She threw her arms around me. “Oh, Jeff, I’m so glad you got my message.” She hugged me.
Sebastian McCabe may be a genius, but the look he gave me indicated he was getting entirely the wrong picture here.
“What is it?” I asked Quandra, holding tight to her shoulders and at the same time stepping back a bit. “What’s wrong?”
“It’s Peter; I’m so worried about him.”
“Why?” I asked. “What’s happened?”
Mac held up his hands as if to call timeout. “I suggest you first sit down and attempt to compose yourself,” Mac told Quandra. “Then tell us where Peter is and why you so clearly fear for his life.”
My brother-in-law and I settled into a pair of scarlet chairs that could have been abandoned by royalty who’d found them too ornate. Quandra sat on the edge of one of the two king-sized beds covered by thick, quilted spreads in rich tones of purple and indigo. She crossed her legs.
“Peter got a call this afternoon when I was in his room,” she said with a studied attempt at making her voice calm. “We were going over some production schedules. He didn’t want to tell me anything about it - the phone call, I mean - but he didn’t have to. From what he repeated back to the man who called I could tell what was going on. The man claimed to have some kind of information about the murder. He said he’d tell everything to Peter if Peter would meet him somewhere at four-forty-five.”
“Where?”
“That’s one thing I didn’t get. And Peter wouldn’t tell me or let me go along. I’m afraid something dreadful is going to happen to Peter.”
Something fatal, she meant.
“How long ago did he leave?” Mac asked.
“More than an hour, but he didn’t leave because of the phone call. He’s following up what he thinks is a clue to the murder. It’s something to do with a business called Double Takes. I’m not sure what it’s about, but Peter said he had an idea something like it might exist around here and he looked in the local newspaper files until he found it.”
I’d figured all along that somebody would find out sooner or later, somebody besides Chickory Williams. And now that it had happened, it was like finally having that long-expected shoe drop - right on my head.
“He was feeling awfully cocky when he left here,” Quandra went on. “I don’t think he’s going to be on guard the way he should be.”
Without a spoken word between us, or even an exchange of meaningful looks, Mac and I got out of our chairs at the same time.
“I think we can find this Double Takes place,” I told Quandra. “Then we can follow Peter from there to wherever he’s meeting this mysterious caller - if we’re not too late. We’ll do our best.”
Mac seconded the sentiment, using longer words, and we left.
There was no point in saying out loud what Gerard’s tracking down of Lem Carpenter could mean to Mac, so neither of us said it. We just rushed down the two flights of steps to the lobby - not wanting to wait for the fancy elevator - and ran out to Mac’s car. At least I ran. When Mac caught up, I was shaking my head.
“We can’t follow somebody in this car,” I said.
“And why not?” he demanded, as if injured.
“Because the damned thing is longer than the state of Florida and has fins like the shark in Jaws. It’s also the color of a fire engine, and just about as inconspicuous. I kind of think Gerard would notice after not very long.”
“I am not comfortable in your car. It is too small for me.”
No, you’re too big for it. The Beetle is quite spacious enough for people who make healthful food and beverage choices. “Your comfort is not the primary consideration at the moment, Mac.” I was close to shouting. “Just get us back to your house so we can change cars.”
“Very well.” He sighed his surrender as he engaged the ignition. “Home is on the way.”
We went back to the house, changed cars in less than two minutes, and headed for Lem Carpenter’s home and office. The brick ranch was just in our sight when we saw a tall, blond-haired man walk down the front steps into a silver Honda Accord Hybrid. It was Gerard.
“Now he will be on to the appointment with his mystery caller,” Mac said. “Do not lose him.”
Thanks, sleuth. I wouldn’t have thought of all that.
We followed, close enough to see and far enough away to avoid being seen unless he was looking for us. This went on for what seemed like an hour and was probably ten minutes. We’d gone in a near-circle that left us not far from home, in an area popular with students in search of low-rent quarters within a few blocks of the college. Gerard parked in front of an old brick building, a classic four-family on a corner. He got out, looked around, stuck the car keys in his pocket, and went in.
I drove around the block and parked behind Gerard’s car.
“Now what?” I asked.
“Now we turn off the engine and wait,” Mac said. “And we watch. And we do not let the front door of that building out of our sight.” In that typical boxy four-family design, there was no back door.
I looked at my watch: four-fifty. I was supposed to call Hoffer in ten minutes. Until then, there was nothing to do but wait.
“How did you do that trick with the twenty-dollar bill on the murder night?” I asked to pass the time. “What made it flame up like that?”
“Elementary, as the Master would put it,” Mac said off-handedly, straining his neck to watch the house. “He did say ‘elementary,’ you know. He just didn’t say ‘elementary, my dear Watson.’ At any rate, I substituted Ralph’s twenty-dollar bill with one of my own. Mine was treated with nitrocellulose - hence the vanishing act. In essence, it was a simple substitution.” He paused, as if struck by his own comment. “I still have the sense that the core of this case lies in some similar trickery or illusion.”
“There’s a trick involved all right, and it’s a substitution,” I said, a bit nettled by his lecturing. “You substituted Rodney Stonecipher for Peter Gerard. I wonder what Carpenter told Gerard.”
“That will become clear with time.”
“That’s for sure,” I said, “like it or not.”
Karl Hoffer wanted me to call him at five. At least that would relieve the tedium of staring at the building waiting for Gerard to emerge. And what would we do when he did come out? Have a chat and make sure he got back to Quandra safe and sound, I guess.
I pulled out my phone, found Hoffer’s number on whitepages.com, and punched it.
“Ah, yes, Mr. Cody,” Hoffer said a little breathlessly when I’d announced myself. “Thank you for returning my call. I simply wondered whether there were any questions I might answer for you so you don’t have to get your information second- or third-hand. I ask because I understand you have been making inquiries about me.”
Why did I feel like a cat was walking up my spine? He was the one who had some tall explaining to do, not me.
“How do you understand that?”
“I still have some friends at the University of Cincinnati. I am flattered that you find my academic career so interesting.”
Irritated by his patronizing tone, I showed my hand before I had intended. “What academic career would that be?” I said. “You didn’t go to UC.”
“Where did you get that silly idea? Of course I did.”
“The records there in the College of Arts and Sciences don’t show it.”
“But that can’t - wait a moment. Did you check by name or by Social Security number?”
I was glad I could say “by name.” People tend to get a tad touchy about their Social Security number being bandied about.
“Well, that explains it,” Hoffer said with a sort of chuckle. “I had a different name as an undergraduate. I was Karl Hofrichter in those days. Some years later I shortened it to Hoffer for my sta
ge name as a performer and eventually adopted that as my legal name well. I’ve never been a contributor or active alumnus, so I presume there would be no reason for UC or the College of Arts & Sciences to note the name change in their records.”
“Oh.” I would check out his story later, but it sounded believable. “I didn’t think -”
“That is quite clear,” Hoffer said coldly. “You didn’t think. Consider yourself fortunate this time, for I am not a vengeful man. In the future, however, if you intend to trample on the privacy rights of your fellow citizens I would advise you to tread more carefully. This amateur sleuthing you are engaged in can be dangerous.”
“I appreciate the warning. Or is it a threat?”
“A threat? Good heavens, no!” His mock shock was laden with irony. “Merely friendly advice.”
“Thanks. If I have any more questions, I’ll be in touch.”
I disconnected.
“Did you get all that?” I asked Mac.
He grunted. “Professor Hoffer was not speaking in an especially low voice. Nor was his reaction altogether unnatural for a man who discovers that his affairs are being poked into during a murder investigation.”
“Thanks for your support.” I was determined to stay peeved. “I really thought I had something there. I wasn’t sure what, or what it had to do with Rodney Stonecipher, but something.”
Mac didn’t respond to that. He was looking out the window. “That letter carrier is the first soul I’ve seen the entire quarter of an hour we’ve been here.”
He was just coming out of the apartment building, a man with a full beard like Mac’s. In boredom we watched him walk down the block and around the corner.
“Nobody’s getting any mail today,” I remarked idly.
Mac suddenly sat up. “Mail? It’s past five o’clock. Have you ever seen a mail delivery this late in the day? Another thing: I saw the letter carrier coming out the building, but I didn’t see him going in.”
The implication hit me like a physical force. “He must have been in there since before we came - way too long for any mailman.”
I jerked open the door of the car and ran down the block to the intersection where the presumed letter carrier had turned. I looked as far as I could in either direction. No dice. Not a flash of blue uniform was to be seen.
By the time I got back to the apartment building, Mac was already standing in the front door. There were four mailboxes in the dingy hallway, each labeled with a name and all of them equally meaningless to me.
“We’ll just have to knock on every door,” I said.
Mac went to the right and I went to the left. We both pounded. My door was opened a crack by a young black-haired woman - about sophomore age, I figured - who only let me see her head. Somehow I had the feeling she wasn’t alone, or dressed.
“All right, what’s so damned important?” she demanded.
“Sorry to bother you - ” I began.
“Over here!” Mac shouted from across the hall.
“ - so I won’t,” I finished.
The presumed co-ed peered over at Mac, who was looking through an open door into the other apartment, then shut her own door without further comment.
“No answer, but the door was unlocked,” Mac explained.
We went in.
It was the apartment Peter Gerard had gone into, all right. And he was still there, spread out on the living room floor with half his head blown away and blood everywhere.
No Answers
“So much for playing sleuth,” I said bitterly. “Peter Gerard tried and look what happened. I don’t intend to be next. You can go ahead and make like Sherlock Holmes - or Miss Marple if you want to - but I’m not. This stupid partnership is dissolved.”
I even thought I meant it.
Mac regarded the body. “The problem with Peter is that he did not take the game seriously enough. He came here to meet a man claiming to have information - the classic ruse of a killer - and yet he came unarmed.”
“So you’re saying he should have brought a gun, like Max Cutter?”
“I did.” Mac pulled up his sweatshirt to reveal a firearm stuck in the belt of his pants. “A Colt .32.”
“Where the hell’d you get that thing?”
“Stop shrieking, Jefferson. I bought it. It is quite legal - I have a concealed carry permit. Now call Quandra Hall at the Winfield.”
“Why?”
“To see if she answers. Do you realize how much of what we know about the events leading up to this death comes only from her unsupported word? Perhaps there was no mysterious caller offering information about the first murder.”
And maybe the beard on that letter carrier was a phony, disguising the face of a woman.
I called Quandra’s hotel room, letting the phone ring a full two minutes.
No answer.
I called Oscar on his cell phone to tell him about Gerard’s demise. This made me feel quite virtuous, by the way, considering that the last time I was involved in finding a dead body I phoned it in anonymously from Erin’s last remaining pay phone.
“You found what?” Oscar screamed. I quickly filled in a few basic details. “Stay right there,” he said. “And don’t call Teal. If you call Teal, I will be very, very unhappy.”
And if I don’t call her, she’ll be unhappy. What a choice.
“Don’t you believe in freedom of the press, Oscar?”
“Not especially. But what Teal prints isn’t the issue right now. I don’t want her hanging around the murder scene when my people are trying to collect evidence. And I’m telling you, Jeff, if she shows up this time it’s going to be your ass.”
He hung up.
“I guess you heard that,” I told Mac.
“Indeed I did - every stentorian word. Oscar’s mellow mood from earlier in the day has certainly evaporated. Perhaps his demand is just as well. Lynda is an excellent journalist. She might ask some questions that would be uncomfortable for us, especially me.”
“There is that,” I conceded. “So do I risk infuriating Oscar and putting ourselves in a deeper hole than we’re already in or do I risk getting Lynda pissed at me just when it looks like our relationship might be getting less complicated?”
Without waiting for an answer to that rhetorical question, I called Lynda’s cell phone. When voicemail kicked in, I hung up. Have you ever noticed that cell phones make you reachable around-the-clock, even when you don’t want to be, but somehow they don’t help you get a hold of other people when you most need them?
“You could have left a message,” Mac said.
“By the time she got it, it probably wouldn’t matter. I’ll try again later.” Where the hell is she? What’s the she doing with her Android turned off or out of reach?
Oscar, deflected from what was to have been a night of drinking beer and watching college football on ESPN, showed up with his cops in fifteen minutes. He wore a University of Dayton Flyers cap and a sour expression.
“You birds are developing a nasty habit of showing up in the close proximity of dead bodies,” he said, looking down at the latest.
Mac ignored the implied criticism - or was it something approaching an accusation? I still wasn’t sure whether Oscar meant something serious with the theories he had offered on the river, or whether he had just been playing head games with my brother-in-law. “Does this tragedy convince you that Peter Gerard was indeed the intended victim all along?” Mac asked Oscar.
“Not yet,” the lawman said. “I don’t intend to jump to any conclusions. The murderer might want me to do just that. Now, take it from the top. What were you doing following Gerard, anyway?”
“Quandra Hall, Gerard’s assistant, asked us to,” I said. “She was worried about him, afraid something might happen to him.” I let my voic
e show the irritation I felt. “That’s understandable, isn’t it? I mean, in view of what happened before - and since?”
“Yeah, I guess she had reason to be worried, all right. But why call you clowns instead of the police?”
“Nothing personal, I am quite sure,” Mac said. “Of course, you should ask Ms. Hall that question. I rather imagine that she felt as though she knew us, could trust us, and would find sympathetic ears in these quarters. The police, on the other hand, were an unknown quantity to her and might be inclined to dismiss her fears.”
“Well, she sure made the right choice,” Oscar said acidly. “Gerard might have gotten hurt otherwise.”
“Sarcasm is the last refuge of the witless, Oscar,” Mac retorted with some heat. He reached into his acre of sweatshirt to pull a cigar from the pocket of the shirt beneath. The motion caused a tug on the sweatshirt, raising it a fraction of an inch above the hip where Mac’s Colt .32 was nestled. It was legal and hadn’t been fired. Still, if Oscar saw that -
“Hold it!” the chief called.
Mac froze.
“You’re not going to light that cigar in here,” Oscar said. “Might disturb the evidence. Now, back to your story. You followed Gerard here, you saw him come into this building and not come out. Did he have any connection with this building that you know of?”
“I don’t see how he could,” I said. “He’d never been in this town until the day before yesterday.”
“That could be long enough. Do you know anybody else connected with this building - especially anybody from the college or somehow messed up in this case?”
“No,” I said, “not that I know of.” Mac slowly shook his head.
“Okay,” Oscar said. “The name on mailbox is Susan Gramke. We’ll find out where she fits in sooner or later. Now, both of you were watching the building the whole time, right?”
Mac nodded. I hesitated.
“What is it, Jeff? You don’t seem any too sure.”
“Well, I was on the phone for a few minutes. I’m not sure I was paying the closest attention to the building then.”
Holmes Sweet Holmes Page 16
