23-The Tenth Life

by Lockridge, Richard

  His dream had not been about Colonel. It had been about a dog named Adrian—at first, in the dream, named Adrian. Later in the dream the dog had not been named Adrian at all, but some routine canine name which kept slipping out of Heimrich’s sleeping mind. So did the dog’s breed. Part of the time it was a collie; part of the time a German shepherd. At all times a big dog, and most of the time growling.

  Growling, yes, at Colonel. Because—of course. Because Colonel, bristling, had growled first. Colonel had growled, obviously meaning it, when this strange dog, collie and shepherd intermittently, had threatened Mite. Not that Mite, in the dream any more than in actuality, had seemed disturbed. (Mite is contemptuous of dogs in general. He does not relate Colonel to other dogs. He appears to consider Colonel as a rather outsize cat.)

  A dream dog named Adrian. No—got it. Named Shep. A silly, routine name for as handsome an animal as the Blakes’ shepherd. But that did not clear things up, reasonably, and Heimrich had gone back to sleep; to sleep until—he looked at his watch—almost nine in the morning; almost the time he was due at the barracks.

  Heimrich poured himself coffee and put the Chemex on an asbestos insulator over a burner set at simmer. He went out, still moving quietly, and got the New York Times, halfway up the drive. There was a short piece below the front page fold. “Police Probe Vet’s Death.” It was unlike the Times to use “Vet” for “Veterinarian.” It had only in the last few years stopped putting quotation marks around “gas” when gasoline was meant.

  It promised to be as hot a day as the day before had been; as the day before that had been. Back in the house, Heimrich turned the air conditioning on. He poured another cup of coffee, leaving plenty for Susan in the Chemex, and was thinking about feeding the animals—who had already been thinking about it for some time—when Susan joined him in the kitchen. Susan said “Good morning” to the three of them. She poured herself coffee and said “Humans first” to Mite, who audibly disagreed. Heimrich lighted a cigarette and waited while Susan drank coffee. When she had poured herself a second cup and accepted the lighted cigarette he offered her, he said, “We don’t see much of the Blakes anymore, do we?” Which was a hell of a remark to start the day with.

  Susan’s expression said, “What on earth?” but her lips did not. She said, “Do we want to, particularly? I think they’re in Europe. Or have been. Why, dear?”

  Michael had said something about Carl Blake the night before, probably while she and Joan were in the kitchen. It had started him to wondering about them. “Actually,” he said, “Something started me dreaming about them last night. About that dog of theirs, really. Shep, I think his name is.”

  “The one who was swearing at Colonel last fall? And being sworn back at? No, I think his name was Pepper. Anyway, they called him Pep. That might have been short for something else, I suppose. Pepso-dent? Anyway, I think he’s dead. Somebody at the club said something about it. Last spring, I think it was. It could have been Ginny herself, I think.” Heimrich groped a moment and came up with it. Ginny for Virginia Blake.

  “Happen to remember what she said about it?”

  “Really, dear. What on—oh.”

  “Yes,” Heimrich said. “According to Michael, Blake called Barton ‘Dr. Killer Barton’ a couple of months ago. Apropos Barton’s overhead smash. Ostensibly, anyway.”

  Susan said, “Quit it, Mite.”

  Mite was using his forepaws on a bare leg, with claws sheathed, of course. Still, even affectionate cats can get absentminded. Susan said, “All right, all right,” and fed both their animals.

  “No,” Susan said and sat down again. “I’m afraid I don’t. I was only half listening. Actually, I think, Ginny was talking to someone else. Grace Weaver, it could have been. The one who breeds Labs. Big black ones.”

  Heimrich knew Grace Weaver slightly, and that she bred retrievers. And so, as one dog person to another, would be interested in an account of Pep’s demise.

  “They were having drinks together on the terrace,” Susan said. “I remember now. I sat down at the table next to theirs. You’d called and said you couldn’t make it. You were working on something. The Roberts case, I think. And that you thought you might make it home for dinner. So I decided to have a drink.”

  “Mid-June, then,” Merton said. “Rather latish mid-June.”

  “Anyway, Grace said, ‘He’s always been good with mine’—I don’t remember the exact words, but something like that. And Ginny said, ‘He certainly wasn’t good with poor Pep. Must have bungled the operation, Carl thinks. Carl’s still steamed up about it. Not as much, I guess, as when Pep died, but still a lot. At first, he talked about a malpractice suit, as if Barton was a regular doctor. An M.D. He even talked to our lawyer about it. And Glen talked him out of it.’ That’s all I remember, dear. I wasn’t trying to listen. You know how it happens—a word or two catches you and then—well, you pick up snatches, without really meaning to.”

  Merton Heimrich knew how it happened. He said, “Glen? Glen Rivers, you think?”

  “I don’t know, dear. He’s the only lawyer around here named Glen, far’s I know. Aren’t you about ready for breakfast? Scrambled eggs be all right? And bacon? Or would you rather have them poached? I think I’ll poach mine.”

  Poached would be all right.

  Heimrich looked at his watch. Nine forty. Glen Rivers might be at his office on Van Brunt Avenue. It would do no harm to try. There was at least an even chance it would do no good, either. Lawyers are sticky when it comes to discussing clients. Still—

  He looked up and dialed the number of “Rivers Glen atty.”

  Yes, Mr. Rivers had just come in. “Inspector Heimrich is calling, Mr. Rivers.”

  “Morning, M. L. I enter a plea of not guilty. To whatever it is.” Rivers was in a carefree mood. The mood put youth into a normally middle-aged voice.

  Heimrich was not in a carefree mood, particularly. However—“Witholding evidence, Glen? Failing to cooperate with the police who are in pursuit of their duties?”

  “All right, M. L. Come off it, huh? Cooperation is my middle name. Only, about what?”

  “That could be the catch, Glen. Because it’s about a client. Carl Blake.”

  Rivers said, “Oh,” with a lessening of joviality. Then he said, “What about Blake?”

  “Last June,” Heimrich said, “did he happen to consult you about a possible malpractice suit? Against a vet? Adrian Barton, to be exact?”

  “Look,” Rivers said, and now there was something near to asperity in his voice, “you’re not trying to tie Blake into that. Not Carl Blake! Hell, man. You know Carl.”

  “I’m not trying to tie him into anything, Glen. Just trying to find out what I can about Dr. Barton. Perfectly harmless question as far as your client is concerned. And I do know the bit about privileged communication. If you want to use it.”

  “And am I still beating my wife, M. L.?”

  “Nothing like that, Counselor.”

  “All right. God knows Carl talked enough about it. To everybody who’d listen, probably. It was about that dog of his. Dog named Pep, for some reason. Probably because he had it. Big German shepherd. Part shepherd, anyway.”

  “I’ve met Pep, Glen. Carl did want a malpractice suit?”

  “Yes. I talked him out of it. Laughed him out of it, what it came to. Even if Pep had been a particularly valuable dog, that kind of suit would have been pretty silly. I mean a purebred that’d win big at dog shows. He wasn’t. Just a nice big dog. The Blakes picked him up at an animal shelter, Blake told me. So? So what? Sure, they were fond of the dog. But you’ve got to sue for something, M. L. Anyway, sue a vet.”

  “Yes,” Heimrich said. “I get your point. And I take it Carl did. What did he want to charge Barton with? Specifically? What kind of malpractice?”

  “Bungling an operation. Or performing one that wasn’t necessary. It was a little hard to tell precisely what Carl had in mind. Seems Barton said the dog had cancer, and that an op
eration would prolong his life. By a couple of years, maybe. Carl admitted Barton hadn’t promised more than that. Hadn’t really promised that, I gathered. Anyway, the dog died a couple of weeks after they got him home. And Carl was sore as hell about it. But you know Carl.”

  Heimrich did. Carl Blake, member of a stock-brokerage firm, was rather often irascible. With cause, perhaps. Stocks had not been behaving well that summer. People were staying out of the market, to the distress of brokers.

  “Your eggs are getting cold,” Susan called from the kitchen. Heimrich thanked Glen Rivers and hung up.

  The eggs weren’t really cold. And the bacon was crisp. And Susan had made them fresh coffee.

  They had finished breakfast, except for the final cup of coffee and the cigarettes that went with it, when the telephone rang. “Probably Charley,” Heimrich said, and crossed the room to the telephone. It was Charley Forniss, calling from the barracks.

  The report from the biological lab in White Plains had come through. “Affirmative.” (Forniss, Marine Corps captain, inactive duty, is inclined to revert to military shorthand.) Yep, traces of curare in the tissues. Samples—“samples” of Adrian Barton, DVM —had been sent to the federal poison center in Atlanta for further analyses and confirmation. But Barton had died of curare poisoning. Presumably self-administered, but murder all the same.

  Miss Arnold had not been found. Several young women, blond and wearing blue summer dresses, had been found and interviewed. None of them had been Carol Arnold. A good many other possibles had been sighted, one in Cleveland, one in Los Angeles. That they had to expect, and had, of course, to look into. And was Heimrich coming in? There had been a couple of telephone calls for him, one from a man who sounded urgent, but had hung up before he gave his name.

  “Not right away, Charley. A few things to look into around here. Damn nebulous things, I’m afraid. Maybe around noon. Anything else coming up there?”

  The last was a silly question. Other things were of course coming up. New crimes do not wait for solution of older ones.

  “Nothing too hot, M. L. Nothing we can’t handle.”

  Heimrich did not leave the telephone. He dialed information. He got the number to dial for information in the Philadelphia area. After no delay to speak of, he got the telephone number of The American Cat Fancy. He hung up; he dialed the number given. He waited longer this time. Apparently the Fancy slept late. Finally he got, “American Cat Fancy, good morning.” Could he speak to someone in the advertising department?

  “I’ll switch you. But I don’t know if there’s anybody there yet. They come in late, mostly.”

  After several rings, there was somebody in the advertising department, William Cohen, assistant advertising manager. Who was that calling, again? Inspector What? Inspector M. L. Heimrich, New York State Police. O.K. And what could they do for Inspector Heimrich?

  Yes, Linwood Cattery was one of their advertisers. A Mrs. Grace Cummins? Yes, that was right. And what about Mrs. Cummins’s Linwood Cattery? Well, most of their advertisers contracted for insertions in specific issues, one at a time. A few, the bigger ones, contracted for a series of insertions, usually for a year at a time.

  “The big ones, Inspector. Those who don’t mind paying in advance for a year at a time. A lot of them —say, how do I know you’re really a police inspector?”

  “You don’t, of course, Mr. Cohen. I could be a competitor, looking for trade secrets. But is this sort of thing secret, Mr. Cohen?”

  “I guess not. As a matter of fact, we haven’t got many competitors. Anyway, most of our advertisers don’t want to pay a lump sum for a year’s insertion. Although we do give a discount, of course. Come down to it, Inspector, not too many of them have the ready cash. Running catteries isn’t all that profitable.”

  All right, he’d check and see whether the Linwood Cattery was one of the solvent few. Assuming he was really talking to a police inspector, who had some reason for asking. Oh, all right. He supposed he could chance it. If Inspector Heimrich, assuming he was that, would hang on a minute?

  Heimrich hung on.

  Yes, as he had supposed, Linwood Cattery was on a month-to-month basis. Yes, that meant Mrs. Cummins would order an ad each month for the subsequent months’ insertion. Sure, advertisers could change the copy if they wanted to. If they were expecting to have kittens for sale in the spring, they would so state in, say, the February issue. Which went in the mail usually about the twenty-fifth of the preceding month.

  All right, it hadn’t really been any trouble. And he hoped Heimrich really was a police inspector, because otherwise he’d have stuck his neck out.

  “Not too far, Mr. Cohen,” Heimrich said, and cradled the phone. As if it had been waiting for that, the telephone rang again. There was tenseness in Dr. Latham Rorke’s voice. Without waiting for the inevitable question, Heimrich said, “No, we haven’t, Doctor. Not yet.”

  “Listen,” Rorke said, to a man who was obviously already listening. “I think she’s trying to get in touch with me. And that something, or somebody, is stopping her. About half an hour ago—”

  About half an hour ago, Rorke had been making rounds with a resident, and he had been paged on the PA system. “Dr. Rorke. Dr. Latham Rorke. Please call operator.” The paging call was unusual; interns are too lowly for such summonses.

  Rorke had called the operator. “A call for you, Doctor,” the operator had said. “She says it’s urgent. Here’s Dr. Rorke, miss. Go ahead.”

  There was a click of transfer, and Rorke had said, “Hello, this is Latham Rorke.”

  But he had said it to a dead telephone, said it to nothing, to nobody.

  “May have got tired of waiting,” Heimrich said. “And just hung up. People do, you know. And it could have been anybody. But you realize that, of course.”

  But Rorke did not realize that, and Heimrich knew he didn’t. At the moment there was only one call Rorke wanted, was desperate for. So any call had to be that call.

  “I know the operator,” Rorke said. “Recognized her voice. I went around to see her.”

  It had been a woman’s voice on the phone. A young woman’s. One could tell. The operator had rung Rorke’s room, not expecting an answer and not getting one. She had said, “Sorry, miss. Dr. Rorke doesn’t seem to be in his room. Probably making the rounds.”

  “Can’t you page him or something? Please can’t you? I’ve—I’ve got to get in touch with him. It’s terribly important. Please.”

  There was a rule against it. Hospital speaker systems are to be kept clear for emergencies.

  “But there was something in the way she said it,” the operator had told Rorke. “So—well, so I broke the rule.”

  “She’s a nice kid,” Rorke said. “Named Ann Something.”

  Ann Something was sure—well, almost sure—the caller had still been on the phone when she had used the speaker system. Just before Ann had used the microphone, she had said, “All right, I’ll page him. Just hold on,” and the girl who was calling—“nice voice. Very young voice it sounded like. And very upset about something”—had said, “Thank you. Oh, thank you.”

  “Nobody that anxious would have got tired of waiting and hung up,” Rorke told Heimrich. “It had to be Carol.”

  “Probably,” Heimrich said. “Operator have any way of telling whether it was a local call?”

  “Listen, you can’t tell, anymore. You know that.”

  Heimrich did know that. Direct dialing has made a difference, one not to the advantage of the police.

  “If it was Miss Arnold,” Heimrich said, “it was probably a local call, a White Plains call. We found the Evans car in White Plains.”

  “Yesterday,” Rorke said. “If she had been here yesterday, she’d have called me yesterday.”

  He was very positive, very sure. There was no point in telling Rorke that if Carol Arnold was running, as probably she was, she would have been unlikely to call anybody, even a man who loved her and whom, chances were, she lov
ed. Running as, all right, maybe she was.

  “I can’t just stay here and wait,” Rorke said. “Twiddle my thumbs. You ought to be able to understand that, Inspector. I’ve got to do something.” Heimrich could understand. It was easy to understand. But—

  “The best thing you can do,” he said, “is to stay where she can reach you when she wants to.”

  He was told that that was easy to say. And that it was impossible to do.

  “I’ve got a hunch,” Rorke said. “Call it a hunch. Call it a feeling. She’s still up there somewhere. And something’s happened to her. She called me to tell me where she is and what’s happened. So, I’m coming up there. Because maybe I can help.”

  Heimrich couldn’t think how. Rorke, perhaps, could help himself by activity, if only the activity of driving from White Plains to Van Brunt. Better, probably, than twiddling the thumbs, letting anxiety twiddle the mind.

  “It’s up to you, Doctor,” Heimrich said.

  “You’ll be at your office, Inspector? At the barracks, wherever that is?”

  “Probably not until this afternoon sometime, Doctor. Until then—” He paused to consider. He wasn’t, come to think of it, sure where he would be. “If you want to get in touch with me,” he said, “call here. At the house. My wife will be able to tell you where I am. Although perhaps it will only be where I was. As specific as I can be, at the moment. But I still think—”

  He was not given time to say what he still thought, which was that Rorke had better stay at his hospital and be on hand for another telephone call.

  Rorke said, “Right, Inspector,” and hung up. “Rorke,” Heimrich told Susan. “And damn near out of his mind with worry.”

  “Yes. As you’d be yourself, dear. If she were your girl.” He looked at her. “Oh, all right,” Susan said. “If I suddenly vanished into thin air. Trailing suspicion of murder behind me. You do suspect her, don’t you?”