All But a Pleasure

by Phyllis Ann Karr

  * * * *

  ching ching ching the telephone makes its noise ching ching ching but her human is not here ching ching ching he goes out ching ching ching the telephone makes its sound a long time ching ching ching caterina does not like it ching ching ching she leaps up on the desk ching ching ching she bats it with her paws the loose thing of it flies off it falls over the edge of the desk it hangs there by its cord the telephone in the bedroom stops making the noise too caterina nudges the rest of the telephone off the desk as she springs down many folded papers fall down too they are the ones he takes so much time with it is too bad about them falling down and scattering over the floor but what can caterina do pick them up in her mouth and jump back up onto the desk carrying them she likes to jump but to carry the papers up is work let the humans do it they are much better at it with their hands with the long wiggly things that are nice for stroking caterina when she likes being stroked she goes searching for mice there are no mice maybe a nice fat spider

  * * * *

  Angela counted seven sets of chimes. Then she thought she heard him lift the receiver, and she started to cry Hello—but there was a clinking and a thudding, and then just a busy signal…

  What had happened?

  Oh, Mother Mary, Mother Mary, Blessed Virgin Mother, let my next plane come soon, let me get there in time!

  CHAPTER 20

  Still Tuesday October 3

  They were headed out to pay Dupont and O’Toole another visit, this time in Lestrade’s blue Fairfield. When they reached Vadnais Estates, Lestrade told her partner, “I’m going to pull up and park when we get about ten meters past Imani’s place. I want another look at it.”

  “Want to figure out where they have their smastering den? I swear, I don’t see how it can be anywhere on the ground floor, not unless all their gear is hand-carried and hidden out of the way when not in use. Rolegaming pretty well fills up most of the ground-floor rooms Sundays, and the few it doesn’t, are left open for the guests anyway. So are the second-floor comfort stations. Seems to limit smastering to the third-floor or higher, and the basements. I’d bet on the basements.”

  “Yes,” Lestrade said dryly. “Anyone would think so, wouldn’t they? Listen to yourself, Detective! You met these floaters, you liked them just fine, you had an innocent good time with them, but one faint hint of smastering, and your whole attitude to them changes, presto! What happened to all this Christian sermonizing about ‘judge not or you’ll be judged yourself’?”

  “Hey, Old Woman, I never thought the whole Sunday crowd could be in on it. I just wondered where Sam and his cronies lead their double lives.”

  “Save ‘Old Woman’ for when I like you again, Detective. Look. You don’t like this kinky stuff, and maybe I don’t like it either, but as long as the floaters involved are doing it of their own free will and nobody is getting seriously hurt, the law says—maybe reluctantly, but it’s still on the books—to leave ’em alone. And the Old Woman says, If you stop socializing with everyone, Republicrat or Democritan, who does anything in the privacy of their own homes that you don’t happen to like or approve of, sonny, you’re going to live a lonely life.”

  “Sarge,” he said after a moment, “I’d sure as hell hate to get in the way of a genuine scorching from your tongue.”

  Must be her tone. Okay, let it be her tone, as long as it got her point halfway across. “Okay, Detective, stop worrying about it. I only scorch the floaters I like.”

  Imani’s estate was on the other side of the road. About a car length past the corner of Imani’s fence, Lestrade pulled the car over, parked it, got out and strolled back, making a careful survey of the area. Clayton followed her.

  “Looking for something, Sarge?”

  “A good place for a stake-out.”

  “What happened to live and let live?”

  “Not to stake out Imani’s place,” she growled. “To place one or two or our own to look for anybody else who might be staking out Imani’s place.”

  “You mean you think our murderer maybe zeroed in on Jackson and Soderstrum because he thought they were floaters he’d seen going into Imani’s?”

  “Or coming out.”

  “Sarge, that’s just… Sarge, that’s a really long shot.”

  “Maybe. Cheer up, Detective. If your personal prejudices are spot on here, we’ll have somebody right on hand either way. Let’s see. Rise of land over there across the road from Imani’s. Good. Stargazers. A couple of pollies in plain clothes, acting like stargazers. Let’s hope we get some clear nights, especially next Sunday. Use an unmarked car…yes. Now, who? Little Bird and…Vergucchi complaining about his rheumatism these days…maybe we can get Brown reassigned.”

  Having settled it in her mind, Lestrade turned for another look at what they could see from here of Imani’s Victorian. Not much visible through the trees, except that round tower. Were its top windows shuttered up? She thought about getting the binoculars from the car, decided against taking the time and maybe looking conspicuous.

  Something about the place…gave her an odd feeling. Not nasty, just…unsettling. Young Davison might have a word for it—some word known to him and maybe three or four other people in the world.

  All her fine talk about live and let live, and now she was reacting exactly like ninety-nine point nine percent of the population? Rosemary Lestrade, she scorched herself with a hard mental shake, you big hypocrite! Haven’t you learned anything from what your own Wiccan people have had to put up with from good, fundamentalist Christian citizens? With that, she rejoined her partner in the car and they drove on to Dupont and O’Toole’s.

  Today it was him they found home alone with Pango, the dog who had the size of a small pony and the psychomystique of a box turtle on tranquilizers. O’Toole explained that his wife Hilga a.k.a. Fleur was out looking for something with Rottweiler or maybe Timberwolf blood—maybe a pair of them—to punch up home security.

  “In that case, you’ll need a Beware of Dogs sign,” Lestrade observed. “City guiderule. Any reason to think this neighborhood is threatened more than any other place in Forest Green?”

  “No…not really. But isn’t that enough? Aren’t the whole city and all the surrounding farmlands threatened? Ask me, I’d say everybody around needs a good, fierce watchdog or two.”

  Clayton picked right up on it. “What, exactly, do you mean, M. O’Toole, by ‘not really’?”

  “Well…first thing we saw in this morning’s paper was the photo of this new victim. The photo asking, ‘Did you see this woman alive at any point before yesterday morning?’ And, well, Detectives…”

  “If you saw her anywhere, M. O’Toole,” Lestrade told him, “you’ve got a serious duty to report it. Finding the last person to see her alive—and leave her that way—helps us trace her movements.”

  “Yes. The thing is, we never saw her this last wraparound. How could we? Being up in Milwaukee for the IABA convention. So…we couldn’t figure out if this counted or if reporting it would only clutter up your desks… You’ve been in touch with her family, obviously. So why would you want to go earlier than the last time they saw her alive?”

  “To the point, M. O’Toole,” snapped Lestrade. “When and where did you see the late M. Gaia Soderstrum? Let us judge how relevant it is.”

  “Sunday before last. Her and that young floater in black—must’ve been her date—heading in for the rolegames at Sam Imani’s place. Hilly and me were out walking our dog. Didn’t know them from Adam and Eve—except that we’ve been seeing him Sundays all through the summer—but we said hello when they stopped to pet Pango. You know how it is.”

  Lestrade thought about asking O’Toole how many fancy words the young floater in black had taken to say hello, and decided it was beside the purpose. She also decided, and signaled Clayton with a raised-brow nod, not to explain that the young woman they had seen was just a look-al
ike of the actual victim. “Okay, M.,” she pronounced, “you’re off the hook. A week ago yesterday, at a place her family knew she was going, doesn’t help us much. We came to see you about something else, anyway.”

  “Something else, Detectives? There hasn’t been another…”

  “We’re always working on several cases at once, M. O’Toole. This one concerns possible copycat use of a tattoo stamp.”

  O’Toole visibly relaxed. “Afraid I can’t help you there, Detectives. We don’t make tattoo stamps, my wife and I. If we needed any boost to our income, we might. But we don’t. But isn’t copycatting a tattoo stamp more in the line of IABA than police work?”

  “A stamp marking members of a gang possibly involved in illicit activities looking a little too much like the group mark of a perfectly innocent club.” Lestrade had figured it out ahead of time. No use getting O’Toole and his wife suspicious of their near neighbors if there turned out to be no cause. Suspicions, once planted, died too hard.

  O’Toole was shaking his head. “Still can’t help you, Detectives. Like I said, my wife and I just don’t do stamps.”

  Clayton asked, “Not even for a friend? By special request?”

  O’Toole spread his hands. “Sorry. Not a question of business policy. As I think my wife may have mentioned on your earlier visit, we don’t even have the equipment for stamp-making. You can search our place if you like.”

  Lestrade and her partner exchanged quick glances. “Thanks, M. O’Toole,” she said, carefully casual, “that won’t be necessary.”

  “Say someone—a friend, say—asked you,” Clayton went on. “Would you recommend any of your fellow artists for the job?”

  “Partly depends how soon they wanted it. For probably the finest craftship, Colliers of Colorado or Bob Yovill of Washington, D.C. But Colliers usually takes six months to a year, and with Yovill the wait could be a couple of years. For a competent quick job, Elias Hammer right here in town is probably as good as anybody.”

  “Thank you again, M. O’Toole,” Lestrade said before Clayton could add anything farther. “I thank that’ll be all for today.”

  * * * *

  “We don’t need a search warrant when somebody hands us permission on a silver platter,” Clayton was saying as they got back in the car.

  “But we do need more than two pollies to give a property that size any halfway decent search. As O’Toole could have guessed when he made the offer.” Damn! she wished he hadn’t.

  “We could at least have gotten it in writing.”

  “What’s the point? Anything suspicious they might have had is going to be gone before we can get back with enough people to search the place.”

  “So you played it for the least chance of tipping off Hammer and Naismith?”

  “Minimizing the damage. Maybe there’s hope for you yet, Detective.”

  “Sarge, you’re looking hard at Hammer, aren’t you?”

  “We aren’t labeling anyone ‘Prime Suspect,’” she answered, reminding herself as much as him. “Not yet. Not with what little we’ve got. Still too early. Start labeling anybody ‘Prime Suspect,’ and you stop looking hard enough at everybody else.” But, yes, she admitted to herself, in some secret part of her brain, and not too happy with her own psychomystique, she was looking hard at Hammer. And she couldn’t shake the guilt of feeling that, if she’d only found enough to work with right after Harry Jackson’s murder, Gaia Soderstrum might still be alive.

  She also couldn’t help taking another frown at Imani’s tower as they drove past his Victorian on their way out. What was it about that place?

  CHAPTER 21

  Still Tuesday October 3

  The country being on Winter Time, it was after dark when Angela’s plane got into the Forest Green airport. Luckily, she had no checked baggage, and the snack on the plane had given her more than she could eat today, so all she had to do was hurry out to her old Mason, which they had taken Sunday morning rather than leave Aunt Sally’s beautiful new Bakersfield in the airport parking lot.

  She came as close as she had ever come in her life to deliberately breaking speed limits on her way through town to the Marquette House.

  Very grateful, now, that he had given her his keys—thinking at the time that she might sometime be the one in need of a safe place—she fumbled herself in through the front door and then the door into Arnheim.

  It was all clean and neat. Everything looked okay. Could Aunt Sally have been right? Could he have been flying down to Boca Raton even while she was flying up to Forest Green? Could their planes have passed each other in the air?

  “Cory!” she shouted into his apartment. “Cory!”

  No answer, only his tortoiseshell cat came padding delicately out at the sound of Angela’s voice.

  He would never have flown off to Florida for who knew how long and just left Caterina alone in the apartment. Or Evermore. Looking around again, she saw the telephone lying on its side on the floor at the foot of the desk, its receiver out of the cradle. Caterina must have jumped up and knocked it off. Yes, that explained the busy signal. The cat must have knocked all those envelopes off at the same time. Angela went over, replaced the telephone on the desk, started gathering up the scattered envelopes.

  They were letters. Sealed and addressed, but only with names, not street numbers. And no return address, no postage stamps. To Corinna Olmstead Casanova—that was his older sister, up in Arbor City; Patrice Davison Whitman and Michael Olmstead Hawthorne—his parents; M. Esther Florsheim…his landlady, Angela thought; Detective David Clayton, F.G.P.D.; Detective Sergeant R. Lestrade, F.G.P.D.… and—here was one for her, Angela Garvey! And…and…one labeled “Corwin Davison Poe, His Last Will & Testament”! And a single slip of paper—it must have been on the top, that was why it was on the bottom now—reading, “In the Improbable Eventuality of My Premature Demise.”

  Angela hardly even spared a glance to make sure Caterina stayed in the apartment. She broke every speed record on her way to the police station. She would have welcomed any polly who pulled her over.

  * * * *

  what is that all about caterina wonders the human who is here before the one her human likes so much she grabs up all the folded papers and runs away is she chasing a mouse there are no mice but there are always spiders here is a nice big spider beneath the couch caterina plays with it until it stops moving she eats it and goes and drinks water from her dish

  * * * *

  Angela sat in the small waiting lounge of the Forest Green Police Station, turning the letter with her name on it over and over in her hands. All the other letters, even his Will, she had given to the officer at the front desk, to use however the police judged best. She assumed Sergeant Lestrade and Detective Dave Clayton were already reading theirs.

  As for her, she would not read hers until they knew for certain… Even to open it now would be like admitting in her heart that they were too late.

  * * * *

  Dave and the Old Woman sat in their office, reading. He was trying to act like a good police detective and check any personal feelings of his own at the door. Just the facts, M. Just the facts.

  “Detective Clayton—or may I without impertinence continue addressing you as ‘Dave’?

  “Your perusal of this epistle signifies that in all probability my corpus delecti no longer houses my soul—essence—psychomystique—call it what you will, which, for all any of us can know, perhaps hovers near you even now, searching and aching to render whatever further assistance might prove possible to its present condition.

  “I append only this hope, this last prayer: some member or members of a group may prove guilty of an—extracurricular, let us call it—outrage, without the other members necessarily being tainted.”

  What the Sheboygan did he mean by that last sentence?

  “Lady God!” Lestrade exploded. “All
right, Detective, listen to this. Translation. He begs pardon for disregarding my ‘suggestion’—pretty way of putting it!—but at least his remains give us more evidence. He lists about a dozen indicators we can use to help identify his body—big of him!—along with the names of his dentist and personal physician, and hopes this spares us any need to call Angela Garvey back from Florida. If so be we have to get somebody in to formalize the identification, his sister Corinna Olm­stead is handy in Arbor City. He’d even enclose a set of fingerprints—holy martyr Silverstairs!!—if he had such a thing as an ink pad handy. All right, M. Davison, if we get you back in one breathing piece, we’ll see whether we can’t accommodate you there. And—well, praise the Lady you finally saw your way through to come clean about this one! Just a little bit tardy, wouldn’t you say? —” She cut herself off, slammed the letter down on her desk, got up, came around to her partner’s side of the table, and put one hand on his shoulder. Very gently, considering. “Dave…I’m sorry. I hate telling you this…or maybe he put it in your letter, too? No, I see he didn’t. Dave…Julie Whitcomb is one of them.”