The Odd Job

by Charlotte MacLeod

  “I understand perfectly,” said Sarah. “She affected everybody pretty much the same way, if it’s any comfort to you. Thank you so much, Mrs. Fortune, you’ve been a real help. I’ll be back with Mrs. Tawne’s lawyer as soon as he sets up an appointment with your people about the inventory, but I’ll make very sure it’s not scheduled to interfere with your lunch hour. By the way, has anybody shown up yet with a second key for the LaVerne box?”

  “No, not yet. But they will, you can bet on that.”

  Another box holder claimed Mrs. Fortune’s attention; Sarah and her bodyguard took the hint. As they left the bank, Drummond asked, “Did you get what you came for, Mrs. Bittersohn?”

  Sarah shrugged. “I’m afraid to say yes, but I can’t say no. My guess is that whoever sent Dolores that bagful of alleged Christmas presents had instructed her to put them in the LaVerne box, the one that had been sitting unused all these years, quite possibly for just this purpose.”

  “That’s pretty crazy, isn’t it?”

  “You just don’t know collectors. A really dedicated one might wait half a lifetime or more and resort to incredible dodges to get hold of one particular object that he’s set his heart on. But anyway, what I started to say was that Mrs. Tawne, in her excitement over getting another assignment from her old connection, must have forgotten to bring the right key for the LaVerne box. Considering how long ago she’d hidden the key, she might easily have lost track of where she’d put it. She’d have been in a mad rush, as she always was; rather than spend half an hour pawing through that great big sack she always carried or going home to look for the key, she’d have made a snap decision to put the packages in her own box and switch them when she got the chance. But then some new crisis came along, and she forgot about the Christmas packages as she naturally would, being Dolores.”

  “Kind of a flake, was she?”

  “Not really. It’s just that she always took on a little more than she could handle, and the latest job took precedence over the one before. So there they sit, and I don’t know what to do about them. And there’s poor Dolores, waiting to be reduced to a little heap of ashes, if it hasn’t happened already. I must check with the undertaker about that. I suppose whoever murdered her Sunday afternoon was working on the principle of ‘kill the messenger.’ What do you think, Officer Drummond?”

  “I think we’d better get hold of Lieutenant Harris.” Drummond’s last few words were obscured by an unstemmable yawn. Sarah took pity on him.

  “And I think you should go straight home and get some sleep. Catch yourself a Watertown car; I’ll talk to the lieutenant. Where’s a pay phone that works, I wonder?”

  Drummond yawned again and pointed. Sarah fumbled for a quarter and dialed police headquarters. She learned from the desk sergeant that Lieutenant Harris was at the Wilkins Museum; that was fine with her. She kept a quasi-maternal eye on Drummond until she’d seen him safely down the subway stairs and went on to where she’d parked the car Ira had borrowed for her. The car had acquired a parking ticket. Sarah thought of having it framed and presented to Officer Drummond as a memento, but he’d no doubt seen far too many parking tickets already.

  There was a for-pay parking lot not far from the museum. She paid her fee like a virtuous citizen and walked over, noting that Harris’s car was illegally parked at the entrance. Just behind it was an opulent vehicle that must be Elwyn Fleesom Turbot’s; Sarah could hear the head of trustees in full cry even before she’d set foot inside the lobby. Why wasn’t Turbot off at some criminal lawyer’s office trying to find an attorney bloody-minded enough to act for his villainous twins? She made rather a point of ignoring him.

  “Oh, there you are, Lieutenant Harris. I have some information that Officer Drummond thought you should hear as quickly as possible. Is there someplace where we can talk?”

  “You can talk in front of me,” growled Turbot. “I happen to be the executive in charge here, in case you’ve forgotten.”

  This was much too good an opening to ignore. “On the contrary, Mr. Turbot,” Sarah replied sweetly. “I seldom forget anything. Right now I’m remembering the lawsuit that Joseph Melanson’s lawyer is about to bring against you for criminal harassment. If he fails to recover from the inhuman treatment to which you subjected him, the charge will of course become either manslaughter or first-degree murder.”

  “What the hell are you talking about? I got a confession out of him, didn’t I? Any of the guards will tell you that, they were witnesses. I sent Melanson to jail because he’s a goddamn murderer.”

  “No, you didn’t, Mr. Turbot. You sent an innocent man to jail because you’re a loud-mouthed bully who needed to show the staff what a big, tough he-man they’ve got for a boss. You picked Melanson as a target for the sole reason that he was the one you knew would be easiest to intimidate. Anybody with half an eye could have seen that Joseph Melanson is one of those over-conscientious worriers who are afraid of their own shadows. He could no more have killed Dolores Tawne than a mouse could kill a cat.”

  “The hell he couldn’t. He confessed, damn it, right here where I’m standing.”

  “I know he did. After the way you’d been yelling and browbeating and humiliating him in front of his co-workers, Melanson would have confessed to raping your great-grandmother, just to get away from the sound of your disgusting voice. I saw him night before last in a prison cell, and so did Lieutenant Harris; he was virtually catatonic. If he’d been left alone in that cell all night without any medical attention, he would very likely have been found dead yesterday morning.”

  “Ah, you bleeding hearts. The bastard was faking.”

  “He was not faking. We were both with Mr. Melanson when he collapsed from a heart attack. Fortunately he was near enough to the hospital to be treated in time. I wasn’t allowed to see him yesterday, Lieutenant Harris, but I did go this morning.”

  “How’s he doing?”

  “So-so. He’s in intensive care, of course, and very weak. His heart isn’t good, I learned that he’d been getting treatment from his own doctor for some time. He kept digitalis in his locker and took it regularly during his morning and afternoon breaks and at lunchtime, or would have if Mr. Turbot hadn’t put on that show of histrionics and kept him from getting at it. It appears to have been a combination of not getting his medicine and the shock of being arrested for a crime he was incapable of committing that triggered Melanson’s heart attack. Right now, it’s touch and go. I did manage to exchange a few words with him in the hospital.”

  “Is that what you want to talk with me about?” Harris asked.

  “Yes, it is. Maybe we could go up to the chapel, if Mr. Turbot will excuse us. There are seldom many visitors there on a weekday and I’d prefer not to be overheard.”

  Turbot doggedly refused to be excluded; Sarah decided there was no point in making a scene. The dark-brown paneled walls and heavy chandeliers, in need of a cleaning which they probably wouldn’t get now that Dolores was gone, struck the proper note of solemnity. She sat down in one of the carved oaken chairs and motioned for Harris to take the one beside it.

  “What I heard from Melanson is about Dolores Tawne. On the Friday before she was killed, she got a phone call from an old acquaintance whom she hadn’t heard from for many years. The caller wanted her to do a favor, quite a simple one but something that could only be entrusted to a true and loyal friend. Dolores had always prided herself on her probity, she was only too glad to say yes.”

  “Damn fool,” growled Turbot.

  Sarah ignored him. “What it came down to, Lieutenant Harris, was that the friend would send some packages to be kept in a long-unused safe deposit box to which Dolores had the key. A messenger would bring them to the museum before lunchtime. When she got them, she must immediately take the packages to the bank and put them in the empty box.

  “Dolores was excited at getting her finger into this interesting new pie, she let Melanson see the bagful of what they both took to be Christmas presents. Mela
nson thought they were pretty, little boxes all in holiday wrappings and tied with red ribbons. This was on the thirty-first of August, which happened to be Melanson’s birthday and gave him a special reason to recall the incident.”

  “So?” said Harris.

  “So it appears that Dolores did not put the packages in the bank at once, as she’d been told to do. It wasn’t until lunchtime that she showed up at the bank. And then she couldn’t find the key she wanted. According to Mrs. Fortune, who has charge of the safe deposit boxes, Dolores made a great fuss, then decided to use her own box, to which she did have the key.”

  “Have we come to the punch line yet, Mrs. Bittersohn?”

  “Almost, Lieutenant. Do you remember the day I was deliberately run down and nearly killed by somebody driving a gray 1989 Toyota, license number seven-five-three-two KG?”

  Sarah thought she saw Turbot wince, but she couldn’t be sure. “That was the day Officer Drummond and I went to the bank, after I’d learned that I was Dolores’s executrix. You may not remember my telling you about the stickpins in her safe deposit box; you were talking on your car phone and it sounded as if you were being shot at.”

  “Ah yes, I remember it well,” said Harris. “The shooting, that is. You’d better refresh my memory on the stickpin part. You’d already been to Mrs. Tawne’s studio, right?”

  “Right. That’s where I got the safe deposit key that you’d already found, plus a different one that I found under the paper lining in her bottom dresser drawer. The second box turned out to have been rented in the name of LaVonne LaVerne back in the sixties. Dolores Tawne had been paying rent on the box for approximately thirty years, but it had never once in all that time been opened. As executrix, I got to open it, and found nothing inside except six old-fashioned steel hatpins and some photographs of a group of women in fancy dress, whom my uncle Jeremy Kelling identified as the Wicked Widows.”

  “Oh yeah, you mentioned them before. So what’s the story?”

  “Knowing Dolores as I did, I surmised that she’d been instructed to put the packages, unopened, in the box which had presumably been kept ready for that particular purpose. Having taken on too many responsibilities at the Wilkins, however, she dashed off to the bank forgetting the key that she’d hidden in the drawer, most likely at the time the box was first rented. She may even have forgotten where she’d left it; she was a great fusser and a demon for getting things done, no matter how. It would have been like her to shove the packages into her own box, meaning to change them over when she found the right key, and race back to the museum on some desperate mission like trimming the peacocks’ claws, forgetting all about the mixup she’d left at the bank.”

  “Mixup? My God! If they’re in her box with no identification on them—my God! Don’t you realize what she’s done, you dumb little half-wit?”

  Turbot took a threatening step toward Sarah; Harris forestalled him. “Kindly control yourself, Mr. Turbot. As executrix, Mrs. Bittersohn, you were entitled to open whatever you found in Mrs. Tawne’s box. This would include the wrapped packages. Did you open them?”

  “I opened some of them,” Sarah replied. “They were velvet-covered jewelers’ boxes, each containing an antique gold stickpin. One had a cluster of emeralds and opals in an elaborate baroque setting, another a diamond of perhaps ten carats surrounded by alternating sapphires and rubies. I can’t tell you what they’d sell for in today’s market, even as single pieces. As a collection, which I surmise the packages to be, they might be worth more, assuming the stones are genuine. My husband could give you an estimate, and also tell you who stole them, like as not. Since I can’t do that, I thought the sensible course would be to leave the packages just as I found them until Mrs. Tawne’s lawyer makes an appointment with me, the bank officer, and somebody from the Treasury Department to open the box and evaluate the contents.”

  “The Treasury Department?” Turbot was past roaring, he sounded as if he were being strangled.

  “Oh yes, I believe they always have to be—catch him, Lieutenant, he’s having a heart attack.”

  Turbot was not having a heart attack. He was simply so engorged with fury that he’d cut off his own breath. Sarah was all for shipping him off to the hospital on general principles, but Harris had encountered this kind of situation before. He performed some arcane variation of the Heimlich maneuver that got the head of trustees back into bellowing condition quite easily. Needless to say, he got no thanks.

  “That goddamn woman!” Turbot bellowed. “If she were still alive, I’d kill her myself. Can’t you get it through your head—”

  “If you mean me, I understand you perfectly,” Sarah replied with her sweetest smile. “Was there something else you’d like to say, Mr. Turbot?”

  What Turbot had to say was not the sort of language that ought to be used in a chapel. Sarah felt a surge of gratitude that Aunt Bodie was not among those present.

  “Please don’t bother to run Mr. Turbot in on my account,” she told the lieutenant. “Mr. Turbot’s had such a string of mishaps lately. I realize he’s terribly disappointed that those prankish twins of his muffed his instructions to run me over on Monday. No doubt he still feels that Officer Drummond was taking too much upon himself when he pulled me out from under the wheels of that gray 1989 Toyota sedan, registration number seven-five-three-two KG.”

  Turbot had not expected this. “You’re lying! It can’t have been the twins.”

  “There were witnesses, Mr. Turbot. Don’t forget this happened right in Kenmore Square, at a busy time of the day. People notice such things, you know. Officer Drummond took down the registration number as soon as he’d snatched me away from the wheels and got me up on the sidewalk. I’d already recognized the car. I’d seen it before, on Sunday afternoon, when I’d left your house and you’d sent your two cowboys to run me off the road because I’d foolishly revealed at the table that I knew too much about stolen paintings in general and the Wilkins Museum in particular.”

  Sarah was about as angry as she’d ever been. “You shouldn’t have been so quick to underestimate a dumb little cutie-pants, Mr. Turbot. You must be upset at having both your sons denied bail because of their terrible police records, but I’m afraid you can’t have been a good father to them.”

  “I’m not a father at all, damn it! How can you call those two hyenas mine? If you think I’d ever—good God, who’s that?”

  There had never been any electricity installed in Madam Wilkins’s palazzo during her lifetime, and according to the terms of her will, there must never be any changes. The only illumination came from gas jets and candles. Here in the chapel, a rack of votive candles was set below and to the left of the altar, but only a few of the cups were alight. Those inside the room could see nothing but a silhouette in the doorway. It was that of a woman who might have been dressed for that sumptuous opening-day blowout when Madam Wilkins first flung wide her doors to the cream of Boston society.

  The woman gave an impression of great height, but the illusion may have been created by the huge cartwheel hat that she wore very much to one side. Her face was veiled in a great swath of black net, its ends tossed back over her shoulders. Her gown fitted her tightly down to the mid-thighs, then fanned out in a great pouf that concealed her nether limbs.

  Sarah had known for some time that Lydia Ouspenska was going to regild some of the museum’s more decrepit frames when she got the chance. It would not have been beyond Lydia to dress for the occasion, as Peter Paul Rubens had been wont to do; but this outfit was something else, and Sarah knew what. She snatched up one of the paper spills that Dolores had always kept handy to light the votive candles with and went quickly down the line, touching off wicks until there were enough of the small flames alight to see by. Even so, the silence, with that startling figure still poised in the doorway, was eerie.

  Sarah was in no mood for any more histrionics. “Lieutenant Harris,” she said calmly, “may I present you to Miss LaVonne LaVerne, who is, I presume, t
he last of the Wicked Widows? I know you never talk, Miss LaVerne, but aren’t you supposed to flap your veil or something? We’d be delighted to get a better look at that Mona Lisa mask you’re wearing. Your old friend Dolores Tawne did a superb job on those masks, didn’t she? It’s a great shame you felt it necessary to kill her. I marvel that you got those stickpins away from Mr. Turbot without killing him first.”

  Sarah had no idea why she was so recklessly taunting a murderess who’d killed four Boston policemen, six Wicked Widows, and heaven only knew how many others, not counting the woman who’d been true to her trust and bragged about it. Right now, Dolores ought to be here in the chapel, dusting the altar and scraping wax out of these votive candle holders that were getting so badly smoked up. As Sarah had anticipated, the housekeeping was already going to pot.

  Either the Wicked Widow didn’t hear or didn’t care. Ignoring Sarah, she glided without a sound toward Harris, her black-gloved arms and black-sheathed torso writhing in a sensuous, hypnotic rhythm. The lieutenant stood frozen, his police revolver still in its holster. Turbot was worse than useless, standing there with his mouth agape. For once, no sound was coming out. Sarah stepped out of her shoes, slipped around behind the Wicked Widow, and climbed up on one of the long oaken benches, as close as she could get to Harris and Turbot.

  The Widow appeared to be in an ecstatic trance, working her serpentine way closer and closer to those two mesmerized males, sliding away, swooping back, stalking her prey like a cobra. Standing on the bench, Sarah had a bird’s eye view of that enormous hat. She could make out the curved backs of the combs that had been sewn inside the brim and anchored in the too-coarse, too-abundant raven hair. A wig, for sure. Good.