The Burglar In The Closet (19 page)

"How?"

I shrugged. "Beats me, but it could have happened. Or maybe the deal with the counterfeit went fine but Grabow found out she was just using him, two-timing him with other men and stringing him along for the sake of the counterfeiting deal. Maybe he learned she was sleeping with Knobby, maybe he found out about the other boyfriend. He got jealous and he got mad and he picked up a dental scalpel and went after her."

"Where would he get a dental scalpel?"

"Celniker Dental and Optical, same as Craig."

"But why would he-"

"He's got a whole collection of them. All sorts of picks and probes and scalpels, and it looks to me as though they're all made by Celniker unless other manufacturers also put hexagonal shafts on their instruments. I suppose they're handy for printing and printmaking, cutting linoleum blocks, making woodcuts, any of that sort of detail work. Either he took one along as a murder weapon or he just happened to have one in his pocket."

"That seems strange, doesn't it?"

It did at that. "Try it this way, then. He'd had Crystal up to his loft and she spotted the tools and mentioned that Craig had the same kind at his office. After all, she was his hygienist back before she married him. Matter of fact, that could explain the coincidence of Grabow having the same kind of tools as Craig. Maybe he was using something else, X-acto knives or God knows what, and Crystal told him he should get a set of dental instruments because the steel's high quality or whatever the hell she told him. Anyway, if he knew Craig used Celniker instruments, he could have taken the scalpel along to make it look as though Craig did the killing. He wouldn't have any reason to get rid of his own Celniker tools because there's nothing to connect him with Crystal in the first place, and once Craig's tagged with the crime the cops won't have any reason to look any further."

"So he took the scalpel along with the intention of using it as a murder weapon?"

"He must have."

"And he picked her up and went to bed with her first?"

"That would have been fiendish, wouldn't it? I just met him briefly but I didn't get the impression that he was that devious a person. He struck me as pretty direct, the strong and silent type. When she went out to the bar she probably met the Legal Beagle and brought him back. I don't remember their conversation very well because I was making such a determined effort to ignore it, but it certainly wasn't Grabow. At least I don't think it was.

"No, here's what I figure happened. Say Grabow was watching the house, or maybe he tracked her from the bar where she met the lawyer. Or whoever she met, it doesn't have to be the lawyer. In fact we can forget the lawyer because I don't think he really enters into it. The fact that Frankie Ackerman mentioned three men as friends of Crystal's doesn't mean all three of them are involved in her murder. It's remarkable enough that two of them are."

"Anyway," Jillian prompted, "she brought home some man or other and Grabow was watching."

"Right. Then the guy left. Grabow saw him leave. He gave him a minute or two to get lost, then came on over and leaned on the bell. When Crystal let him in, he did his strong and silent number and stuck the scalpel straight into her heart."

Jillian clutched her own heart, her small hand pressing high on the left-hand side of the navy sweater. She was following the line as if it were a movie and she were seeing it on TV.

"Then he came on into the bedroom," I went on. "First thing he saw was my attache case standing against the wall under the French woman's portrait. He went over and-"

"What French woman?"

"It's not important. A picture on Crystal's wall. But he didn't see the picture because he only had eyes for the attache case. See, he figured an attache case is an attache case. He assumed it was full of the counterfeit money and this was his chance to swipe it back."

"But the money was in a black vinyl case, wasn't it?"

"Black Naugahyde. Right. But how would Grabow know that?"

"Wouldn't he have packed it like that to begin with?"

"Maybe, but how do we know that? Maybe he gave Crystal the money in a Bloomingdale's shopping bag. That's what I usually use on burglaries. It looks like you belong, striding along with a Bloomie's bag full of somebody else's property. Suppose he just knew someone had transferred it to an attache case, and here was an attache case, the very item he was looking for. The natural thing would be for him to grab it and get the hell out and worry later what was in it."

"And later, when he opened the case-"

"It probably confused the daylights out of him. For a minute he must have thought Crystal was some kind of medieval alchemist who managed to transmute paper into gold and diamonds. Then when he had it figured he had to go back for the money. That would explain the second break-in, the burglary after the police had already sealed the apartment. Grabow went back for the money, broke the seals, searched the place, and went home empty-handed. Because the counterfeit bills were all packed up at Knobby Corcoran's apartment, sitting on a shelf in the closet."

Jillian nodded, then frowned. "What happened to the jewels?"

"I suppose Grabow held onto them. People tend to retain jewelry rather than leave it for the garbage man. I didn't see them around his loft, but that doesn't necessarily mean anything. The jewels are evidence and he wouldn't leave them lying around because they'd lock him into the murder."

"He kept the dental tools around."

"That's different. There's no way to explain the jewelry and he'd have to realize that. He must have stashed it somewhere. It's possible he tucked it away right there on King Street. It wouldn't be terribly difficult to hide the jewels under the floorboards or inside the modular furniture where I wouldn't find them on a routine search. As far as that goes, I found a safe-deposit key among his other stuff. It's possible the jewels are already in the bank. He could have gone Friday before the banks closed and stashed them in his safe-deposit box. Or he might even have fenced them. That's not inconceivable. As a counterfeiter, the odds are he knows somebody who knows somebody who fences stolen gems. It's no harder to find a fence in this town than it is to place a football bet or buy a number or score drugs. But there's really no reason to speculate about the jewels. There's already enough evidence against Grabow to put him away for years."

"You mean the dental tools?"

"That's a start," I said. "I moved things around at his place, just in case he decides to get rid of the evidence. I put some of the twenties where you'd have to search to find them. Same with a few dental instruments. If he panics and throws out the instruments, there'll be a few he won't find that the police would turn up easily on a search. And I hid the printing plates. That might make him panic if he goes looking for them, but the way I left things he'll never believe a burglar set foot in the place. I even picked the lock on my way out to relock it, and that's a service relatively few burglars perform for you. I left his loft empty-handed, you know. In fact I walked out of there with less than I brought, since I planted those fake twenties on him. If I did that all the time I'd have a problem coming up with the rent every month."

She giggled. "My mother used to say that if burglars came to our house they'd leave something. But you're the only one I ever heard of who actually did."

"Well, I'm not going to make a habit of it."

"Have you been a burglar all your life, Bernie?"

"Well, not all my life. I started out as a little kid, just like everybody else. I love the way you giggle, incidentally. It's very becoming. I guess I've been a burglar since I got done being a kid."

"I don't think you ever did get done being a kid, Bernie."

"I sometimes have that feeling myself, Jillian."

And I got to talking about myself and my crazy criminous career, how I'd started out sneaking into other people's houses for the sheer thrill of it and learned before long that the thrill was all the keener if you stole something while you were at it. I talked and she listened, and somewhere in the course of things we finished the coffee and she broke out a perfectly respectable bottle of Soave. We drank the chilled white wine out of stemmed glasses and sat side-by-side on the couch, and I went on talking and wished the couch would do its trick of converting into a bed. She was lovely, Jillian was, and she was a most attentive listener, and her hair smelled of early spring flowers.

Around the time the bottle became empty she said, "What are you going to do now, Bernie? Now that you know who the killer is."

"Find a way to get information to the cops. I suppose I'll run the play through Ray Kirschmann. It's not his case but he smells money and that'll make him bend procedures like pretzels. I don't know how he's going to make a dollar out of this one. If the jewels turn up they'll be impounded as evidence. But if there's a buck in it he'll find it, and that'll be his problem not mine."

"I know he wants you to call him."

"Uh-huh. But not now, I'm afraid. It's the middle of the night."

"What time is it? Oh, it really
is
the middle of the night. I didn't realize it was so late."

"I'll have to find someplace to stay. I'm afraid my own apartment's no good for the time being. They probably don't have it staked out but I'm not going to risk it now, not if they've got a pickup order out on me. I can get a hotel room."

"Don't be ridiculous."

"You figure that might be ridiculous? I suppose you're right. Hotels don't get that many check-ins at this hour and it might look suspicious. Well, there's something else I could always try. Just scout an empty apartment, one where the tenants are gone for the weekend, and make myself right at home. That worked well enough for Goldilocks."

"Don't be ridiculous. You stayed here last night and you can stay here again. I don't want you to take a chance of getting arrested."

"Well, Craig might-"

"Don't be ridiculous. Craig won't be coming over and I wouldn't let him in if he did. I'm pretty angry with Craig, if you want to know. I think he behaved terribly and he may be a great dentist but I'm not sure he's a very wonderful human being."

"Well, that's great of you," I said. "But this time I'll take the chair."

"Don't be ridiculous."

"Well, you're not going to sit up in that thing, for God's sake. I'm not going to let you give up your bed again."

"Don't be ridiculous."

"Huh? I don't-"

"Bernie?" She gazed up at me from beneath those long eyelashes. "Bernie, don't be ridiculous."

"Oh," I said, and looked deeply into her eyes, and smelled her hair.
"Oh."

Chapter Eighteen

It must have been around ten when we woke up the next morning. There were a few churches on the block and it kept being some denomination's turn to ring bells. We lay in bed for the next two hours, sometimes listening to the church bells and sometimes ignoring them. There are worse ways to spend a Sunday morning.

Finally she got up and put on a robe and made coffee while I set about getting into the same clothes I seemed to have been wearing forever. Then I got on the phone.

Ray Kirschmann's wife said he was out. Working, she said. Did I want to leave a message? I didn't.

I tried him at the precinct. He had the day off, somebody told me. Probably at home with his feet up and a cold beer in his fist and a ball game on television. Was there anybody else I would talk to? There wasn't. Did I want to leave a message? I didn't.

Did I dare go home? I wanted a shower but there wasn't much point taking one if I had to put on the same clothes again. And it was Sunday, so I couldn't go out and buy a shirt and socks and underwear.

I picked up the phone again and dialed my own number.

The line was busy.

Well, that doesn't necessarily prove anything. Somebody else could have called me a few seconds before I did; he'd get an unanswered ring while I got a busy signal. So I hung up and gave him a minute to get tired of the game, and then I dialed my number again, and it was still busy.

Well, that didn't prove anything either. Perhaps I'd had a visitor who knocked the phone off the hook. Perhaps phone lines were down on the West Side. Perhaps-

"Bernie? Something wrong?"

"Yes," I said. "Where's the phone book?"

I looked up Mrs. Hesch and dialed her number. When she answered I heard her television set in the background, then her dry cigarette-hardened voice. I said, "Mrs. Hesch, this is Bernard Rhodenbarr. Your neighbor? Across the hall?"

"The burglar."

"Uh, yes. Mrs. Hesch-"

"Also the celebrity. I seen you on television maybe an hour ago. Not you personally, just a picture they had of you. It must have been from prison, your hair was so short."

I knew the picture she meant.

"Now we got cops all over the building. They was here asking about you. Do I know you're a burglar? they asked me. I said all I know is you're a good neighbor. I should tell them anything? You're a nice young man, clean cut, you dress decent, that's all I know. You work hard, right? You make a living, right?"