NINE
THE NEXT MORNING AFTER BREAKFAST, I went to my desk at a few minutes after eight and dialed Cortland’s office.
“Yes, Mr. Goodman, he’s in,” Ms. Auburn-Hair said brightly. “I’ll put you through. Hold on.”
“Are you alone?” I asked when Cortland picked up the receiver.
“Yes,” he said eagerly. I actually think the little guy was warming to the hunt. “I hadn’t expected to hear from you again so soon.”
“A woman I know tells me unpredictability is among my most endearing traits. I’m calling to find out if I can come up today and have a look through Markham’s house.”
“Well…I suppose so.” He clearly wasn’t thrilled at the notion. “Yes, of course—I don’t see why not. The only problem, and it’s hardly a big one, is that I’ll be away all morning. I only have one class Thursdays, at eight-thirty, and a graduate assistant is taking it for me. I’m departing in about twenty minutes and driving up to Kingston to meet with a state representative about the possibility of his addressing my classes and I probably won’t return till around one.” He paused, deliberating. “Here’s what I can do, though: I’ve got the key to Hale’s house, of course, and I’ll leave it in the flowerpot on his front stoop on my way to Kingston.”
“That’s not a terribly original place,” I said.
“Well…I suppose you’re right, but who else is going to want to get into the house?”
“All right, then—in the pot it is.” Cortland gave me the address and the directions to Markham’s house.
“Tell me, has anybody been through the place since Markham’s death?” I asked.
“No, only I, at least as far as I am aware. And I’ve just been there twice. Once to get the clothes for…you know, for his funeral, and the other time to, uh…locate an article he had authored for a scholarly quarterly. He’d completed it, and the quarterly wants to publish it posthumously. I think I told you that Hale has a niece in California, didn’t I? Her name is Christina; she says she’s going to try to come in the next month or so. I’ve pretty much left the place alone so she can go through everything. Under the circumstances, though, I see no reason you shouldn’t undertake an examination. I haven’t any idea whether you’ll find anything helpful.”
“Neither do I, but I’ve got to start someplace.” I thanked Cortland and he thanked me back. After I hung up, I wrote a note to Wolfe, telling him that I’d be gone most of the day, and put it on his desk blotter. He probably was still attacking breakfast up in his room, and from there he’d go straight to the plant rooms at nine.
This time, the drive north wasn’t nearly as pleasant as it had been the day before. A light rain began falling almost as soon as I pulled out of the garage, but before I crossed the George Washington Bridge, it had become a cats-and-dogs number that turned the road into a parking lot. Traffic finally thinned out when I got north of Suffern, but the downpour kept up all the way north, making me glad I’d thought to bring a raincoat.
When I got into Prescott, I pulled off on one side of the town square and got my notes from my pocket. Cortland’s directions told me I was no more than three blocks from Markham’s house. The rain had let up a little by the time I left the square and entered the streets of the residential area, most of which had big trees lining both sides. Down Cedar, onto Van Buren, one block up Oak, and then down Clinton. Markham’s block was a row of two-story white frame houses with shutters and green roofs, the type you’re likely to find in small towns all over New York State and New England. They were set well back from the street. Halfway down the block I found the address—one-seventy-nine—which along with several of its neighbors looked like a prime candidate for a Norman Rockwell painting. All they needed to complete the picture were freckle-faced, redheaded kids wearing tennis shoes, riding bikes, and playing ball in the front yards.
I eased to the curb, killed the engine, and climbed out of the Mercedes. The rain had stopped, and the street was as quiet as a museum. I went up the brick sidewalk and the steps to the door, where, just for the hell of it, I rang the bell. Of course there was no answer, and after waiting for all of thirty seconds, I checked in the flowerpot, where I found nothing but dirt and a long-gone geranium. On a hunch, I picked up the welcome mat, but that cupboard was bare, too.
Now I had a decision to make. Either I could enter by the front way or the back; given that at least one pair of eyes and possibly more were watching the block from behind the starched white curtains of neighboring houses, I figured going in the front was less suspicious, assuming I could get in quickly. I pulled out my ring of skeleton keys and selected one that looked to be a match for the front door’s inexpensive, name-brand lock. It fit like Cinderella’s slipper, and I whispered a thank-you to Markham for not installing a dead bolt as I pushed the door open.
The place smelled stale, which was hardly surprising, since it had been shut since Markham’s death. The small vestibule opened into a larger center hall with a stairway to the second floor. The living room was on the right, the dining room on the left. I turned right, into a spacious room decorated in a style that Lily probably would have called “American Miscellany.” I liked it, though. I felt I could get comfortable in any seat in the room, which is at the top of my priority list. There were bookcases on either side of the white brick fireplace, and I thought about tackling them but decided to wait until I’d seen more of the house.
Behind the living room was what probably once had been a sun porch. Markham had turned it into an office. He hadn’t bothered to close it off from the living room, but then, why should he? He was the only person living in the house. It was a good working room, with plenty of natural light, even on this overcast day—windows on three sides, low bookshelves under them, a dark wooden desk that looked like it had been built to withstand a nuclear attack, and a personal computer on a small table next to the desk. The PC was a fairly new model, compatible with the one back at the brownstone. The desktop and the rest of the room looked neat and orderly, but maybe Cortland had done some straightening up when he’d been there. If so, his own office could use a little of the same effort.
I was about to move on in my tour when the doorbell chimed. My first impulse was not to answer it, then I thought I’d better at least have a peek at who might be calling on a dead man. Through the curtains on the living room windows, I saw a second car at the curb behind the Mercedes, and, thinking back, it was at that moment I decided on a course of action. I might have done things differently if Wolfe hadn’t been so damn surly about the whole Prescott business, but Wolfe’s Wolfe and I’m me, and I did get things to happen. You’ll have to be the judge of whether it was done the best way.
I went to the front door, pulled it open, and found myself facing an earnest-looking young man in a police uniform who looked like he was just learning to shave. “Yes, sir,” he said, touching the bill of his cap. “Patrolman Nevins, Prescott Police. We got a report someone was here, and we stopped by to check on it. Do you have official business in this house?”
“Yes, I do,” I said, giving him a friendly, open smile. I didn’t invite him in.
“Do you mind telling me what the business is?” he asked in a polite but firm voice. Young Patrolman Nevins had been trained by the book.
“It doesn’t concern the police,” I said, still smiling.
He looked uncertain, maybe because the book didn’t cover this, and before he could say anything, another cop, closer to my age, waddled around the corner of the house. He obviously had been checking in back. “What’s up, Charlie?” the newcomer asked Nevins.
“This gentleman says he has a reason to be here, but doesn’t want to tell what it is.”
“Oh, yeah?” said the older one. He lumbered up the stairs and stood next to his partner, facing me. His nameplate said Sergeant Amundsen. The insignia on his right arm revealed he was one of Prescott’s finest. “You a real-estate man?”
“No,” I said, keeping the smile on my face.
> “A real talker, huh?” Amundsen hooked his thumbs in his belt and eyed me without affection. He was beefy, probably six-one and two-ten, with a ruddy face that wore a “don’t-mess-with-me” expression. “Let’s see some identification, please.”
I pulled out my wallet and handed Amundsen my driver’s and private investigator’s licenses. “A private cop, eh?” He scowled. “Okay, Mr. Goodwin, what’s the story? Don’t try to jerk us around.”
“Me? Try to jerk someone around? That’s not my style—I’m a straight man, Sergeant. Have been since my Boy Scout days.”
“You could have fooled me, Ace. All right, then, let’s have it straight, without baloney.” Amundsen’s blood pressure clearly was headed north.
“I’m here on business for my employer, Nero Wolfe, of New York City, same address as mine. No baloney.”
Amundsen raised a bushy eyebrow and looked at young Nevins. “The famous fat man?” He turned back to me. He didn’t look impressed. “So what’s this business?” Wolfe would have said the word “Republican” in the same tone.
I shook my head. “Sorry, you’ll have to ask our client, Mr. Walter Cortland.”
“A smart guy, huh?” Amundsen sneered. I’d obviously touched a sore spot. “You know, you remind me of a grown-up version of some of those wise-ass fraternity guys over at the university. How did you get in the house?”
“The door was unlocked,” I said, holding my smile.
Amundsen used a word that clearly indicated he didn’t believe me. “I repeat, what’s your business here?” Young Nevins looked at him in awe.
“Mr. Cortland will be back in his office at Prescott University or at his home sometime around one,” I told him.
Amundsen looked disgusted. “Charlie, check him to see whether he’s taken anything from the house. I’m going to look around.”
Nevins patted me down right there on the stoop, found I had no weapon, and told me to empty my pockets with an enthusiasm that indicated I was the first ultradangerous criminal he’d ever frisked. I took everything out—wallet, card case, car keys, handkerchief, a small penknife, some change, and, of course, the batch of skeleton keys. Nevins looked at the keys as I held them in the palm of one hand. “What are these?” he asked. “Or can I guess?”
I held my noncommittal grin but said nothing. “Ed, better come here,” Nevins called into the house. “We got us a problem.”
“I knew we had a problem when I laid eyes on this one,” Amundsen grumbled as he came back to the stoop. “Now what?”
“These.” Triumphantly, Nevins held out the key ring.
Amundsen again mouthed what apparently was his favorite word, then looked at me with an expression I took to be somewhere between frustration and downright dislike. “Now, look, Godwin, why not save everybody a lot of trouble and tell us what’s going on?”
“Goodwin,” I corrected in an even tone. It was all right for me to alter my name, but I wasn’t tickled to have others do it. “Sergeant, I have taken nothing from the house, so there’s no burglary—and by the way, you’re free to check the car, too. And I’ve done no damage, as you’ve just seen, so there’s no vandalism.”
Amundsen glowered at me, then raised his head, thrusting his chins out. “Illegal entry, not to mention suspicious behavior. This isn’t New York City, Goodwin, where people can just barge into other people’s houses. We’re taking you down to the station.”
I shrugged, and after Amundsen slammed the front door shut, making sure it was locked, the three of us walked down the sidewalk. At the sergeant’s direction, I unlocked the car and opened the trunk, and he and Nevins checked it out, finding nothing more incriminating than a spare tire in the back and the owner’s manual in the glove box. They looked disappointed. “Drive, we’ll follow,” Amundsen commanded. “Go three blocks on Clinton, take a left on Hudson, and go two blocks. The station is on the right, in the middle of the block, facing the square. Pull into the parking lot behind it. And don’t try any cute New York tricks. We’re right behind you all the way. On second thought, Patrolman Nevins will ride with you.”
“I feel like a desperado,” I said to Nevins as we pulled away from the curb. “I’m surprised the sergeant didn’t insist on putting the cuffs on me, although it would have made steering a little difficult.” Nevins said nothing. He just looked at me as I drove, probably wondering about the types who inhabit that strange and incomprehensible city down the river.
I rolled along at twenty-five miles an hour, with Amundsen two car-lengths behind, his flashers on. The sun had come out, and there were plenty of gawking pedestrians on Hudson Street as our little parade pulled into the lot behind the police station, a one-story brick building with white columns on the front. The whole town seemed to be done in American Colonial.
“You’ll probably get a commendation for this, Sergeant,” I said to Amundsen as we walked in the back door. “And you, too, son,” I added to Nevins. “By any chance is there a wanted poster of me on your bulletin board?”
“Just keep flapping your gums if you want more trouble than you’ve already got, if that’s possible,” Amundsen huffed. I started to ask which TV police shows he got his dialogue from but checked myself. There was no sense wasting my humor on somebody who wouldn’t appreciate it.
Inside, Amundsen steered me to a small, windowless room with three straight-backed chairs and a gray metal table against one wall that had seen better days. “Wait here,” he said gruffly. Before I could respond, he stormed out and banged the door behind him. The room had all the cozy ambience of police stations everywhere. The only thing on the eggshell-white walls was a calendar from the local Chrysler-Plymouth dealership with a picture of an Irish Setter and a cute litter of puppies. And the only reading material was a brochure with the catchy headline “Ten Tips on How to Keep Your House Safe from Burglars.” My watch told me it was eleven-thirteen as I started in learning how to make my house a burglarproof fortress.
Seven minutes and four tips later, the door opened and a tall, thin specimen wearing a brown suit and with more hair above his eyes than on top of his head came in, shut the door hard, and looked down at me. His eyes were little and mean. “Mr. Goodwin, I’m Lieutenant Powers. Sergeant Amundsen has filled me in on what happened at Professor Markham’s house. He also told me you had nothing to say. You’ll talk to me.”
I glanced up, trying my best to look bored, which wasn’t hard. “What am I charged with, Lieutenant?”
“Don’t get smart with me.” Like Amundsen, he liked to sneer. Must be something they teach them at the academy. “Remember, you’re not in New York City now.”
“I’ve been reminded of that already today,” I said lightly. I was beginning to know how Clint Eastwood feels in a new town. “You folks seem to have a real complex about New York. Am I being held without a charge?”
“Listen, goddamn it, if we want to book you, we’ll have no problem doing it. Breaking and entering, for starters. Now are you going to tell me what you were doing in Professor Markham’s house?”
“Well, I guess you’ve bullied it out of me,” I answered. “As I told Sergeant Amundsen, my employer, Nero Wolfe, and I have a client named Walter Cortland, of whom you may have heard. He’s a professor at the university, and he thinks Hale Markham was murdered. He hired us to confirm—or refute—his contention.”
“Yeah, Ed mentioned that damned Cortland.” Powers actually snarled. “I might have known. What a pain-in-the—oh, the hell with it. Listen, Einstein, if you’re working for that whiny pest, how come you didn’t just get a key to Markham’s place from him, huh?” He looked down at me with a smirk and I wondered if, like his New York Police counterpart, Lieutenant Rowcliff, he stuttered when he lost control. It was tempting to find out, but probably not worth the effort.
“He went up to Kingston for the morning and he forgot to leave me the key, Lieutenant, it’s as simple as that. Honest. Call him—he can tell you. He’s supposed to be back by about one.”
Powers fired more questions at me, but I got stubborn and folded my arms, staring straight ahead. After about half a minute, he realized we’d exhausted the conversation and stalked out, slamming the door harder than Amundsen had. I clearly was making no friends in Prescott.
Five minutes later the door opened and a square-faced, gray-haired, lanky number in a white uniform shirt and black tie pushed in. The nameplate on his pocket read HOBSON. “Mr. Goodwin,” he said curtly, “I am Carl Hobson, chief of police here in Prescott, and I’m here to find out precisely what the hell’s going on.” He enunciated each word, probably to underscore to me that, unlike the others I’d talked to, he really meant business.
I looked up at him. “Am I being charged?” I asked quietly.
“Maybe you don’t realize it, but you’re in a lot of trouble, mister,” he said, sounding like a poor imitation of James Cagney in Mr. Roberts. The guy must be a scream at a party. “We’ve already been around the course with Walter Cortland and his crazy notions about murder. The last thing we need is somebody waltzing in here from—”
“New York?” I offered.
He looked at me coldly with his light blue eyes and continued without missing a beat. “—who thinks he’s going to create headlines by trying to invent a murder. For your information, there hasn’t been a homicide in this community in twenty-seven years, and it’s despicable to think that someone like yourself and your publicity-hungry boss would take advantage of poor Professor Cortland’s grief over losing his friend just to generate a case—and notoriety—for yourselves.”
“I think you should talk to Mr. Cortland,” I said in an even, unemotional tone. I’d been so deadpan for the last few hours I was beginning to worry it might become a permanent condition. “He should be back in town about one o’clock.”
“You’re damn right I’ll talk to him, mister,” Hobson said, his voice rising a notch. His color did the same. “And for your sake, you’d better hope he says the right things. You’re under arrest.”
The Bloodied Ivy (The Nero Wolfe Mysteries Book 3) Page 8