Trace (Trace 1)

by Warren Murphy

  “A snap. I called the college and told the registrar I was thinking of hiring her for a job and they verified that she had a degree from them. And I told them I spilled coffee on her application, what was the name of her high school, and they gave it to me.”

  “I never fail to be overwhelmed by the devious Oriental mind.”

  “You think my people were shoguns because they were good with those swords? Of course we’re devious. Anyway, it’s a little town in upstate New York, near Ithaca, and I found out the name of the newspaper in that town.” She hesitated. “You want to know how I found out the name of the newspaper?”

  “Yes. I want to know every trick you use.”

  “I called Information. And I found this small daily newspaper and talked to a reporter and I charmed him a little bit. Well, like most newspapers, they keep the high-school yearbooks around.”

  “I didn’t know that,” Trace said.

  “Sure. Young kids are always wrapping their cars around trees and things or getting lost in boating accidents, and if the newspaper’s got a yearbook, then they’ve always got pictures of the victims without pestering the family.”

  “Live and learn.”

  “So as luck would have it, this reporter is coming down to New York City today. And he promised to drop off the yearbook for me.”

  “You must really have charmed him,” Trace said sourly.

  “I think the hundred dollars I promised him charmed him more,” Chico said. “Isn’t that terrific?”

  “What do we need a yearbook for?”

  Chico shrugged. “Maybe nothing. But maybe it’ll tell you something you ought to know about Muffy.”

  “I hope so. I don’t see how I can get Groucho to go for three hundred dollars for a yearbook without there being something good in it,” Trace said.

  “A hundred,” she corrected.

  “That’s our cost. We’ll ask for three hundred and negotiate down,” Trace said. “Trust me. I’ve been through these negotiations dozens of times.”

  “You’ve never won one,” she said.

  “No. But I know all Groucho’s tricks and I’m overdue.”

  Chico went to the bathroom and Trace took the green tooth molding out of the bag and held it in his hand, looking at it. When the young woman came back, he had his jacket on.

  “I’ll be back in a while,” he said. “If you want to wait.”

  “Where you going?”

  “I want to ask Jeannie if she recognizes whoever might belong to these teeth. In case it was a friend waiting for her.”

  “You want me to go with you?” Chico asked.

  “No. You must be starved. Why don’t you go feed yourself and I’ll meet you back here later?”

  “How much later?”

  “I don’t know,” Trace said.

  “Maybe I’ll be here and maybe I’ll go back to my place,” she said.

  “Okay,” Trace said. “Leave me a note if you go.”

  “Don’t worry. I’ll be gone,” she said.

  25

  “Hi, son. Come to talk about peanut butter?”

  “No, business.”

  “Sounds serious.”

  “It is. Last night somebody broke into Jeannie Callahan’s office, just about the time you were supposed to be meeting with her.”

  “Damn, that’s too bad.”

  “Why’d you miss the meeting?”

  “I’m a suspect in the burglary?”

  “In my eyes you are. Why didn’t you make the meeting with her?”

  “Gentlemen don’t generally talk about things like that.”

  “Make an exception in this case.”

  “Oh, hell, why not? If I don’t talk about it to somebody, I’ll go crazy. Remember that little blonde I showed you?”

  “In the pink sweater?”

  “Yeah, that’s her. Well, yesterday, after you left, she came into the office here and she started, what do you young folks say, coming in to me.”

  “Coming on.”

  “Yeah, that’s right. She was coming on to me. So one thing led to another and I took her to dinner and then we stopped someplace and spent the night.”

  “You missed a business meeting so you could get laid?”

  “Sure. Wouldn’t you?”

  “I guess I would.”

  “If you were my age, I know you would.”

  ‘Thanks, Mr. Winfield.”

  “Anytime, Mr. Tracy.”

  26

  “Well, what do I look like?”

  “Let’s see,” Trace said. He stood in the doorway of Jeannie Callahan’s apartment, sizing her up. “The body is lissome and exquisite. Very nice. The right side of your face is an absolute joy to behold. I love your eyes and lashes. Your teeth are marvelous. Your smile warms my days.”

  “Keep going,” she said suspiciously.

  “And the left side of your face looks like a slab of liver that got tenderized by a tank tread.”

  “Naff off,” she said, and swung the door closed in his face.

  He caught it and pushed it back open. “But I’m willing to forget it,” he said. “Just keep your good side to me.”

  “Okay. Since you’re partially nice, you can come in and get partially drunk with me.”

  Trace helped himself to a drink in the kitchen and was pleased to note that Jeannie had already started to learn: the vodka was chilled and thick in the refrigerator’s freezer compartment, the way he liked it best.

  Jeannie had a brandy in her hand, a large snifter almost full, when Trace joined her on the couch.

  “How are you feeling?”

  “Fine. Brandy wounds all numbs.”

  “It numbs all wounds too. Any second thoughts about what happened in your office last night? Any flashes of memory?”

  “No. Just a big fist coming out of the dark. And a grunt. Dammit, I wish I had been you. I would have clubbed that bastard.”

  “It’s obvious you’re talking about my size and not my fighting heart,” Trace said. “What kind of stuff do you keep in that file cabinet?”

  “Documents mostly. Betsy keeps most of the real records out in the computer room.”

  “Yours filed alphabetically?”

  “Is there any other way to file things? Drink up, you’re slowing me down,” she said.

  “How many drawers in that file cabinet? I forget.”

  “Four,” she said. She reached down and lifted Trace’s glass to his lips. He took a long sip before putting it back down.

  “So that’d be like A to F, G to M, N to S, and T to Z in the four drawers.”

  “How’d you do that so fast?”

  “I was an accountant in an earlier life,” Trace said.

  “I hate accountants.”

  “Now I’m a drunk.”

  “I love drunks,” she said.

  “I noticed. So he broke into the second drawer, that’s G to M. What’s in that drawer that’s so important?”

  “Ask him,” she said. “Catch him and ask him, and after he tells you, kick him in the nuts for me. I’m going to put a head on this. You ready?”

  “Not yet,” Trace said. He noticed that she lurched a little as she walked toward the kitchen. She came back, put her glass down, and leaned back on the couch with her head on Trace’s shoulder. They sat quietly for a while.

  “It wasn’t G to M,” she said abruptly.

  “Why not?” he said.

  “Top drawer doesn’t count. I keep my checkbooks and stuff in there. The files start with the second drawer, maybe like A to H.”

  “Good. Now we’re getting somewhere. A to H.”

  “Talk about it later,” she said. “Kiss me now.”

  “That purple stuff on your face might be catching.”

  “Them’s bruises, son. Honestly won on the field of battle. ‘We few, we ancient few, we band of brothers,’ how’s it go?”

  “Happy few,” Trace said, “‘We few, we happy few, we band of brothers, for he today that sheds his blo
od with me shall be my brother.’”

  “Very good,” she said. “I’m impressed.”

  “The perils of a Jesuit education. I remember everything and understand nothing.”

  “Kiss me anyway,” she said, and he did.

  “It was Carey’s file they were looking for,” he said. “That’d be in that drawer.”

  She nuzzled her face into the hollow between Trace’s arm and chest. “Wanna make love?”

  “Not just now.”

  “Another drink?” she asked.

  “You just poured that one.”

  “Somebody musta stolen it while my back was turned.”

  Her glass was almost empty and he hadn’t even seen her drink it.

  “No, I’ll pass this round,” he said. “Hold on. I want to show you something.”

  He fetched from his pocket the green wax mold of teeth.

  “Recognize that?” he asked.

  “Obviously somebody who didn’t brush after every meal,” she said.

  “I think that’s the guy who cold-cocked you,” Trace said.

  “I didn’t get a chance to look into his mouth.”

  “Recognize it, though? You know anybody with a big ugly mouth like that?”

  “No. I only hang out with people with perfect teeth. I’m very prejudiced against bad teeth. Against empty glasses too.”

  She got up and teetered out to the kitchen. He heard the bottle cap fall on the floor. When she came back holding a glass, her hand was wet.

  “Only half full,” she said. “I’m tapering off.”

  As she set the glass down, the telephone rang and Trace watched her go to the phone and stand there, swaying gently in her shoeless feet.

  “Hello, George,” she said thickly. “No, I’m all right. Really, I’m feeling fine. Trace is here. Devlin Tracy. Right. Yeah. I’ll be okay. Thanks for calling. Oh. Okay.”

  She turned and held the phone out to him. “It’s George. He wants to talk to you.” She carried the phone to him.

  “Hello, Doc.”

  Jeannie took a sip of her drink, then curled up on the couch and put her head in Trace’s lap.

  “I met with Mrs. Carey and Muffy today. Dammit, they want to move Mr. Carey tomorrow. I couldn’t talk them out of it. I may have to get a court order to stop them.”

  “Did you warn them?”

  “I wouldn’t talk to that snotty broad. I don’t like her. But I told Mrs. Carey that her husband might die if she moved him.”

  “What’d she say to that?”

  “She said she wanted him home. She said her daughter would want that too.”

  “Sorry, Doc.”

  “Not as sorry as I am. I don’t even know if he’ll survive a trip home in an ambulance. Are you going to see Mrs. Carey?”

  Trace thought a moment and said, “Yes, I am. Tonight.”

  “Try to talk her out of it,” Matteson said.

  “I just might be able to.”

  “I owe you a big one if you can.”

  “Okay.”

  When he leaned forward to hang up the phone, Trace saw that Jeannie Callahan was sound asleep on his lap. He shook her shoulder. “Jeannie?”

  “Yes,” she said softly, her eyes still closed.

  “Did Mitchell Carey make out a new will in the hospital?”

  “Carey? New will?”

  “Did he make a new will out in the hospital?” Trace snapped the words to try to penetrate her drunken fog.

  “New will? New will? No. He can’t even talk, how’s make will?”

  He sat quietly for a moment and she was again asleep. When she was breathing deeply, he moved out from under her and gently placed a pillow under her head.

  He emptied their two drinks into the sink, then unplugged the telephone so its ringing wouldn’t wake her. He put on his jacket and walked toward the door, then came back and kissed her on the cheek.

  “I think I love you a little bit,” he said. “Maybe a whole lot. But what we’ve got here isn’t companionship, it’s two compulsions. Six months together and we’d both be dead, or our brains so pickled that we wouldn’t know if we were alive or dead. So long, little girl.”

  When he left, he locked the door tightly behind him.

  27

  Chico had gone back to her own motel and Trace talked with her for an hour on the telephone before he drove to Mrs. Carey’s home.

  The old woman seemed pleased to see him when she answered the door. “Come in, Mr. Tracy. Have you heard the good news?”

  “What news is that?” Trace said. He closed the door behind him but was careful that it did not click locked.

  “Mitchell’s coming home from the sanatorium. Tomorrow.”

  “That’s what I wanted to talk to you about,” Trace said.

  “Why don’t you go into the study and make yourself a drink? My tea is steeping, I’ll be right in.”

  In the study, Trace looked out the side window toward the bristling hedges jutting up from the rolling trimmed lawn like ghostly black apparitions. He shook his head and poured himself a drink from the liquor cabinet and was standing there when Muffy steamed into the room.

  “What are you doing here?”

  “I’ve come to talk to Mrs. Carey.”

  “If you’ve come to talk about Mr. Carey, forget it. Her mind is made up.”

  “Who made it up for her?”

  “She makes up her own mind.”

  “Good. Then she can change her own mind,” Trace said.

  “Listen, you—” she started.

  “No, you listen. I don’t like you. As far as I’m concerned, you’re a Svengalian little shit who’s got her hooks out for the Carey money, and you best back off or I’ll spend some time proving it. Now, go haunt a house. Or look in your crystal ball or something. If I want to hear from you, I’ll rattle your chain.”

  Muffy looked at him, then curled her lips back, baring her teeth. It was a feline gesture, the thing a cornered cat might do, Trace thought. Wordlessly, she walked from the room, and Trace again glanced toward the window but still saw nothing except the blackness of the night.

  Trace was sitting at the small table in the center of the room when Mrs. Carey returned with her tea on a tray.

  “Would you rather sit over here?” she said.

  “I wanted to talk business with you and I thought this was more businesslike,” he said.

  She joined him at the table, and while she poured tea and spooned honey into it, he looked past her toward the side window, but still saw nothing there that he wanted to see.

  She looked up at him expectantly and he said, “I’m here as Bob Swenson’s friend and a friend of yours, Mrs. Carey.”

  “Thank you. I’ve always sort of felt that,” she said.

  “You saw Dr. Matteson today?” he said, in a gentle question that needed no answer, but the woman nodded.

  “A nice man,” she said. “Very nice. And so caring.”

  “Then why don’t you listen to him? He told you it might be killing your husband to bring him home now.”

  She visibly winced when Trace said “killing,” but she sipped her tea, pursed her lips, and said, “I’m sorry, Mr. Tracy. Muffy just said you’d probably try to talk me out of it, but I have my reasons.”

  “What kind of reasons?”

  “I can’t tell you about them, but they’re very good reasons. We’re going to be a family again. A real family.”

  “I think I know your reasons, Mrs. Carey. You remember Houdini, the magician?”

  “Of course.”

  “Do you know he spent most of his adult life looking for a spiritualist, a medium, who wasn’t a fake? And he never found one?”

  She had a small smile on her lips, as if to say she had heard it all before. If she was surprised that Trace knew about her reasons for wanting her husband moved, she did not show it.

  “All the so-called spiritualists, the fancy mediums, the spoon-benders, the watch-starters, today, they’re all fakes,” Trace
said. “Magicians’ tricks.”

  “Some people never believe,” she said gently.

  Trace saw a motion over her shoulder and he nodded his head. “All right, Mrs. Carey, I didn’t want to do this, but let me show you just what you believe in, enough to maybe kill your husband.”

  He walked to the light switch by the door and turned it off. The room was lit only by the hall light shining through the partially opened door.

  He sat back down and said, “Close your eyes, Mrs. Carey, and hold my hands.”

  “This is—”

  “Please. Just do it.”

  Grudgingly, slowly, the woman complied, and a moment later, a soft eerie female voice filled the room.

  “Devlin, are you there? Are you there?”

  It was a soft and haunting voice, and Mrs. Carey’s eyes opened wide with shock.

  “Please, Mrs. Carey. Just listen. Yes, I am here,” he called out.

  “Devlin, this is your mother.”

  “Yes, Mother.”

  “It’s cold where I am.” As the voice spoke, Trace kept his eyes on Mrs. Carey. The shock on her face had seemed to give way to confusion, then annoyance.

  “Turn up the heat, Mother,” Trace said.

  “But they won’t let me, Devlin. They said I didn’t pay my bill. Come and get me, Devlin. In the great beyond. Come and get me, come and…” As the voice began to trail off, Trace said to the woman, “It’s a hoax, Mrs. Carey, don’t you see?”

  “How do you know? How can you be so sure?”

  “Because my mother’s not in any great beyond. She’s in the Bronx, busting my father’s chops.”

  “But—”

  “No buts. You want more? Here.” He nodded again and suddenly an apparition began to appear on the drapes at the far end of the room.

  “Look,” Trace said. He pointed toward the drapes, and Mrs. Carey followed his hand with her eyes. “A spirit picture,” he said.

  The image on the drapes danced a moment, then stopped. It was fuzzy and dull and unrecognizable, and as Trace watched, it began to slowly grind its way into focus.

  Finally the picture on the drapes was clear.

  It was a cartoon of Porky Pig.

  “Oh,” said Mrs. Carey with pain in her voice.