Z WANTS IN FOR A THIRD
I heard Pete’s low whistle as he passed the sheet to Chris.
“My guess is that this is a rough copy of the message Chester sent to Ward, a message which tipped Ward off to the stakes the greedy shrink was playing for. Ward was a practical man, he knew that he would have to do something about Zekerman.”
“But didn’t the picture change when Yates caught it?” Pete asked.
“How could it? Chester’s share would be paid into the company. Ward’s interests were legally guaranteed no matter who headed up Chester’s company. But Chester’s death decided Ward to act as quickly as he could to eliminate this bloodsucker. He knew that Zekerman kept no secretary or receptionist; he knew that he wouldn’t run into any other patients. He just kept his regular appointment, and when he found a moment, he clobbered Zekerman with his own African statue. When he’d made sure that he was dead, he went over the office carefully, taking the appointment book, a group of files including his own and Chester’s, and anything else with his name on it. In another two minutes, he was walking back to his office.
“Funny thing about that: as soon as he examined the files, he knew Zekerman hid his dirty secrets elsewhere. Ward and I both started wondering where that might be just about the same time. I got to the blackmail files only minutes ahead of his boys.”
“So Hilda Blake had unwittingly tipped Zekerman to the prospects of blackmailing the same two she’d sworn to kill.”
“Yes, but Zekerman was pretty sure that it was Hilda who killed Chester. That’s another ironic thing about this case. Zekerman was so greedy to get his third of the profits from Core Two that he wanted to warn Ward about Hilda. He told me on the phone to watch out for Ward. He didn’t mean that I should be careful of him, but that Ward should be on the look-out himself.”
“Tell me, Ben,” Savas said, leaning across the table, “when did you get all those women straightened out?” I thought about that one for a moment, enjoying the cognac and the concentration in the four eyes opposite.
“Well, Phoebe Campbell worried me right from the start, but I felt I had to run with that in order to find out what was going on,” I lied. “I didn’t start putting all those faces together until I got an itch at the back of my knees when I saw the Secord University crest on the bookends in Elizabeth Tilford’s room. I had Hilda Blake in the back of my head from then on.”
“Did you ever find out what that whispering was that your neighbour, the chiropodist, heard just before she hit him?”
“Easy. He heard the rustle of her skirts, and was just about to turn, when she connected.”
“Here’s to the rustle of skirts!”
“Long may they rustle!” We drank to that and didn’t talk for a few minutes, each of us attuned to the sound of a different rustle. Pete broke the silence.
“It’s a good thing there won’t be a trial,” he said. “They would have locked her away this time for the rest of her life.”
“Yeah,” I agreed. “The funny thing is, that after she’d successfully assassinated those two, she was as sane as I am, which isn’t saying much, I admit. But she had planned all the chapters-even the last. I saw the phial of pills in her hand when I said good night. I knew that I’d never see her again. And she saw that I knew. One of those circles of knowing.”
“She was dead when we got there. How come it took you until midnight to remember our phone number?” I shrugged, and examined the bottom of my empty glass. I didn’t like the idea of Hilda being dead. I could still picture her sitting in the garden, watching the cares drop away from her as she made her confession.
“Where’s Lije with that cognac?” Savas asked.
“So, that’s it?” Pete cocked his head in my direction. “Now it’s up to all the lawyers. It could go on for years.”
“Especially now that the cat’s out of the bag about the scam Ward was practising on an unsuspecting city council.”
“In the end, Myrna Yates is going to become a very rich widow. With her looks, she won’t be a widow for long.”
“Harrington’s resigned. The mayor has been running scared, won’t talk to reporters, won’t make a statement. There were questions asked in the Legislature. There’ll be a cabinet shuffle at the very least. There’s been talk of a Royal Commission to investigate.”
The cognac must have been getting to me. Pete and Chris kept on talking, but I was taking in only every other word. Hilda had dreamed for years of killing off Yates and Ward. Now she’d done it. And her revenge was still working away like a mother of vinegar. Both men had been totally discredited. Their reputations have been through the shredder. Their clubs not only removed their names from membership, but fixed it so that they’d never been members. Once large firm, with nothing to do with this story, quietly dropped the name Ward from the hyphenated name. The old family crests had fallen off the wall. At a boy’s private school the plaque which displayed the names of the winning school “eight” for 1960, was mutilated so that now there were only six. The thing that Ward feared most, the motive that had carried him from one coverup to the next, family disgrace, was still at work. Hilda’s revenge was a continuing process, not something over and done with. I don’t think Hilda had counted on that.
Savas was talking: “A lot of people were involved all right, but since Ward’s dead, he’ll get most of the blame.”
“Myrna deserved better than Chester from the start. Better than Ward too for that matter.”
“Funny the way Harrow took it all so calmly at the end. I thought he’d have our guts for garters.” Pete said. I shrugged. I hadn’t mentioned to Pete or Chris that I’d had a word with Sergeant Harrow. I wasn’t going to run afoul of him any more. He’d been the policeman who’d helped Harrington cover up that hit-and-run job. Harrow knew I wasn’t launching into the extortion business, but he knew when to bet and when to fold, so when I told him that I was on to him, he smiled a yellow smile and threw his cards in the middle of the table.
“Hey, Benny! Come back to the conversation.” Both of them were looking at me.
“Sorry. You were saying that Myrna Yates is going to be a rich widow. I didn’t miss a word. As a matter of fact, she’s already playing Lady Bountiful.”
“What do you mean?” asked Pete, wiping his chin on a crumpled napkin.
“Well, I got a message through Martha Tracy asking me if I would accept, in addition to a fair settlement of my outstanding account for services rendered, the gift of a brand new ten-speed bicycle.”
The boys grinned and Lije came round with the cognac again. I liked the idea of the bicycle. It was what I needed to change my luck. There was a whole cast of characters I wanted to forget and couldn’t, pictures I saw at night that I couldn’t turn to the wall. Maybe the bike would get me out into the country more. I could use the exercise. I had a whole summer of warm weather to look forward to, and with it I was hoping that a fresh ripple of divorce business might find its way up my twenty-eight steps. The summer should be good for that.