Crossings (A Harry Reese Mystery Book 2)

by Robert Bruce Stewart

  Eventually, we came upon the farmstead we’d been told belonged to a fellow named Warner. We saw a man moving about the barn and Emmie went off to make inquiries. After what looked like an animated conversation, she came back.

  “What did he say, Emmie?”

  “Well, he first asked me if I was the lady who wanted to kill his son. I assured him I had no such intention, and he asked if I might change my mind. He offered to supply me with a shotgun and said there was little chance I’d get caught as neither he nor his daughter-in-law would have any objection.”

  “A little rural humor, I imagine. So they are here then?”

  “Oh, yes. He said to just go up to the house.”

  Mrs. Warner greeted us at the kitchen door. She was a young woman, of medium height, with a very round face. We introduced ourselves and told her why we had come.

  “Oh, I know about the danger. A man came by last week. He told me we’d better leave New York, as several people had already been killed. Seems the thing had gotten a little out of hand.”

  “What thing is that?” I asked.

  “Well, this insurance thing, of course. Isn’t that why you’re here?”

  “Yes, but we weren’t sure how exactly you were involved.”

  “I don’t want to be confessing to anything.”

  “Mrs. Warner,” Emmie said, “I assure you, we will not betray your trust.”

  “Well, I’m not sure I did anything wrong, anyway.”

  “I’m sure not,” Emmie said. “No doubt you were merely coerced into joining the scheme.”

  “You talk just like her!”

  “Just like who?” I asked.

  “The lady who came with the plan.”

  “What was the plan?” I asked.

  “Well, first I should tell you how it all started. Why don’t you sit down.” She poured us some coffee and offered us doughnuts. “You see, a friend of mine took me to one of these poolrooms. Only you don’t play pool, you bet on horse races. And I won, twenty-two dollars. So of course I went back the next day. I lost my twenty-two dollars and then some, with three races still to go. And the man there said, ‘If it’s just a temporary shortage, we may be able to advance you some money.’ And I said, ‘Well, as it happens, my husband died just yesterday and I’m due to get $5,000 insurance any day now.’ He said that was all fine then and he let me play on credit. I kept going back, and some days I won and some days I lost, but mostly I lost. At the end of a week, I owed him almost four hundred dollars. It didn’t seem real. I mean, where would I ever get four hundred dollars?”

  “Where indeed?” I said.

  “Then the man became rather angry and said I had better come up with the money. I told him I didn’t have it, that my husband was still alive. And he said, ‘Then maybe you should kill him.’ But, of course, there was no insurance policy for five thousand dollars. So killing him then would have just been a waste of time.”

  Emmie and I exchanged glances.

  “Yes, what would be the point?” Emmie said.

  “Well, a week or so later a man came by and made some threats about it, but you can’t get blood from a turnip. Then one day this young fellow comes, I forget his name. He was much more pleasant. I told him all about how I got into the mess, and he was very understanding. He said that if I paid just part of the money I still owed, I think he said two hundred dollars, he would forget the rest. This seemed fair, but I still didn’t have it. Then he put me on a payment plan. Each week he came by and I’d give him a dollar or so from the house money. And then the lady came by.”

  “What was her name?” I asked.

  “She never said. But she talked just like your missus. Only, not as friendly. She had a way of making you feel ignorant. Do you know what I mean?”

  “I know exactly what you mean,” I said. “What did she look like?”

  “Oh, she was very nice looking, tall, and blonde, I think. But she had this cold look.”

  “What did she propose?”

  “Well, she said she had taken over my debt and now I needed to pay her. I told her I couldn’t, but she insisted we could find a way. First she asked me how much my husband made each week, and if my family had money. She seemed to realize I had no money to give her. Oh, here’s Dickie.”

  A husky sort of young fellow had entered the room. She introduced us to her husband and he sat down with us and ate a plate of doughnuts.

  “I was just telling them, dear, about the lady who came by. Well, since I had no money, she said there is always life insurance. I said we had no life insurance. She said that would be no problem, but the question was, would I be willing to do in my husband. I said I suppose I might be. And she said we could always make the insurance policy for a little more than I owed, then I’d have some money to set up for myself. Well, that seemed a nice idea.” She turned to her husband. “More doughnuts, dear?”

  “No, I need to get back to the workshop.” Mr. Warner excused himself and went back out of the house.

  “He’s a tinkerer. He’s trying to make a machine that will milk cows. He sees himself as a sort of Thomas Edison. Now where was I?”

  “The lady generously suggested you might benefit from your husband’s life insurance,” I said.

  “Yes, that’s right. A week or so later, a man stopped by with some papers. An application form, I think. He said a doctor would need to come by, and we needed to pick an evening when my husband wasn’t at home, and he would take Dickie’s place. I thought this was becoming kind of exciting, like in a book. Well, the next week, this man came back, in the evening. And then the doctor came. He examined the man who was pretending to be my husband and said he was very healthy, and then he signed some forms and left. Then the other man left.”

  I took out the photograph of Huber and showed it to her. “Was that the man?”

  She got up and went into another room and came back holding a pair of eyeglasses. She put these on and studied the photograph. “Yes, it very well may have been.”

  “Were you wearing your eyeglasses when he came by?” I asked.

  “No, no. I only wear them if I have to read something. He filled out the form, asked me some questions, and then had me sign my husband’s name for him.”

  “So you might not be altogether sure what any of these people looked like?” I asked.

  “No, not exactly. But I’d recognize the voice of the lady, I think.”

  “Please go on. The doctor and the man posing as your husband had left.”

  “Well, a couple weeks later, that lady came back. She said, ‘You need to take care of your husband soon.’ And she gave me a tin of rat poison. I said, ‘How am I to get him to eat rat poison?’ And she explained how I could put it in his dinner each day. Well, how could I be sure I wouldn’t eat some? So I didn’t do that. She came by again, maybe just a week ago now. I think it might have been the Saturday before we left. She was even more unfriendly. When I told her I wasn’t sure about the rat poison, she became very angry and said it didn’t matter how I did it, but if I didn’t do it soon, it would be done for me. Well, up until then, I had tried to be agreeable. But now she went too far.”

  Her husband returned and began looking in a cupboard. “Have you seen that funnel, dear?”

  “On the shelf above,” she answered. “Well, I mean, if someone is going to kill my husband, I think it should be me. Don’t you agree?”

  “I do indeed,” Emmie said. “I made the same argument myself just a week ago.”

  “You did?” Mrs. Warner seemed surprised. And her husband gave me a look of utter amazement.

  “You mean there’re two of them?” he asked. “Good God.”

  “How did you leave things with this lady?” I asked his wife.

  “Well, she said she would leave it to me, but to do it soon. I decided then I had made a mistake. I mean, going along with this insurance thing. I wasn’t sure what to do. I didn’t think I could go to the police, and I didn’t want to have to explain it to Dick
ie. I wasn’t sure he would understand. But then that gentleman came by last Tuesday. He said that Dickie and me were in danger and that the best thing would be for us to leave town, and not tell anyone where we were going. So I sent a note to Dickie, saying I was sick, just to get him home. And we left for here.”

  She then gave us the address of the poolroom and vague descriptions of all her visitors. Afterwards, her husband motioned me outside.

  “You know everything she says is nonsense?” he asked.

  “Even the descriptions?”

  “No, they’re probably mostly real. But all the talk of killing me—she just didn’t realize the other people were serious. She’s always saying things like that.”

  As confused as Emmie’s doings made me, I had to admit Richard Warner had it worse. We went back inside, where old Mr. Warner had joined our wives.

  “I could make it look as if he was killed by his own machine,” the old man was saying.

  “All right, dear,” his daughter-in-law agreed.

  Mrs. Warner started to stand up, but sat down quickly and looked a little ill.

  “Are you all right, dear?” her husband asked.

  “I don’t know. Lately I’ve been feeling a little odd.”

  “I know what it is,” the old man said. “She’s having my baby.”

  “I think he might be right, dear,” she told her husband.

  “Are you sure?” he asked.

  “No, not certain,” she said.

  “It’s mine,” the old man said.

  “How will we know that until we see it?” Mrs. Warner asked him.

  The old man thought on that for a bit and then observed, “There’d be nothing odd in him looking like his brother there.”

  “Assuming Dickie is yours,” Mrs. Warner retorted.

  He thought about that for a while. “Well, the next one will be mine.”

  “Yes, dear,” his daughter-in-law agreed. Then she leaned over toward Emmie. “He’s a little daft.”

  Before we left the farm, I made sure they realized they really were in some danger, given that Mrs. Warner could identify all these people. Or at least, they would believe she could. Then we went out and woke the driver and set off for Fulton. There wasn’t much to do between dinner and our 9:30 train, so we took a stroll about Fulton.

  “What an odd family, Harry.”

  “Yes, it makes you wonder just what sort of child they’ll have.”

  “I’d been thinking, we should have come with more photographs,” Emmie said. “But I don’t suppose it would have been much use.”

  “No, I noticed she had to feel about for things, like the cups when she poured the coffee. I don’t think she sees well at all. But her descriptions might still be helpful. The mysterious lady seemed reminiscent of someone near and dear.”

  “Elizabeth? I suppose it did sound rather like her. But I still don’t think she’d have anything to do with murder. And how did this lady, whoever she is, become the debt collector for the poolrooms?”

  “Assuming Mrs. Warner’s account is creditable, there seems to have been a series of different collectors. First, the threatening thug, probably in the employ of the poolroom operator. Then the fellow who offered to let her off for part of what she owed. And finally, the lofty lady. That second fellow may provide the answer. He sounds like a traditional debt collector, the kind who buys debts at a discount.”

  “So the poolroom operator, realizing his thug wasn’t up to the task, sells the debt to the second gentleman. And then he hires the lofty lady?”

  “I imagine it’s something like that. It would help to know the bookkeeping arrangements of a poolroom.”

  “The poolroom she mentioned was one of the ones Elizabeth took me to.”

  “Well, that could be useful.”

  “Elizabeth said it was owned by Minden.”

  I wanted to take the train as far as Syracuse and spend another night in a hotel. But Emmie insisted she have her way this time, and we booked a sleeper through to New York. Just as I predicted, we arrived at half past seven in need of a good night’s sleep.

  15

  After we brought our things home, I told Emmie I’d need to go see Ratigan.

  “Are you going to tell him about the Warners?”

  “Of course, at least that we found them.”

  “But don’t tell the police where they are, Harry. You wouldn’t want her husband’s brother to be born in Sing Sing, would you?”

  “No, no. Who’d want to break up that happy home?”

  I crossed the river and told Ratigan about Mrs. Warner and her account of her various visitors.

  “Have you ever heard of gambling debts being taken on by debt brokers?” I asked.

  “No, but lots of things go on in this town I find hard to believe.”

  “Anything new on Anna Farrell?”

  “No, she hasn’t been near her old place. I’d say she either left town or has fallen through the cracks.”

  “What do you mean by fallen through the cracks?”

  “There’s a lot of people down on their luck, barely getting by. They can’t even get in the dives any more. They’ve pawned everything they can. They just kind of disappear, until they’re found dead somewhere.”

  “Have you learned anything else about Osborne?”

  “Nothing notable. But we might learn more when we can talk to people at Sovereign.”

  I walked down to the Bureau and called Tibbitts. He agreed to meet me for lunch at the place on Thames. Keegan came in a while later and I told him about our weekend excursion.

  “It doesn’t sound as if that solves anything,” he said.

  “It confirms what we already suspected: the scheme was to enable wives to pay their gambling debts by insuring their husbands, and then knocking them over. But we still don’t know who all was involved. When do you think we can get into Sovereign’s offices again?”

  “Soon. There’s someone who wants to meet with you. Perhaps this evening. He’s out in Brooklyn, too.”

  “Does he have a name?”

  “Mr. X for now. He may be taking charge of Sovereign—at least that’s what he’s trying to do. I’ll see if I can set something up. Check in with me before you go home this evening.”

  Then I went off to Thames Street. Tibbitts was late, which only increased my displeasure with him.

  “What was all that about last Thursday?”

  “I thought you saw through that,” he smiled. “To tell you the truth, I don’t know myself. The old fellow that bartender described, someone you know?”

  “Yes, someone who was out at Aqueduct on that afternoon.”

  “Yeah?”

  “I saw him there myself.”

  “I never get to go to the races.”

  “But who put you up to it?”

  “What’s it matter?”

  “I’d like to know what I’m up against.”

  “Is that why you wanted to meet?”

  “Yes. If I’m going to be led around by the nose, I’d like to know who’s doing the leading.”

  “I’m not sure that it had to do with you, more likely the other party. Let’s leave it at that. Are you still trying to get to the bottom of the Sovereign case?”

  “Yes.”

  “They aren’t.”

  “How do you know?”

  “Same way I knew about it in the first place. Are you going to be able to clean it up?”

  “Does it matter to you?”

  “Sure, I need to know when to cover my shorts,” he smiled.

  “You’ve shorted their shares?”

  “Sure. Haven’t you?”

  “No, maybe I ought to.”

  “Probably too late. The question now is when to cover the shorts. How’s the lady Custis working out?”

  “She’s moved in.”

  “You’re kidding,” he stopped. “That was fast.”

  I smiled. “It turns out she went to school with my wife, and she insisted.”

/>   “She been any help?”

  “Well, some, I guess. What made you bring her into this? Was that your idea or someone else’s?”

  “That was all mine. To be honest, I just wanted her to keep an eye on you. She didn’t have anything better to do, and she owed me a favor. But since then I haven’t heard from her.”

  “Didn’t have the hold on her you thought you had?”

  “Oh, I would have found her quickly enough.”

  We split up and I took a long walk back to the Bureau. On the way, an amusing notion occurred to me. I walked over to Ratigan’s office and interrupted his lunch.

  “I just had a thought,” I began. “Suppose, just hypothetically, you heard about a scandal at some large company that they were trying to keep a secret. And you had some control over what would be revealed, and when. Could you make a very large sum shorting the stock without exposing yourself?”

  “You could have, but I’d say you’re too late now.”

  “No, seriously.”

  “I am serious. Hadn’t you shorted it already?”

  “No, had you?” I asked.

  “Just a little,” he smiled. “But I already covered.”

  “Well, let’s get back to the hypothetical. Suppose that the man in question isn’t a foolish insurance investigator, but a shrewd financier. How much could he expect to make?”

  “That would depend on the company and the nature of the scandal. With a company the size of Sovereign, in an industry where integrity is so important, I’d say a lot. There’s no question a lot of money has already been made.”

  “And it would be even more profitable if you could string it out?” I asked.

  “Sure, the longer the questions go unanswered, the lower the price will go.”

  “Well, I had a thought on the way over here,” I said. “More money has been made shorting Sovereign’s shares because of this scheme than the scheme itself could have made.”

  “I suppose that’s true. And if the fellows who are short are really clever, they’ll go long just as it all comes out in the newspapers.”