Riker smiled to hide his deep disappointment. So James Winter was still alive years after Humboldt had been stabbed to death in a little town in Maine. A pity. Uncle James had been such a great candidate for a hitman, lots of cash but no visible means of support.
Their fresh beer had arrived via the maid at the back door. And when Smyth had finished two more bottles, Riker decided to take his best shot – before the attorney passed out. „I hate to bring this up, sir, but my partner still wants to see the trust documents. You think – “
„I told you – or was it your partner? No matter. No documents without a warrant.“
„But you’re the executor. The city attorney says that you can – “
„Can, but won’t. Matter of principle.“
Riker well understood the problem. „So it wouldn’t look good for the firm.“
„Damn right it wouldn’t,“ said Smyth. „For over a hundred years, we’ve been known for absolute discretion.“
And yet, the detective had just completed a tutorial on the Winter family faults.
„Okay,“ said Riker. „You got my word on this. We won’t tell anybody that your dad mismanaged the Winter children’s trust fund.“
The expression on Sheldon Smyth’s face could only be read as guilty surprise, and, in the absence of hot denial, Riker knew he was on to something.
„Hey, I’m a homicide cop. What do I care who diddled what? And the statute of limitations is on your side. But you don’t want a gang of cops at the door. I understand. You want discretion? You got it. How’s this. You like Charles Butler, don’t you? You trust him, right? Instead of us getting a warrant to haul everything downtown, suppose we look over the documents at his place, neutral ground?“
However drunken the man might be, when he smiled, the lucid face of the lawyer made a brief appearance, just popping out long enough to say, „If you could talk a judge into giving you that warrant, you’d have it by now. No deal.“
Sheldon Smyth’s eyes were closing, and Riker left him sitting there amid the litter of empty bottles, one more thing for the maid to clean up.
The quick rap on his door was somewhat annoying, but hardly loud enough to wake his houseguest. Charles opened the New York Times. The rap went on.
Most irritating.
He crushed his newspaper. Even if he had not recognized the impatient knock, almost a signature, he would have known it was Mallory.
Rap, rap, rap.
He glanced at his watch to see that she had allowed him a generous two hours to ply intimate secrets from Nedda, perhaps believing – so insulting – that he would never see through the ruse. Given time for reflection, he had come to understand his true role at the polygraph examination. Riker had as good as confessed, admitting that Charles would have been Mallory’s guest if Bitty Smyth had not insisted on his presence.
Rap, rap. Bang!
Eventually, she would go away. She had keys to the offices across the hall, but none to his apartment. Though now he heard the sound of metal on metal.
Oh, fool I.
When had she ever been deterred by the lack of keys?
His intruder was so stealthy, he never heard the door open. Mallory simply appeared at the end of the foyer. Her own surprise was fleeting – there, then gone. He rose from the couch, startled and speechless. Her preemptive strikes could be dazzling. He was stunned that Mallory was the first one to strike a pose of outrage and indignation. Oh, the very idea that she should have to break into his apartment when he was just sitting there all the while. All of this was in her face, deliberately written there for him to read.
Chief Medical Examiner Edward Slope spent his lunch hour on a tree-lined street in suburban Brooklyn, conversing on the freak warmth of October, and lifting his face to the sun. Yes, he agreed with Rabbi David Kaplan that every day of Indian summer was a gift. They both turned their attention to the mystery crate at the center of Robin Duffy’s garage, while they waited for this charter member of the floating weekly poker game to join them.
„One more time, David.“ The doctor regarded the crate with grave suspicion. „It was dropped off the back of an unmarked truck in the dead of night… but you don’t think Kathy stole it?“
The rabbi shook his head. „No, and neither do you.“
In Edward Slope’s opinion, the rabbi was too gentle to see the worst in others. He also believed that this gentle man regularly beat him at cards by sheer luck and not by the cunning of a born poker player. And, in truth, neither did the doctor believe that Kathy Mallory had stolen the crate, but she might delight in this accusation.
Perverse brat.
And if the truth were fully told, Edward Slope, her principal detractor, loved her unconditionally.
A screen door slammed, and they turned to see a short bulldog of a man walking toward them and grinning widely. „It’s all settled,“ he said. „Charles thinks the game was canceled.“
Edward Slope was still grappling with the concept of a surprise poker game. He faced the open garage, his eyes passing over all the discarded hobbies of Robin Duffy’s experiment in retirement from his legal practice. What a failure. The walls were lined with tools for home improvements, a half-finished canoe from the boat-building class and the potted remains of a dead herb garden.
Kathy Mallory was another one who did not deal well with drastic life changes. She had grown up in this neighborhood and lived across the street with her foster parents. The old house had burned down, leaving a messy hole in her landscape until another house had been raised on the same footprint of land. Every fourth week of the poker-game rotation, Edward had remarked on the progress of the builders, and, now that it was done, he could not claim to be shocked.
In the early stages of construction, he had recognized something familiar in the raw timbers, the bones of the house. The completed structure was exactly the same in every maniacal detail. This week, the shrubbery had been added, evergreens shaped the way Helen Markowitz had always pruned them. The young tree recently planted in the yard was different, of course – or was it? No, that tree was the same size when Kathy was a little girl. He recalled the night when Louis had come home with a birthday present for Helen, a genuine baby felon caught in the act of robbing a car. What a surprise. And the following week Edward had helped Louis to dig a hole and put a sapling into that same ground. This had long been the custom of the Markowitz family, planting a tree when a child was born – or snatched off the street during the commission of a felony.
Robin stood beside him now, admiring Kathy’s handiwork, as if what she had done was a normal thing. „The mailbox is the original. She saved it from the ashes.“
„What about… inside the house?“
„Just a few things,“ said Robin, „but the kid’s still working on it. Took her months to find Helen’s wallpaper pattern. The company went out of business, but she tracked down some rolls to a hardware store in Montana. The furniture’s a problem, too – all family heirlooms. Some of it dated back to the twenties. What a perfectionist, huh? Every piece has to be exactly the same. So she goes to estate sales on her days off.“ He glanced back at the crate in his garage. „That’s how she knew where to find the table.“ Robin entered the garage and selected a crowbar from the tools on the wall. „She says we can uncrate it to fit it through Charles’s door, but we can’t unwrap it yet. I think she’s afraid we’ll ding up the wood.“
Edward Slope had lost all interest in the surprise poker game. He continued to stare at the house across the street. He tried to imagine Kathy in there, restoring the furnishings of the dead to make her ghosts feel more at home. Or was it an act of pure defiance – creating this illusion that death had never come to her house? Either way, it was quite mad, but also tender, and this argued well for a human heart.