Too Many Clients (11 page)

He was on his feet. “What the hell is this, Archie'What am I in?”

“You’re in three hundred bucks. I advise you to ask me no questions; I might answer them. Go home and tell your wife you’ve had a rough two days and nights and need a good rest.”

“I want to know one thing. Am I going to get tagged?”

“Toss a coin. I hope not. We could be lucky.”

“Would it help if I wipe up here'Ten minutes would do it.”

“No. If they ever get this far they won’t need fingerprints. Go home and stay put. I may be ringing you around noon. Don’t take any of the pictures.”

I entered the elevator.

When Wolfe came down from the plant rooms at eleven o’clock I was at my desk with the noon edition, so-called, of the Gazette. There was a picture of Maria Perez, dead, on the front page. She didn’t really rate it, since she had had absolutely no distinction but youth and beauty, but she got a break because nobody important had been killed or robbed or arrested that night.

It was wide open. The only facts they had, leaving off the tassels, were: a) the body had been found at 12:35 a.m. by a watchman making his rounds on a North River pier in the Forties; b) she had been dead not more than three hours and probably less; c) she had been shot in the back of the head with a .32; d) she had last been seen alive by the two girl friends who had gone to the movie with her, and who said she had got up and left a little before nine o’clock and hadn’t come back; she had said nothing to them; they had supposed she was going to the rest room; and e) her father and mother refused to talk to reporters. There was no hint of any suspicion that there was any connection between her death and that of Thomas G. Yeager, whose body had been found three days earlier in a hole in the street she had lived on.

I had reported briefly to Wolfe after his breakfast in his room, just the essentials. Now, as he sat at his desk, I handed him the Gazette. He glanced at the picture, read the story, put the paper down, and leaned back.

“Verbatim,” he said.

I gave him the crop, including, of course, my call on Fred. When I had finished I handed him the evidence I had got from Maria’s drawer. “One item,” I said, “might mislead you-labels from four champagne bottles. I do not and will not believe that Maria drank any of the champagne. She got the labels when her father or mother brought the bottles down to dispose of them.”

“Who said so?”

“I say so.”

He grunted and began his inspection. With that sort of thing he always takes his time. He looked at the back of each item as well as the front, even the advertisements, the five-dollar bills, and the tear sheets from the Times. Finishing with them, the labels, and the photographs, he handed them to me and tackled the drawings. After running through them, five seconds for some and up to a minute for others, he stood up and began laying them out on his desk in rows. They just about covered it. I stood and watched as he shifted them around into groups, each group being presumably different sketches of the same woman. Twice I disagreed and we discussed it. We ended up with three groups with four sketches each, five groups with three sketches each, one group with two, and two with only one. Eleven different guests in two years, and it wasn’t likely that Maria had got all of them. Yeager had been a very hospitable man.

I pointed to one of the four-sketch groups. “I can name her,” I said. “Ten to one. I have danced with her. Her husband owns a chain of restaurants and is twice her age.”

He glared at me. “You’re being frivolous.”

“No, sir. The name is Delancey.”

“Pfui. Name that one.” He pointed to the two-sketch group. “One dated April fifteenth and the other May eighth. Last Sunday.”

“I was leaving it to you. You name it.” “She has been in this room.” “Yes, sir.” “Julia McGee.”

“Yes, sir. I wasn’t being frivolous. I wanted to see if you would spot her. If those are the dates Maria saw the subjects in the hall, not merely the dates she made these sketches, Julia McGee was there Sunday. Either she killed him or she found him dead. If he was on his feet when she arrived she wouldn’t have left before midnight, because refreshments were expected�and of course she didn’t go to take dictation. And if he was alive and she was there when the murderer came she would have got it too. So if she didn’t kill him she found him dead. By the way, to clear up a detail, I have entered the dollar Mrs. Perez gave me in the cash book as a retainer. I took it because I thought she would be more likely to hold on if she had us hired, and I assumed they are now eliminated. They didn’t kill their daughter. I am not crowing. I would rather have been wrong than be proved right by having Maria get it, even if she asked for it.”

“That she asked for it is only conjecture.”

“Yeah. But our theory is that she was killed by the person who killed Yeager or we haven’t got a theory, and in that case Maria must have made the contact. Suppose it was Julia McGee. She couldn’t have known there was an eye on her behind that crack as she went down the hall, or if she did she couldn’t have known whose eye it was. If she felt or suspected it, as I did, and pushed the door open and found Maria there, she wouldn’t have gone on up and used the gun she had brought to shoot Yeager. So Maria must have made the contact yesterday, and she wouldn’t do that just for the hell of it, just for the pleasure of saying, ‘I saw you come in Sunday evening so I know you killed Mr. Yeager.’ She wanted to make a deal. That she asked for it may be only a conjecture, but I don’t make it because I like it. I would prefer to believe that she was as good inside as outside. Anyhow she didn’t drink that champagne.”

Wolfe said, “Mmmmh.”

I pointed to one of the three-sketch groups. “That’s Dinah. Mrs. Austin Hough. Maria knew how to get a likeness. She got Mrs. Delancey too.”

“There is none of Meg Duncan.”

“No. When she got photographs of her she didn’t need a sketch.”

He sat down. “Get Fred. How soon can he be here?” “Twenty minutes.” “Get him.”

I got at my phone and dialed, and Fred answered. I told him that if he could make it here in nineteen minutes two things would be waiting for him, $315 and instructions from Wolfe, and he said both would be welcome. I turned and told Wolfe, and he said, “Get Miss McGee. I’ll speak to her.”

That took a little longer. The trouble seemed to be, when I got the Continental Plastic Products switchboard, that Julia McGee had been Yeager’s secretary, and now that he was no longer there the operator didn’t know where Miss McGee was. I finally got her and signed to Wolfe, and he took his phone. I stayed on.

“Miss McGee'I must see you as soon as possible. At my office.”

“Well�” She didn’t sound enthusiastic. “I leave at five. Will six o’clock do?”

“No. It’s urgent. As soon as you can get here.”

“Can’t you tell me on the phone�no, I suppose not. All right, I’ll come.”

“Now.”

“Yes. I’ll leave in a few minutes.”

We hung up. Wolfe leaned back and closed his eyes. I gathered up the drawings and put them with the rest of Maria’s collection. Getting a folder from the cabinet, I marked it yeager and put the collection in it, decided that the safe was the proper place for something that might some day be a people’s exhibit, and took it there instead of the cabinet. When Wolfe’s eyes opened I took him a check to sign, to Fred Durkin for three hundred fifteen & 00/100 dollars. We were now out about five Cs on the Yeager operation, and we had four clients and two bucks in retainers, plus a damn good chance of ending up in the coop for obstructing justice. As I put Fred’s check on my desk the phone rang. It was Mrs. Yeager. She wanted to know when I was going to take her to see the room on 82nd Street. She also wanted to tell me that the daughter of the superintendent of that house had been murdered, and she thought Wolfe and I should look into it. I could do that when I took her to see the room, saving a trip. If you think I should have stopped her because phones have extensions and someone might have been on one, you are correct. I tried to. I finally managed without hanging up on her.

By then Fred was there, having been admitted by Fritz. I gave him his check, and Wolfe gave him his instructions, which he took without a blink. The difference in the way he takes Wolfe and the way he takes me is not based on experience. Up in the bower, getting it only from me, he had suspected that I was perching him far out on a limb and he didn’t like it. Now, with Wolfe, there was no question of suspecting or not liking. He had got the idea somehow, long ago, that there was absolutely no limit to what Wolfe could do if he wanted to, so of course there was no risk involved. I would like to be present to see his face if and when Wolfe tells him to go to Moscow and tail Khrushchev. When the doorbell rang he got up and moved to a chair over by the bookshelves as I crossed to the hall.

And got a surprise. It was Julia McGee on the stoop, but she wasn’t alone. I stepped back in the office and told Wolfe Aiken was with her. He scowled at me, pursed his lips, and nodded, and I went and opened the door and they entered. For a president Aiken was polite. She was only the ex-secretary of his ex-executive vice-president, but he let her precede him in, down the hall, and into the office. Wolfe stood until they were seated, him in the red leather chair and her in the one Fred had vacated.

Aiken spoke. “You sent for Miss McGee. If there has been a development, you should have notified me. I have had no word from you. If you have something to say to Miss McGee, I want to hear it.”

Wolfe was regarding him. “I told you Tuesday night, Mr. Aiken, that it may be that the less you know of the particulars of my performance the better. But it can’t hurt for you to know about this; I would almost certainly have informed you of it before the day was out. Indeed, it is just as well to have you present.” His head turned. “Fred?”

Fred got up and came to the corner of Wolfe’s desk. “Look at Miss McGee,” Wolfe told him. Fred turned for a glance at her and turned back.

“I don’t need to,” he said.

“You recognize her?”

“Sure. I ought to; she gave me this.” He pointed to his cheek.

“That was Tuesday evening. Had you seen her before that?”

“Yes, sir. I saw her Sunday evening when I was covering that house on Eighty-second Street. I saw her enter the house. At the basement door.”

“Did you see her leave?”

“No, sir. She could have left while I was at the corner, phoning in. I phoned in every hour, as instructed. Or after I left for the night.”

“Did you tell Archie, Tuesday evening, that you had seen her before?”

“No, sir. She came at me the second she saw me Tuesday evening, and it was a tangle. After Archie took her away I got to thinking. It was her I saw Sunday. I should have told you, but I knew what it would mean. It would make me a witness in a murder case, and you know how that is. But this morning I decided I’d have to. You were paying me and you were counting on me. So I came and told you.”

“How sure are you that you saw Miss McGee, the woman sitting there, enter that house Sunday evening?”

“I’m dead sure. I wouldn’t have come and told you if I wasn’t. I know what I’m in for now.”

“You deserve it. You had vital information, obtained while you were on an assignment from me, and you withheld it for thirty-six hours. I’ll deal with that later. Go to the front room and stay there.”

As Fred crossed to the door to the front room no eyes but Wolfe’s followed him. Aiken’s and mine were on Julia McGee. Hers were on a spot in the pattern of the rug, in front of her feet.

When the door had closed behind Fred, Wolfe spoke. “Miss McGee. Why did you kill him?”

“Don’t answer,” Aiken commanded her. He turned to Wolfe. “You’re working for me. As you put it yourself, you are to make every effort to protect the reputation and interests of the corporation. What’s that man’s name?”

“Fred Durkin.”

“Why did you have him watching that house Sunday evening?”

“On behalf of a client. In confidence.”

“You have too many clients. You didn’t mention it Tuesday evening. You said you had no engagement.”

“We were discussing the murder of Yeager, and I had no engagement to investigate that. I’m humoring you, Mr. Aiken. My other engagements are no concern of yours if there is no conflict of interest. Why did you kill Yeager, Miss McGee?”

Aiken jerked his head to tell her not to answer, and jerked it back to Wolfe. “That’s just a trick. Granting that Durkin saw her enter that house Sunday evening, that doesn’t prove she killed Yeager. He may not have been there. Did Durkin see him enter?”

“No. But someone else did. Mr. and Mrs. Cesar Perez. The janitor and his wife. I would advise you not to approach them. They are bereaved. Their daughter died last night. Since you don’t want Yeager’s connection with that house disclosed, you had better leave them to Mr. Goodwin and me.”

“What time did Yeager enter'Before Miss McGee or after?”

“Before. He arrived around seven o’clock. I am humoring you, sir.”

“I don’t appreciate it. Granting that Durkin saw Miss McGee enter, he didn’t see her leave. Are you accusing her of killing Yeager there in that house and carrying his body out to the street and dumping it in that hole?”

“No. I’m not accusing her; I am confronting her with a fact.” Wolfe cocked his head. “Mr. Aiken. I’m not turning our association into a conflict instead of a concert; you are. I told you Tuesday evening that the only feasible way to try to protect the reputation and interests of your corporation with any hope of success would be to stop the police investigation of the murder by reaching an acceptable solution of it without involving that room. I dare contrive such a solution and offer it only if I know what actually happened. It is established that Yeager entered that room around seven o’clock that evening, and it is a reasonable assumption that he was still there when Miss McGee arrived. You say my asking her why she killed him was a trick; certainly it was, and an ancient one; the Greeks used it two thousand years ago, and others long before. I’ll withdraw that question and try another.”

He turned. “Miss McGee. Was Mr. Yeager in that room when you entered it Sunday evening?”

She had finished studying the pattern of the rug some time back. Now her eyes left Wolfe to go to Aiken, and his met them. She said nothing, but he did. “All right, answer it.”

She looked at Wolfe, straight. “Yes, he was there. His body was. He was dead.”

“Where was the body?”

“On the floor. On the carpet.”

“Did you touch it'Move it?”

“I only touched his hair, where the hole was. He was on his side with his mouth open.” “What did you do?”

“I didn’t do anything. I sat on a chair a few minutes and then left.”