No Police Like Holmes

by Dan Andriacco

  “I need it. But it would be even worse if Ralph heard it someplace else first. Never let your boss be surprised.”

  I pulled out my phone, chose Ralph’s name from my contacts list, and tapped his phone number.

  “This is Jeff Cody,” I said when the provost had answered in his precise voice. I could hear music playing in the background. Could that really be Dave Brubeck? “You aren’t going to like this.”

  “That I believe. Well, what is it now?”

  “One of the participants in this Sherlock Holmes colloquium thing has been murdered.”

  “Good God in heaven!”

  I winced and pulled the phone away from my ear. The expression on Mac’s hairy face showed that he’d heard Ralph almost as well as I had.

  “It isn’t as if the body showed up in the middle of Muckerheide Center,” I said quickly. “The murder was off-campus.”

  “Thank God for that. Give me the details.” I could have sworn Ralph had stopped to drink something between the two sentences.

  I summed up the case as Oscar knew it - leaving out, of course, what I knew that the chief didn’t.

  “What we have here, Ralph,” I concluded, “is a very unfortunate set of circumstances, especially with the murder following the theft so closely. But I’m on top of it. I’ve spent quite a bit of time discussing this case with the chief of police. I’m sure that when he finds this mysterious visitor in the deerstalker the murder will be solved.”

  “And I suppose we can look forward to yet another spate of unfavorable publicity when someone is arrested,” Ralph said. “At least it isn’t likely to be a college employee. Is it?” The last two words came out almost as a plea.

  The doors of the President’s Dining Room swung open. Sherlockians spilled out in a sea of now-familiar faces - Molly Crocker, the deerstalkered (yes!) Dr. Queensbury, Sven Larsen, Professor Whippet...

  “Well, Cody?”

  I went as far as I could, assuring Ralph that neither Mac nor I nor anybody connected with St. Benignus College had been wearing a deerstalker cap today.

  “What you have to do is downplay the college connection with this so-called colloquium,” said Ralph, who had made a speech earlier that day accepting the Woollcott Chalmers Collection as a highlight of what he now dismissed as the “so-called colloquium.”

  I promised him I’d use all my influence with the police and the press. It was an easy promise because I have none. But it mollified Ralph, who believes otherwise.

  “I suppose your intentions are good, Cody,” he conceded. “I might even be able to make something out of you if you weren’t under the constant influence of the execrable McCabe.”

  The thought had been expressed before, and not just by Ralph. It’s undeniably true that my life would be simpler and less turbulent without Sebastian McCabe in it. But it would be a lot less interesting, too.

  “Mac’s right here,” I told Ralph. “Want to talk to him?” There I went again, showing that constant influence.

  “Spare me, Cody. I’m warning you, if you can’t get control of this story I’ll find someone who can.”

  He hung up.

  “Good show!” Mac said. “That was a most convincing performance, old boy, just then and earlier with Oscar as well. Now perhaps you would care to give me the unexpurgated version.”

  “Meaning what?”

  “Meaning,” Mac said, making a show of studying his unlighted cigar, “the whole story of your personal involvement in the murder - the details of which you did not share with Oscar for quite good reasons, no doubt.”

  Chapter Twenty-One - Too Many Suspects

  “How do you figure-”

  “Hell and damnation, Jefferson,” my brother-in-law thundered, “do not trifle with me at a time like this! I cannot pretend I knew instantly the reason for your strong interest earlier in Hugh Matheson’s argument with Noah Queensbury. I would be doltish indeed, however, if I did not see the implications of it now. That, coupled with your late arrival, your question about who else arrived late, and your sly looks at Ms. Teal - congratulations on your rapprochement with her, incidentally - all make the conclusion inescapable: You are in this mess up to your red eyebrows.”

  I raised my hands in protest, speaking quickly as Kate and the Chalmerses appeared among the crowd in the doorway of the President’s Dining Room. “It’s not like I killed the guy or anything, but it’ll look bad if Oscar finds out I’m the one who called 911 and didn’t leave my name. I could say I didn’t have time to tell you about it, but the truth is I wanted to leave you out of it for your own good.”

  “People have been trying to do things for my own good all of my life,” Mac said. “Fortunately, I have thus far managed to frustrate them at every turn.”

  With my sister and Mac’s friends almost within earshot, we agreed to discuss the matter later at his house. Mac hobnobbed with the other Sherlockians until they’d all disappeared to their own homes or hotel rooms, then piled me and his house guests into his oversized Chevy.

  At Mac’s house we checked out the eleven o’clock news to see if the Cincinnati TV stations had picked up the murder of the city’s most famous lawyer. At the same time I was surfing the news websites on my iPhone. Ben and Lynda’s story wasn’t on the web yet, and only Channel 9 had a sketchy “this just in” report of about ten seconds near the end of the newscast. But TV4 used a full two minutes on the colloquium and the Woollcott Chalmers Collection. After a few seconds of me talking about the theft, it focused mostly on Chalmers using his cane to point out the wax bust of Sherlock Holmes and various other highlights of the Sherlockiana display.

  It must have been midnight by the time the others went to bed, leaving Mac and me to adjourn to his study. Here I must explain that the study of Sebastian McCabe is a wonderful working room, a large one, not a House Beautiful model of decorating. It has books on all four walls, sure. But it also has the computer he writes on, a bar with a beer tap, and a big-screen TV. When the Big One gets dropped and humanity has to stay indoors for few generations, that’s where I want to be. It’s my favorite room in all the world.

  I commandeered a comfortable leather chair while Mac tapped himself a Cincinnati microbrew called Christian Moerlein OTR Ale into a frosted mug.

  “Do not just tell me what happened,” he directed. “Re-live your adventures. Spare no details.”

  I gave him everything I could remember, right down to the conversation with Queensbury in the men’s room. Okay, I left out the hugs with Lynda because I saw no reason to appeal to his prurient interest. But I gave him everything else.

  “You,” Mac said at the conclusion, “are in great peril. And Lynda with you. Pardon the detective story cliché, but if we fail to unmask the murderer without undue delay, Oscar is going to reach his own conclusion and it won’t be pretty.”

  “Wow, you really are a Great Detective.”

  “Sarcasm is the lowest form of humor, Jefferson, below even puns. As to your actions, I must say that blundering around in the murder room, then concealing it from Oscar as though you had some personal culpability to hide, really was remarkably dense.”

  “It seemed a good idea at the time,” I mumbled, steamed that he was right.

  Mac drank deeply of his beer and stuck an unlighted cigar in his mouth.

  “Besides,” I added, “at least we found the books.”

  “Ah, yes. And what do you see as the importance of that?”

  “Well, now we know that Matheson stole the books, of course - the last salvo in his ongoing feud with Chalmers.”

  “What became of the third missing volume, the Beeton’s Christmas Annual?”

  “How should I know?” I pried my eyes open and stifled a yawn, all-too-aware that my brain was on low speed at best. “Maybe the killer took it for a souvenir. Who knows what somebody w
earing a deerstalker might do?”

  “Then you accept Oscar’s assumption that the earlier visitor to Hugh’s room was the killer?”

  I hesitated. “It’s a good working theory, at least.”

  “Agreed.”

  “So then all we have to do is find the person beneath the hat?”

  “Indeed. That task may be simple to state but not necessarily easy to accomplish, however. There are many possibilities and many people who should be interviewed. Take out your notebook, please.” Without thinking, I did so. “Write down these names: Gene Pfannenstiel, Molly Crocker-”

  “Hold it.” I stopped with my pen halfway through ‘Pfannenstiel.’ “I’m not your Watson - or your secretary.”

  “And quite a good thing,” Mac commented, drawing another beer. His administrative assistant, Heidi Guildenstern, is an insufferable woman whom I have long suspected of being a spy for Ralph Pendergast. “I prefer to think of you as my amanuensis.”

  Later, I looked that up in a dictionary and found out it out means “one employed to take dictation,” coming from the Latin word for a slave acting as a secretary. But even that night in Mac’s comfortable man-cave, before I knew exactly what the word meant, I resented it because it was a big word I didn’t know the meaning of.

  I handed Mac the notebook and pen. “Do it yourself, genius.”

  “Really, Jefferson,” he said with a sigh, “you can at times be remarkably petty and stubborn.” Oh, you think so, too. For the record, I prefer to think of myself as determined, not stubborn.

  Despite his feeble protest, Mac wrote a bunch of names and handed the notebook back to me. I looked at the list:

  Gene Pfannenstiel

  Molly Crocker

  Noah Queensbury

  Graham Bentley Post

  Woollcott Chalmers

  Renata Chalmers

  Reuben Pinkwater

  The person whose phone number was on the notepad in Hugh’s room

  “Who’s this Reuben Pinkwater?” I asked.

  “A book dealer from Licking Falls. Undoubtedly you’ve seen his display at the colloquium.”

  “The bald guy? Yeah, I’ve seen him.”

  Maybe Matheson had been killed for the missing book after all. But how would this Pinkwater know Matheson was the thief? And why hadn’t he taken the other two books? After a little sleep I’d probably have other questions, but right now I could think of just one more:

  “Do you really consider all of these people suspects?”

  “By no means,” Mac said. “A few are merely individuals who might have seen or heard something of significance.”

  “You’re going to interview all of them?”

  Mac’s bushy eyebrows, both of them this time, shot up as if he were astounded at the notion. “Of course not, old boy! You are.”

  I was reduced to inarticulate noises.

  “How would I have time to interview any of them, much less all?” Mac continued. “I have duties as host of the colloquium. Surely you are more than capable of formulating the proper questions for each to elicit enlightening responses?”

  That was really playing dirty. How could I say no? But I didn’t give in right away. I threw the notebook on a small table near my chair and we discussed it. The discussion ended with me saying, “I’m not doing it for you. This is my own investigation for my own good. I just hope I can put the finger on somebody before Oscar finds another witness that saw Lynda and me leaving the murder room. Anyone’ll do, so long as he’s guilty.”

  “Ah, the Max Cutter approach,” Mac observed.

  “Maybe I can get Lynda to help. Her neck is on the line, too.”

  “Splendid! A fine detective duo you two would make, in the grand tradition of Nick and Nora Charles, John Steed and Emma Peel, Fox Mulder and-”

  “Oh, shut up,” I said, standing. “Just one more thing before I go to bed: Ed Decker said the Hearth Room C key that’s kept in the Muckerheide Center offices wasn’t shiny and you said yours wasn’t either. That’s supposed to be an indication those keys weren’t copied; Decker knows that much. So how did Matheson get in without leaving a trace? Do you think Gene helped him?”

  “I am quite certain that he did not,” Mac said, “and for the best of reasons: Hugh Matheson did not take those books or cause them to be taken or acquire them after they were taken. He was not the thief, nor - I am reasonably certain - did he even know who the thief was.”

  Chapter Twenty-Two - Public Relations

  For hours I lay in bed without sleeping, the day’s events churning over and over in my mind as I positioned myself on my right side, my left, my stomach, my back, my right side... Eventually I must have nodded off or I wouldn’t have had the dream.

  Mac and Lynda were there, and so were Woollcott and Renata Chalmers, Judge Molly Crocker and Hugh Matheson. Everybody was running from the Winfield to Muckerheide Center and back again in speeded-up time, like a Keystone Kops movie. Chalmers shook his cane at the others as if in reprimand.

  They were all wearing deerstalkers.

  Mac had just pulled off Lynda’s hairpiece when the Indiana Jones theme song blaring out of the iPhone on the nightstand by my bed shattered the dream. I bolted up, fumbled for the phone, grabbed it, and finally stammered out a hello.

  “Jeff? It’s Morrie Kindle, Associated Press.”

  For five years Morrie has been stringing for the AP, and I’ve known him longer than that, but he always gives me the complete ID.

  “You got a crime wave going on there at Benignus or what?” he demanded.

  I pulled the phone away from my ear to look at the time: 6:36, the numbers said. By now the print edition of the Erin Observer& News-Ledger, which is where Morrie gets most of his news, would be decorating the front lawns of Erin. I should have stolen Ralph’s.

  “I suppose you’re calling about the Matheson murder?” I said.

  “Unless there’s some other campus crime I should know about.”

  My head was pounding from the lack of sleep and my eyes hurt. I was in no mood for trading witty dialogue with an untalented scribe.

  “I haven’t seen the Observer and I can’t help you much on this one anyway, Morrie,” I snapped. “The murder didn’t happen on campus and Campus Security isn’t involved. I really don’t know very much about it.” All but the last sentence was clearly true, and I could make an argument for the last one. “Why don’t you wake up Chief Hummel and see what he can tell you?”

  Morrie assured me that Oscar was next on his call list. But he had a few questions about “this Sherlock Holmes deal” that had brought Matheson to Erin. He already knew something about the colloquium from rewriting the Observer story on the stolen books caper for the AP, but he wasn’t sure where a big shot legal eagle like Matheson fit into such shenanigans.

  “I guess he was crazy,” I said, “just like all the other Sherlockians. That’s off the record, of course. But why else would a grown man collect all that Holmes stuff?”

  “He was a collector? You mean like books? Rare books about Sherlock Holmes?” Morrie Kindle’s voice got louder and faster. I could almost hear his heart go into overdrive. Even a second-tier reporter could see the story there. “Still off the record, Jeff, there has to be some kind of connection between this murder and those books being taken, don’t you think?”

  “Off the record, Morrie? I really don’t know what to think.”

  I meant it. When we’d found the stolen books in the dead man’s hotel room it had seemed so clear to Lynda and me that Matheson was the thief. Not so, Sebastian McCabe had insisted - and then refused to elaborate.

  When I finally convinced Morrie that I was innocent of any useful thoughts, he hung up on me.

  The morning was cool and the sun was hiding. Instead of pulling up erinobserver.com
on my smartphone to read the story like a smart public relations director would have, I went into denial mode and tried to hide under the covers. It was no use; sleep wanted no part of me. Finally I gave up and got out of bed. I showered, shaved, and slipped on a pair of khaki slacks and a light blue shirt with thin green lines running in both directions. I would have looked right at home at a boat dock or trendy bar.

  Dressed for the day ahead, I retrieved the morning newspaper from the lawn in front of the carriage house and took it back to my apartment to read.

  The headline on the top story was informative if not particularly creative: FAMED LITIGATOR SLAIN AT WINFIELD. I was impressed that the headline writer got by with using the word “litigator” instead of the shorter “lawyer.” A hint of mystery entered the story in the subhead: Did Killer Wear Deerstalker Cap?

  There was a little refer line in bold type politely telling the reader to Please see related story, page 12A. The inside piece turned out to be Lynda’s story on the presentation of the Chalmers Collection. It was illustrated by a nice photo of Chalmers and Ralph, who didn’t look nearly as constipated as usual, so that was good. But the murder story started at the top of 1A. That’s what everybody would read.

  With his typical thorough reporting, Bernard J. Silverstein had gotten all the facts straight, as far as the police had known them last night. The third paragraph read:

  “Matheson was in Erin, police and hotel officials said, to take part in a colloquium on ‘Investigating Arthur Conan Doyle and Sherlock Holmes’ being held this weekend at St. Benignus College.”

  That was the first of four references to the college in the main story. I counted them because I was sure that Ralph Pendergast would.

  As the subhead hinted, Ben had really taken off on the Holmes angle again. Who could blame him? The murder of a “famed litigator” in our little town was juicy stuff by itself. Throwing in the stolen books, the colloquium, and the mysterious visitor in the deerstalker made it National Enquirer and Inside Edition material. It would be an epic, too, and not a one-day wonder. And after the AP story went out, the aforementioned tabloids and their allegedly more respectable brethren in national media would be on it like bees on flowers.