The Burglar Who Counted the Spoons (Bernie Rhodenbarr) (31 page)

I rang off and looked up at Ray Kirschmann. “Now I’ll duck around the corner and buy the book at the Strand,” I said, “and I’ll call her back tomorrow and tell her she’s in luck.”

“It’s nice to see you makin’ an honest livin’, Bernie. And all you got to do is walk around the corner, instead of chasin’ all over town.”

“You talked to the Ostermaier children.”

“Yeah, and I gotta say I don’t see any of ’em lookin’ good for the intruder.” He pulled a notebook from his back pocket. “Let’s see now. Meredith, that’s the older daughter, lives in Alphabet City.”

“With her husband.”

“Right. The two of them head up a little theater company, what you call off-off-Broadway.” He frowned. “Isn’t that a double negative, Bernie? If somethin’s off-off-Broadway, doesn’t that put it back
on
Broadway?”

“I don’t think so.”

“Well, you’d know better’n me. He’s a producer-director and she’s some kind of manager, and they’re in rehearsals for a new play by a guy whose name I couldn’t write down without askin’ how to spell it, which I didn’t want to bother. They were both at the theater from late afternoon until one or two in the mornin’, with a whole cast of actors who could swear to it, not to mention the playwright.”

“And the son in Chelsea was busy passing hors d’oeuvres at a party in Tribeca.”

“What’d you do, talk to him yourself? That’d be Boyd, and it wasn’t Tribeca, it was Murray Hill. He and his partner were catering a company dinner. That’d be his business partner.”

“And it ran late?”

“Past ten, and it was close to eleven by the time he got out of there. His other partner picked him up, and they went to a club and had some drinks, and then they went to the gym and buffed their lats and their pecs and their quads, and then shared a bench in the steam room until the sun came up.”

“Better them than me.”

“My thought exactly, Bernie. His brother’s the tax lawyer in Park Slope.”

“Jackson.”

“You got a good memory. Jackson Ostermaier. He didn’t get home until around the time his mother was bailin’ out on Wagner, but once he did he was in Brooklyn for the rest of the night. He’d been workin’ late at the office, but not as late as he told his wife.”

“He’s got a girlfriend?”

“He took this drawin’ class, and she was the model. Now he pays the rent on her two rooms in Boerum Hill, and he’s the only one who gets to see her naked.”

“At least as far as he knows.”

“Right. Anyway, she’s in Brooklyn, like two subway stops from him. It’s a regular thing for him to stop for an hour or so on the way home, and that’s what he did the other night.”

“I guess that leaves Deirdre.”

“The younger daughter,” he said, “and she coulda been the intruder, but we already got her at the scene discoverin’ the body a little after two o’clock. And she was home from midnight on, because she made all those calls to her mother before she went over there.”

“That’s all four,” I said. “Meredith, Boyd, Jackson, and Deirdre.”

“And none of ’em’s the intruder.” He looked at me. “And you’re not surprised, are you? You already figured as much. So why’d I waste my time checkin’ ’em out?”

“Suppose they didn’t have alibis, Ray. Suppose each of them had the opportunity to sneak into the Ostermaier house late that night. Who’d have a reason?”

“All of ’em. It was drivin’ me crazy, all those solid alibis, because all four of ’em have plenty of motive, and it’s the best motive there is.”

“Money,” I guessed.

“There you go, Bernie. You ever happen to notice how nobody’s ever got enough? First glance, everybody’s doin’ okay for theirselves. Take a closer look and you see four serious cases of the shorts.”

“Catering business isn’t going so well?”

“No, and the partners don’t get along too great. What Boyd wants to do is buy his partner out. That’d be his business partner, not—”

“Not his life partner. I get it, Ray.”

“Well it’s confusin’, the same word croppin’ up all over the place. Best thing about gay marriage is we can stop callin’ ’em partners all the time. The caterin’ business is him and his partner, the steam room is him and his husband. Which also sounds strange,
him and his husband
, but I figure I’ll get used to it.”

“In time.”

“Anyway, that’s Boyd. Next up is Meredith. The off-off-Broadway theater keeps losin’ money.”

“There’s a surprise.”

“Ready for another one? The landlord wants to raise their rent. Plus their apartment’s gonna be too small when the baby comes.”

“She’s pregnant?”

“That you could work your way around, you know? Keep the kid in a dresser drawer for a few months. No, they got an adoption in process, and the agency says their apartment’s not big enough. Anyway, same story. Not enough money.”

“And Jackson’s got a wife and a girlfriend.”

“And kids in private school, and last year’s bonus wasn’t so hot, and two other guys want him to join them and start their own firm.”

“And Deirdre?”

“Keeps spendin’ more’n she brings in. She’s out of work, and the work she’s out of don’t pay much anyway. Workin’ part-time at day care centers is a slow way to get rich, and her credit cards are pretty much maxed out at this point.”

“All four of them need money,” I said, “or want it, anyhow. And there’s this big house on Ninety-second Street with just one person living in it.”

“No mortgage on it, either. Mr. Ostermaier paid it off years ago.”

“And left it outright to Mrs. Ostermaier?”

“Nope. Didn’t have to. He was in the kind of business where you play it safe by putting things in your wife’s name. So it was all hers, free and clear.”

“A house like that, in today’s market—”

“Gotta be ten, Bernie. Might go fifteen.”

“Million.”

“Well, yeah.”

“Say twelve, and split it four ways—”

“More’n enough for a caterer to buy out his partner. His business partner, I mean.”

“He could probably buy out his husband, too. Three million would let a lawyer pay his girlfriend’s rent and his kid’s school fees, too.”

“You could start a day care center easy.”

“If you still wanted to. You could move to a larger apartment, and keep your theater open.”

“So we got four people sharin’ a hell of a good motive,” he said, “but none of ’em coulda done it. And nothin’ got done to begin with except breakin’ in after the woman was already dead, and what’s the point of that? Bernie? You payin’ attention?”

“Sorry,” I said. “I was thinking of something.”

“Tryin’ to work out who’s the intruder?”

“Oh, I already know that,” I said. “I’m trying to figure out who’s the murderer.”

“She died of peanuts, Bernie. Remember?”

“I know,” I said. “Don’t put your notebook away yet, Ray. There are a few more things it’d be good to know.”

“On your table,” he said. “I read it on the chance it might be a clue.”

“And was it?”

“Same blue felt tip,” he said, “but see the thickness of the letters?”

“I guess the tip’s showing a lot of wear.”

“What I’d guess,” he said, “is that she pressed really hard on it, just to show you how pissed off she is. You gotta treat your customers right, Bernie, if you expect to make a go of it in a legit business.”

I said I’d keep that in mind. He left again, and the bell jingled again, and I went and made my phone call.

“I have to apologize,” I told Burton Barton the Fifth. “Someone came into the store, and I didn’t want our conversation overheard.”

“I assumed as much. You have the, uh—”

“Book,” I supplied.

“Yes, let’s call it that. It’s in your possession?”

“It is, and I’d rather it were in yours.”

“As would I. Shall I come to your shop?”

“I think it may be under observation.”

“By your earlier visitor? And might he be a government worker?”

“Yes,” I said, “and yes. Why don’t I bring the, uh, book to you?”

“To me?”

“At your residence. Or your place of business, as you prefer.”

He considered it, or at least paused as if so doing. “No,” he said at length. “No, I wouldn’t want you to put yourself out.”

“It’s no problem, really.”

“It would be a problem for me,” he said. “I’ll come to you, as I’ve done in the past. But not to the store, not if it’s being watched. We adjourned to a coffee shop recently.”

“Yes, and once was enough. Let me think,” I said, and at least paused as if so doing. “There’s an establishment on the corner of Eleventh and Broadway where no one will take undue notice of us. It’s not fancy, but it’s comfortable enough. It’s called the Bum Rap.”

A few minutes later my store was closed for the night and I was two doors down the street at the Poodle Factory, tapping away at Carolyn’s laptop.

“Shit,” I said.

“No luck, Bern?”

“No.”

“Bern, your problems are nothing compared to this poor woman’s.
‘CLOSED? WHAT DO YOU MEAN, CLOSED??? YOUR LIGHTS ARE ON AND I KNOW YOU ARE IN THERE! YOU HAVE A BOOK I NEED!! BUT YOU ARE NEVER OPEN!! JUST FOR THAT I AM STEALING CZECHOSLOVAKIA!!! TOMORROW I WILL COME BACK FOR LONELY PLANET GUIDE TO ATLANTIS!!!’
All those exclamation points, Bern.”

“I know. She probably wants me to sell her a Robert Ludlum novel.”

“
The Lonely Planet Guide to Atlantis.
Did she actually take Czechoslovakia?”

“Somebody did.”

“She’s enjoying this, Bern. She’s frustrated that you’re always closed, but she’s making the most of it. When did she leave this? Not during lunch.”

“When Chloe came over.”

“You locked up?”

“Chloe did. She wanted to spend a few minutes in the back room.”

“Oh?”

“She was expressing her gratitude.”

“I’ll just bet she was. And did her expression have a happy ending?”

“Carolyn, I’m trying to concentrate.”

“Always a problem,” she said, “when one has been recently drained of one’s precious bodily fluids. I’ll let you be.”

She let me be, but I couldn’t get anywhere. I gave up and used her phone. Two miracles happened in quick succession: I remembered Ray’s cell phone number, and he answered it.

“I have a phone number,” I said, “and I need an address. And I know they’ve got reverse directories online, and I tried them all and got nowhere.”

He told me to give him the number, and I did. “I’ll call you back,” he said. “You’re at Carolyn’s, right?”

Jesus, was he watching me after all?

“How did you know that, Ray?”

“A secret cop trick,” he said. “My phone rang, and I looked at it, and it said ‘Poodle Factory’ on it.”

“Oh, right. You want the number?”

“That popped up, too. Gimme a minute, I’ll check that other number for you.”

It was more like five minutes, and he came back with a blank. “It’s a burner,” he said. “You buy a phone for cash and use it until the minutes are up. Then I suppose you could burn it, but it’d make a hell of a stink, so you’d most likely just toss it. No name, no address, not that we can get hold of, anyway.”