by Dorien Grey
Marty just looked at me for a minute. “Still a pretty big risk,” he said. “Why don’t you just turn everything you’ve got over to us, officially?”
I finished another bite of my BLT before responding. “And what could you do with it? Plagiarism’s a civil crime, true, and I’m sure you could get him on that with what I know, but I’m more interested in finding out exactly why and how Taylor Cates died. The police have already accepted the accidental death idea. To have them have to go back to square one and try to make a winnable case would take a heck of a lot more time and taxpayers’ money than I’m sure they’d care to expend.”
Marty gave a slight shrug, which I took to be of acknowledgment.
“No,” I continued, “I really think I’m in a better position, based on everything I’ve been able to piece together, to follow it through to the end.”
Marty still did not look totally convinced.
“If I’m right,” I said, “and Knight did not, despite what I first assumed, kill Taylor, I don’t think he’d resort to trying to kill me just to keep his secret. He’s going to be pretty damned upset at the idea of being hauled into court for plagiarism, but it’s a lot easier to deal with than a murder charge.
“My money is on Dave Witherspoon, and maybe Knight will be able to give me something I can use to prove it.”
The waiter came to take Marty’s plate, and refill our coffee. When he’d gone, Marty sat back in his chair. “Well,” he said, “you know that if I have reason to believe that a murder has been committed, I’m obligated to act on it.”
“Understood,” I said, taking a forkful of potato salad from my side dish, “but technically that should involve a little more solid evidence than either one of us has at this point. I can assure you that the minute I get any solid evidence, you’ll be the first one I call.”
He took a sip of coffee. “Well, while it’s against my better judgment, I guess I can give you that. But for God’s sake, don’t do anything stupid! You’re getting pretty close to it as it is in trying to confront this guy.”
I sighed. “I know, and believe me I don’t have a death wish. I’ll be careful.”
We sat in silence for a moment until I said, “Now, how about letting me see that picture of your daughter?”
*
There were one or two things I wanted to check before I tried contacting Evan Knight. One of them was to talk to Dave Witherspoon again. I really needed to feel more confident than I did about exactly who, Knight or Witherspoon, had taken Morgan’s letters. If Dave had taken them, that would cinch my blackmail theory. If Knight had taken them, though, Witherspoon would have had to come up with some other basis for the blackmail, and the fact that I didn’t have any idea what that basis might be bugged me.
After leaving Marty with the usual promise to keep him fully informed, I drove to the Burrows and pulled into the parking lot to the side of the building. The Datsun was there.
Again, I went directly to the cataloging room and rang the bell, and the redhead once more came to let me in.
“Can’t keep away, huh?” he asked with a grin as he held the door open for me.
“It’s getting to be my home away from home,” I replied. As he closed the door behind me, I said, “Is Dave Witherspoon around?”
“Sure. Hold on just a second and I’ll get him for you.”
He handed me a clipboard with an apparently new, formal check-in sheet and pencil, then moved off toward the stacks at the far end of the room. I signed, dated, and entered the time in their appropriate spaces, then exchanged a nod and smile with Janice, who was working at her usual table.
A moment later Dave appeared and came over to me.
“Dick,” he said by way of greeting. “Ken said you wanted to see me?”
“Yeah. I’ve just got a couple of quick questions. You started working on the Butler papers while they were still at the Burrows estate, right?”
“That’s right. Evan Knight had started the cataloging some time before, but hadn’t finished.”
“Were Morgan Butler’s papers separate from those of his father?”
I watched his face for any reaction, and there was none.
“Actually, no. They were all pretty much mixed together. Evan had been separating them as he went along, and I just continued doing the same thing as I went through the materials Evan hadn’t gotten to.”
“And you cataloged them as you came to them?”
He shook his head. “No, I just separated them out into a box Evan had started for him, and put them in chronological order for specific cataloging after I’d finished his father’s.”
“But you didn’t read them?”
“Not really.”
Why didn’t I believe him? I would have expected him at least to look a bit puzzled as to why I’d asked, but he didn’t.
“You’d completely cataloged Jeremy Butler before you…left?”
He nodded. “Yes. I had just started on Morgan’s and hadn’t gotten more than a third of the way through before Taylor got me fired.”
“I really admire you for having taken getting fired so well,” I said. “I think I’d have been ready to kill the guy.”
I’d deliberately used the word “kill” hoping it might get some sort of reaction from him, but it didn’t. Not so much as the quiver of an eyelash.
“As I told you,” he said casually…maybe a tad too casually…“I understood. Taylor was being Taylor. A bastard, but still Taylor. And it all worked out in the long run.”
Yes, it had. And just maybe not by accident…double entendre intended. I remembered what his partner Ryan had said about Dave when we’d had lunch, “He sees something he wants, he goes for it.” Well, he’d wanted his job back.
I didn’t see anything else I might be able to get out of him at that point, so I thanked him for his time, and he went back to whatever it was he was doing while I picked up the clipboard and pencil and signed myself out.
Besides, I thought as I walked up the steps to the main entrance, it might be good to keep him on his toes by stopping by frequently to ask him a question or two.
*
The more I thought of it, the more likely it became that Dave Witherspoon had definitely taken the letters. Again, Evan Knight didn’t strike me as a candidate for Mensa. If he even thought about removing Morgan’s letters when he first came across them, he probably figured he had plenty of time to do it. He didn’t foresee the moving of the collection, and specifically that anyone other than him might start cataloging the Butlers’ papers.
I was just unlocking the door to my car when I remembered something that sent me back into the library and up to Irving McGill’s office.
“Come,” McGill’s deep voice said in response to my knock at his office door. He seemed a bit surprised to see me when he looked up from some papers on his desk as I entered.
“Mr. Hardesty. I wasn’t expecting you.”
“I’m sorry to bother you,” I said, “but I have a quick question you might answer for me.”
He gestured me to a seat, but I declined. “Thanks, but I won’t be but a moment,” I said.
“So, what is it you want to know?” he asked, leaning back in his chair.
“There was a fire at the Burrows estate shortly before the collection was moved. Do you remember exactly when that happened?”
He thought a moment, then said, “Sometime in January. The 24th, I believe. Why?”
“I was just curious,” I said. “I can imagine it gave everyone involved a real scare.”
“That it did, indeed.”
“I’d imagine it was particularly so for Evan Knight, since he’d worked there for so long.” I paused just for a second, but not long enough for him to reply before I said, “Oh, that’s right…he was in Europe at the time.”
McGill shook his head. “No,” he said, “Evan had returned the week before the fire. He was still recovering from the news that the collection was to be moved. I suppose he really shoul
d have been notified just as a courtesy, but really no one knew where he might be at any specific time and the moving of the collection wasn’t really his concern in any event.”
“Ah.” That confirmed what I’d thought. “Well, thank you for your time. I’ll let you get back to work now.”
“You’re quite welcome,” he said, immediately dropping his eyes back to whatever it was he’d been reading when I came in.
*
So, conjecture time again. Knight comes back from Europe, learns not only that the collection is being moved but, quite probably, that someone…Dave Witherspoon…is cataloging the Butler papers. He has no way of knowing what Dave might discover, so he sets a fire in hopes that any evidence linking “his” books to Morgan’s papers would be destroyed. It’s entirely possible, of course, that the fire was completely accidental and Knight had nothing to do with it, but it made sense that he might. But in either case, the fire didn’t touch Morgan’s papers and Dave Witherspoon had gotten enough from them to begin his blackmail.
And again I had to consider what I was going to do about Knight. If I was able to determine that he had killed Taylor, the answer was obvious—turn him in and let the judicial system do whatever it wanted with him. But if he hadn’t, that still left me with the fact that he had stolen another man’s work, and that, too, was a crime. Every penny he had made from Morgan’s work belonged to…whom? Collin Butler? I’d thought that one out earlier, and decided he probably wouldn’t want to be linked in any way with his father’s books…including the money they earned. God knows he didn’t look like he needed it.
And when I’d thought about it earlier, I’d assumed that Collin Butler was the only one who had a legal right to the profits from Morgan’s books. But I realized now that I was wrong. Morgan had specifically donated them to the Burrows Collection and therefore the Burrows Foundation would have claim to whatever the books had earned.
The most important thing for me was that Morgan be given the recognition he deserved, of which Evan Knight had deprived him. But I realized, again ironically, that it’s quite possible that if it weren’t for Knight’s stealing them, they may not ever have been published.
Life is truly strange.
*
I have no idea where the rest of the day went, but suddenly it was time to head home for the weekend. I didn’t really want to put off the inevitable, but Knight could wait until Monday.
*
Nice weekend. Went by much too fast, of course, and nothing much was accomplished. It’s amazing how much time grocery shopping and laundry doing and dry-cleaner-going and fish feeding and plant watering and housecleaning—an absolute necessity with a four-year-old around—take out of a Saturday. And Saturday night we took Joshua to an early showing of a kid’s movie Jonathan thought, rightly, he’d enjoy.
Sunday was paper for me and church and Sunday School for Jonathan and Joshua, and instead of going out to brunch, we made a picnic lunch and drove up to the Jessup Reservoir, about twenty miles away. There were more people in the picnic area than I’d anticipated, but Joshua got to play with a couple kids his age and feed the ducks and get his shoes soaked by wading into the water before we could stop him, so it all worked out.
As I said, a nice weekend.
*
No point in putting it off. As soon as I got to the office Monday morning, I called Evan Knight. Luckily, he was home.
“Evan Knight,” the voice said as the receiver was picked up.
“This is Dick Hardesty,” I said. “We have to talk.”
“I thought we just had.”
“Yeah, well, this was before a bunch of things came up,” I said.
“Well I’m really pretty busy.” It was clear from the tone of his voice he didn’t want another conversation. “I’m going over the proofs for my next book, and I’m on something of a deadline. So…”
“It’s your books we have to talk about.”
There was a decided pause, then, “What about my books?”
“Your books and blackmail,” I amended.
This time the pause was so long I was afraid he might have hung up…except I’d heard no click and there was no dial tone.
Finally, “I don’t understand.”
“I think you do, and you can talk to either me or the police. The choice is yours.”
“Okay. When and where?”
“The Carnival, three o’clock.”
He hung up without another word.
*
Oh-kay, Hardesty, a mind-voice said with mild exasperation. Now what?
Well, first and foremost, I just wanted to see what might come of it. I hoped that whatever Knight’s reaction might be, it would point me in the direction I should go next. And while I have been known to be wrong in my assessment of people, I think my ability to recognize when I’m being conned or lied to is a little better than average. I knew I was basing my recent shift away from thinking of Knight as a killer on the fact that if he were going to have killed anyone, it would have been Dave Witherspoon when the blackmail first began (and I hadn’t a clue exactly when that was). No, I was now leaning toward Dave Witherspoon as Taylor Cates’ killer, and I hoped Knight might give me something to support that contention.
*
Jonathan’s call shortly after lunch, to remind me to stop by the photographer’s to pick up our pictures, was a welcome reminder that life did exist outside of murder investigations. Sometimes I got myself so wrapped up in a case that I lost track of that fact.
I arrived at the Carnival around ten till three and was, except for the bartender and one other customer, the only guy in the place. I ordered a Manhattan, and leaving a bill on the bar, took it to a table under the small front window…that was too high off the floor to be able to see out of while seated. The jukebox segued from Elton John’s newest, “Sad Songs” to another top-ten, “Let’s Hear It for the Boy.” Though I’ve never really paid that much attention to what was on the top of the music charts, I happened to like them both.
At exactly three o’clock, the door opened and Evan Knight walked in. He looked around the room, spotted me, and without so much as a nod of acknowledgment, went directly to the bar. A moment later he strode over to the table, all but slammed his beer down, and took a seat.
“Okay,” he said. “So what the hell is this all about?” But before I had a chance to open my mouth, he continued, “I’m sorry if my banging your boyfriend pissed you off, but that’s no cause to start making all sorts of ridiculous accusations. There are libel laws, you know, and I could haul your ass into court.”
Ah, yet another “a good offense is the best defense” ploy. Too bad I wasn’t buying it.
“You could,” I said, “but we both know you won’t. Plagiarism’s a crime, too, as I think you know, and I know you’ve been publishing Morgan Butler’s novels under your own name.”
“Prove it!” he said, picking up his beer to take several deep swigs.
“As a matter of fact, I can,” I said. “And I know all about Dave Witherspoon blackmailing you because of it.”
He looked at me scathingly. “You should be a writer,” he scoffed. “That’s some imagination you’ve got.”
“Glad you like it,” I said. “Did you know Dave Witherspoon killed Taylor Cates?”
He’d picked up his beer again and had it halfway to his mouth, but stopped in mid-motion and then put it back on the table.
“Are you out of your fucking mind?”
I shook my head. “Afraid not. I had you pegged for it until I found out it was Dave and not Taylor who was behind the blackmail. And if you think for one split-second that when Dave gets busted for blackmail he won’t do everything in his power to pin Taylor’s death on you, you’re kidding yourself.”
Knight leaned forward in his chair, menacingly. “You know what I think?” he said. “I think you’re making this whole thing up just because the thought of someone else screwing your boyfriend drives you nuts, and you’ll say or do anyth
ing to get back at me. I think you don’t have one single bit of proof of any of this crap, and until you do, you can just go fuck yourself.”
With that he stood up and walked out of the bar.
Well, that went well, one of my mind-voices observed.
*
I decided not to return to work, and instead drove to the photographer’s studio to pick up our pieces of immortality. They weren’t exactly cheap, but the per-day cost spread over a hundred or so years was rather reasonable. And she’d done a really great job. She gave me the card of a friend of hers who owned a framing shop and said he did excellent work. I thanked her, paid her, and carefully carried the equally-carefully-wrapped prints to the car and set them carefully on the back seat. With my track record for breaking things, “carefully” was definitely the operative word.
I hadn’t really given that much thought to my meeting with Evan Knight. I’d lobbed my hand grenade and had no control over what bits and pieces might start falling around me as a result. I’d just have to wait and see.
I got home far enough ahead of Jonathan and Joshua to set the photos out on the couch, propped up against the cushions so they could see them the minute they walked in. I was in the kitchen fixing my Manhattan when I heard the door open.
“Wow!” Jonathan said, obviously spotting the photos immediately. “These are great!”
Joshua seemed equally impressed, particularly by those that had him in them. He grabbed one of himself in his sport coat and bow tie and ran into the bedroom “to show Mommy and Daddy.”
I realized, as he said that and raced out of the room, that he had been with us now for the better part of a year. His fifth birthday was coming up in August. Good Lord, where does the time go?
I showed Jonathan the card the photographer had given me, and after studying the pictures for a few minutes, he went directly to the phone to call the framer. I knew they were probably closed for the night, and I was right.
“Maybe we can go over there tomorrow?” he asked. “I can’t wait to get them framed and up on the wall. And I have to write all the relatives and send them copies, and.…”