But He Was Already Dead When I Got There

by Barbara Paul

  Simon slowly nodded agreement. “I don’t like it, but … very well. Let us check the paper and choose a movie that attracted us so strongly we were able to put Ellandy’s impending financial collapse out of our minds for the requisite two hours. Tomorrow will be plenty of time—nothing more’s going to happen today.”

  He was wrong.

  When Simon got home, he found Dorrie stretched out on the sofa, listlessly watching Glen or Glenda? on the VCR. “Hello, darling.” Simon kissed the top of her head lightly and said, “Mind if I turn the volume down? I have something to tell you.”

  “Turn it off if you like. I have something to tell you too.”

  Simon settled for turning the sound off, leaving the grainy black-and-white images flickering silently on the screen. He sat on the sofa, cradling Dorrie’s bare feet in his lap. “You’ll never dream what your brother has been up to.” He repeated everything Malcolm had told him in Ollie’s Tavern, including his proposal for coming up with two-way alibis. Dorrie listened with an earnest concentration that disconcerted Simon slightly; he’d expected her to be amused. “Doesn’t it surprise you, darling? Upright, squeaky-clean Malcolm Conner playing games with the law?”

  “After all that preaching he did to me about responsible behavior! What a hypocrite,” she muttered tiredly. “Do you think they’ll believe you went to a movie?”

  “Probably not. But so long as Malcolm and I tell the same story, I don’t see that there’s anything they can do about it.”

  “Seems pretty chancey to me.”

  “It is. I agreed only because Malcolm is undoubtedly right about one thing. It does look as if the police have narrowed their suspects down to two people, your beloved brother and your adoring husband. And since I know I didn’t do it—”

  “Don’t be silly, Simon.” Dorrie dismissed his thinly veiled accusation as not worth discussing. “When Nicole went back to look for the note—why did she fire Uncle Vincent’s gun?”

  “To protect you, evidently.”

  “Me!”

  “Malcolm says she thought you’d killed him. She was trying to make it look like self-defense.”

  “She thought I killed … how dare she?” Dorrie flared angrily. “Well, I like that! She took one look at Uncle Vincent’s dead body and decided I was a murderer? I’ll kill her!”

  “Now, Dorrie,” Simon soothed, smiling.

  “Of all the fucking nerve! Who does she think she is?”

  “Fuckin’,” Simon corrected. “You don’t pronounce the g. And don’t be so hard on Nicole. Her first instinct was to help, remember. She made herself into an accomplice after the fact just to keep you out of trouble. At least, that’s what she thought she was doing. Do try to calm down.”

  Dorrie took a big breath, let it out. “I suppose you’re right. I should be grateful instead of angry, shouldn’t I? Well, I’ll work on it. Later. Right now, I’ve got something to tell you.”

  “Oh, that’s right. Very well—your turn.”

  Dorrie got up and began to pace nervously back and forth in front of the television. “Three things, actually,” Dorrie said. “Number one, Ellandy Jewels now has a fourth partner. Gretchen has the promissory note. She says if we don’t make her a partner, she’s going to call in the loan.”

  “Gretchen?” Simon was appalled. “Why, that conniving … where did she find the note?”

  “Mrs. Polk had it. It seems she knew the combination to the safe all along.”

  “Oh, Dorrie! That is about the worst thing that could happen. Can’t you—”

  “Number two, Lionel and Gretchen are now separated, a direct result of number one.”

  Simon wasn’t interested in the Knoxes’ marital problems. “Dorrie, it might be worth going into the hole just to keep Gretchen out. She’s not going to pour her own millions into the business—there’s too much of Uncle Vincent in her for that. She’ll leech you dry. There must be—”

  “Number three,” Dorrie persisted. “Lieutenant Toomey called just before you came in. He wants to reenact all the events that took place the night Uncle Vincent was murdered. He wants to do it tonight.”

  Simon’s left eyebrow rose. “All the events?”

  “Everything he knows about. We’re going to have to mess up the library again.”

  “Oh, for the love of heaven,” Simon grunted in disgust.

  “We might as well go change—he wants us all to wear the same clothing we had on that night. We’re going to start as soon as it gets dark. Come on—it’s going to be a long night.”

  “It is indeed,” Simon agreed heavily.

  14

  Sergeant Sal Rizzuto was in disagreement with his superior officer. He couldn’t see what was to be gained from acting out everything that happened after Uncle Vincent had been done in. Before, maybe, if they knew what had really happened. But now, they were going to have to go through the whole silly rigamarole and Sergeant Rizzuto was going to have to go through it with them, when he could be home watching Great Performances on PBS.

  “Why?” he’d complained to Lieutenant Toomey. “Howzit gonna help us?”

  “They might tell us something,” Toomey had answered. “We’ll have them all watch what the others do. Can you imagine this bunch keeping quiet for two or three hours straight? They’ll talk, and they might let something slip. Like Malcolm—he’s new at double-dealing and hasn’t quite got the hang of it yet. Dorrie—Dorrie’s a gasper. And Gretchen isn’t the most discreet person in the world. They’re bound to tell us something.”

  At eleven o’clock they were ready to start. The front and back doors of Uncle Vincent’s house were locked, but the double doors leading from the terrace into the library were not. The alarm system was off, and one window in the dining room was open. Mrs. Polk was in her rooms, Bjarne Pedersen was in the kitchen, and Godfrey Daniel was in the library.

  So was Sergeant Rizzuto, seated in a wheelchair and slumped over the desk, playing the role of the corpse. Two things were different from the night Uncle Vincent was murdered. Gretchen would walk through the reenactment with them; they’d just pretend she was upstairs in her room asleep. Also, Toomey had had Bjarne turn on all the terrace lights; there was no need for everyone to go stumbling around in the dark.

  Toomey faced his six resentful suspects outside the terrace wall. Simon and Dorrie were dressed in their black house-breaking outfits, the camouflaging benefits of which were nullified by their blond heads shimmering brightly in the moonlight. Dorrie carried a light pack on her back. Gretchen was wearing every pearl she owned. Lionel and Malcolm had on the same clothes they’d worn all day, but they’d both removed their ties and added gloves—just as they’d done the night Uncle Vincent was killed. Nicole, however, was dressed in an orchid velour running suit with matching Nikes. “Nike was the goddess of fate,” Toomey grumbled, “not feet.”

  “Beg pardon?” Nicole asked.

  “I thought I told you to wear the same outfit you had on the night of the murder. You weren’t wearing that, were you?”

  “What did he say about the goddess of feet?” Dorrie whispered. Simon shrugged.

  “Lieutenant, do you have any idea how difficult it is climbing over a wall in hose and high heels?” Nicole asked. “I didn’t see that it would matter if I dressed for the part this time.”

  Malcolm spoke up. “I thought Nike was the goddess of victory.”

  “You’re right,” Lionel said, remembering. “Winged Victory? That’s Nike.”

  “Forget Nike,” Toomey barked, ending the discussion. He glanced at his wrist; he was wearing two watches, one telling the real time and the other set to approximate the time of the murder night. “Let’s say it’s one-fifteen,” Toomey told them. “That gives Ms. Lattimer fifteen minutes to get over the wall and into the library. Is that enough time?”

  “It should be,” Nicole said.

  “All right, then, let’s get started. Where was the ladder?”

  “It was leaning against the wall of the g
arage next door. But Lieutenant, it’s not there now.”

  Toomey sighed and went over to ring the neighbor’s doorbell. Simon glowered at Dorrie. “There was a ladder,” he accused.

  “You didn’t see it either,” she answered defensively.

  Toomey was showing his identification to the neighbor, who’d answered the door in his pajamas. The man went back in the house, and a minute later the garage door opened from the inside. Toomey brought out the ladder and positioned it against the side of the garage.

  At the Lieutenant’s signal, Nicole started wrestling the heavy ladder toward the terrace wall. When Malcolm stepped forward to help her, Toomey waved him back. Nicole reached the top of the wall and dropped down out of sight on the other side. The neighbor stood by his garage door, watching with interest.

  “All right, everybody up the ladder!” Toomey called out.

  “I most certainly am not going up that ladder!” Gretchen announced in a voice not to be argued with. “I’d ruin my clothes!”

  “Now, Mrs. Knox, don’t cause trouble,” Toomey remonstrated. “Nobody else is objecting. Why do you have to be different?”

  “I gotta be me,” she declared defiantly.

  “Must you really?” Simon murmured.

  “I’m not climbing the wall.” Gretchen headed toward the terrace gate, calling to Nicole to unlatch it from the inside.

  “Why don’t we all go in that way, Lieutenant?” Lionel suggested. “We’ve seen that Nicole can get in over the wall, and that was the point, wasn’t it?”

  Toomey made a show of thinking it over and then conceded, secretly relieved at not having to climb the ladder himself. They all trekked in through the gate, leaving the disappointed neighbor behind. They followed Nicole through the open dining room window and to the library, where the lights were already on.

  Rizzuto lay motionless at the desk, Uncle Vincent’s automatic near his outstretched right hand. Half of the Hermes statuette lay on the desk, the other half on the floor. Godfrey Daniel darted under the sofa, alarmed at the arrival of so many people at once.

  “That’s a good place for you, kitty, you stay right there,” Toomey said, adjusting his murder watch to read 1:30. “Now, Ms. Lattimer—show us what you did.”

  “I think I just stood here staring at him a minute or two,” she said.

  The others moved out of the way as she started her search. But she’d no more than pulled out the top drawer of the file cabinet when Toomey stopped her. “We didn’t find your fingerprints there.”

  “Oh. I used my scarf.” She glanced down at her running suit and smiled sheepishly. “I had a scarf wrapped around my waist.”

  “You see why I wanted you to wear the same clothing?” Toomey said reprovingly and handed her his handkerchief. “Use this.”

  Nicole was working her way through the first drawer when Godfrey Daniel overcame his alarm and emerged from under the sofa. He jumped lightly to the top of the file cabinet and watched Nicole as she closed the first drawer and went on to the second. “He did the same thing that night,” she remarked. She went on working her way through the files.

  “What a fascinating way to spend an evening,” Lionel said dryly. “Watching Nicole look in file folders. When she’s finished, let’s go to an all-night garage and watch them align wheels.”

  “You just can’t pass up a chance to be sarcastic, can you?” Gretchen said sharply.

  “She’s almost done,” Malcolm interposed quickly, ending the quarrel before it could start. Nicole hurried through the last drawer.

  “Lieutenant, I’m gettin’ a cramp,” said the corpse.

  “Okay, you can move.” Rizzuto sat up and started working a kink out of his shoulder. “Now what, Ms. Lattimer?” Toomey asked.

  “The desk.”

  Rizzuto made a face and resumed his position. Nicole went through the motions of searching the desk. Then she placed the automatic in Rizzuto’s hand and fired, putting a bullet squarely into the desk. The noise made everyone jump and sent Godfrey Daniel scurrying back under the sofa.

  “I didn’t think she was actually going to fire it,” Dorrie complained to Malcolm in a murmur.

  Nicole wrapped the two parts of the statuette in Toomey’s handkerchief. “That’s all, Lieutenant.”

  “It took you eleven minutes this time instead of thirty,” Toomey said, resetting the watch to read two o’clock. “I know, you were just pantomiming searching, that’s all right. What about the lights?”

  “I turned them off.” She suited action to the word, and led the others back to the dining room window. “Then I left through the terrace gate—the ladder’s on the other side of the wall, and the gate unlocks from the inside anyway.”

  As they all headed toward the gate, Malcolm slowed his steps and drew Simon back. “Have you seen Naughty Marietta?”

  “What?”

  “The old movie, Naughty Marietta—you’ve seen it, haven’t you?”

  “Years ago, on television.”

  “That’s good enough. The Alhambra has been having a Jeanette MacDonald-Nelson Eddy film festival all month. That’s the movie we went to see—Naughty Marietta.” Malcolm hurried to catch up with the others.

  Simon rolled his eyes. Naughty Marietta!

  Outside the terrace wall, they saw the neighbor had dragged a lawn chair out of the garage and was sitting there waiting for the next act. Nicole wrestled the ladder back to its place against the garage wall and told the neighbor not to put it away as it would be needed again.

  “Now give the broken statuette to Mr. Conner,” Toomey instructed. “All right, everybody, that’s what Ms. Lattimer did. Any comments?”

  “Comments?” Lionel repeated. “Are we supposed to evaluate her performance?”

  “I don’t see why she had to ruin the desk,” Gretchen said indignantly. “That’s a Chippendale—Uncle Vincent paid six hundred thousand dollars for that desk.”

  “A bargain,” Simon remarked.

  “Yes, it was,” Gretchen agreed. “Somebody offered him nine hundred thousand for it just last year.”

  “That much?” asked Malcolm. “I didn’t know Chippendale prices were rising that fast.”

  “Could we please stop talking about furniture?” Toomey snarled. “We might as well go on. Murdochs—you’re next.”

  The others watched as Simon boosted Dorrie up to the top of the wall. When she tossed the rope over for Simon, he gestured apologetically toward the ladder and said, “No moon that night.” He climbed the wall.

  Nicole snickered. “I saw it.”

  Toomey and the four others retraced their steps through the terrace gate. Dorrie was rummaging through her backpack and pulled out a new can of Redi-Whip, which she handed to Simon.

  “You brought the Redi-Whip?” Lionel exclaimed. “What for?”

  Dorrie explained her intention to spray the alarm box, which they’d failed to locate. “I know, it’s supposed to be shaving cream,” she added, “but Simon uses an electric razor.”

  Nicole found this an interesting problem. “What about mousse?” she asked. “Hair-styling foam?”

  Dorrie’s hand went automatically to her blond curls. “I never use styling foam,” she said absently. “It leaves a film on your hair.”

  “Could we get on with it, please?” Toomey growled.

  They all moved around to the double doors leading into the library. “I think we used flashlights here,” Simon said. “That’s why I put the Redi-Whip down on the terrace—so I’d have a free hand.”

  “Aren’t you forgetting something?” Toomey asked. “The table?”

  “Oh, that’s right.” Simon struggled with the heavy wroughtiron table, shoving it up flush against the terrace wall.

  “Excuse me, why did you do that?” Nicole asked. “Why not just go out the terrace gate the way I did?”

  “That’s what we did do, as it turned out,” Simon explained. “But at the time I thought it wouldn’t hurt if we had a quick escape route ready.”
He took a flashlight from Dorrie. “Well, is everyone ready for the big discovery?”

  He opened the library doors, played his flashlight around the room, and “discovered” Sergeant Rizzuto slumped over the desk. Dorrie turned on the lights.

  “Now I want you to take your time with this,” Toomey cautioned. “Try to remember the exact order in which you did everything.”

  “I think one of the first things we did was sit down and talk it over,” Dorrie said. At Toomey’s gesture, she and Simon sat on the sofa. “Godfrey Daniel was here with us. Remember, Simon? He dug his claws into your pants leg.”

  “I remember,” Simon said with a pained expression. “Do we have to repeat that part of it, Lieutenant?”

  “Yep,” Toomey said. “Where is he? Here, kitty!” A small black-orange-white head lifted itself above the desk top in the general vicinity of Rizzuto’s lap. “There you are, Godfrey!” Toomey carried the cat over to the sofa.

  “Thank god,” sighed the corpse. “He’s been sharpenin’ his claws on my knee for the last five minutes.”

  This time Godfrey preferred Dorrie’s lap to Simon’s. He lay on his back and allowed Dorrie to stroke his throat; a loud purring like rusty machinery being started up filled the room.

  “What did you talk about?” Toomey asked sharply.

  The Murdochs exchanged a glance. “About what we should do,” Dorrie said. “Simon wanted to leave immediately—all this other stuff was my idea. Don’t blame him.”

  “Didn’t you speculate about the murder? Didn’t you wonder who’d done it?”

  “We may have,” Dorrie said vaguely. “I don’t really remember.”

  “Of course you remember,” Toomey snapped. “Who?”

  “Me,” Lionel said with a comes-the-dawn look. “You thought it was me!”

  “Lionel,” Malcolm cautioned. “Don’t volunteer.”

  Dorrie said, “Well, it seemed to me it had to be one of the three of us at Ellandy’s, and it just didn’t seem likely that, uh …”

  “That Nicole had done it?” Lionel finished for her. “Thanks a heap, Dorrie!”