Now we were getting somewhere. “Do you remember who called him?”
Mrs. Swenson opened a notebook on her desk. “Mr. Fairfax had me keep a detailed log of all of his calls.” She flipped to the last page. “A woman calling herself Miss Schmidt called at seven minutes past nine that morning. She insisted Mr. Fairfax was expecting her call. I usually never put someone through to him once he asked me to hold his calls. When Mr. Fairfax overheard me repeat her name as I wrote it down, he called out for me to put it through and shut the door.”
I pulled out my notebook and wrote down Miss Schmidt’s name. I played a hunch. “Do you remember if she had an accent?”
Mrs. Swenson thought about it. “Yes. Not British, though. Similar, but harsher. German maybe?”
German. And I bet Miss Schmidt was actually Countess Alexandra von Holstein. “Do you remember this Miss Schmidt ever calling here before?”
“Never,” she said. “I would’ve remembered the accent. And even if I didn’t remember it, I would have logged it. I already checked; she never called here before.”
An urgent call from a strange woman with a German accent just before Fairfax killed himself. Things were getting interesting, especially because none of this was in the report, not even in Loomis’s preliminary report. That didn’t fit.
“How long did the call last?”
“I haven’t the slightest idea.” She nodded at Fairfax’s door. “The door remained closed until I heard…the shot.”
But that didn’t fit my new timeline. “What about the call you placed for Mr. Fairfax to Dr. Blythe?”
Mrs. Swenson didn’t look happy that I’d doubted her memory. “I didn’t place any call for him that morning. If he made one, he must have used his private line after ending his call with Miss Schmidt. I always thought she had been the last person who’d spoken to him.”
A private line in his office made sense, but the lack of detail about the caller in Loomis’s report didn’t. “Did you tell the detectives who were here about that phone call from this Miss Schmidt?”
“I tried.” She went back to her notebook. “I was being interviewed by a Detective Loomis when men from Chief Carmichael’s office arrived and told him to leave. A Detective Hauser took over the investigation and interviewed me. I had the feeling that he wasn’t all that interested in anything I had to say, not like Detective Loomis. But I noted that he made several phone calls of his own while he was here.” She blushed a little as she said, “I didn’t mean to eavesdrop, but I couldn’t help but overhear that he seemed to be speaking to Chief Carmichael directly.”
Now the blank spots in the report were beginning to make sense. Detective Steve Hauser was my replacement as Carmichael’s latest errand boy. Hauser was the perfect man for the job. He was smart enough to know how dumb he should be.
Hauser’s involvement explained why details about the last phone call had been kept out of Loomis’s version of the report. Loomis probably hadn’t been given a chance to stick around long enough to ask Mrs. Swenson about it. I could understand why Hauser decided to leave it out. Why complicate a perfectly good false accident report by adding a lot of facts?
I decided it was finally time to take a look at Fairfax’s office for myself. I knew I’d made some progress with Mrs. Swenson, and wanted to stay in her good graces. She’d been Fairfax’s secretary for a long time, and might have some more information that could come in handy later on.
“If you have no objections, I’d like to take a look at his office now, Mrs. Swenson. I’ll be respectful, I promise.”
Her right eyebrow rose, and I suddenly found myself wondering what she looked like without those thick glasses. “You already have Mrs. Fairfax’s permission, Mr. Doherty, so we both know you don’t need my permission to do anything.”
“I know, but I’d like to have it anyway. You worked for him for a long time and deserve that kind of respect.”
The charm worked. Any ice that had formed between us melted right away. She even walked me to the door. “By all means, Mr. Doherty. But I’m afraid you won’t find much inside. We cleared out the office out some weeks ago. All that’s left is furniture.”
“That’s fine. I won’t be long.” I turned the knob and pushed the door in. There was still plenty of daylight coming through the windows, but I turned on the light switch anyway. Thanks to the crime scene photos in Loomis’s file, I had already seen the office from several different angles, but nothing beat seeing something with my own two eyes.
On the left: A set of empty bookshelves against the far wall. A small bathroom next to them. The door was open.
In the center: Walter’s desk and chair, facing the door. A wall of clean windows behind them faced north. The view was seventy-five stories above Manhattan, and I could see they were putting the finishing touches on one of the new Rockefeller buildings several blocks away. It was the kind of view I could look at all day and all night if I had the chance, but I wasn’t there for sightseeing.
On the right: Another empty bookcase against the wall. Cabinets on the bottom. All doors closed.
I picked up on an odor that didn’t belong and quickly knew what it was. Smells of new carpet and new paint that had been trapped, then dulled by the closed door and windows. There was no sign of the blood splatter I’d seen on the windows in the crime scene photos. And the top pane that had been shattered by the bullet exiting the top of Walter’s head had since been replaced.
The whole office looked brand new, like nothing had ever happened here. Like a man hadn’t decided to end his life here. I guessed that was the point.
I didn’t have to look behind me to know Mrs. Swenson was standing just outside the office. Lurking, even though she didn’t mean to.
I decided to push whatever good will I might’ve built up with her and take a risk. “Why do you think he did it?”
Mrs. Swenson shook her head. “I’ve asked myself thousands of times, and I don’t have the slightest idea. I wish I did. I wish there was something I could’ve done to keep him from doing something so drastic. I’ve often wanted to ask Trip about what his father had written in the note, but I’ve never had the courage.”
“Note?” I didn’t mean to snap at her, but I had. “What note? There was no mention of a suicide note in the police report.”
“Well, there should’ve been.” She pointed at the desk. “It was in an envelope right there when we found him. It was addressed to Trip in Mr. Fairfax’s own handwriting. Trip was in his office downstairs when it happened. He was the first one who dared to go inside while I called the police. Trip took the note with him before the police arrived.”
I took off my hat and ran my fingers across my scalp.
A suicide note. Jesus. That hadn’t been in the report, either, but in Hauser’s defense, the son might not have told them about it. “Did you tell Detective Hauser or Loomis about the note?”
“No, because he didn’t seem very interested in anything anyone had to say. As I’ve already told you, he was on the phone much of the time he was here.”
That fit Hauser’s style. He hadn’t been sent here to investigate anything. He’d been sent to report what he saw to Carmichael and wait for instructions. I knew the drill. I’d run it plenty of times myself over the years.
But if he knew about a suicide note, it should’ve at least been in the initial report. Loomis had been on the scene first, before Hauser. He would’ve written it up, just like he would have written up the phone call to Blythe if he’d known about it.
I wondered if I should give Hauser a pass on the suicide note. I wondered if Trip had told them about it in the first place.
The answer to that question could be as important as the contents of the note itself.
I said to Mrs. Swenson, “Please call Trip and tell him I’d like to speak to him, but don’t mention anything about the suicide note. I’d like to
ask him about that personally.”
She fidgeted some more with her hands. “He won’t be happy. He’s already on the phone with his lawyer to see if he can fire you without his mother’s permission.”
I didn’t know Trip, but I’d met his mother. I didn’t think he’d have much luck on that front. “Call him anyway. I’ll just take a quick look around in here while I wait.”
I quietly closed the door behind her as she went to her desk to place the call. I leaned against it and looked around the office, absorbing the quiet.
I spoke to the empty room. “Come on, Walter. Show me something.”
I decided the desk would be the best place to start. I checked all the drawers. All of them had been cleaned and emptied. Not even a scrap of paper or a pencil left behind. Whoever had cleaned it out had been very thorough.
I checked the bathroom next, and my conclusions from the crime scene photos were right. It was too small for anyone to hide in after the shooting. In fact, there was barely enough room for a toilet, a sink, and a small shower.
It was the small shower that bothered me. The wall was much deeper than the rest of the small bathroom. Deeper than it needed to be.
My ex-brother-in-law was a plumber. I had worked a few jobs with him from time to time when I’d first gotten married and money had been tight. I knew you needed some clearance in the wall for pipes and drains and things like that, but this was way too much space.
Something more than pipes was in that wall. I knocked on the tiles and all of them seemed solid. Whatever might be behind that wall couldn’t be accessed from the shower.
I went back into the office and checked the bookshelves against that same wall. Every shelf was empty. Not a speck of dust. I knocked on the wall behind them.
The back of one sounded different than the others. Not as hollow. I knocked on it again, only harder. The entire section of the bookcase, about one foot high by about a foot and a half wide popped open on a hinge. Framed by shelves above and below it, the door was almost impossible to see. With books on the shelves, it would’ve been completely hidden.
Walter Fairfax had been a very careful man indeed.
I pulled the small door all the way open. A gunmetal-colored safe door was right behind it, built into the wall. A dial for the combination lock, but no key.
I tugged on the handle, but it didn’t budge. Locked. There’d been no mention of the safe in the police report, either, but I couldn’t blame Hauser for this one. The cause of death was clear. Hauser had no reason to poke around looking for anything, much less a safe.
But I wondered if Mrs. Swenson knew about the safe. Or Trip. I wondered what might be in there, or if it had been cleaned out yet. Did it contain the bank accounts and leases I was looking for? Did it contain something else that tied Fairfax to Countess Alexandra? Or was it empty?
There was only one way to find out for certain. I had to find a way to open the damned thing.
I opened the office door just as Mrs. Swenson was just hanging up the phone. “Mr. Fairfax said he’s on his way, Detective.”
But I had other things on my mind. “Do you know the combination to this safe?”
“What safe?” Her expression was genuine.
“The safe that’s in the wall in bookshelf next to the bathroom.”
She got up from her desk and went into the office to see for herself. I could tell she had never laid eyes on it before. She moved the wall panel back and forth on its hinge. “I had no idea this was even here.”
“So you don’t know the combination.”
She looked at me like it was the dumbest question she’d ever heard. Maybe it was. “You really are a detective after all, aren’t you?”
That made me smile. “I have my moments.” I turned my attention back to the safe. “We’ve got to try to get this thing open. I need you to write down the month, day, and year of Mrs. Fairfax’s birthday, his children’s birthdays, and his anniversary for me while you’re at it. Mr. Fairfax’s birthday, too. He might’ve used them as the combination. Birthdays and anniversaries are the easiest to remember.”
“You’re the first man I’ve ever met who said that,” she said. “I’ll start making a list now. But if none of those combinations work, what then?”
“I’ve got some ideas,” I admitted, “but it’ll be a whole lot easier if one of those dates work.”
A younger, sterner version of the picture I’d seen of Walter almost knocked Mrs. Swenson over as he barreled into the office. Trip had his father’s flat face and dead eyes. Lucky for him, he had his mother’s sharp features, which keep him just north of being ugly.
“How dare you come barging into my father’s office like this?” Walter Fairfax, III yelled. “Get out of here right now before I throw you out!”
Mrs. Swenson quietly shut the door behind her as she made a tactical retreat.
I’d come up against his type before. All Ivy League swagger and no common sense. He’d probably been a tough guy back at Harvard or Princeton, but that had been more than a decade ago. Now he was just another doughy brat with a bank account and a snappy last name in a town lousy with doughy brats with snappy last names.
Now that it was just the two of us, I saw no reason to be polite for the sake of Mrs. Swenson. I crossed my arms across my chest and leaned against the bookcase. “The only one who barged in here was you. Your mother gave me permission to be here when she hired me this morning.”
“I know all that!” He didn’t look too happy about it, either. “I had tried talking her out of it, but Mother can be stubborn once she gets an idea in her head.”
“I noticed that,” I said. “Like the crazy idea she has about how your father couldn’t have committed suicide because he didn’t leave a note behind.” I smiled. “But you and I both know he did, don’t we, Trip?”
The younger Fairfax checked to make the door was closed and lowered his voice. “Who told you about that?”
I wouldn’t let Mrs. Swenson take the blame. “It was mentioned in the draft police report that I got from an old friend of mine on the force. The same report that was written before Chief Carmichael wrote that beautiful piece of fiction calling your father’s death an accident.”
That took some of the fire out of him. “The family never asked him to do that.”
“Well, he did it anyway,” I said, “and now you owe him whether you like it or not. You’ll have to deal with him eventually, but for now we’ve got bigger things to worry about, like that suicide note. Where is it?” I inclined my head toward the safe. “You tuck it in there for safe keeping?”
I could tell by the look on his face that it wasn’t good news. “Is that a safe? I’ve never seen that before. My father never said anything about a safe. We don’t even have one in the mansion.”
That meant I’d have to handle the safe on my own. But for now, I cared more about the note. “Then give me the note.”
It was Trip’s turn to fold his arms. “Give me one good reason why I should tell you anything.”
“Because I’ll tell your mother that you’ve been hiding the note from her for the past month. And then I’ll call Chief Carmichael and tell him you have it. Your mother will want to read it, and Carmichael will be furious you’ve got evidence he covered up a suicide. Both of them will keep tearing pieces out of you until you hand it over. It’s even money on who wins, but I think your mother will win out.” I smiled. “So just save yourself a lot of trouble and give me the goddamned note.”
I stayed quiet while I watched him run through his options. He didn’t have many, so I didn’t have to wait long. When he looked away, I knew it wasn’t good news. “I don’t have it.”
I pushed off the bookcase and took a step toward him. “Don’t lie to me.”
Trip took a step back. “I’m not lying. I told Chief Carmichael’s man about the note when he got here.
He took it with him when he left. A Detective Houseman, I think it was.”
“Hauser.” Of course. The son of a bitch.
“He said it was important evidence in the case and demanded that I hand it over immediately. Neither he nor Chief Carmichael ever brought it up again, so if you want to read it, you’re going to have to ask them.”
Of course Carmichael had the note. It proved his accident ruling was a lie. It gave him leverage to make sure the Fairfax family paid up when he told them to or else the world would get proof that Walter had killed himself. Sure, Carmichael would look bad if the note got out. But people would quickly forget about a botched police investigation. The stench of suicide would hang around the Fairfax family for a generation.
The suicide note had been a good lead while it lasted. I could’ve used it as leverage against Carmichael for years. But since he already had it, there was no way I’d ever see it. “Did you read the note before you gave it to Hauser?”
“Of course I read it,” he said. “It was the last thing my father wrote. I could barely make out what it said because his hand must have been shaking badly when he wrote it. He normally had such beautiful penmanship.”
I didn’t want to lose my patience, but it was getting tougher by the second. “What did it say?”
“It said, ‘I’m sorry I had to do this. I had no choice.’ That was all.”
“I had no choice,” I repeated. That phrase was important. It spoke to a distressed state of mind. But it didn’t explain why Walter had decided to kill himself so suddenly. That last phone call from Miss Schmidt must have pushed him over the edge. It obviously caused him to call Dr. Blythe. Those two lines told me a little, but not enough. “I know it’s painful, but do you have any idea what he was talking about?”
“How the hell should I know?” Trip’s voice finally broke and his eyes watered over. “It was a suicide note, for God’s sake, not his autobiography.”
Trip’s tears came on full force, washing away every trace of rage and anger he’d brought with him when he’d first barged into his father’s old office. And that’s when I remembered this was the very same place where his father had taken his own life.
The Fairfax Incident Page 6
