“Not necessarily, Mrs. Yates,” I said. This time I smiled, and she crossed her slim legs deftly with only a faint hiss of nylon rubbing on nylon.
“We went through a great tragedy near the beginning of our marriage. I told you about that. I could tell within a hair’s breadth when Chester would crack. He could withstand an enormous amount of pressure, pressure that would destroy an ordinary man. He was a bear for work, and he thrived on getting out of tough corners. I know that in recent weeks he had been preoccupied with his business. But that was Chester. He loved it. No, Mr. Cooperman, I’m sure that Dr. Zekerman fits into the story somehow, but I doubt that it was because of business worries.
“And non-business worries?”
“You mean us, our private lives?”
“Yes.”
“Chester never was the sort to play around, Mr. Cooperman.”
“That’s not what you thought last Thursday.”
“True,” she said, examining the rim of her saucer with her cup held like she was going to drop it about a foot from her mouth. “Normally, Chester wouldn’t look at another woman. He never did. But …”
“This has something to do with Ward.” I was guessing, but I said it like I’d got the news by registered mail.
“Chester and Bill played follow-the-leader throughout their lives, and when Bill took a mistress, girlfriend, or whatever you call it nowadays, I, well, I feared …”
“I get it. That was in the back of your mind when you came to see me?” She nodded, and sipped the tea she’d been holding in the air for the last two minutes. “Tell me about this girlfriend of Ward’s.”
“What’s that got to do with anything?” I gave her a look, and she took a deep breath. “Her name is Elizabeth Tilford. I’ve never met her, although I’ve seen her once or twice. She used to work in my husband’s office as a secretary. She’s a mildly good-looking redhead, tall, about thirty, with very little sense of what to wear in an office, if you ask me. I don’t know where she is now. She went away someplace.”
“Is Ward broken-hearted?”
“Bill has a way of getting over heart-break, Mr. Cooperman. You mustn’t imagine that Elizabeth Tilford was the first.”
“But he still lives with his wife?”
“Naturally. Neither Bill nor Pauline want the sort of public scandal that would result in a break between them. They have an understanding. In some way she knows what Bill has been doing, and in others she is able to ignore it. She’s perfectly comfortable, and has learned the value of keeping her husband on a long leash.”
“A very long leash.”
“If it’s long enough, you don’t even know it’s there.”
“Yes. Well. To change the subject for a minute, did you husband ever mention C2 to you?”
“Mention what? C2? No, I don’t think so. What is it? Is it important?”
“It could be. At this stage it’s hard to tell what’s important and what isn’t.” I put down my cup. “Well, I think that I’ve learned everything I came to find out. That’s the bottom of my list of questions. I’ve enjoyed the tea. I want to thank you for being so frank with me.” She led me back to the hall and my hat and coat. She even helped me with the sleeve I’d pulled out when I took it off. She was a real nice lady, and I hated asking her the questions at the top of my list.
“Mrs. Yates,” I asked, with my foot in the door, “would I be very wrong in guessing that you are in love with Bill Ward?”
You had to hand it to her. I thought that I’d just hit her with enough to lay her out. She stood there for a moment trying to force a smile to her lips, but her eyes told me what she thought of me.
“You really are a detective, Mr. Cooperman. Yes, I’m in love with Bill Ward. I thought I hid it better. But then I’ve always loved him. Good afternoon, Mr. Cooperman.”
ELEVEN
I parked my car around behind my office building, which formed part of an arch of brick and stone structures put up on the high ground above the old canal at the end of the nineteenth century. The fieldstone looked green and wet on the lintel of the backdoor leading to the cellar. The unpainted wood of the door looked rotten. I walked up the lane and then climbed the twenty-eight steps to my big front door. I wasn’t even breathing hard.
I put in a call to Martha Tracy at Scarp Enterprises, and in doing so, I remembered a batch of questions I’d meant to ask Myrna Yates. I was sorry that I had to take it out on her, especially since she was signing my cheques, but I needed to know more about the business end of Chester’s involvements. If he was in the middle of something when he got knocked off, there must be more than several people around town sucking in air and not letting it out. Martha was out to lunch, the receptionist reported. I left my number. To kill time, I put in another call to Pete Staziak, at the Regional Police.
“What’s with you, Benny?”
“What do you mean?”
“Don’t answer a question with a question.”
“Tell my mother. What’s wrong?”
“Well, how come you’re always calling me up at work lately, and for a couple of years before this week I hardly ever heard from you?”
“What are you talking? I’m always interested in how you’re doing. How are you doing? There, I’m asking.”
“I thought you were supposed to be a private investigator?”
“What’s that supposed to mean?”
“Well, Ellery Queen and Perry Mason aren’t always phoning the cops to see what the latest developments have been.”
“That’s in books. Besides they were related to the cops or practically. Nobody tried to freeze them out. Come on, Pete, don’t hold out on me. Have you got a report back from the Forensic Centre in Toronto yet?”
“Yeah.”
“Well?” He took a long breath like someone who had just given in to lighting up his first cigarette in three weeks, two days, seven hours and fifty-five minutes.
“Okay, Zekerman was clubbed to death.”
“Stop the presses! You didn’t have to go to Toronto to find that out. I could have told you. Even that washed-up drunk Hildebrandt could have told you that.”
“Leave our former shady coroner out of this. Do you want to know when he died or don’t you?”
“Surprise me.”
“Don’t be the smart ass, Benny. He was killed just after five, as close as they can place it.”
“Could it have been just before?”
“Sure. There’s a margin in these things.”
“So, he was knocked off by someone after getting his full hour of therapy or by someone who didn’t bother to get into the nice soft leather chair.”
“Looks that way. We are trying to get some help from Medicare to help us find out who his patients were yesterday, but they are reading us a lot of stuff about confidentiality and like that. They are very sensitive about that kind of thing. We got lots of his files here, but it sounds like they all could have done him in. He was seeing some weird people, Benny.”
“Is that all you’ve got?”
“You complaining? If you weren’t a private eye, you’d have to go out and get a job.”
“I never thought I’d hear that from a cop.”
“Hey, there is one funny thing we found out about your good dead friend the doctor: he was cooking the Medicare accounts.”
“How can you tell?”
“Interesting, huh? Well, we took what was left of his office downtown and looked at it most of this afternoon. We found a few bill which didn’t quite tally with the jottings about appointments. He was charging everybody we could match up with about three or four visits a month more than they actually made. No skin of the customers’ noses, because in the end they collected from Medicare. Nice fellow, eh?”
“Maybe he was killed by a bunch of hit boys from the Medical Association for giving them a bad name?”
“I’ll tell Harrow you suggested it.”
“Don’t spoil my supper. So long. I’ll be talking to you.”
“Don’t rush. Goodbye.” Pete was a good guy most of the time. But he was a sucker for a queen’s side opening.