Widows

by Ed McBain

  Well, once it hadn't.

  "How's Steve taking it?" Kling asked.

  "I haven't seen him this morning," Brown said. "He was pretty shook up last night."

  "Yeah, I can imagine," Kling said. "Is your father alive?"

  "Yes. Is yours?"

  "No."

  "So I guess you know."

  "Yeah."

  "Did the lieutenant say how long you'd be on this?"

  "Just till Steve's done with the funeral and everything. He pulled me off a stakeout me and Genero are working on Culver. These grocery-store holdups."

  "Yeah," Brown said.

  "What are we looking for?" Kling asked.

  "Anything that'll give us a line on the guy who wrote these letters," Brown said, and tossed the packet to Kling. Kling sat on the sofa and undid the blue ribbon around the envelopes. He unfolded the first letter and began reading it.

  "Don't get too involved there," Brown said.

  "Pretty steamy stuff here, Artie."

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  "I think you may be too young for that kind of stuff."

  "Yeah, I agree," Kling said, and fell silent, reading. "Very good stuff here," he said.

  "It gets better."

  "You go on and do whatever you have to do, I'll see you next week sometime."

  "Just read the last letter."

  "I thought I might read all of them."

  "Last one's got everything you need to know."

  Kling read the last letter.

  "Paying for the apartment here, huh?" he said.

  "Looks that way."

  "He sounds old, don't you think?"

  "What's old to you?"

  "In his fifties, maybe. Doesn't he sound that way to you?"

  "Maybe."

  "Just the words he uses. And the tone. How old was this girl?"

  "Twenty-two."

  "That sounds very young for this guy."

  "You might want to look through some of that stuff in her desk, see if you find anything about anyone named Arthur. I think his name might be Arthur."

  "That's your name," Kling said.

  "No kidding?"

  "You sure you didn't write these letters? Listen to this," Kling said, and began quoting. "And afterward, I'll pour oil onto your flaming cheeks, and should any of this oil accidentally flow into your..."

  "Yeah," Brown said.

  "Some imagination, this guy."

  "Check out the desk, will you?"

  Kling folded the letter, put it back into its envelope, retied the bundle, and tossed it onto the coffee table. The desk was on the wall opposite the sofa. The drawer over the kneehole was unlocked. He reached into it for a checkbook in a green plastic cover.

  22

  "What makes you think his name is Arthur?" he asked.

  "I've been going through her appointment calendar. Lots of stuff about Arthur in it. Arthur this, Arthur that. Arthur here at nine, Arthur at Sookie's, call Arthur . . ."

  "That's a restaurant on The Stem," Kling said. "Sookie's. He probably figured the turf up here was safe."

  "What do you mean safe?"

  "I don't know," Kling said, and shrugged. "He says his office is downtown, so I figure he knows people down there. So up here would be safe. He may even live downtown, for all we know. So up here would be safe from his wife, too. I figure he's married, don't you?"

  "Where do you see anything about that?"

  "I don't. But if he's single and he lives downtown . . ."

  "There's nothing there that says he lives downtown."

  "How about him taking a cab when he leaves late at night?"

  "That doesn't mean he's going downtown."

  "All right, forget downtown. But if he isn't married, then why's he keeping a girl anyplace? Why don't they just live together?"

  "Well. . . that's a point, yeah."

  "So he's this old married guy keeping this young girl in a fancy apartment till he can get her an even fancier one."

  "Is 'Phil' another restaurant?"

  "Phil? I don't know any restaurant named Phil."

  "It says here 'Arthur at Phil, eight p.m.'"

  "When was that?"

  "Last Wednesday night."

  "Maybe he's a friend of theirs. Phil."

  "Maybe."

  "You know how much the rent on this joint comes to each month?" Kling said, looking up from the checkbook.

  "How much?"

  "Twenty-four hundred bucks."

  "Come on, Bert."

  "I'm serious. Here are the stubs. The checks are made out to somebody named Phyllis Brackett, for twenty-four hundred

  23

  r

  a shot, and they're marked Rental. Rental March, Rental April, Rental May, and so on. Twenty-four hundred smackers, Artie."

  "And he's trying to find her a better place, huh?"

  "Must be a rich old geezer."

  "Here he is again," Brown said, tapping the calendar with his ringer. "'Arthur here, nine p.m.'"

  "When?"

  "Monday."

  "Day before she caught it."

  "I wonder if he spent the night."

  "No, what he does is take a taxi home to his beloved wife."

  "We don't know for sure that he's married," Brown said.

  "Got to be," Kling said. "And rich. I'm clocking five-thousand-dollar deposits every month on the first of the month. Here, take a look," he said, and handed Brown the checkbook. Brown began leafing through it. Sure enough, there were deposits listed for the first of every month, each for an even five thousand dollars.

  "Probably won't help us," Brown said. "His letter . . ."

  "Cash, I know," Kling said.

  "Even if those deposits were checks, we'd need a court order to get copies of them."

  "Might be worth it."

  "I'll ask the loot. What was that woman's name again?"

  "Brackett. Phyllis Brackett. With a double Ton the end."

  "Take a look at this," Brown said, and handed Kling the calendar.

  In the square for Monday, the ninth of July, Susan had scrawled the name Tommy!!!!

  "Four exclamation points," Kling said. "Must've been urgent."

  "Let's see what we've got," Brown said, and picked up a spiral book bound in mottled black plastic, Susan Brauer's personal directory.

  The only possible listing they found for anyone named Tommy was one under the letter M: Thomas Mott Antiques. 24

  Brown copied down the address and phone number and then leafed back to the pages following the letter B. There was a listing for a Phyllis Brackett at 274 Sounder Avenue. A telephone number was written in below the address. He copied both down, and then they read through the calendar and the directory and the checkbook yet another time, making notes, jotting down names, dates, and possible places Susan Brauer might have visited with the elusive Arthur Somebody during the weeks and days before her murder.

  They went through every drawer in the desk and then they turned over the trash basket under the desk and sorted through all the scraps of paper and assorted debris that tumbled out onto the carpet. They spread newspapers on the kitchen floor and went through all the garbage in the pail under the sink. They could find nothing that gave them a last name for the man who was paying the rent on this apartment.

  In Susan's bedroom closet, they found a full-length mink coat and a fox jacket . . .

  "He's getting richer and richer by the minute," Kling said.

  . . . three dozen pairs of shoes . . .

  "Imelda Marcos here," Brown said.

  . . . eighteen dresses with labels like Adolfo, Chanel, Calvin Klein, Christian Dior . . .

  "I wonder what his wife wears," Kling said.

  . . . three Louis Vuitton suitcases . . .

  "Planning a trip?" Brown said.

  . . . and a steel lockbox.

  Brown picked the lock in thirty seconds flat.

  Insjde the box, there was twelve thousand dollars in hundred-dollar bills.

  The doorman
was a dust-colored man with a thin mustache under his nose. He was wearing a gray uniform with red trim and a peaked gray hat with red piping, and he spoke with an almost indecipherable accent they guessed was Middle Eastern. It took them ten minutes to learn that he had been on duty from four p.m. to midnight last night. Now what they

  25

  wanted to know was whether or not he'd sent anyone up to Miss Brauer's apartment.

  "Dunn remembah," he said.

  "The penthouse apartment," Kling said. "There's only one penthouse apartment, did you send anybody up there last night?"

  "Dunn remembah," he said again.

  "Anybody at all go up there?" Brown asked. "A whiskey delivery, anything like that?"

  He was thinking about the martinis.

  The doorman shook his head.

  "Peckage all the time," he said.

  "Package, is that what you're saying?"

  "Peckage, yes."

  "People delivering packages?"

  "Yes, all the time."

  "But this didn't have to be a delivery," Kling said. "It could've been anyone going up there to the penthouse. Do you remember anyone going up there? Did you buzz Miss Brauer to tell her anyone wanted to come up?"

  "Dunn remembah," he said. "Peckage all the time."

  Brown wanted to smack him in the mouth.

  "Look," he said, "a girl was killed upstairs, and you were on duty during the time she was killed. So did you let anyone in? Did you send anyone upstairs?"

  "Dunn remembah."

  "Did you see anyone suspicious hanging around the building?"

  The doorman looked puzzled.

  "Suspicious," Kling said.

  "Someone who didn't look as if he belonged here," Brown explained.

  "Nobody," the doorman said.

  When finally they quit, it felt as if they'd been talking to him for a day and a half. But it was only a little after three o'clock.

  26

  274 Sounder was a brownstone on a street bordered by trees in full summer leaf. It had taken them close to an hour in heavy traffic to drive from the penthouse apartment on Silvermine Oval all the way down here to the lower end of Isola, and they did not ring Phyllis Bracken's doorbell until almost four o'clock that afternoon.

  Mrs Brackett was a woman in her early fifties, they guessed, allowing her hair to go gray, wearing no makeup, and looking tall and slender and attractive in a wide blue skirt, thong sandals, a sleeveless white blouse, and a string of bright red beads. They had called before coming, and not only was she expecting them, she had also made a pitcher of cold lemonade in anticipation of their arrival. Brown and Kling almost kissed her sandaled feet; both men were hot and sticky and utterly exhausted.

  They sat in a kitchen shaded by a backyard maple. Two children were playing in a rubber wading pool under the tree. Mrs Brackett explained that they were her grandchildren. Her daughter and her son-in-law were on vacation, and she was baby-sitting the two little blonde girls who were splashing merrily away outside the picture window.

  Brown told her why they were there.

  "Yes," she said at once.

  "You were renting the apartment to Susan Brauer."

  "Yes, that's right," Mrs Brackett said.

  "Then the apartment is yours ..."

  "Yes. I used to live in it until recently," she said.

  They looked at her.

  "I was recently divorced," she said. "I'm what is known as a grass widow."

  Kling had never heard that expression before. Neither had Brown. They both gathered it meant a divorced woman. Live and learn.

  "I didn't want alimony," she said. "I got the apartment and a very large cash settlement. I bought this brownstone with the settlement money, and I get twenty-four hundred a month

  27

  renting the apartment. I think that's a pretty good deal," she said, and smiled.

  They agreed it was a pretty good deal.

  "Was anyone handling this for you?" Brown asked. "Renting the apartment uptown? A real estate agent, a rental agent?"

  "No. I put an ad in the paper."

  "Was Susan Brauer the one who answered the newspaper ad?"

  "Yes."

  "I mean personally," Brown said. "Was she the one who wrote ... or called . . .?"

  "She called me, yes."

  "She herself? Not anyone calling for her? It wasn't a man who called, was it?"

  "No, it was Miss Brauer."

  "What happened then?" Brown asked.

  "We arranged to meet at the apartment. I showed it to her, and she liked it, and we agreed on the rent, and that was it."

  "Did she sign a lease?"

  "Yes."

  "For how long?"

  "A year."

  "And when was this?" Kling asked.

  "In February."

  Fast worker, Kling thought. He meets her on New Year's Day, and he's got her set up in an apartment a month later. Brown was thinking the same thing.

  "I don't know what to do now that she . . . well, it's just a terrible tragedy, isn't it?" Mrs Brackett said. "I suppose I'll have to contact my lawyer. The man who drew the lease. I guess that's the thing to do."

  "Yes," Kling said.

  "Yes," Brown said. "Mrs Brackett, I want to make sure we've got this absolutely right. You were renting the apartment directly to Miss Brauer, is that right?"

  "Yes. She sent me a check each month. To this address."

  28

  "No middleman," Brown said.

  "No middleman. That's the best way, isn't it?" she said, and smiled again.

  "Do you know anyone named Arthur?" Kling asked.

  "No, I'm sorry, I don't."

  "Did Miss Brauer ever introduce you to anyone named Arthur?"

  "No. I only saw her once, in fact, the day we met at the apartment. Everything since then has been through the mail. Well, several times we spoke on the telephone, when she ..."

  "Oh? Why was that?"

  "She needed to know how to work the disposal . . . there's a switch on the wall . . . and she wanted the combination to the wall safe, but I wouldn't give her that."

  "Did she say why she wanted the combination?"

  "No. I assume to put something in the safe, wouldn't you guess?"

  I would guess, Kling thought.

  Like twelve grand, Brown thought.

  "Thank you very much for your time," Kling said. "We appreciate it."

  "Some more lemonade?" she asked.

  Outside, the little girls kept splashing in the pool.

  Thomas Mott was a man in his late forties, early fifties, with stark white hair, deep brown eyes, and a face that seemed carved from alabaster. Brown guessed his height at five-eight, his weight at a hundred and forty. Slender and slight, wearing skintight black jeans, a red cotton sweater, and black loafers without socks, he flitted among the treasures in his Drittel Avenue shop like a dancer in a Russian ballet. Brown wondered if he was gay. There was something almost too delicate about the way he moved. But he was wearing a narrow gold wedding band.

  Kling could not have named or dated any of the antiques here if he were being stretched on a rack or roasted on a spit, but he knew he was in the presence of objects of extreme

  29

  beauty. Burnished brass and wood rubbed to a gleaming patina, tiny clocks that ticked like chickadees, stately clocks that tocked in counterpoint, beautiful bottles in ruby reds and emerald greens, silver-filigreed boxes and bronze lamps with stained-glass shades that glowed with vibrant color. There was a hush in the place. He felt as if he were in an ancient cathedral.

  "Yes, of course I know her," Mott said. "A terrible shame, what happened to her. A lovely person."

  "Why'd she come in here on the ninth?" Brown asked.

  "Well, she was a customer, she stopped by every now and then, you know."

  "But was there something special about the ninth?" Kling asked. He was thinking of those exclamation points.

  "No, not that I can remember."
<
br />   "Because her appointment calendar made it look like something important," Kling said.

  "Well, let me see," Mott said.

  "How well did you know her?" Brown asked, biting the bullet.

  "As well as I knew any of my customers."

  "And how well was that?"

  "As I said, she came in every now and ..."

  "Well enough to call you Tommy?"

  "All my customers call me Tommy."

  "When was the last time she came in?"

  "Last week sometime, I suppose."

  "Would it have been last Monday?"

  "Well, I..."

  "The ninth?"

  "I suppose it could have been."

  "Mr Mott," Kling said, "we've got this idea that Miss Brauer felt it was important for her to come in here last Monday. Would you happen to know why?"

  "Oh," he said.

  Comes the dawn, Brown thought.

  "Yes, now I remember," Mott said. "The table."

  30

  "What table?"

  "I'd told her I was expecting a butler's table from England ..."

  "When did you tell her that, Mr Mott?"

  "Well. . . last month sometime. She came in sometime last month. As I told you, she stopped by every ..."

  "Every now and then, right," Brown said. "So when she was in last month, you mentioned a butler's table to her ..."

  "Yes, that was coming from England on or about the ninth, was what I told her."

  "What kind of table is that?" Kling asked. "A butler's table?"

  "Well, it's a ... I'd show it to you, but I'm afraid it's already gone. This was solid cherry, quite a good buy at seventeen hundred dollars. I thought she might be able to find a place for it in her apartment. She jotted down the date I was expecting it, and said she'd give me a call."

  "But instead she came to the shop."

  "Yes."

  "On Monday the ninth," Kling said.

  "Yes."

  "So that's what was so urgent," Brown said. "A cherrywood butler's table."