Green Thumb

by Ralph McInerny

  “That’s hackwork, Phil, as you know. I’ll put someone on it. Meanwhile, what do you say to lunch at Berghoff’s?”

  The prospect of the restaurant’s legendary sauerkraut made Phil leap at the invitation. For the next two hours, he and Nosey quaffed beer and ate like starving Germans. Nosey was a White Sox fan, but Phil was made tolerant by the Berghoff’s heavy fare and he listened to the captain’s hopes for the current season. He nursed in silence his own persistent if often dashed hopes for the Cubs. By the time they returned to Nosey’s office, the report was ready.

  “Zilch,” said Nosey. “We tried the hotels near the Newberry and then did a citywide search. No Samuel Sadler. What’s it all about?”

  “Just routine.”

  Nosey narrowed his eyes. “Wasn’t someone named Sadler found dead on the golf course at Notre Dame?”

  “This is his brother.”

  Nosey did not pursue it because he was interrupted by the ringing of his phone. Phil rose to go, pantomiming his thanks and heading for the door. By the time he looked back as he closed the door, Nosey had swung toward the window and was deep in conversation.

  On the jolting train ride back to South Bend, Phil got out his cell phone several times, but he returned it to his pocket without using it. Jimmy must be told of what he had learned, however tangential the information was to his investigation. But Phil wanted to talk to Roger first.

  In South Bend, trains, planes, automobiles, and buses all arrive at the airport. Phil caught a cab and was taken to the campus and the apartment he shared with Roger. When he came in, he was surprised to find Roger deep in conversation with Samuel Sadler. He greeted the two and beat it into the kitchen for a beer. Their voices came to him, the topic some essay on the French Revolution by an Italian named Manzoni. Phil went on to his own room and picked up the phone, then decided not to call Jimmy Stewart. No doubt there was a simple explanation for Samuel Sadler’s whereabouts when his brother was poisoned at Notre Dame. Surely Jimmy didn’t imagine that Samuel was the murderer.

  That was when Phil decided to take up what might have been Jimmy’s suggestion had he learned that Phil had drawn a blank in Chicago. He called Michigan City, the town he had just passed through when returning on the South Shore, and had Henry Wales, another professional friend and a chief of detectives, run a similar check of hotels in Michigan City. Within an hour the answer came. Nothing.

  “Call the major motel chains, Phil. They have common records.”

  “Good idea. Thanks.”

  “This have to do with the murder at Notre Dame?”

  Wales was an alumnus of Indiana University, which may have accounted for the edge in his voice when he mentioned Notre Dame.

  “Indirectly. Maybe.”

  None of the major chains had accommodated Samuel Sadler during the relevant days. Phil sat in puzzlement. From Roger’s study, the discussion continued. Reluctant to break it up, Phil pursued a wild possibility and put through a call to Niles, Michigan, a town just seven miles to the north. He spoke to another detective friend, Carl Bristol, who said he would check it out.

  While he waited, Phil heard Roger’s shuffling approach and then he was in the doorway. “Had a nap?”

  “Has he gone?”

  “No, no. Why don’t you join us, Phil?”

  “It’s all over my head.”

  “No, it’s over mine. He wants to talk baseball.”

  And so it was that Phil was deep in a discussion of the Minnesota Twins when the phone rang. Roger answered it and called out.

  “It’s for you, Phil. Detective Wales from Niles.”

  Phil took the call in the kitchen.

  “You said Samuel Sadler, Phil?”

  “Any luck?”

  “He stayed at the Wildflower Motel for three days.” He gave the dates.

  “Thanks, Carl.”

  “He any relation of the guy who was killed?”

  “His brother.”

  “Keep me posted, Phil.”

  Phil put down the phone and waited a minute before going back to the study. While he had been talking baseball with Samuel Sadler, all the puzzlement of his trip to Chicago had dissipated. How could so knowledgeable a fan come under suspicion? When he emerged, Roger and his guest were at the door.

  “I’m going to give him a ride back to the Morris Inn, Phil.”

  “Nonsense. I’ll take him. You’re going to make our supper, aren’t you?”

  And so it was arranged. Samuel got settled beside him on the seat of the golf cart and Phil set off.

  “You had a call from Niles,” Samuel said quietly.

  “I went up to Chicago. To the Newberry Library.”

  “And found I hadn’t been there?”

  “You were staying in Niles.”

  Samuel nodded. “The Newberry seemed a more plausible explanation. Often I find a motel room conducive to work. That’s what I was doing in Niles.”

  Phil let it go. He was grateful that Samuel knew that his story had been looked into and been found wanting. The rest was up to Jimmy Stewart.

  39

  Jimmy Stewart now seemed to have a choice between Maureen O’Kelly and Samuel Sadler as chief suspect, with some reluctance. He was still inclined toward Maureen. There was the long-standing quarrel between her and Mortimer Sadler. If it had only been something that happened years ago when they were undergraduates, the motive would have been less than weak. But what he had learned about the exchanges between the two the day before Sadler turned up dead—the bet on their golf game, his anger at Maureen for showing up at the closed alumni reunion he had planned—brought the whole thing into the present.

  Over and above motive, there was the question of means. The poison that had killed Sadler came from a kind of plant that Maureen O’Kelly cultivated in her Minneapolis garden. But there was still the matter of opportunity. How would Maureen have put a bottle of poisoned water in Sadler’s bag, betting that he would swill it down even during an early-morning round? That difficulty had been overcome when Stewart had a talk with Swannie, the head of the grounds crew at Burke.

  “Is it always this cool in here?” he asked Swannie. The low shed had doors on the north and south sides and they were wide open, allowing a breeze off the lake to pass through.

  “This is nothing. In the morning I have to wear a jacket.”

  “How early do you begin?”

  “We do the greens in first light, long before anyone shows up.”

  “Who’s we?”

  “I have a crew of three.”

  “They all do greens?”

  Swannie made a grunting sound. “I do the greens myself. Try to get anyone to show up before seven o’clock.”

  “You do them yourself?”

  “I enjoy it. And I want it done right.” His sad look grew sadder. “Who knows how long before they build on this nine.”

  It emerged that Swannie had been cutting the greens the morning Sadler was killed.

  “I start on nine and work backward.”

  “You saw him start off?”

  “I saw you and Phil Knight drive off one.” Swannie smiled and Jimmy remembered his skied drive that had gone but fifty yards. “I was already on the eighth green.”

  “You see the guy who started after us?”

  “I thought it was a twosome. Him and his wife.”

  “Why would you think that?”

  “I saw her come into the shelter behind the first tee. He was down practicing putting. He was already there when I did the ninth green.”

  “You saw a woman in the shelter.”

  “She came out and went to the cart the guy I thought was her husband had gotten ready before he went to the practice putting green.”

  “His clubs on the cart?”

  Swannie nodded. “All he needed was his putter.”

  “I don’t suppose you got a good look at her from the eighth green.”

  “A blonde.”

  “You sure?”

  “When
she came out of the shelter the sun hit her hair. Quite a dish she seemed, even from that distance.”

  “When we got to the sixth green it hadn’t been mown. It was dewy like all the others.”

  Swannie looked sheepish. “I was concentrating on what I was doing but the next time I looked he was heading for the second green in the cart. Alone. Naturally I wondered what had happened to the woman.”

  “Naturally.”

  “I could always finish the greens.”

  “You’re in charge. What did you do?”

  “I walked back along the ninth fairway when you and Knight had gone to the second tee. When I got back to the shelter, there was no sign of her. I went down to the practice green, but she wasn’t there, either. So I came in here for a cup of coffee.”

  All this had been established before Phil passed on the information about Samuel Sadler’s stay in the Niles motel. Jimmy decided to check out the brother before he confronted Maureen with what he had learned about her early morning appearance at the starter’s shelter on the first tee and the fact that she had been seen at Sadler’s cart while he was on the practice putting green. If nothing else, it would give him time to decide how to handle her.

  “You gathered the information, Phil. Come on with me when I talk to him.”

  It was Jimmy’s plan to question Samuel conspicuously in the lobby of the Morris Inn so that if Maureen noticed, she wouldn’t realize that she was still his primary suspect. When Samuel came down to the lobby in response to Jimmy’s call, his son Paul was with him.

  “You’re out of the hospital?” Jimmy said.

  “I’m fine.”

  Samuel looked from Phil to Jimmy after they had taken seats in the lobby. “So you’ve learned that I was in the vicinity when Mort died?”

  “In Niles.”

  “That’s right.”

  It was Paul who reacted. “What is this, anyway?”

  “Just a few routine questions.”

  “Don’t give me that crap. I warn you not to try to pin this on my father.”

  “Paul,” his father said gently. “No one has suggested such a thing.”

  “They better not. Look, Lieutenant, I’ll give you a hint. Take a look in Mrs. O’Kelly’s golf bag.”

  “Why would I do that?”

  “Just take a look!”

  “You think there’s a bottle of poisoned water in her bag, too?”

  “It’s in the trunk of her car out in the parking lot.”

  “You’re sure of that?”

  “Paul,” his father began, but his son was on his feet.

  “Why don’t we check?”

  “Break into her car?”

  Paul seemed not to have considered this problem, but as soon as he did he had a solution. “I’ll call Francie.”

  And off he went to the house phone at the front desk. Samuel looked at Jimmy and Phil apologetically. “He seems to think I need protection.”

  “Tell me about your relations with your brother.”

  Samuel sat back in silence for a moment. “I suppose you have to ask me these things. Very well.”

  And he told Jimmy and Phil what they already knew about the primary role that Mortimer had assumed in the family business as well as in the Sadler Foundation.

  “I know Paul thought that I was being slighted. Perhaps from time to time I was a little irked to be treated like the village idiot whenever anything practical was at stake. But the truth was I was relieved that Mort assumed the primary responsibility. It left me free for my own pursuits. After my wife died, I was even more grateful not to have to concern myself with business or the work of the foundation. Paul effectively became my proxy at meetings.”

  Paul joined them, accompanied by a puzzled Francie.

  “What is it?” she asked.

  “Francie, they want to see your mother’s golf bag.”

  “What?” She stepped away from Paul.

  “It’s just routine,” Paul said, looking to Jimmy for help.

  Francie turned to Jimmy Stewart. “Lieutenant, I want you to stop harassing my mother. Oh, I know what you’re after with all these questions. Where did you get the idea of looking at her golf bag?”

  All heads turned toward Paul, and Francie’s mouth opened as she stared at him. She turned to Jimmy Stewart.

  “All right. Let’s go look at her golf bag.”

  And she marched across the lobby to the entrance and the others fell into step behind her. Samuel put his arm around Paul’s shoulders.

  Francie was already at the car when they came into the parking lot. She got a key into the trunk and turned it. Slowly the door lifted. She stepped aside and waited for Jimmy Stewart. But it was Paul who got the bag out of the trunk and stood it up against the back bumper. Jimmy made a thorough search, unzipping pockets, taking out gloves and balls and tees. He then removed the clubs and examined the main compartment of the bag. He looked at Paul.

  “Nothing.”

  Francie glared at Paul. “What did you think they would find?”

  But Paul had pushed Jimmy aside and was searching the bag himself. Francie watched him with angry eyes, but there was the beginning of a smile on her lips.

  40

  That evening Phil was recounting these odd events to Roger when there was a knock on the door. It was Francie O’Kelly.

  “There’s something I have to tell you,” she said to Phil when she had come in.

  This was unusual. Phil usually felt like a spear carrier, someone all but invisible in the background, when Francie visited.

  “What is it?”

  “Now I know who put the plastic bag of deadly nightshade in my mother’s golf bag. Paul Sadler!”

  “What plastic bag?”

  “The one Paul thought you would find.” Her eyes went to Roger. “I’ve done a very stupid thing, thank God.”

  The two brothers listened to her account of taking her mother’s bag to practice on what was left of the old sixteenth fairway.

  “You can imagine what I thought when I found it.” She looked abject. “But now I know how it got there.”

  “You buried it?” Phil said.

  “Yes! What if I hadn’t? You and Lieutenant Stewart would have thought just what Paul wanted you to think. What an awful thing for him to do.”

  Roger had sat round eyed through her recitation. Now he began to rock back and forth on the center cushion of the couch.

  “Protecting his father?”

  “Why do you suppose he led Jimmy Stewart and Phil out to your mother’s car? To lead them away from his father.”

  “But he came along.”

  “You know what I mean.”

  For the first time she sat, falling into a chair as if she had been dropped. “He thinks his father is guilty?”

  She fell silent and the anger she had been feeling toward Paul seemed to melt away. It would be difficult for her to forget what Paul had attempted to do to her mother, but this explanation made them oddly allies, children protecting their parents.

  “That’s nuts,” Phil said.

  “Why?” Francie asked sharply.

  In a ruminative voice, Roger outlined what he assumed to be Paul’s thinking. Paul attributed to his father the resentment of Mortimer Sadler that he himself felt. Mortimer Sadler Hall, so equivocally named, represented Mortimer seeking to take sole credit for his family’s generosity in providing the building to Notre Dame. How could his father not secretly seethe as he contemplated the usurpations of his younger brother? Samuel’s secretive presence in the neighborhood when his brother was poisoned enabled Paul to leap to the conclusion that it was his father who had put the bottle of poisoned water in Mortimer’s golf bag, intending the result that had in fact occurred.

  “I still say it’s nuts,” Phil said.

  “Of course there is another explanation.”

  “What?” Francie sat up at the suggestion.

  But Roger was slow to answer and when he did his voice had dropped a register. “He
could have been diverting suspicion from himself.”

  “But Paul was poisoned, too.”

  “Yet you are sure he planted a plastic bag of deadly nightshade in your mother’s golf bag.”

  “He had to.”

  Phil was on his feet. “Come show me where you buried it.”

  They went together, all three, Phil at the wheel of the golf cart, Roger squeezed into the seat beside him, Francie in back, riding side saddle, as it were, and leaning forward between the two brothers.

  The sun was a red disc in the western sky when they turned onto the Burke golf course, went up past the tiled drinking fountain and out on the ninth fairway. The course was deserted now, and the hum of insects was beginning to give way to the chirp of their nocturnal counterparts. Birds made lazy swings through the sky, the penultimate swoops before the sun would suddenly drop from sight and twilight come on.

  Francie directed Phil to the black metal fence that separated the remnant of the sixteenth fairway from Cedar Grove Cemetery. It took a while before she located the spot. She clambered out of the cart and knelt, pulling away clumps of dirt tufted with grass. She turned, holding up the plastic bag.

  It was Roger who took it from her, holding it up so that the rays of the setting sun made the plastic shine and brought out the colors of its contents. He nodded. “How did you know what it was, Francie?”

  “I’ve seen the plant at home.”

  “Did you notice it in the window box in Paul’s room?”

  “Is that why we went there?”

  “I suppose it could have been determined whether these came from his plant.”

  “Could have been?”

  “The window box is now gone.”

  “It had to come from there.”

  Phil had been listening impatiently. “But why did he put it in Mrs. O’Kelly’s golf bag?”

  “For the same reason he led you and Jimmy to her car.”

  “To divert suspicion from his father?”

  “Or from himself.” Roger’s words seemed to lift like smoke into the suddenly twilit air. Beyond the fence, in Cedar Grove, a figure stood motionless beside a grave, wholly unaware of the trio on the fairway.