Husbands And Lap Dogs Breathe Their Last

by David Steven Rappoport

“That’s great! Did he say what’s wrong with you?”

  “I’m not sure they know for certain, dear.”

  “I have a question for you. I couldn’t find the honey you ate yesterday.”

  “Why were you looking for that?”

  “I thought it might be the source of your illness.”

  “It was right on the kitchen counter. Maybe Rebecca put it away.”

  “Is there any possibility Rebecca might have removed it from the house?”

  “Cummings, I am absolutely positive that Rebecca has nothing to do with this. I have known the woman for years. Many years. Why would she want to harm me?”

  “I didn’t say that she does,” Cummings responded.

  The phone beside Ernestine’s bed rang. It was Rebecca. She had received Cummings’s note and was calling to see how Ernestine was getting on. They chatted for a few minutes, and then Ernestine said to Cummings, “She wants to thank you for leaving her the note.”

  “Please ask her about the honey.”

  “Rebecca, do you know what happened to that jar of honey I ate from the other day? I see. Hold on, dear.” She covered the mouthpiece and told Cummings, “She accidentally broke the bottle while she was cleaning.”

  “So it’s in the trash?”

  “I imagine so, but today is trash day. More than likely, it’s been picked up.”

  By the time Cummings brought Ernestine home from the hospital, which occurred two days later, she was more or less herself. He got her settled comfortably into her bed.

  “Didn’t you say something about going to Boston?” Ernestine asked.

  “It can wait.”

  “I can look after myself for the afternoon. Now go!”

  Cummings’s first stop was the Cambridge office of the Boston Basilisk, the former underground weekly newspaper of radical leftist politics that presently existed only as an online vehicle for entertainment, sports banality and personal ads. The office was small, and the staff was sparse. Cummings had little trouble locating the editor. She introduced herself as Joyce.

  “We take ads online only these days, but you can use that computer over there, if you’d like,” she said politely, incorrectly anticipating Cummings’s request.

  “I’m not here about an ad. I’m wondering if you have a morgue.”

  “I don’t think many of our readers are that erotically adventurous.”

  “I meant a newspaper morgue. Back issues.”

  “In the five years I’ve worked here, no one has ever asked to see a back issue.”

  “So you don’t keep them?”

  “Actually, we do. The owner insists. I think he secretly hopes that somehow we’re going to return to the glory days when the Basilisk had actual content and supportive advertisers. We have every issue available in electronic form, dating back to the paper’s founding in 1963.”

  “I’d like to look at a copy of the paper from 1985. Any average week will do.”

  “Okay. How about sometime in April?”

  “That will be fine.”

  She led Cummings to an empty desk nearby, sat down at the computer and accessed some files.

  “We date our editions on Sundays. How about April 7, 1985? Just use the cursor to go forward and backward.”

  She rose and returned to her desk.

  Cummings carefully studied each page of the paper, looking for advertising from specialized retail shops. He found nine stores that might be of interest. An online check revealed that only two were still open. He noted their names and addresses.

  Navigating through Boston has a justifiable reputation for complexity, and it took Cummings some time to find the first shop, even with GPS. This was Old Ways, advertised as “occult books and paraphernalia” in 1985. It was located in a strip mall in Somerville. The shop’s name was prominent on a bright yellow plastic sign with a cornucopia, which also featured a tagline with a typographical error: “The New Age Horny of Plenty.”

  The proprietress was a thin woman in her early thirties with frizzy hair that hung down to the small of her back. She wore a floor-length red Victorian dress. She did not look up as Cummings entered.

  “May I assist you?” she asked with marked tone of boredom.

  “I’m just browsing,” he responded. He spent a few minutes perusing the wares, the usual assortment of mundane objects of New Age cheerfulness, none of which were what he was looking for.

  “You don’t carry items for the more serious occult practitioner?”

  “What do you mean?” she responded.

  “Amulets and talismans, for example.”

  “I don’t know what those are.”

  “Never mind. Thank you.”

  Cummings went on to the second venue, Pentacle Books. This was in the basement of a Victorian brownstone in Back Bay, which had become one of Boston’s most fashionable shopping districts. Cummings assumed the shop predated the upscale surge, as it seemed unlikely that a bookstore of any sort could survive with the current retail rents in this neighborhood.

  The interior was brick, and the light was inadequate. The walls were lined with bookshelves, crammed with books old and new, except for the far wall. A long glass display case stood in front of it with a cash register to one side. A small laptop lay near the register.

  An elderly woman sat behind the display case. In dress and manner she looked professional but nondescript; she might have been behind the counter in any kind of business from a green grocer to a bank. She looked up at Cummings and nodded.

  Cummings browsed for a few minutes. The books ranged from recent to rare. Cummings had no idea what knowledge they contained, but they all seemed priced for a tony retail location. The display case held a range of items: knives, bowls, objects carved with signs and sigils, and jewelry. It appeared to Cummings this shop was a much more likely venue for his purposes than the previous one.

  “Have you worked here a long time?” Cummings asked.

  “Yes,” the woman responded. “I founded the shop in 1969.”

  “I’m a private investigator,” Cummings responded. “I’m looking into two murders, one in Chicago and one in Maine. I’m trying to determine if there’s a connection between them. I suspect the connection involves the fact that the killer of one, and someone else of importance, went to college together in Boston. Finally, I know that the killer has been collecting amulets and talismans since his undergraduate days.”

  “Do you have some identification, Mister ...?”

  “Wanamaker. I’m afraid I’ve run out of business cards. Here’s my driver’s license.”

  He showed it to her. She looked at it carefully.

  “I can assure you I’m not going to ask you anything sensitive,” Cummings said reassuringly.

  “What do you want to know?” she replied.

  “Do you recall any customers named Tom Daniels or Jules Verne? Oddly, that’s his real name. He goes by Tom Daniels, at least these days. He would have lived in Boston in the 1980s.”

  “It sounds familiar, but I can’t place it.”

  “What about Anunciación Hollingberry?”

  “No.”

  “Otto Verissimo?”

  “No.”

  “Do you know of an object called the Craddock Brooch?”

  “Actually I do. I sold it some years ago. When I get in better quality occult books or objects, and they don’t sell here within a few months, I sell at auction.”

  “Do you use Clarkson’s Auction House in Chicago?”

  “Yes. It’s one of the auctioneers I use. I sold some pieces there a few weeks ago. They belonged to Emma Hardinge Britten. There was a scrying dish and a lingam, I believe.”

  “Would you be willing to verify if your vendor number was CB788?”

  “I don’t think I’d feel comfortable with that. I’m sorry.”

  “I understand. Thank you for your time.”

  Cummings turned to leave when the woman asked, “Did you say you’re investigating a murder in Maine? Where
in Maine? I have a summer house there.”

  “Horeb.”

  “Really? My house is in Gethsemane. That’s not ten miles away. Who was murdered?”

  “A man named Chess Biederman. Did you know him?”

  “I don’t believe so. But I do know someone in Horeb, a woman named Elektra Philemon. She used to clean for me.”

  “I know her well.”

  “Do you? What a coincidence! She used to clean my house and the shop here. She lived in Boston at the time, of course. This would have been, let’s see, the mid-1970s. The customers thought she was fun, so sometimes she also helped out in the shop.”

  “Did she? She is effervescent.”

  “That she is! What was that name you mentioned? Daniel something ...”

  “Tom Daniels.”

  “Elektra moved to Maine, and we lost touch. I did hear from her some years ago. She asked my advice about financing a restaurant. She was hoping to open a Greek taverna somewhere. I don’t know the first thing about restaurants, so I wasn’t much help. I didn’t hear from her after that for a long time — well, except for Christmas cards — but she did phone me a few months ago.”

  “Did she?”

  “Yes. She asked about an old customer, if I had a current address.”

  “And was that, by any chance, Tom Daniels?”

  “My memory isn’t what it once was, and I have thousands of customers. I’m almost sure she asked about Daniel somebody. I recall that I did look up the name in my client records. I gave her whatever information I had.”

  “Would you mind checking your records for Tom Daniels?”

  “Certainly. I have a database. It will just take a moment.” She opened the laptop and soon had the information.

  “Yes. We do have a Tom Daniels with a Chicago address. His last transaction was two years ago. I sold him an amulet. Is that the man you’re referring to?”

  “Yes.”

  “Has he been killed?”

  “I’m afraid he’s been arrested for murder.”

  “Oh, my!”

  Deuteronomy Smelt was immersed in thought. He’d been sitting in his room all afternoon, thinking, and he wasn’t arriving at meaningful conclusions.

  He glanced at his desk and noticed that the bushy beard he’d worn on his ill-conceived trip to Zion hadn’t been put away. At that moment a trip to the attic seemed to be a good distraction from his growing irritation with himself.

  In the attic Deuteronomy located the appropriate storage box and carefully replaced the beard.

  On his way back his eye caught something unexpected. It startled him.

  He returned to his room and made a call.

  “Ernestine, this is Deuteronomy. How are you?”

  “I’m improving, thank you for asking.”

  “I didn’t realize you’d been ill. Are you alone there? Do you need anything?”

  “No, no. I have my housekeeper, and Cummings is visiting.”

  “I was hoping he was. May I speak to him?”

  “He’s in Boston just now, but he should be back by evening.”

  “Thank you, Ernestine. I’m going to drop off a message for Cummings. Now you let me know if you need anything.”

  He scrawled out a message on a postcard, this one with a black-and-white photo of a globe with a banner: “Greetings from the 1937 World’s Fair.” The message read, “My deductions may have been incorrect. Please come see me as soon as possible.”

  He put on a tie and sports jacket and left the house for the brief walk to Ernestine’s. So as not to disturb her, he slid the card under her door.

  Chapter Twenty

  Cummings arrived back at Ernestine’s late in the afternoon. Ernestine mentioned Deuteronomy’s postcard. Cummings read it.

  “Maybe I should go over there,” Cummings said. “Have you had dinner?”

  “I am just fine. Go and see Deuty.”

  “One question. Could you tell me about the honey Chess gave you? When did he give it to you?”

  “It must have been at my annual holiday party. He probably brought it as a hostess gift. You are developing an obsession with that honey!”

  “One last thing. Was Elektra at your holiday party?”

  “Of course, dear. You remember my Christmas parties — I invite just about everybody in the village!”

  Cummings rang Deuty’s buzzer, and Elektra opened the door.

  “Mister Deuty say you go into his room when you arrive,” she said, leading him to Deuty’s door. She pounded on it. “Mister Cummings he come in.”

  “Very well. Thank you, Elektra.”

  Deuteronomy looked agitated. Cummings didn’t probe. Deuteronomy Smelt wasn’t the sort of man who would appreciate that.

  “Thank you for coming so promptly,” Deuteronomy said. “Truthfully, you are here earlier than I’d hoped. I’ve invited some people for coffee and dessert.”

  “Who?”

  “Rebecca Harpwater and her son.”

  “Why?”

  “I believe there are some questions that need to be asked. I’ve been rethinking what we know about Chess’s murder. I fear I’ve misinterpreted the facts.”

  “In what way?”

  “The key thing is that we need to allow for a wider range of solutions. I don’t think it’s prudent to talk more now. Elektra knows I’ve invited Rebecca and John, which she thinks is curious. I don’t want to add to her concerns by making it appear that you and I are engaged in skullduggery. She and Rebecca are good friends, you know. Very good friends.”

  “No, I didn’t.”

  “Can you come back at 7:30?”

  “Certainly.”

  “Thank you. Perhaps you’ll be good enough to follow my lead tonight.”

  “Of course. However, I’ve just come from Boston, where I learned something I think I should tell you.”

  Just then Elektra knocked on the door to announce she’d just made some muffins.

  “You’ll have to tell me later,” Deuteronomy replied.

  When Cummings returned a few minutes after the appointed time, Deuteronomy was making small talk in the parlor with Rebecca and John Harpwater. All of them seemed ill at ease. Cummings wondered if this was due to the social hierarchy in Maine, in which the classes coexist but rarely coalesce, or if Rebecca and John were simply feeling put on the spot.

  Elektra had prepared a delectable assortment of Mediterranean pastries arranged attractively on doilies on a silver tray. She poured and distributed cups of coffee, then left the room.

  “It was wicked kind of you to take care of Ernestine,” Rebecca said to Cummings. “I know she appreciates it.”

  “I’m happy to help,” Cummings said.

  “My mother always said, ‘what’s the good of having neighbors if you can’t help them when they need it?’ I don’t know that the young people think like that anymore.”

  “I’m not certain if they do or they don’t,” Deuteronomy said. “My granddaughter wants to go to medical school and then be a doctor in Africa, but I know lots of young people who don’t see past their own noses. But I think I know what you mean. Years ago things made a lot more sense than they do today. For example, Chess’s murder. That doesn’t make any sense at all.”

  “That is the truth!” Rebecca agreed.

  “My friend Cummings and I have been trying to determine what happened.”

  “Are you working with the County Sheriff?” John asked.

  “No. This is more informal,” Deuteronomy explained. “That’s why I’ve invited you both tonight. We thought you might be able to help us.”

  “How?” Rebecca responded, surprised.

  “You knew Chess, of course. And John, you worked for him. I also understand you were personal friends.”

  “That’s true.”

  “Do you know of anything unusual around the time Chess was killed, John? Perhaps something you haven’t told the police.”

  “No, I don’t believe so,” John replied.

  �
�You’re sure? You’re really sure?” Deuteronomy probed. “I’ve been told you played poker with Chess the night before he disappeared.”

  “That’s true. It wasn’t just the two of us, of course. It takes four to play poker,” John responded, sounding defensive.

  “Perhaps I could ask Rebecca a question,” Cummings interjected.

  Deuteronomy shot him a look of disapproval for changing the subject. Cummings continued anyway.

  “Is there any more of the honey that Ernestine ate the day she became ill?” he asked Rebecca.

  “I am wicked sorry about that! I accidentally broke the bottle, and I put it in the trash.”

  “I know. Ernestine told me. Were there any other bottles? I mean at her house?”

  “No. There was just the one. I’d given her a few bottles of honey myself, but those were used up already. Do you think that’s what made Ernestine sick?”

  “We wouldn’t know unless we tested that particular bottle, and that doesn’t seem possible now.”

  “I’m just glad she’s all right,” Rebecca said.

  “We all are,” Deuteronomy said. “John, perhaps we could talk about that poker game.”

  “Excuse me,” Cummings said, rising and walking in the direction of the downstairs bathroom used by guests. John began to describe what he remembered about the poker game. Deuteronomy shot Cummings another look as he left the room.

  The bathroom was on the other side of the house, near the kitchen and down the hall from what Cummings had always assumed was Elektra’s room. All three rooms were accessed from the same hallway.

  Cummings stood and listened. He heard a sitcom laugh track coming from inside Elektra’s room. This suggested she had gone off duty or was at least taking a break.

  Cummings walked into the kitchen and quietly closed the door behind him. He noticed several doors in one wall. He opened the first. It was a broom closet. He opened the next. It was a rather large pantry.

  He turned on the light and went inside, quickly perusing the shelves. Soon he found what he was looking for: five jars of Harpwater Hives honey, identical to the one he’d seen Ernestine use. He turned off the light and returned to the living room.