“Or else what?”
“Or else I’ll beat you up!” They both laughed; she gave him a quick kiss, and scooted off to the kitchen.
He heard her humming happily while she worked. He listened to her as he looked around the room. It always delighted him to notice how Diedre’s personality was reflected so perfectly by her environment. Feminine and delicate, but fun-loving and mischievous, too; she had put a huge black paper mustache on one of her frilly lace lampshades for no more reason than silliness. On the other side of the room, she had the framed pictures—
“Diedre, what happened to the picture of you, me, and Ricky?”
She came back from the kitchen with the sandwich. “Oh, darn, there goes the surprise. I sent it away to have a poster made of it, one-and-a-half by three feet, I think. Won’t that be terrific? We’ll be just like movie stars.”
He smiled at her. “You’ll always be a star to me.”
“Eat your sandwich.”
“Yes, ma’am.” He took a bite. “Where’d you get the idea?”
“Oh, they called me on the phone, a new photo developing place; as an introductory offer, if I sent them two rolls of film to develop, they’d make any color or black and white print into a poster, so I—what’s the matter?” Her fiancé’s expression was definitely one of pain.
“Where’d you send it?”
“Oh, a box number, I’ve got it written down somewhere. What’s wrong?”
“I don’t like the idea of sending that in the mail especially in this kind of weather. It can get wet, or—or crushed ... it’s a hard picture to replace.”
“Don’t be such a worry wart. I’ve got the negative.” It didn’t seem to make him feel much better. To take his mind off it, she said, “Tell me about the case.”
He told her all about the morning’s events; Janet Higgins’s profile, Fleisher’s skepticism, and most of all, the professor’s bombshell about the sign. Telling about it took his mind off the picture, but it didn’t seem to make him feel any happier.
When he finished, Diedre said, “These people all sound so interesting. I’ve got to meet them. I’m going to invite them all to dinner. What’s today, Monday? I’m going to make a big turkey dinner for Wednesday. Let’s see, I can get fresh vegetables from—”
“Diedre, a murder investigation isn’t exactly—”
“You have to make everyone promise to come, Buell.”
“Love, I just can’t—”
“Oh, yes you can. Don’t think you’re going to have all the fun.”
Buell exploded. “Fun! How can you think this is fun!”
Diedre was all waving hands and urgent whispers, cutting him off. “That’s not exactly what I meant, Darling, please don’t be mad. Please.”
Buell subsided but shook his head. “Diedre, sometimes I go sick inside when I think about this whole thing. It’s not fun, Love, at all.”
Now Diedre was troubled. “I know, I know I said it wrong, but what I meant was I love you, and I’m jealous of you. You’re working with these people, getting close to them. I want to be part of whatever you’re part of. I want to know the people you know, so I can share more of your life—your feelings.”
Buell grinned at her, ruffled her hair. “Well, right now I feel like a rockheaded fool, if you want to share that one. I’m sorry, Love.”
She forgave him. “Then you’ll get them to come?”
Two pairs of blue eyes gazed at each other from a distance of eight inches. Buell said, “I’d go to hell and invite the devil himself, if you asked me to.” Then the kissing started.
Janet had taken Ron Gentry’s cryptic remark about Terry Wilbur’s room as a challenge. Apparently there was something here to see, and she turned around once, then again, sweeping the room with her eyes trying to see it.
“Are you a child, or a teetotum?” Ron asked under his breath.
“What?” Janet demanded.
“Nothing. It just seemed appropriate considering Wilbur’s taste in literature.”
It did strike the psychologist as a somewhat juvenile atmosphere for a boarding house tenant in his mid-twenties. The poster of Farrah Fawcett-Majors (whom Janet hated with a cold-green passion) and the various pieces of hockey equipment were understandable; some things men like no matter what their age. But Wilbur’s room was littered with children’s literature of all kinds—
Little Golden Books, Dr. Seuss, even an old Alice and Jerry primer left over from some obsolete grade school reading program. There seemed to be everything, in fact, but a copy of Through the Looking Glass, from which Ron had quoted.
The professor was carefully leafing through some of the books, lost in thought. Janet peeked over his shoulder. Some of the books, many of them, had been defaced by pencil marks. Words were underlined, giving sentences bizarre emphasis, like, “No, I do not like them, Sam; I do not like green eggs and ham.” Words, sentences, and sometimes single letters were copied in a strange, distorted scrawl. Often, Wilbur had inscribed a jagged, angry zigzag on a page, pressing so hard he had torn the paper.
The professor looked up, and spoke to his pupil. “You are right, Ronald. This room is important, I can sense that. Did not the police examine this room?”
“A couple of times,” Ron told him. “The first time, they were looking for drugs. The second time, after the note, they tried to find something that would indicate Wilbur wrote the Hog notes. They looked all through the books, but they were trying to find something in them instead of something about them.”
Janet was looking at a sum volume entitled The Littlest Snowball. She held it gingerly, as though it were dirty. Scientist or not, she was puzzled, and more than a little afraid.
“But what can it mean?” she demanded. “Something about these simple little books made him furious.” She looked again at the book. “What could he read in here to make him so angry?”
“I wish I knew, Janet,” Ron said. “Which one have you got there, The Littlest Snowball? That’s not even the one that made him the maddest. There’s one called The Big Red Dog that he thrust the pencil clean through, like he was stabbing it through the heart. I’m not the shrink around here, but it’s my opinion that Terry Wilbur is one disturbed young man.”
Janet wasn’t about to argue with that. The fact that she could not conceive of a reason for Wilbur’s behavior added to her feelings of unease. As soon as the blizzard let’s up, she promised herself, it was back to the library for a look at more case histories. A book, she knew, was a vaginal symbol. She’d start her research from there.
“And yet ... ,” Benedetti said, as he looked through more books. “And yet, not all of these aroused Wilbur’s ire. It seems as though the thicker the book, the less it bothered him. There are a few here that are virtually untouched.”
“I noticed that, Maestro,” Ron said. “Including this one.” He handed the professor a brand-new-looking copy of E.B. White’s Charlotte’s Web. It was the thickest book in Wilbur’s collection, and it was evident that he had seldom, if ever, opened it—the cover creaked when the professor looked inside. It was also the only “Children’s Classic” Wilbur seemed to own.
“This is the one you mentioned to me, isn’t it, amico?”
Ron nodded. Janet said, “What’s so special about that story?”
“Don’t you remember?” Ron asked.
“I never read it.”
“You never read Charlotte’s Web?” Ron sounded horrified. “Look, it’s all about—”
The professor interrupted. “I believe it will be better for the investigation if Dr. Higgins reads the book for herself. She will better be able to evaluate your theory if she follows the same steps you did in forming it. Don’t you agree, Doctor?”
It all sounded like mystification and showing-off to Janet, and she was about to say so, but the look in the professor’s shiny dark eyes was so commanding that she agreed to his suggestion, almost meekly.
“Va bene,” he said. “Now, I wish a word with Wilbu
r’s landlady.”
The landlady was hovering on the stair landing, waiting breathlessly for them to come down. Since Ron had been there twice already, and was therefore an old friend, she addressed the question to him.
“Well, Ronny? Did you find anything? Proof? Disproof? Anything?”
“It’s hard to say, Mrs. Zucchio.” As far as Ron could tell, nothing trivial had ever happened to Rosa Zucchio in her life. The last time Ron had visited her boarding house, he had actually heard her say “Ooh, I just had the most terrific drink of water!” (She started many of her sentences with “Ooh.”) And she greeted all the commonplaces of life the same way—with an enthusiasm that bubbled musically through her voice, and animated her tiny and still attractive person with constant sweeping gestures.
Right now, she was torn between conflicting emotions: a genuine liking for Terry Wilbur and concern for him, and excitement at the prospect of going down in history as the Hog’s landlady. A nontrivial fact like that, carefully used, could see her through years of breathless conversation.
When the professor asked her if she would mind answering a few questions for him, Ron saw her big eyes go all soft and dreamy, and chalked up another conquest for Benedetti. Mrs. Zucchio nearly floated into the living room, where she shooed out her boarders and seated Ron, Janet, and the professor in front of a roaring fire.
“That’s Terry, there,” she said, pointing to a row of pictures on the mantel. A photographer-tenant had taken them to test out some new equipment, and used his fellow boarders as models.
The portrait of Wilbur revealed nothing sinister. It showed a clear-eyed, wholesome-looking young man with a strong build and a good, outdoor tan.
Mrs. Zucchio went to get them coffee and Italian cookies. Benedetti pronounced them “Delizioso!” and smacked his lips, making Mrs. Zucchio his slave.
“Now, dear lady,” he said, “tell me about Terry Wilbur.”
Ron had found that the most frustrating words a private detective can hear are “I already told the police.” There was no danger of that from Rosa Zucchio. Not only did she cheerfully answer for the professor the same questions the police had asked, but she cheerfully gave word-for-word identical answers.
Terry Wilbur had been boarding with her almost nine years, since he was eighteen. He had no living relatives, poor thing. He worked for Sparta Lawn and Garden, had been there eleven years, started right after he left school. Everybody liked him, nobody hated him. He was friendly, quiet, popular, bright.
Girls? He had girl friends, nice girls. Never tried to keep them past eleven o’clock. “I don’t allow opposite sexes to stay past then,” she explained. “He had to see a girl, he went out.”
Had she met Leslie Bickell?
“The girl who died? I met her once, but I wasn’t too crazy about her if you want to know. Ooh, such a stuck-up! Like she went with Terry to do him a favor, you know? What’s the matter, Professor?” she asked, suddenly concerned.
Ron saw with a degree of amusement, Benedetti was scowling a fearsome scowl. He hadn’t read the police reports to hear Mrs. Zucchio recite her lines from them, he wanted to compare old answers with new and mine the differences for significance.
That wouldn’t work with Mrs. Zucchio. She had a phonographic memory for the sound of her own voice. Benedetti would have to frame some questions the police hadn’t asked. Ron waited for the mastermind to go to work.
“Was Wilbur a good gardener?” Benedetti asked. That’s how one knows he’s a mastermind, Ron thought. He can get away with a question like that.
Mrs. Zucchio answered, “I heard he was very good.”
“He has lived here nine years, correct? Has he ever, done any gardening for you?”
“He repotted my hydrangea ...”
“Heh, heh, heh,” the professor laughed benignly. “No, dear lady, I meant on the outside of the house.”
“Ooh, no, how could he? He’s busy working for the company from early early spring until way in the middle of the fall, and before and after that the ground around here is like a rock!”
“What did he do, then, to pass the winter?”
“Well, last year, he worked as a busboy in a restaurant downtown.”
“And this year?”
“He wasn’t working anywhere this winter. He said he had a project for this winter.”
And that, Ron thought, is how he proves he’s a mastermind. God alone knew what Benedetti had in mind when he started the line of questioning, but look what he had found.
“What was this project, Mrs. Zucchio?”
“I don’t know, he wouldn’t tell me. He said he might when he was finished.”
“When did he tell you this?”
She scratched her head. “Oh, October, November. When I asked him what he was doing with that big package of books.”
TEN
ALL THE WAY TO the hospital (the next stop on the agenda) the professor had been talking to himself in low, rumbling Italian that was too fast for Ron to understand. In his experience, though, it always meant trouble.
In the elevator on the way up, the old man exploded. “It is wrong!”
Janet jumped. Ron said simply, “Yes, Maestro.”
“Wilbur’s disappearance, I can understand, but the books, the destruction of the books—I don’t like it, Ronald.”
“Yes, Maestro.”
“Yes,” the old man echoed. He rubbed his chin. “This may be a sign of an evil deeper than I had anticipated. Well, if it is, I welcome it! I will see its face! I am not a detective, I am a philosopher. There is always more to learn.” He tossed his head decisively.
Now that the crisis was past (for now, at least), Ron felt safe in saying something beside “Yes, Maestro.”
“Who do we see first, Maestro, Elleger, or Vasquez?”
“Vasquez?” Janet asked.
“Leslie Bickell’s heroin probably came from him,” Ron told her. “Terry Wilbur went to school with him.”
The professor chose to see the girl first. The uniformed policeman guarding the two rooms checked their credentials and let them in.
Despite being swathed in bandages and casts, Barbara Elleger was starting to feel better—it was obvious by her crankiness and irritability. When Ron, Janet, and the professor entered, the girl was complaining to a middle-aged couple, who reminded Ron of Grant Wood’s “American Gothic,” about her hospital-enforced ten o’clock lights out.
“How can I go to sleep? How can I get tired just laying here?”
Her parents sympathized, but said it was the policy for the whole hospital, beyond their poor power to change. Their daughter appeared to hold it against them.
When she found out who her visitors were, she said, “Look. Can you get that reporter Buell Tatham to come here? I want to thank him, but the big brains around here won’t let me have a phone, let alone call anybody.”
They told her they’d pass the message along.
“Good,” she said, “now what do you want?”
At this point, Mr. Elleger, who had been silent, jumped to his feet and confronted the professor. “Now listen,” he said without preamble, “I don’t mind you asking Barbara about the accident itself, but I won’t allow any questions about this ... this Muntz boy, or diaphragms, or anything like that! Do you hear?”
Barbara Elleger’s freedom of movement was limited, but she managed a grand gesture with just her eyes, rolling them upward in disgust and saying, “Oh, Daddy.”
Ron could tell from the professor’s tight smile that he was making allowances. Calmly, he said, “I hear you, Mr. Elleger, please, there is no need to shout in the hospital. But may I ask the reason for your position?”
Elleger was flustered. “I—I won’t have Barbara exposed to such things.”
“Indeed,” the professor said. “It would seem from her statement to the police that she has already been quite thoroughly exposed to—”
Elleger swung at him. The professor seemed to pull his head into his overcoat
, like a turtle, so the blow missed. Elleger was undiscouraged, and was going to try again, but Ron grabbed him by the inside of his elbow, firm but not brutal, pulled him off balance and led him to a chair.
“What’s the matter with you?” Ron asked him. “You’re twice as old as I am, and he’s twice as old as you are. That would make for a pretty strange fight.”
“I am not four times as old as you are, Ronald,” Benedetti said. “I am still less than one hundred years old, I assure you.”
Mrs. Elleger took the opportunity to assert herself.
She mopped her husband’s balding pate and said, “I think we’d better leave now, Russell.” She kissed her daughter on the small available patch of forehead, smiled at the three investigators, and said, “So nice to have met you.”
When they were gone, Barbara said, “Honestly,” in the manner of someone who bears a great burden. “Well, what do you want to know?”
The interview turned out not to be worth the trouble it took to get it. It consisted almost exclusively of “I already told the police” followed by negatives.
No, she had no enemies. No, she had never been aware or suspicious that anyone was watching her. No, she never told anyone but her two deceased girl friends about the diaphragm. No, she had never heard of or met Stanley Watson, Leslie Bickell, Terry Wilbur, Davy Reade, or any other of the hundreds of names turned up during the investigation of the case.
Of the crash itself, she remembered nothing but the impact, and being helped from the car.
“Anything else?” she asked, peevishly.
The professor waved his no. “Ronald?”
“Yeah, I have a couple of questions.”
Barbara Elleger sighed.
“Carol Salinski was of Polish descent, right?”
“That’s all? Yes, she was. Half. Her mother is French.”
“And Beth Ling was Chinese.”
“Good guess.” She was very sarcastic.
“Poland,” Ron said. “China.” He stood up. “That’s all, thanks.”
“Good,” the patient said. “Maybe I can get a little rest.”
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