Haunting Investigation

by Chelsea Quinn Yarbro

  “Thanks, boss,” she said. “I hope you’ll like what I’ll have tomorrow morning, after I have that meeting with Inspector Loring.”

  Lowenthal nodded twice decisively. “You’re sticking to your guns on this.”

  Poppy felt color rising in her cheeks. “Thanks,” she muttered, and made up her mind to get more information from Loring than she had planned. The more she could turn up, the likelier it was that Lowenthal would keep her on the story. “I’m grateful to you for giving me this chance. I won’t let you down.”

  “I’m counting on that,” said Lowenthal.

  Poppy tried to summon up a smart rejoinder, but only said, “I’ll do my best.”

  Lowenthal regarded her in his most evaluating way. “So tomorrow is a busy day. What about this evening? You think you could get anything out of your cousin? Something that you can use, that is?”

  “I’ll talk to him this evening, if he’s in. He might go back to New York today,” she said, not looking forward to trying to pump Stacy.

  “Anything else?” He brought his chair upright.

  “Tomorrow evening, I have a … an engagement. I’ll have to be out of here by four at the latest.” She cleared her throat, fighting nerves once more.

  “Then go home directly from your interviews and put your story together there. So long as you have it here before you go to the funeral on Wednesday, it should be all right. You can bring in your funeral coverage in the evening, when it’s over.” He made a shooing gesture with his hand. “Chop-chop.”

  Feeling relieved, Poppy got to her feet and started toward the door. “Thanks again, boss,” she said as she went out the door and returned to her desk; she was a bit light-headed now that she was out of Lowenthal’s office. She sat down and stared at the inkwell under her desk-lamp that stood next to the Royal typewriter. It was a substantial machine, but not quite as formidable as the Smith on the desk in her Aunt Jo’s library. There was a ream of paper in the lower drawer in the left-hand side, and she opened it to remove a sheet, and then took carbon paper and onionskin second sheet from the central drawer. She set them up and rolled them into the platen, and told herself to type something. But after two minutes, when no words had come, she got up and went to the lunch room for a cup of coffee. She was almost alone in the room which smelled of coffee and bear-claws set out on the service table; the keeper was on the far side of the room, wiping the table-tops in an automatic way, and paid no attention to Poppy’s arrival.

  Poppy went to the service table, took an ironstone mug from the shelf, and poured out coffee from the coffee samovar, then added one cube of sugar and a teaspoon of cream, and went to the nearest table to sit; she pulled a small paper napkin from the dispenser on the table, and took one of the tin spoons that sprouted from a greenish glass. She took a little time to stir the coffee, preoccupied with what she would be doing later that day. She was about to take a first sip when she saw the lights flicker, and she set her mug down and looked around for the shimmer in the air that would announce Chesterton Holte’s presence.

  “I hope I didn’t startle you,” he said, as if he were sitting in the chair across the small table from hers.

  “Don’t speak so loudly,” she whispered. “Missus diMaggio will hear.”

  “Not me,” he said, not lowering his voice. “Only you can hear me.”

  “And why is that?” She took the mug and sipped the coffee.

  “Others can’t hear me unless I remain entirely visible, and even then, most of the living aren’t aware of ghosts. My voice goes along with my body.” A spot of air glistened where his eyes might be, but other than that, she could not see him.

  Poppy did not stop whispering. “Is there some reason you’re here?”

  “There is,” Holte said. “I’ve had another chance to talk to Knott, and he said that the night before he was attacked, your cousin warned him about Warren Derrington; came to his house and swore Knott to secrecy. He thought that was strange, that Stacy should warn him against Derrington. Knott doesn’t remember most of it, not yet, but he said that he recalled that the warning seemed … unexpected.”

  “Did he happen to tell you what Stacy said about Derrington?” Poppy asked, and saw Missus diMaggio glance at her in a disapproving way. She raised her voice and said, “I’m trying to straighten out my grammar. Number and tense. It helps if I do it aloud; I hear the errors better than I see them.”

  Missus diMaggio resumed her polishing, and paid Poppy no more attention.

  “He said it probably had something to do with counterfeit antiquities,” Holte answered. “There’s been a spate of them in Boston and New York, and he was worried some might crop up in Philadelphia. He seems to think Hadley and Grimes knew about it.”

  “Do you want me to find out from Stacy what he told Derrington?” Poppy hated to ask, for it once again tied her cousin to the terrible killing.

  “If he’s willing to talk about it, and assuming that he will tell you the truth. You might see if he knows where Derrington has gone,” Holte responded. “Don’t push him, though. He might turn obdurate.”

  “I’ll try — that’s the best I can promise.” Poppy drank some more coffee, and then quietly asked Holte, “Anything more?”

  “Knott still can’t remember who killed him, or exactly when, but he said it might have been someone he knew, or someone from one of his clients, because he doesn’t think he was surprised to see him.” Holte paused. “He’s fairly certain there was only one person.”

  “That’s better than nothing,” Poppy murmured, wanting to encourage him. “What about Overstreet? Any news on that front?”

  “Well, he must still be alive,” said Holte. “He hasn’t turned up in the dimension of ghosts, so that means he’s not dead.”

  “Small comfort,” Poppy said softly.

  “It means that you aren’t looking for a body,” Holte pointed out. “That should be useful to the police.”

  “I’ll have to think of some way to explain that to Inspector Loring,” Poppy said, a little more loudly than she had before. She finished off the coffee with a deep gulp, then got up to pour herself some more. Taking her time, she poured a second cup, added her sugar and cream, and returned to the table. “Did Knott have any idea where Overstreet might be?” she muttered as she sat down.

  “No,” Holte admitted. “Neither did Moncrief.”

  “Did you ask Madison about Overstreet?” Poppy looked askance.

  Holte seemed to shrug. “So long as I was there, I though I might as well find out if he had brought anything more to mind.”

  “Such as who attacked him,” Poppy whispered, and glanced up as Tony Milligan, one of the older copy-boys, came into the lunch room. “Good morning, Tony.”

  “Miss Thornton,” he responded, going to the tray of bear-claws and using a paper napkin to take one of them. “Slow day?”

  “For another hour or so, then it goes into high gear,” said Poppy, doing her best to sound at ease. “What about you?”

  “Busy,” said Tony, and took a large bite of the pastry. “I’ll leave a dime for this,” he added to Missus diMaggio before he tossed a coin into the jar set out for that purpose, and then sauntered out of the room.

  “He’s a weasel, that one,” said Missus diMaggio.

  “He’s fifteen,” said Poppy, and went on in an undervoice, “What did Moncrief say?”

  “He said he’d talked to Warren Derrington that afternoon, and whatever he was told upset him. That was one of the reasons he was tippling more than usual.” Holte’s face became a little more visible, but it faded away like a puff of smoke.

  “Any idea what Derrington told him?” Poppy leaned nearer to where she guessed that Holte remained.

  “Not really,” Holte admitted. “But it does suggest that there was something odd going on with Derrington.”

  “And maybe Stacy,” Poppy added. How could her cousin be caught up in anything so dreadful as murder? Poppy asked herself, and made herself listen to
Holte.

  “Perhaps after the fact,” said Holte. “All we have now is a collection of guesses,” he warned her. “You admit that he isn’t forthcoming about his business dealings, and it could be that there are things going on beyond his control.”

  This did not seem like Stacy to Poppy, but she seized upon it, saying, “That’s possible.”

  “If you’d like, I’ll try to learn more.” Holte sounded as if he were farther away now, and preparing to leave.

  “Let me talk to Loring before you do anything more,” Poppy said, this time loudly enough to earn a sharp look from Missus diMaggio.

  “I’ll talk with you again tonight. Will that do?”

  “Sure. Later,” said Poppy, and drank down her second cup of coffee before returning to her desk, concentrating on what she would put on the pages waiting in the typewriter.

  THIRTY-ONE

  “I APOLOGIZE FOR BEING LATE,” INSPECTOR LORING SAID AS HE SAT DOWN NEXT to Poppy on the bench near the edge of Constitution Pond. “It couldn’t be helped. It’s one of those things I can’t say much about. I trust you understand.” There was enough of a breeze to riffle the pond, and it frisked between him and Poppy, carrying a frisson with it.

  “Un-huh.” Poppy continued to follow the progress of a flock of ducks out on the pond and paddling for the far side. “It’s a shame that this will be gone next year,” she said after a perfunctory glance in his direction.

  “That it is. I’m going to miss it.” He rubbed the lapels of his tweed jacket, and attempted a quirk of a smile. “And now that we’re agreed on this, and that the mayor has made a mistake to have it drained, shall we get on with our business?”

  “As you like,” she said, and resisted the urge to take her notebook out of her purse. “You go first.”

  “That’s good of you,” he said, but did not continue.

  “Do you have anything new to tell me?” she asked, and was shocked at how snippy she sounded.

  “One or two things,” he replied cautiously. “What about you? Have you learned anything that will help this investigation?”

  “I have a few leads, and you may want to follow them; I’m going to,” she said, not turning away from the ducks.

  “Okay,” he told her. “Are you certain about any of them?”

  “No — that’s why I said they were leads,” she countered, wondering why she was treating him this way. You want his help, she reminded herself. Don’t antagonize him. “There is one thing that looks like it might be useful: apparently Warren Derrington’s mother is related to the Grimes’.”

  “Huh,” he said.

  “I haven’t confirmed it, but Aunt Jo will be able to tell me. I didn’t get much of a chance to talk to her this morning.” She decided to say nothing of her hectic scramble to get to work — it would sound unprofessional — and might lead Loring to think less of her as a reporter.

  “I’ll see what I can do with it.” He ran his thumb along his jaw. “Is that your only lead?”

  Poppy wished she felt more confident about the things Holte had told her. “No, but it’s the easiest to check out. The others are more … indirect.”

  “But you think they’re promising?” Loring pursued.

  “I wouldn’t want to follow them if they weren’t, not the way things are going.” She took a deep breath and moved slightly to put a few more inches of bench between them. “I’ve had some information that Miles Overstreet is probably alive and has gone into hiding. He might be able to tell me if there truly is a connection between the Knott murder and Moncrief’s.”

  Loring heard her out, then asked, “Is your source reliable? About Overstreet?”

  “He has been right about other things so far,” said Poppy, adding impulsively, “And just now, I’m trying to find out where Warren Derrington has gone. I can’t help thinking that he’s tied into the murders.” The alternative, she added to herself, was to think that Stacy was.

  “Doesn’t your cousin know?” Loring was startled; he turned to watch her more closely.

  “If he does, he hasn’t mentioned it,” she replied.

  “Have you spoken to him about any of this?”

  Poppy disliked being under scrutiny, but she knew it would be unwise to say anything that could be shown to be wrong. “Not in any detail; I haven’t had much of an opportunity,” she answered. “Stacy’s closed-mouthed about what he’s been doing.”

  “I know what you mean. He was the very dev … dickens to interview. Whatever is going on with Derrington, he doesn’t want to talk about it.” He looked across the pond to the stand of cattails where the ducks had taken refuge from a yappy dog on a leash on the far bank; the dog’s owner was attempting to pull his pet back from the brink.

  “No, he doesn’t,” Poppy said.

  Loring was silent for a moment. “So what do you think? Is your cousin involved in any of these deaths directly, or is he simply on the fringes?”

  “I wish I knew,” Poppy admitted. “I’m fairly sure that Derrington is involved, but I don’t know about Stacy, which could be because we’re related, and I don’t want to suspect him of anything illegal, but I haven’t seen anything concrete that would seem to implicate Stacy in an overt wrongdoing.”

  “At least you’re aware of that,” said Loring, by way of expressing sympathy.

  “I can’t help that. It isn’t as if he’s going to confess to me,” she said, and added, “I don’t always like Stacy, but — ”

  “Blood is thicker than water. I understand that. And you’re both upper crust, so you probably wouldn’t speak against him, no matter what.” Loring sighed. “Anything else?”

  “I still think Knott’s murder is tied to Moncrief’s, and to James Poindexter’s supposed suicide,” Poppy said boldly, wanting to regain her position as a disinterested reporter. “They had a number of things in common — and not simply their social stratum, but their employments overlapped. These commonalities are beyond the bounds of coincidence, in my opinion. And with Derrington’s being part of the Grimes family, it complicates things even more.”

  “You mean that Poindexter and Moncrief worked for the same firm? I agree that I find that suspect, but that’s not enough to make direct charges. Still, we’re trying to get more information on Hadley and Grimes. We know that Poindexter and Moncrief had a few accounts in common, Moncrief having taken over some of Poindexter’s clients. We know that for a fact — it’s been confirmed. And we know from bank records that they had both purchased goods from Knott in the past, but at that level of society, such connections aren’t unusual. They are factors, not facts, worse luck.” He shaded his eyes to look at the far side of the lake. “Since there’s still no sign of Overstreet, we’re putting more men on finding him. That’s not for publication.”

  “All right.” Poppy made a mental note to keep this to herself for now. “But if anything turns up, you’ll give me an exclusive?”

  “If I can.” He gave her a sheepish smile before he once again gazed across the pond. “That’s the best I can do.”

  “Then I’ll have to accept it,” she said, not quite as affably as she wanted. “I have a theory I’d like to discuss with you. And for now it is simply a theory: I’m not planning to use it unless I can find some evidence to support it, but,” she continued, rushing to address the matter before she lost her nerve, “I think that Moncrief knew the person who killed him. He let someone into the house, and I don’t think he would do that without actually knowing the person. Same with Knott. That’s one of the commonalities I mentioned. It’s one of the reasons I think they’re connected, no matter how different their deaths. Work might not be significant in this case, but hospitality might be.”

  Loring thought this over, then hesitantly asked, “Would either or both of those men admit your cousin if he called unexpectedly?”

  “They would, but the same can be said of a great many men, not just Stacy. They would let Denton North in, and he’s investigating their firm in some way,” Poppy repli
ed at once. “You keep insisting on talking about my family’s position in society: we’re not the only ones in our station, and anyone among the so-called upper crust would reasonably be expected to be received by Moncrief or Poindexter or Knott.”

  “I get your point,” said Loring, “and I’ll keep it in mind. I hope we find Overstreet soon — I have a hunch that he could explain a great deal.”

  Poppy wanted to yell at him, to tell him everything that Chesterton Holte had told her, but knew she could prove nothing, and some of what she had to offer would seem implausible at best, so she only remarked, “I’ll try to keep a decent perspective on the case, so long as you give me your word that you will do the same.”

  He turned to look at her. “You drive a hard bargain, Miss Thornton.”

  “It’s my job, Inspector Loring,” she reminded him. “As yours is yours.”

  Three boys, newly out of school, came running along the path, shouting as they went; a woman pushing a baby-carriage glared at them. The boys yelled more loudly and kept going.

  “Do you really think that draining the pond will stop another ‘Flu epidemic?” Loring asked her inconsequentially.

  “I think the authorities hope so; they need to demonstrate that they are taking precautions beyond talking to doctors,” said Poppy, feeling strange about discussing the ‘Flu so directly. “They have to do something visible to quiet the fear of the ‘Flu, and this will be an obvious change, something people can point to.”

  “That’s true,” Loring allowed.

  “Though I suppose the draining of the pond is more aggravating than beneficial.”

  “Is there anything else that can be done?” Loring stared at her, waiting for her to answer.

  “There probably is, but it may be politically or financially too expensive. I don’t know if anyone in a position to make changes would take the time to explore the matter.”