The Pot Thief Who Studied Ptolemy (The Pot Thier)

by J. Michael Orenduff

  “How would that work?” asked Susannah.

  “Well, suppose someone had been planning to kill Gerstner and was waiting for the best situation to do so. Suppose that person saw that I was away from the party and took the opportunity to fire a shot. Then later, that person kills Gerstner and puts the body in 1101, Gerstner’s apartment, to frame me.”

  “That sounds rather far-fetched,” said Blass.

  “I agree. But the night of the party was not the first time I’d been in Gerstner’s apartment.”

  “Every time he speaks,” said Arthur in deadpan, “he admits another crime.”

  “I have discussed his situation with the authorities,” said Layton, “and they have granted him immunity.”

  “Who are you?” asked Bertha.

  “I, madam, am Layton Kent, attorney for Mr. Schuze.”

  “Another criminal profession,” said Arthur.

  I pressed on. “In my previous visit to Gerstner’s apartment, I found one of the stolen pots, but I left it there because I wanted to recover all of them, not just one. While I was there, someone entered the apartment. I hid behind the couch, so all I saw were shoes. I left without being detected, so the person who came in doesn’t know I was there. I went down to the parking garage in the basement and watched for half an hour, and no one wearing those shoes left the building.”

  “The person might have left through the lobby,” said Bertha.

  “True. But remember the shot we all heard was fired in the building. If the person who walked in on me in Gerstner’s apartment is the one who fired that shot, then the odds are he lives in the building. And this is not a walking city. People who live in Rio Grande Lofts generally take their cars when they leave the building.”

  “Speculation,” said Horace.

  “Granted. But what is not speculation is that I saw those same shoes again on the feet of the person who murdered Gerstner.”

  “How can you be sure they were the same shoes?” asked Bertha.

  “Because they were unique. And the feet I saw them on were the feet of Frederick Blass.”

  “Are you accusing me of murder, Hubert, or are you accusing me of bad taste in shoes?”

  “Both, actually.”

  “This must be Hubert’s idea of a bizarre parlor game. But of course there’s not a shred of evidence other than the fantasies of his imagination. I do admit to having a collection of shoes to die for, but that hardly makes me a murderer.” He looked to the others with that winning smile.

  He was smooth, all right. “Unfortunately for you, there may be some very strong evidence. The police entered your apartment with a warrant moments after you left to come here. By now they probably have your dueling pistols at the crime lab. I’m confident one of them will turn out to be the murder weapon.”

  “Your confidence is unwarranted.”

  “The police will also be searching for any of the missing pots.”

  “Let them do so,” he said with a shrug of his shoulders. “Mr. Kent,” he said, “perhaps after this is over I can discuss with you the possibility of court action against Mr. Schuze for libel.”

  “Quite impossible,” said Layton. “In the first place, Mr. Schuze is my client. Bringing an action against him would constitute a conflict. And secondly, no libel is committed when the charges are true.”

  “I’m no longer willing to participate in this farce,” said Blass, and he rose to go.

  “Sit down, Blass,” said Fletcher.

  “Am I under arrest?”

  “Let’s just say you’re being detained for questioning. My men in your apartment will contact me when they’ve finished their work, and then we’ll see if anyone needs arresting.”

  Blass sat back down and glared at Fletcher then at me. Even though he was a murderer, I felt guilty about proving it, and I looked away. No one said anything and the silence in the room was as thick as an adobe wall.

  Then there was a knock on the door.

  It was not the police. It was Miss Gladys Claiborne with a tray of desserts.

  57

  Fletcher looked at the door, rolled his eyes, then looked at me. “It’s the same dame was here last time, Hubert. Tell her to go away.”

  I opened the door and explained it was not a social gathering.

  “Well, I can see that,” she said, pushing me aside with the tray and heading for the counter. “That same nice detective is here again, but I think these young men in uniform are different ones. What are their names, detective?”

  “Ma’am, this here’s an official police matter, and I’m going to have to ask you to leave.”

  “Oh, come on detective, we might as well eat while we’re waiting for your men to report,” said Horace Arthur.

  “We don’t need—” started Whit.

  “I agree with Horace,” said Bertha, interrupting him. “I, for one, am famished.”

  “Me, too, Whit,” chimed in Susannah.

  The two uniforms had already walked over to the counter and were examining the offerings.

  Whit threw up his hands.

  Miss Gladys proudly peeled the plastic wrap off the tray. “Detective, you look like a strong man. Would you be so kind as to slant this tray up while I explain what’s on it?”

  Whit walked resignedly behind the counter and lifted the tray to a perfect angle for display.

  There was strawberry pie. Miss Gladys didn’t give out recipes. I guess she didn’t think it appropriate for an official police matter, but I knew what was in it because she had made it for me before. It’s a ready-made graham cracker crust from the baking aisle, two packages of frozen strawberries, strawberry Jell-O, and a can of ReadyWhip. The names of Miss Gladys’ ingredients are frequently followed by ™. I would tell you how to put everything together, but you can probably figure it out yourself.

  There were also marshmallow brownies, praline pie, and something called 7-Up cake.

  The praline pie is a regular pecan pie with the Karo syrup heated until it caramelizes before the pecans are added. It is absolutely delicious, and even though I thought turning my dramatic unmasking of a killer into a dessert party was in poor taste, I did take a piece of the praline pie. Everyone grabbed something, even Frederick Blass who evidently thought he had nothing to fear. He was talking to Jack Wiezga and eating a marshmallow brownie.

  Fletcher gave in and started in on a slice of 7-Up cake. “Hubert, you got any coffee?”

  I retrieved my coffeemaker from under the counter, and while I was starting the process, I heard Miss Gladys ask Whit if he was married. He looked at her warily and said he was. She seemed disappointed, but recovered swiftly with an offer for him to take some dessert home to his wife. He allowed as how the 7-Up cake was the best cake he’d ever eaten. “Nice and moist,” he said, “not like my wife’s cakes, you need a glass of water handy just to swallow.”

  The coffee finished brewing, but the phone rang and everyone was spared having to drink it.

  I answered and passed the phone to Fletcher who listened, muttered a few yeahs and hmms and then hung up. “That was my colleague back at the station. They found one of them pots hidden in your closet, Blass, and they found blood on one of them old pistols, too. Of course we had a sample of Gerstner’s blood from the crime scene, and the blood on your pistol matched perfectly. I guess instead of hiring Mr. Kent here for a libel suit, you might want to ask him would he defend you against a murder charge.”

  Blass started to say something, then thought better of it and remained silent while Fletcher read him his rights, and Miss Gladys said, “Oh, my.”

  58

  “Wow, Uncle Hubert. You’re going to be a hero when you return those pots to San Roque. You are going to return them, right?”

  “All the originals.”

  Tristan had helped me carry the chairs back where they belonged, and he was now ensconced in one of them, tilting it back on its two rear legs and drinking a bottle of beer. I’d offered him a glass for the beer, but as usual he
’d declined. “That’s pretty good music, Uncle Hubert. Who is it?”

  “Lionel Hampton.”

  “What is it, like the 1920s?”

  “More like the forties.”

  “But even that’s before you were born, so how did you come to like it?”

  “The Beatles were before you were born, but you like them.”

  “Good point. But all their stuff has been digitally remastered. I don’t think there’d be enough market to justify that for this Hampton guy.” He was walking to the refrigerator as he talked.

  “Probably not,” I agreed. “On the other hand, most people who listen to Lionel Hampton, myself included, wouldn’t know what digitally re­mastered means. They still think vinyl creates the highest fidelity.”

  “You’re kidding me. That’s really an old 33 1/3 disc? Where’s the turntable?”

  “It’s not a record. It’s satellite radio.”

  “You have any salsa to go with…” He brought his head out of the fridge. “Satellite radio! The one I brought over for you? You told me you’d never use it.”

  “Well, I didn’t think I’d be able to. I mean, there’s not even a knob to tune in stations.”

  “Uncle Hubert, when’s the last time you saw a radio with a twist tuner?”

  “Is that a knob?”

  “Yep.”

  “The radio in my Bronco has one.”

  “Your Bronco is older than I am. See, no matter how good your ear and how dexterous you might be with your fingers, you can’t get a twist tuner to center on a signal. The degree of angle a twist turner moves through is several orders of magnitude below the scale of radio frequencies. A digital tuner measures the frequency and the amplitude of the station’s signal and—”

  “Tristan?”

  “Yeah, Uncle Hubert?”

  “I think I have some salsa in the cabinet.” I found a jar, opened it and poured it in a bowl.

  “Uncle Hubert?”

  “Yes?”

  “Did you also figure out why those guys smashed your pots?”

  “I didn’t, but Martin told me what probably happened. As you know, San Roque has little interaction with the outside world. Occasionally a young person leaves and doesn’t return. A few of them are here in the city, but they often don’t fare well. A small band of them are on drugs. Martin thinks they remembered a tribal story about treasure in pots, so they broke mine open hoping to find a treasure.”

  “Which they obviously didn’t find, but why take the pieces?”

  “I guess they wanted to break them in to smaller pieces to see what they could find. The process was taking too long, so they took the pieces somewhere where they could examine them without worrying about the police showing up.”

  “Maybe they thought the treasure was weed, and they planned to grind up the pots and smoke them.”

  That brought a laugh from both of us.

  “Oh,” he said, “I have Stella Ramsey doing the news if you want to see it.”

  “You know I don’t have a television, much less a videotape player.”

  He laughed again. “Videotape players are so out, Uncle Hubert. I have it right here on my Blackberry.”

  And he powered it up and there was Stella. Even on a very small screen, she was beautiful.

  “Thanks for including me tonight,” he said after the show was over. “It was radical. And it’s also good to see the bad guy get caught.”

  Before he left, I asked him how he was doing, but you already know how that goes.

  59

  Order was restored to my little corner of the cosmos the next day at five, a margarita in my hand, Susannah across the table.

  “I still don’t get how you knew Frederick fired that shot while you were burgling Gerstner’s apartment.”

  “I didn’t know at first. I wish I had because I could have avoided being arrested and then being the subject of a manhunt, both of which were pretty unnerving.”

  “You know, Hubie, I’d say you demonstrated a lot of nerve breaking in to that building over and over. But I still don’t get how you knew.”

  “The shoes were the key.”

  “When did you see those shoes on him again?”

  “I didn’t. That was a lie I told because the truth was too complicated to explain at the gathering last night. But I saw him in some other exotic footwear, and it made me wonder if he was the one I saw from under the couch.”

  “But you said that was a woman. Your even heard her putting the seat down.”

  “I thought it was a woman because I’ve never seen shoes like that on a man. Once I had it in my mind it was a woman, then of course I thought the clack was her putting the toilet seat down.”

  “Because you were in a man’s apartment, and you pigs always leave the seat up.”

  I chose not to argue that point. “But when I started wondering if it was Blass, I realized the same sound is made by putting the seat up. Once I started thinking about him, the reasons to think he did it kept piling up.”

  “Like?”

  “First, he had the opportunity to fire the shot.”

  “So did everyone else at the party.”

  “In theory, yes. But if it were one of the guests, that would mean he had anticipated that I would be there and that I would sneak out to Gerstner’s apartment, so he brought a gun along to fire out the window while I was gone.”

  “Not very likely.”

  “Right. The only person in a position to seize the opportunity of my sneaking out would be the host. First, he wouldn’t have to bring a gun to the party. He already had one there. Second, he could move around more easily than a guest. He could go in to the second bedroom, lock the door, and fire one of the dueling pistols out the window. A guest would have to wander around in an unfamiliar apartment, find the pistol, figure out how to fire it, etc. No, if anyone fired a pistol, it had to be Blass. And remember, after I saw the shoes from under the couch, no one left the building with those shoes on. And the night of the party, the Ma pot was gone from Gerstner’s apartment, so I figured the person with the fancy shoes took the pot and lived in the building.”

  “But that’s not conclusive.”

  “Conclusive? It’s not even very plausible, but it was the only theory I had. Once I started thinking about how that theory might work, things started falling in line, things that were a lot more plausible and even conclusive.”

  “Such as?”

  “I knew Gerstner had the pots, and I figured he must have been selling them off to supplement his retirement checks. But Gerstner didn’t seem the type to be able to pull that off. He would have needed someone to be sort of a high-class fence.”

  “Enter Frederick Blass?”

  “Exactly. And then I remembered Jack Wiezga called Blass a fence, and that started me thinking about Blass’ apartment. You remember how fancy it is?”

  “Probably better than you do,” she said while looking down at the floor.

  “It was actually two units merged together, I would guess at no small expense. The walls were adorned with paintings by Degas, Gorman, and other expensive original art, and he hosted lavish parties, serving French champagne in hand-blown Jablonski flutes. Department heads make a decent salary, Suze, but he had to be living well above his means.”

  “Remember I told you he talked a lot about money?”

  I nodded.

  “What else?” she continued.

  “I found the first piece of real evidence in Gerstner’s filing cabinet, bank deposit slips. On the part where you list the checks, there were two with Blass’ name.”

  “The checks from Blass may have been for something else. It all sort of piles up like you said, but it’s still not conclusive. And I still don’t understand how you even knew someone tried to frame you in the first place. Maybe that shot we heard was just a car backfiring, and later that night Gerstner came home and someone killed him.”

  “I thought that at first, too, remember? But when I saw the murder scene, the
re was very little blood on the couch. I asked Whit about it, and he said the murderer must have tried to wipe it off. But why would the murderer try to wipe off the blood? I mean, he left the body there, so it was obvious there had been a murder. On top of that, everyone knows some of the blood would remain no matter how much you tried to clean it up. It just didn’t make sense. Then I thought of Ptolemy and Kepler.”

  “Oh, brother – not that again.”

  “Sorry. It’s how my brain works. Ptolemy and Kepler gave two explanations for the same thing. I realized there were two explanations for the blood being swirled around on the couch. One was what Whit told me – someone tried to wipe it off. The second explanation is that someone tried to wipe it on. Once I thought of that, I realized it made more sense. The murderer must have shot Gerstner somewhere else and brought the body to Gerstner’s apartment. Then he tried to make it look like the shooting had taken place there by smearing Gerstner’s blood on the couch. Now, there’s no reason to risk moving the body and wiping blood on the couch unless you’re trying to frame someone. So the blood on the couch was the final piece of the puzzle from my perspective. Once I realized the murderer was trying for a frame, everything came together.”