Trace poured himself more wine. “Anybody else?” he asked, but got no takers.
“So the thief gets into the house and he’s trying to drill open the safe and Jarvis comes back. He’ parks out on the road and walks up the drive to the house. He lets himself in. He’s very quiet because he thinks Spiro is home. Maybe asleep, maybe not. But when he gets inside, he hears the sound of the drill. He drops his bag, goes into the living room, and faces off with the thief. The two men scuffle and the thief slugs him, probably with his drill. Then the thief runs. He doesn’t know if Jarvis is dead or alive or whatever, but he’s no killer at heart, he just wants to get the hell out of here. So he leaves without ever getting into the safe.”
“Then what happened to my jewels?” Felicia asked.
“Yes. Where are the jewels?” Ferrara echoed. “Do you actually know?”
“Maybe,” Trace said. “I want everybody to come with me for a moment.” He got up and walked toward the gate in the fence behind the swimming pool. The entire table followed him with the exception of Chico, who was still eating, and Sarge, who was taking off his jacket and rolling up his shirt sleeves over his massive arms.
At the fence, Trace said, “When the thief fled, he may have gone out through here. Or he may have just gone out the front door. I’m not sure.”
“What the hell does that mean?” Rosado asked.
Trace looked past him back toward the dinner table, where Sarge was sitting back down. Chico nodded to Trace and he said to Rosado, “Never mind. It’s not really important.”
“This is ridiculous,” Ferrara said.
“Come on. Go back and sit down,” Trace said. “Almost done now.”
When they were back in their seats, Trace said, “Remember, Felicia, Jarvis came to steal the jewels. As you well know. So now he’s been knocked out, maybe badly hurt. He comes to. He’s groggy maybe. The place is a mess. But he’s thinking of only one thing: protecting you. He puts his gloves on. The gloves he carried to Las Vegas in July all the way from London when he didn’t pack anything else. Or maybe he was wearing them all the time. He opens the safe.”
“What would stealing my jewels have to do with protecting me?” Felicia asked.
“Remember. As far as Jarvis knew, Spiro was still in the house, maybe sleeping. Jarvis was in no condition to clean things up, and when Spiro came in and saw the mess, he was going to call the cops. Jarvis didn’t want them ever to find out what was in that safe. Here’s one everybody missed. The tree inside. The one that was knocked over in the fight? If you go look at the two trees, the one that was knocked over doesn’t have the burlap wrapping around its roots anymore, like the other one does. Jarvis took the burlap and used it to wrap up what was in the safe. He threw his phony passport in there too, because he knew that might just cause trouble. Then he stashed them away.”
“Where? How? His body was found over there?” Neddleman said. He was pointing to the fish pond.
“I thought it was strange,” Trace said, “that Jarvis crawled out here. Why didn’t he crawl to a phone to call for help? Maybe he would have, but he had to get rid of the stuff first. That’s why he came out here. It was just his bad luck that he, well, maybe got dizzy and fell and bopped his head, and then he lay there and bled to death. While Spiro was waiting for him at the airport. Sarge, you want to do it?”
“Sure,” his father said. The burly gray-haired man stood up and walked to the goldfish pool. He sprawled himself out on the stone deck and plunged his arm deep into the water. A moment later, he brought out a burlap package, dripping water.
“Christ, this smells,” Sarge said. “Clean that pool, Countess.”
He brought it back to the table and plopped it down on the clean dinner plate in front of Rosado. The policeman used a steak knife to cut away at the rough package and Felicia came down from the head of the table to watch. She was followed by the Neddlemans. It was the first time, Trace realized, that he had ever seen them move
“I’d like to do Cleopatterer,” National Anthem said, but no one was listening.
Rosado pulled out a blue-covered passport booklet.
“That should be the fake passport in the name of Edward Stark,” Trace said.
Rosado cut some more fabric and then peeled back the burlap. There was a tiara and two elaborate diamond necklaces. And the white marble ashtray.
“My jewels,” the countess said. “My jewels.” She reached over and lifted the tiara over her head. “Your father’s right. That water smells. But they’re my jewels.”
“Not exactly,” Trace said. He took the tiara back from the countess and returned it to Rosado.
“What do you mean, not exactly?”
“They’re yours, all right, but they’re not jewels. They’re just cheap paste, glass imitations of your jewels. You know this, Felicia, but nobody else does, so I hope you don’t mind my explaining it. That’s why Jarvis went to New York three weeks in a row before your trip to Europe. He was selling off the jewels in your pieces and getting them replaced with paste imitations.”
“That’s absurd,” she said. “Really, Trace—”
“Is it? It’s a great way to beat the insurance company. Sell the real jewels and steal the imitations yourself.”
“Ridiculous,” she snapped.
“We’ll know when we have these looked at,” Rosado said.
“Remember, Countess, you told me that you never do charitable work or served on boards or anything like that. But you went out of your way to be photographed wearing all this junk just before you went to Europe. That was part of it. Making sure that a lot of people saw you in the jewels. Then, when they were stolen while you were away, well, you had hundreds of witnesses that they really existed. Anyway, I don’t think there’ll be much trouble finding the jeweler in New York who replaced these real stones with glass. It’s pretty specialized work.”
“I resent this,” Felicia said. “This whole idea of my stealing my own jewels—”
“Remember, Countess, how you got them,” Trace said.
“They were gifts,” she said.
“They were stolen,” Trace said. Rosado looked at him sharply and Trace shrugged. “That’s what Interpol thinks, anyway. They have the countess and Jarvis listed among their top suspected jewel thieves.”
“Why steal the ashtray?” Ferrara asked sharply.
“It wasn’t stolen,” Trace said. “Jarvis used it as a weight to make sure the package would sink to the bottom of the pool.”
Ferrara waved his arms over his head in disgust. “This is all moronic,” he snapped. “Felicia a thief? You’re an imbecile, Tracy. I’ve never liked you, but now I think you ought to be committed.”
“Quiet, morgue-breath,” Trace said. “To steal jewels, you have to be where jewels are. What better way than to be a beautiful woman? Especially one with a phoney title? The only better way might be to be a drug-dealer.” He stared at Ferrara, who glared back.
“Anyway, Felicia and Jarvis aren’t the only jewel thieves in the world,” Trace said.
Mrs. Neddleman said softly, “I still don’t understand who killed Jarvis.”
“The insurance-company detective knows,” Trace said.
“He’s not here,” Marks said. “The baron’s not here.”
“Sorry, Groucho, he’s not your detective. In fact, Interpol says he’s a jewel thief too.”
“What?” Walter Marks said. He rose up out of his seat.
“He’s got a record,” Trace said.
“I put up twenty-five hundred dollars in bail money,” Marks moaned.
“Not my problem,” Trace said.
Neddleman was growling again. “You say the detective knows. Who’s going to tell us?”
“The insurance detective will. Wont you, Willie?”
Ferrara’s head snapped around toward his valet as if on a spring. “Willie? Him?” He pointed at Parmenter and laughed.
Parmenter ignored him. “Congratulations, Mr. Tracy. Very ingenious.”
“I had help,” Trace said. “You want to tell us anything or should I go on?”
“You go on, by all means,” Parmenter said.
“How’m I doing so far?”
“I’d give you about a seven.”
“That’s not too bad,” Trace said.
Walter Marks was pointing at Parmenter. “Him?” he said, and looked to Trace.
National Anthem said, “I think he’s nice. Sort of. For a man.”
Trace told Marks, “Yeah, he’s your secret agent, Groucho. You want him to go now and fetch you a drink? Not too sweet.”
“I don’t believe it,” Marks said.
Trace imitated his whine. “I don’t believe it,” he said. “Sorry for that. I’m not a very good mimic. You want to do your impression of Walter?” he added, looking at Willie.
The small man smiled.
“Remember,” Trace said, “I told you all before it wasn’t Jarvis who called Spiro? It was somebody imitating his voice. It was Willie here.”
Parmenter was still standing at his place at the table.
“You made a mistake when you showed off the other night for Chico, imitating Groucho,” Trace said. “She remembered. She remembers everything.”
“Showing off always gets you into trouble,” Parmenter said.
“I still don’t believe it,” Marks said.
“Believe it, Walter,” Swenson said.
“Eeeeyou. This is getting exciting. I think,” said National Anthem.
There was silence for a moment and one of the parrots squawked, “Polly want a hit.”
Felicia was still standing near Trace, staring at Parmenter, and Trace looked up at her.
“You see, Felicia,” Trace said, “Willie’s been working for insurance companies for a few years working on big jewel robberies. You and Jarvis were two that kept getting away. So when you went to London, he was there. He thought this was the perfect chance to find out what you two had hidden back here. So he got make-believe sick and went away for a couple of days, supposedly to visit relatives. What he did was hop the first plane to the States and then to Las Vegas. He never expected that, just by coincidence, Jarvis would do the same thing.”
Felicia sat down heavily in the chair next to Chico. She stared dully at the candelabra in front of her as she spoke. “It wasn’t a coincidence. When Willie got sick, it gave us the idea. It could look like food poisoning and it was a great excuse for Jarvis to get sick too and get back here. We never knew who Willie was.”
“Nobody did. Not even Ferrara, and Willie worked for him.”
“He was convenient,” Willie said. “He was entrée, you might say.”
“So here you are,” Trace said. “You’re on your way to Las Vegas, and you never suspect it but so is Jarvis. You both have the same idea. You want to check Felicia’s jewelry, and if it’s stolen, steal it back. Jarvis, on the other hand, has already sold off the real stuff, exchanged it for paste, and he wants to steal the paste now to beat the insurance company. You get here before he does and you sit in your car near the gas station down the road and finally you call Spiro and send him off to the airport on a wild-goose chase. When he leaves, you slip in and go to work. Jarvis arrives, finds you, and then it’s what I told you. Struggle, Jarvis drops, Willie runs, Jarvis dumps the jewels so that the fact they are fakes won’t hurt Felicia, and he has the bad luck to hit his head and bleed to death.”
“Can you prove any of these accusations?” Parmenter said.
“We’ve got the airline manifests of you flying into Las Vegas on the same day Jarvis got killed. You’re on Line eighteen, William Parmenter. I’m sure your passport will show it too, or airline tickets or whatever. It won’t be hard to nail down.”
Parmenter, who had been the lone person standing at the table, sat back down. “It was an accident, you know,” Willie said. “I didn’t try to hurt him. I just wanted to get away without him recognizing me.” His face seemed to brighten. “He bled to death after hitting his head. That doesn’t have anything to do with me.”
Ferrara looked over at him. “I think you’ve got one hell of a nerve. You’re supposed to be working for me and you’re off doing—”
“Oh, shut up,” Willie Parmenter said. He picked up a bucket of melted ice and poured the water over Ferrara’s head.
The curly-haired Italian shrieked, and National Anthem, said, “I love mystery movies. Don’t you, Bobby, sweetheart?”
“Sure, sure,” Swenson said.
Ferrara was drying his hair with a large cloth napkin. For a moment he looked as if he’d throw a punch at Willie, but his eyes met Sarge’s for a moment and Trace’s father gave him a look that meant that throwing a punch would only be the start of something big, and the Italian slumped back in his chair.
“The other night,” Trace told Rosado, “Felicia told me that she was surprised that the thief hadn’t contacted her. That didn’t make any sense to me. But it does when you realize that the jewels are fake, and once the thief found it out, he had a good blackmail move against her. That’s why she was surprised she hadn’t heafd anything. Isn’t that so, Countess?”
She was still staring at the candelabra. “Yes,” she said softly.
“And, Willie, you had a problem too,” Trace said. “Felicia’s jewels were gone, but you didn’t get them. Who did? Where were they? You knew there was something going on, so you got the insurance company to send you in here. Probably you figured you’d be able to pick up an easy fee, because you had the one piece of information that the cops didn’t have: that the thief never got the jewels. That’s why you were always lurking around, listening in, trying to find out something. The obvious choice in your head was Spiro, and that’s why you broke into his apartment to see if he had the jewels. But he didn’t, of course. They were here all the time.”
Trace poured more wine into his glass and turned to Rosado. “Good luck, Dan. Now it’s all yours to sort out. I don’t know who gets charged with what and I don’t care. And, Walter—”
Marks looked up.
“I think you probably owe Felicia the insurance money on Jarvis’ death,” Trace said. “Unless your legal beagles figure out some way she shouldn’t get it.” He leaned over to Felicia and said, “I told you I’d try to get it for you.”
Rosado stood up and said, “I’m calling for some help here. Don’t anyone try to leave.”
“They won’t,” Sarge said.
A few minutes later Rosado returned. The guests were still sitting around silently, as if the main course had just been served and when they lifted the top of the serving tray, they had found a corpse.
Trace noticed Rosado beckoning to him and walked over to him.
“One thing everybody forgot,” Rosado said softly.
“What?”
“R. J. Roberts. Who killed him?”
“It had nothing to do with this,” Trace said. “It was most likely a hooker named Lip Service. They had a fight. I think he slugged her and she cut him. She’s skipped town to go back to Minnesota.”
“Oh. And what about Hubbaker and Roberts?”
“This is only a guess. I think Roberts found out that Hubbaker had a record. That’s what that note in his files meant. Maybe he was going to blackmail the baron, or maybe he thought Hubbaker could help him find out about Felicia’s robbery. I don’t know.”
“I don’t know either, and I can’t find out because Hubbaker’s gone,” Rosado said.
“He’s probably skipped,” Trace said. He talked very softly. “You could do me a favor if you wait before putting out a want on him,” Trace said.
“Why’s that?”
“First of all, he didn’t have anything to do with anything. Second of all, I wouldn’t mind if his bail was forfeited.”
Rosado looked past Trace toward Walter Marks, sitting at the dinner table, looking disgusted.
“I understand,” Rosado said. “I will pursue the baron with all due slowness.”
“Polly want a
hit,” one of the parrots squawked.
27
The annual convention of the Garrison Fidelity Insurance Company was over. It had ended with a gala banquet at which Bob Swenson, company president, had praised the dedication and zeal and intelligence of the men who had made the company what it was, among them none other than Walter Marks, “our brilliant vice-president for claims.”
After the dinner, Marks pleaded an early plane and passed up the opportunity to come to Trace’s apartment for an after-dinner party to celebrate the convention and also Trace’s birthday, now one day past.
Swenson came. Alone.
“Where’s National Anthem?” Trace asked
“It’s all over,” Swenson said.
“What happened?”
“She’s leaving the country.”
’Why?” Trace asked.
“Why? Because she got a goddamn offer to star in some Zulu epic or something. The Queen of the Apes. I guess she never balled a gorilla before. Anyway, she left, and I don’t want to talk about it. Where’s your phone?”
“Use that one,” Trace said.
Swenson dialed long distance. As he was dialing, he said to Trace, “You hear what I said about that dingaling, Marks?”
“Every word. I nearly threw up,” Trace said.
“You’ve got to praise the little people,” Swenson said. “It keeps them in line. You know, he told me he was going to give you enough rope to hang yourself. Poor bastard, he gave you forty-seven miles of rope and you wrapped it around his neck.”
Trace said, “I had a lot of help.”
“I’ll give him rope,” Swenson said. “Hello, Deirdre, this is Mr. Swenson…. Yes. Everything’s fine here; we finished everything up tonight. Monday morning, first thing, I want you to send one of the office boys to a hardware store…. Listen and I’ll tell you. I want one mile of rope…. That’s right. Rope. Clothesline. Deliver it to Walter Marks’ office…. That’s right. And put a note on it. ‘Better luck next time.’…. No, no. Don’t sign it and don’t let him know it came from me…. Yeah. I’ll be back Sunday…. Okay. Good-bye.”
And 47 Miles of Rope (Trace 2) Page 21