“What was it, some land in Florida turned out to be swamp?”
“Something like that. Smith disappeared with the money and was never seen or heard of again. In all there must’ve been over two or three million bucks.”
I whistled. “What happened?”
“The Mounties followed the paper trail for a while, then they lost it. Smith never surfaced again.”
Except as Schiller, I thought. He probably split his time between Florida and the Cayman Islands, traveling on a phony Canadian passport but not staying in Canada for long. Too risky. “Do we recognize any of the victims’ names?” I asked Mike.
I could almost hear him grinning over the phone. “I thought you’d never ask. As a matter of fact we do: a Mr. Edward Brennan.”
* * *
Karen was sitting at a stool at the bar sipping something colorful and cluttered through a candy-striped straw. She was wearing a green silk off-the-shoulder number, one I had seen in her closet, with her legs crossed. I caught an eyeful of slim, tanned thigh as I walked toward her. She smiled and said hello. Her shiny blond hair fell over her shoulder on one side, and she had tucked the other side behind her ear, fixing it there with a pink flower that matched her lipstick. Nice touch.
I must admit I’d been relieved to find out it was Ed who had the connection with Smith, not Karen. It didn’t mean he was the killer, of course, but it sure gave him one hell of a motive. I still had a lot of questions for Karen, though, and I wasn’t sure how, or if, I could mix business and pleasure.
I ordered a bourbon on the rocks and we walked through to the table. It was a tacky-looking kind of restaurant, with nets hanging from the ceilings and old barrels converted into chairs, but the food was always superb.
Karen examined the menu, then she said, “I’d like to start with some oysters. How about you?”
“Fine by me.” Oysters! For an ice queen? Maybe Al French had an agenda of his own? So we ordered a dozen oysters and a bottle of Californian champagne, followed by swordfish steak for me and coquilles Saint-Jacques for Karen. She avoided my eyes as the waiter lit candles on the table.
We chatted about this and that. Karen seemed nervous, on edge, attention all over the place, so much so that she seemed skittish. But just when I thought I’d lost her, she’d look me in the eye and come back with the kind of remark that showed she was there all the time, maybe even a step or two ahead.
“Did you know Bud, Ed, or Ginny back home?” I asked when the subject came around to last night’s wake.
She shook her head. “One rule about a world you escape to is that neither it nor any of its inhabitants can exist in the world you regularly live in.” She fingered the napkin ring on the table as she spoke, shadows flitting in the depths of her eyes.
“I can understand that,” I said, thinking it sounded like something out of a computer-game manual. The oysters arrived and we helped ourselves. “I suppose it’s an escape for me, too.”
“Is it? In what way?”
“I used to come down here with my wife.”
Karen frowned. “Then it’s not an escape you’re after,” she said. “It’s catharsis.”
“Maybe you’re right. If so, it hasn’t happened yet.”
She put her hand lightly on mine. “Give it time, Jack. Give it time.”
We finished the oysters, and the main courses arrived. I tried to find a way to steer the conversation back to Bud Schiller. As usual, I couldn’t find a subtle way, so halfway through my swordfish, during a temporary lull, I said, “Remember when you told me the three of you went to your room and Bud stayed out by the pool?”
She nodded. “And you thought he might be meeting someone?”
“That’s right. Did any of the others leave your room at any time?”
“Not until later.” She blushed. “Ed must have passed out there. I found him on the couch in the morning.”
“Did Ed ever mention knowing Bud from before?”
Karen looked down at her plate and speared a scallop. “No.” Then she looked back at me and her eyes widened. “What are you suggesting? That Ed murdered Bud? You can’t be serious?”
“I don’t know, Karen. I’m just curious, that’s all.”
“But why? Why are you interested? Are you a cop?”
“I’m a private investigator,” I told her, “but I’m not licensed to operate down here.” I shrugged. “It just seemed suspicious to me, that’s all.”
I paused for a moment, then I jumped right in and told her about Schiller’s true identity and the land scam, in which one Edward Brennan lost his life’s savings. When I finished, Karen was pale. She excused herself to visit the washroom.
When she came back, she looked a lot better. She didn’t wear much makeup, but she had given herself a fresh coat of the basics and looked good as new.
“I’m sorry for overreacting,” she said. “Honestly, I’d never really considered that Bud’s death could have been deliberate. I suppose I was too busy blaming myself. But Ed . . . ?”
“I can’t be sure,” I said. “But it doesn’t look good. Are you certain he never left your condo?”
“He went over to his own unit to pick up some Scotch. I’d run out. But he wasn’t gone for more than ten minutes.”
“Ten minutes was enough.”
“What are you going to do?”
“Tell the authorities, I suppose.”
She nodded slowly. “That would be the right thing to do, of course. But poor Ed. I don’t like the thought of him spending the rest of his life in jail. Can’t you just . . . you know . . . let it go?”
“However much of an asshole Bud Schiller was, he didn’t deserve to die like that.”
“You’re right,” she whispered. “I’d like to go home.”
As I followed Karen’s Honda back to Whispering Palms, I was beginning to think that I’d blown my chances of a pleasant end to the evening. But she invited me up for a nightcap.
Once we were inside, she busied herself preparing the drinks, flitting nervously between fridge and cocktail cabinet, chattering brightly away. Ever since we got back, I’d sensed a certain tension between us and I thought it was sexual. When she walked past me to open the sliding glass door to the lanai, I put my hand out and touched her shoulder. She turned, gave me a swift peck on the cheek, and said she had to go to the bathroom.
I gazed out at the dark island beyond the lanai, the Christmas lights on the bridge, drink in hand, waiting for her. What did the peck on the cheek mean? Was it promise or consolation? You’re an old fool, Jack Erwin, I told myself. You should stick to your bourbon and blues.
Then I heard a door open behind me. Thinking it was Karen coming back, I turned around.
Ed Brennan stood there, a baseball bat in his hands.
Before I had time to react, the front door opened and Ginny Fraser walked in carrying a long kitchen knife.
Karen came out of the bathroom. She wasn’t carrying any weapon and she looked as if she had been crying. “Oh, Jack,” she said, shaking her head. “I’m so sorry.”
“What are you going to do?” I asked, trying to sound more confident than I felt. “Hit me on the head with the baseball bat then stab me and pretend it was an accident? Just to protect Ed here? Come on, Karen, he’s not worth it.”
“You don’t understand,” Karen said. “You think you know everything but you don’t. You don’t know anything.”
My breath caught in my throat. “What the hell are you talking about?”
Then a strange thing happened. I saw Karen flash a quick, sad glance at Ed, and he just seemed to deflate right before my eyes. His baseball bat dropped to the floor. “He’s right, Karen,” he said. “We can’t do this. We’re not killers.”
I looked at Ginny Fraser. She dropped the kitchen knife and flopped onto the sofa.
After I got my breath back, I turned to Karen and said, “Right, now we’ve got that charade out of the way, will someone tell me what’s going on here?”
* * *
“I’m sorry,” Ed said for the third time. “I don’t know what came over us. We were desperate. I still can’t imagine what made us think we could kill an innocent man. When Karen phoned from the restaurant and told us you knew . . . we just panicked.”
“I’m sorry I deceived you,” Karen said. “I admit I was trying to find out if you knew anything. After I saw you and the woman from the office looking at the pool yesterday, I thought you might be trouble. So I arranged the puncture.”
Well, that makes two of us acting from impure motives, I thought. “So you’re all sorry,” I said. “Whoop-a-de-doo-dah. Now would someone tell me why I shouldn’t call the police right now?”
“We can’t stop you,” Ed said. “We won’t stop you. In a way, it would be a relief.”
I poured three fingers of Karen’s bourbon into my glass and settled down on the sofa beside Ginny. Karen and Ed sat opposite in matching easy chairs. “Just tell me what it’s all about,” I said. “Who really did kill Schiller?”
“We all did,” Ed answered.
I looked at Karen and Ginny, who both nodded.
Jesus Christ, I thought, it’s Murder on the Orient Express all over again.
“Ginny and I pushed him into the pool,” Ed went on. “He thought we were playing games. Karen plugged in the piano, and we all lowered it in after him. After that all we had to do was lie to the police and tell them he was still alive when we left him.”
“What I really don’t understand,” I went on, “is why. I know Smith cheated Ed out of his life’s savings, but what did he ever do to you, Karen?”
“My father,” she said flatly. “Vernon Connant. You’ll find his name on your list. Lee’s my married name. Smith swindled him out of every penny we had. When the news broke he killed my mother, then himself. With a shotgun. I was five at the time. Just before he put the gun in his mouth and pulled the trigger, he looked at me. He was going to kill me, too, but at the last moment, he couldn’t do it. I’ll never forget that look. I’ve spent my whole life trying, one shrink to another, pills, the lot. You can’t tell me that Sherman Smith didn’t deserve to die.”
I took a long sip of bourbon and let the fire fill my mouth before swallowing. “What about you, Ginny? You weren’t on the list either.”
“My husband. Harvey Pellier. I went back to my maiden name.”
“What happened?”
Ginny gave a harsh laugh. “Nothing quite so dramatic as Karen’s story. Harvey lost everything, and it broke his spirit. He left us. Just walked out and never came back. We hadn’t been really well-off, but we’d been happy. When Harvey left, the family just fell apart. I couldn’t hold it together. The kids did badly at school, started hanging with a bad crowd. You know the sort of thing. They drifted into drugs, street life. Will died of an overdose. Jane’s still somewhere out on the streets. I haven’t heard from her in years.”
After a few moments of silence, Ed ran his hands through his hair and said he wouldn’t mind a drink. Karen got him a Scotch on the rocks. Then he began. “I bumped into Smith about four years ago. Pure chance. Coincidence. I just couldn’t believe it. I suppose, when you think about it, you never know who’s going to be renting from who. Anyway, I saw him, after over fifteen years, and do you know what?”
I shook my head.
“He didn’t recognize me. I mean, you ought to recognize people whose lives you ruined, don’t you think? Because of him I had a nervous breakdown, I got hooked on the booze, lost job after job. You name it.” He thumped his chest with his fist. “Then, when I began to relive what he’d done to me, I realized the anger was still there. Only now I had the advantage. But I couldn’t kill him. Not alone.” He glanced at Karen and Ginny. “When it first happened—I mean twenty years ago—lots of us had meetings with lawyers, and I became close to Karen’s father and Ginny’s husband. But Smith had never seen Karen or Ginny. So I got in touch with them, told them the situation, and we planned what to do. We befriended him, one by one, pretended we didn’t know each other, then we killed him.”
Ed fell silent and the others looked at me. It was hard to imagine the havoc Sherman Smith had wreaked on these lives, hard not to sympathize with the three of them, but who was I to judge?
“It’s up to you now, Jack,” Karen said, seeming to sense my dilemma. “You know the whole story now. We’re guilty of premeditated murder.” She glanced at Ed. “If you want my honest opinion, I don’t think it’s helped any of us. I don’t think it’s going to make our lives any easier to bear—probably the opposite—but it’s done and you’re the only one who knows about it. We can’t kill you, but we’re not going to give ourselves up willingly either. It’s your decision.”
So whether I liked it or not, it was up to me. I finished my bourbon, then I nodded and went back to my condo.
* * *
Almost exactly one year to the day later, I found myself in Chloe’s for “Happy Hour.” There were one or two faces I recognized around the bar, but most of the people were strangers. I still didn’t know why I kept coming back year after year. Especially this year. Maybe Karen had been right and I was looking for catharsis.
Or for Karen.
I looked across the bar at where I had first really noticed her last year, running her finger around the rim of a glass. Now a chain-smoking brunette with a hard face sat there instead.
“Hi, shamus.”
Al French slipped onto the empty stool beside me.
“Beer?” I offered.
“My turn.” Al ordered two beers. “Did you ever get to the bottom of that mysterious death?” he asked.
“Which one was that?”
“You know. Last year. That asshole Bud Schiller.”
“Oh, him.” I shook my head. “I don’t think there was anything mysterious about it at all. I think he was drunk, he tripped, and he fell into the pool.”
“Yeah, and he pulled the piano in after him just for good measure. Come on, Jack.”
I shrugged. “You know, Al, sometimes the strangest of accidents do happen. Did I ever tell you about the guy they found dead on the subway tracks and couldn’t find his head?”
The Wrong Hands
“Is everything in order?” the old man asked, his scrawny fingers clutching the comforter like talons.
“Seems to be,” said Mitch.
Drawing up the will had been a simple enough task. Mr. Garibaldi and his wife had the dubious distinction of outliving both their children, and there wasn’t much to leave.
“Would you like to sign it now?” he asked, holding out his Montblanc.
The old man clutched the pen the way a child holds a crayon and scribbled his illegible signature on the documents.
“There . . . that’s done,” said Mitch. He placed the papers in his briefcase.
Mr. Garibaldi nodded. The movement brought on a spasm and such a coughing fit that Mitch thought the old man was going to die right there and then.
But he recovered. “Will you do me a favor?” he croaked when he’d got his breath back.
Mitch frowned. “If I can.”
With one bent, shriveled finger, Mr. Garibaldi pointed to the floor under the window. “Pull the carpet back,” he said.
Mitch stood up and looked.
“Please,” said Mr. Garibaldi. “The carpet.”
Mitch walked over to the window and rolled back the carpet. Underneath was nothing but floorboards.
“One of the boards is loose,” said the old man. “The one directly in line with the wall socket. Lift it up.”
Mitch felt and, sure enough, part of the floorboard was loose. He lifted it easily with his fingernails. Underneath, wedged between the joists, lay a package wrapped in old newspaper.
“That’s it,” said the old man. “Take it out.”
Mitch did. It was heavier than he had expected.
“Now put the board back and replace the carpet.”
After he had done as he was asked, Mitch carried the p
ackage over to the bed.
“Open it,” said Mr. Garibaldi. “Go on, it won’t bite you.”
Slowly, Mitch unwrapped the newspaper. It was from December 18 1947, he noticed, and the headline reported a blizzard dumping twenty-eight inches of snow on New York City the day before. Inside, he found a layer of oilcloth. When he had folded back that, too, a gun gleamed up at him. It was old, he could tell that, but it looked in superb condition. He hefted it into his hand, felt its weight and balance, pointed it toward the wall as if to shoot.
“Be careful,” said the old man. “It’s loaded.”
Mitch looked at the gun again, then put it back on the oilcloth. His fingers were smudged with oil or grease, so he took a tissue from the bedside table and wiped them off as best he could.
“What the hell are you doing with a loaded gun?” he asked.
Mr. Garibaldi sighed. “It’s a Luger,” he said. “First World War, probably. Old, anyway. A friend gave it to me many years ago. A German friend. I’ve kept it ever since. Partly as a memento of him and partly for protection. You know what this city’s been getting like these past few years. I’ve maintained it, cleaned it, kept it loaded. Now I’m gonna die I want to hand it in. I don’t want it to fall into the wrong hands.”
Mitch set the Luger down on the bed. “Why tell me?” he asked.
“Because it’s unregistered and I’d like you to hand it over for me.” He shook his head and coughed again. “I haven’t got long left. I don’t want no cops coming ’round here and giving me a hard time.”
“They won’t give you a hard time.” More like give you a medal for handing over an unregistered firearm, Mitch thought.
“Maybe not. But . . .” Mr. Garibaldi grabbed Mitch’s wrist with his talon. The fingers felt cold and dry, like a reptile’s skin. Mitch tried to pull back a little, but the old man held on, pulled him closer, and croaked, “Sophie doesn’t know. It would make her real angry to know we had a gun in the house the last fifty years and I kept it from her. I don’t want to end my days with my wife mad at me. Please, Mr. Mitchell. It’s a small favor I ask.”
Mitch scratched the side of his eye. True enough, he thought, it was a small favor. And it might prove a profitable one, too. Old firearms were worth something to collectors, and Mitch knew a cop who had connections. All he had to say was that he had been entrusted this gun by a client, who had brought it to his office, that he had put it in the safe and called the police immediately. What could be wrong with that?
Not Safe After Dark: And Other Stories Page 23