The Best American Mystery Stories 2013

by Lisa Scottoline

  “Which leaves only one possible escape route.”

  “The rear door to Letitia Carver’s house, yes. But it was bolted when I tried it, and she claims not to have had any visitors.”

  “She could have been lying.”

  Quincannon conceded that she could have been.

  “I don’t suppose there’s any chance that she herself could be the culprit?”

  “She’s eighty if she’s a day,” he said. “Besides, I saw her sitting in her parlor window not two minutes before the shots were fired.”

  “Lying to protect the guilty party, possibly. Perhaps a relative. In which case the murderer was hiding in the house while you spoke to her.”

  “A galling possibility, if true.” Quincannon paused, glowering, to run fingers through his thick beard. “The crone seemed innocent enough, yet now that I consider it, there was something . . . odd about her.”

  “Furtive, you mean?”

  “No. Her actions, her words . . . I can’t quite put my finger on it.”

  “Why don’t you have another talk with her, John?”

  “That,” Quincannon said, “is what I intend to do straightaway.”

  Gunpowder Alley was no more appealing by daylight than it had been under the cloak of darkness. Heavy rain during the early morning hours had slackened into another dreary drizzle, and the buildings encompassing the alley’s short length all had a huddled appearance, bleak and sodden under the wet gray sky.

  The cul-de-sac was deserted when Quincannon, dry beneath a newly purchased umbrella, turned into it from Jessie Street. Boards had been nailed across the front entrance to the cigar store and a police seal applied to forestall potential looters. At the house next door, tattered curtains still covered the parlor window.

  He stood looking at the window for a few seconds, his mind jostled by memory fragments—words spoken to him by Maguire, others by Letitia Carver. Quickly, then, he climbed to the porch and rapped on the front door. Neither that series of knocks nor two more brought a response.

  His resolve, sharpened now, prodded him to action. In his pocket he carried a set of lock picks which he’d purchased from an ex-housebreaker living in Warsaw, Illinois, who manufactured burglar tools, advertised them as novelties in the Police Gazette, and sold them for ten dollars the set. He set to work with these on the flimsy door lock and within seconds had the bolt snicked free.

  In the foyer inside, he paused to listen. No sounds reached his ears save for the random creaks of old, wet timbers. He called loudly, “Hello! Anyone here?” Faint echoes of his voice were all the answer he received.

  He moved through an archway into the parlor. The room was cold, decidedly musty; no fire had burned in the grate in a long while, certainly not as recently as last night. The furniture was sparse and had the worn look of discards. One arm of the rocking chair set near the curtained window was broken, bent outward at an angle. The lamp on the rickety table next to it was as cold as the air.

  Glowering fiercely now, Quincannon set off on a rapid search of the premises upstairs and down. There were scattered pieces of furniture in two other rooms, including a sagging iron bedstead sans mattress in what might have been the master bedroom; the remaining rooms were empty. A closet in the foyer contained a single item that brought forth a blistering, triple-jointed oath.

  He left the house, grumbling and growling, and stepped into the side passage for another examination of the barred window to Sonderberg’s quarters. Then he moved on to the cross passage at the rear, where a quick study confirmed his judgments of the night before: there was no possible exit at either end, both fences too tall and slippery to be scaled.

  Out front again, he embarked on a rapid canvass of the immediate neighborhood. He spoke to two residents of Gunpowder Alley and the bartender at the saloon on the Jessie Street corner, corroborating one fact he already knew and learning another that surprised him not at all.

  The first: The house next to the cigar store had been empty for four months, a possibility he should have suspected much sooner from the pair of conflicting statements he’d finally recalled—Maguire’s that in the two weeks he’d patrolled Gunpowder Alley the parlor window had always been dark, the woman calling herself Letitia Carver’s that she often sat there at night looking out.

  And the second fact: Raymond Sonderberg, a man who kept mostly to himself and eked out a meager living selling cigars and sundries, was known to frequent variety houses and melodeons such as the Bella Union on Portsmouth Square.

  The mystery surrounding Sonderberg’s death was no longer a mystery. And should not have been one as long as it had; Quincannon felt like a damned rattlepate for allowing himself to be duped and fuddled by what was, as Sabina had suggested, a crime with an essentially simple explanation. For he knew now how and why Sonderberg had been murdered in his locked quarters. And was tolerably sure of who had done the deed—the only person, given the circumstances, it could possibly be.

  Titus Willard was alone in his private office at the Montgomery Street branch of Woolworth National Bank when Quincannon arrived there shortly before noon. And none too pleased to have been kept waiting for word as long as he had.

  “Why didn’t you contact me last night, as we agreed?” he demanded. “Don’t tell me you weren’t able to follow and identify the blackmailer?”

  “One of the blackmailers, yes, the man you paid. Raymond Sonderberg, proprietor of a cigar store in Gunpowder Alley.”

  “One of the blackmailers? I don’t understand.”

  “His accomplice shot him dead in his quarters and made off with the satchel before I could intervene.”

  Willard blinked his surprise and consternation. “But who . . .?”

  “I’ll have the answer to that question, Mr. Willard, after you’ve answered a few of mine. Why were you being blackmailed?”

  “. . . I told you before, I’d rather not say.”

  “You’ll tell me if you want the safe return of your money and the remaining blackmail evidence.”

  The banker assumed his habitual pooched rodent look.

  “A woman, wasn’t it?” Quincannon prompted. “An illicit affair?”

  “You’re, ah, a man of the world, surely you understand that when one reaches my age—”

  “I have no interest in reasons or rationalizations, only in the facts of the matter. The woman’s name, to begin with.”

  Willard hemmed and hawed and pooched some more before he finally answered in a scratchy voice, “Pauline Dupree.”

  “And her profession?”

  “Profession? I don’t see—oh, very well. She is a stage performer and actress. Yes, and a very good one, I might add.”

  “I thought as much. Where does she perform?”

  “At the Gaiety Theater. But she aspires to be a serious actress one day, perhaps on the New York stage.”

  “Does she now.”

  “I, ah, happened to be at the theater one evening two months ago and we chanced to meet—”

  Quincannon waved that away. No one “happened to be” at the Gaiety Theater, which was something of a bawdy melodeon on the fringe of the Barbary Coast. The sort of place that catered to middle-aged men with a taste for the exotic, specializing as it did in prurient skits and raucous musical numbers featuring scantily clad young women.

  He asked, “You confided in her when you received the first blackmail demand?”

  “Of course,” Willard said. “She had a right to know . . .”

  “Why did she have a right to know?”

  “It’s . . . letters I wrote to her that are being held against me.”

  Highly indiscreet letters, no doubt. “And how did the blackmailer get possession of them?”

  “They were stolen from her rooms last week, along with a small amount of jewelry. This man Sonderberg . . . a common sneak thief who saw an opportunity for richer gains.”

  Stolen? Sonderberg a common sneak thief? What a credulous gent his client was! “Was it Miss Dupree’s s
uggestion that you pay the initial five thousand dollars?”

  “Yes, and I agreed. It seemed the most reasonable course of action at the time.”

  “But when the second demand arrived two days ago, you didn’t tell her you’d decided to hire a detective until after you came to me.”

  “That’s so, yes. Engaging you was a spur-of-the-moment decision—”

  “And when you did tell her, you also explained that I’d be present at the second payoff and that I intended to follow and confront the blackmailer afterward?”

  “Why shouldn’t I have confided in her? She—” Willard broke off, frowning, then once again performed his rodent imitation. “See here, Quincannon. You’re not suggesting that Miss Dupree had anything to do with the extortion scheme?”

  It was not yet time to answer that question. “I deal in facts, as I told you, not suggestions,” Quincannon hedged. “Where are you keeping her?”

  “Her rooms are on Stockton Street,” the banker said stiffly.

  “Is she likely to be there or at the Gaiety at this hour?”

  “I don’t know. One or the other, I suppose.”

  “Come along, then, Mr. Willard,” Quincannon said, “and we’ll pay a call on the lady. I expect we’ll both find it a stimulating rendezvous.”

  They found Pauline Dupree at the gaudily painted Gaiety Theater, primping in her backstage dressing room. She was more or less what Quincannon had expected—young and rather buxomly attractive, with dark-gold tresses and bold, smoke-hued eyes wise beyond her years. Her high color paled a bit when she saw Quincannon, but she recovered quickly.

  “And who is this gentleman, Titus?” she asked Willard.

  “John Quincannon, the detective I told you about.” The smile the banker bestowed on her was fatuous as well as apologetic. “I’m sorry to trouble you, my dear, but he insisted on seeing you.”

  “Did he? And for what reason?”

  “He wouldn’t say, precisely. But he seems to have a notion that you are somehow involved in the blackmail scheme.”

  There was no need to hold back any longer. Quincannon said, “Not involved in it, the originator of it.”

  Pauline Dupree’s only reaction was a raised eyebrow and a little moue of dismay. A talented actress, to be sure. But then, he’d already had ample evidence of her skills last night.

  “I?” she said. “But that’s ridiculous.”

  Quincannon’s gaze had roamed the small dressing room. Revealing costumes hung on racks and an array of paints and powders and various theatrical accessories were arranged on tables. He walked over to one, picked up and brandished a long-haired white wig. “Is this the wig you wore last night, Mrs. Carver?” he asked her.

  There was no slippage of her composure this time, either. “I have no idea what you’re talking about.”

  “Your portrayal of Letitia Carver was quite good, I admit. The wig, the shawl and black dress and cane, the stooped posture and quavery voice . . . all very accomplished playacting. And of course the darkness and the candlelight concealed the fact that the old-age wrinkles were a product of theatrical makeup.”

  “And where was I supposed to have given this performance?” Pauline Dupree’s eyes were cold and hard now, but her voice remained even.

  “The abandoned house next to Raymond Sonderberg’s cigar store in Gunpowder Alley. Before and after you murdered Sonderberg in his quarters behind the store.”

  “Murder?” the banker exclaimed in shocked tones. “See here, Quincannon! An accusation of blackmail is egregious enough, but murder—”

  Pauline Dupree said, “It’s nonsense, of course. I have no idea where Gunpowder Alley is, nor do I know anyone named Raymond Sonderberg.”

  “Ah, but you do. Or rather, did. Like Mr. Willard, Sonderberg was drawn to melodeons such as this one. My guess is you made his acquaintance in much the same way as you did my client, and used your no doubt considerable charms to lure him into your blackmail scheme.”

  “Preposterous!” Willard cried. “Outrageous!”

  “But you never intended to share the spoils with him,” Quincannon said to the actress. “You wanted the entire ten thousand dollars. To finance your ambition to become a serious actress, mayhap? A trip east to New York?”

  An eye-flick was his only response. But it was enough to tell him that he’d guessed correctly.

  “I give you credit, Miss Dupree,” he went on. “You planned it well enough in advance. You had two days to make your arrangements, after learning from Mr. Willard that I would be at the Hotel Grant last night. You found out, likely from Sonderberg, about the abandoned house next to his building; he may even have helped you gain access. Sometime yesterday evening you went there and made final preparations for your performance—applied makeup, arranged a rocking chair near the window, created the illusion of an old woman seated there.”

  “Yes? How did I do that?”

  “By placing a dressmaker’s dummy in the chair, covering the head with the white wig, and draping the rest with a large shawl. This morning I found the dummy where you left it, in the foyer closet.”

  Willard made disbelieving, spluttering sounds. The actress said, “And why would I have set such an elaborate stage?”

  “To flummox me, of course. You knew I would follow Sonderberg from the hotel and that I would be nearby after he arrived home with the satchel. Your plan all along was to eliminate him once he had outlived his usefulness, and to do so by making cold-blooded murder appear to be suicide and staging an apparent vanishing act must have seemed the height of creative challenge.”

  Willard should have been swayed by this time, but he wasn’t. His feelings for Pauline Dupree were stronger than Quincannon had realized. “My dear,” he said to his paramour, “you don’t have to listen to any more of this slanderous nonsense—”

  “Let him finish, Titus. I’d like to know how he thinks I accomplished this creative challenge he speaks of.”

  “It wasn’t difficult,” Quincannon said. “So devilishly simple, in fact, it had me buffaloed for a time—something that seldom happens.” He paused to fluff his freebooter’s beard. “Your actions from the time you set the scene in the house were these: You left the same way you’d entered, by the rear door, crossed along the walkway, and were admitted to Sonderberg’s quarters through his rear door. Thus no one could possibly have seen you from the alley. How you explained the old crone’s makeup to Sonderberg is of no real import. By then I suspect he would have believed anything you told him.

  “You waited there, warm and dry, while he went to the Hotel Grant. When he returned with the satchel, he locked both the entrance to the cigar store and the inside door leading to his quarters. You made haste to convince him by one means or another to let you have the satchel. Then you left him, again through the rear door, no doubt with instructions to lock and bar it behind you.”

  “Then how am I supposed to have killed him inside his locked quarters?”

  “By slipping around into the side passage and tapping on the window, as if you’d forgotten something. When Sonderberg opened it, raising it high on its hinge, you reached through the bars, shot him twice, then immediately dropped the pistol to the floor. Naturally he released his grip on the window as he staggered backward, and it dropped and clattered shut—the loudish thump I heard before I ran into the passage. The force of impact flipped up the loose swivel catch at the bottom of the sash. Of its own momentum the catch then flipped back down and around the stud fastener, locking the window and adding to the illusion.

  “It took you no more than a few seconds, then, to run to the rear walkway and reenter the house, locking that door behind you. While the patrolman and I were responding to the gunshots, you drew the parlor drapes, removed the dressmaker’s dummy from the rocking chair, donned the wig, and assumed the role of Letitia Carver. When I came knocking at the door a while later, you could have simply ignored the summons; but you were so confident in your acting ability that you decided instead to have
sport with me, holding the candle you’d lighted in such a way that your made-up face remained shadowed the entire time.”

  A few moments of silence ensued. Willard stood glaring at Quincannon, disbelief still plainly written on the lovesick dolt’s pooched features. Pauline Dupree’s expression was stoic, but in her eyes was a sparkle that might have been secret amusement.

  “Utter rot,” the banker said with furious indignation. “Miss Dupree is no more capable of such nefarious trickery than I am.”

  “Even if I were,” she said, “Mr. Quincannon has absolutely no proof of his claims.”

  “When I find the ten thousand dollars, I’ll have all the proof necessary. Hidden here, is it, or in your rooms?”

  Again her response was not the one he’d anticipated. “You’re welcome to search both,” she said. Nor did the sparkle in her eyes diminish; if anything, it brightened. Telling him, he realized, as plainly as if she’d spoken the words, that such searches would prove futile, and that he would never discover where the greenbacks were hidden, no matter how long and hard he searched.

  Sharp and bitter frustration goaded Quincannon now. There was no question that his deductions were correct, and he had been sure he could wring a confession from Pauline Dupree, or at the very least convince Titus Willard of her duplicity. But he had succeeded in doing neither. They were a united front against him.

  So much so that the banker had moved over to stand protectively in front of her, as if to shield her from further accusations. He said angrily, “Whatever your purpose in attempting to persecute this innocent young woman, Quincannon, I won’t stand for any more of it. Consider your services terminated. If you ever dare to bother Miss Dupree or me again, you’ll answer to the police and my attorneys.”