“Mite,” Susan told the lithe big tom who had grown out of his name, “he doesn’t want to play. He thinks it’s hot and that the boy went off without him and that you’re rambunctious.”
Mite turned and looked at her intently. Then he leaped away with violence and went halfway up the ash tree. He turned and looked at them.
“No,” Susan said, “I’m not going to chase you. And Colonel isn’t going to chase you. Find yourself a mouse.”
Mite backed down the tree until he was some ten feet from the ground. He twisted himself and looked down at the ground for some seconds. Then he leaped from the tree trunk and landed and immediately bounded off toward the deeper grass which lay beyond a dry stone wall. He went over the wall.
“He thinks that was an order,” Heimrich said. “Did you specially want a mouse?”
“Actually,” Susan said, “I’d rather have a gin and tonic.”
Heimrich put a leg over the side of the chaise and a foot on the ground.
“No,” Susan said, “I’ll get them,” and she went to her feet as if she were on springs.
He turned to watch her as she went toward the low white house which, long before he knew it, or had met a woman named Susan Faye, had been a barn. He always turned to watch her move. He sighed slightly, thinking that she did not deserve to be married to a hippopotamus.
Colonel sat up, which seemed a somewhat laborious process. He looked around, turning so he could look toward the stone fence and the field beyond it.
“Don’t worry about him,” Heimrich told the big dog. “He’ll be back.”
Colonel lay down again. He got up in sections but he always lay down in one piece, with a considerable thump. He lay, this time, with his head toward the wall the cat had gone over. Colonel did not, although Mite was grown now and extremely agile, trust the black cat out of his sight. After all, Mite was his cat. He had brought Mite home in his mouth when Mite was a very small black kitten and, when Colonel put him gently down on the terrace, a very wet one.
“He’s grown up, Colonel,” Heimrich told their dog. “People will start calling you overprotective. And—”
He stopped talking to the dog because he could hear the telephone ringing in the house. When the telephone rings in the low white house, particularly on days off, it too often means that somebody has killed somebody. Which means the end of a day off for an inspector, Bureau of Criminal Investigation, New York State Police. Poor Susan, Heimrich thought. She thought my being made an inspector would mean predictable office hours.
He looked at the door in which a long-legged slender woman in blue slacks and yellow shirt would soon appear to tell him the barracks was calling. She did not. Of course, all telephone calls did not mean that somebody had killed somebody. Quite possibly somebody wanted them for cocktails. Or young Michael, who had been playing tennis at the club, hadn’t been lucky about a ride home and was asking, in his slow grave way, to be fetched. Or—
Susan came out carrying a tray with two tall glasses on it. She carried the tray slowly across the flagstones, being careful not to slosh. She put the tray down on a small round table between the two chaises. She sat on hers and lifted her glass and they clicked glasses.
“Bob Wallis wants to see you about something,” Susan said. “He sounded angry about it. I told him to come along over.”
“Wallis always sounds angry,” Heimrich told her. “It’s the way his voice is made.”
“Also,” Susan said, “he always walks as if he were walking through something. Fighting through something. Where did Colonel go?”
“To find his cat,” Heimrich told her. “His very special cat. Who can’t be trusted out of sight.”
“Everybody is always leaving him,” Susan said. “Michael goes off to play tennis. Mite goes off to catch a mouse.”
They were halfway down their tall drinks when a station wagon came up the drive and turned to face out, as if it were about to go away again. Lyle Mercer got out on the near side and, unexpectedly, Michael Faye followed her. He wore white shorts and tennis shirt and a sweater draped over his shoulders. He carried a tennis racket.
Lyle waved a hand at them, and Michael, who looked wet, whose shirt clung damply to his lean body, waved his tennis racket. Robert Wallis jutted his way around the wagon and walked toward the terrace, his head thrust forward. He always, Susan thought, looks like a battering ram about to batter.
Susan turned on her chaise and said, “Hi, dear,” to Lyle Mercer. Heimrich stood up. Susan’s son said, “Thank you, sir,” to the back of Robert Wallis and, “Thank you, Miss Mercer,” to Lyle, who was following Wallis toward the terrace. She stopped and smiled back at him. Wallis didn’t stop or, until he was on the terrace, say anything. The tall, slim boy said, “Mother. Dad,” and went into the house.
Wallis thrust a hand toward Heimrich, who took it and found it a lean, hard hand. Wallis said, “Mrs. Heimrich,” a little absently and then, not at all absently, “Sorry to barge in, Inspector. Want to ask you something. Also, tell you something.”
“All right,” Heimrich said. He reached a long arm out and pulled a director’s chair up and said, “Miss Mercer.” Lyle sat in the chair and Robert Wallis looked around, a little angrily, and then jerked a chair up beside Lyle Mercer’s. “I’ll get you drinks,” Susan said and started to get up from the chaise. But Lyle shook her head and Wallis did not appear to hear her. Wallis sat leaning forward in the chair.
“Is there,” Wallis said, his voice grating, “a law against putting lying advertisements in newspapers?”
“Probably,” Heimrich said. “There are a lot of laws. And regulations. Federal Trade Commission, probably. Better business bureaus. Fraudulent claims and—”
“Not what I mean,” Wallis said. “Look.”
He took a roughly torn sheet of newsprint out of a side pocket of his summer jacket. He thrust it toward Heimrich. He said, “From the Citizen. The ones I’ve checked.”
Heimrich read the want ads with checks beside them. He shook his head and handed the paper down to Susan. Then he sat on his chaise. He said, “The wedding dress ad is unusual, naturally. There’s nothing illegal about wanting to sell a horse and a gun. Should be, I think, as far as the gun’s concerned, but there isn’t.” He shook his head again. “That what’s bothering you, Mr. Wallis?”
“What’s bothering me,” Wallis said, “is that my newspaper’s been used by somebody to play a nasty trick. These ads came in in plain envelopes, typed on plain paper. And the signatures typed. And it turns out the signatures were forgeries.”
“You can’t forge a signature on a typewriter,” Heimrich told him. “Whose signatures? Or was it the same on both?”
“On both,” Wallis said. “Paul Wainright on both. But Wainright says he didn’t send them in. And—you tell him, Lyle. The whole thing.”
Lyle told them the whole thing. When she had finished, Susan Heimrich said, “What an awful thing to do. What a—a low, vicious thing to do.”
“Mrs. Wainright called it ‘tacky,’” Lyle said. “I don’t know precisely what she meant.”
“Shabby, I think,” Susan said. “Something like that. I think of—oh, dirty ruffles on a dress.”
Heimrich had closed his eyes. It was some seconds before he spoke. Then he said, “You suggested Mr. Wainright tell the police about this, Miss Mercer? And he thought it wouldn’t be any use?”
“Yes.”
“And you decided the police should be told?”
“I decided that,” Wallis said. “Somebody’s played a dirty, nasty trick. Made the Citizen party to it. The girl here found me at the club. Swimming.” He ran a hand through stiff, still somewhat damp, black hair. “So, Inspector, what can you do about it? Must be a law against that sort of thing.”
“There are a good many vicious things that aren’t illegal,” Heimrich said. “Oh, if it went on. Harassment if it went on. Wainright could get a court order to stop it. If he could find out who was doing it.”
“There ought to b
e some way to find out,” Wallis said. “Some way the police could find out.”
“These envelopes the ads came in,” Heimrich said. “No return address, of course. Anybody happen to notice the postmarks?”
“No.”
“Plain typewriter paper. No address—return address—on that, of course?”
“No.”
“And envelopes and paper burned after the ads were set. Thrown away, anyhow.”
“The refuse people pick up on Friday,” Wallis said.
“You see,” Heimrich said, “come down to it, Mr. Wainright is pretty much right. Nothing to put a finger on. A crackpot. A sadistic one, with a grudge against the Wainrights. But—a shadow.”
“That’s what Mr. Wainright said,” Lyle said. “You can’t fight shadows.”
“Or put handcuffs on them,” Heimrich said. “Or charge them with anything. Malice—a desire to hurt—those things aren’t crimes, Mr. Wallis. Actually, using somebody else’s name isn’t. Unless it’s done for profit, naturally. Wainright told you he had no idea who might have wanted to rake the girl’s death up again, Miss Mercer?”
“He said he didn’t.”
“And that it was a year ago last Thursday his stepdaughter was killed? To the day?”
“Yes.”
“And whoever sent these advertisements in stipulated that they be printed in the Citizen’s issue of October tenth?”
Wallis answered that. He said, “That’s what Mrs. Allsmith says. She handled the ads. Handles a lot of things at the Citizen, Gertrude Allsmith does.”
“Have any answers come in, do you know, Mr. Wallis?”
“Early for that,” Wallis said. “Paper comes out, goes into the mails, Thursday. People get it Friday.”
“We don’t,” Susan Heimrich said. “Saturday, sometimes. Sometimes not until Monday. And the carrier gets here, usually, late in the afternoon.”
“You get your mail from a carrier, Mr. Wallis? I mean mail for the newspaper?”
“P. O. box,” Wallis said. “Boy picks it up. Only the post office closes at noon on Saturdays. But if there are answers, all we can do is send them along. Anyway, I guess it is. Tampering with the United States mail, or something like that, if we didn’t.”
Merton Heimrich had closed his eyes again. He said, “hmmm.” He reached out, without opening his eyes, and picked up his glass and drank from it.
“Really,” Susan said, “I wish you two would let me get you something to drink. Something long and cold.”
This time Robert Wallis did hear her. He said, “Well.” He looked at Lyle. He said, “You, child? You are over eighteen.” He looked at her again. “Barely,” he said.
“All right,” Lyle said. “Something with gin in it. Not much gin.”
“With tonic?” Susan said, and started to get up.
“We just barged in,” Wallis said. “Hate being barged in on myself. Probably—”
“With tonic?” Susan repeated, and was more firm about it. She also stood up.
Wallis said, “A light one.” Lyle said, “Very light for me, please, Susan.”
Susan started across the terrace, but Merton Heimrich said, “I’ll get them,” and was off the chaise in a smooth, swinging movement. He picked up the tray and looked down at Susan’s glass, which was still three-quarters full. Susan said, “No, dear,” and Heimrich put his own almost empty glass on the tray and went off toward the house. For so big a man, he moves so well, Susan Heimrich thought. Particularly for a man who thinks he’s a hippopotamus.
Heimrich was gone some time. Lyle said, “It’s beautiful here, Susan,” and Wallis turned his aluminum-and-nylon chair and jutted his head toward the Hudson. He did not, for some seconds, say anything. Then he said, “Well, I’ll be damned.” With that, he pointed.
A very large Great Dane was walking, slowly, with evident care, across the lawn from the direction of a stone wall. He seemed to be measuring his pace. And a very black cat, moving somewhat more rapidly, was timing his movements to the big dog’s pace. The cat was weaving in and out under the tall dog, between the dog’s long legs.
“Oh,” Susan said, “they do that all the time. It’s something they made up together. Although I suspect Mite was the one who had the idea first. He has so many ideas.”
“Mite?” Wallis said, with some incredulity in his voice.
“The cat’s called Mite,” Susan Heimrich explained. “It was a very appropriate name when Colonel first brought him home.” She looked at her animals. “He has rather outgrown it,” Susan said. “But it’s his, now, and you can’t change names in mid-cat.”
Colonel walked to the shade of the ash tree and collapsed in it. His front paws stuck out into the sun. Mite looked the situation over and curled up between the dog’s big paws, where the sun was warm on his shining black coat.
The screen door squealed slightly as it closed itself. Heimrich carried a tray with three tall glasses on it across the terrace. Susan said, “Channel Thirteen?” and Heimrich said, “What else? A dance festival somewhere.”
“Sometimes we worry a little about the boy,” Susan said. “On the other hand, he plays rather good tennis.”
“And baseball,” Heimrich said, and put the tray down and handed glasses to Lyle Mercer and Robert Wallis.
“Kept you waiting, I’m afraid,” Heimrich said. “Got curious. Got them working on the files.” He did not amplify. He said, “I see Colonel found his cat. No mouse?”
“He didn’t bring one home,” Susan said. “Of course, sometimes he just has a picnic.”
Heimrich said, “Drinks all right?” and was told the drinks were fine. He said, “I like your newspaper, Mr. Wallis. It’s an honest newspaper. You’d published other small-town newspapers before you started the Citizen?”
“No,” Wallis said and turned his chair from the Hudson so that he jutted his head toward Heimrich. “Worked on city papers. With the idea of a country weekly in the back of my mind. A kind of itch, and God knows why.” He drank, rather deeply, from his glass. “My wife and I were going to run it together,” he said. “My wife died.” He drank again. Then, to nobody in particular, he said, “The damnedest things happen in the country.”
“Yes,” Merton Heimrich said. “Like everywhere else, Mr. Wallis. You’d thought they didn’t?”
“I suppose so,” Wallis said. Then, abruptly, he laughed. His laughter, unexpectedly, did not grate at all. “I hadn’t,” he said, “counted on pit-barbecued children.”
They all laughed at that, the most famous of the Citizen’s typos. “The annual food fair for the benefit of the Visiting Nurse Association will be held Saturday on the grounds of the Memorial Methodist Church. Cakes and pies donated by members of the Van Brunt Garden Club will be on sale, as will pit-barbecued—”
“Reggie Peterson is certain he wrote, ‘chickens,’” Robert Wallis said. “And the linotype man is just as sure he followed copy. And the proofreader simply missed it.”
“And you,” Lyle Mercer said, “went through the ceiling.”
“Right,” Wallis said. “We’ve framed the hole.”
He finished his drink and looked at Lyle’s, which was not much more than begun. “Any time,” Lyle said, and sipped and put her glass down on a flagstone. Then the telephone rang in the house. Susan started up but Heimrich said, “Can be they’ve checked it out,” and swung off the chaise and went across the terrace.
Heimrich was, this time, gone almost five minutes. When he had sat down again and sipped for a moment from his glass, he nodded his head.
“All violent deaths in country areas we check out,” he said. “Accidental or otherwise. Go into the records. It happened the way Wainright told you it happened, Miss Mercer. And when it happened—a year ago last Thursday. The girl, Wainright’s stepdaughter, was Virginia Gant. Her horse threw her. Threw her headfirst into a stone wall.”
Virginia Gant had been twenty, he told them. She was the daughter of Robert Lee and Florence Gant. She had been born in Virg
inia, where her father bred horses. Hunters, for the most part. His father had before him. Robert Lee Gant had been more than a breeder of horses. He had been—
“Wait a minute,” Wallis said. “He was head of some damn big corporation or other. Merged with something else, the corporation did. A hell of a big merger. Engineered by Gant —and then he retired sitting pretty.”
“Apparently the same Gant,” Heimrich said. “About the accident. It was early in the morning. A rather misty morning. Bad footing for the horses. A good many had dropped out of the hunt. The Wainrights hadn’t.”
Paul Wainright and his stepdaughter had, according to the report of the trooper who had checked the accident out, been riding side by side. Florence Wainright was ahead of them; had already jumped a low stone fence into the next field. Virginia Gant was riding a bay stallion. “Her special horse, apparently.” A little inclined to be nervy, according to what Wainright had told the trooper. Some people wouldn’t have ridden him. Wainright had, he said, warned Virginia about him. And been laughed at. He had been laughed at not only by his stepdaughter but by his wife.
Virginia had ridden since she was a child. She had never before been thrown. The stone wall was not a high one, according to Wainright. It was an entirely routine jump. He had been riding nearly abreast of his stepdaughter, but a little ahead of her. His horse had taken the jump. Virginia’s stallion had refused it.
“Just dug his forefeet in,” Wainright had told the trooper.
“I’ve known it to happen,” Lyle Mercer said. “They—sometimes they seem to get notions. But a good rider—” She let it hang.
“Perhaps the girl was too confident,” Heimrich said. “Too sure. Anyway—”
Anyway, the girl had been thrown over her horse’s head and, headfirst, into the wall. She had died almost at once. The horse had stumbled and fallen against the wall and had broken his right foreleg.
Wainright had jumped his horse back over the wall and had run to his stepdaughter, calling to her. Florence Wainright had heard his shouts and had ridden back. They were leaning over the girl together when others came up, one of them a local doctor. But there was nothing he or anyone could do for Virginia Gant, who was twenty. And who was to have been married the following June.
Risky Way to Kill Page 4
