Cirak's Daughter

by Charlotte MacLeod

  When she came back in with the warmed-over coffee, three mugs, and some cream and sugar, she found the victim wedged helplessly into a corner of the sofa. The accountant was giving him a stern lecture on the intricacies of finance while the phonograph blatted, “You’re Sweet an’ Petite but I’m Seven Foot Two, So I Gotta Find Me More Woman Than You.”

  Bauer drank his coffee like a shellshock victim, then struggled out of the sofa and said he had to be getting along. Mercifully, Harriet Compton let him go.

  “I’ve enjoyed meeting you, Mr. Bauer. Do let me know how you make out with Con Fed.”

  “I’ll get your jacket,” Jenny said quickly. She rummaged in the closet. “Let me help you.”

  “Hey, this can’t be mine.”

  Greg Bauer had to be telling the truth. The suede jacket Jenny was holding for him would never have covered those wide shoulders with their extra padding of fat.

  “Oh, sorry,” she apologized with a straight face. “This must be the one I found hanging in the closet when I moved here. It must have belonged to that Mr. Cox who lived here before I did. You don’t happen to recall seeing it on him?”

  “No, I can’t say I do.”

  Greg was fingering the rich-textured suede, perhaps wishing he could have laid claim to the garment. “It’s a beautiful jacket, but it doesn’t look like Cox, somehow. He either went in for the wildest plaids you ever saw or else he’d get all togged out in dark gray pinstripes and a black homburg like a London banker. We used to get a kick out of his clothes because they always went from one extreme to the other.”

  “I see,” said Miss Compton. “This jacket is too middle-of-the-road. Mr. Cox must have been an interesting person to know. Well, I expect the owner will turn up one of these days. You might mention among your men friends that my niece has found an expensive-looking suede jacket in her hall closet. Somebody from the neighborhood may have left it here and forgotten where it is. Beth told us Mr. Cox used to entertain quite a lot.”

  “I wouldn’t know. Cox never bothered much about Pam and me. Well, thanks for the coffee and the hot tip. I sure am grateful to get that inside dope on the Con Fed split.”

  “He ought to be,” Harriet remarked after Jenny had closed the door on their uninvited guest. “I’ve put a tidy piece of change in that young man’s pocket, if he doesn’t louse up the deal. And now I think this old gal’s had enough excitement for one day. If you’ll excuse me, I’m going to hit the sack.”

  8

  Morning brought Beth Firbelle and an armload of chrysanthemums. “Aunt Marguerite thought you might as well enjoy these before the frost gets them. It was down around freezing last night.”

  “How lovely!” Jenny helped her untangle the stems from the cord of the ever-present crocheted drawstring bag. “Won’t you come in for a cup of coffee? Aunt Harriet and I are still trying to wake each other up.”

  “Thanks, but I don’t dare take the time. We’re getting ready for our annual rummage sale at the church, and Aunt Marguerite promised I’d help. I ought to have been down there half an hour ago. You wouldn’t have any white elephants you’d care to donate, I don’t suppose?”

  “Haven’t I just! This place is full of them. Was Mr. Cox’s taste really all this rotten, or did he just inherit the furniture from whoever was here before him, the way I did?”

  “I don’t think Mr. Cox did much about the furnishings. Most of the stuff was already here. Old Mrs. Brady—you wouldn’t know about her, of course, but she lived here for a while after she broke up her big place, where Greg and Pam are living now. Anyway, she brought a lot of things with her when she came. The furniture was terribly out of scale for this little house, but it was what she’d been used to and I suppose she couldn’t bear to part with it.”

  “I can,” said Jenny. “If you want to send somebody around with a truck, I’ll be glad to fill it up. I’m sick of tripping over fake oriental tabourets and those ghastly jardinieres that look as if they’d been glazed with melted peanut butter and then left to mildew. Don’t you think I ought to clean this place right out and start fresh, Aunt Harriet?”

  “It’s the only thing to do.”

  The older woman had come to the door in her brand-new blue lounging robe, cradling a mug of hot coffee in competent, heavily veined hands. “Good morning, Beth. Aren’t you kind to bring us all those flowers. And did I hear you say rummage sale?”

  “Yes, it’s Saturday from ten till six. Would you like to come?”

  “Why not? I don’t think I’ve been to one in forty years. Is there something Jenny and I can do to help?”

  “Well, if you’re really serious about contributing all these wonderful things?”

  “We really are,” Jenny assured her. “Can you send somebody over with a wagon or whatever, or shall I try to squeeze them into that bug of mine? I’ll have to make about seventeen trips if I bring the stuff myself.”

  “I can arrange for a pickup.”

  Beth made her farewells and bustled off, the drawstring bag swinging purposefully. Harriet Compton put on a washable shirtwaist she’d bought at Louise’s Boutique, tied one of Jenny’s blouses around her waist by the sleeves to serve as an apron, and started lugging.

  “We might as well pile everything beside the driveway,” she panted, staggering out with a truly dreadful jardiniere, complete with a bouquet of dusty peacock feathers. “Why anybody would deliberately choose to live with a thing like this is beyond me. My mother wouldn’t even allow peacock feathers in the house. She claimed they were bad luck.”

  “Too bad my father didn’t know that,” said Jenny.

  “Jenny, I’m sorry! I didn’t mean to—”

  “That’s all right, Aunt Harriet. A person can’t feel much grief for somebody she’s never known.”

  She fiddled with one of the bedraggled plumes. “I don’t know what I feel, to tell you the truth. I was brought up to believe my father was the worst creature that ever crawled the face of the earth, but as they say, there are two sides to every story. I hate to think I’ve been prejudiced by his leaving me all that money, but at least it shows he never forgot me, and he wanted to look after me in the end. That’s something, isn’t it?”

  “Yes, Jenny, that’s something. Come on, let’s get the rest of this trash out of the house. Maybe it will change the luck.”

  Throwing away the clutter was a great catharsis. An hour later, Jenny’s emotional state and the interior of the carriage house were both vastly improved.

  “I can’t believe it!” she exclaimed. “You can actually walk through the living room without barking your shins on anything. I wish I had the nerve to chuck that crummy old overstuffed parlor suite, too.”

  Miss Compton laughed. “Don’t get carried away. We do need something to sit on, you know.”

  “Yes, but does it have to be something like that? I’d like a pretty little settee and maybe one of those Shaker rocking chairs. This room could be so pleasant with the right furniture.”

  “Yes, it could,” Harriet Compton agreed. “The proportions are good, and that fireplace with the cherry-wood mantel is absolutely perfect, now that we can get a decent look at it. You could turn this old carriage house into a real showplace, if you decide to stay here.”

  “Why shouldn’t I stay? It’s my house, isn’t it?”

  All of a sudden, Jenny felt a ferocious pride of ownership. “This is the only real home I’ve ever had, where I can do exactly as I please without my mother’s relatives standing over me finding fault. I’ll stay as long as I want,” she finished childishly.

  “I was only wondering how long you’d want to,” drawled Harriet Compton.

  Jenny flushed. “I’m sorry. That was pretty silly of me. Of course, I shan’t want to roost here for the rest of my life. Once I’ve done what I came for, maybe I’ll take a wad of my father’s money, if there’s any left to take, and go see the world. But it would be sort of cozy to know this little house was waiting for me when I got tired of traveling an
d wanted to come home.”

  “It would, wouldn’t it? I hope you can, Jenny.”

  “Oh well, perhaps I wouldn’t like it so much after all. Living in the house where my father was murdered—” She slammed her fist into a red and yellow sofa cushion. “I’d like to take that suede jacket and shove it into the rummage sale!”

  “Go ahead, if that’s the way you feel about it,” said Harriet Compton.

  “And destroy the one real clue we’ve got? You don’t think I meant it, do you? I’m just blowing off steam. Besides, we’ve let Greg Bauer know we have the jacket. Maybe he’ll spread the word, and somebody will come looking for it. Or come looking for you. It’s going to be a jolt when whoever mailed it finds out it’s landed right back here on Packard Street.”

  “You can say that again,” Harriet agreed. “I think we can cross Greg Bauer off the list as far as the jacket’s concerned, though, don’t you? I’d be willing to swear he’d never seen it before.”

  “He was just sorry it didn’t fit.” Jenny snorted. “Tough luck on Sue Giles if Greg turns out to be innocent after all. Come to think of it, I’ll bet Sue’s own husband’s about the right size. I wish we’d thought of the jacket while she was here. We could have said we came across it while we were cleaning the junk out and wondered if Bill might have left it sometime when he was visiting Mr. Cox.”

  Harriet shook her now slightly disheveled head. “No good. Don’t you recall how bitter Sue was about their never getting invited to Cox’s parties? What occasion would Bill have to forget he’d left an expensive suede jacket here?”

  “Plenty of occasions, maybe. As the next-door neighbor, he’d have a better chance than anybody else to sneak over here at night and—and do things without being caught.”

  “I’m not saying he didn’t. I only meant that Sue didn’t want us to think he could have. As to opportunity, the Gileses both had every chance in the world. They might have been up to something together. More probably, they could have seen somebody around here the night Cox was killed and didn’t say anything for fear of getting involved. Lots of people are like that, you know. Or maybe they knew the murderer as a friend or a relative.”

  “Which could mean anyone in Meldrum, judging from what I learned at that party they gave,” said Jenny. “They could even have helped the killer to get rid of the jacket. I’ll bet they wouldn’t have had any trouble getting that piece of wrapping paper out of this house to mail the package in. Or they might have taken in a package ages ago for that old woman who used to live here and wound up keeping the wrapper for some reason or other.”

  “They may even have a key to this house,” Harriet agreed. “People do often leave door keys with their closest neighbors. And you told me yourself that Sue’s frightened about something. Furthermore, we both saw how quick she was to steer us away from thinking she and her husband were friendly with James. Then she tossed us that earful about James and the Firbelles. Makes you wonder, doesn’t it?”

  “But how could they have gotten your address to send you the jacket? You’ve never met either of them before, surely?”

  “Jenny, how am I supposed to answer that? To begin with, I haven’t so much as caught sight of Bill Giles yet. He may be my long-lost cousin, for all I know. As for Sue, I don’t recall ever meeting her, but that doesn’t mean I haven’t. Accountants don’t handle their clients’ day-to-day bookkeeping, you know. We just go in and spend a day or two at the end of a fiscal year or at income tax time when the books have to be gone over. Some companies employ literally hundreds of clerical workers, and they all tend to look alike when you’ve seen as many of them as I have. Sue could have worked in some office I visited and remembered me because having the accountant in always puts the boss in a tizzy.”

  “I can imagine,” said Jenny. “Uncle Fred always comes unglued when he’s having his taxes done. I suppose you might make an impression on the staff simply because you didn’t come often.”

  “Yes, and maybe not a favorable one.”

  “Especially if they were cooking the books, as you say. Maybe you sent Bill Giles to jail for embezzling, and now they’re out to get you!”

  Harriet only shrugged. “Stranger things have happened, my dear. Sue’s got a mean streak in her wide enough to think of revenge, I’d say, judging from the way she was ripping her neighbors up the back yesterday. And if she’s scared, she must have some reason to be. Though that could be just nerves because she’s living next door to the house where James was killed. In any case, I’d say we ought to check out the Gileses pretty thoroughly, wouldn’t you?”

  “Let’s invite them to one of those intimate little dinners my father never asked them to. How about Sunday night?”

  “Let’s see how things work out. We don’t want the invitation to look too contrived. Maybe we could have them over for dessert and coffee some night during the week, after we’ve got the place fixed up a bit. New curtains or whatever would make a reasonable excuse. I notice Sue’s taking a keen interest in our junk pile, even though she’s trying not to let us see her peeking around the curtain over there.”

  “I expect everybody on the street is doing the same,” said Jenny. “Too bad my Aunt Martha isn’t here to catch the show. She spends half her time spying on the neighbors. I wonder if anybody saw Greg Bauer sneaking around the place last night. He must be pretty desperate to come hunting stock market tips from me.”

  “Maybe that wasn’t all he thought he’d get,” drawled Harriet Compton. “Visiting lonely ladies is probably his favorite pastime. I’ll bet this was the first time he’s done it to have his palm read, though.”

  “I still can’t believe he was serious about that Peruvian stock; but he certainly acted as if he was, don’t you think, Aunt Harriet?”

  “I’m just glad I’m not handling the accounts at the place where he works, wherever that may be,” the older woman agreed. “He may already have taken a dip into the boss’s cash. Probably gambled and got in over his head. That type always does. Bauer is the classic smalltime embezzler: greedy, vain, and stupid enough to think he can get away with it. For his family’s sake, I hope I threw a scare into him before it’s too late. He can bail himself out if he doesn’t botch that Con Fed deal.”

  “Then he’ll be hounding you for another hot tip.”

  “Let him. Maybe I’ll set up in Meldrum as an investment broker. I couldn’t do any worse than some of the so-called experts. As an old friend of mine used to say, ‘if they’re all so smart, how come they’re not all millionaires themselves?’”

  A sad little smile curved Harriet Compton’s lips, then she shook her head, as if to rid her mind of something she’d rather not think about. “Well, Jenny, can you think of anything else to throw out?”

  “That had better be it for now. I do hope Beth’s found somebody to cart this junk away. I also hope we don’t have to chase over to the rummage sale and buy any of it back. I’m sure I’ve gotten rid of at least six things we’re going to need later, like that gruesome lamp with the icky green shade that was on the dining room table.”

  “How desperate would you have to be to need that thing back? If that’s what James used to light up those cozy little dinner parties of his, I should think the guests would all have come down with indigestion.”

  Jenny laughed. “I love the way you keep calling him James, as if he were some black sheep relative of yours.”

  “I didn’t realize I was doing that.” Harriet Compton actually blushed, as if she’d been caught doing something improper. “Maybe it’s on account of those slipcovers. He must have been quite a person, if he had the guts to buy something that wild.”

  “Maybe you knew him,” said Jenny.

  “But I—”

  “I don’t mean known, but met, the way you said you might have run across Sue Giles somewhere. I wish we had a picture of him.”

  “You didn’t find any snapshots or anything around the house?”

  “No. There were no personal papers of an
y kind. No clothes, either. Maybe the murderer took them.” The black mood was back. “Maybe he was tied up with the Mafia or something. How do I know where he got all that money? Living here under an assumed name—”

  “Lower your voice and come inside.” Harriet Compton’s voice lashed out low and sharp. “For God’s sake, use your head. Don’t go shouting it all over the neighborhood.”

  Appalled at her loss of control, Jenny turned to follow Harriet Compton into the carriage house. They hadn’t quite reached the door when a large, sleek station wagon pulled into the overgrown driveway.

  What ghastly luck! Just as she’d gotten to the point where she needed to get it all off her chest, the rummage sale messenger had to arrive. And naturally the driver had to be Lawrence MacRae.

  His companion was a white-haired, crimson-faced woman in bristly wool tweeds and a lurid tam o’shanter. This must be the grandmother with the tartan cat. She was out and tugging at a spindle-legged tabouret almost before the car stopped beside the junk pile.

  “Pr-r-riceless! The gr-randest heap o’ trash we’ve had in thir-rty year-rs!”

  Her r’s rolled out like the snare drums of the Queen’s Own Highlanders. She hurled the tabouret into the back of her grandson’s lavishly equipped station wagon, then wheeled to stick out a small, square hand at Harriet who, with Jenny, had, of course, gone back to help with the loading.

  “How d’ye do? I’m Elspeth Gillespie.”

  Harriet Compton managed to return the determined handshake without wincing. “How do you do? I’m Harriet Compton. My grandmother was a Gillespie. And this is my niece, Jenny Plummer.”

  “Oh, aye? That one’s gr-randmother was nae Gillespie, I’ll be bound.”

  The Scotswoman’s fierce blue eyes raked over Jenny’s ivory-cream complexion and eyebrows so jetty they gleamed in the sun like a black cat’s fur. “She has the look of a tinker lassie tae me.”

  “Cross my palm with silver and I’ll tell your fortune, pretty lady,” Jenny whined pertly. Maybe she did have gipsy blood in her. That could explain a lot of things.