No Police Like Holmes

by Dan Andriacco

  Not that I blamed Lynda, for she was only a news editor doing her job, but how could she do this to me? I crumpled up the first section of the newspaper and threw it across the room at a bookcase, where it knocked over the perfidious woman’s photo.

  Well, that didn’t help matters, even if it did feel good. I had to concentrate on the murder and solve it myself. That was my only chance to limit the journalistic feeding frenzy to a few days. I sat in my armchair and tried to think.

  In any good detective story, the killer would be just about anybody who hadn’t been seen wearing a deerstalker. And it could be that way. It wouldn’t have taken much for somebody to borrow one for an hour or so as a sort of slight disguise or protective coloring. But I couldn’t help thinking of Noah Queensbury. He’d been dressed in that particular headgear every time I’d seen him. And he’d had an argument with Matheson shortly before the murder. How did I know he was telling the truth when he said they’d been arguing about Sherlock Holmes? Maybe it was something a lot more serious.

  But would he really kill somebody? As loony as he seemed, Queensbury was a surgeon.

  So was Jack the Ripper, most likely.

  The Indiana Jones theme song interrupted my reverie. At least this time I was awake. Reluctantly, I answered the phone with, “Hello, Ralph.” I plowed on before he chance to say anything. “I’m sorry about the Observer story, but you know there was no way to keep the college out of Matheson’s murder.”

  “Murder? Oh, yes, most regrettable. But what your friend Ms. Teal did with that story about the presentation of the Woollcott Chalmers Collection was even worse.”

  “Huh?” Blindsided and scrambling to figure out what he was talking about, I quickly un-crumpled the paper. Spreading the relevant page in front of me, I once again looked at the photo of the distinguished Woollcott Chalmers and the un-constipated Ralph Pendergast. The story with it was heavy on adjectives that indicated what an honor this was for St. Benignus College to be the recipient of the collection. Lynda had written it, as well as apparently helping Ben with his page one murder story. “What’s wrong with it? I couldn’t write a story that positive.”

  “No doubt,” Ralph’s dry voice dripped acid. “But if you had interviewed the provost perhaps even you would have quoted him in the story, not McCabe.”

  I sighed.“Whose picture is with the story, Ralph?”

  He conceded that his was.

  “That’s worth a thousand words,” I said. “College official meets enthusiastic contributor. We’ll get permission to put that picture on the website and reprint it in the alumni magazine and in the next fund-raising brochure. It’s dynamite.”

  “Do you really think so, Cody?”

  “Scout’s honor.” I’d never been a Scout, but Ralph didn’t know that. He was mollified enough about the Chalmers Collection story to start worrying about the murder again. I promised I’d stick close to the situation all day and do any damage control that might be necessary. By the time Ralph hung up I congratulated myself that I’d avoided another royal ass-chewing.

  That happy thought was marred by one of the less pleasing of the sounds that punctuate my life. Vroooom! Mac’s ancient Chevy was tearing out of the garage below me. I looked out the window just in time to see the tail fins disappearing down the road. The Chalmerses were leaving for the second day of the symposium. Mac again would preside over the day’s rather limited activities like a royal duke while he expected me to do his leg work, damn him anyway.

  Even worse, I was going to do it.

  I called Lynda to enlist her help - I figured she owed me for the morning I’d had so far - but got no answer. Today being Sunday, maybe she was at Mass with her cell phone turned off. I’m not Catholic, but I should have been in church myself, praying my way out of this. (In case anybody is worried about my sister and brother-in-law, who are Catholic, they hit the 5:15 p.m. Mass in the chapel the night before.)

  Or maybe Lynda was somewhere else. Should I send her a text: Where the hell are you? Better not. She would not react well.

  As I disconnected the call I looked around for my notebook with Mac’s list of suspects - casually at first, then with a growing concern. After a minute of that I realized I must have left it in Mac’s study last night. I put on a jacket, picked up my wallet and keys, and went out of my apartment, locking up behind me. With the McCabes gone to the colloquium and the three McCabe children all staying overnight with friends for the weekend, there was nobody to let me into the house. Fortunately I have my own key, which I used.

  The notebook was on the small table where I’d thrown it in a pique last night. I stuck it in my pocket and left the study, heading out of the house. Then I stopped, frozen.

  I’d heard something - I wasn’t sure what, but something, a noise in an empty house where there should have been no noise.

  Chapter Twenty-Three - Personal Space

  With stealth and caution I passed through the hallway toward the guest suite at the back of the house, where the noise had appeared to originate. Down these mean streets a man must go...Along the way I picked up my nephew Brian’s baseball bat from the kitchen. It was only aluminum but it felt comforting in my hand. I held it like a club.

  Outside the suite, added on by the previous owners for the wife’s parents, I paused. My stomach was one big mass of knots and my heart was pounding in my ears from the adrenaline rush. I wiped sweaty palms on my khaki slacks.

  Strangely, from this close up the noise in the suite sounded like water running in the bathroom.

  Should I knock first and give the traditional “Who’s there?” or should I barge right in, bat at the ready? WWMD - What Would Max Do?

  Opting for the element of surprise, I tightened my grip on the bat with my right hand and pushed in the doorknob with my left. And I walked in.

  The empty bedroom was large and bright, with sun pouring in from a window overlooking a spectacular view of the Ohio River. There were two dressers opposite the bed (one of them with a mirror), a clothes tree draped with clothes, a couple of modern lamps and a captain’s chair. At the far end of the room, to the right of the big window, was an alcove that I knew led to a small sitting room with a TV and several bookcases.

  The dresser with the mirror was clearly Renata’s domain. Across the top of it were spread all the tools of the womanly arts - a hair brush, a jewelry box, a wig, and a tray full of lipsticks, eye shadows, powders, and other elements of witchcraft. The other dresser top was blank by comparison; it only held a set of keys, some spare change, and a large container for pills marked off by the days of the week.

  I had gotten about that far in my visual survey of the room when I heard the gasp, a sharp intake of breath behind me to the right. I jerked around, simultaneously swinging the bat into position for action.

  And saw Renata Chalmers.

  She stood in the doorway of the guest bathroom, her deep brown eyes dilated in surprise. Her right hand was on a middle button of her green and white blouse, as though she’d stopped dead in the act of dressing. The pale pink of a lacy bra was just visible. Okay, I noticed; I couldn’t help it.

  For a long moment, with her eyes fixed on me, I felt like a butterfly mounted on a pin in somebody’s collection. The room was hot and my mouth was dry and this should have happened to somebody else, like maybe Ralph Pendergast.

  “Jeff!” Renata said at last. Her eyes traveled down to the bat in my hand. “What are you doing in my room? And with that thing?”

  I let my right hand and the bat drop to my side. “I thought I heard a noise,” I said lamely.

  “I pretty much always make a noise when I take a shower.” The temperature of her voice was just this side of frigid. Her hair was damp from the steam of the shower and the Victorian ringlets from last night were gone. She buttoned her top two buttons as I avoided her eyes, certain that my face must be
turning the color of her underwear.

  “But there wasn’t... there shouldn’t have been anybody here,” I stammered. “Mac left fifteen minutes ago. I was sure he would have taken everybody with him.”

  “He had to set up some things early,” Renata said. “My husband and your sister did go along, but I wasn’t ready yet. You could have knocked, you know.”

  “It’s this murder business and the robbery, I guess. It has me on edge. I’m sorry. I feel ridiculous.”

  “You look it, too,” she said. “A baseball bat, yet!”

  She laughed and I managed a smile. “It was the nearest weapon I could grab to defend myself.”

  “Well, thanks for not using it on me. Are you going over to the colloquium or do you have more sleuthing to do?”

  Both, actually. The colloquium is where I would see and interview the people on Mac’s list. Without telling Renata that, I offered to give her a lift in my seldom-used 1998 Volkswagen New Beetle, but she demurred.

  “On a morning like this I’d just as soon walk,” she said. “It isn’t that far.”

  True enough, so I decided to leave my bike at home and walk with her. It was still cooler outside than you’d expect from the brightness of the sun, but it was perfect for a brisk walk. The long-legged Renata, swinging her huge handbag, set a pace I had to work to keep up with.

  “It’s hard to believe Hugh’s dead,” she said. “He was so lively.”

  “Maybe too lively. He had quite a reputation for playing to win, no matter what the game.”

  She nodded. “The reputation was well deserved. And what you must have heard about his success with the ladies - that was true, too.”

  I let that pass. “Your husband and Matheson didn’t get along, did they?”

  “Well, you saw them yesterday.”

  “Yeah, and I’ve also heard stories.”

  “Probably true.”

  I shook my head and said I found it amazing that grown men could be so venomous over a shared hobby.

  “There’s a little more to it than that,” Renata said.

  “Meaning?”

  She shook her head. “It doesn’t matter now.”

  I supposed she was right. Chalmers was on Mac’s list of people to suspect or at least interview, but Mac himself had provided the old man’s alibi for the period when Matheson was murdered.

  But there were other members of the Anglo-Indian Club on that list, people Renata would know.

  “Tell me about Molly Crocker,” I said.

  “She’s one smart cookie, Jeff - plus ambitious, aggressive, and tough. She was especially tough on deadbeat dads when she was a prosecutor. Her fans call her Maximum Molly.”

  “Are you one of her fans?”

  “You could say that. I’m going to be the treasurer of her re-election campaign.”

  Bias noted.

  “What were her relations with Matheson?” I asked.

  “I have no reason to think that she had any outside of the club, other than the fact that she’s female - which, come to think of it, is a pretty compelling reason. And I guess Hugh might have tried some cases in front of her. You ask a lot of question, Mr. Cody. Shades of Sherlock!”

  “Now that hurts, Mrs. Chalmers. I’m not the Sherlockian here - you are.”

  She shook her head. “Not me, my husband. Don’t get us confused. I have my own interests.”

  “Music and art and things cultural, right?”

  “That’s another question.”

  “I have more. For instance, is Noah Queensbury for real?”

  “His wife must think-”

  “I mean about Sherlock Holmes,” I interrupted, impatient.

  “He’s a gifted surgeon. I suspect that he works hard and plays hard. That Holmesmania stuff is his way of playing. He may act crazy, but I think it’s just an act.”

  I paused at an intersection, waiting for a WALK light. Renata, seeing no cars coming our way, jaywalked. I scampered to keep up.

  “Were any of your friends, or just people you know from the colloquium, late for the banquet last night?”

  She shrugged. “I wouldn’t know. I got held up fixing my hair into those ringlets I wore last night.”

  We were within sight of Muckerheide Center now, the flat slabs of some architect’s tribute to Frank Lloyd Wright rising above the horizon before us.

  “But your husband was there as early as the cocktail hour,” I pointed out. “Mac said so.”

  “Sure. When I saw how long it was going to take to fix my hair, I told him to go on without me. He and Kate and Mac were all dressed, and they’re more social creatures than I am anyway. And even a husband and wife need a little personal space between them now and then, don’t you think?”

  Personal space... it sounded like an echo of Lynda’s constant complaint that I was too clingy, too jealous, too bossy - and after a while, just too too. Maybe things between us never would have gone off the rails if I had lightened my touch a bit. Maybe that was still possible.

  “I guess I’m not qualified to answer that one,” I said. “I mean, I’ve never been married.” Not that I was against the idea.

  I glanced in her direction, trying not to look like a man looking at a woman. I’m sure I failed miserably. It was hard to get away from the fact that Renata Chalmers was a stunningly attractive and sensuous female married to a man about forty years older than she was. I’d have bet he felt no such craving for personal space.

  Sunday, March 13

  9:00

  Breakfast (President’s Dining Room)

  Field Bazaar

  Session Four

  10:00

  “Dr. John H. Watson: Conductor of Light” - Dr. Noah Queensbury, BSI, Cincinnati

  10:30

  “Holmes on the Radio” - Bob Nakamora, Philadelphia

  11:00

  “Humor in the Canon” - Dr. Sebastian McCabe, BSI, Erin, Ohio

  11:30

  Sherlockian Auction - Bob Nakamora

  12:00

  Farewells and Thanks

  Certificate of Participation

  Chapter Twenty-Four - Bacon, Eggs, and Suspicion

  I took my leave of Renata at the registration table outside the Hearth Room. She continued on to the President’s Dining Room, although we were too early for breakfast, while I lingered to talk with Popcorn.

  My administrative assistant, four feet eleven inches of romantic imagination wrapped up in a grandmother of three, was still swept up in Love’s Savage Desire.

  “Is this your first time through that book or are you re-reading the steamy parts?” I asked, as if I didn’t know the answer. In her opinion, I don’t put enough sex and violence in my books. She’s a widow.

  Popcorn sighed and set down the paperback. “I saw Lynda earlier.” She wasn’t at church, then, at least not any more. “Are you two an item again?”

  “I’m not sure,” I said, “but keep an eye on her Facebook status.”

  Turning away from Popcorn’s blue cat’s eyes, I found myself looking at the coat rack next to the registration desk. There were only a couple of coats on it, and no hats at all. I strained to remember what it had looked like yesterday.

  “Did you notice anybody taking a deerstalker off of that rack yesterday afternoon?” I asked Popcorn.

  Anybody who had a thing like that at a program like this would most likely want to wear it all the time, like Queensbury, not warehous
e it on a coat rack - unless maybe he was saving it up to wear as a sort of disguise during the commission of a murder.

  But Popcorn shook her head. “I don’t think so. I couldn’t swear to it because I was taking money and handing out name tags when I wasn’t reading my book, but I don’t think so. Why, is there one missing?”

  “Probably not. It was just a thought.”

  I left Popcorn to her book, planning to join the breakfast crowd in the President’s Dining Room. Before I got very far in that direction, though, I saw the bald-headed bookseller go in the second door of the Hearth Room with a box under his arm. Reuben Pinkwater, Mac had said his name was, and he was on Mac’s list of people to interview.

  I sidled up to him casually as he pulled books out of the box and stacked them on the long table. He was wearing gabardine pants, a small brown bow tie and white shirt with the sleeves rolled up. When he heard me coming he looked up and gave a cheery “Good morning.”

  The smile, showing off his gold tooth, put wrinkles in his face to match the soft indentions at the back of his head. It occurred to me then that all bald men over the age of thirty-five look alike, from Daddy Warbucks to Lex Luthor to Kojak.

  But a deerstalker would hide a bald dome nicely.

  “Morning,” I agreed. “I haven’t seen you around Erin.” This was content-free chatter to get the ball rolling.

  “Probably not. My shop’s in Licking Falls. The Scene of the Crime. Here.”

  He handed me a business card with the name of the store and the unmistakable silhouette of Sherlock Holmes, the man in the deerstalker.

  With the card in my hand I gestured to the small stack of deerstalker caps on one end of the table. “Do you sell many of those?”

  He looked where I pointed. “A few a year. I thought I’d get rid of them all this weekend, but no such luck.”

  Pinkwater fussed with the books in jerky movements, squaring off volumes that already looked perfectly aligned to me. There were paperbacks and hardbacks of every size, some hot off the press and some barely held together with rubber bands. About ninety percent had either “Sherlock Holmes” or some obvious Sherlockian reference like “Baker Street” in the title.