by Anna Porter
His thoughts were interrupted by a loud clanging noise that breathed instant life into the motionless Arnold, who turned on his heels and dashed out the door, without a word of explanation.
David headed for the two mahogany filing cabinets at the far end of the room and opened, at random, the middle drawer of the nearest one. No telling what else of interest Zimmerman might have filed, after all the bits and pieces Deidre had discovered. The whole drawer was full of files headed “Pacific Airlines,” with a plethora of subdivisions with such uninteresting labels as “P & L 1985,” “P & L 1986,” “Executive Planning Ledger,” “Diversification.” He flicked through a couple and was disappointed to discover they were indeed what they claimed to be. The top drawer was just as dreary, with long sheets of numbers regarding Monarch Enterprises.
He was about to start on the bottom drawer when Arnold returned with what David now recognized as a smile on his face. He was preceded by a small balding man wearing gold-rimmed glasses and a mink coat and carrying a black leather briefcase embossed with gold letters. His face, round and jovial, turned quite red when he saw Parr bending over the filing cabinet.
“By what right, sir,” he demanded, bearing down on Parr, his briefcase swinging, “are you foraging about in Mr. Zimmerman’s private papers?” His voice was a high crackly squawk that expressed both indignation and astonishment.
“Foraging,” David thought appreciatively, excellent. It implied both that he was aimlessly searching about and that he was an animal. He waited till the little man had planted himself between him and the cabinets, then he slowly removed the search warrant from his breast pocket.
“I am Philip Masters,” the little man said with dignity. “Paul and Brenda Zimmerman’s counsel.” He tried to read the warrant without touching it, then took it from David’s hand. “Perhaps you’d be kind enough to explain, Officer,” he demanded, his voice a notch lower.
David did. He told him exactly what he had told Arnold, adding that he already had evidence linking Paul Zimmerman to Harvey Singer.
“In that case,” Masters said, “there is no need to go through papers relating to business deals involving Mr. Zimmerman’s private companies that have no possible bearing on whoever Mr. Slinger...Singer...whatever, was. Right?”
“As it happens, Mr. Masters,” David said patiently, “I have every right to examine all of Mr. Zimmerman’s papers and fully intend to do so. And I would recommend that you get out of my way so that we can stop wasting each other’s time. Unless you prefer I charge you with obstructing justice, a nasty little charge carrying a minimum sentence of—”
“All right.” Masters shifted to one side of the cabinets. “But I will remain here protecting my clients’ interests.” He murmured something else about “wanton destruction,” but David assumed that was a last-minute face-saver and let it go. He resumed his random progress through the bottom drawer, then all the other drawers, without finding a single sheet of paper bearing Singer’s name. He persevered at the task with rather more attention to detail than he had intended, but Masters’s nervousness implied that there were indeed secrets in these files if only he had the key. In the end, he decided to take them downtown later and have someone with expertise in industrial crime go through them. Masters, of course, could challenge the validity of the seize order, if he knew enough. Unlikely he’d had much experience in criminal law. David would wait and see.
“Do you happen to remember where you were the night of February 26th, Mr. Masters?” he asked.
“The 26th? No. I don’t think I know what kind of day that was at all. Almost two weeks ago. Before Paul died...” He was sweating profusely inside the smooth mink coat. The smell of perfume, or expensive cologne, mixed with tangy body odor and maybe fear. But why fear?
“A Thursday night,” David told him. “You were here, according to Mr. Nagy, working late with Mr. Zimmerman. You stayed till close to 6:30.”
Masters looked at Arnold, seeking confirmation. The butler glided toward Masters, eager to explain. “That was the evening, Mr. Masters, you and Mr. Zimmerman were signing papers. There was that young lady here interviewing Mr. Zimmerman.”
Judith would have enjoyed the “young lady” bit. He must remember to tell her. She was due back in a couple of hours.
“Yes. Yes,” Mr. Masters said. He had unbuttoned his coat, but his face was still red. “That night. That night. Hmm. Hard, on the spur of the moment, to remember the actual things one does. Know what I mean?”
David did, but he wasn’t about to say so. Maybe if Masters sweated enough, he’d let slip what was bothering him. He took one more look around the study, then headed for the next room. Arnold and Masters followed closely.
David poked his head into the gallery—Zimmerman was marginally redeeming himself for the reception area and the stagy library—and went on to the split-level living room. The gallery had no obvious hiding places for either gun or papers.
The living room was dominated by the large painting of Brenda Zimmerman wearing black velvet cut low to display her magnificent breasts, a blue hand-held Japanese fan somewhat obstructing the view of her cleavage. Her hair, worn in a knot on top of her head, was spun gold, her eyes an amazing violet, her skin perfectly molded around the curved high forehead and raised cheekbones. Indeed, Zimmerman must have been a man of good taste.
“I have it,” Masters said triumphantly. “I drove to the Inn on the Park and had a drink in the bar after I left here. Then I went home. Jane was chairing a ladies’ evening for the New Theatre Company that evening. Fund-raising. I was in no hurry to get home. Must have been 8 or 9 before I did. Had some frozen dinner and went to bed early.” He followed David to the piano which he was opening to look inside. “Officer, really, I cannot imagine that you seriously believe you’re going to find anything in that Steinway.”
David opened all the drawers of all the antique tables in the room and found nothing but coasters and ashtrays.
“Was anybody with you?” David asked.
“Not until Jane came home at around midnight, no,” Masters said. “Please do be careful with that,” he added when David pried open the door of a standing clock. “It’s three hundred years old and part of Meredith Zimmerman’s inheritance.”
The dining room yielded nothing but a recognition of where Paul Zimmerman had died. “His back was to the kitchen door,” Judith had said. At the longer of the two dining room tables. There was a swing door to the kitchen, which, in turn, connected to the staff’s quarters.
Arnold led the procession up the winding staircase.
“Were you aware that Michael Ward had a criminal record?” David asked Masters.
“Ward? Who is Ward?”
“The young man who took care of the cars,” Arnold said.
“Oh yes. Well, no. How would I have known?”
“We knew,” Arnold said forcefully. “Mrs. Zimmerman works with the John Howard Society for the rehabilitation of former inmates. This particular young man was working out extraordinarily well until...”
“He left without a forwarding address shortly after the murder,” David said. Then he thought, wouldn’t that have been amazingly convenient for Paul Zimmerman, had he killed Singer and stayed alive to be accused of the crime? He could have encouraged the young man to disappear. Could have paid him a handsome severance.
“You think he killed this man Singer?” Masters asked.
“Possibly,” David said.
Upstairs there were two vast bedrooms connected by a sitting room. Each bedroom had a king-sized bed, Brenda’s blue with a pink canopy, Paul’s blue and brown-striped. The carpets were two inches thick in both rooms, pink and brown respectively.
“It’s preposterous,” Masters murmured as David began to sift through drawers full of underwear and socks. Zimmerman had over a hundred suits in his walk-in room-sized closet, and they were only his winter wear. Arnold said his summer clothes were in storage. He must have had two hundred silk shirts and ties. Why wou
ld a man bother? There were rows and rows of shoes, each pair glossy with fresh polish.
“All this,” Philip Masters said proudly, “will go to the poor.”
David was turning each shoe upside down to see if something fell out. Shoes made super, though hardly original, hiding places. He thought of Brother Twelve and the Indian and what a bonanza it would be for them to find this lot on some city garbage dump. The detectives still had no idea what Singer had been carrying in his shoe.
Going through the coat pockets David found a photograph of a young woman with red hair and blue-green eyes. On the back, in childish script, it said: “To Paul with love. Forever and ever. Your Martha.”
“Who is Martha?” David asked, holding the photograph so both Arnold and Masters could see it.
When neither of them replied, he slipped the picture into his pocket.
“It’s Mrs. Charles Griffiths,” Masters said, at last. Obviously he had decided David would find out soon enough. “She has no possible involvement in your investigation, therefore you have no right to take the photograph. You do not have the right, sir, to casually pocket other people’s property. There are procedures to observe...” He was beginning to gesticulate with his arms, his face glowing with indignation.
“I have the right to take whatever I believe is of material interest to the case, Mr. Masters,” David said calmly. “The rules leave the decision as to what is and what is not relevant entirely in the senior officer’s hands.”
While David began a cursory search through Brenda Zimmerman’s endless wardrobe, Masters left to use the phone in the florid sitting room between the two bedrooms.
David wondered how the Zimmermans decided which bed to choose for their conjugal rights. His was much too macho, what with lifelike hunting scenes on the walls, the rows of miniature toy soldiers in the glass window boxes (did Zimmerman play war games?), the display table with antique rifles. Hers was just as determinedly fluffy: all pinks and whites, a dressing room with more jars and bottles than you’d find in your average corner drugstore, the robin’s-egg blue and beige harvest tapestry that stretched the length of her bed, the extra-large pink TV set, lamps shaped like lilies, and a profusion of clothes to make Imelda Marcos envious. Perhaps they met in the middle and made out on the resplendent chaise longue?
He merely glanced at Meredith’s quarters, concluded they were too sumptuous for a child of ten—or any age—and decided to leave them to last. It was an unlikely place to hide documents, and not one that would be safe for a gun. David would not eliminate the possibility, but there were more likely places to search first.
“What’s in the basement?” he asked Arnold.
“Gym. Swimming pool. Tennis court. Sauna.”
This time David led the way. He didn’t wait for Masters.
The basement was warmer than the rest of the house and just as spectacular. The pool was a bean-shaped green expanse, with orange marble tiles all around; the gym had more equipment than David’s club at the Y. The sauna was double the size of the Y’s. Between the sauna and the pool there was a long dressing room with separate doors for boys and girls and a series of metal lockers to stash your clothes.
It was behind one of the metal doors in the men’s dressing room that David found a gun. It was wrapped into a pair of men’s white running shorts, covered by a lot of other white shorts and socks.
He didn’t touch the gun. He didn’t have to. He knew what it was through the layer of cloth. He lifted it by its muzzle and dropped it, shorts and all, into one of the plastic bags he had brought in his pocket.
To his credit, Arnold made no remark when they were joined by Masters at the top of the stairs. “It’s taking unconscionable liberties,” Masters was saying. “You would think we live in a police state where you can barge around in someone else’s home, grabbing at random whatever you choose.” He shook his head rather theatrically and followed David out toward the garage. He had left his coat behind somewhere. His jacket flapped open as he hurried to keep up. “I have the right, Detective Inspector, to ask for a full accounting of everything you are trying to take from this house and will later seek legal recourse for malicious prosecution if I find you have so much as disturbed my clients’—”
“Later,” David waved him to one side as he called Stewart over. He handed over the plastic bag with the gun and asked the constable to take it over to the lab. Now. Then he took another look at Martha Griffiths’s photograph before returning it to Arnold. “That,” he said, “is all I will need for the moment. We will leave a guard at the door to make sure nothing is removed till we have completed the search.” He turned to Philip Masters. “I don’t suppose, Mr. Masters, you could tell me something about Harvey Singer yourself?”
“Never heard of the man till today,” Masters said indignantly. “I told you that.”
“Would you know if Mr. Zimmerman had been blackmailed by someone in the past couple of months or so?”
“Blackmailed?” Masters squeaked. “What do you mean, blackmailed?”
“Were you aware of anyone who might have been blackmailing Mr. Zimmerman and to whom he would have given two installments of $50,000 each, on January 7th and February 3rd?”
Masters stared at David. “Why those particular dates?”
“You haven’t answered my question, Mr. Masters,” said David, watching him intently.
There were beads of perspiration all over Masters’s bald pate and gathering along the hairline. He held his hands together in front of his gentle paunch, the fingers almost white as he squeezed them together. This was more than just anger and frustration. What did Masters know that he wasn’t telling?
“I don’t believe I have to answer your question at this time, Officer,” Masters said finally. “I assure you that if I were to answer, it would have nothing to do with this man Singer and his unfortunate death. If I were you, I’d redouble my efforts to find that young jailbird. I have never been in favor of Brenda’s interest in causes. Women nowadays feel they must do something useful to justify their existence. Total rot. Why they can’t just enjoy what they’ve got—” He stopped as suddenly as he’d begun, probably regretting his outburst. “Arnold, would you get me a Scotch, please.”
That’s when David told Masters he had found the gun. That was the way he said it: “the gun,” because that little bit of phony certainty might nudge him into telling what was on his mind.
When Masters said nothing, only stared into space, David returned to the hall to call Griffiths. While he dialed, Masters came in and slumped down on a pink bow-legged stool by the Greek statue to watch him.
Griffiths answered his own phone. He had clearly been warned Parr would call again. “The 26th of February?” he repeated after David told him about the murder and Zimmerman’s car. “Yes, they were both at our house for dinner.” David could hear him flicking though his diary to confirm the time. “Paul and Brenda arrived rather late. We were on the point of sitting down and Martha was beginning to fuss about where they were. The Goodmans were also here, and the Parkers...”
“Do you remember when the Zimmermans left?”
There was a long silence, then Griffiths asked, “Why?”
“Was it 9 or 10? Perhaps closer to midnight?” David persisted.
“Closer to 10, I think,” Chuck Griffiths said. “Yes, I believe they left early. You could check with the others, if you like. It’s hard to be sure...”
“That seems unusually early, doesn’t it?” David asked. “Especially as you didn’t start eating till some time after 7:30. Was there some particular reason why they left?” He had no cause to hassle the wronged husband, but it was worth the effort if it jogged his memory.
“Ah yes,” Griffiths said. “Brenda had a headache. That’s what it was. She suddenly developed a raging headache and wanted to go home.”
“And Paul Zimmerman? Didn’t he go with her?”
“No. He finished his coffee and dessert and left about half an hour later. Maybe clos
er to 10:30.”
Still within the time frame to kill Singer and be home before Brenda became worried. Could be a nice bit of planning, that, sending Brenda home ahead. But how would he have managed it? Something in her wine? Maybe he chose that night to tell her about Martha? Bit risky that, to tell your wife you’re having an affair with your hostess just before you dig into the main course.
“You’re not actually suspecting Paul Zimmerman of killing this man Singer, are you?” Griffiths’s voice registered complete astonishment.
“It’s only an investigation, Mr. Griffiths. Thank you for your help. I may have to call on you again, but you’ve already been of great assistance.” David hung up. “I’d like to talk to the chauffeur,” he told Masters, “and Mrs. Zimmerman as well.”
“They are both in Bermuda,” Masters said sullenly. The large Scotch Arnold had supplied hadn’t lifted his spirits one ounce.
“I know,” David said.
“I’m quite sure Mrs. Zimmerman has never heard of Singer, nor has Geoff Aronson,” Masters persisted.
“Mrs. Zimmerman has already made a statement to police officers in St. George, Mr. Masters. I merely wish to confirm a couple of details. I could call her while you listen in as her counsel.” David was trying to be as accommodating as he could.
“She’s still in a state of shock. I wouldn’t advise it...”
“In that case, I’ll have to go to Bermuda myself, won’t I?”
Masters liked that idea even less. “Doubt if they’d send you all that way,” he pondered, “just to ask a few questions. Especially as your prime suspect is already dead. What’s the point?”
That was smart for a little corporate lawyer in a state of shock. David smiled. “You could be right there, Mr. Masters, but the department does like to tie up its loose ends. You have a choice. Either we call now, or I go tomorrow.”
Masters gave up. He finished his drink and dialed the Bermuda number. David let him struggle though the introductory pieces. He’d done it himself three times already, and Staff Sergeant Graham’s warning about Brenda’s vile temper had done little to help.
