, “Well, Paul does. You know a Diane?”

Paul shook his head. His face looked waxen.

“She’s trying to help find her killer,” Ba Ba said in a sepulchral tone. “We have to find out who Diane is and pass the message on to her.”

“Anyone here know a Diane?” Spence asked.

“Who has a collection of Buffalo nickels?” Paul said. His voice was so harsh it was nearly unrecognizable. “Come on, enough’s enough. Forget it. Marion, I’d rather like a drink. You mind?”

“No, by God, we all deserve something. Come on.”

“Well,” Gruenwald said in the dining room, “your wife puts on a good party, Meiklejohn. I’ll be on my way. See you around.”

Charlie nodded. He wiped the sweat from his forehead; he felt gray and very, very old.

Johnny looked as shaken as Charlie felt. He muttered something about a drink, and wandered out of the dining room, headed for the living room where voices sounded faint, very distant.

“Diane Musselman,” Gruenwald said in a low voice. “Goddamn it! What the hell are you up to?” He sounded mean and dangerous. “I’ll phone Belmont to stake out her place. Damn you, Charlie! Jesus Christ!” He hurried away.

“Drink,” Charlie thought clearly then. Drink. He wanted a drink very badly.

“I knew you’d be good,” Ba Ba was saying to Constance when he entered the living room. Max was pouring drinks. Toni was on the sofa and no one else was in sight. “I could tell,” Ba Ba was going on. “You shouldn’t fight it, Constance. It’s a God-sent gift that can do good things.”

Drink, Charlie thought again. He took Constance’s hand; it was icy. “Are you okay?”

She nodded. Charlie’s gaze happened upon Toni, huddled on the sofa, watching Constance with bitter hatred.

Charlie stiffened, listening, then dropped Constance’s hand. “Wait here,” he said curtly, and raced to the foyer, out to the porch, in time to see the white Corvette throw gravel as it left the driveway too fast and sped off down the dirt road. He already had his keys in his hand as he ran to the Volvo and snatched the door open, jumped in and tore off after the Corvette before anyone else got off the porch.

The little sports car was faster than the Volvo, and it was being driven by a maniac. Charlie kept it in sight, but did not catch up; he made every turn, every curve, and kept it in sight. At first he had thought they were heading toward Chevy Chase, but very soon he realized he was lost. Although he had a good sense of direction, and would be able to find himself if he had just a glimpse of a map, or if he had driven these roads in daylight, he was driving twisting country roads in the dark, and the roads were narrow, some blacktop, some concrete, some dirt, with mileposts instead of names. Names would not have helped, he had to admit to himself as he made another right turn. He kept most of his attention on the car he was following, but there was enough left over to keep in sight the headlights behind him, pacing him. Bill Gruenwald, he thought, hoped.

All right, he reasoned, Gruenwald had called Belmont or some of his own deputies by now; they would have someone keeping an eye on the Musselman house. Maybe. His lips tightened. They
would
have someone keeping an eye on the house; they’d better.

Up ahead was a lighted area, a gas station, tavern, even, by God, a stop light, he realized, closing the distance between his car and the Corvette.

Constance watched Charlie speed off after the Corvette, followed closely by the sheriff’s Ford. She watched until all the lights were gone, and then turned to reenter the house.

“What the devil is going on?” Max stood at the door, also watching.

“I don’t know,” she said. “It seems everyone decided to go out for a ride.”

“Johnny too?” Max sounded disgusted. “Now what?”

“Not me, too,” Johnny said, coming from the shadows of shrubs in the yard. “I gave my keys to Paul. He was pretty upset and his rented car was packed in between the Volvo and your car. Dad. It just seemed easier to let him take mine until he cools off.” He laughed. “He’ll be surprised when he realizes that Charlie and the sheriff both are on his tail.”

“Good Christ,” Max muttered and went back inside.

Constance and Johnny followed him.

All right, she thought, all right. All she had to do was keep everyone in sight until Charlie and Bill Gruenwald returned. She knew that, but everyone else wanted to wander. Max vanished and returned; Tootles and Spence had been gone, and came back together from the office; Ba Ba wanted to talk to Constance and she kept trying to dodge her. Toni just shivered on the sofa and watched Constance with dull hatred. And Johnny was in and out of the kitchen, also dodging Ba Ba, looking more and more often at his watch as the minutes crawled by.

“Shit,” he muttered once. “I thought he’d want to take a spin to the village or something. I didn’t think he planned on staying out all night.”

“Constance, you really should just try the crystal ball, just once,” Ba Ba said. “I just know you’d be sensational with it.”

“Who is Diane?” Spence asked, and Ba Ba shrugged.

Constance asked him if he would drive her back to the motel in a little while.

“Whistle when you’re ready,” he said agreeably.

She went to the office and found a piece of paper, and an envelope and scrawled a note to Charlie, sealed it, and put it in her pocket, just in case. She was not certain she would trust it to anyone here, she realized. Tootles would certainly read it, and Ba Ba and Toni were doubtful. Meanwhile she would keep it in her pocket.

Forty minutes dragged by; no one had relaxed, or sat still more than a few minutes at a time while they waited. Even Ba Ba had become silent and looked fatigued, when suddenly Johnny stood up and said, “Dad, this is too much. Mind if I borrow your car and go home? If and when Paul comes back, feel free to use the Corvette.”

Silently Max fished out his keys to the Continental and handed them over. He looked terribly tired. Johnny mock-saluted and left the room. Constance turned to Spence and said, “Me too. Would you mind?”

He looked at her curiously, then shrugged. She said to Max, “If Charlie comes back here tonight, will you give him a note for me, please?” She handed the envelope to him. “Thanks. Good night, everyone.”

As soon as the Corvette reached the brightly lighted area of the tavern and gas station, Charlie braked, jerked the Volvo to the side of the road. A moment later the dark Ford pulled up behind him. Gruenwald emerged.

“What?” he asked.

“It’s Volte,” Charlie said in a hard, tightly controlled voice.

“Paul Volte?”

“Yeah. How fast can we get back to the house? You know a better way than the way we just came?”

When Spence got his car headed up the driveway. Max appeared at the passenger side door. “I’m going, too,” he said. “Unlock the door.”

Spence glanced at Constance. After a second she nodded and he unlocked the door with his control panel. Max got in the back seat.

“I suppose you want me to follow the Continental,” Spence said, driving out to the road, making his turn. The tail lights were at the intersection; they vanished.

“Yes,” Constance said. “I don’t think it will be far.” She did not look at Max in the back seat; he did not speak again.

The Continental turned in at the condo complex. “You’ll have to pass him,” Constance said. The other car was stopped at the gate, Johnny was opening it. “Max, do you mind?” she said and ducked down in the seat. In the back seat Max leaned over out of sight. They passed the Continental just as it was pulling inside the complex. “Now stop,” Constance said. “Let’s back up, right to the gate, and go on foot.” She looked at Max. “Why don’t you wait for us?”

“No!” He was out of the car before Spence had set the hand brake.

When they got to the driveway to Applegate, the Continental was going down the ramp to the basement. Constance hurried, with Spence at her side. Max trailing a step or two behind. Pierce, the watchman, was standing at the driveway down to the basement. He had looked puzzled a moment earlier, now he looked totally bewildered. Constance held her finger to her lips, and he looked past her to Max, who nodded. Pierce shook his head and moved back a few steps, leaned against the building silently, and watched.

They took the stairs. At the basement level, Constance kept going down until they exited at the sub-basement. There was a dim light, and eerie shadows cast by the rows of storage compartments. It was silent. She glanced at the footwear of the two men; running shoes on Spence, soft-soled sandals for Max, and her own sandals would not make noise, she knew. They left the stairwell and looked down the first row of storage compartments. Empty. Silently they moved to the next row, and this time, Constance dug her fingers into Max’s arm and drew him back. Toward the far end Johnny was opening one of the doors.

She had her witnesses, she was thinking, but what could they see from here? Only that he was taking something out. But if they got closer and he ran, then what? She pulled Spence back a bit farther and whispered, “I’m going down the other aisle and get closer.”

She could handle him, she was certain. He was big and muscular, but she had the skill, years of training, and she had the edge of surprise.

She had reached the halfway point of the rows when she heard the metal storage door slam, and then his footsteps, heading for the stairs at the other end. She started to run.

“Hold it right there, Mr. Buell. If you don’t mind.”

The sheriff? Now she fairly flew to the end of the aisle and came to a stop. Charlie was standing there, leaning against a storage compartment, and at his side was Sheriff Gruenwald, holding a gun. Charlie looked past him to Constance; a very wide grin split his face.

“What the fuck are you doing down here?” Johnny demanded. “This is my building! Get the hell out of here!”

“Let’s not get too excited,” Sheriff Gruenwald said. “What is that you” removed from the storage compartment?”

“None of your fucking business. What, you got a warrant or something? You going to shoot me in the back when I leave? This is my property, you pissant sheriff! How do you think you can explain coming here and threatening me? Man, when I get hold of my lawyer—”

“You’ll do what, Johnny?” Max’s voice was heavy, wooden. “Whose building? What do you have there, Johnny?”

Johnny spun around at the sound of his father’s voice. His voice rose to a near falsetto when he cried, “You did this? You called him! Why? I didn’t do anything you wouldn’t have done in my place! I didn’t!”

Max was walking down the aisle toward him. “Give it to me, Johnny. What is that? A bundle of clothes? Give it to me.”

Johnny moved a few steps toward him, and then he swept out his arm and knocked Max to one side, against one of the metal storage compartments, and he ran. At the end of the aisle, Spence stepped forward and hit him once on the jaw. Johnny dropped and was motionless.

And somehow during this, without awareness of her own actions, or Charlie’s, Constance had moved to his side, and he had put his arm around her and was holding her very close.

TWENTY

At ten minutes before
ten the next morning Charlie and Constance pulled into the condominium grounds. The superintendent Ditmar met them at the curb in front of Building B—Birmingham. Or maybe Baloney, Charlie thought, taking the envelope Ditmar held out to him. It contained the computer card keys to the elevators and various rooms.

“I turned off the electronic door-closer system, just like you said I should,” Ditmar said. He hesitated, as if he wanted to ask them if it was true. He shook his head, then turned and walked back toward his little trailer/office.

Charlie opened his trunk and took out the shopping bag with his purchases from the previous day. “This won’t take long,” he said to Constance. “If they get here before I finish, keep them out here. Okay?”

She nodded and watched him enter the B building with his bag of tricks. Bill Gruenwald and state police investigator. Lieutenant Belmont, arrived together a few minutes later. She greeted them and relayed the message: Charlie would be along in a minute or two.

Howard Belmont was fierce-looking this morning. His forehead was furrowed with deep lines, and his lips were nearly invisible. Bill Gruenwald looked as though he had slept very little, but he was calm and peaceful, almost as if he had taken a week’s supply of tranquilizers. She suspected that he had not needed any.

“He began to talk,” he said. “Not enough yet, and his lawyer put in an appearance and stifled him, but he started. Once they start, they usually keep on.” He ignored the state officer. “And there was a pretty wrinkled note to Victoria Leeds in the pocket of the pants. They had a date for five o’clock. His stuff is in the lab now.”

Charlie walked from the building then and nodded pleasantly to Bill Gruenwald and the lieutenant, who eyed him as if he suspected rabies. “Good morning,” Charlie said cheerfully. “Let’s get the show on the road, gentlemen. What I’ll do is give you what I have, and then split.”

No one protested. “Okay,” he said. “Let’s pretend. We are the little group that Johnny Buell brought over here the night he killed Victoria. Right? Honey? You want to drive?” Constance got behind the wheel; the others got inside the car. She made a U-turn and drove slowly down the ramp to the parking basement of the B building.

“Pretend two things,” Charlie said. “First, that this is Building A, and next is that we had to use the electronic thingie to open the gate to the basement.”

Constance drove to the other end of the basement, headed up the ramp to the street again; she stopped and pulled on the hand brake.

“And here we are,” Charlie said. He got out and opened the door for the sheriff and the lieutenant. “We’ll take the elevator up to six. I have the key for it.”

He opened the door; they got in and the door closed again. Very soon the opposite door opened, and he led them out into the larger foyer. “Keep in mind that all these buildings are exactly the same,” he said, leading the way, past the curved hall that would accommodate bookshelves, to the doorway to the living room. “Wait here,” he said, “and don’t touch anything. Wet paint, you know.” The odor of paint was very strong; tarps were heaped on the floor in a table-shape. “I improvised the furniture. The tables have been put away somewhere,” he said, walking quickly past the tarps, into the dining room, where he picked up the shopping bag, and then rejoined them. He held it up and said, “Briefcase. And now out.”

They retraced their steps silently, back to the elevator, down to the basement, back inside the car. Constance drove up to the street and stopped again.

“Whoops,” Charlie said. “Let’s check the other apartments. You can come too,” he added. He still had the shopping bag. Bill Gruenwald was looking bored; the lieutenant’s face was red and his eyes nearly closed. He looked as if he had high blood pressure, and it was rising second by second. When Charlie entered the building on the first-floor level, they all followed him. This time they entered the elevator with the big brass number five.

At the fifth floor Charlie moved swiftly; he went through to the living room where tarps were arranged in such a way they resembled a table. The paint smell was strong. Bill Gruenwald and Lieutenant Belmont exchanged glances. If this wasn’t the room they had just left, it was identical to it, down to the tarps on the floor. Charlie very quickly rolled the tarps to make a bundle, and not quite running, but moving fast, he left the apartment by way of the door to the hall. He jerked his head in an invitation for the others to follow as he hurried to the end of the hall and opened the staircase door, and started up. No one spoke.

At the sixth floor Charlie used his borrowed key to open the apartment and led them to the living room where more tarps had been draped over sawhorses, another table-like shape, and where one tarp had been rolled into a cylinder that could have been a body on the floor.

Gruenwald came to a dead stop. Charlie hurried past the tarps, carrying his bundle, and dumped it in the dining room on the floor. As soon as he unrolled the tarps, the odor of paint rose and spread. He picked up the sponge he had soaked in turpentine and put it in a plastic bag that he closed with a tie, and then shoved into his shopping bag. Still moving silently, he motioned again for them to follow him. They got into the dedicated sixth-floor elevator, where a bunch of fake flowers was on the shelf under the mirror. The odor of the cologne he had sprayed on them was stifling; this time Charlie punched B for basement. When they got down and left the elevator, he went along the row of doors lifting off the panels with floor numbers stenciled on them. They were being held only by finishing nails that fitted very loosely into the holes drilled for screws. Only the number six was relatively tight. It took five seconds to remove that one. He leaned the panels against the wall, and went up the stairs to the first floor and from there out to the street where he stopped at the Volvo, opened the trunk and tossed the shopping bag inside.

Gruenwald had a dazed look on his face. “Voilà!” Charlie said. “Sleight of hand. The case of the disappearing body. Now you see it, now you don’t.”

“That son of a bitch,” Belmont muttered. “That lousy son of a bitch!”

“I should have tumbled sooner,” Charlie said. “Everything pointed to him.”

Gruenwald snorted. “Come on. Let’s have a look at those numbers.”

They went back down to the basement and this time examined the numbered panels. “Nothing’s very fancy down here,” Charlie said. “That threw me, I guess. The brass numbers up on the ground floor are pretty hard to ignore and they’re on to stay. But these are stenciled on the panels. Same stencils used for parking spots, and for the storage compartments in the sub-basement.”

Gruenwald and Belmont studied one of the panels carefully. They went to the elevator doors and examined one of them just as thoroughly. One side of each door had the panel with the big B already stenciled on it; there was nothing to indicate what floor the elevator served. Until the numbered panels were attached, each door was a blank ride.

“All those identical doors,” Charlie said, “no way you can guess which is Six B, which one’s Five B, and so on. And this building’s identical to the A building. This section looks exactly the same as this section of A building; the painting has progressed to the same place it was over there. The only door that was marked was the door to the stairs. A big six on any of the doors, the other numbers loosely in place, that would have been enough to carry the illusion. One thing missing in their testimony was the arrangement of roses.”

Gruenwald thought, then nodded. “No one in that group mentioned flowers,” he said.

“I know,” Charlie said. “I asked them specifically about the elevator, what they saw, heard, the works. No roses. No flowers. The girls put their purses down on the shelf and primped a little in the mirror. Debra even left her purse on the shelf when they went into the apartment. They couldn’t have done that if the flowers had been there.

“And there’s nothing upstairs to indicate they were on five instead of six,” Charlie said. “The apartments are so much alike no one would have noticed that the elevator was a few feet off to the side. Out the windows they’d see tree-tops, what they expected. Inside both apartments, there were conference tables. So, the mention of wet paint and the turpentine on rags and the tarps on everything was to make sure they would stay put, as well as make sure they truly believed that they had been in Six A and there had not been a body on the floor. The paint smell was another giveaway, but I didn’t notice. Everyone said there was a smell of paint, but what people smelled was thinner, turpentine, and all the interiors are latex, water-based. No turpentine anywhere. The painters washed their brushes in the sub-basement, and I missed that. Anyway, there shouldn’t have been any odor immediately identified with paint. No one should have smelled turpentine, and they did; they should have smelled roses, and they didn’t.

“So they went up to Five A, where he had set the stage complete with briefcase, and down they came again, ready to swear they had been in Six A. He returned to move the tarps out of Five A, fix the numbers on the elevator doors, and the stage was set to give him a lovely alibi. Planned to the last detail. Then Tootles crossed him up by ordering the flowers, a little surprise for Max. And she crossed us up by lying about them, saying Johnny had ordered them. I called the florist,” he added. “She picked them out in person.” That was the trouble with Tootles, he thought then; you had to check and double-check every statement she made, and life was too damn short.

They walked out to the street level and stood near the Volvo.

“What about last night?” Belmont demanded. “What the hell were you doing last night?”

“One of the things I hammered at the girls about,” Charlie said, “was where everyone was standing, sitting, looking at all times. They saw him open the trunk of the Continental and toss his briefcase inside. There were no clothes in the trunk, no work clothes at all. I never mentioned clothes, or flowers, of course, but there it was, like a puzzle piece that’s defined by the hole. Just something else missing from their testimony. That night, if he had to borrow the Continental to pick up his pals at the train station, his work clothes should have been in it, or else in the apartment. He went back to the house to switch cars, remember? Still in his work clothes then. Victoria Leeds came to meet him, thinking she had a date with Musselman probably, and he killed her. He changed into party clothes, but what happened to the work clothes? We figured that if we charged him up with the séance, got him in an emotional state, and then if I baited you,” he said to the sheriff, “about following up on lab work and physical evidence, he might do something foolish. I hoped he would take the hint and decide to get rid of the clothes if he hadn’t already done that. I thought they might be somewhere around here, but there are a lot of places to hide stuff around a construction site.” He shrugged. “Probably he never had a chance to collect them without risking being seen, you sure can’t hide much in that little Corvette, so he needed the Continental again. He came down to get the evidence, maybe the only physical evidence there is. Makes me think he believes there’s something incriminating there. But it was stupid of him. He should have waited.”

They almost always did something stupid, he thought, almost as if they wanted to leave a trail, get caught.

“If we hadn’t turned around and come back, he’d have got away with the clothes,” Gruenwald said. “Shit,
that
was a dumb thing to do, warn him like that.”

Charlie suppressed a grin and nodded meekly. With Constance at one end of the aisle, and Spence at the other, Johnny had had absolutely no chance of getting away. Zilch chance, he added to himself.

“If the manuscript turns up and if it has pretty damning things to say about the job here, or about Johnny, we can nail that to his hide, but if it doesn’t…” Belmont was gazing thoughtfully into the distance, no doubt hearing a defense attorney mock his case.

“What Johnny could be most afraid of,” Constance said, with no warning that she had been noodling with that topic, “is his father. This job is rather like probation for Johnny, isn’t it?” She was not inviting comment. Her clear pale eyes were focused on the Volvo, or the trees beyond it, or the horizon, or nowhere.

“Put yourself in his place and you can follow his thought processes pretty accurately,” she said after a moment. “If this job goes well, Johnny takes over the company, Max more or less retires, and Johnny’s future is rather rosy. He has a girlfriend who is used to a life-style that is elevated, to say the least. He must be desperate to become a full partner, start his plan to expand. If he made a suspicious deal with anyone who could monkeywrench the whole thing, it’s understandable that he might panic. He has to keep Max from learning anything that would keep him from becoming a partner, taking charge.” She brought her gaze back to the small group, back to Belmont. “So, I think you’ll be all right for motive. Musselman died because he knew something that Johnny couldn’t afford to have published; Victoria because she knew what it was.”

Charlie always thought she went at things backwards. If you get the who and the how, he liked to say, the why pops up at you like a Halloween spook. But she needed the why or she was inclined to distrust the who and how.

“There must be a reason why Max has kept Johnny as an employee, not a partner,” she said, just as if he had been arguing with her. “And Johnny knows that Max would dissolve the company rather than turn it over to his son if there’s anything crooked in the background; Max is maybe the second most honest man I know.”

Charlie grinned and she looked surprised and added crisply, “My father is the first.”

Gruenwald glanced at his watch and said, “What about the art that got ruined?” Charlie shrugged. “Maybe he’ll explain that,” Gruenwald said. “Trying to create a motive for Marion Olsen? Maybe. Well, I have guys over at the Musselman house, making a search. If there’s a manuscript, they’ll find it. I’m going over there now. You coming, Howie?”