The Burglar Who Traded Ted Williams (23 page)

“Not anymore,” I said. “Oh, he was still dead, but by the time we got into his apartment the cops had hauled him out of here in a body bag. That made the news Sunday night, and after that I never heard another word from Doll. She concluded, reasonably enough I suppose, that any chance she had of making a couple of bucks had just gone down the bathtub drain, so she’d move on to whatever life offered her next.”

“What happened to the cards?” It was Lolly Stoppelgard who wanted to know, reinforcing my view of her as an eminently practical woman.

“Gone,” I said. “Did Luke sell them? If so, what happened to the money? My guess is he put them, briefcase and all, in a coin locker somewhere while he figured out what to do with them. But there must be half a dozen other things that could have happened to them, and I have a feeling we’ll never know where they wound up.”

“And what about Luke?”

“I beg your pardon?”

“The young man,” Edna Gilmartin said. It was, as far as I could recall, the first time she’d spoken up all night. “The young man who died mysteriously in a locked bathroom. Who killed him?”

“Oh, that’s easy,” I said. “Harlan Nugent killed him.”

I
had a tense moment there, I have to admit it. Because all Harlan Nugent had to do was tell us to go home and pick up the phone to call his lawyer.

But what he said was, “That’s ridiculous. I never even knew the man. Why on earth would I kill him?”

“That’s a good question,” I said.

“And we were in London,” Joan Nugent put in. “Neither of us could have had anything to do with it. We were out of the country.”

“You left Wednesday evening,” I said. “Doll dropped the cards at Luke’s apartment on Monday. Sometime between then and when you left, Luke was up here and Harlan Nugent killed him. If I had to guess, I’d go with Tuesday afternoon.” I looked over at Ray. “How does that square with the estimated time of death?”

“No problem, Bernie.”

“I think you must be out of your mind,” Nugent said. “That man was never in this apartment on any of those days.” A shadow passed over his wife’s face, and for an instant it looked as though she was about to say something, but her husband’s hand settled on hers and the moment passed. He set his jaw. “I’ll repeat what I said before. You admitted it was a good question. Why on earth would I kill him?”

“It’s still a good question,” I said, “but I’ve got a couple of good questions myself. Why would a man take off all his clothes and lock himself in somebody else’s bathroom?”

“To take a shower,” Lolly Stoppelgard suggested.

“That would make sense if it was his own bathroom,” Carolyn volunteered, “but it wasn’t. Maybe he got all sweaty posing and he needed to wash up.”

“He was not here,” Harlan Nugent said.

“Or maybe he just needed to use the john, Bern. That wouldn’t get him in the tub, though, would it? Ray, has anybody checked if the shower worked in his apartment on the seventh floor? See, if he couldn’t take a shower at his own place—”

“Forget the shower,” I said. “The water wasn’t on and the body wasn’t wet.”

“Some men tend to lock themselves in the bathroom,” Lolly Stoppelgard said, with a glance at her husband. “Did they find any funny magazines in there with him?”

Time to grab the wheel again. “He would lock himself in the bathroom,” I said, “as a way of hiding. Once, years ago, back in the days when I still engaged in occasional acts of burglary—”

“Aw, Jesus,” Ray muttered.

“—I was an uninvited guest in an empty apartment when its occupant returned. I hid in the closet, though a bathroom would have done as well had one been close at hand. I couldn’t lock the closet, of course.” Someone else had locked the closet, with me in it, and when I managed to get out I found a corpse on the floor. I winced at the memory.

“Nor was I naked,” I continued. “Last week Ray Kirschmann asked me what kind of burglar takes off his clothes in the course of a burglary. No burglar I ever heard of, I told him, so—”

“He was posing,” Patience said. “That’s it, isn’t it?” She smiled at Joan Nugent. “He was posing for you, wasn’t he?”

“I’ve never painted nudes,” Joan Nugent said. “I don’t believe in it.”

“You don’t believe in it?”

“No, I don’t. I think we’ve had entirely too much of that sort of thing down through the centuries. My most recent painting of Luke was in harlequin garb. I assure you he was fully clothed.”

“Then he was changing,” Patience said. “He’d posed in costume, and—”

“Never in costume. When he posed for me he wore street clothes. I would sketch the lines of his body, and then I’d paint the harlequin costume in later. I didn’t need him for that.”

“But he was naked,” I said.

“Oh, no,” she said. “I’d remember that. I’m sure it’s not at all the sort of thing I would forget.”

“Joan,” Harlan Nugent said gently, “shut up.”

“You might have remembered,” I told her, “if you’d known what was going on. But you were unconscious. You’d been drugged.”

“Not a word, Joan,” Nugent said.

“If you’ll all follow me,” I said, leading the way to the studio or guest bedroom, as you prefer. “You were drugged, Mrs. Nugent, and you were unconscious. Your clothes were off. Luke Santangelo’s clothes were off as well, and he was attempting to—”

“Oh my God,” someone said.

“I suppose you were on the daybed over there, or perhaps on the floor. Then there was the sound of your husband’s key in the lock, and seconds later he had thrown open the hall door and announced his presence. He’s a big, hearty man. I’m sure he tends to make his presence known.”

“Sometimes he’ll say, ‘Lucy, I’m home.’ Like Ricky Ricardo, you know. He does a good Cuban accent. Show them, darling.”

Harlan Nugent looked like a man trying to think of a reason to take the next breath.

“You walked in,” I said to him, “and found your wife unconscious, or at the very least out of her mind on drugs. You saw the bathroom door, closed. You tried the knob and it was locked.”

“And then what did I do?”

“You banged on the door, demanding that it be opened. Luke Santangelo was many things, most of them unsavory, but he was not entirely out of his mind. The last thing he was going to do was open the door.”

“Then I’d say we were at an impasse,” Nugent said, “since I’m hardly of a size to slither through the keyhole, and the door doesn’t have one anyway, does it?” He made a huge fist and gave the door a thump. “Pretty sturdy,” he observed, “but I suppose I could have knocked it down
in extremis.
Kicked it in, put my shoulder to it, that sort of thing. But didn’t I understand that it was still intact, indeed still locked, when the police were forced to break in?”

“I was wondering about that myself,” I said. I went over and tapped on the door, then flicked the switch alongside it. No lights went on or off. I opened the bathroom door and repeated the process, with the same results. “What have we here?” I said. “Doesn’t seem to do anything, does it?”

“I think it may control one of the baseboard outlets,” Nugent said. “What possible difference could it make?”

“I wonder,” I said, and whipped out my ring of burglar’s tools and began unscrewing the screws that held the switch plate in place.
“Voilà,”
I said at length, showing them all the rectangle devoid of the usual switchbox. “Once upon a time, this must have been a child’s bedroom. And after the child locked itself in the bathroom and couldn’t get out, perhaps for the second or third time, one of its parents resolved to make sure nothing of the sort ever happened again. Hence this little safety device.”

“Our children were grown when we moved here,” Joan Nugent said. “This room has always been my studio. And I’ve never locked myself in this bathroom. I hardly ever use this bathroom, and I rarely lock the door in the other bathroom, either.”

“Joan,” her husband said, “nobody cares. And you, sir,” he said to me. “What you’re suggesting makes no sense at all. Even if all the other nonsense you’ve suggested were true, which it is not, and even if I had known about this ancient passageway, which I did not, and even if I were sufficiently outraged to want to injure the villain, why would I leave him in the bathroom? If I went in there and killed him, why wouldn’t I get rid of the body?”

“Because you couldn’t get in the room.”

“Bernie,” Ray Kirschmann pointed out, “you just showed us how to do it. Remember?”

“Vividly,” I said. “But that’s not what Mr. Nugent did. Instead he got a gun from wherever he keeps that sort of thing, and he stuck the business end of it through the opening and shot Luke Santangelo right between the eyes. I don’t know if Luke was standing in the tub at the time. He may have tried backing away when he saw a gun poking through a wall at him, and who could blame him? But once he was shot the impact would have sent him reeling, and one way or another he wound up in the tub. He was dead, and the door was still locked.”

“So, Bernie? He reaches in like you did, unlocks the lock, an’ walks out with the stiff draped over his shoulder. Mr. Nugent here’s a big guy, the stiff was a wiry little punk, he wouldn’t have no trouble doin’ it. Your doctor didn’t say nothin’ about not doin’ any heavy liftin’, did he, Mr. Nugent?”

“Had any of this happened, Officer, I’d have done exactly what you’ve just said.”

I said, “Oh yeah? Let’s see you do it, Mr. Nugent.”

“Don’t be ridiculous.”

“Come on,” I said. “Show us how you’d have done it and we’ll all go home.”

“This is a farce,” he said. “Why should I dignify it by—”

“Oh, give it a rest,” I told him. “You’re too big. You’ve got forearms like a Bulgarian weightlifter. I don’t even know if you could get your hand through the opening, but you’d never get enough of your arm in to reach the lock. And why should you make a fool of yourself now by trying? You already tried once and found out it didn’t work.”

“And then what did I do, Mr. Rhodenbarr?”

“You tidied up. You screwed the switch plate back where it belonged. You threw a blanket over your wife and let her sleep it off. When she woke up asking whatever happened to cool bland Luke, you said he must have left before you arrived. ‘I guess I must have dozed off,’ she said. ‘I guess you did at that,’ you said, ‘but don’t you think we ought to start packing? We’ve got a flight tomorrow evening.’ ”

“And I suppose I left the corpse in place and trotted off to London.”

“Why not? He wasn’t going anywhere. Your wife already said she hardly ever uses that bathroom. If she tried to get in there during the twenty-four hours before you left for the airport, she’d find the door locked. ‘Seems to be stuck,’ you could tell her. ‘Wood must have swelled over the summer. Have to get the super to look at it after we come back.’ ”

“You’re forgetting something.”

“Oh?”

“Our apartment was ransacked in our absence. Things tossed about, drawers emptied out, jewelry and other valuables taken. How does that fit in with your little scenario?”

“He’s got a point,” Ray said. “There was even a piece or two of jewelry found in the tub with the deceased.”

“I’m sure there was,” I said. “Right where Nugent tossed it when he faked the burglary?”

Nugent stared at me. “I faked the burglary? When did I do that, right after I kidnapped the Lindbergh baby?”

I shook my head. “I have a pretty good idea how you did it,” I said. “The only real question is when you tossed the jewelry in the tub. It was a nice touch, and I wonder if you were farsighted enough to do it right after you shot Santangelo or if you had to remove the switch plate a second time later on. I’d guess the latter. The killing was an impulse thing, wasn’t it? While the cover-up took some planning.”

“You must be out of your mind.”

“Here’s what I think,” I went on. “Late Tuesday night, while your wife was asleep, you realized what you had to do. You got some of her jewelry, came in here, undid the switch plate, tossed the jewels in the tub with the corpse, and closed up again. Then Wednesday the two of you were ready to fly to London. Maybe you were already down on the street loading the bags into the taxi when you contrived to remember something, one bag you’d conveniently left behind. ‘I won’t be a minute,’ you told your wife, and it wouldn’t have taken you much longer than that. Scoop up a few valuables, spill out a few drawers, and you’re on your way again. You’d already have disposed of whatever clothing Santangelo had removed before he, uh, did what he did. In a pinch you could have tossed them out the window, leaving them for the homeless to scavenge, but I suspect you found an even safer way.”

“And what did I do with the jewels?”

“Good question,” I said. “That necklace is a beaut, Mrs. Nugent. I’ve been admiring it all night. I don’t suppose it was one of the stolen pieces?”

“I had it with me in Europe.”

“I don’t know what you’re driving at,” Nugent said, “and I don’t think you do, either. The police have a full and precise inventory of everything that was taken. You can be assured that the pieces my wife is wearing are not on it.”

“I’m sure they’re not,” I said, “but it’s good to know about the inventory. Ray, I don’t suppose you happen to have a copy of it with you, do you?”

“I do, as a matter of fact.”

“And I do if he doesn’t,” said Nugent. “What possible difference can it make?”

“Well,” I said slowly, “if we found some of the pieces on that list here in this apartment, it wouldn’t look good for Mr. Nugent, would it?”

“If he took the stuff,” Ray said, “he wouldn’t leave it here. He ain’t stupid, Bernie.”

“I could hardly tuck it in my breast pocket and carry it to London and back,” Nugent said testily, “and I wouldn’t have had time to do anything else with it, would I?”

“That’s right,” I said. “You’d have had to stash it someplace on the premises. I know what you’re going to say, Ray. After the Nugents returned, he could have transferred the goodies to a safe deposit box.”

“Words right outta my mouth, Bernie.”

“And he could have,” I said, “but I don’t think he did. Why bother, since the cops had already been in and out of the place in his absence? I think he decided the jewels were perfectly safe right where they were. Now where would that be?” I looked thoughtfully at Harlan Nugent. “Someplace where your wife wouldn’t come upon them, because she thought the burglary was genuine. Some private space of yours. A den, say.” I led the way, and damned if they didn’t all follow me. “A locked desk drawer,” I said, having located just such a drawer. “Is this where you put the jewels, Mr. Nugent?”

“What a curious fantasy.”

“I don’t suppose you’d care to open the drawer for us?”

“Nothing,” he said, “would please me more.” He opened an unlocked drawer on the opposite side of the desk and rummaged through it. “Damn it to hell,” he said.

“Is something wrong?”

“I can’t find the fucking key.”

“How convenient.”

He cursed colorfully and imaginatively. If I’d been a key and somebody talked to me like that, I’d do whatever he wanted me to do. This key, however, remained elusive.

“Bern,” Carolyn said, God bless her, “since when did you ever need a key to open a lock? Use the gifts God gave you, will you?”

“Well, I can’t do that,” I said. “We’re guests in Mr. Nugent’s home, and it’s his desk and his drawer and only he knows what’s in it. I couldn’t possibly try to open it without his permission.”