Wall of Glass

by Walter Satterthwait

  Behind me, the silence started growing.

  At last Rita sighed. She said, “Joshua, it seems to me that we have a number of choices at the moment. You can keep sulking and hacking at those green peppers and probably amputate your thumb. You can take back your snow-peas and your green pepper and go sulk in the privacy of your own home. Or we can talk about this and decide whether we want to work on the case.”

  I took a deep breath, and then a deep swallow of wine, emptying the glass. I turned to her. “You know,” I said, “one day that sweet reason of yours is going to get you into a lot of trouble.”

  She smiled at me. “But not today.”

  I smiled back. “You think Romero would spring for a retainer?”

  She shook her head. “I don’t imagine he’ll go for anything but a straight spec contract. But it’s not as though we’re overloaded right now. I thought we’d give it a week, no more. What do you think?”

  “Okay,” I said. “A week.”

  She nodded. “Do you want some more wine?”

  “Yeah. You got another bottle of that stuff?”

  THREE

  ATCO INSURANCE was on Washington Street and occupied the whole of a large remodeled adobe house near the Bank of Santa Fe. It was a convenient location. Lackeys could haul the premium money over to the vaults without working up a sweat.

  Not all the money went into the bank, however. A good percentage of it had been spent fitting out Allan Romero’s office. Thick pile carpeting, padded leather furniture, oil paintings of Southwest scenes on the walls, everything oversized and everything, including the paintings, color coordinated in browns and beiges. Romero’s desk was mahogany, and you could’ve strung a net down its center and played a mean game of volleyball on its top, so long as you didn’t mind skidding around on the polish.

  Romero himself had probably never given a moment’s thought to the idea of desktop volleyball. One of the new breed of Hispanics who spoke English without a trace of accent, emphasis, or humor, he was somewhere between thirty-five and fifty. It was difficult to tell because the thin lines that ran down along the sides of his thin and narrow mouth might have been there when he was born. His face was thin too, and so was his mustache, which was as black as his slicked-back hair and looked as if it had been drawn on with an eyebrow pencil.

  He was wearing a dark gray three-piece suit with subdued pinstriping, a white silk shirt with a gold collar pin, and a striped silk regimental tie. I don’t know what regiment the tie came from, but maybe Romero did. He looked like the kind of person who would, and who’d be happy to tell you about it, at length, if you asked him. I never did.

  He set the contract down and flattened it carefully against the desktop with fingers that were thin and very nicely manicured. Something that might have been a smile flickered briefly on his mouth, but vanished so quickly I couldn’t be sure. “I believe I detect,” he said, nodding to the contract, “the fine Italian hand of Mrs. Mondragón. I particularly admire the stipulation that payment of the fee be contingent only upon the necklace’s recovery, and not upon its return to Atco.”

  “The thing’s going to be confiscated by the police,” I said. “You know that as well as we do. It’s evidence in a homicide. But Atco is the owner of record. You’ll get it back.”

  He raised his left eyebrow, a trick I’ve always envied. “But when? In six months? A year? If the person responsible for the theft is also responsible for the death of this Biddle, and the police manage to apprehend him, then the necklace will be held until after the trial. And Lord knows when that might take place. With appeals and whatnot, do you know how much time a good lawyer can waste? And throughout it all, Atco will be unable to recoup its claim payment. Its money will be lying dormant.”

  “Maybe you’ll be lucky,” I said, “and we won’t find the thing. Then all you’ll have to do is raise your rates.”

  Another flicker. “You have, I think, an oversimplified view of how an insurance company operates.”

  “Probably. I’m an oversimplified kind of guy.”

  “Putting aside,” he said, “just for a moment, the payment of the finder’s fee, let’s discuss the fee itself. I’ve spoken with the Home Office, and in view of the size of this particular claim, they are, of course, quite anxious to retrieve the necklace. They’ve authorized me to make what I think is a very generous offer of five percent of insured value.”

  I doubted very much that he’d spoken to anyone. Romero might work on a weekend, but everyone in the Home Office was probably out bruising tennis balls or down in the basement counting Krugerands. “Well,” I said, “I’ve spoken to Mrs. Mondragón, and in view of the difficulty of this particular case, she’s authorized me to propose a fee of fifteen percent of insured value, plus a retainer of one percent, and naturally, a per diem of one hundred dollars.”

  The smile flickered back to his lips and this time it stayed for a while. “An admirable woman, Mrs. Mondragón.”

  “I’ve always thought so.”

  “But you realize, of course, that my hands are tied. I can do nothing without a go-ahead from the Home Office, and I’m afraid they’d never agree to such a proposal. They might very well direct me to contact another detective agency.”

  “They’ve had six months to contact another agency.”

  “Ah, but that was before Biddle appeared, offering the necklace.”

  “Biddle’s dead, and I’m the one he offered the necklace to. Even if you hire another agency, in the end you’ll still be dealing with me.”

  He pursed his lips. “Are you suggesting you know more about its whereabouts than you’ve so far revealed to the police?”

  “I’m suggesting the same thing to you that I suggested to Biddle, two days ago. You called me. I didn’t call you.”

  Something new flickered across his lips, something that might have been a frown. He eyed me for a moment. At last, with a small crisp nod, he said, “Perhaps you and I can come to an agreement without my further involving the Home Office. But naturally you understand that a retainer and a per diem are simply out of the question.”

  After that, it was just a matter of horse trading. The two of us dickered for a bit, Romero occasionally flicking his cool quick smile in my direction, and finally we agreed to what Rita had said we would. A simple speculation contract, no retainer, no per diem, ten percent to be paid to the Mondragón agency upon recovery. We both signed the contract, I slipped my copy into the inside pocket of my jacket, Romero folded his and put it into his desk drawer.

  I took out my notebook and my Erasermate. “Suppose you tell me,” I said, “how the necklace got stolen.”

  His elbows on the arms of the chair, Romero sat back and locked his fingers together atop his vest. “It happened in October of last year. On the sixteenth, a Friday. Mr. and Mrs. Leighton had gone to Albuquerque and stayed overnight. Mrs. Leighton returned on Saturday morning and discovered that the house had been burgled, the necklace taken. She notified the police, and, later that day, our claims office.”

  “The husband didn’t come back to town with her?”

  “No. Mr. Leighton was planning to play golf later that day and then fly back.”

  “His own plane?” There are no commercial flights between Albuquerque and Santa Fe.

  “The plane of his host in Albuquerque, a Mr. John Dupree. As I recall, the plan was for Mr. Dupree and Mr. Leighton to golf that afternoon, and then for Mr. Dupree to fly Mr. Leighton back to Santa Fe.”

  “Is that what happened?”

  He shook his head. “Mrs. Leighton called the Dupree house at eleven and informed Mr. Leighton of the theft. Mr. Dupree flew Mr. Leighton to Santa Fe. They both arrived at the Leighton house at two.”

  “That’s three hours later. The trip only takes an hour by car, and a lot less in a private plane. Did they slip in a quick nine holes before they left?”

  Romero shrugged. “Something to do with the plane. A preflight check of some sort.”

  “And
when did you people get involved?”

  “That day. Saturday. We have an emergency claims number, and this was the number that Mrs. Leighton called. The agent who took the call notified me immediately.”

  “Is that standard procedure?”

  “In the case of claims exceeding a certain amount, yes.”

  “What amount?”

  He frowned slightly, to make it clear the answer wasn’t really any of my business, then said, “Twenty thousand dollars.”

  “And what time did you arrive at the house?”

  “A little after two, shortly after Mr. Leighton and Mr. Dupree arrived.”

  “What time did Mrs. Leighton call the emergency number?”

  “One-thirty.”

  “Why did she wait so long to call?”

  “She had been dealing with the police for several hours. It was on their advice, very properly given, that she called us.”

  “The police were still there when you arrived?”

  “No. I spoke with Detective Sergeant Nolan later, at his office.”

  “Were you and Nolan both satisfied that this was a genuine burglary?”

  “Of course.” He showed me his eyebrow trick again. “You’re not suggesting, I hope, that the Leightons themselves were somehow responsible?”

  “The thought never crossed my mind.”

  “We’ve been handling the Leightons’ account for nearly twenty years.”

  I nodded. “Was the necklace included in a general policy, or did it have its own?”

  “All of Mrs. Leighton’s jewelry was on a rider attached to their general homeowner’s policy.”

  “What kind of premiums were they paying?”

  Another quick frown. “Twelve thousand.”

  “What part of that represented coverage on the necklace?”

  “Five thousand.”

  “For a total coverage of one hundred thousand.”

  He nodded.

  I said, “I thought that whenever something that valuable was being insured, the insurance company usually farmed out part of the coverage to other agencies.”

  He frowned again and gave me a small quick nod. “That is, yes, our usual policy. The agent who wrote the coverage, however, chose to do otherwise. And the supervisor at the time accepted it.”

  Both of them hot, presumably, for the larger premiums to be had if Atco carried the necklace by itself. I wondered what’d happened to those two after the necklace had been stolen. They’d probably been assigned to the office in Minsk. “The necklace,” I said. “Where was it kept?”

  “Normally, as I understand it, in their safe-deposit box at the bank, with the rest of her jewelry.”

  “Where was it that Friday night?”

  “In the drawer of her dresser. In her bedroom.”

  “Why?”

  “Mrs. Leighton had worn it that week to some social function.”

  “Was anyone in the house at the time of the burglary?”

  “No. They have two children, teenagers, but both were sleeping over with friends.”

  “Alarm system?”

  “Yes. A Cartwright.”

  “Interior and perimeter?”

  “Interior only. And it wasn’t armed. Apparently their son forgot to turn it on before he left the house.”

  The Cartwright’s a decent system, infra-red, motion-sensitive. You punch a number code onto a keyboard before you leave the house. If anything moves in there before you disarm the system, an externally mounted siren goes off and a phone call is automatically made to the local Cartwright monitoring office in town. From there, someone telephones the police department. But, like any other system, it doesn’t work very well if it’s not turned on.

  “Were the phone lines cut?”

  “Yes.”

  “They have a leased line?”

  “No. But it hardly matters in this instance, since, as I say, the alarm wasn’t activated.”

  When the alarm is set, a leased line, also called a balanced line, will automatically notify the monitoring service if it’s been cut or tampered with. But the phone company charges about thirty bucks a month for one, and some people can’t see their way to spending the extra money.

  I asked him, “What about the wires to the siren?”

  “They were untouched.”

  “The house is isolated,” I said.

  He nodded. “Yes.”

  Disabling the phone lines to an empty house is one of the first things a competent professional burglar would do. With an armed Cartwright, and with most other systems, cutting the lines will sound the siren, but a burglar’s not going to worry about that if the house is out in the boonies. And if the house is out in the boonies, even a leased line isn’t going to be much help. A good man can get in and out of the average private residence in less than twenty minutes, and he’ll be carrying a police scanner with him. By the time the cops arrive, if they ever do, he’ll be long gone.

  I said, “The son was there after they left?”

  “Yes, with some friends. They all left shortly after nine o’clock.”

  “No possibility that he or his friends were involved?”

  “None.”

  “And the other kid?”

  “A daughter. She’d left earlier in the day.”

  I sat back in my chair, the leather whispering against me. “Sergeant Nolan felt that Biddle masterminded the burglary, using a friend named Killebrew to do the actual work. Did you agree with him?”

  “Yes, I did. Unfortunately, as perhaps you know, we were never able to substantiate our belief.”

  I nodded. “I’ll have to talk to the Leightons.”

  He showed me his quick flicker of a smile once more. “I’ve anticipated you in that regard. I spoke with Mr. Leighton this morning. He’s willing to see you this afternoon at four.”

  THE SUN was shining and the temperature back up into the sixties as I turned off Old Santa Fe Trail onto the rutted and muddy dirt road. For a moment, before I eased up on the gas, the front of the Subaru slewed in the muck and the steering wheel jerked against my hands.

  In any other American city this size, the road would have been paved. But in Santa Fe, raw earth is as chic as raw fish. The wealthier locals like it especially in the winter, when they can hop into their four-wheel-drive vehicles and feel like cowboys as they go whizzing down the mudslides into town. I put the Subaru into four-wheel drive, and felt pretty much like a cowboy myself.

  On either side of me were gently rolling hills dotted with scrub pine and gullied by arroyos, deep open wounds in the reddish earth. For most of the year these were dry, but now their rocky bottoms were covered with brown meltwater, gurgling and gleaming as it sluiced down toward the far-off Rio Grande. The snow had vanished, all of it except for a few dispirited clumps huddling in the shade beneath the piñon. The houses here were set back from the road and hidden behind stands of juniper and walls of adobe.

  The driveway I wanted was maybe two miles from the main road, and marked by a large wooden gate with the name “Leighton” branded in rustic letters on the frame overhead. The compound itself, I saw when I reached it, was like the others, walled round in brown adobe, and there were enough cars outside to start a small but exclusive dealership. I had a choice of parking the wagon beside a Mercedes 450SL, a Saab Turbo, a Maxda RX7, or a Jeep Renegade. I picked the Jeep.

  Over the wooden crosspiece at the entrance the name “Leighton” had been branded again, in case you’d missed it the first time. Inside the walls, I saw that someone had spent a lot of time, and a lot of money, transforming the broad courtyard from high desert scrubland into English country garden. There was grass, bright brilliant green against the litter of damp petals from the apple and peach trees. There were rose bushes and a bed of tulips, the tulips looking a bit bedraggled after the storm. Carefully tended hedges bordered the winding flagstone walk and, off to my right, a small willow draped its branches over an ornamental pond.

  This far out of town, Leighton
would be off the municipal water lines. He had to have a well. I wished him luck with it. The level of the aquafer upon which Santa Fe sits is going down every year, and the developers, Leighton among them, keep bulldozing open new subdivisions, throwing together new houses, sinking new wells. One day the air will be shattered by an enormous sibilant rattle as twenty thousand thirsty straws suck at the bottom of an empty glass.

  The main house, off to my right, was a fortress of adobe and glass, flanked on either side by wings that extended along the courtyard walls. I walked up the flagstone walk, went up the steps, and pushed the doorbell. From inside I could hear a chime sounding the first four notes of Beethoven’s Fifth. I don’t want ding dong, Sammy, I want class.

  After a few moments, the door was opened by a young girl, sixteen or seventeen years old. Tousled blond hair, a formless gray sweatshirt, baggy jeans, battered running shoes. One day she might be pretty, maybe even beautiful. Now she was wearing braces and thick-lensed horn-rimmed glasses and she moved inside her body as though it were something she’d ordered from Spiegel’s, and she didn’t know yet whether she wanted to keep it or send it back.

  “Hello,” I said. “I’m here to see Mr. and Mrs. Leighton.”

  Her gray eyes blinked behind the glasses. “You’re the private detective?”

  “Yep.”

  “Come on in. Dad’s on the phone, but my mother’s waiting in the living room.”

  I followed her through a large foyer and down some broad red tile steps to a huge sunken living room. Three walls were of stippled white plaster, hung with the kind of subdued modern oil paintings that drew attention not to themselves, but to their owner’s subdued good taste. The fourth wall was of glass and looked out on the plot of land that was forever England. There was a brick floor beneath me, and vigas overhead, long stripped pine logs that ran across the high ceiling. A stone fireplace, broad and round, sat in the center of the room beneath a cylindrical copper chimney with a wide conical mouth. Piñon logs were burning inside, presumably to counteract the chill put out by the air conditioner.