Edwin of the Iron Shoes

by Marcia Muller

  Harmon straightened the knot of his paisley tie, regarding Charlie through his thick glasses. Now that the light no longer shone directly on them, I could see his eyes were brown but without the soft quality brown eyes usually have.

  “You’ll feel better soon,” he said softly. He then turned to me and held out his hand again. “Nice meeting you, Miss McCone. Take care of our boy here.” I started to get up to let him out, but he added, “No, don’t bother. I’ll go out the back way. The door self-locks.”

  He turned and left the room. Charlie followed him with his eyes, not moving his head.

  “Harmon’s a bastard,” he muttered, more to himself than to me. “I tried to tell her. I tried.”

  I set the glass of gin down on the floor close to the love seat. “Look, Charlie, don’t you think you should get some sleep?”

  “Sleep?” He laughed mirthlessly. “I lay down, all I’m gonna get is the whirlies. You ever had the whirlies? Round and round …”

  “Yes, I’ve had the whirlies. Everybody’s had the whirlies. Charlie, what happened at the Merchants’ Association meeting?” I was impatient to get the answer I’d come for.

  “Oh, we took up a collection. Gonna get the biggest goddamn wreath for Joanie. You wanna contribute?” He leaned forward, holding out his hand.

  I sighed inwardly and said, “How much should I?”

  “Couple of bucks would do.”

  I reached for my bag and got out a five. “That’s from me and Hank and the others at All Souls.”

  Charlie stared at the bill. “That’s a lot. They don’t pay you much. Can you afford it?”

  “I’ll make them pay back their shares out of petty cash.”

  Charlie kept staring at the bill. “Petty. That’s what it was. I was petty. She’s of still been alive if I wasn’t a petty bastard.”

  “How do you mean?” The night before, Charlie had lashed out at me for failing to unmask the vandals and thus prevent Joan’s death. Now I wondered if his attack on me had been on extension of some secret guilt of his own. If so, how much of that guilt was founded on fact?

  Charlie said, “She wouldn’t of been alone, that’s what I mean. All alone with Old Father Death. If I hadn’t of been so petty.”

  “I don’t understand.”

  He looked up at me, a sly light in his tiny eyes. “She was alone and Old Father Death came creeping …”

  I decided we were getting nowhere this way. “Charlie, what else happened at the meeting?”

  He looked blank. “What?”

  “Are they going to hire me?”

  “Hire you?”

  “The Merchants’ Association! Do they want me to investigate the murder?”

  “Oh, hire you. No. They voted against it, Sharon.” An apologetic note crept into his voice. “I guess Joanie’s death ended the Association. There’s no feeling of togetherness any more. Joanie’s gone, and nobody can bring her back.”

  I felt a disappointed twinge. “They don’t want to find her killer?”

  “Yes. No. I don’t think anybody cares. We just all want out before it’s one of us next.” He glanced furtively over his shoulders. “You see, Old Father Death’s lurking around Salem Street, and he’s going to strike again. He could be out there in the dark right now. Who knows? I want out, too.” There was a wild light in his eyes.

  I shook my head, shivering. Charlie might be babbling drunk, but he raised spectres I couldn’t deal with. “Stop talking like that, Charlie. Nobody else is going to die.”

  “I’m going to die. You’re going to die. We all are. In our time, in our own special way. Who knows but that our time is now? Maybe it’s there, just seconds away, out there

  I stood up. “Look, Charlie, I’ve got to go. You better follow me out and make sure you lock up after me.”

  “You can go out the back way. It locks behind you.”

  “No,” I said firmly. “My car’s in front.” Damned if I would go out into the alley with Charlie’s Old Father Death lurking in the dark!

  It was bad enough to pass through the roomful of junk on the way to the front door. Several times, I glanced from side to side but saw nothing more threatening than a huge, ugly armoire with gorgons carved on its doors. Just the same, I was glad to get out of there. I waited long enough to make sure Charlie shot the bolt, then raced for my car, fumbling with the keys.

  I needed light, and reasonable, sober people to dispel the gloomy foreshadowing of my own uncertain death. I also needed to talk to Hank about the new turn of events. Could I investigate Joan’s murder without the Merchants’ Association’s sponsorship? I wanted to investigate it very much.

  I headed for All Souls to see Hank. If he was anything, it was reasonable and sober.

  8

  My gloom was somewhat alleviated when I arrived at All Souls. The windows of the Victorian building glowed cheerfully, and the porch light spread a wide circle of welcome into the night. I took the front steps two at a time and hurried down the first-floor hallway, past the empty offices toward the sound of voices.

  In the living room, I found several of the associates sprawled on the floor around a Monopoly board. The board was covered with little green houses and big red hotels, and a fortune in paper money lay scattered about.

  “Hank?” I asked when the game players looked up to see who had come in.

  One of them gestured toward the kitchen.

  I kept going, following a long red cord that trailed on the floor. At its end, I found Hank, pacing back and forth with the telephone cradled in his arms. Red push-button phones with twenty-five-foot cords were a small, harmless fetish at All Souls. There were seven extensions on the first floor alone, and their users habitually abandoned them wherever they were when they finished talking. Often the red cords got hopelessly snarled together, with the resulting mazes requiring expert attention.

  “Listen, you have nothing to worry about. The old fool can’t sue you; he has absolutely no grounds,” Hank was saying. “And if I don’t get back to what I was doing before you called, I stand to lose out on an option for some very choice real estate. Right. ’Bye.” He clapped the receiver in place and smiled at me. “Boardwalk and Park Place are still up for grabs.”

  I sighed and said, “I hate to interrupt your wheeling and dealing, but I do need to talk with you.”

  He shrugged and said in mock sorrow, “I wasn’t cut out to be an entrepreneur anyway. Let’s go talk in the map room.”

  On the way out of the kitchen, I grabbed a handful of cookies from the big jar that was always full of chocolate chips. They would be my dinner. Hank grinned and led me down the central hall to the second office on the right.

  The room was aptly named, since all four walls and part of the ceiling were covered with maps: a huge street map of San Francisco; Bay Area road maps, all spliced together and curling up on the floor; U.S. maps; maps showing popular hiking trails, campgrounds, congressional districts, wineries with tours and tasting, city bus routes, and postal zip codes. In addition, there was a highly useful collection of tide tables, airline schedules, and menus from carry-out restaurants.

  Hank sat down behind the desk and gestured at the client’s chair. “What can I do for you, ma’am?”

  I quickly related the scene with Charlie and Ben Harmon, not going into my attack of the willies. Hank sat quietly, tapping a pencil on the desk while he listened.

  “Interesting,” he said when I was through. “So Ben Harmon was holding Charlie’s hand, was he?”

  “I wouldn’t go so far as that. He let Charlie think they were drinking together. What’s your relationship with Harmon anyway? As I recall, he sent Joan to you.”

  Hank nodded. “Occasionally he refers a client to us, when he comes across someone for whom a legal services plan is appropriate. Harmon’s a frustrated attorney himself and a bit of a courthouse hanger-on. Otherwise, we really don’t have a relationship at all.”

  “He’s kind of a rough character, isn’t he?”
>
  “He has that reputation, which is one reason I wouldn’t want to see All Souls any more closely connected to him than it already is.”

  “What do you suppose his connection with Charlie is?”

  Hank frowned. “Really couldn’t say. It would be interesting to find out. They may have business dealings. Harmon does a lot of what he refers to as ‘business on the side.’ He likes to imagine himself a high roller, but in my opinion he’s not smart enough for those circles. You know the type: always got a hot deal going but nothing ever comes of it.

  “He has what he calls a ‘syndicate,’” Hank went on.

  “All people that I would guess he’s gathered solely on the basis of their ability to provide him with capital for his schemes. So if he asks you to invest in a treasure hunt or something, my advice is to hang on to your pennies.”

  I smiled. “Pennies is all I’ve got right now. Forgetting Harmon for the minute, I have another question for you. About Joan’s estate: who inherits? Or was there even a will?”

  “There’s a will; I ought to know. It was like pulling teeth to get her to make one. You wouldn’t believe the state Albritton kept her business affairs in. Just incredible! I don’t know how she managed to squirrel away all the money she did, what with the messy way she operated.”

  “The estate is large then?”

  “Substantial.”

  “And since she had no family, who does it go to?”

  “I thought you’d realize,” Hank said. “Charlie Cornish. He gets it all.”

  I hadn’t realized, but now that he’d pointed it out, it was logical. Logical and somewhat disturbing. After a minute, I said, “Well, in light of the Salem Street merchants not backing me, there’s not much I can do about the murder but work on that inventory and keep my eyes open. Maybe I can drag the inventory out to give myself more time.”

  “Don’t take too much. Greg Marcus is well aware of my reason for having you hang around the shop. I don’t want to abuse the privilege and destroy his cooperative mood.”

  The mention of Marcus annoyed me. “He doesn’t strike me as so cooperative. He’s only allowing it as a favor to you, and he acts as if he were sure I wouldn’t find out anything of value anyway.” The lieutenant’s comment about getting back to my antiques still irked me.

  “Now don’t go sticking out your chin and getting belligerent on me,” Hank said. “You know, you’ve developed a funny attitude toward the worthy lieutenant. I’d say you were interested in him, the way you get perturbed every time his name comes up.”

  I sniffed haughtily, “that’s hardly the case. I prefer my men to be sensitive.”

  “Like that rock musician you were going with down south?” Hank loved to tease me about my private life.

  “Besides being a rock musician, John’s a very talented pianist. Anyway, that’s kind of tapered off.

  Hank frowned. “What happened?”

  “Nothing. But when you live two hundred and fifty miles apart and see each other twice a year, if you’re lucky, eventually you have to admit the relationship’s cooled down. I’ll always care about John, though.”

  “So now you’re looking.”

  “You make it sound like the big safari is on. Sure, I’m open to possibilities, but I’m not about to start prowling the singles bars. I don’t have to be romantically involved with someone to feel complete, and certainly a woman would be desperate to turn to Greg Marcus for companionship!”

  Hank grunted. “Don’t be too sure. Greg’s been married once, to a hell of a good woman; and a few years ago, he was the unnamed correspondent in a society divorce. He’s what you might call ‘a wolf in a misogynist’s clothing.’”

  “Well, to mix metaphors, I don’t hear the call of the wild. Besides, I notice the wife didn’t stick around.”

  “Then your feelings toward him must be solely competitive.”

  “What’s that supposed to mean?”

  “Let’s face it. I know you. I bet the picture of Greg’s having to admit you’d caught up with the killer before he did is a pretty gratifying one.”

  “So what’s wrong with a little healthy competition?” I asked. “It’d do Marcus good.”

  Hank laughed. “Wait till I tell him that!”

  “You wouldn’t. It would spoil the surprise for him.”

  “You’re right, I won’t. But I want you to get the inventory done as your first priority. Any one-upmanship with the lieutenant can wait until that’s taken care of.”

  I stood up and said, “All right, you’re the boss. But I think it’s a pretty poor use of a trained investigator to have me sit there and count bric-a-brac while a killer’s on the loose.”

  I turned to go then, leaving him to think on my words while I made a dignified exit, but I only succeeded in hooking the strap of my shoulder bag on the arm of the chair. I turned back and wrenched it free, glaring. Hank’s eyes were quietly amused.

  “Hey, Shar,” he said.

  “What?” The word came out a rude snarl that embarrassed me.

  “I think you’ve met your match in Greg Marcus.”

  “Oh, do you now? Well, it works both ways. Maybe he’s met his match in me!”

  I marched out of the office, careful not to slam the door. Behind it, I could hear Hank laughing.

  Well, Hank wanted the goddamn bric-a-brac counted soon, so that was what he’d get. In fact, I’d start tonight.

  9

  The highboy, I thought, had to be Queen Anne. Or was it Chippendale? Which one of them had those funny feet? Because this highboy had funny feet, very funny feet indeed. I stared at the illustrations in one of the antique collector’s guides I’d borrowed from the library, then leaned my head against the offending object. My watch showed three fifteen in the morning, and I was exhausted.

  I could go home, but it didn’t seem worth the effort, so I found an afghan on a chair near the cash register, wrapped myself in it, and curled up all five-foot-six-inches of me on the mauve settee, next to Clothilde.

  “It’s a good thing I’m not superstitious,” I told the dressmaker’s form, “because I’m sure there must be something about it being bad luck to sleep in a room where a murder’s been done. But you and I know better, don’t we, old girl?”

  It then occurred to me that I ought to ask Clothilde what she had seen the night of the murder. Of course, she wouldn’t have any answer, having no head and thus no eyes.

  Sharon McCone, you are going insane, I thought, as I twisted around to find a comfortable position on the little settee.

  Maybe it was trying to sleep like that in an unfamiliar place, or maybe I really did harbor eerie feelings about the scene of a violent death, but I couldn’t doze off. I would be aware, terribly aware, that I was almost asleep, and then the awareness would jerk me completely awake. My body twitched, and I sat up several times with the sensation of falling. When I began to hear strange sounds and think how isolated I was, surrounded by abandoned, burned-out buildings, I became thoroughly disgusted with myself and started counting backwards from one thousand. It worked, as it always did, around seven hundred and fifty.

  Then I dreamed, a great Technicolor dream, of chasing Edwin, the iron-shod mannequin, down into a labyrinth, which opened in the antique shop floor. He ran, feet clanking, eluding me. The labyrinth was draped with macramé cobwebs, and I tried to avoid them by weaving from side to side, but it didn’t help. One of the cobwebs brushed my face with an evil, mocking caress. I screamed in terror.

  And sat straight up on the settee, safely back in the antique shop. But I was not alone. Someone else was in the shop, someone who had brushed by me and was now moving toward the workroom and the back door.

  Throwing off the afghan, I leaped up and tore into the workroom after him, not stopping to think what to do if I caught him. On the way, I grabbed up a hammer from the edge of the workbench and kept going, suddenly colliding with a dark figure.

  I raised the hammer, but the intruder spun and grabbed me. Th
e impact made the hammer fly through the air, and in one swift motion, I followed it, spinning along and crashing to the floor on my side, on top of what I later discovered to be a genuine fake umbrella rack, circa nineteen ten. Free of me, the intruder wrenched the door open and tied, his footsteps racing down the alley.

  I lay on the floor for a minute. My breath came hard, and my eyes filled with tears of pain. Finally, I got up and turned on the light to see what damage I’d done. There was a long scrape on my left arm, and I knew bruises would soon show on my leg, but otherwise I seemed okay. The flimsy umbrella rack was wrecked.

  There was, or had been, something in the shop that mattered enough for someone to pick a lock in a dark alley at four thirty in the morning. Someone? Who? Certainly not Charlie’s Old Father Death. He didn’t need to pick locks.

  I shut and secured the door, then cleared the remaining antiques away from it so they wouldn’t present obstacles to pursuit if the intruder returned. If he did, I’d have him, but I was betting he wouldn’t be back. When I finished, I went into the front room, debating whether to curl up on the settee again or do the sensible thing and go home. I was still badly shaken, and I realized that this dilapidated building was a dangerous place to be in the middle of the night, when Salem Street was deserted. Certainly it had been fatal for Joan Albritton.

  In a quiet panic, I gathered up my bag and jacket but froze in mid-flight. The sound of crashing glass rang out in the street, and I dropped to the floor. It took a couple more crashes for me to realize that my building was not the one under siege. I crept forward as still more noise shattered the air, and raised up to peer over the window sill at the street.

  In the light from the corner lamppost, I saw the smashed glass front of Junk Emporium. In a moment, Charlie came flying out the door and looked wildly in both directions. He stood for a few seconds amidst the rubble on the sidewalk, then leaned down and picked up what looked like a brick.

  So the vandalism was starting again.

  Still trembling, I went to the door, unlocked it, and stepped out into the street. All was quiet now, except for Charlie’s vigorous cursing. I started across to him, then whirled, a tremor passing along my spine. I had left the shop door open, an invitation for someone to slip through it, the same someone who had broken in while I slept. Suppose he hadn’t had time to get what he wanted before I woke screaming? I quickly retraced my steps.