Now, Pamsett is smooth, but not that smooth. The questions clearly got to him. At that, the guy handled himself pretty well. “Oh, yes, yes, I was at both. Nice services, don’t you think? As to why I was there, that is a valid question,” he conceded, nodding.
“I thought it was.”
“Well, this is a little embarrassing, but only if the reason for my being there gets back to Megan.”
“That seems unlikely.”
“I’m glad to hear you say that. Well, in all candor, Mr. Goodwin, I went to the services because I was... well, afraid Megan would appear there and make some sort of scene — you know, berate the dead boy’s parents and all.”
“Doesn’t that seem a little farfetched?”
“You don’t know Megan very well,” he replied earnestly.
“Perhaps not. But what would she gain from something like that?”
“Nothing, it’s true. But I’ve watched Megan grow increasingly irrational over the last several months. And now, this horrible business with Noreen has just about put her over the brink.”
“Are you suggesting Alzheimer’s?”
“Oh, no, no. But she’s definitely unbalanced. I have very great affection for Megan, Mr. Goodwin. I know a wonderful side of her — a side she allows far too few people to see. But she also has her demons, God help her.” He gestured toward the ceiling.
“But couldn’t you have just stayed with her the morning of the funeral? That would have prevented her from going.”
“She would have seen right through that,” Pamsett said, spreading his hands. “As it turned out, though, my precautions were unnecessary, weren’t they? She wasn’t there, and nothing happened.”
“Nothing happened,” I agreed.
“Well, I really must be going now. Thank you so much for your time,” Pamsett said. I followed him down the hall to the door, suggesting that his best chance to get a cab quickly was at Eighth Avenue. He thanked me and we shook hands like gentlemen before he stepped out into the night. David Niven was never more elegant.
I thanked him too, albeit silently, for saving me a trip to see him tomorrow.
Twenty-One
On Monday morning, having had my more-or-less-standard breakfast of wheatcakes, sausage, eggs, juice, milk, and coffee, I was in the office a few minutes before nine bringing the orchid records up-to-date on the computer when the phone rang.
“Archie, I admit I’m slow, dammit, and it was only this morning that I made the connection, but the least you could have done was keep an old friend current on what was happening,” Lon Cohen fired off after I’d said hello.
“Hey, explain yourself, old-timer,” I answered.
“With pleasure. I was going back over our Sunday profile on Michael James, and it finally dawned on me that the Rowan who was his grandfather is the late father of a certain special friend of a certain licensed New York private investigator. That, coupled with your call to me the other day asking about Sparky Linville’s murder, made me realize that something’s probably going on that I should be looking into.”
“Could be.”
“Could be? What the hell kind of answer is that? Come on, Archie, how many times have you tapped me for information about cases you and Wolfe are working on?”
“And how many times have you and the Gazette gotten scoops on cases my eminent employer has blown the lid off, to slip in a phrase that we tough-talking detectives are supposed to use?”
“Okay, I concede that we’ve probably scratched each other’s backs more or less equally over time. But today is today, and there are deadlines to be met. Is Wolfe trying to find somebody other than Michael James to stick with the Linville murder?”
“That’s an interesting conjecture.”
Lon lowered his voice and spoke slowly, enunciating each word. “Archie, there will be times again — and you know it — when you are going to need me.” The boy’s nothing if not subtle.
“You’re right,” I responded. “I think you might for this afternoon’s edition like to suggest that unnamed sources have reported that Nero Wolfe has been looking into the case.”
“God, is that the best you can do?”
“Right now it is, although I promise you that if and when anything happens, you’ll be the first to know. You always have been in the past. Hell, a murder weapon hasn’t even been found yet, has it?”
“Not as far as we know, but the James kid has confessed. What makes Wolfe think he isn’t guilty?”
“Uh-uh. Nice try, friend, but for now you’ve got all I can give you.”
“You don’t make it any easier for me to do my job, Archie,” Lon said reproachfully, and I countered that I wasn’t aware I was on the Gazette payroll. With that, he used a word that Cramer also likes and hung up.
The doorbell rang as I cradled the phone. I walked down the hall, wondering what Cramer could possibly want this time, and was surprised to see our client through the one-way glass. “Come in,” I said brightly. “I must confess I wasn’t expecting you.”
Her face looked as if she’d either been crying or been up all night, or maybe both. “I... had to see you,” she said unevenly.
“Okay,” I told her when she’d sunk into the red leather chair and I was at my desk, “you have my undivided attention.”
“I killed him,” Noreen pronounced coldly. “It was me.”
“You killed Linville?”
“That’s right.” She was staring more or less in my direction, but without eye contact.
“Have you told the police?”
“No, I... thought you should know first. I feel terrible about... lying to you and Mr. Wolfe and all.”
“And you were going to let your brother take the fall?” I asked sharply.
“No-o-o, I wouldn’t have,” she said, the tears starting. “At first I thought he’d retract his confession, but he hasn’t. This is terrible!”
“It certainly is. All right, Noreen — how did you kill Linville?”
“You already know,” she wailed. “In that garage — with a metal thing, you know.”
“Tire iron?” I asked.
She nodded.
“How did you know where he kept his car?” I asked.
“I... He mentioned it one of the times we were out — he loved to talk about that car, he told me everything about it.”
“You’ve got a good memory. Did you have to wait a long time for him to come home that night?”
“More than two hours.”
“Did you wait inside the garage or in the street?”
“What difference does it make?” Noreen wailed.
“The police will want to know,” I told her. “They like their facts all neat and tidy. How many times did you hit him? Did he bleed a lot?”
“God, I don’t know, I don’t know!” She was so loud now that Fritz popped his head in to see if anyone was being throttled. I waved him away.
“Did he say anything as he was falling?” I pushed on, but I didn’t have to go any further. She had her head in her hands, racked with sobs. I handed her a handkerchief.
“Listen, Noreen,” I told her after the waterworks had subsided, “I’m not even going to give you a ‘Nice try’ for that ludicrous performance. Mr. Wolfe is having enough trouble without having to deal with such a stunt. If I were to repeat your story to him, he’d throw me out on my ear, and I wouldn’t blame him — to say nothing of what he’d do to you. I guess I can excuse this because you were doing it to save your brother, right?”
She nodded, still wiping an already badly smeared face. “You weren’t very nice, though.”
“If you’d gone to the police with that fairy tale, you’d have really gotten a taste of ‘not very nice.’ Now, Mr. Wolfe is going to be walking in here in less than ten minutes, and I think you’ll agree it’s a good idea if you’re gone then. That is, if you still want to be a client.”