He shook his head in disgust. I started to object, thinking he was scorning my opinion, but he overrode me. “No, no, David, my chagrin is not directed your way. At least not at this time. I was simply wishing for a scenario of action comparable to our coup in the McClain matter. What an evening that was!”
“Yeah,” I muttered. “And your chariot still has the scar to prove it.” Regan glanced smugly down at the dent on the left side of the wheelchair. I continued. “And so does my heart. I don’t ever want to go through anything like that again. Please.”
“Ah,” he said contentedly, “there was never any real danger.” There’s a word for statements like that, but him being a man of the cloth, I didn’t say it.
“In any case,” he went on, after a few more moments of pleasant reverie, “I should be adroit enough to dream up a new way to put our knowledge to use. Do you think —?” He stopped and frowned. He cocked his head at me. “David, what are the chances that those earrings were deliberately left there by the murderer?”
I gave it some thought, and slowly shook my head. “No, I can’t see it. At least I can’t see any reason for it.”
Regan nodded. “Nor I. Which means that —” He broke off, put his head in his hands and began rubbing his eyes. His voice muffled, he went on, “I’m pondering a theory, David, even as we speak. Think along with me, please. We know that Miss Penniston received a phone call from Mr. Sarnoff at her office the night she died. When she left that party it was undoubtedly to meet him. It now seems that they met in the office Sarnoff had sublet. What happened there?”
Regan raised his head and looked at me but I outwaited him. He didn’t get that irritated look he gets when he wants an answer I can’t or won’t give, so I guess he was just thinking. He finally resumed, holding me with his eyes.
“We may assume that Miss Penniston did two things while there. She removed her earrings and she wrote the phone number of the place on her left palm. As I say, these are only assumptions as yet, but they give rise to an interesting working hypothesis.”
I frowned. “Well, we know she was in the habit of keeping any and all phone numbers. But why did she take off her earrings? That’s what I —”
Regan shook his head at me. “No, David. You’re asking the wrong question. The important question is not why she took them off, but where was Sarnoff when she was taking them off? And when she wrote that number on her palm. I find it inconceivable that Sarnoff — and for now let us assume he is the murderer we are after — would have left those earrings there for you to find more than two weeks later, had he known she put them there. Or that he wouldn’t have scrubbed that number off her palm, had he known she wrote it. I conclude that Sarnoff was out of the office when she did both.
“Yet Sarnoff must have been there to admit her — nothing suggests that Miss Penniston had a key, and much suggests she didn’t. And, assuming he was the murderer, he was there when she died. Then what prompted him to leave? Having gone to such lengths to get her there, why leave her alone — for several hours, apparently? And why did she remain there?” Regan shook his head.
“And there is a final puzzle. Given the murderer’s penchant for removing his victim’s earrings, why didn’t he return to that office and retrieve the earrings?”
We stared at each other. The expression on the boss’s face suggested he was looking for me to come up with an answer. I hated to disappoint, but I didn’t have a clue.
The phone rang in my office. Saved by the bell. I made tracks.
“Goldman.”
“Mr. Goldman, this is Harold Brady. Mr. Rice asked me to call you.”
The Bishop was in the doorway, eyebrows raised. He was really getting into it. I covered the mouthpiece and mouthed the words the gemologist. Regan got even more excited. Pushing himself all the way into my office, he stage-whispered, “Tell him you’ll call back. Get his number and hang up.” I frowned at him but finally obeyed, leaving Brady puzzled.
The Bishop was third-degreeing me before the receiver hit the cradle. “Did he say anything about the earrings?”
“How could he? You cut me off before I could even —”
“I want to talk to that man,” the boss interrupted, spinning and heading back through the door. “Call him back on my line, David. And tell him I’m joining the conversation. “
I would have liked to know how he wanted to be introduced but he was in no mood for delay. I shrugged and punched out Brady’s number.
“Mr. Brady. Dave Goldman again. My associate, F. X. Regan, would have a word with you.” The even more befuddled jewelry expert mumbled something along the lines of “Okay.” I stayed on the line.
“Mr. Brady,” said Regan from his office. “Mr. Goldman is still on the line, but he has asked me to ask you some questions. What can you tell us about those earrings, sir?”
“Er, yes, er, Mr. Regan. Well, each earring has twenty-one imitation diamonds and twenty imitation rubies, all tiny ones, an eighth carat each. Whoever did the setting is a superb craftsman. The design is very unusual. Were the stones genuine, it would be a very costly set. At a distance of several inches, one could be fooled — even I. Looked at carefully, up close, the material in the stones is obviously cubic zirconia.”
“Cubic zirconia, Mr. Brady?”
“That’s right…um, crystallized zirconium dioxide.”
“Ah! Could you give me an approximate dollar value for the set, sir?”
“Well, I hesitate to give an estimate.”
“I assure you, sir,” said Regan, “I shan’t quote you. I’m simply looking for an order of magnitude. As much as a thousand dollars, say?”
“Oh, perhaps. But probably not. Wholesale, as they are right now, perhaps four hundred. Retail, with luck, eight- or nine-fifty. Very difficult to say. The setting is lovely, but with imitation stones… On the other hand, they’ve been well cared for; only one tiny scratch on the setting, almost invisible to the naked eye.” Brady sighed. “Perhaps a thousand. It’s hard to say.”
“Indulge me, sir,” the Bishop said, applying plenty of lubrication. “Again, not for publication, could you give me an estimate of the set’s worth, were the stones genuine diamonds and rubies.”
Brady chuckled. “That I don’t mind doing, since it’s pure fantasy. With high-quality gems — no, say, highest quality gems, twelve-point diamonds and rubies, well cut — that set of earrings, with the kind of crafting that’s gone into the setting, could be worth easily fifteen — maybe even twenty-thousand dollars. Easily.”
“Thank you, Mr. Brady,” said Regan. “I’ll leave the conversation, now. I think Mr. Goldman may have a question or two for you.” The Bishop rang off.
I thought for a moment. “Just one question, Mr. Brady, what were Mr. Rice’s instructions to you, as you understood them? As regards those earrings?”
“He said to keep them in a safe place. And that I was to give them to no one except to you and him. Jointly.”
“An honest man,” I commented. “I couldn’t have thought of a better arrangement. I hope it doesn’t come to it, but they could be important pieces of evidence in a criminal case. Guard them with your life.” I hung up on a no doubt thoroughly confused jeweler.
The Bishop looked up when I reentered, and his look started my spine tingling. He was onto something. I grinned.
“You look like a lion that smells fresh meat. What’s up?”
“This: the questions I was raising when Mr. Brady called are probably unanswerable till we have more facts. But is that important? Perhaps we can come up with a working hypothesis based on some educated guesses and design a plan around it to trap Mr. Sarnoff.
“First of all, let’s take the questions: why did Miss Penniston remove her earrings? And why did she go to that office in the first place?
“Using facts that we know, I think it’s a fair assumption that Sarnoff invited her there. He let her in and left. How did he get her there? And why did he leave? Those are doubtless important questions,
but since I see no way of exploring them, let them go for the nonce. She came, he left. Miss Penniston was left for several hours to her own devices. Query: how did she occupy her time for those two or three hours? Any ideas, David?”
“I know what I’d do,” I grinned. “That leather couch in there wasn’t in the greatest of shape. But it was good-sized. And it looked comfortable.”
“Exactly.” Regan nodded with satisfaction. “You might have taken a nap. If Miss Penniston took a similar course, what do you think she would have done with a pair of heavy, valuable —?”
“— earrings?” I interrupted excitedly. “She’d take them off!”
“No doubt,” said the Bishop. “And wrap them in a tissue.”
I was thinking fast. “So when the killer arrived…”
“She wasn’t wearing them,” Regan finished. “And either forgot she had taken them off, or decided, for whatever reason, not to put them back on. And the killer paid no attention.”
“Then why didn’t Sarnoff return for the missing earrings? Certainly he knew she’d been in that office; and he knew the earrings were not on her ear lobes.”
Regan raised his left thumb. “Either he didn’t know she’d been wearing earrings, or…” right thumb up. “…he knew but didn’t consider the jewelry of sufficient value to bother looking for.”
“Okay,” I conceded. “I can buy it. So where does that leave us?”
“Advantageously situated,” the boss said. “Consider. We have now accumulated two or three pieces of vital information known neither by the police nor, more to the point, the murderer.
“We don’t know what drew her there, but we do know with a fair degree of certainty that Miss Penniston spent her last hours in that office. We know that she — or someone — left those earrings there. And we know the office was rented under the name Sarnoff. Of course, two of those facts are also known by Sarnoff. What he doesn’t know is that anyone else knows.”
Regan set his brake and leaned forward, elbows on the desk, holding me with his eyes. “Nor does he know that Miss Penniston wrote the office phone number on her palm. Therefore, he has no reason to think that anyone knows he was using the office. Yet. How can we use what we know — but Sarnoff doesn’t — to our advantage?” Regan tilted his head back and squinted at the ceiling.
“Sarnoff’s mysterious identity,” he mused, head back, “continues to intrigue me. No one has seen him; he hides behind post office box numbers and false addresses. The only person who knew him — Laura Penniston — is dead.”
The boss released the brake on the wheelchair, and began to pace. On his third pass from the east wall to the west, I said, “Call me when you need me,” and headed for my office. He didn’t seem to hear me. When he’s pacing, he often doesn’t hear or see anything.
But I didn’t make it. I was two strides from the door when he exploded.
“David!” I turned to him, miffed.
“Hey! I was only going to wait in my office. If you —”
Regan waved it away. “Sit down, please. I have an idea, but it’s problematic. I need your advice.”
36
I soon understood why the Bishop wanted my input. Rolling around in his wheelchair, he’d come up with a doozy of an idea. Trouble was, it conflicted with his inconvenient code of morality and he needed me to assuage his tender conscience. Myself, I loved it as soon as I heard it.
“But,” he said mournfully, “it entails a direct contravention of the truth.”
“Yeah, but look at the reason why. To nail a murderer and get Jerry Fan —”
“— Fanning out of jail,” Regan finished for me. “A man we know to be innocent. But David, one can’t violate a commandment simply to obtain a good result. ‘The end justifies the means’ flouts the very essence of Christian morality or any other morality.” I didn’t ask the boss if that was a knock against me. I was afraid I knew the answer.
“Well,” I said instead, “figure out some way around it. I’ve seen you do it before.” That got him. He turned various shades of pink and gave me a glare that would have melted steel.
“I have never,” he huffed, “subordinated morality to my own needs or desires, and you know it! That is the rankest kind of —”
I threw up my hands. “Hey, I take it back. But haven’t I heard you talk about something called broad mental reservation?”
“Well, yes, there’s that,” the Bishop allowed, partly assuaged by my semi-apology. “That can sometimes apply. But clearly the type of statement I am envisioning would not fall under that rubric. Regrettably.”
So we had a lengthy discussion of the whole situation. What Regan could and couldn’t do, morally. And — more to the point — what he could and couldn’t let me do. It was all very interesting if somewhat academic.
For myself, it wasn’t an issue. As I said, I thought he’d come up with a dandy, and was ready to go with it, morality be damned.
“All right,” he finally said, quasi-capitulating, “go ahead and explain our dilemma to the Pennistons. It’s not my wont to let others make my ethical decisions for me. But a little discussion with them might clarify matters.”
I guess I should have thanked him for including me on his high moral plane by calling it our dilemma. I made the call — and got lucky. Caught the Pennistons just as they were going out the door.
“Oh, Mr. Goldman,” Maureen said. “Nice of you to call. Mr. Lancer, our attorney, is just now taking us to lunch. Roger and I came upstairs to freshen up. After lunch, we’re going over to Mid-City National with him to open Laura’s safe deposit box. Then he’s taking us to LaGuardia in time to catch the five o’clock flight back to Wichita.” I glanced at my watch: 11:53 A.M. Things were moving too fast.
“Do you have a second phone in your room, Mrs. Penniston?” I asked. “I have something I need to discuss with both of you, and since you’re on your way to lunch I’d like to do it over the phone — if you don’t mind taking a minute.”
Roger got on. I wished the Bishop would too. It was tricky and I was afraid I’d screw it up. But his morality wouldn’t let him participate — beyond watching me do it. I outlined Regan’s immoral idea.
“What we — I mean, what I — have in mind is a trick to pull Sarnoff out of hiding. I think there’s a good chance that one or more of your daughter’s friends knows Mr. Sarnoff and either doesn’t know it — because he was using a false name — or doesn’t want to admit it. This trick involves your daughter’s earrings. How much did they cost? Does either of you remember?”
A pause. Then Maureen’s voice, quietly, “Roger?”
“Yes, I do.” Roger was positive. “They were twelve hundred and fifty dollars. And well worth it. They were beautiful. And Laura loved them. She said she’d always —” The doting father had to stop and clear his throat. No one said anything for a few seconds.
I decided Roger had said all he was going to, and broke the silence. “Thank you. Now let me tell you what I have in mind. I’d like to ask you to get the word around that those missing earrings were really terribly expensive. I’d like you to tell everyone that the diamonds and the rubies in them were real. That those were twenty-thousand-dollar earrings. Could you do that for us — I mean, me?”
More silence. Finally, from Maureen, “I’m afraid I — what are you saying? You want us to lie about them? Lie about how valuable they were?”
“Well, I’d prefer to call it a broad mental reservation, not lying,” I said, glancing at the Bishop. He blushed and looked irritated. “But, yeah, basically that’s it. I think if you’re willing to do that, we can find the man that murdered your daughter.”
“Whom should we tell?” Roger asked.
“I’d like you to call George McClendon, Betty Donovan, Lee Stubbs, Sandra Norville and Bob Theodore, and tell them all. All of them saw her that evening, so it would be natural for you to ask them: are they absolutely sure they were the red cross earrings? Because you know just how valuable they are. You just can�
��t believe they’re now in the hands of some murderer.”
“I don’t understand.” Roger put in. “How could that possibly help?”
I held a two-second debate with myself regarding how much I should tell them. I decided to give them a piece of the puzzle.
“Okay,” I said. “Because I think Sarnoff needs money bad. He cheated your daughter and Betty out of one hundred twenty thousand dollars. And I think if he sees a way to get twenty thousand more, he’ll go for it. And I think I know where he thinks he knows the earrings are. And I plan to be there to nab him when he goes after them.”
A short silence. Then Maureen said in a shocked voice, “You think this Sarnoff’s the one who murdered Laura, don’t you, Dave?”
“Frankly, I do, Maureen. I don’t have time to go into all the reasons, but — yes.”
Roger had another objection. “But doesn’t Sarnoff — or whoever killed her — already have the earrings? If she was wearing them, and they were missing when the police found Laura, he’s probably got them.”
“Nope,” I assured him. “The earrings are in a very safe place. When this is all over, I’ll return them to you.”
“We’ll do it,” Roger said grimly. “If you really think it might do some good, Dave, I’m willing. Count us in.” A murmur of conversation between the two of them. Then Roger gave me the kicker. “We’ll postpone our flight back to Wichita, Dave.”
“Thank you,” I said, relieved. “I appreciate it. Suppose I come over to your hotel so we can discuss it.”
The couple agreed to meet me in the Hilton lobby at 2:30.
“I don’t like this, David,” Regan fretted as I hung up the phone. “I am aiding and abetting direct and blatant disregard of the truth. I can’t permit it. Call them back.”
That did it. I blew up. “Look, dammit! I don’t know where you dig up that so-called morality of yours! But if you’re more concerned about telling a little white lie to a bunch of suspects in a murder case than you are about a guy who set up and knocked off four broads, all I can say is —”
The Fundamentals of Murder (Davey Goldman Series Book 2) Page 25