“I’ll have someone there in half an hour, Mr. Payne,” Schraeder said. “Would you care to tell me the nature of the problem? Or should I come out there myself?”
“I think it would be helpful if you came here, Mr. Schraeder,” Payne said.
“I’m on my way, sir,” Schraeder said.
Payne put the telephone back in its cradle and turned from the alcove in the wall.
Captain O’Connor was standing there.
“Dr. Amelia Payne is on her way here,” Payne said. “As is my wife. They will wish to be with the Detweilers.”
“I understand, sir. No problem.”
“Thank you, Captain,” Payne said.
“Mr. Detweiler is in there,” O’Connor said, pointing toward the downstairs sitting room. “I believe Mrs. Detweiler is upstairs.”
“Thank you,” Payne said, and walked to the downstairs sitting room and pushed the door open.
H. Richard Detweiler was sitting in a red leather chair-his chair-with his hands folded in his lap, looking at the floor. He raised his eyes.
“Brew,” he said, and smiled.
“Dick.”
“Everything was going just fine, Brew. The night before last, Penny and Matt had dinner with Chad and Daffy to celebrate Chad’s promotion. And last night, they were at Martha Peebles’s. And one day, three, four days ago, Matt came out and the two of them made cheese dogs for us. You know, you slit the hot dog and put cheese inside and then wrap it in bacon. They made them for us on the charcoal thing. And then they went to the movies. She seemed so happy, Brew. And now this.”
“I’m very sorry, Dick.”
“Oh, goddamn it all to hell, Brew,” H. Richard Detweiler said. He started to sob. “When I went in there, her eyes were open, but I knew.”
He started to weep.
Brewster Cortland Payne went to him and put his arms around him.
“Steady, lad,” he said, somewhat brokenly as tears ran down his own cheeks. “Steady.”
The Buick station wagon in which Amelia Payne, M.D., drove through the gates of the Detweiler estate was identical in model, color, and even the Rose Tree Hunt and Merion Cricket Club parking decalcomanias on the rear window to the one her father had driven through the gates five minutes before, except that it was two years older, had a large number of dings and dents on the body, a badly damaged right front fender, and was sorely in need of a passage through a car wash.
The car had, in fact, been Dr. Payne’s father’s car. He had made it available to his daughter at a very good price because, he said, the trade-in allowance on his new car had been grossly inadequate. That was not the whole truth. While Brewster Payne had been quietly incensed at the trade-in price offered for a two-year-old car with less that 15,000 miles on the odometer and in showroom condition, the real reason was that the skillful chauffeuring of an automobile was not among his daughter’s many skills and accomplishments.
“She needs something substantial, like the Buick, something that will survive a crash,” he confided to his wife. “If I could, I’d get her a tank or an armored car. When Amy gets behind the wheel, she reminds me of that comic-strip character with the black cloud of inevitable disaster floating over his head.”
It was not that she was reckless, or had a heavy foot on the accelerator, but rather that she simply didn’t seem to care. Her father had decided that this was because Amy had-always had had-things on her mind far more important than the possibility of a dented fender, hers or someone else’s.
In the third grade when Amy had been sent to see a psychiatrist for her behavior in class (when she wasn’t causing all sorts of trouble, she was in the habit of taking a nap) the psychiatrist quickly determined the cause. She was, according to the three different tests to which he subjected her, a genius. She was bored with the third grade.
At ten, she was admitted to a high school for the intellectually gifted operated by the University of Pennsylvania, and matriculated at the University of Pennsylvania at the age of thirteen, because of her extraordinary mathematical ability.
“Theoretical mathematics, of course,” her father joked to intimate friends. “Double Doctor Payne is absolutely unable to balance a checkbook.”
That was a reference to her two doctoral degrees, the first a Ph. D. earned at twenty with a dissertation on probability, the second an M.D. earned at twenty-three after she had gone through what her father thought of as a dangerous dalliance with a handsome Jesuit priest nearly twice her age. She emerged from this (so far as he knew platonic) relationship with a need to serve God by serving mankind. Her original intention was to become a surgeon, specializing in trauma injuries, but during her internship at the University of Pennsylvania Hospital, she decided to become a psychiatrist. She trained at the Menninger Clinic, then returned to Philadelphia, where she had a private practice and taught at the University of Pennsylvania School of Medicine.
She was now twenty-nine and had never married, although a steady stream of young men had passed through her life. Her father privately thought she scared them off with her brainpower. He could think of no other reason she was still single. She was attractive, he thought, and charming, and had a sense of humor much like his own.
Amelia Payne, Ph. D., M.D., stopped the Buick in front of the Detweiler mansion, effectively denying the use of the drive to anyone else who wished to use it, and got out. She was wearing a pleated tweed skirt and a sweater, and looked like a typical Main Line Young Matron.
The EMT firemen standing near the blanket-covered body were therefore surprised when she knelt beside the stretcher and started to remove the blanket.
“Hey, lady!”
“I’m Dr. Payne,” Amy said, and examined the body very quickly. Then she pulled the blanket back in place and stood up.
“Let’s get this into the house,” she said. “Out of sight.”
“We’re waiting for the M.E.”
“And while we’re waiting, we’re going to move the body into the house,” Dr. Payne said. “That wasn’t a suggestion.”
The EMT firemen picked up the stretcher and followed her into the house.
She crossed the foyer and opened the door to the sitting room and saw her father and H. Richard Detweiler talking softly.
“Are you all right, Uncle Dick?” she asked.
“Ginger-peachy, honey,” Detweiler replied.
“Grace is upstairs, Amy,” her father said.
“I’ll look in on her,” Amy said, and pulled the door closed. She turned to the firemen. “Over there,” she said. “In the dining room.”
She crossed the foyer, opened the door to the dining room, and waited inside until the firemen had carried the stretcher inside. Then she issued other orders:
“One of you stay here, the other wait outside for the M.E. When he gets here, send for me. I’ll be upstairs with Mrs. Detweiler, the mother.”
“Yes, Ma’am,” the larger of the two EMTs-whose body weight was approximately twice that of Amy’s-said docilely.
Amy went quickly up the stairs to the second floor.
A black Ford Falcon with the seal of the City of Philadelphia and those words in small white letters on its doors passed through the gates of the Detweiler estate and drove to the door of the mansion.
Bernard C. Potter, a middle-aged, balding black man, tie-less, wearing a sports coat and carrying a 35mm camera and a small black bag, got out and walked toward the door. Bernie Potter was an investigator for the Office of the Medical Examiner, City of Philadelphia.
This job, Potter thought, judging from the number of police cars-and especially the Fire Department rescue vehicle that normally would have been long gone from the scene-parked in front of the house, is going to be a little unusual.
And then Captain O’Connor, who Bernie Potter knew was Commanding Officer of Northwest Detectives, came out the door. This was another indication that something special was going on. Captains of Detectives did not normally go out on routine Five Two Nine Two jobs.