A Study in Amber

by Phyllis Humphrey

  “If you did, he could figure it out, I’m sure,” Tessa insisted. “Besides everything else, he’s often fixed my computer when I didn’t know what I was doing and made it crash.”

  “Crash?” Holmes asked.

  “That’s a term for when the machine suddenly stops working and you haven’t a clue why.” I shrugged. ”Computers can be very temperamental.”

  Tessa chimed in again. “But Doc Watson would be able to figure out the password, if it had one. Why don’t we call him anyway?”

  By that time, I’d already pressed a lot of icons on the screen, but hadn’t found the name of the phone’s owner or anything useful. I glanced at my watch. “It’s almost eleven. We can’t call him now.”

  “Of course we can. He won’t be in bed yet, and I have his number on my speed dial.” Tessa pulled out her own cell phone and pressed the number before I could stop her.

  She moved closer and let us hear her side of the conversation. “Doc, it’s Tessa. Can you come over right away? We need your expertise.” Pause. “No, my granddaughter’s apartment.” Pause. “Thank you.”

  While we waited the few minutes for Watson to arrive, I explained more about him to Holmes. “He is not your Doctor Watson. He’s a young man and never went to medical school or served with the British army in Afghanistan.” Which reminded me that I actually knew a young man who’d been with the U.S. Army in a more recent war in Afghanistan. But, again, I digress.

  Holmes sighed and crossed his arms over his chest, as if thinking of ways to dispute my words.

  Still trying to get information, I clicked “Contacts” on the killer’s cell phone and scrolled through a bunch of names.

  Watson opened the downstairs door and bounded up the stairs. He greeted Tessa with a kiss on the cheek, then turned a smiling face to me. “What’s up?”

  I gestured toward the sofa. ”Do you know my guest?”

  He looked around. “What guest?”

  So much for my wondering if Doc might be able to see Holmes. “Never mind.” I pointed him to a chair at the table, sat in the opposite chair and handed him the second cell phone. “Do you know how to get someone’s name from his phone?”

  “You mean am I a good hacker?”

  “You don’t have to break in. I’ve already opened it. I have an important reason for needing some information in this one.”

  He shrugged and took it from me. “So what is it you want to know?” He turned it over in his hands, and then I thought I heard it ring.

  Yet Doc didn’t put the phone up to his ear or do anything to it. Instead, he stood, pulled his own cell from his belt and answered that. “Watson here. What’s your problem?”

  Naturally, I didn’t hear the other end of the conversation, but it appeared he took a maintenance call from one of his clients.

  “Be right there,” he said next, and beelined for the door. “I’ll let you know if I won’t be back soon.”

  As he swung past Tessa, she grabbed his jacket sleeve. “Who is it? Anyone I know? What’s wrong?”

  Watson stopped at the doorway. “Mrs. Foster. She has a flood in her kitchen. Water everywhere.” Then he pounded down the stairs.

  I hurried over to Tessa. “Do you know Mrs. Foster?”

  “She lives in the last house on this block, the one with the pink front door.”

  Holmes hadn’t moved a muscle and I turned back to him and explained. “It looks like we won’t get any help tonight.”

  His mouth turned up in a wicked smile. “Perhaps. But I suggest you try to retrieve the murderer’s device. Your Doc Watson has run off with it.”

  Once again, Holmes had been more observant than I. It took me a few seconds to realize Watson had apparently clipped his own phone on his belt again, but forgot he held the one I’d handed him. I gave the table a quick glance, but it wasn’t there.

  “Oh my gosh, I’ll have to follow him. I can’t let that phone out of my sight.”

  I grabbed my poncho off its peg and raced down the steps, calling, “Watson, wait!” But he’d already fled down the stairs and out the door. I threw my poncho over my shoulders and stepped onto the front porch. Watson sprinted down the sidewalk to my left, and I called to him again, but he didn’t answer.

  I groaned. Since Tessa had told me where Watson was headed, I decided I needn’t run and merely walked at a fast pace. I caught up to him at Mrs. Foster’s building. Apparently he waited for someone to answer his ring and press the button to unlock the front door.

  “The phone,” I said. “You walked off with the cell phone I wanted you to look at.”

  He glanced at his hand. “You’re right. Sorry.” He stared at the screen. “Try ‘Home.’ Lots of people put their land line phone number in there. Worth a try.” He gave it back to me just as I heard a click on the door latch and he could go inside Mrs. Foster’s building. “See you later.”

  “Right.” I turned around to retrace my steps. Walking slowly, I did as Watson had suggested and, sure enough, a phone number appeared opposite the word ‘Home.’

  I’d gone about halfway back when I had an eerie feeling someone walked behind me. I’d been too busy finding my way to the land-line telephone number I wanted and failed to pay attention to my surroundings. I whirled around, but my follower must have ducked behind a tree. Cold chills crawled up my spine. Should I continue on my way home—where only Tessa and a not-available Holmes awaited—or go back to the pink-door house where I’d find Watson? But only if Mrs. Foster buzzed me in.

  I didn’t do either. Suddenly I felt something hard dig into my back.

  “I have a gun,” a male voice informed me. “Don’t turn around and I won’t hurt you.”

  Chapter 6

  “Who are you?” I didn’t look behind me, but my legs had turned to jelly.

  “I just want what belongs to me. I want my backpack.”

  “I don’t know what you’re talking about.” Ever since childhood, I’d denied knowing anything I was asked about in case I were the guilty party. Which was probable in my overly-curious youth.

  “I know you have my cell phone and I’d left it in my backpack, so that means you have it, too.”

  Smart man, but I don’t give in easily. “What makes you so sure I have your cell phone?”

  His tone had become gruff and serious. “Because I put a GPS in it and I tracked it to you.”

  A GPS in his phone? I knew that to be possible, so I’d have to admit I had it. Sooner or later.

  “I don’t have your backpack.” I resisted the urge to turn, but I raised my voice. “The building landlord took it and is going to give it to the police.”

  “Damn!” He paused. “Keep your back turned and spread out your arms so I can see.”

  I stalled a moment. I opened my poncho with both hands, hoping the folds of the thing, along with the darkness, would conceal the phone in my hand. No such luck.

  He grabbed my arm and snatched the phone away. “I was right. This is mine.”

  I played dumb. “I don’t believe you. Who are you, anyway?”

  No answer.

  “How did you come to leave it in that flat?” Still no answer, and I didn’t move. I’m cowardly that way. But then I heard running footsteps. I turned in time to catch only a glimpse of a man sprinting down the street. Damn!

  I returned to the house and climbed the stairs to my apartment. Holmes looked anxious, but Tessa wasn’t there.

  Reading my mind, Holmes said, “Your grandmother has retired for the night, but I shall remain if you have something of interest to report.”

  As briefly as I could, I described what had happened, how the murderer forced me to return his phone and then disappeared again. I glanced at my watch. “Its almost midnight. Why don’t we retire and I’ll tell you more about it in the morning?”

  He stared upward for a moment and clasped his hands behind his back. “Very well. I suspect you know you will lose the wager we have made, and that is why you are in no hurry to explain. Tell Mrs
. Hudson I will have tea in the morning. Good night.”

  He disappeared through the doorway into the hall and soon I heard the door of the guest bedroom close.

  * * *

  Holmes did not have tea the next morning after all, there being no Mrs. Hudson to bring it to him. However, I’d become addicted to tea during my visit to England, so, when he entered the sitting room where Watson and I sat at the table, I was drinking tea and serving coffee to Watson. Holmes didn’t even mention tea. He looked the same as he had the night before, apparently requiring neither tea nor a change of clothes. I was learning a lot about ghosts.

  He paced the floor, the only exercise he might get in his present condition, and stopped in front of the fireplace. “Satisfactory or not, tell me what occurred last night. Did you retrieve the murderer’s telephone device?”

  “Yes and no.”

  Watson interrupted me. “Are you speaking to Holmes?”

  “Yes.” I had spent thirty minutes before Holmes emerged from his room, not just sharing croissants with Watson but explaining about the way the ghost of Holmes had entered my life. So Watson merely listened to me and stared, as I did, toward the fireplace.

  I told Holmes about Doc returning the cell phone to me and how the murderer—or whoever he was—put a gun in my back and took his phone away from me.

  Holmes’s face bore a puzzled look. “How could he possibly know you had it and where you were?”

  I turned to Watson. “He wants to know how.” I explained some more. “As I said before, you can’t hear Holmes, but he can hear you.”

  Watson spoke as he might have while explaining things to a group of students when he taught schoolchildren. “The man told Sherry he had a GPS in his cell phone, which could be remotely activated and reveal its whereabouts if he lost it.”

  “A GPS?” Holmes approached the table. “What the devil is a GPS?”

  “He wants to know what a GPS is,” I said to Watson. “Remember he has over a hundred years of technology to catch up with.”

  Watson sighed before beginning. “GPS stands for Global Positioning System, and it enables us to know our exact position anywhere in the world.”

  Holmes seemed thoughtful for a long moment, then spoke in a loud voice. “My word! That is truly amazing.”

  “However, you don’t want to know how it works,” I said, reminding him of his disinterest in the solar system and other scientific discoveries.

  “On the contrary. I do not wish to clutter up my mind with unnecessary details, but the ability to locate someone anywhere in the world is a tool any detective should rejoice to own.”

  I repeated his words to Watson.

  “Oh, but it’s not that simple.” Watson then went on to explain about the satellites orbiting the earth which send signals to devices that are designed to receive them. “And you can’t just find someone if he doesn’t want to be found.”

  Holmes paced some more, no doubt absorbing the information. “If one cannot track a fugitive via this method, then what practical good is it?”

  “It’s very practical,” I insisted. “Today almost every new automobile is equipped with one, and it will tell the driver which routes to take in order to reach a specific destination. They have built-in maps, too, so you don’t need a paper map in order to get where you want to go without getting lost. A recording with a woman’s or man’s voice gives turn-by-turn instructions.”

  Holmes sounded a bit sarcastic. “Admirable, I’m sure.”

  Watson, having apparently warmed to his topic, went on, explaining how the system developed, about the twenty-four satellites and their orbits and the accuracy of GPS receivers.

  As if reluctantly accepting the explanation, Holmes dropped heavily into the arm chair. “Very well. I grant you this GPS is a remarkable device, but our task is to find a murderer and you say we can’t find him, even with the device, if he doesn’t wish to be found.”

  I repeated that to Watson, and then added. “Thanks, by the way, for suggesting I try pressing ‘Home’ on his phone. That worked.”

  Holmes leaned forward. “What worked? Are you saying you found the man’s name in that device?”

  “Not his name, but something almost as good. His home telephone number.” I confess I smirked a bit at this point. “And Watson, here, turned that number into a name and address.”

  Watson took up the explanation. “There’s a reference book called a Reverse Telephone Directory which can do that if you know how to access it.”

  Holmes rose and came to the table quickly. “You say the directory told you his name and where he lives? Then why are you sitting here so calmly? We must tell the authorities and go there at once.”

  I turned to Watson and told him what Holmes said.

  Doc shifted in his chair. “Well, not exactly. I do have his last name, which is Parton, but I’m waiting for the service to give me the rest. The public really isn’t supposed to have access to these things, but hackers have done it and some companies also sell the information.”

  Holmes turned about and did more pacing. “I see.”

  I took a final gulp of tea and spoke to Holmes. “Even if we get an address, we won’t necessarily want to go there. Or even tell the authorities.”

  “I quite understand.” He turned and gave me a self-satisfied look. “If the American crime investigators are anything like the British ones, they will use information to their own advantage and claim to have discovered it themselves.”

  He paced again, gaze unfocused, as if, in his mind’s eye, he remembered a different place and time. “I recall an incident in which Inspector Lestrade accused me of murdering a detective because his superiors assumed I had given him information and then held a grudge because he failed to give me credit for it.” He snorted. “What rubbish!”

  “I believe I read that in one of the stories Sir Arthur Conan Doyle wrote about you.”

  “Personally, I do not care who solves crimes, so long as they are solved. However, since you found this particular bit of information, it’s up to you to decide if you will share it with the authorities.”

  I removed the cups and dishes from our places and put them on a tray at the edge of the table. “I don’t care, either, but, in my opinion, we don’t really know this man is the murderer, or even if a murder occurred at all.”

  “You mean because of the lack of sufficient blood?” Holmes said.

  “Exactly. You and I both remarked on it last night. Tessa having found bloodstains on her skirt after sitting on the hearth fender, along with the few stains I found on the rug, made me wonder. I lay awake for a time last night thinking about it.”

  I turned to Watson while I explained. “Surely if the dead man had been shot there should have been a lot of blood.”

  “Yeah, according to the television and movie crime shows I’ve seen, there would be.”

  “Yet,” I continued, “Mr. Kostich, the landlord, claimed the neighbor reported ‘a gun shot,’ not ‘several’ gunshots.”

  “Aha,” said Holmes, drawing near. “That is significant. And, in my experience, even a single shot can cause the victim—Mr. Andrews, you say?—to bleed copiously.”

  “But suppose Andrews had fallen,” I said, “perhaps during a fight with the other man, and struck his head on the marble fender, thereby leaving a small amount of blood, some of which Tessa found on her skirt.”

  Holmes stared at me with a serious look. “Can you get into that flat again? Will Mr. Kostitch allow it?”

  I knew exactly what he proposed. If Andrews had not been shot at all, the bullet from that gun must be somewhere else. “When Tessa and I went there the evening before, we hadn’t seen a bullet or bullet hole, but the room being so dim, we saw very little. Without my magnifying glass, I might not even have noticed the small patch of blood on the carpet.”

  “Take a torch this time,” Holmes said. I knew he meant flashlight, “and search for a bullet in the fireplace or possibly the wall next to the fireplace.”<
br />
  “If he won’t let me in...“

  Watson interrupted.“I just happen to have a pass key.” He smiled. “Because he’s one of my customers.”

  I frowned. “I don’t think it’s a good idea to just sneak in without permission.”

  “What if he doesn’t give permission?” Doc said.

  “Well, in that case, maybe.”

  “But we’d have to do it at night.”

  “What do we have to do at night?” The question came from Tessa who had entered, as usual, without knocking first.

  “We’ve been talking about going back to the murder scene and looking for a bullet or bullet hole.”

  “Goody. I’ll go too. And it will be at night? Even better.”

  “You won’t be coming with us this time,” I told her. “Watson and I will do it.”

  She groaned. “How can I be useful if you won’t let me go?” With a sigh, she sank into an armchair.

  Holmes had settled in the chair by the fireplace again and stroked his chin. “In the meantime, what other leads do you intend to pursue toward the solution to this puzzle?”

  I took the tray into the kitchen, giving me time to think about what so-called leads we had. When I returned to the sitting room, I had one idea at least.

  “That newspaper clipping. The Chicago Tribune is a well-known newspaper and it’s possible libraries carry copies of it in their microfilm files.”

  Tessa got to her feet. “I can do that. I’m very familiar with our library. Heaven knows I used those old microfilm files for research many times. That was before Google.” She looked toward Holmes, as if he knew what she was talking about.

  “Yet, do they have the exact newspaper we want to see?” Nevertheless, I decided to take her up on her offer. “All right, you can come with me. You’re familiar with the library files, so it will save time, and I know what to look for in the newspaper.”

  Holmes spoke up. “And I? What am I allowed to do? I don’t even know what you are talking about. What is a microfilm file and why is it in a library?”

  “You know the word “micro” and you know “film,” so microfilm is a small reproduction of a piece of film produced by a photograph. It’s a method to store thousands of pages of newspapers, and other material, without taking up acres of space.” I paused. “While Tessa and I are gone, Watson can explain it to you.”