by Medora Sale
“Well, give him my love when he gets in,” said McNeill. “If he does. And tell him I’ll be back in fifteen minutes or so.” And he heaved himself back up to his feet and stalked out of the room.
“Where does McNeill think he’s going?” said a familiar, testy voice. Dubinsky turned his head slowly in the direction of the door and stared impassively at Inspector Sanders. “We need everybody.”
“He’s just come in from the west end; he’s past due for a supper break,” said Dubinsky. “And where have you been?”
“All over,” he said vaguely. “Actually, I was tracking down some ideas I had in the von Hohenkammer case,” he added in a mumble. “Didn’t realize how late it was.” He sat down and began leafing through reports on his desk. “Anything come in on Milanovich?”
Dubinsky shook his head.
“The girl’s disappeared, too,” said Sanders. “No one seems to have seen her since this morning. We’d better start looking for her.”
“Maybe she’s wherever her brother-in-law is,” said Dubinsky. “Could be they were planning on running off together on Mummy’s money or something. Or then again,” he added, “maybe she’s at the movies. Or shopping. It’s a bit early to panic.”
Sanders gave him the look of a man whose best lines have just been stolen and picked up the telephone. He dialed twice, spoke briefly each time, and hung up. He looked at his watch. “Long movie,” he said. “Check the airport.”
“While you’re waiting for that,” said Dubinsky with barely concealed sarcasm, “you might be interested in what we got from Walker. He can see a very long stretch in his future, and he’s been spilling his guts out to Volchek in there.” He pushed some papers over in Sanders’s direction; the inspector sighed, picked up his chair, and moved over to Dubinsky’s desk.
“What’s been done about Walker’s accomplices?” asked Sanders with a twinge of guilt in his voice.
“McNeill and Collins went out to the address on Lippincott—nothing. They’ve left someone there. Volchek is circulating a description. He’s sent teams out to the airport, bus depots, and so on. He figures they might be trying to make it back to Spain. If they heard we picked up Walker.”
“What do those two guys do?” asked Sanders. “I mean, when they’re not breaking into houses. They must have some job or other or they never would have got into the country.”
Dubinsky shook his head. “Dunno. No one ever asked him.”
“Then send someone to ask him, for God’s sake. We might be able to find them that way.” But Dubinsky wasn’t listening. He had already picked up the phone.
Twenty minutes later, the telephone rang on Dubinsky’s desk. He listened, jotted down some notes, muttered briefly, and hung up. “Interesting,” he said, looking over at Sanders. “Carlos is a security guard; he used to work for Mid-City, but quit last January or February.”
“Too early for Volchek to include him in those people he was running a check on.”
“That’s right. And the other guy, Manny . . . Walker thinks he worked in a restaurant as a waiter, or maybe even a chef. He’s not sure.”
“Wonderful,” said Sanders. “How many thousand restaurants are there in the city?”
“Enough,” said Dubinsky. “Enough so that by the time we’d checked them all he could have changed jobs three or four times. Anyway, I’ll send Collins out to Mid-City to find out what they have on Carlos.”
Harriet opened her refrigerator door and decided that nothing in it was worth the trouble of eating, much less cooking. She grabbed a piece of celery, ran it under the tap, and nibbled at it as she wandered around the apartment. A sick sense of guilt was hovering somewhere around her stomach, and she was trying very hard to isolate it, somehow wrap it up and tuck it away somewhere. It can’t have been just that she felt that she had been unpardonably rude to Nikki, could it? Most of the unforgivable things that she had thought had remained silent screams in her head. She had the tact, surely, to suppress the most obvious signs of her impatience. Maybe she had told Veronika she would meet her for lunch, but where? She went out onto the deck and shivered in the cold September wind while she ran through a mental list of all the restaurants she could have possibly had suggested. None of them rang a bell.
She walked back in, rubbing her arms briskly against the chill, and decided that perhaps she was suffering from hunger, not guilt. She opened the refrigerator again, looked seriously this time, and finally pulled out a piece of aging cheddar wrapped in plastic. It felt unpromisingly hard, as though it had been drying out in her refrigerator for weeks, but it might just be grillable. She set it down, and it hit the counter with a thud. “Really, Harriet,” she muttered, “that cheese isn’t just old, it’s mummified.” She stopped dead. “Good God. The museum. I was supposed to meet her at the museum. This afternoon.” She looked at her watch and then walked quickly over to the telephone.
Carlos tucked the yellow parking tag into his pocket and got into his car. In spite of all that had happened this afternoon, he drove with his usual judgment; he couldn’t understand the stupidity of people who drew attention to themselves by parading their aggressions on the road. As he wheeled the car neatly into an opening in the traffic on St. Clair, the faint stickiness on the fingers of his right hand caught the steering wheel unpleasantly, and he frowned. He should have been wearing gloves. That was stupid. He wondered where his knife had fallen. Not onto the floor. He’d looked. So he must have kicked it into one of the grottoes, and that meant it might be found today or lie there until the next major renovation of the area. But the whole goddamn scam was coming apart, anyway. It was time to drift on. Before he was connected with it. It should be safe enough back in Arizona. He could work in the antiques store for a few months; that would make his mother happy. Besides, another winter in this place and he was going to crack. Just clean out the papers and things he’d left at Manu’s, pick up as much cash as he could get from the fence, pack up his suitcase, and he’d be gone. They’d still owe him plenty, but under the circumstances . . .
He saw the police cruiser almost before he had made the right turn onto the street. He took a deep breath, completed his turn, accelerated very gently, slowed, and turned into a narrow alleyway that provided access to the shabby garages behind each house. Still at the same measured pace, he took another turn between two houses that led him out onto the next block and began a tortuous path back to his own little flat.
Meanwhile, the bored constable in the cruiser jotted down the license number of the car that had driven into the alleyway. On this quiet street of hardworking families, once the sun had set and day shifts were over, there wasn’t much activity. He recorded it all.
The clerk at Iberia Airways was doing her best. Yes, a flight had left for Spain over an hour ago. The constable read out the description on the page in front of him, looked up, and smiled hopefully.
She stared at him with an expression that mixed exasperation and amazement. “I’m sorry, sir,” she said, “but half the men on the flight could be described like that. Slender, dark haired, brown eyes, and moderately tall. Not young, not old. With a small mustache. You haven’t anything else?”
“Well,” said the constable unhappily, “his name seems to be Manny or Mano or something like that.”
“Manuel?” prompted the clerk hopefully.
“Yeah, that sounds right,” said constable. “You got anyone like that on your passenger list?”
“I’m sure we do,” muttered the clerk. “Several, in fact. Manuel isn’t an unusual name, you know. Here,” she said, running her finger down the page. “One, two, uh, no, I remember him, he was just a little kid, and that one was quite elderly, in a wheelchair. Could your person be elderly?” The constable shook his head. “Then”—she flipped over a page—“three. Three men who might fit your description, all named Manuel.”
“Then how about someone who looks sort of like him, but shor
ter. Named Carlos.”
She muttered something that, perhaps fortunately for his morale, the constable did not catch. “Not a very helpful description,” she snapped. “It covers about every other male on the plane. Including the crew. Dark hair and eyes are fairly common in Spain, you know, sir. And Carlos is about as common a name as Manuel.” The constable shrugged his shoulders unhappily. “We’ll see what we can do,” she added, remembering her obligation to be helpful. “I’ll put you in touch with security.”
While the harassed team at the airport were plodding through their unenviable task of tracking down two Spaniards with dark hair named Manuel and Carlos, Collins was contemplating throwing the man on evening shift at Mid-City Security Systems in jail for the night. It had taken ten minutes for the man to be convinced that he had to call someone in authority; it had taken twenty minutes for him to locate the relevant telephone lists and, finally, to reach a vice-president, who promised the imminent arrival of someone else with keys to the personnel files. Fifteen minutes after that, a very irritated personnel manager, smelling slightly of Scotch, turned up and tried his best to look cooperative.
Harriet was about to slam the telephone down, drive over to the shiny new police building on College Street, and run up and down the halls screaming Sanders’s name when she finally got him on the other end of the line. “My God, but you’re a hard man to reach, John,” she said. “I was beginning to think your story about being a cop was just an elaborate excuse for never being available.”
“Sorry,” he muttered. “I really do work here. Sometimes, anyway. All hell broke loose while I was over at your place.” His voice had dropped so low she was having trouble making out the words.
“So people noticed you were gone, eh? Well, don’t fret. This call is legit. I just remembered something about Nikki. I promised to meet her at the museum today, I think. I can’t remember if we actually set a time or not, but she may have gone there looking for me.”
“The museum? Well, she wouldn’t be there now, would she?” He looked at his watch. “It’s eight o’clock. When does it close?”
“I’m not sure,” said Harriet. “Some nights it stays open late, I suppose. Do you want me to call?”
“No. Official business. I’ll call you when I know something. But I wouldn’t count on anything. She won’t still be there, even if she did go to meet you.” Sanders cut the connection and looked up.
“Now what?” said Dubinsky.
“It seems the von Hohenkammer girl might have gone to the museum this afternoon. We’d better put someone on it.”
“Listen, she’s been gone less than twelve hours. She’s not a five-year-old kid,” protested Dubinsky.
“Maybe not. But she’s still a possible suspect in a murder case. And an essential witness,” he snapped. “I’d like to keep tabs on her. Get someone to call the museum.” He scribbled down the relevant information.
“Here,” he said. “You, what’s your name?” A blond young man who was lounging uneasily against a desk in the middle of the noise and confusion jumped and reddened slightly.
“Lucas, sir. Rob Lucas. I was sent over in case—”
“Right. You might as well beat your head against this one and find out what it feels like. Call the museum and ask if Veronika von Hohenkammer, five foot three—”
“I know what she looks like, sir,” he interrupted.
“Oh, keen, eh? Then find out if she was there this afternoon and when she left.” He handed him the piece of paper with his indecipherable scrawl on it. The telephone rang again, and this time Dubinsky reached over and picked it up. “It’s Collins,” he said, looking over at Sanders. “He’s got something.” Dubinsky took neat and rapid notes for a minute or two. “Great,” he said. “Bring me back a corned beef on rye.” He glanced up, caught Sanders’s signal, and added: “Two corned beef on rye.”
“What’s he got? Besides food,” said Sanders.
“Ah, he has a name, address, and previous employer for Carlos. Very interesting, too.”
“Well, for chrissake, don’t just sit there grinning. What in hell did he find out?”
“His name is Carlos Ramirez. He gave as a reference his previous employer. He used to work at the Royal Ontario Museum as a security guard. Coincidental, eh? And his address was 142 Palmerston Avenue. That sounded familiar to me. Didn’t a witness in this case live on Palmerston?” Dubinsky reached for the file.
“Call Volchek and find out,” said Sanders. “It’s faster.”
“Mrs. Maria Figuerao,” said McNeill from his position a couple of desks away. “I interviewed her; 142 Palmerston Avenue. Same number as my sister’s house in Oshawa, different street name. I noticed it at the time. She was the owner of the house where Walker spent the whole night playing cards when Mrs. Wilkinson was getting killed. And what do you want to bet that Volchek’s other two witnesses are our disappearing Spaniards?”
“Basques,” said Dubinsky. “That’s what Walker called them.”
“Basques?” said Sanders. “You didn’t say they were Basques.”
“Volchek said it was all the same thing,” said Dubinsky. “It seemed easier to call them Spaniards. I mean, they are Spaniards, aren’t they?”
“Sort of,” said Sanders, reaching for the phone.
Ten minutes later, the tired and irritated clerk behind the desk at Iberia Airways swore in exasperation as the same young police constable, looking considerably less lively this time, walked over to her. “Now what?” she said. The obligatory smile refused to emerge.
“We have some more information on those two men I was asking you about before.” She reached for a piece of paper, just in case. “The name of the second man is Carlos Ramirez.”
She ran her pencil down the passenger list rapidly. “No. No Carlos Ramirez.”
“And apparently these two men are Basque.” He said the word with a certain hesitation. “Does that make a difference? “
There was a long pause as she continued to stare at the list. Then she looked up at him and smiled very sweetly. “Constable, if you were looking for a Canadian named . . . oh, let’s say John or Bill . . . and all you knew was that he was six feet tall, wouldn’t it be helpful to find out he had purple hair and spoke only Swedish?”
It took a few seconds for the sarcasm to penetrate. The constable reddened.
“Yes, Constable, it makes a difference. A hell of a difference. I will inform security. They will be very interested.” As she reached for the phone, she smiled again. “And you can be damned sure his name isn’t Carlos Ramirez, either.”
Are you certain of this?” Sanders asked. He was staring down at the piece of paper that Rob Lucas had just put in front of him.
“Yes, sir. I talked to three of the six people who were on duty in the public areas of the museum this afternoon. The guards didn’t notice her, but the woman at the admissions desk certainly did. And so did the woman in the gift shop. She bought an expensive bronze medallion and paid for it in cash. Quite late in the afternoon. She was apparently waiting for a friend and kept looking out the windows of the shop for her. And according to the woman selling tickets, she wanted to know where the Greek and Roman collections were and asked her to direct her friend there when she came. But she didn’t give a name. The description fits.”
“And no one saw her leave.”
“That’s right. No one. It didn’t strike them at the time, but they noticed it when I asked. The guards had done a check, chased one little girl out of the bat cave—kids always hang around the bat cave—but saw no one who fit the description of Miss von Hohenkammer loitering about.”
“Could she have gone out a back door?”
“Only with a key. Otherwise, she would have set off the alarms. When I asked if she could have slipped out when one of the staff were leaving, they admitted that it was possible. But not likely.”
Sanders
stared down at the neatly written notes. “What do you know about the Basques, Constable?” he asked.
“The Basques?” said Lucas, momentarily startled. “Spanish or French Basques, sir?”
“Spanish. No, both.”
“A bit. They speak a non-Indo-European language which is very difficult for non-Basques to learn. And let’s see, they’ve been fighting for their independence from France and Spain for centuries. And the Spaniards feel about the ETA—that’s the Basque separatist organization—about the same way that Margaret Thatcher feels about the IRA. There are some excellent Basque restaurants in town if you’re interested—Basque cooking is very good—and quite a few Basques emigrated from Spain to the American Southwest. What else did you want to know?”
“That’ll do. Where in hell did you get all that from?”
“A history course I did. I wrote an essay on independence movements in the Iberian Peninsula. Want to know something about Catalonia?”
Sanders glared. “No thanks. Telephone the people at the museum and tell them we’ll be there in ten minutes. Get a car, Constable. I’ll meet you out in front.”
“Do you know exactly where she would have been in the museum? What sections?” asked Sanders into the telephone.
“Greek, I suppose,” said Harriet. “That was what she was interested in. Did she go to the museum?”
“Oh, she went, all right. And no one saw her leave. Which means there’s an outside chance that she still might be there. I’m going to see if I can find her now.”
“I’ll come with you,” said Harriet firmly. “I can help you search for her. And if she’s there and hiding for some reason—my God, but that sounds bizarre, doesn’t it?—she might come out if I’m there.” Harriet paused in wonder. “I never realized she was that squirrelly.”
“Squirrelly?”
“If she’s hiding in the museum, she’s squirrelly, let me tell you. Normal women don’t do things like that. I’ll meet you in front of the building.”
