The Burglar Who Counted the Spoons (Bernie Rhodenbarr) (28 page)

A drink later, she said, “I wonder who left the notes.”

“A stranger. Someone I don’t know, and will evidently never get to meet, since she only comes around when I’m not there.”

“Twice.”

“Probably more than that. Look at the first note.
WHY ARE YOU ALWAYS CLOSED?
Meaning every time she comes by I’m closed, but this time she could leave a note because my table was on the street.”

“And she saw your table, so that made her come over, and then you were closed, and she was really pissed.”

“Well, disappointed, anyway. And the same thing happened again today, and she left another note.”

She sipped her drink. “We keep saying ‘she,’ ” she said. “How do we know it’s a woman?”

“We don’t, not really. The writing is plain block capitals. There’s nothing gender-specific about it.”

“And yet a woman wrote it, and we both know it.”

“Yeah,” I said. “And Ray made the same assumption, come to think of it. He said ‘she,’ and I barely noticed.”

“So she’s a woman, Bern. If all three of us know it, who cares why we know it? She’s a woman. What else do we know about her?”

“She carries a little notebook.”

“And a blue felt-tip pen.”

“And she tears sheets out of it without taking the time to open the three little rings.”

“Why bother? She’s gonna leave the note on your table, not put it back in the notebook. She printed both notes. Maybe her handwriting’s lousy.”

“You think? Her printing’s very neat.”

“Good point. You know what I read somewhere? A lot of kids these days aren’t being taught cursive writing. They’re using a keyboard all the time, so printing’s good enough when they actually have to use a pen or pencil.”

“Goodbye, Palmer Method,” I said. “What about SpeedWriting?”

“I guess it’s SpeedPrinting these days.”

“ ‘
F U CN RD THS, U CN GT FKD,
’ ” I said. “Remember those ads in the subways?”

“I thought the message was something about getting a good job. I guess there were different versions.”

“Must have been. Remember SpeedReading?”

“Evelyn Wood, Bern. Read a whole book as quickly as you can turn the pages.”

“I wonder if anybody ever took both courses. SpeedWriting and SpeedReading.”

“Maybe that woman who writes twenty reviews a day for Amazon. I forget her name.”

“You must have read it too quickly. Skimmed right over it.”

“I guess.”

“Or she left out the vowels. ‘
F U CN RD HRRT KLSNR, U CN GT A GD RVW.
’ ”

“Bern, we’re getting off the subject here. All we know is she prints. What else?”

“She’s honest.”

“Because she didn’t take the two dollars. She’s more than honest, she’s considerate.”

“Because she put them out of sight, so nobody else would take them.”

“And said so in the note, and spelled it ‘Czech’ so you’d know to look in the book.”

“So she’s clever, too, and given to wordplay.”

“Are you gonna leave her a note?”

“You think I should?”

“It’s only polite, Bern. Besides, you’re wondering about her. You’re hoping she’s cute.”

“Don’t be ridiculous,” I said. I drank some of my drink, which was mostly melted ice. “I thought about a note,” I admitted, “when I was closing up. But I couldn’t leave my table out all night. That would be suggesting that I wanted somebody to take it away.”

“Or you’d get a summons for littering. You could tape a note to the window.”

“ ‘
SORRY, STILL CLOSED.
’ ”

“Maybe not. Next time you leave the table out—”

“I’ll leave a note. If I remember.”

“So it wasn’t murder,” she said.

We’d left the Bum Rap, and not a moment too soon, and were walking in the general direction of Arbor Court, which was also the general direction of the Seventh Avenue subway.

“It was natural causes,” I said.

“And a burglar with a key just happened to pick that time to show up.”

“Whoever the intruder was,” I said, “and whatever he was looking for, there was nothing wrong with his timing. It was
her
timing that threw things off. If she hadn’t left the opera early—”

“She’d still be alive?”

“Maybe,” I said, “and maybe not, depending on how she got the peanuts into her system. But she wouldn’t have been home and on the floor when he unlocked her door.”

“It sounds as if you’re blaming the victim,” she said, “but how can you blame anybody for giving up on Wagner?”

“Oh, I don’t know. Mark Twain said his music’s not as bad as it sounds.”

“I thought Mick Jagger said that about Barry Manilow.”

“You may be right. Something bothers me.”

“About Chloe? You think she might get caught?”

“No, she won’t get caught.”

“About the woman who left you the notes?”

“No, either she’ll turn up or she won’t, and either way it’s not important. No, what bothers me is the whole way she died.”

“The peanut lady.”

“Mrs. Ostermaier.”

“Right. Well, of course it bothers you. It’s sad, a nice woman like that. And you know what’s really terrible, Bern? It’d be funny, except a woman’s dead, so how can it be funny?”

“What are you talking about?”

“The song,” she said. “The goddam song, the ad jingle. I can’t get the damn thing out of my head.”

“What song?”

“Oh, like I’m the only one with the jingle running through my mind?
‘I wish I was an Ostermaier wiener, that is what I really want to be, ’cause if I was an Ostermaier wiener, everyone would be in love with me.’
Come on, Bern. Don’t tell me it’s not running in your head the same as it is in mine.”

“Well, it is now,” I said. “Thanks a lot.”

Carolyn’s take on the Oscar Meyer jingle grabbed ahold and wouldn’t let go. The subway was crowded and noisy—I know, it’s hard to believe—and I didn’t get a seat until it thinned out some at Penn Station. I tried to divert myself with the ads, but not even Dr. Zizmor’s offer to improve my complexion could stifle the Ostermaier Wiener.

I got off at 72
nd
Street, and I don’t suppose it was entirely coincidental that I stood at the counter at Papaya King and let a pair of hot dogs serve as dinner.

I went home and played music, which didn’t help, and tried TV, which didn’t help either. I picked up a book and read about Bill Bryson’s adventures in Australia, and kept finding passages I’d have read aloud, if I hadn’t been alone in my apartment. I went on reading, and I chuckled some, and nodded in occasional agreement, and all the while the earworm went on burrowing in my consciousness.

I tried other jingles, the most annoying ones I could recall. That seemed dangerous, because what if the cure proved more enduring than the disease? I tried the Pepsi jingle, a bare childhood memory (
Pepsi-Cola hits the spot / Two full glasses, that’s a lot
) and my mind quickly segued into the parody (
Christianity hits the spot / Twelve apostles, that’s a lot
) and that sent me back to apostle spoons, and Button Gwinnett, and Chloe Miller, and I did a certain amount of thinking and worrying and wondering, and underneath it all was the Ostermaier jingle, ever the relentless background music to my rumination, and harder to shake than a summer cold.

I got undressed. I had a shower. I got in bed with the Bryson book and a cup of chamomile tea, read one and drank the other. When I closed the book and switched off the lamp, my earworm was still hard at work. I decided it must hold the secret of the universe, and I meditated upon it one word at a time, and while I was at it I fell asleep.

When I woke up it was gone.

I opened up around ten. After my usual chores on Raffles’ behalf (spooning out cat food, freshening his water dish, flushing the toilet) I dragged my bargain table out onto the street. When I got back inside the phone was ringing.

It was Ray. “I called ten minutes ago,” he said. “You didn’t pick up.”

“I wasn’t here.”

“That’s what I figured. You know, I almost called you late last night.”

“I wasn’t here then, either.”

“At home.”

“Well, you’d have reached me there, but if it was late I can’t say I’d have welcomed your call. I went to bed early with an earworm.”

“That’s a hell of a thing, Bernie. A man takes his life in his hands when he leaves the city, and if it’s not Lyme disease or bees flyin’ up your nose, it’s worms in your ears. Where’d you pick it up?”

“Actually,” I said, “I got it from Carolyn.”

“From Shorty? I can’t say I’m surprised, the places she goes and the degenerates she hangs out with. You seein’ a doctor?”

“It’s all better now, Ray.”

“You sure? A thing like that, if it comes back—”

God forbid. “I’ll take measures,” I assured him. “You said you almost called last night. Why?”

“I had somethin’ on my mind, and I couldn’t stop thinkin’ about it.”

“I know the feeling.”

“And it’s from somethin’ you said.”

“Oh?”

“Or didn’t say. This Ostermaier case, which isn’t even a homicide anymore, on account of you can’t get an indictment against a peanut.”

“It’d be different,” I said, “if it was a ham sandwich. What was it I said?”

“Intruder.”

“Huh?”

“What you figured out,” he said, “and all credit to you for it, because it’s helpful, is that the old lady was already dead when the burglar got there.”

“Well, it certainly looks that way to me, Ray, but—”

“No, it does to me, too, now that you laid it out for me. She came home and dropped dead, and an hour later he came callin’. The intruder.”

“So?”

“That’s what you called him, Bernie. The intruder.”

“Well,” I said, “he was intruding, wasn’t he?”

“You never once called him a burglar. And it’s not like it’s a word you’ve never heard before, bein’ as you been one yourself for all the years I’ve known you.”

“I always called him an intruder?”

“Every time.”

“And never a burglar.”

“Not once, Bernie.”

I looked over at Raffles, who had been stalking something invisible to the human eye, and who was now gathering himself to pounce on it.

“It must have been unconscious,” I said.

“So I should just forget about it?”

“No, because it has to mean something. Ray, I guess I just don’t think of the guy as a burglar.”

“Because he had a key.”

“There have been times,” I said, “when I had a key.”

“You’re sayin’ this was different.”

“All those objects scattered around.”

“The cigarette lighter. The little ivory Chinaman. The figurines.”

“Everything,” I said. “And nothing broken, as though they’d been deliberately arranged that way.”

“Why would anybody do that?”

“To make it look like a burglary,” I said. “And the only reason anybody would carefully stage a scene to look like a burglary—”

“Is if it wasn’t.”