Dr. Coffee managed a humorless laugh. “Tell me more,” he said as they passed through the gate and headed for the parking lot.
“While you’re away I took a gander at the phone company’s long-distance records. I find two calls in one week from Patty Erryl’s number to the same place in Louisiana. Who makes the calls? Not me, says Auntie Min. Must be a mistake, says Patty. Not two mistakes, says Ritter. Then Rhodes comes clean. He makes the calls.
“Patty is terrified of this Wallace character, but she runs to see him every time he raises his little finger. Why? Well, Rhodes phones a newspaper pal in Louisiana to smell around a little, and he finds out Wallace is blackmailing Patty. Seems when she was studying music down there she got mixed up with a crummy bunch and got caught in a narcotics raid. She’s let off with a suspended sentence but the conviction is a matter of record. Wallace finds out about it and starts putting the screws on her, so Rhodes kills him. So I lock him up.”
“That poor, love-sick, courageous, gallant liar!” said Dr. Coffee as he climbed into Ritter’s car. “Let’s go right down to the jail and let him out.”
“But Doc, Rhodes confessed!”
“Max, Rhodes is making a noble sacrifice, hoping, I’m sure, that he can beat the rap when he comes up for trial. He’s given you a confession he will surely repudiate later if it doesn’t endanger Patty. He’s confessed so that you will not run down those long-distance phone calls and discover they were from Patty to the Public Health Service Hospital in Carville, Louisiana.”
“The phone company didn’t say anything about Carville. The number was a Mission number out of Baton Rouge exchange through Saint Gabriel.”
“Exactly. All Carville numbers go through Baton Rouge and Saint Gabriel, and the exchange is Mission.”
And Dr. Coffee told Ritter about Carville, Hansen’s disease, and Papa Albert Boulanger.
“I’m positive, Max, that Papa Albert is the white-haired man with the package under his arm — the man the clerk at the Westside saw get into the elevator shortly before Wallace was killed on Wednesday,” he said. “I’m also sure that he was paying blackmail to protect Patty.
“When Papa Albert found out two weeks ago that he didn’t have long to live, he decided that before he died he would get Wallace out of Patty’s life forever. Northbank is only two hours from New Orleans by jet. He could have come up by an early evening plane, killed Wallace, and been back at his New Orleans hotel by midnight. He’ll have an alibi, all right. Who wouldn’t perjure himself for a man with only a month or two to live.”
“But Doc, if he’s going to die anyhow, why doesn’t he just give himself up, say he did it for Patty, and die a hero?”
“Because that would undo everything he’s been willing to commit murder for. That would connect Patty with Carville. And let’s face it, Max, the stigma of Carville is still pretty strong poison in too many places.”
“Not for Rhodes it ain’t. Or don’t you think he knows?”
“He knows. But he’s an intelligent young man and he’s in love with Patty.”
“I still don’t see what Rhodes was doing at the Westside the night of the murder if he didn’t kill Wallace.”
“He’ll deny this, of course, but I see only one explanation. Papa Albert didn’t have Wallace’s address — Wallace has been getting his mail at General Delivery. My guess is that Boulanger called Patty, probably from the airport, to get the address. And Patty, realizing after she had hung up what the old man was intending to do, sent Bob Rhodes out to the Westside to try to stop him. Rhodes got there too late.”
“Do you think we can break Boulanger’s alibi, Doc?”
“I’m sure you could build a circumstantial case! You could dig up an airline stewardess or two who could identify him as flying to and from New Orleans the night of the murder — he’s a striking-looking old gent. You could subpoena bank records in Louisiana to show that he withdrew amounts from his savings account approximating Wallace’s deposits in Cleveland. Maybe the desk clerk at the West-side could identify him. But you’ll have to work fast, Max. Otherwise you’ll have to bring your man into court on a stretcher.”
“You really think he’s going to die, Doc?”
“Sooner than he thinks, I’d say. The metastases are pretty general. The lungs are involved — he has a characteristic cough. The lymph nodes in his neck are as big as pigeons’ eggs. With luck he may last long enough to hear Patty sing in the finals — La Tosca, I hope. Unless, of course, you start extradition proceedings.”
The detective swung his car into the “Official Vehicles Only” parking space behind the county jail.
“I dunno, Doc,” he said as he switched off the ignition. “Maybe we ought to let God handle this one.”
Phyllis Ann Karr
Blood Money
A tale of the Seventeenth Century, a tale of death and ruin, of greed and hate, of bloodshed and revenge and — money...
Were I five years younger, dear husband Hal, I would have killed myself for bringing such shame upon your memory. But to-day, let me be content to set all the matter down in this paper, and bury it in the earth above your grave. And pray you, also, be content with this much, for there has been enough of bloodshed.
That your father was a hard man, who should know better than you? Had his lordship your father been willing to lay aside his quarrel with Camden, this six years past come Shrovetide — had he bethought himself that his only son’s life hung in the balance — had he summoned Camden, who was the nearest surgeon — but no, having sworn to ruin Camden’s repute, he must needs send to Saltash for Trevane, for sottish, worse-than-useless Trevane — and that when your pressing need was for physic that same night! And so now we lie apart, with cold earth and sod and stone between us, when you might have been still in my bed.
I pray you, Hal, do not judge me in haste. I have a horror of judgements which cannot be undone. This present disgrace took root when you and I were little more than children, in 1616 when your father sued and won his unjust judgement against Thomas Penhallow, and, when Penhallow would have appealed, the Justice replied to him in the words King James had used to Star Chamber, that “it is better to maintain an unjust judgement, than ever to be questioning after sentence is passed.” So that Penhallow was ruined, losing house and lands and all, and it was rumoured his child starved and his wife left him because of it, too.
Penhallow had reason enough to hate your father, Hal, but he dropped from sight, and for fifteen years his lordship had no thought of him save to gloat now and again over those words of his late Majesty, words which could be turned to such convenient use.
But some while after you were buried, your father went to work on Master Carnsew and Sir Edward, and by wearing them down he was able, last year, to buy out both their shares in the Wheal Nancy mine. And one day going to see his new mine, and standing to look on at the men who were drawn up out of the shaft, he met with one who, on stepping into the light of day, stood gazing back at his lordship. Then your father peered more closely, and saw beneath the grime and ore dust and coating of years, and knew this man to be Thomas Penhallow.
We searched and made enquiry (for after Harkness refused to stop longer in Wilharthen House your father had made of me, though a woman, a sort of secretary; a clever economy it was for him, seeing he need pay me no more than food, gowns, and chamber in Wilharthen, which he must have provided me in any case; nor could I leave him like Harkness, having nowhere to go). But all we learnt from the enquiry was that Penhallow had been three or four years in the Wheal Nancy, working as a tributer, for a share of the ore he brought to surface, and a good man for finding out new lodes; and the mine captain thought he had come from the Great Pelcoath when it filled with water, but how long he had been at Pelcoath, or where he lived before that, the mine captain could not say.