by Barbara Paul
Not until I was investigating him. I remembered the casual way he’d taken the news that I had evidence of his chicanery, almost as if he’d been expecting it. No almost: he had been expecting it. He had known what I was doing, and he’d taken steps to protect himself. He wouldn’t have gone looking for evidence incriminating me if he hadn’t known he would need it. Someone had tipped him off.
Lieutenant D’Elia had known of Wightman’s resignation the same day it happened. Since then I’d more or less dismissed the idea of a spy reporting to outsiders as too preposterous to be taken seriously. Spies within the business, yes—but an eclectic snitch? Sounded nutty, but that must be it. Somebody at Speer’s was moonlighting as a pipeline-for-hire.
Who knew about my investigation of Wightman? I dismissed Nedda; she knew something was in the wind but I’d told her no details. That left only three people: Peg McAllister, June Murray, and me. I knew I hadn’t tipped Wightman off, even accidentally. And Peg McAllister would shoot herself before she’d do anything to harm the business.
That left June.
It made sense. When I’d first started my investigation of Wightman’s private deals, I’d sent June to the file room to dig out all the negative reports he’d ever filed, as a starting point for Valentine. In order to conduct a similar investigation of me, Wightman would’ve had to have access to the negative reports I had filed. June already knew how to go about looking for damaging evidence. She was the logical one to supply Wightman with the ammunition he’d needed.
I spent the rest of the flight back to Pittsburgh working on a plan for dealing with my oh-so-perfect secretary.
CHAPTER 10
The first thing I noticed when I got home from San Francisco was a nick in the leg of a maple Pilgrim chair I’d bought only the week before.
“How did it happen?” I demanded of Nedda. “How could you possibly have let it happen?”
She raised a lazy eyebrow at me. “I’m supposed to stand guard over your chairs? The cleaning service was here yesterday. It must have happened then.”
I was appalled. “The cleaning service? You let the cleaning service handle my chairs?”
Nedda looked amused. “What are they supposed to do—skip every room that has one of your chairs in it? They’d end up cleaning just the kitchen and the bathrooms.”
“And I suppose they sit on them and rest in between chores,” I said in disgust.
“They know better than that. This service is used to handling antiques—normally they’re very careful. Earl, if you insist on keeping those chairs here instead of in the gallery where they belong, you shouldn’t be too surprised when an accident happens.”
“Get a new cleaning service. A bonded one. I can’t have this kind of thing. I don’t know if that nick can be—”
“They’re all bonded,” Nedda said with an edge in her voice. “And what makes you think the next service would be better? It’d probably be worse. The service we use is a good one, and I’m not going to all the trouble of looking for a better one just because you’ve cluttered up the house with more antique chairs than anyone could possibly want.”
“I want them,” I pointed out. “And I want them here. Nedda, if you’d ever take the time to look at the chairs—really look at them—you wouldn’t see them as clutter.”
“Every time I turn around I stumble over one of those damned chairs,” she snapped. “Amos’s porcelain, at least, doesn’t take up much room. You men and your little acquisitions.”
“You don’t exactly live the spartan life yourself,” I said mildly. “Come on, Nedda, it’s not worth quarreling about.”
“Not so long as you get your way. Earl, I don’t mind a few goodies stolen from the gallery, but you’ve gone too far. Who was it said moderation in all things?”
“Columbia Pictures,” I said promptly, trying for a light note. “Some guy talking to Ronald Colman in Lost Horizon.”
She didn’t smile.
Time for the branches’ quarterly reports, and I got a shock: Speer Galleries’ overall profits were down. I’d expected it of the San Francisco office—Wightman’s doing. And I’d put a lot of the home office money into my chair collection—all recoverable, of course. But it was the London branch that was the surprise; it showed a dip in profits that was totally unexpected. And the fault, I was angry to learn, lay in the new rare books department.
I read through the report submitted by the woman I’d put in charge. Her name was Deborah Ainsley and she’d written a wordy account of how rare books moved in long-term cycles and how we were now in the buying half of the cycle. Two years from now, she promised, the investments she was making now would pay off handsomely.
Maybe. I got on the phone and called H. L. Sprogg, the London branch manager. I asked him about the Ainsley woman’s explanation of long-term cycles in the rare books trade. “Straight answer, Mr. Sprogg. Do rare books move in cycles?”
He hesitated. Then: “I don’t really know, Mr. Sommers. Rare books—well, they don’t seem to follow any normal rules that I can see. Also, they require a very, very specialized kind of knowledge.” He hesitated again. “That’s why I was so concerned when you appointed Mrs. Ainsley to establish a rare books department.”
I remembered he’d harrumphed a little but he hadn’t really said anything. “If you didn’t think she was qualified, you should have told me so at the time.”
Again that hesitation. “If you’ll remember, Mr. Sommers, you presented me with a fait accompli. You did not consult me, you informed me. I thought it extraordinary at the time to find a brand-new department established on my own turf without my being consulted. And such a specialized department at that. Mr. Sommers, I understand you have your own way of doing things over there, but here we find it best to take on a new line only after a careful study of the market and consultation with all the parties involved.” Meaning him. “I did try to suggest caution at the time.”
Yeah, I guess he did at that. “Is it Mrs. Ainsley then? Is she the problem?”
All the way across the Atlantic I could hear Sprogg choosing his words carefully. “Mrs. Ainsley’s intentions are above reproach,” he finally said. “But sometimes I suspect she overestimates her own knowledge. She loves rare books, there’s no doubt of that. Unfortunately, a love of one’s specialty doesn’t automatically guarantee proficiency. And you did give her virtually autonomous powers, Mr. Sommers. She has been investing heavily in items she’s convinced will return a profit. But, ah, she’s, how shall I say, misjudged before—”
“You mean she’s in over her head.”
“I’m afraid so. Frankly, I feel most uneasy, having to rely on her investments to bring our overall profit picture back up to its normal level.”
Damn the woman. “Suggestions?”
“Mrs. Ainsley has invested too heavily for us to write the department off as a loss. The only solution I can see is to bring in a bona fide expert and see what he can salvage.”
“Have you started looking for one?”
Sprogg admitted that he had. “But rare books experts are almost as rare as the books they handle. The few I found who were even remotely interested said they would come only as department head. They refused absolutely to serve as assistant to someone who doesn’t really know the field.”
“Then fire her,” I said. “Get her out of there.”
Sprogg was shocked. “Oh, I couldn’t do that. Mrs. Ainsley has been with us for eighteen years. She was a good general agent before, ah, before the rare books. I can’t dismiss her out of hand.”
“Then ease her out, Sprogg. Get her back to doing her old work and bring in someone who knows what’s what. How you handle it is your business—but find a way to handle it. And find it soon.”
“I’ll do what I can,” he said doubtfully.
I hung up, disgusted with this turn of events. The woman had convinced me completely—I’d thought she knew her stuff.
So the man you couldn’t fool had been right once again; A
mos Speer had said something like this would happen. I should have let it alone.
I’d rented a small furnished apartment instead of relying on motel rooms. She was waiting for me when I got there.
“I was beginning to think you’d changed your mind,” she smiled at me.
“Am I late? Sorry. I didn’t realize.”
“My watch is probably fast,” she said accommodatingly.
We were being polite. June looked calm, far calmer than I felt. She wasn’t going to lose her poise over something as mundane as taking a midday sex break with her boss.
She’d fixed a shaker of martinis; the perfect secretary. When I’d figured out June must be the one who was helping Wightman, my first impulse had been to fire her. But that wouldn’t have been too smart. I had a feeling June could be very useful. Somehow Wightman had won her allegiance; it was up to me to win it back. Since I didn’t really know what she wanted, all I could think of was sexual flattery. Besides, I’d always wanted to see what June Murray looked like with her hair mussed up and her make-up smeared and her clothing rumpled.
I tasted the martini: too sweet. “Perfect,” I said. “How do you like the apartment?”
“Very attractive. How long have you had it?”
“Three days.” Got that, sweetie? The place was rented just for you.
The first time was a bit strained; the second went a little better. June wasn’t exactly submissive in bed, but she let me do all the work. Afterwards I forced myself to lie still for the mandatory postcoital chitchat; maybe I could learn something. I led the conversation around to what she really wanted out of life.
“Good work, good health, good friends.” It sounded memorized.
“That’s all?”
She laughed. “There’s something else?”
“Are you happy doing secretarial work?”
But she didn’t take the bait. June was too smart to start asking for things after only one session in bed.
We were both playing roles. I was the conventional lecherous employer who took it for granted that secretaries were put on this earth to service their bosses in any way demanded of them. June was the female servant whose only purpose in life was making her master comfortable. And if you think June Murray was type-cast, you believe in Santa Claus.
For several days I’d been noticing a man loitering around the entrance to the gallery. He was there when I arrived in the morning and there when I left at night. Once he was seated in a parked car; the other times he was just standing on the sidewalk. He made no effort to appear like a casual passerby; he was just there, watching. The unsettling part was that he looked vaguely familiar.
Then one Friday morning it hit me: he was the voiceless sergeant who’d been with Lieutenant D’Elia during the investigation of Amos Speer’s murder. I called police headquarters and asked for D’Elia.
“Are you having me watched?” I demanded when he came on the line.
“Why do you ask that, Mr. Sommers?”
“You know damned well why I ask that. That man of yours, Sergeant whatsisname—he’s been out front every day this week.”
“Sergeant Pollock. Yes, I posted him there.”
“You posted him? Why?”
“We still have an unsolved murder on the books, remember,” he said unhelpfully.
“So how is watching Speer’s front entrance going to solve it?”
“You never know what might turn up. By the way, you might like to hear that your security guards are meticulous about not letting unauthorized visitors into the gallery. Sergeant Pollock was most impressed.”
“Meaning he couldn’t get in?”
A low chuckle came over the wire. “Now, Mr. Sommers, I think you know we can gain access any time we wish. But we don’t want to disturb you any more than we have to.”
“Well, you are disturbing me, Lieutenant DEE-lia,” I said, deliberately mispronouncing his name. “A cop very obviously watching the entrance all day? You think that’s not disturbing?”
“Duh-LEE-uh,” he corrected pleasantly. “I’m sorry you’re disturbed. I’ll tell Pollock to be more discreet.”
I slammed the receiver down; I wasn’t getting anywhere this way. It seemed incredible to me that the police didn’t have anything better to do than stand around all day watching the front entrance of Speer’s. What did D’Elia hope to accomplish?
Maybe he’d already accomplished it: he’d rattled me. Maybe D’Elia just wanted to remind me, once again, that he was keeping an eye on me. Still watching. Still not letting me off the hook. Did the Pittsburgh police really have so much manpower they could afford to waste a sergeant on watching a building all day just so he’d be seen twice?
Wait a minute—maybe he didn’t watch all day. If the purpose of his being there was to throw a scare into me, then Pollock needed to be visible only when I arrived and when I left. I hurried down to the front entrance and out into the street.
The January wind told me I should have grabbed my coat. I looked both ways down the street; no sign of Pollock. I looked into the parked cars; nobody. I double-checked, then went back inside. Sergeant Pollock was there only at times I could be expected to see him. He’d been sent there to intimidate me.
Lieutenant D’Elia didn’t have anything on me. He wouldn’t be playing these half-assed games if he did. In cases where hard evidence is lacking, apply psychological pressure—did police manuals actually print things like that? He couldn’t get me; I was safe. I kept telling myself that. It didn’t help much. Just knowing you’re suspected by the police is all it takes to throw your digestive processes permanently out of whack. And it was so damned unfair. I didn’t kill Amos Speer. Charlie Bates did.
Peg McAllister was waiting in the outer office when I got back. “Got a minute, Earl? A decision needs to be made.”
Then make it, I felt like saying. Instead I told her to come on in.
“It’s these agreements with Wightman’s victims,” Peg said. “Going pretty well, on the whole. Most of them are so delighted to be handed extra money that they sign on the spot. But a few are making trouble noises. They don’t want to settle for an estimate.”
We were up against the problem of figuring out just how much each piece of purloined porcelain was worth. I’d told Peg that Wightman and I had reached an agreement; we would reimburse the people he’d bilked and he would pay us back in installments. I’d said he couldn’t help us in determining the value of the porcelain because he’d destroyed all his records to avoid incriminating himself. So Peg and I had hit on the plan of paying off on the basis of what similar pieces of porcelain had sold for recently. And now Peg was saying there were a few soreheads who wanted to know exactly what their pieces had gone for.
“So,” Peg concluded, “we’re going to have to decide whether we want to try to trace their porcelain for them, or continue bargaining in the hope that they’ll back down.”
I groaned. “Which would cost more?”
“No way of telling. Tracing the porcelain could be an expensive undertaking, or we might get lucky and find what we need straight off. The bargaining might stretch out so long that the final settlements get inflated all out of proportion, or we might reach agreement next week. There’s no way to know.”
Hell. “What do you suggest?”
“Continue the bargaining. Just to avoid using two different standards for reaching agreement.”
I nodded. “Okay, that’s what we’ll do, then.” One decision was as bad as another. “Take care of it, will you?”
When Peg had left, I pulled out the last quarterly reports from the branches and went over them for the hundredth time. I just couldn’t find any way of diverting profits from the Rome and Munich branches into what I now thought of as the Wightman Sucker Fund. Not to mention the Sommers Sucker Fund. There were all sorts of ways of juggling books, but I had to make Peg think there was money coming in periodically from Wightman. If I suddenly denied her access to the books, she’d get suspicious.
If worse came to worst, I could always sell my chairs. Holding back the Duprée until last. That would bring in the money, but it would go on the books as profit from normal business deals since the chairs legally belonged to Speer Galleries and not to me personally. Damn it to hell, why should I have to give up my chairs? But with profits down it could easily come to that. But say I did that; say I sold my chairs and made everything right with the people on the sucker lists. Peg would still start wondering when Wightman was going to start paying off. And Peg wasn’t a person to leave loose ends lying around.
Peg was the stumbling block. If she’d just keep her nose out of this, I could handle it. I started thinking it was about time for Peg McAllister to retire.
“His name is Arthur Simms,” Valentine said. “He’s a financial advisor with Keystone Management Consultants. Harvard Business College, positions with various management firms in Oklahoma City, Denver, Chicago, Atlanta. Came to Keystone two years ago. Each move involved a sizable increase in salary. Forty years old, married, two children.”
Arthur Simms. Good name for a playmate.
“They meet regularly in an apartment in Shadyside. Mrs. Sommers rented it under an assumed name.”
My mouth dropped open. That was the same section of town where I’d rented an apartment to meet June. I asked Valentine for the exact address. He told me; only five or six blocks from my place. Christ.
“How regularly do they meet?” I asked.
“At least twice a week, sometimes three times.”
We were sitting in a bar. I didn’t want Valentine coming into my office in case Peg should happen to see him and wonder what he was working on now. (Peg again!) The detective droned on, giving me more details about the man Simms. “He’s respected in professional circles—his specialty is advising companies that are in financial difficulties. In his personal life his reputation seems to be equally high. So far as I could determine, this is his first extramarital affair. Either that, or he is extraordinarily discreet.”
