by Barbara Paul
No long-distance weapons this time—I’d have to do the job myself. The thought of that made me break out in a cold sweat, prompting curious looks from Nedda. I’d have to locate Charlie, make my plans, and then somehow crank myself up to going through with it. I’d have to. It was the only way. Yes.
Once I’d made the decision I began to relax. Charlie had kept his mouth shut so far; I was going to have to rely on his keeping quiet a little longer, until I got back. That was the weak part of the plan: the fact that Charlie hadn’t spilled the beans so far didn’t mean he wouldn’t be seized by an urge to confess tomorrow morning. But there was nothing I could do about that. I’d have to bank on his continued silence until I could make sure he was silenced permanently. So be it.
By the time we were approaching Orly I had experienced a miraculous recovery from my indisposition. We’d leased a villa outside Nice, and I gave myself over to one long period of self-indulgence. France was beautiful, Nedda was beautiful, and at times even I felt beautiful. There were days when I could forget Charlie Bates for hours on end. I tried not to keep thinking I ought to be back in Pittsburgh taking care of the one man who could destroy me. But walking out on the honeymoon would be an invitation to a divorce, so I concentrated on enjoying myself.
When we’d been there a month, I started dropping little hints that it was time to be thinking of getting back. Conjugal bliss was great stuff, but business was business.
Nedda didn’t take to the idea too well. “Well, thanks a lot, Earl,” she said in mock-sarcastic tones. “That says a lot for the trip.”
I sighed dramatically. “Nedda, love, life with you on the Côte d’Azur is nirvana itself. But all good things must come to an end.”
“Why?”
“What?”
“Why must all good things come to an end?”
Because I’ve got to go back to Pittsburgh and murder somebody. “I don’t want to end the honeymoon, Nedda,” I said, overstressing the difference, “it’s just that I think I ought to be getting back.”
“Quibble, quibble.” Nedda didn’t want to leave yet and that was that. We stayed.
Part of me (the irrational part) was glad she was being so inflexible. France had something to offer I just couldn’t get enough of: its chairs. My god, the chairs! Beautiful, exquisite pieces that delighted the eye and fed the soul. We took a few quick trips to Paris and other places, and I made some incredible buys. A Louis XIV walnut fauteuil dated 1680. An 1850 cane-seated papier-mâché chair inlaid with gilt and mother-of-pearl. A pair of Louis XV waxed beechwood chairs signed “Nagaret à Lyon.”
But the biggest find was a High Gothic throne chair dating from the fifteenth century. The seat had been replaced sometime during the last century, but the cresting was intact and the bookfold paneling on the front and sides was original. It would complement without matching the grand English oak box chair Robin Coulter had bought for me from Mercer Gallery. I told Nedda what we could sell this one for, how much profit we’d realize on that one—all the time knowing most of them would end up in the house in Fox Chapel.
Amazing how quickly one adjusts to spending large sums of money. My days of hustling Hepplewhites were over (thank god; I hate Hepplewhite). I could indulge what Nedda jokingly referred to as my chair fetish without worrying about the bank balance, without worrying about being caught.
When we’d been there a little longer, I tried again. “It’s been six weeks now, Nedda. I was counting on staying only a month.”
She gave me her innocent look. “Is that why we paid two months’ rent on the villa?”
I’d been hoping she wouldn’t remember that. “When we were circling Orly, we talked about it. We agreed to stay a month.”
“Did I agree to that? I seem to remember being told we’d stay a month.”
“Nedda, if I’m going to run the galleries, I ought to be back there doing it.”
“Relax, Earl. The business isn’t going to collapse just because you’re not there. Or is that what you’re afraid of?”
I didn’t have a snappy comeback for that, so I let it drop. It wasn’t just Charlie Bates now; I was beginning to worry about the business a little too. I’d left Peg McAllister in charge and I knew she wouldn’t let anything happen. Still.
We took a drive to Avignon; there was a showroom there I wanted to visit. The selection turned out to be disappointing—until I came to a chair that made me stop dead in utter astonishment.
It wasn’t French. Never in their most manic moments had the French produced anything like that chair. No, the English were going to have to take the blame for this one. It was a Regency armchair built by someone who’d flipped his lid over a fad of the times. The Regency period was a time of extremes—simplicity was fashionable but excess was admired once in a while in relief. The man who’d made this chair had opted for the latter. English Regency was the more graceful counterpart of the trend-setting French Empire style—the last two consistent styles before nineteenth-century mass production, mass imitation. Both English and French styles went ape on occasion, trying to outdo each other in ornamentation that caught a popular rage of the times: a fascination with Egypt and all things Egyptian.
So what we had here was an English Regency Egyptian chair that must have been an elaborate imitation of a French Empire Egyptian chair. A mishmash. I couldn’t tell at first glance what kind of wood had been used; every visible inch of it had been either gilded or painted black. Sphinx-head handgrips, lion-paw feet, other ornamentation in the form of lotus leaves, scrollwork, sun-and-pyramid, chimeras, crossed whip and scepter, ankhs, winged lions, scarabs, ostrich feathers, wheat sheaves. The chair that had everything. Even the three-inch spindles gratuitously inserted into the shortened back were delicately carved representations of cats—sacred ones, no doubt. Incredible, utterly incredible. I was laughing so hard my eyes were watering.
“I have a husband who laughs at chairs,” Nedda said amiably.
What a preposterous chair. It had a lovely silhouette—but who pays attention to silhouette with such a whizbang display of ornamentation to distract the eye? Such a pretentious chair, a downright ridiculous chair, a wonderful chair. I bought it, of course.
“Do you really think Pittsburgh’s ready for that?” Nedda smiled.
“Well keep it around a while for laughs,” I said. “Then we’ll look for someone with enough sense of the absurd to appreciate it properly.”
Nedda finally agreed to return to Pittsburgh, but only when eight weeks had passed. She’d intended to stay the full two months all along. I mentioned earlier that Nedda was used to having her own way; now I had a closer view of how she went about getting it. By mild resistance, evasive action, teasing answers to serious questions. No direct lay-down-the-law confrontations. But we ended up doing what she wanted. Wasn’t it Jeanette MacDonald they called the iron butterfly? Bad analogy, don’t know why I thought of it; there was nothing at all butterflylike about Nedda.
The iron panther?
Two things needed immediate attention.
First, locating Charlie Bates. That meant calling in outside help. Much as I thought about it, I couldn’t see any way around it. I couldn’t find Charlie myself (I’d tried once before), so I’d have to use a private investigator. So if Charlie’s body were found after I’d killed him, I’d be up to my eyeballs trying to explain to Lieutenant D’Elia why I’d hired a detective to find him. Therefore I was going to have to figure out a plan that made sure Charlie completely disappeared from the face of the earth. Think that’s easy? Try it sometime. Anyway, I contacted a big agency that claimed discretion was its middle name and told them to find Charlie Bates.
The second thing was taking care of Wightman. I’d originally planned to fire him the minute I got back, but in France I’d had time to think about it a little. It would be more fun if I did bring in that bright young kid from the San Francisco office. Let Wightman squirm a little first. I’d give more and more of his work to the kid and then sit bac
k and watch the countermeasures Wightman would be sure to take. Should be quite a show.
But I never got to see it. When I called the manager of the San Francisco branch, he told me the kid had quit to go work for one of our competitors.
Hell.
The detective’s name was Valentine, and the head of Triangle Inquiry Consultants (what a euphemism) had assured me he was “one of our best men.” Valentine was rather colorless in appearance, a man easy to forget—a requisite in his trade, I suppose. He was curiously soft-spoken and polite, even overpolite. Not at all what you’d expect in a private eye. But even his elaborate courtesy couldn’t take the sting out of what he was saying.
“To put it in a nutshell, Mr. Sommers,” Valentine said, “we can’t find a trace of Charles Bates. When someone drops out of sight, we usually begin our search by talking to his family and friends. But Mr. Bates has no family—even his ex-wives have all moved away. And you seem to be his only friend. We checked the police blotter, hospital admissions—”
“A man can’t just vanish into thin air.”
“True. But he can leave town. If we’d had his picture we could have checked airport and bus terminals. But as it is, you can’t expect a stewardess to recognize a man from just a verbal description, especially if he’s someone she may have seen only once two months ago.”
“I told you I didn’t have a picture.”
“I know. It’s unfortunate, because Mr. Bates seems to be one of those people who go through life without ever leaving their mark on it. Whether this is intentional on Mr. Bates’s part or not, I’m sure you’re more qualified to say than I am. But the fact remains that he suddenly stopped appearing in the places he used to frequent. And nobody knows why. His landlady says he didn’t move out, he just never came back. She still has his clothes and his personal belongings.”
“Did you look through them?” A useless question, but I asked it.
Valentine nodded. “Nothing there. And his neighbors barely remember him. I checked with the Motor Vehicles Bureau to see if they had a new address for his driver’s license. No luck. His car has been towed away—the police say it was abandoned. Mr. Sommers, may I ask if you were close to Mr. Bates?”
“No, not really. We’d known each other a long time, that’s all.”
“Well, then, I hope you won’t be offended when I say Mr. Bates led a rather shabby life. And an empty one. Three failed marriages. Short-term odd jobs to tide him over between get-rich-quick schemes that never panned out. Always just one step ahead of his creditors. It’s a familiar pattern. From what we learned about him, I’d say it was possible—even probable—that he just turned his back on the life he was leading and walked away from it. People are doing that now more than they used to. They just get fed up—and take a walk.”
Hadn’t thought of that. “And you think that’s what Charlie did?”
“It’s a strong possibility. We can rule out accident and suicide. You can’t die in this town without showing up on somebody’s records. I’d say your next step is to go to the police and file a missing persons report. The police have access to sources of information all over the country. All I can tell you is that we are reasonably sure Charles Bates is no longer in Pittsburgh, unless …”
“Unless what?”
“Unless he’s gone into hiding. A man can turn invisible if he really puts his mind to it. New name, new bona fides, new appearance. New life-style. Perhaps your friend simply doesn’t want to be found.”
I pretended to accept this explanation and thanked Valentine for his help. Charlie Bates could no more change his way of living than I could rearrange the order of the universe.
When the detective had left, I worked at coming to terms with my mixed feelings. My best-laid plans for protecting myself against the threat posed by Charlie Bates’s big mouth were all worthless if I couldn’t find Charlie. Valentine seemed to think he wasn’t going to be found without police help, and I wasn’t about to go to the police. So long as Charlie stayed lost, maybe I’d be all right. I didn’t see that I had much choice. I was just going to have to learn to live with not knowing what Charlie Bates was up to.
Once I’d made my mind up to that, I yielded to an enormous wave of relief. I wasn’t going to have to kill him after all. I’d sent him to his death once and it didn’t take. I’d do the same thing again if I had to. But that’s different from firing the gun yourself.
That’s messy.
Buzz, buzz. “Mr. Wightman to see you.”
“Tell him I’m in—”
Door open. “Ah, there you are, dear boy.” He sat down uninvited.
“Have a seat,” I said sarcastically.
“Thank you,” totally unperturbed. “I came to tell you, old chap, that after this week I will no longer be on your payroll.”
God damn him, he beat me to the punch. “Just like that?”
“Oh, dear me, no! Not ‘just like that.’ The whole time you were abroad tripping the light fantastic, I was busily establishing my new home away from home, if you catch my drift. I estimate that with diligence, fortitude, and a few hours of overtime I will have my present work load in tip-top condition by Friday, ready to hand over to my downwardly mobile successor, whoever the poor soul may be.”
“Surely I’m entitled to an explanation.”
“That you are, dear boy, that you are. Quite simply put, my reason for leaving is this.” He paused dramatically. “I don’t think you’ve got what it takes to run this business. In my fully considered judgment, within two years the once eminent Speer Galleries will be going to the dogs. And frankly, old chap, I don’t care for dogs all that much. You’re going to fail, and I don’t wish to fail with you. There. Could anything be plainer?”
I wanted to hit him. “Something about rats and desertion comes to mind.”
“Ah, but to call me a rat you must first call yourself a sinking ship—and that’s something you won’t do until the very last minute. Until too late, as a matter of fact. And rather than wait around for the inevitable eleventh-hour hysterics, I prefer to make my exit upstage center and make it now. You never fully appreciated the Speer, old boy, and you never had the percipience to learn from him. He was a grasping old pirate, but he knew how to run a gallery. You don’t.”
I didn’t even try to keep the anger out of my voice. “I know it’ll be hard, but we’ll try to struggle along without your services. Even though we both know I can replace you in five minutes. In fact, why wait until Friday? Why not get out right now?”
“There, you see!” Wightman neighed. “The Speer would never, never, never have said that! But because I got you angry—which, I might add, I have always been able to do with an absolute minimum of effort—because I got you angry, your only thought was to strike out, hit back, get even. Shall I tell you a secret? Amos Speer didn’t like me. Hard to believe, but it’s true. But whatever he thought of me personally, he was fully appreciative of my contribution to the business—a distinction you will never be able to make, dear boy.”
“Wightman, I’m curious,” I said. “How did you get a new position without a recommendation from Speer’s? What lies did you tell?”
He threw back his head and whinnied. “My new employer didn’t require a recommendation. He’s quite capable of recognizing value when he sees it.”
“And who is this sterling judge of character?”
“Me. I hired myself. Say hello to your newest competitor—I’m going into business for myself. Since I was unable to convince you there’s still gold in them thar California hills, I decided to mine it myself. Don’t look for such high profits from your San Francisco branch hereafter. I fully intend to take your west coast business away from you.”
The sonofabitch. “You can’t do that!” I blurted out, stupidly. “You can’t tell me you quit and you’re going to take my profits away from me and then just calmly get up and walk out—”
His eyes gleamed. “Watch.”
And he calmly got up and walked
out.
CHAPTER 7
I spent the rest of that day contacting porcelain experts I knew and ended up scoring zero. It wasn’t going to be as easy to replace Wightman as I’d thought.
So I wasn’t in the best of moods when I got home to find Nedda in a prickly tête-à-tête with Lieutenant D’Elia. Why was that cop talking to my wife behind my back? Not that Nedda would give anything away. She didn’t know anything.
“Martini?” Nedda asked me. I tried to read the expression on her face. “Lieutenant D’Elia says he just dropped in for a little chat.” The stress on says was ever so slight.
“A martini would be nice,” I nodded. “Is there something I can do for you, Lieutenant?”
D’Elia smiled easily. “Just dropped by to offer my congratulations. Belatedly, I’m afraid.”
Sure you did. “Thank you.”
“Congratulations seem in order on two accounts. Your marriage and your directorship.”
“Yes.” No help from me.
“Here you are.” Nedda handed me a glass.
I took a sip of the martini; too dry. “Did you offer the Lieutenant a drink?”
Nedda smiled sweetly. “No, I didn’t.”
“That’s all right, Mr. Sommers, I don’t care for anything.”
I used Amos Speer’s trick of letting an awkward silence develop.
D’Elia cleared his throat. “I was just talking to your wife about France. I haven’t been there since right after the war, but it sounds as if a lot has changed. According to what Mrs. Speer says.”
“Mrs. Sommers,” Nedda corrected.