23-The Tenth Life

by Lockridge, Richard

  Heimrich wasn’t at all sure, but he had a stock answer to hide behind. “Just a matter of routine, Mrs. Barton. Something required under circumstances like these. So, straighten things up as you like, but don’t, please, destroy anything which might, well, shed any light.”

  Hide behind stock answers, clichés of no meaning.

  Mr. John Doe owed X number of dollars, for the professional care, and room and board, of one Towser, four years old and beagle by breed, who had had a mild attack of virus pneumonia. Shed light indeed.

  “They’re just medical records,” Mrs. Barton said. “And bookkeeping records, which are of no concern to anybody but me. And maybe Dr. Folsom, if he decides to take over. He’s thinking about it. What do you mean, ‘shed light’?”

  So, a cliché had turned around and bitten him.

  “The last five issues of this cat magazine,” she said. “The thing he subscribes to for the waiting room. Where I’d have expected them to be, because we have a lot of cat people. Not in a locked file cabinet with a rubber band around them. You think that’s going to, what you say, shed light?”

  Heimrich realized he was expected to laugh at the absurdity. He almost did. Still, anything unusual; anything out of place. He did manage a small chuckle of confirmation. And said that he’d stop by in an hour or so and do the routine check. If young King could stay on and let him in and sort of show him around?

  She supposed so. And if there was anything he wanted to ask her about, she’d be up at the house. “Only this is about the time I usually lie down for a rest, Inspector.”

  It was almost six in the evening before Heimrich stopped the Buick outside the animal hospital, Adrian Barton, DVM. He had had to wait for the Evanses, yes, in the Cadillac, to arrive and retrieve the red Volks, by then thoroughly gone over and fingerprinted. He had to wait while Evans kicked the Volks’s tires, resentfully. He had had to pull to the side of the narrow blacktop leading up to the hospital to clear the way for a car which, at first sight, seemed to be being driven by a large and noticeably shaggy dog. It had turned out that the dog was merely sitting beside a human driver, not much larger than he and female. Being discharged from hospital, the shaggy dog presumably was.

  “Ring and walk in.” Heimrich followed instructions. This time the door was unlocked. Young King was in the waiting room, smoking a cigarette. He put the cigarette out, rather hurriedly, and stood up. He said, “Mrs. Barton said you’d probably be coming. And that I was to show you anything you wanted to see.”

  “Yes,” Heimrich said. “It shouldn’t take long.”

  He followed Roger King out of the waiting room, through the operating room in which Adrian Barton had died, into Barton’s office.

  It seemed orderly enough. Mrs. Barton had typed a list of names, followed by amounts—obviously amounts owed. It was rather a long list and of no concern to Heimrich that he could think of. None of the amounts was large. He recognized a few of the names. Judge Ainsworth owed $112.50, which a little surprised Heimrich. He had not known that Ainsworth, a retired judge and a widower, owned a pet, let alone a sick one. He did know that Miss Jane Pringle owned a rather aggressive tomcat, because Mite had had a fight with him. Over a female, or just because both were tomcats, resenting the existence of other tomcats.

  These copies of The American Cat Fancy, constrained by a rubber band and kept, to Mrs. Barton’s obvious puzzlement, in a locked file drawer? The drawer wasn’t locked now, and King took the clumped magazines out of the file drawer and handed them to Heimrich, who slid off the heavy rubber band.

  “They’re usually in the waiting room,” Roger told him. “For people to read while they wait. People who are all that serious about cats. He kept the Reader’s Digest out, too, I suppose for people who brought dogs in.”

  Heimrich looked quickly at King. He saw no secret meaning in the young face. It might well be that Roger favored dogs. And hence the Reader’s Digest?

  The copies of The American Cat Fancy were those of February through June. Heimrich skimmed the earliest two. In January, there had been a cat show, in Memphis. CFA and ACA. Lawnside’s Princess Sapphire of Kensington had been best of breed and, as it turned out, best of show. A cat rather oddly named Prince Tarzan had been best opposite sex. Why Tarzan? It could hardly matter.

  There had been cat shows in February, March, April and May, in various cities. The winners, all grand champions, were recorded. Heimrich couldn’t have cared less. He skimmed on. Various catteries had advertisements in, most of them including photographs of cats, offering stud service, having kittens available. (With papers.) Some had kittens expected. Linwood Catteries, Mrs. Grace Cummins, R.N., owner, had Prince Ling Tau at stud, still at $200 a mating, still to approved female Siamese. The Prince, beginning with the March issue, was billed as “The All-American Cat.” He was so designated in the April, May and June issues. Perhaps he had, the year before, earned that distinction.

  But what had earned these copies of a small, and very specialized, magazine seclusion in a locked file drawer, instead of prominence on a table in a veterinarian’s waiting room? Heimrich found he couldn’t imagine; that he shared Mrs. Barton’s professed puzzlement.

  “Any idea why he kept these locked up?” Heimrich asked Roger King.

  Roger did not have. And did the inspector want to look at the files on the animals the doctor had treated since the first of the year? The records for earlier years were locked up, but he was sure Mrs. Barton would have the keys and he would be glad to go up and ask her, if the inspector wanted him to.

  The inspector did not. He did not particularly want to examine the hospital records of the current year. Mrs. Brown’s bitch had whelped; result, three puppies. Mrs. Jones’s domestic shorthair tomcat had been “neut,” which probably meant castrated. (Mite remained fully male, but he was primarily an outdoor cat, and did his spraying there.) All right, Heimrich would have a glance at the current year’s record of small animals in hospital, either for treatment or as boarders.

  Why, for the love of God, had he told Mrs. Barton he wanted to go through her late husband’s office files? Why in hell did he?

  Because, until Carol Arnold was found, he hadn’t known what to do next. It came down to that. And to a final report on tissue examination from the biological lab of a hospital in White Plains.

  But here he was. He might as well plod.

  There were two rather thick folders, one for dogs and one for cats. There was also a very thin one marked “Birds.” A parrot named Mike, property of a Robert Bruns, had managed to break a wing. Dr. Barton had managed to set it. “Full use regained.” Except, presumably, Mike remained in a cage.

  Cats first. Listed alphabetically under owners’ names. (Except people were always saying that nobody “owned” a cat. Which was true enough, and at the same time nonsense. What you can starve or nurture, kill or save, you own.)

  Listed alphabetically. Also illegibly. The records were, obviously, for Dr. Barton’s eyes only; were reminders, for him, of animals treated. Not legible, very much abbreviated—down, sometimes, to single letters. “Cum. Li C.” Cummins? Linwood Catteries? Probably; worth taking a chance on. “Pr L?” Say Prince Ling Tau. “SP 2½.” Seal point, two and a half years old? “L.C.” That meant nothing to an outsider, which was Merton Heimrich. “Ad. rea?” Again nothing to go on. “Adverse reaction?” Pure guessing. To what? There was no answer in Dr. Barton’s scribble. Finally, a capital D. Which probably meant “discharged.”

  Below the entry was “1/23-24.” A date, probably January twenty-third and twenty-fourth.

  Perhaps Carol Arnold could guide him through Barton’s cryptogram. Remember to ask her, when he found her. If he found her.

  One other “Cum” entry: “Cum. Fe C. Ldy B 9 mo. SP. Of. Ready dis.”

  A couple of days ago, Ldy (for Lady?) Bella, nine months-old seal point, had been ready for discharge, apparently cured of Of? Perhaps, at a guess. Whatever “Of” might be. Off feed? Perhaps.

  (Peopl
e chose odd names for Siamese cats. Siamese names? Intended to sound like it, anyway. The sound of the Orient, at any rate. Of Asia. But hadn’t he heard somewhere, been told by someone, that there were no Siamese cats in Siam? He couldn’t be sure. In any case, there was now no Siam, so the question was moot.)

  Ready for discharge? The cat, perhaps the “poor little cat” which Carol, in response to a telephone request, had been returning to Mrs. Cummins’s cattery when she had run a Pontiac into a ditch and then into a tree. That damn cat! That damn girl, come to that.

  After seven; time to call it a day. Home for dinner, for a pleasant change. For a drink on the terrace, although the sun would be slanting low. Time for rumination. By tomorrow, they would have turned up Carol Arnold and asked her to explain herself.

  The Buick was climbing the steep drive to the house above the Hudson when a question which should have been there earlier jumped into Heimrich’s mind.

  Could it be that “D” meant deceased, not discharged? Nonsense. Prince Ling Tau, best cat of the previous year, had been at stud from January 23-24 through June. At $200 an encounter, impregnation guaranteed. As he was advertised as being.

  Susan opened the front door for him, and Colonel, looking healthy but mournful, was sitting tall beside her.

  Susan said “Hi” with pleasure in her voice and some surprise also in it. Merton Heimrich’s hours are extremely variable; getting home in time for dinner is not often included in them. He looked tired, Susan thought. He did not look as if he had got anywhere that pleased him. She pushed Colonel aside and he accepted pushing with a mournful groan. He went over in front of the fireplace and thumped down. He didn’t thump more loudly than usual. He seemed to be moving all right.

  “The kids are on their way over,” Susan said, after she had released herself from Merton’s arms. “I said we’d feed them.”

  “The kids” are Michael Faye, Susan’s son, but now their son, and Joan Collins, who had driven Michael down from Hanover, New Hampshire, one icy night and been just in time to involve herself in murder. She was in her last year at Dartmouth; Michael had been graduated that spring. They planned to get married in October. “When all the trees light up,” was the way Joan had put it.

  “Good,” Heimrich said. “So she did get down.”

  Susan did not answer that, since the answer was too obvious to make. She did say, “You need a drink, dear.”

  Air conditioning was keeping the house cool. The low sun was still a glare on the terrace. It would shine in their eyes. So they went to the terrace for their drinks. Mite?

  Mite had stepped out. “He decided it had got cooler.”

  Mite had been wrong. On the terrace it was not cooler and the sun was indeed in their eyes. But, if squintingly, they could see the Hudson River and the green beyond it. And their martinis were very cold, very crisp in taste. They were half finished with their first drinks when a Volkswagen grumbled up the driveway. (A time for Volkswagens, Heimrich thought. He was beginning to dislike them.)

  It was Joan’s Volks. She had obviously driven it down from Hanover for the weekend. And, as obviously, Michael had got her a room at the Van Brunt Country Club, where, that summer, he was the tennis pro. A room at the club went with the job; teaching and, on occasion, court rolling also went with it. Michael had more or less decided to play tennis for a living, at least for now. Until he was in his late twenties, perhaps. If he could make the grade.

  They slid out of the Volks with the agility and grace of youth and walked toward the terrace. Joan was slight and short beside her tall man. She had put her hair up. (When they had first met her and been surprised that the “friend” who was driving him down from Hanover was not another male, she had worn her hair loose. It had streamed down her back to a little below her slender waist. A few more inches and she could have sat on it.) They walked to the terrace hand in hand.

  The weekend of the Volks, Merton Heimrich thought. A weekend, also, of young love.

  Michael said, “Hi, Mother. Hi, Dad,” to Susan and Merton Heimrich, both standing—Heimrich as a gesture of courtesy and welcome; Susan because it was her job to get drinks. Susan said, “Son. Joan, dear,” and put her arms around the girl.

  “I’m afraid we sort of barged in,” Joan said, “the way we always seem to.”

  She was assured they had not, and Susan went for drinks. Joan and Michael drink bourbon, in very small quantities.

  “Around the club they’re saying Dr. Barton was murdered,” Michael said.

  “Are they, Michael? Well, they may be right. You knew him, son?”

  “A little. The way I do a lot of the members. The tennis people. Well enough to say hello to, is about all.”

  “He came over often, Michael? To play tennis, I mean?”

  Michael Faye wouldn’t say often. Now and then was more like it.

  “Used to be pretty regular last summer, they say. His wife came with him then, from what I hear. They got to the semifinals in mixed doubles, somebody said. She hasn’t been around this year, apparently. I saw a pretty girl with him a couple of times awhile back. But she wasn’t his wife, unless he was a cradle-snatcher, and I never heard he was. Seemed a nice enough guy, from what little I saw.”

  “Popular with the other members?”

  Susan and Merton are members of the country club, but not of the tennis group. Golfers and tennis players tend to stick with their own kind.

  “Look, Dad, I just work there, remember? Far’s I know, he was well enough liked. You think one of the members killed him? Because he beat them at tennis, maybe?”

  “No, Michael. Not that I know of. He did win at tennis?”

  “In the over-thirty-fives, he was pretty good. Won his share. Maybe a little more. Good first serve, when he got it in. Ground strokes all right. Inclined to come in on bad approach shots. A little old for rushing the net, I thought. But the way he liked to play.”

  Tennis players are almost, if not quite, as loquacious about their game as golf players.

  “Not good enough to, well, aggravate other players?”

  “People like these people don’t get aggravated when they lose, Dad. When they get bad calls, maybe. But my flock doesn’t make bad calls. Very honest crowd. Don’t see too well, some of them. But no cheating calls I’ve ever seen.”

  “If Michael’s going to talk tennis, Joan,” Susan Heimrich said, “come and help me make drinks. Also, it’s cooler inside.”

  They went inside.

  “Maybe I do talk tennis too much,” Michael said. “Bore people who aren’t too keen on it.”

  “You don’t remember anybody who seems to have—call it animosity—toward Dr. Barton?”

  “Hell, no. Pretty well liked, far’s I’ve seen. Look, Dad, I’ve only been working there six weeks or so. And I’m just the tennis pro—teaching pro.”

  “Yes, son. I didn’t mean—”

  “There was one sort of odd thing,” Michael said. “There’s a man named Drake. Blake. Something like that. Carl something. Keen player. Was club champion last year, they tell me. He did say a sort of funny thing once about Dr. Barton.”

  “Carl Blake,” Heimrich said. “Your mother and I do know the Blakes. See them now and then. Go there for dinner maybe once every couple of months. Have them here about as often. Brought their dog over once, but he and Colonel didn’t get along. Big German shepherd. Made a pass at Mite, their dog did. Colonel wasn’t having any of that. You know how he is about his cat.”

  Michael did know. Susan and Joan came back to the terrace. Joan was carrying a tray with two glasses on it, both partly filled with a pale amber liquid. Very pale, Heimrich thought.

  “This funny thing?” said Heimrich. Subjects are things to wander from, but not, when possible, too far from.

  Michael said, “What?” and then, “Oh. Nothing much. It’s just that you were asking, Dad.”

  Heimrich did not say anything.

  “It was right after I got the job at the club,” Michael said. �
��I had a lesson coming up and the kid was late. So I was sitting by one of the courts and watching two men play. Pretty good, both of them were. For their ages, I mean. One of them was Dr. Barton, although I didn’t know it then. And Mr. Blake came and sat down beside me. And—look, Mother, this is about tennis again. If you and Joan want to go back and maybe mix another drink or something?”

  “We can stand it, son. For a little while, anyway.”

  “All right,” Michael said. “Dr. Barton hit a good approach shot. Deep and wide, pretty much on the line, actually. To this other guy’s forehand. And the other guy tried to lob out of trouble, because Barton had come in.”

  The lob had been short. Barton had taken it at about the service line; had taken it with an overhead.

  “Man, he really murdered it,” Michael said. “Bounced it over the backstop, actually. Good smash, but a waste of effort. He had the court wide open. He could just have nudged it back. Smashes can be tricky. Anyway, he made the point. Set point it was, as it turned out. And when they were leaving the court, they came by where Mr. Blake and I were sitting. And Mr. Blake said, “‘Killer Barton, we call him. Dr. Killer Barton.’ He said it to me, but loud enough for Dr. Barton to hear. Ordinary enough thing to say, I suppose. After that smash. Only, it seemed to me Dr. Barton didn’t like it. Anyway, he pretended not to hear it, and he’d have to have heard it. Because I’m pretty sure Mr. Blake meant him to. Dr. Barton didn’t look at us. Just walked on, although the man he had been playing stopped and said hello, and what a nice day it was, or something. But like I said, Dad, it wasn’t anything, really.”

  “No, son, it probably wasn’t,” Heimrich said.

  The four of them clicked glasses and drank. Mite came home from across the fields, not hurrying about it. He went to the screen door and spoke about its being closed.

  The setting sun was blinding by then, so they took Mite’s advice and went into the house, where it was cool.

  10

  The kids had gone back to their rooms at the country club rather early. At a little after ten, so Susan and Merton Heimrich had been early to bed. But in spite of that, they slept late the next morning. Heimrich was first up, and he was quiet as he made himself coffee. Made himself coffee and wondered why he had been dreaming about a dog. Dreaming about a cat would have been easy to understand; his life for the last few days had been full of cats, “poor little cats” and “damn cats.”