The Innocents Club

by Taylor Smith

  Scheiber’s knees protested audibly as he got to his feet. “I’ll be anxious to see the tox-screen results.”

  “Why? You find anything to suggest suicide?” Klassen asked, also rising.

  “Not sure. There are sleeping pills on the night table—Dalmane, the label says.”

  She made a note of it on her clipboard.

  “And some Prozac in the bathroom medicine cabinet,” Scheiber added. “Except I did a count, and there’s only eleven sleeping pills missing out of a prescription for sixty. Only half a dozen of the Prozac pills left, but the prescription is nearly a year old.”

  “Somebody said his wife died last summer?”

  “I think we got that from the neighbor, yeah,” Scheiber said. “I need to verify it. So maybe he was down in the dumps and was prescribed the Prozac. But the label says he had two more refills coming. Unless he was switching bottles, it doesn’t look like he ever filled them. Same thing with the sleeping pills. I’ll check with the pharmacy, but it doesn’t look like Mr. Korman here was a big pill popper.”

  “Okay. You guys,” Klassen said to the officers on the side, “want to give us a hand loading him on the stretcher? We’re going to have to dispense with the body bag, the way he’s locked up. We’ll just lie him on the gurney sideways, like he is now, and strap him down.”

  The two coroner’s deputies, Scheiber, Eckert and two of the officers surrounded the body.

  “On my count,” Klassen said. “One, two, three!”

  A collective grunt sounded as they lifted the unwieldy form onto the gurney. When it was finally strapped in place, Klassen and her assistant draped a heavy sheet over it and secured that, as well. Still, the corpse’s knees and one elbow hung over the edge of the stretcher. Klassen took a black vinyl body bag and opened it out flat, stretching that around to help camouflage the shape.

  “Don’t want to be giving any little kids nightmares,” she said. She made a few more notes on her clipboard. “Did you see any other prescription medications around?” she asked, finishing up her site report.

  “An empty tetracycline container, some Tagamet,” Scheiber said. “That’s about it. For an old guy, he seems to have been remarkably healthy.”

  She made a note of it. “Anyone else live here?”

  “Doesn’t look like it.”

  “Do we know who his next of kin might be?”

  “Not yet. I’ll have to let you know on that,” Scheiber told her.

  “We’re going to have to seal the premises,” Klassen said. “You going to do it, or you want me to?”

  “No,” he said. “I’ll do it. I’m keeping this one active until we’ve got a confirmed cause of death.”

  Klassen nodded. “Okay. I’ll call you as soon as the autopsy’s scheduled. Probably won’t be till day after tomorrow, though. Morgue’s down to a skeleton staff for the holiday.”

  Scheiber winced. “Oh, Iris! Bad pun.”

  “You think that’s bad? You don’t want to be around me at Halloween,” she said, grinning. “We could use a little help getting this gurney down that circular staircase,” she added, shifting her gaze to Eckert.

  “You got it,” he said, scrambling to set his cameras on one of the lounge chairs.

  Scheiber walked over to the deck railing. The crowd below, if anything, had gotten thicker, although it was being held away from the house now by a line of yellow tape. He turned back to Eckert. “Hold on a sec, Dave. Bring your Nikon.”

  Eckert picked up the thirty-five millimeter once more and walked over. “What?”

  “Did you get a shot of the looky-loos?”

  “Couple.” He raised the camera and snapped off a few more. “You don’t really think we got a killer hanging around out there, do you?”

  “Wouldn’t be the first time, but to be honest? I doubt it. Old guy probably did overdo the tub and struck out. Still, better to be safe than sorry.”

  Eckert was zooming the telephoto lens up and down the alley. Suddenly, he snorted and dropped the camera back to his chest. “Jeez! Would you check out that ass Livermore?”

  Klassen had moved beside them, and she joined Scheiber in looking over. “Ah, yes,” she said, “God’s gift to the female sex.”

  Livermore was strutting up and down the line, looking very serious, pausing now and again to take a few ostentatious notes. A couple of pretty young things with short shorts and halter tops were leaning across the yellow tape. One of them said something to him, and the other giggled. Livermore sauntered over, adjusting his black wraparound sunglasses as he went.

  “Look at him. He’s checking out their cleavage,” Klassen said.

  “The man-in-uniform phenomenon,” Scheiber said. “Works like a charm every time.” Eckert looked irritated, but there wasn’t a cop in the land—himself included, Scheiber reflected—who hadn’t milked it now and again.

  “Yeah, well, maybe,” Klassen said, “but personally, Livermore leaves me cold.”

  Eckert looked relieved.

  Just then, a phone rang inside the house. Scheiber and Eckert glanced at each other. “Take it?” Eckert asked as they headed for the bedroom.

  “Hang on. Let’s see if a machine kicks in.” Scheiber’s latex-gloved hand picked up a portable from beside the bed, but as it rang a second time, he headed out into the hall, leaning over the balustrade to the open area below. At the third ring, he spotted the answering machine on the bar dividing the kitchen from the open dining–living room, and reminded himself to check it before he left. The machine clicked on, and a recorded voice, male, drifted to the high, oak-beamed ceiling above.

  “You’ve reached the Korman Literary Agency. Leave a message. I want to hear from you.”

  Strong, blunt, accented. No hint that the speaker was a senior citizen, Scheiber thought. A New Yorker, for sure. They grew ’em tough back there.

  After the beep came a woman’s voice, her accent hard to place. Not a New Yorker, though.

  “Hi, Chap, it’s Mariah. I was hoping to catch you before you lined up that meeting with Professor Urquhart. I’m thinking maybe we should hold off until we’ve had a chance to discuss this a little more. The more I think about it, the idea of plagiarism doesn’t hold much water—never mind the murder theory.”

  Eckert and Scheiber exchanged lifted eyebrows. Murder? Eckert mouthed.

  “You knew my father. Whatever he was lacking in moral fiber, Ben Bolt never seemed short on ideas to write about, did he? So why do I keep thinking this Urquhart character is trying to shake us down?”

  A long sigh whistled down the line.

  “I realize now I should have read those unpublished papers more carefully before dumping them on you. I’m sorry about that, Chap. But before I see this Louis Urquhart, I do want to read them, so I can at least gauge where the man is coming from. Like it or not, I guess that’s how I’m going to have to spend my vacation. Then, we’ll decide what to do about the professor, if that’s all right with you. I’ll get the papers back when we see you. I was hoping I’d be free today, but the powers that be, curse them, are not ready to cut me loose yet. We’ll probably drive down there sometime tomorrow, but if you need to reach me in the meantime, just leave a message at the Beverly Wilshire, okay? Otherwise, I’ll see you tomorrow. Bye!”

  Scheiber and Eckert stood in silence for a long moment. “Okay,” Scheiber said finally, “now, I’m officially intrigued. Nobody—and I mean nobody—comes in here without my permission until we find out what that was all about.”

  “She called him ‘Chap’?” Eckert said. “You figure that’s a nickname?”

  “Must be. A book thing, maybe? Like, short for ‘Chapter?’ Who knows?”

  A gurney wheel squeaked behind them. “What’s up, guys?” Iris Klassen was leading the stretcher into the hall. Her driver and a couple of the NBPD uniforms were struggling to tuck in the edges of the vinyl body bag so it would squeeze through the bedroom door. Twice they got stuck, slamming what had to be the victim’s knees into the do
or-frame, and had to back up and try again. It was such an undignified business being dead in the presence of strangers, Scheiber thought, wincing at this assault on the late Mr. Korman’s old bones.

  Klassen must have been thinking the same thing. “Hey, guys! What do you say we try to get the son of a bitch to the morgue in one piece, hey?” She turned back to Scheiber and Eckert. “What was that about the woman’s father?”

  “It sounds like it was Benjamin Bolt’s daughter calling,” Eckert said. “You know—the writer? Korman was a literary agent, so I guess Bolt must have been one of his clients.”

  Scheiber frowned. “He’s pretty famous, isn’t he?”

  “Well, du-uh, Jim—of course he’s famous,” Eckert said. “Like, practically on a par with Ernest frigging Hemingway?”

  “That was his daughter on the phone?” Klassen asked.

  Scheiber nodded. “She was supposed to meet with Korman. Must be from out of state. She’s staying at the Beverly Wilshire.”

  “La-di-da.”

  Scheiber pursed his lips and tapped his pencil against his notepad. “So, if Mr. Korman here had unpublished Ben Bolt papers in his possession, they’d be pretty valuable, wouldn’t they?”

  “I imagine they would,” Eckert said.

  “Hmm…”

  “What?”

  “Nothing,” Scheiber said. “You guys go ahead and get the body loaded up in the van. I’m just going to take another look around here before I seal the place up and go have a chat with the neighbor.”

  As the others wrestled the clumsy gurney down the winding staircase, Scheiber went back into the book-lined office. Settling in the buttoned leather armchair behind the big desk, he sifted through the enormous piles of papers and manuscripts scattered across the top. After he finished with them, he began opening drawers and digging through their contents. When Dave Eckert returned, Scheiber was in a closet, rummaging through boxes and running his hands over the walls.

  “What are you looking for?”

  “A safe. It looks like this used to be two small bedrooms, only they knocked out a wall to make a bigger office. One of the closets got gutted for bookshelves, over there. I thought maybe Korman would have put a safe in this one, but I can’t find it. You didn’t notice one anywhere else in the house, did you?”

  “No, but I’ll do another go-round, see if I can see one. Behind pictures, maybe? There’s not much free wall space in here, but some of the larger works downstairs would be the right size to cover one.”

  “I agree. Let’s go look.”

  They went through every room in the house, down and up, ending back in the office.

  “No safe,” Eckert said.

  “No safe.”

  “So what does it mean?”

  “It means, if the lady on the phone is to be believed, that Mr. Korman had some very valuable documents lying unsecured somewhere in his house. Not in here, though. I’ve looked and looked, and I can’t find them.”

  “Like, how valuable, do you figure?” Eckert asked.

  “Well, let’s put it this way—if somebody had an unpublished Ernest Hemingway novel sitting in his bottom drawer, or maybe the guy’s personal diaries, how much would they be worth?”

  “Jeez. A fortune.”

  “There you go,” Scheiber said. He held out his arms. “But they don’t seem to be here, do they?”

  “Uh-oh,” Eckert said ominously. “Motive.”

  Scheiber nodded. “Motive.” Just then, something he hadn’t noticed before caught his eye. He walked to the open closet, eyeing the row of shelves, and crouched next to the bottom one. “Hey, Dave, get a picture of this, would you?”

  “What? An empty shelf?”

  “Empty,” Scheiber said, nodding. “Strange, no? Since all the others are overflowing? But it wasn’t always empty. See? Korman was no great shakes as a housekeeper. There was something sitting here until very recently. Look, the center of the shelf is mostly clean. But here, see the dust? A distinct outline of a large, rectangular object.”

  Eckert took a light reading and lined up the shot. “More books? Or manuscripts?”

  “Nope. Too big. A box, I’d say. Not exactly lightweight, either. See the drag marks?” He sat back on his haunches while the camera clicked.

  “So, what was in the box?”

  “And where did it go?” Scheiber added. “And, more to the point, who removed it, and when?”

  Chapter Fifteen

  Nothing is ever simple, and no good deed goes unpunished. Those were life’s elemental truths, Mariah thought with a sigh. The DDO’s terse reply to her contact report burned into the glass of the computer screen in front of her.

  Prospect looks promising. You are to attend state luncheon. Look for sideline opportunity to raise prospect of mutually beneficial cooperation with subject. Report back.

  Her stint on the front lines wasn’t over yet. Jack Geist wanted her to go and watch Shelby Kidd and Valery Zakharov spar with each other over an interminable rubber-chicken lunch—and, while she was at it, corner Yuri Belenko and ask him if he’d care to become a double agent.

  “Great,” she muttered. “Just bloody great.”

  Other keyboards pattered around the gray padded cubicle she occupied in the federal comcenter. The place was a hive of computer workstations, each terminal linked to the most secret parts of the federal net, where machines spoke to each other in heavily encrypted digital code said to be uncrackable. Designed primarily for civil-emergency situations, the comcenter’s reinforced walls and ceilings reputedly were strong enough to withstand any natural or man-made disaster short of a direct hit by a ballistic missile.

  The facilities were open for use to visiting officials like herself, but with the long Fourth of July weekend about to get under way, the place was as empty today as it had been last night at midnight, when she’d dropped by to file her report on her contact with Belenko. Mariah glanced around, but the few faces she saw were strangers. No surprise there, given the mammoth size of the federal bureaucracy.

  She grimaced at the deputy’s message. Other people might be pursuing holiday plans, but Jack Geist clearly thrived on different pleasures. The originator code on the e-mail said he’d sent it from Langley at 5:37 a.m. EDT, only an hour or so after she’d sent her report winging eastward. Did the man have a home? Did he sleep?

  The last thing she wanted was to attend a state luncheon, but he’d left her no room to opt out. Fine. The assignment had turned into a two-day affair, after all. She’d attend the luncheon. Then she was out of the picture. And, please, she thought, offering a fervent mental prayer, don’t let Renata be at this damn function. It was one more problem she didn’t need today, worried as she already was about a daughter on the brink of rebellion. Lindsay had been left behind, unhappy and resentful, only to discover that her supposedly hardworking mother was shacking up in an L.A. hotel room with Paul Chaney. A man, Mariah was beginning to realize, she wasn’t in love with and probably never would be. What on earth was she doing?

  Picking up the phone next to her, she called to confirm the rental car she’d reserved and to say she would pick it up later that afternoon. But changing Lindsay’s plane ticket was another matter. In the end, the best she could manage on the eve of a busy holiday was a flight due into LAX at midnight—a gain of only a few hours, but preferable to the alternative of leaving Lindsay back in Alexandria spitting nails for one more day.

  When she called Carol’s house again to give her the revised flight information, Lindsay seemed less than thrilled. “I don’t know why you bothered.”

  “Because I want us to be together,” Mariah said, “and sooner rather than later.”

  “What about Paul?”

  “He’s getting the keys to the beach house today. We could go straight there, but it’ll be so late by the time you get in, it probably makes more sense to stay at the hotel tonight and run down first thing in the morning.”

  “Is he going to be staying at the beach with us?”<
br />
  “Paul? No, he’s not,” Mariah said firmly. Though it had been a close call on that score. She was still irritated by Paul’s blithe assumption he could invite himself along. “But while you’re busy being grumpy about him,” Mariah added, “you might remember that he’s the one who went out of his way to get this beach house for us. It’s a little ungrateful to treat him like Public Enemy Number One.”

  “Yeah, well, you slept with him, Mom, so I guess he got the thanks he was after.”

  Mariah felt the blood drain from her face. She counted mentally to ten before allowing herself to reply, and when she did, her voice was low, even and dangerously controlled. “Lindsay, I have never, ever struck you in your entire life, but you’re lucky you weren’t standing beside me just then. So, listen to me carefully. If you ever say anything like that to me again, or use that tone with me, there will be serious consequences. Do you understand?’

  The line was silent.

  “Do you?”

  The response was the correct one, but as grudging as it could be. “Yes, ma’am.”

  “Look,” Mariah said, “I know you were taken by surprise last night. I’m sorry about that. If I’d known Paul was going to be out here, I’d have told you, but it was as much a surprise to me as it was to you. I’m making allowances for your behavior this time only, though. There’s a limit to how far even you, my love, can go with insulting me or sticking your nose into certain private matters. Are we clear on this?”

  “He was Dad’s friend, Mom! He’s got no business trying to take his place!”

  Mariah sat back in the rolling desk chair and closed her eyes, putting a hand to her forehead. “Oh, Lindsay, he couldn’t possibly. No one could.”

  “Then why does he keep hanging around?”

  “He’s trying to be a friend. If you’ll recall, you were the one who thought he was so great at the beginning, when I kept trying to get rid of him. And now…” She twisted the phone cord in her hand. “I don’t know how this got so out of hand, Lins. Believe it or not, we mothers are not all-knowing or infallible, despite our propaganda to the contrary. I’d be lying if I said I knew what to do about Paul—or much else, for that matter. The only thing I am certain of these days is that you’re the most important person in the world to me. So could we please call a truce for a while and try to have a nice vacation?”