AHMM, April 2007

by Dell Magazine Authors

  Having had a great deal more experience with police officers than the Marienthals, Callender managed to seem frank and cooperative while holding his cards very close to his vest. “Steve's furniture? I had a dealer come in and clear it all out. Junk dealer because most of it was nothing but. Steve inherited it all from our dad, who started the import business back in the forties, right after World War II. He called it Callender Trading, Limited, back then, and all the merchandise came in from occupied Japan."

  "I'm particularly interested in a telephone cabinet that came from your brother's office,” said Auburn.

  "Interested in what way? That's a long time ago."

  Auburn chose his words carefully. “The cabinet turned up in the possession of an antique dealer. The locked compartment had some articles in it that we're trying to trace. I don't imagine you'd remember that cabinet, would you?"

  Callender ran his hand over his flabby jowls in a gesture probably meant to signify deep abstraction. “When Steve died, my sister-in-law left his office just the way it was for a long time—sort of like a shrine, the way people do. Then they got an eviction notice because the building was going to be torn down, and they decided to scrap all the old furniture."

  "I understand you handled the estate."

  "That's correct. I was Steve's executor. His sole heir was his widow Penny."

  "Didn't they have a son?"

  "Kyle. He was ten or twelve when Steve died. He was specifically disinherited under the terms of the will. That's just a legal convention to simplify probate, the tacit assumption being that the widow will look out for the kid until he can look out for himself. Kyle's a veterinarian in St. Louis now."

  "Was cremation also provided for in the will?"

  "Yes, sir.” He squirmed ponderously in his expensive desk chair. “Are you investigating this cabinet or are you investigating Steve?"

  "Maybe a little bit of both,” said Auburn smoothly.

  "You said you found some things in a locked cupboard from Steve's office. Anything of value?"

  "No monetary value, no. But possibly having some connection with a routine investigation I'm working on."

  "Well, if there were any locked cupboards among Steve's furniture, the keys had probably been lost by the time we disposed of the stuff. I guess we figured anything in locked drawers or cupboards was just junk of no particular value—spare stationery, paper clips, that kind of thing."

  "What about liquor?"

  Callender's eyes opened wide in spite of his professional skill at maintaining a poker face. “I doubt it. Steve had a wet bar right in his office. That we sold separately to a guy from Pittsburgh, now that I remember."

  "I've talked to Mr. and Mrs. Marienthal. Did your brother have anyone working for him at the time of his death besides them?"

  "No. It was always pretty much of a family operation and purposely kept small. The cost of renting enough warehouse space for a large stock and maintaining good security on it is astronomical."

  "Do you know if the company ever had any trouble with the authorities—police, Customs..."

  "You mean was Steve smuggling dope? No way, sir. He had a horrendous drinking problem—three Manhattans before lunch and three more afterward—but in his business dealings, he was straight as an arrow."

  "What about his successor, Marienthal?"

  "That's a horse of a different color,” said Callender, looking away briefly. “I'd never accuse Hank of handling narcotics, but he's always been a grand master in the Order of the Golden Fleece. Caveat emptor and all that. I wish you could be more specific as to what you're looking for. I mean, did somebody find narcotics in that locked cupboard after all these years?"

  "No, sir. It's nothing like that. Just a routine investigation. Thanks very much for your time and your help."

  When Auburn regained the street, the sunshine was gone and stray drops of rain were flying before a blustery wind. And since it was nearly three o'clock and he was now a mile away from headquarters, he took a bus back. After ordering records searches on Leonard Callender and the Marienthals, he spent a few minutes updating his files and organizing his thoughts before seeking another interview with Lieutenant Savage. But the lieutenant was expected to be out of his office for the remainder of the shift.

  Auburn was beginning to wonder if this investigation wasn't, as Savage had hinted, just a wild goose chase. But he felt he ought to pursue one more lead before giving up the whole job as a hopeless quest. Within a quarter of an hour he was en route to the funky little shops in the Castlemaine district.

  Again he found Hervey Dorjack's antique shop open for business, though the front door was now shut against the driving wind. Dorjack called to him from the cashier's desk at the rear of the store. “Be with you in a minute. Look around all you want. The furniture is cheaper if you haul it yourself."

  A woman customer wearing an ankle-length black dress and an extravagant amount of eye makeup was arguing with Dorjack about a wooden bowl.

  "It has some kind of smell that I'm allergic to,” she said. “I can't be in the same room with it for five minutes without coughing and sneezing."

  "Well, I'm sorry to hear that, of course,” said Dorjack, not sounding the least bit sorry, “but what do you expect me to do about it?"

  "I want my eighty dollars back."

  "Mm-hmm. Do you see that sign up there, ma'am—'All Sales Final'? I didn't just put it up today. I can't take merchandise back again once it's sold. I might buy the bowl from you for fifty."

  After finally getting rid of her and incidentally reacquiring the bowl, he came forward to where Auburn was waiting.

  "Didn't recognize you from back there, officer,” he said. “Haven't heard that one for a while."

  "I'm sorry?"

  "Says she's allergic to the fruit bowl she bought last week. The silly nitwit just decided she didn't like the looks of it, or maybe her husband threw a fit because she spent so much on it. Did you ever get in touch with Iddings?"

  "Actually, I didn't,” said Auburn, “but we managed to trace that cabinet anyway. The reason I came back today was to check on something else. When I was here yesterday I noticed you had a couple of small articles for sale with the initials SJC on them."

  "Articles such as...?"

  "One was a wooden cigar box—"

  Dorjack nodded. “Humidor. Brazilian rosewood. Sorry, but I sold it just this morning. Didn't get half of what it was worth because of that monogram carved in the lid."

  "There was also a penholder of some kind with the same initials."

  Another nod. “Writing set. I've got it back here now. Things that small tend to walk away sooner or later if they're not under lock and key.” He led the way to a set of glass-fronted display cases. “There it is. Double pen stand—one for black ink, one for red. Matching blotter holder and scissors case. All solid cherry. Just what the well-equipped business executive needed to set up shop back around nineteen forty. A nice set, good condition, too, but once again those monograms are going to kill me."

  "Can you tell me where you got these things?"

  "Yes and no.” He swept the store and the street outside with a quick glance to make sure no one was getting ready to walk off with something that wasn't under lock and key. “Come on back here a minute."

  The space behind the shop was crammed to the rafters with three-legged chairs, cracked mirrors, cabinets with missing hardware, and similar wreckage. A narrow path led among this jumble of damaged furniture to a heavy steel door opening to the alley, and just inside that door was a workbench where Dorjack evidently did some sketchy restoration and refinishing work.

  "I wonder if you're old enough to remember these,” he said, stopping next to a heavy oak office desk. Grasping what looked like a drawer handle on the left front, he swung it upward so that half of the top of the desk folded back and a heavy square shelf rose into position in the cavity thus revealed. “Disappearing typewriter desk. Your Royal Standard, all thirty-five pounds of it,
would be bolted down to this platform."

  Just now the platform was occupied not by a Royal typewriter but by a battered pasteboard box containing a motley assemblage of dusty, rusty relics—a stapler, a paper punch, a cracked ruler, pens and pencils (most of them chewed), a pair of manicure scissors with a broken blade, loose papers, erasers, paper clips, and much more of the same.

  "This desk,” said Dorjack, “and all the stuff in it came from the same place as that telephone cabinet you were trying to trace—Guy Iddings's warehouse. But the cigar humidor and the writing set were the only things I found in here that seemed worth putting out in the shop."

  He pushed aside a couple of yellowed spiral notebooks and pulled out a flat case of tarnished metal with an imitation telephone dial mounted on the top. “Maybe these were before your time too. If you want to find Jones's phone number, you dial J.” As he did so, the lid popped up to reveal a page filled with scribbled names and numbers.

  "How much would you want for that and those two notebooks—if I haul them myself?” asked Auburn, struggling to conceal his elation. Just as he was becoming convinced of the futility of following so cold and faint a trail, he had recognized Hank Marienthal's spiky handwriting in both the phone directory and the notebooks.

  It was close to five P.M. when Auburn took the elevator to the top floor at headquarters and turned over the materials he'd bought from Hervey Dorjack to Sergeant Kestrel in the forensic lab. He explained to Kestrel that he wanted photocopies of all pages that had any writing on them as soon as possible and asked that the originals be kept secure for possible future use as evidence. Kestrel promised to comply, grousing mildly about the hiatus of seventeen years in the chain of custody in which the materials had been kept.

  Auburn ate in the canteen that evening so as to be able to start working on the photocopies as soon as they were available. Investigating a seventeen-year-old homicide had begun to look a little less hopeless now that he had access to materials from Callender's office that had been stored in a kind of time capsule since the era of his death.

  At first the names and addresses, dates and phone numbers recorded in the notebooks seemed humdrum and routine. Then something clicked and sent Auburn back to his computer. By the time he finally turned it off and locked up for the day, the day had turned to black night.

  During the following week, other investigations occupied most of his time, but work on the Callender case moved steadily forward. Auburn had frequent interviews with Savage and other officials, including authorities at a federal prison in Atlanta. At length, accompanied by Patrolman Carl Bystrom, he returned to the Pretty Penny offices at the Patterson Tower Annex with an arrest warrant.

  They sought and obtained a private interview with Marienthal, whose anxiety level didn't seem to have lessened since Auburn's last visit.

  "Come on in,” he said, clearing files off a chair so they could both sit down.

  "We won't need to sit,” Auburn told him. “We'll have to ask you to come over to headquarters with us for formal questioning in connection with the death of Stephen J. Callender. Before you say anything, you should know that we have sworn testimony from Siang."

  Marienthal froze, his complexion blotchy red and white, his breath coming in audible gasps. Auburn read him his constitutional rights according to the Miranda decision and told him he could talk briefly with his wife.

  The next few minutes were almost as painful for Auburn as they were for the Marienthals. He was pretty sure that Penny Marienthal had had no prior knowledge of the murder of her former husband by her future husband. Mute and shaken, she locked the office and followed them to headquarters in Marienthal's car.

  Later that morning Hart Marienthal was booked on charges of first-degree murder. After lunch Auburn visited Nick Stamaty's office in the courthouse to bring him up to date on the case and hand over copies of relevant documents and reports.

  Although it was ultimately up to the coroner to decide whether a death was due to homicide, suicide, or accident, the official ruling was quite often based on information and evidence gathered not by the coroner's investigators or the forensic pathologist, but by the Department of Public Safety. Particularly was this apt to occur in a case of homicide. Although Dane Sackler's death would now be signed out as an accident, the case of Stephen J. Callender would probably have to be reopened and a revised death certificate filed.

  Stamaty examined the papers that lay spread out on his desk. “I'm impressed, Cy. How did you ever put all this together?"

  "Just a lucky hit. When I was researching picrotoxin, I kept coming across old news items about a notorious series of cases where it had been used to dope horses. A well-known businessman and racehorse owner in Singapore named Siang Bock Chee was warned off two racetracks there and eventually fined and banned from racing by the local racing commission. The reason was that on several occasions random testing of horses he'd run showed they'd been doped with picrotoxin, a k a pickle juice.

  "Considering how far off the beaten path picrotoxin is, I knew it couldn't be pure coincidence when Siang Bock Chee's name turned up four times in these old notes and records in Marienthal's handwriting. And things got even more interesting when we learned that Siang was in a federal penitentiary serving a thirty-year sentence on narcotics charges. He had nothing much to lose, and a lot to gain, by cooperating with the authorities.

  "He asked for immunity from prosecution for his involvement in Callender's murder and then traded his sworn testimony about Marienthal for a reduction in his sentence. I've got a videotape of his deposition at the office. Seventeen years ago he shipped a bottle of pickle juice to Marienthal with the understanding that it was going to be used to commit a homicide. The label said ‘Transcendental Balm—Prevents Aging.’”

  "I like this guy's sense of humor,” said Stamaty. “I bet he keeps all the other cons in stitches."

  "To dope a horse with picrotoxin they give it a big slug by injection. But a racehorse weighs half a ton. To a human being, one gulp is lethal. I imagine the stuff tastes like oven cleaner, but Callender drank and smoked so heavily that he probably never noticed what he was swallowing until it was too late. He lived on Manhattans—had a private bar in his office, bought bourbon and sweet vermouth by the truckload. All Marienthal had to do was spike one of the bottles of vermouth with pickle juice and sit back and wait for results."

  "Motive?"

  "Siang isn't admitting it, but I think he was shipping narcotics to Marienthal along with the brass incense burners and imitation-ivory Buddhas. Callender probably got wind of that and was threatening to kick Marienthal out, maybe even turn him over to the authorities. We haven't figured out yet whether Marienthal planned to marry the widow from the start or whether that was just an afterthought. But I'm convinced she wasn't in on the homicide."

  "How so?"

  "Because she's the reason the poisoned vermouth never got poured down the drain. Marienthal was just a hired hand back then. He managed to slip into Callender's office and doctor the vermouth, but once Callender was dead, his widow locked up his office and Marienthal couldn't get back in there to cover up his tracks. She's not sure how the bottle got locked in that cabinet, but she does remember that they couldn't find the key later on. Marienthal must have had a couple of bad days worrying that somebody would discover the cause of Callender's death. But once the body was cremated he could forget about that bottle. And he did."

  "So have you got a confession?"

  "He hasn't said ‘boo.’”

  Stamaty shuffled the papers into a neat stack and put his hand flat on top of it. “Do you really think this is going to work in court?"

  "The city prosecutor thinks so. He flew his assistant, McEwen, down to Atlanta to take that deposition. And it looks like a mighty persuasive mass of circumstantial evidence to me."

  "I'll grant you that, but I doubt if the grand jury will buy it without an autopsy on Callender."

  "Well, you can't win ‘em all.” Auburn snappe
d his briefcase shut. “Mozart wasn't cremated, was he? Maybe I'll apply for an order to exhume him."

  Stamaty gave him a tragic look. “Bad news, Cy. Nobody knows where Mozart was buried."

  Copyright (c) 2007 John H. Dirckx

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  PANDORA'S DEFENSE by GILBERT M. STACK

  I wish I had stayed longer myself, but lady luck had left me."

  Patrick was already in jail before Corey even heard about the murder.

  They were still in Cheyenne after their trouble earlier that year in Denver. Corey was a bare knuckle boxer making the circuit of western towns where Patrick, his trainer and manager, arranged fights for him. They'd been doing this since 1870—four short years—and hoped that Corey could keep up the pace for a few more.

  Then the murder happened, and all of their dreams and plans were derailed. Frantic with worry, Corey pushed his way through the crowd milling about the jail and tried to get through the front door. A burly deputy opposed him.

  "I've got to see Patrick,” Corey told him. In retrospect, he might have gotten farther if he'd asked to see the marshal. The deputy did not move.

  "No one sees the murderer!"

  "Patrick didn't murder anyone,” Corey protested. He didn't actually know this to be the case, but he'd known Patrick long enough to believe in his innocence without proof to the contrary.

  "Found leaning over the dead man with the bloody knife in his hands,” the deputy corrected Corey. “He killed him sure enough. Now get out of here. You can talk to the marshal in the morning."

  Corey knew something was missing from that story as Patrick didn't carry a knife, but the deputy clearly wasn't interested in listening.

  Corey sized up the man. His neck and shoulders were thick, but Corey doubted he would really prove much trouble if Corey chose to assert himself. Still, Mrs. Callaghan didn't raise any boys dumb enough to pick a fight with a marshal's deputy, and that was before Corey took into account the likely reaction of the milling crowd. And there might be another way to get to Patrick this evening.