I made myself a highball at the bar and sat down to sip it and think, but the thinking didn't get me anywhere. I knew one thing I'd be looking for – pills the size and color of nitro pills but that might turn out to be something else. Or a gun or any other lethal weapon, or poison – if it could be identified as such. But that was all and it didn't seem very likely to me that I'd find any of those things, even if Eve did have any designs on her husband's life. One other thing I thought of: I might as well finish my search for a gun by looking for one in Ollie's office. If he had one, I wanted to know it, and he might keep it in his study instead of his bedroom.
I made myself another short drink and did some more thinking without getting any idea except that if I could reach Ollie by phone at the Stark apartment, I could simply ask him about the gun, and another question or two I'd thought of.
I rinsed out and wiped the glass I'd used and went to the telephone. I checked the book and found a Stark, Dorothy on LaSalle Street and called the number. Ollie answered and when I asked him if he could talk freely, he said sure, that Dorothy had gone out shopping and had left him to baby–sit.
I asked him about guns and he said no, he didn't own any.
I told him I'd noticed the ampoules and pills on his dresser and asked him if he carried some of both with him. He said the pills yes, always. But he didn't carry ampoules because the pills always worked for him and the ampoules he just kept on hand at home in case his angina should get worse. He told me the same thing about them the doctor had, that if one used them often they became ineffective. He'd used one only once thus far, and wouldn't again until and unless he had to.
After I'd hung up, I remembered that I'd forgotten to ask him where the will had been hidden in his office, but it didn't seem worth while calling back to ask him. I wanted to know, if only out of curiosity, but there wasn't any hurry and I could find out the next time I talked to him alone. I put the chain bolt back on the door – I was pretty sure by now that Eve wasn't coming back before her bridge–club session, as it was already after two, but I thought I might as well play safe – and went to her room.
It was bigger than any of the other bedrooms – had originally, no doubt, been intended as the master bedroom – and it had a dressing room attached and lots of closet space. It was going to be a lot of territory to cover thoroughly, but if Eve had any secrets, they'd surely be here, not in Ledbetter territory like the kitchen or Ollie's office or neutral territory like the living room. Apparently she spent a lot of time here; besides the usual bedroom furniture and a vanity table, there was a bookcase of novels and a writing desk that looked used. I sighed and pitched in. Two hours later, all I knew that I hadn't known – but might have suspected – before was that a woman can have more clothes and more beauty preparations than a man would think possible.
I'd looked in everything but the writing desk; I'd saved that for last. There were three drawers and the top one contained only raw materials – paper and envelopes, pencils, ink and such. No pens, but she probably used a fountain pen and carried it with her. The middle one contained canceled checks, neatly in order and rubber–banded, used stubs of checkbooks similarly banded, and bank statements. No current checkbook; she must have had it with her. The bottom drawer was empty except for a dictionary, a Merriam–Webster Collegiate. If she corresponded with anyone, beyond sending out checks to pay bills, she must have destroyed letters when she answered them and not owed any at the moment; there was no correspondence at all.
I still had almost an hour of safe time, since her bridge club surely wouldn't break up before five, so for lack of anything else to go through, I started studying the bank statements and the canceled checks. One thing was immediately obvious: this was her personal account, for clothes and other personal expenses. There was one deposit a month for exactly four hundred dollars, never more or never less. None of the checks drawn against this amount would have been for household expenses. Ollie must have handled them, or had his hypothetical part–time secretary (that was another thing I hadn't remembered to ask him about, but again it was nothing I was in a hurry to know) handle them. This account was strictly a personal one. Some of the checks, usually twenty–five– or fifty–dollar ones, were drawn to cash. Others, most of them for odd amounts, were made out to stores.
There was one every month to a Howard Avenue Drugstore, no doubt mostly for cosmetics, most of the others to clothing stores, lingerie shops and the like. Occasional checks to some woman or other for odd amounts up to twenty or thirty dollars were, I decided, probably bridge losses or the like, at times when she didn't have enough cash to pay off. From the bank statements I could see that she lived up to the hilt of her allowance; at the time each four–hundred–dollar check was deposited, always on the first of the month, the balance to which it was added was never over twenty or thirty dollars.
I went through the stack of canceled checks once more. I didn't know what I was looking for, but my subconscious must have noticed something my conscious mind had missed. It had. Not many of the checks were over a hundred dollars, but all of the checks to one outfit, Vogue Shops, Inc., were over a hundred and some were over two hundred. At least half of Eve's four hundred dollars a month was being spent in one place. And other checks were dated at different times, but the Vogue checks were all dated the first of the month exactly. Wondering how much they did total, I took paper and pencil and added the amounts of six of them, for the first six months of the previous year. The smallest was $165.50 and the largest $254.25, but the total – it jarred me. The total of the six checks came to $1,200. Exactly. Even. On the head. And so, I knew a minute later, did the checks for the second half of the year. It certainly couldn't be coincidence, twice.
Eve Bookman was paying somebody an even two hundred bucks a month – and disguising the fact, on the surface at any rate, by making some of the amounts more than that and some less, but making them average out. I turned over some of the checks to look at the endorsements. Each one was rubber–stamped Vogue Shops, Inc., and under the rubber stamp was the signature John L. Littleton. Rubber stamps under that showed they'd all been deposited or cashed at the Dearborn Branch of the Chicago Second National Bank.
And that, whatever it meant, was all the checks were going to tell me. I rebanded them and put them back as I'd found them, took a final look around the room to see that I was leaving everything else as I'd found it, and went back to the living room. I was going to call Uncle Am at the office – if he wasn't there, I could reach him later at the rooming house – but I took the chain off the door first. If Eve walked in while I was talking on the phone, I'd just have to switch the subject of conversation to printing equipment. Uncle Am would understand.
He was still at the office. I talked fast and when I finished, he said, “Nice going, kid. You've got something by the tail and I'll find out what it is. You stick with the Bookmans and let me handle everything outside. We've got two lucky breaks on this. One, it's Friday and that bank will be open till six o'clock. Two, one of the tellers is a friend of mine. When I get anything for sure, I'll get in touch with you. Is there an extension on the phone there that somebody could listen in on?”
“No,” I said. “There's another phone in Ollie's office, but it's a different line.”
“Fine, then I can call openly and ask for you. You can pretend it's a business call, if anyone's around, and argue price on a Miehle vertical for your end of the conversation.”
“Okay. One other thing.” I told him about the two alleged nitro pills I'd appropriated from Ollie's bottle. I told him that on my way in to town for dinner, I'd drop them off on his desk at the office and sometime tomorrow he could take them to the lab. Or maybe, if nitro had a distinctive taste, Doc Kruger could tell by touching one of them to his tongue.
It was five o'clock when I hung up the phone. I decided that I'd earned a drink and helped myself to a short one at the bar. Then I went to my room, treated myself to a quick shower and a clean shirt for the evening.
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I was just about to open the door to leave when it opened from the other side and Eve Bookman came home. She was pleasantly surprised to find me and I told her how I happened to have the house key and Ollie's car, but said I'd been there only half an hour, just to clean up and change shirts for the evening. She asked why, since it was five thirty already, I didn't stay and drive her in Ollie's car. That way we wouldn't be stuck, after dinner, with having both the Buick and the MG downtown with us and could all ride home together. I told her it sounded like an excellent idea. Which it was, except for the fact that I wanted to get the pills to Uncle Am. But there was a way around that. I asked if she could give me a piece of paper, envelope and stamp. She went to her room to get them and after she'd gone back there to dress, I addressed the envelope to Uncle Am at the office, folded the paper around the pills and sealed them in the envelope. All I'd have to do was mail it, on our way in, at the Dearborn Post Office Station and it would get there in the morning delivery.
I made myself comfortable with a magazine to read and Eve surprised me by taking not too long to get ready. And she looked gorgeous, and I told her so, when she came back to the living room. It was only six fifteen and I didn't have to speed to get us to the Pump Room by seven. Ollie wasn't there, but he'd reserved us a table and left word with the maítre d' that something had come up and he'd be a bit late.
He was quite a bit late and we were finishing our third round of Martinis when he showed up, very apologetic about being detained. We decided we'd have one more so he could have one with us, and then ate a wonderful meal. As an out–of–town guest who was presuming on their hospitality already, I insisted –on grabbing the check. A nice touch, since it would go on Ollie's bill anyway.
We discussed going on to a night club, but Eve said that Ollie looked tired – which he did – and if we went clubbing, would want to drink too much. We could have a drink or two at home – if Ollie would promise to hold to two. He said he would.
Since Ollie admitted that he really was a little tired, I had no trouble talking him into letting me do the driving again. Eve seemed more genuinely friendly than hitherto. Maybe it was the Martinis before dinner or maybe she was getting to like me. But it was an at–a–distance type of friendliness; my radar told me that.
Back home, I offered to do the bartending, but Eve overruled me and made our drinks. We were drinking them and talking about nothing in particular when I saw Ollie suddenly put down his glass and bend forward slightly, putting his right hand under his left arm.
Then he straightened up and saw that we were both looking at him with concern. He said, “Nothing. Just a little twinge, not an attack. But maybe to be on the safe side, I'll take one – ” He took a little gold pillbox out of his pocket and opened it.
“Good Lord,” he said, standing up. “Forgot I took my last one just before I got to the Pump Room. Just as well we didn't go night–clubbing, after all. Well, it's okay now. I'll fill it.”
“Let me – ” I said.
But he looked perfectly well now and waved me away. “I'm perfectly okay. Don't worry.” And he went into the hallway walking confidently, and I heard the door of his room open and close so I knew he'd made it all right.
Eve started to make conversation by asking me questions about the girl in Seattle whom I'd talked about, and I was answering and enjoying it, when suddenly I realized Ollie had been gone at least five minutes and maybe ten. A lot longer than it would take to refill a pillbox. Of course he might have decided to go to the john or something while he was there, but just the same, I stood up quickly, excused myself without explaining, headed for his room. The minute I opened the door, I saw him and thought he was dead. He was lying face down on the rug in front of the dresser and on the dresser there wasn't any little bottle of pills and there weren't any amyl nitrite ampoules, either.
I bent over him, but I didn't waste time trying to find out whether he was dead or not. If he was, the ampoule I'd got from Doc Kruger wasn't going to hurt him. And if he was alive, a fraction of a second might make the difference of whether it would save him or not. I didn't feel for a heartbeat or look at his face. I got hold of a handful of hair and lifted his head a few inches off the floor, reached in under it with my hand and crushed the ampoule right under his nose.
Eve was standing in the doorway and I barked at her to phone for an ambulance, right away quick. She ran back toward the living room.
Ollie didn't die, although he certainly would have if I hadn't had the bright idea of appropriating that ampoule from Doc and carrying it with me. But Ollie was in bad shape for a while, and Uncle Am and I didn't get to see him until two days later, Sunday evening.
His face looked gray and drawn and he was having to lie very quiet. But he could talk, and they gave us fifteen minutes with him. And they'd told us he was definitely out of danger, as long as he behaved himself, but he'd still be in the hospital another week or maybe even two.
But bad as he looked, I didn't pull any punches. “Ollie,” I said, “it didn't work, your little frame–up. I didn't go to the police and accuse Eve of trying to murder you. On the other hand, I've given you this break, so far. I didn't go to them and tell them you tried to commit suicide in a way to frame her for murder. You must love Dorothy and Jerry awfully much to have planned that.”
“I – I do,” he said. “What made you guess, Ed?”
“Your hands, for one thing,” I said. “They were dirtier than they'd have been if you'd just fallen. That and the fact that you were lying face down told me how you managed to bring on that attack at just that moment. You were doing push–ups – about as strenuous and concentrated exercise as a man can take. And just kept doing them till you passed out. It should have been fatal, all right.”
“And you knew the pills and ampoules had been on your dresser that afternoon, and that Eve had been home since I'd seen them and could have taken them. Actually you took them yourself. You came out in a taxi – and we could probably find the taxi if we had to prove this – and got them yourself. You had to wait till you were sure Eve and I would be en route downtown, and that's why you were so late getting to the Pump Room. Now Uncle Am's got news for you – not that you deserve it.”
Uncle Am cleared his throat. “You're not married, Ollie. You're a free man because your marriage to Eve Packer wasn't legal. She'd been married before and hadn't got a divorce. Probably because she had no intention of marrying again until you popped the question to her, and then it was too late to get one. Her legal husband, who left her ten years ago, is a bartender named Littleton. He found her again somehow and when he learned she'd married you illegally, he started blackmailing her. She's been paying him two hundred a month, half the pin–money allowance you gave her, for three years. They worked out a way she could mail him checks and still have her money seemingly accounted for. The method doesn't matter.”
I took over. “We haven't called copper on the bigamy bit, either, because you're not going to prosecute her for it, or tell the cops. We figure you owe her something for having tried to frame her on a murder charge. We've talked to her. She'll leave town quietly, and go to Reno, and in a little while you can let out that you're divorced and free. And marry Dorothy and legitimize Jerry. She really will be getting a divorce, incidentally, but from Littleton, not from you. I said you'd finance that and give her a reasonable stake to start out with. Like ten thousand dollars – does that sound reasonable?”
He nodded. His face looked less drawn, less gray now. I had a hunch his improvement would be a lot faster now.
“And you fellows,” he said. “How can I ever – ?”
“We're even,” Uncle Am said. “Your retainer will cover. But don't ever look us up again to do a job for you. A private detective doesn't like to be made a patsy, be put in the spot of helping a frame–up. And that's what you tried to do to us. Don't ever look us up again.”
We never saw Ollie again, but we did hear from him once, a few months later. One morning, a Western
Union messenger came into our office to deliver a note and a little box. He said he had instructions not to wait and left.
The envelope contained a wedding announcement. One of the after–the–fact kind, not an invitation, of the marriage of Oliver R. Bookman to Dorothy Stark. On the back of it was scribbled a note. “Hope you've forgiven me enough to accept a wedding present in reverse. I've arranged for the dealer to leave it out front. Papers will be in glove compartment. Thanks for everything, including accepting this.” And the little box, of course, contained two sets of car keys. It was, as I'd known it would be, a brand–new Buick sedan, gray, a hell of a car. We stood looking at it, and Uncle Am said, “Well, Ed, have we forgiven him enough?”
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