The Caesar Clue (The Micah Dunn Mysteries)

by Malcolm Shuman

  “Don’t you know how to get to a woman’s heart. Now you’ve got me all curious. Where was it and for God’s sake, what?”

  I looked back over my shoulder to make sure that the shop was unoccupied except by ourselves. Satisfied, I turned back to her.

  “It was a birth certificate,” I said. “And a social security card.”

  “Well,” she sniffed, “social security is nothing. Anyone with an offset outfit can do that. Birth certificates aren’t very much more difficult. I assume it was a Louisiana birth certificate? I’ve done some nice British ones lately, for a man with some business in the Caymans.”

  “American,” I said. “For a woman.” I described her.

  She stared at me for a moment and then nodded. “Of course. Now I remember. It wasn’t that long ago.” She drifted over to the table with its ancient volumes. “She bought a passport, too. Now what was the name she had me put on it? Something French …”

  “Morvant,” I said. “Julia Morvant.”

  Her face brightened. “Of course. That was it. You know her then. She’s not in trouble, is she?”

  “No trouble, at least anymore. She’s dead.”

  “Oh, dear.” She wrung her hands. “I hate it when that happens. Not a client of yours?”

  “Not quite. She was on the airplane that crashed the other night.”

  “Oh, that was terrible.” She crossed her arms and clutched her shoulders, shivering. “Poor people.”

  “Yeah.”

  She looked up at me, frowning. “But how did you find her documents? Weren’t they destroyed?”

  “The passport was. The other things weren’t used. They were in a safe-deposit box.”

  “I see.” She pondered a moment. “Well, I don’t imagine they’ll be traced here. I don’t usually leave a mark.”

  I knew what she meant: Her forgeries were as close to perfect as any I’d seen, or the police either, for that matter.

  And since she was very careful in her clientele, she’d escaped the law.

  “What can you tell me about her, Sam?”

  “The girl I made the documents for? Well …” She steadied her hair with a hand. “She was very attractive, for one thing. Almost too attractive. That was one of the things I noticed right off.”

  “How so?”

  “Well, she was trying a little too hard. The elite never try that hard, if you know what I mean.” She chuckled. “Everything about her was perfect, as if a hair out of place would be a disaster. Look at me”—she ran her fingers through some stray gray strands—”I’ve given up. And it doesn’t bother me. I had the feeling it would have bothered her. Funny …”

  “What is it?”

  She shook her head. “When I see anyone that perfect I usually tell myself they’re a zero. You know, surface only, and straw for brains. But this girl wasn’t like that. She spent a good time looking at the books. She seemed to really appreciate them.” She came over and picked up a volume with a torn dustcover. “This is a first edition of Sinclair’s The Jungle. Not in the best condition. I wouldn’t try to pass it off as anything especially valuable, but the important thing is that she knew about it, and knew the book had been bowdlerized to remove a lot of the socialist rhetoric. Very few people know that. I was impressed.”

  “Interesting. So you think she’d studied literature?”

  “I doubt it.” Samantha ran her hand fondly over the books, as if renewing an acquaintance with old friends. “You see, that’s one of those snippets you can pick up on public radio, or by reading reviews, or”—she gave me a meaningful look—“by sleeping with an English professor.”

  “I see.”

  “Yes. I talked with her a long while, asked her quite a few questions. It was obvious that her knowledge was extremely eclectic. Some subjects she had delved into in considerable depth. The poems of Yeats, for example, and Swinburne. She was passionately fond of Swinburne. Of course, everybody knows that kind of gloomy, doom-laden romantic poem is out of vogue now. I suppose Yeats has fared a little better, but then, he was a greater poet. But when I mentioned the Bloomsbury Circle, and other poets from about the same time, late Victorian to early Edwardian, she seemed completely blank.”

  “Anything else you noticed?”

  “Well, when I said she was too perfect in her dress, I didn’t mean there was anything garish or clashing. She knew how to dress. You know”—she looked up at me with earnest blue eyes—”I think the whole thing was that she was trying so hard to be liked. She wanted my approval, almost as if I were her mother.”

  It was my turn to frown. Of course. It made sense.

  “I almost felt sorry for the poor child. She asked a lot of questions about the books, you know, and I sensed she was probing, trying to learn as much as she could in a short period. I had the feeling she was a sponge and that everything I said sank in.”

  “Did she say anything about herself? Where she came from or why she wanted the documents?”

  “Well, you know I don’t ask my clients questions, so long as they come here with the right reference. And she had the best. A judge, whose name I’ll leave unsaid. I’m sure you’ll understand. I called him, though. He’s in one of the older krewes. A fine man. I once did a favor for his son. The boy was in love with a foreign woman who lived in a country where they didn’t want to issue an exit visa, so I volunteered to help. They were all exceptionally grateful. Of course, I took a chance by offering, but it worked out extremely well. In any case, she came to me with his recommendation and that was good enough. I didn’t ask why. But she did volunteer one or two things about herself.”

  My skin started to prickle. “Oh?”

  “It seems her father was a diplomat, killed by a bomb in one of those Third World countries ten or fifteen years ago.

  Her mother went insane and she was shuttled from one girl’s school to another.”

  I exhaled. “What do you think she wanted the passport and birth certificate for?”

  “She said she’d had an unhappy marriage and her ex-husband was badgering her. He had some sort of government connections, she said, and she wanted to put him off the scent and just sort of disappear. Well, my last husband, Luther, was a bit like that, but I didn’t run from him. I was more constructive. I hired a charming investigator who put the fear of God into the poor man.”

  “I remember,” I said. “But, to be truthful, it wasn’t one of my harder cases.”

  “Don’t sell yourself short, darling. Anyway, it’s how we met.” She sighed. “For whatever that’s gotten me.”

  I gave her a smile, but I kept trying to see Julia, standing where I was now, picking up the old book, trying to impress and yet at the same time being impressed and struggling to absorb every bit she could. How often had she been in that position? Every day?

  “Micah, come back.”

  I looked up, taken aback. “What?”

  “Come back to the world. You were in outer space. Is she that important to you?”

  “Yes. For some reason she is.”

  “Because she’s dead? That way, you know, you don’t have to worry about seeing her as she really was, with all her imperfections.”

  “I don’t know, Sam. I honestly don’t. I just know she called and asked for my help and a few hours later she was dead.”

  “Ah.” She put a hand on my shoulder. “Poor Micah. Trying to be the gallant knight. Listen, Sir Knight, I cater to the genteel trade. But that’s mainly a fiction I allow myself. We both know that most people who need forged documents aren’t really very nice. This girl, she was bright and energetic and had a nice personality, but doesn’t it occur to you that she might not be very nice, either?”

  I nodded. “Yes.”

  “So don’t let yourself get drawn in. She’s dead. Let her rest.”

  I put my own hand over hers. “Thanks, Sam. You always have the best advice going.”

  She sighed again. “But advice you won’t take.”

  “Well, you never took
mine to get out of this business. You’ll get caught sooner or later, you know, and then what?”

  She clapped her hands together. “That’s when the fun begins. Can you see the headlines? ‘Grandmother Arrested.’ The book will sell a hundred thousand copies, at least.”

  “Sam, you’re priceless.”

  “That’s what all my husbands said.”

  15

  It was evening and I sat in my car, at Lakeshore Park, looking north, over the gray water. The radio said the storm in the gulf was building to hurricane strength and in a couple of days it might make landfall anywhere along the coast, but the present bad weather was unconnected, just a September squall from a low pressure area that had crept in from the north overnight. Even as I watched, a low growl of thunder rumbled in from the distance. Two miles away, on my left, I could see the glint of tiny autos crawling across the causeway. It was Friday afternoon now and all over the city traffic was backing up in the hurry to escape for the weekend. A line of rain marched across the water, toward me, and a few seconds later drops spattered my windshield. There would be wrecks on the interstate and on the bridges and for some the weekend would begin hours later than planned.

  For others, like Julia, there would be no weekend at all.

  I wondered how many of the names in the book had learned of her death. Just one that I knew of: I’d called him a couple of hours ago and told him to meet me here.

  The thought of the names sickened me slightly, which was odd, because in my work I saw the worst side of human existence and I thought I was used to it.

  But this was different: It had something to do with Julia, and who she was, which was even more important than the superficial matter of what she was. An old man had given her a costume-jewelry necklace and she had kept it for twenty years. Her father had kept her odd assortment of books, which attested to an inquiring mind; with a university education she’d probably have gone somewhere in the literary world. As it was, she dabbled in the classics and hours before she died had recited Shakespeare. That had to mean something. I had to think she was keeping the book for protection, not blackmail.

  The rain was beating down hard now, a million tiny fists, pummeling the car in as many places, and I watched a line of water form at the top of the windshield where the seal was giving way.

  I had been looking for a special name in her book and I hadn’t found it. Not that Stokley would have used his own name, of course, but she was too shrewd to have been fooled. A few of the names bore such notations as minister; there had been at least one priest, and assorted lawyers and bankers. But there was no congressman.

  Not that I believed Stokley was involved; it was just one of those possibilities to be looked into and this one hadn’t checked out.

  I glanced at my watch: five-twenty. The man had said five, but the weather could be a factor. I decided to give him another ten minutes.

  A blinking red light was visible now on the rain-shrouded causeway and a minute later it was joined by a red and blue pair. I was glad I wasn’t in a slicker right now, trying to stop bleeding, giving mouth-to-mouth. I’d done enough of that twenty years ago to last a lifetime.

  My right arm started to ache where I’d slammed it on the pavement. I had a nasty burn from scraping the concrete but I reminded myself that it was a small price to pay, considering my chances five seconds before. I worked my fingers, satisfying myself for the twentieth time that I could handle the gun under the newspaper on the seat beside me.

  I didn’t expect to have to use it but at this point anything was possible.

  A car turned off Lakeshore and slid into the park. The driver hesitated and then pulled up beside me, on the right. I could see that it was an Audi, about twenty thousand new, but through the rain it was impossible to make out the driver’s face. It didn’t matter, though: I already knew there would be fear on it. Fear and maybe even anger. He opened his door and I slid the gun from the top of the seat to just under it, between my feet.

  He came toward me, oblivious of the rain that had already soaked him, and yanked open the door on the passenger side.

  “Get in, Mr. Gautreau,” I said. “You’ll catch your death out there.”

  He nodded and slid in, shutting the door with a sigh. The rain had plastered his seersucker suit to his body and thin wisps of blonde hair clung lifelessly to his bald scalp.

  “How did you get my name?” he asked with a hint of Cajun accent.

  “It was in Julia Morvant’s notebook,” I said. “At least, your first name and your address and some other particulars. The rest I got from the crisscross directory.”

  “God,” he breathed and started to shiver. “I didn’t even know she was dead.”

  “No?”

  His head pivoted in my direction, water still dripping down from his face and glasses.

  “You don’t think I had anything to do with it, for God’s sake? I mean, it was a plane crash. Everybody knows it was a plane crash. You said she was on that plane…!”

  “It was a bomb,” I said quietly. “They just haven’t let it out to the public yet.”

  His bifocals were fogged and I couldn’t see his eyes. “But don’t you see? I called her while she was gone. If you check her tape you’ll find my voice. That proves I didn’t even know she was out of town.”

  “You could have called just to divert suspicion from yourself,” I said. “You could have taken another plane, to find her or hired somebody.”

  “Oh, Jesus, you think I’d blow up a plane and kill all those people? Why? Tell me that, for Christ’s sake? Why?”

  “I don’t know. I can think of several possible reasons, but, for what it’s worth, I have to admit it doesn’t seem likely.”

  “Thank God for small favors,” he said. “Then why did you call me to come here? I guess you want money.” He reached inside his coat then and removed a manila envelope. “All right. Here. It’s all I could raise in an hour. It wiped out my account but take it. Then leave me alone, please …”

  His hand was shaking. I stared down at the envelope, with the tips of the bills showing where it was open. From the looks of it there was at least ten thousand.

  “Put your money away,” I said sharply. “I’m not here to blackmail you.”

  He held the money out a moment longer and then stuck it back inside his coat.

  “What then? What is it you want? Why are you involving me in this?”

  “Because I want to know who really did kill her,” I said. “And I hope you can tell me.”

  He took off his glasses then and tried to wipe them, using the bottom of his coat, but he only succeeded in smearing them.

  “If I had any information, of course, I’d give it,” he said with relief. “But I don’t have any.” He shrugged. “I mean, I didn’t know her, exactly, socially, it was just a, well, an occasional relationship. She never talked about her private life, her friends.”

  “Still,” I said, “you must have formed some impressions of her.”

  “Impressions?” Another shrug. “I guess so. I mean, sure. Look, who are you? Is this going to come out in court or anything? Maybe I should call my attorney.”

  “If you want,” I said. “We could all sit down, you, me, your lawyer, and the police.”

  “The police?” He turned a shade paler. He was forty, give or take a year, going to fat, and he used an expensive cologne. Next week or next month somebody at the brokerage house where he worked would talk him into a membership at the health club and he’d pride himself on getting into shape. But it would only be an excuse for continuing the martinis at lunch and the double shots when he got home. “Look, I don’t want the police. I don’t need them right now. I’ve got a family, a decent job. I work my ass off, sometimes seven days a week. You don’t know how much time I put in just to keep even, to make sure my family has what it needs.”

  I’d heard the spiel before and I knew it was best to wait until he was finished.

  “My son is at Jesuit. His ACT w
as the highest in his class. He’s got a shot at Ivy League colleges. My daughter is vice-president of her class.”

  For a minute I thought he was going to bring out his wallet and show me their pictures.

  “I’ve worked for what I have,” he declared, as if I had called it into doubt. “There’s a lot of pressure, a lot of demands made on me, but I perform. Everybody says I perform. Is it so terrible that I need some relief, some relaxation sometimes? I never hurt anybody. I made sure of that. I never hurt my wife. And it’s not like I’m the only one. Christ, as long as you take care of your family, as long as you perform …”

  “I’m not here to judge you,” I said. “All I care about is her.”

  “Her?” He hesitated and then he realized what I was talking about and his shoulders slumped. “Well, what is it you want to know?”

  “How did you meet?” I asked, looking away from him and at the rain cascading down the windshield.

  “No big deal there,” he said quickly. “It was about a year ago. There was a guy used to work for the firm, he mentioned her one day when we were having drinks after work. Said he’d tied up with something really special. Said I ought to check her out. I didn’t think much about it, but then he got this other job, in San Diego, and I remember, at his going away party, he was with this beautiful girl. He wasn’t married. I thought she was his girl friend or something, you know. She seemed to like me. On the way out I asked him who she was, if she was going, something like that, just polite talk. He was a little looped and he told me he was going to give me a present. He took out a piece of paper and wrote a number on it and her name. Then he wished me a happy life.”

  “You didn’t know she was a pro?”

  “No. I mean, I never associated with people like that. I’ve always been, well, on the shy side. I never went after the pretty girls. I was sure none of them would want to go out with me. I settled for a girl I figured was safe. Not so pretty, but solid, you know. And she’s been a good wife, Elsa. God, this would kill her.”

  I wondered why people like Ron Gautreau always assumed their wives were deaf and dumb. I started to tell him that Elsa probably knew, but was too smart to raise it as an issue. Or maybe she just loved him too much.