Murder in a Good Cause (22 page)

“Would you like a beer?” asked Harriet. She was walking around the living room, energetically drying her hair with a large purple towel.

Sanders yawned. “Coffee is more like it. I have to do something useful before I fall asleep.”

“You seemed useful enough to me,” she hissed, and bumped him out of her way with a swing of her hip as she headed for the stove to make the coffee. “But if you want to be genuinely handy, you might check the answering machine and see why it isn't working.” She turned on the tap to fill the coffee pot and pointed over to her desk with one foot to indicate where the thing lived.

“First of all, it isn't on,” said Sanders in a slightly muffled tone as he bent over the desk. “And secondly, you seem to have wrenched the top off in one of your fits of temper. In addition, there aren't any tapes in it. And,” he said, turning around and holding up a long gray wire, “it isn't plugged in.”

“What?” said Harriet as she flicked the heat on under the coffee and turned to look. “What in hell have you done with it?”

“Me? I haven't done anything. Come and look at it. Do you think your landlord might have been messing around with it?”

Harriet looked down at the gaping wound in the top of the machine. “Look, he's not the world's handiest guy, but he wouldn't have done that.” She frowned and turned toward Sanders. “I don't like this. I left that machine in perfect order, on. I even went back and checked as I was leaving. Just the way I double-checked that front door. Why would someone break in and rip apart my answering machine? I mean, look around you. Absolutely everything else in here is exactly the way I left it.” She sat down and looked around the room with an intensity of gaze that totally excluded him.

He watched her eyes move purposefully from deck, to kitchen, to desk, and finally, to the answering machine. Then she looked down the stairs, paused and nodded. She dropped her head onto the chair back and stared up at the ceiling; after a moment she closed her eyes. He sat down on the couch and waited impatiently for her to return her attention to him.

Just as he was deciding that she must have fallen asleep, she spoke with an irritating lack of relevance. “What did you mean by that crack about taking a lot of stuff to lunch?”

“What in hell has that to do with anything?” asked Sanders, and shook his head. “Leitner told me you were having lunch with Nikki. So I came over to wait for you to get back.”

“Why did he say that?”

“Presumably because she told him she was having lunch with you,” said Sanders.

“Omigod,” said Harriet. “Did I tell Nikki I'd have lunch with her today?” The towel dropped off her head, and a strand of wet hair fell onto her lip. She picked it up and began to twirl it around nervously. “Just let me call her. Get yourself some coffee, and some for me too, please.”

Sanders found himself slamming cupboard doors and running water to prevent himself from listening to Harriet's murmured words. He was just heading for the sliding door onto the deck when she hung up and walked over. “She isn't home, John. She hasn't been home since this morning, apparently. And she did tell Klaus that she was having lunch with me.”

“Did you say you were going to have lunch with her?”

“Of course not! At least I don't think so.” Harriet shook her head impatiently. “Maybe I did, just to calm her down and get rid of her. I was hellishly unpleasant to her yesterday. Damn that girl! No matter what happens, she always leaves me feeling guilty.”

Veronika suddenly realized that for the last ten minutes she had been staring at the same collection of pottery without even seeing it. Another wave of exhaustion and sudden nausea swept over her; she stretched and took a deep breath. Then, suddenly, reflected off a sheet of glass, she saw the dark-haired man again. And now not in reflection but distorted through two sets of glass cases. His head moved as he searched the room, slowly, methodically. She stepped back farther into the darkness, and when she raised her eyes again, he had disappeared. She looked frantically around, her view blocked by pillars and displays and heartlessly beautiful statues. He was nowhere.

Suddenly, there he was, in front of the pans she had laughed at minutes before, looking not at them but through the cases, searching.

She turned, began to run, and then stopped in a panic. Her footsteps resounded on the stone floor, each one giving away her location. She kicked off her little shoes and skidded around the next exhibit, aware of a blur of statues on her right and blank temporary walls everywhere else. Now she could hear footsteps behind her, easy, rapid, confident footsteps. She ducked behind a wall and found herself surrounded by three more walls. She whirled around. She was facing a mural in beige and burnt umber depicting a maze of hideous complexity. It towered over her, mocking her confusion. Horrified, she turned and ran toward what she hoped would be the front of the building, slipping on the floors in her stocking feet, once careening off a display case, once hurtling off the fragile-looking false wall of the Egyptian exhibit area and discovering it to be solid enough to hurt. Suddenly, in front of her, there was bright light coming from another open area. One more accessible to the public, she prayed. She ran toward it and with a sob of relief saw an escalator. The metal grillwork of the steps snatched painfully at her stockinged feet, but she kept running until she reached the second-floor landing. As she skidded across it to get on the escalator again, she stopped dead. At the bottom, looking up at her with a terrifying, gentle smile, was the handsome face of a man she knew, waiting for her as surely as the man behind her was chasing her. She reversed and bolted into the exhibit area on the second floor.

Veronika was aware of cases and cases of animals and birds; she brushed by one small girl, but otherwise, no living being who could be of any help. Ahead of her, past glassed-in forests and snarling stuffed predators, an exit sign glowed. Light-years away. As she ran toward it, on her left she saw an opening to an area of blackness and plunged in, panting. Velvety darkness enveloped her, and she leaned against the wall to catch her breath.

She was in a simulation of a cave, dark, with grottoes carved into the walls, some tiny, some vast enough to hold a party in. Pale illumination filtered down into them, allowing the visitor to see coiled figures of snakes and small mammals and various crustaceans sheltering in the rocky configuration. Above her head bats hung peacefully from the ceiling, and she felt safe. He would think she had left by the emergency exit and would follow. When he had gone, she would creep out and go down the main stairs again. In the distance she could hear the ringing of a bell. Closing time. Security guards would come around soon to clear out loiterers; they would protect her. She pressed herself against the wall and started to edge a little deeper into the cave.

She heard a voice in the distance. “Just a
minute,
Mummy. I'm going in the bat cave one more time. I'll meet you at the top of the stairs.” Veronika began to move forward toward the voice. Then, suddenly, out of the darkness, a powerful hand seized her arm; her head jerked to one side with the force of a blow to the temple.

Carlos looked down at the crumpled girl. He was mildly surprised to discover that she was still breathing. Tough skull. He dropped the cosh into his pocket, reached into his jacket, and took out a thin knife. A sharp little voice from close by said, “
Wait!
I said I was coming right out.” He grabbed the limp Veronika by the hair, pulled back her head far enough to get his hand under her face, and made a rapid slashing movement. With satisfaction that lasted only a split second, he felt the familiar sensation of silent yielding flesh under his knife. Suddenly, the weapon caught noisily in something metal and wrenched itself out of his grip. Before he realized what had happened, his fingers were sliding through a pool of warm, sticky blood.

“Shit,” he muttered, and picked her up. He tumbled her headfirst into a darkened corner of the grotto beside them. She landed with a satisfactory thud. By the time anyone discovered her, he figured, between the knife wound and the head injury, she'd be long dead, anyway.

When the little girl was finally chased out of the cave by the security guard doing his check and restored to her mother in the front lobby, she was filled with excitement. “You know, Mummy, I never saw it before, but they have this really realistic body in the cave, too, all crumpled up on the floor of one of the things in the wall. It's creepy. It's even creepier than the snakes. Can we come back tomorrow?”

“That's nice, dear,” said her mother vaguely. “Now hold on to my hand before we get into the subway. It's crowded. I don't know what your daddy's going to think when he finds out we're not home yet,” she added. “Did you say come back tomorrow? Certainly not. I have to work late tomorrow. Maybe next week. But you must promise not to hide like that again. Mummy was worried.”

Constables McNeill and Collins walked back into the room and threw down their coats. Dubinsky looked up at them and scowled. “You could've called in,” he said. “Or did you forget how? We were kind of interested in knowing what was going on out there.”

McNeill yawned and sat down in the chair beside Dubinsky's desk. “What was the point of calling in? To tell you we found zip all?” He stretched his legs out in front of him. “There was no one home but Grandma and a kid. Grandma doesn't speak any English, Collins here forgot to take a course in whatever the hell language she does speak, and Ma was at work until eleven. At the hospital. Which hospital? Who knows? Anyway, the kid never saw anyone who looked remotely like those two guys, never heard their names, never saw Walker around the house. Nothing.”

“Maybe he's lying,” said Dubinsky.

“Maybe he is,” said McNeill. “You want me to go back and beat it out of him? He looks about ten, skinny, underfed. Just the kind the papers love to get hold of. I could break his arm, maybe. They'd love that. Anyway, we left a guy out there to keep an eye on the house.” He sat up and looked around. “I'm going out for something to eat. The inspector back yet?” There was silence. “Where is he, anyway?”

“How in hell should I know?” asked Dubinsky sourly. “Dead. Disappeared. On ten years' leave. You think he ever tells me anything?”

“Well, give him my love when he gets in,” said McNeill. “If he does. And tell him I'll be back in fifteen minutes or so.” And he heaved himself back up to his feet and stalked out of the room.

“Where does McNeill think he's going?” said a familiar, testy voice. Dubinsky turned his head slowly in the direction of the door and stared impassively at Inspector Sanders. “We need everybody.”

“He's just come in from the west end; he's past due for a supper break,” said Dubinsky. “And where have you been?”

“All over,” he said vaguely. “Actually, I was tracking down some ideas I had in the von Hohenkammer case,” he added in a mumble. “Didn't realize how late it was.” He sat down and began leafing through reports on his desk. “Anything come in on Milanovich?”

Dubinsky shook his head.

“The girl's disappeared, too,” said Sanders. “No one seems to have seen her since this morning. We'd better start looking for her.”

“Maybe she's wherever her brother-in-law is,” said Dubinsky. “Could be they were planning on running off together on Mummy's money or something. Or then again,” he added, “maybe she's at the movies. Or shopping. It's a bit early to panic.”

Sanders gave him the look of a man whose best lines have just been stolen and picked up the telephone. He dialed twice, spoke briefly each time, and hung up. He looked at his watch. “Long movie,” he said. “Check the airport.”

“While you're waiting for that,” said Dubinsky with barely concealed sarcasm, “you might be interested in what we got from Walker. He can see a very long stretch in his future, and he's been spilling his guts out to Volchek in there.” He pushed some papers over in Sanders's direction; the inspector sighed, picked up his chair, and moved over to Dubinsky's desk.

“What's been done about Walker's accomplices?” asked Sanders with a twinge of guilt in his voice.

“McNeill and Collins went out to the address on Lippincott—nothing. They've left someone there. Volchek is circulating a description. He's sent teams out to the airport, bus depots, and so on. He figures they might be trying to make it back to Spain. If they heard we picked up Walker.”

“What do those two guys do?” asked Sanders. “I mean, when they're not breaking into houses. They must have some job or other or they never would have got into the country.”

Dubinsky shook his head. “Dunno. No one ever asked him.”

“Then send someone to ask him, for God's sake. We might be able to find them that way.” But Dubinsky wasn't listening. He had already picked up the phone.

Twenty minutes later, the telephone rang on Dubinsky's desk. He listened, jotted down some notes, muttered briefly, and hung up. “Interesting,” he said, looking over at Sanders. “Carlos is a security guard; he used to work for Mid-City, but quit last January or February.”

“Too early for Volchek to include him in those people he was running a check on.”

“That's right. And the other guy, Manny . . . Walker thinks he worked in a restaurant as a waiter, or maybe even a chef. He's not sure.”

“Wonderful,” said Sanders. “How many thousand restaurants are there in the city?”

“Enough,” said Dubinsky. “Enough so that by the time we'd checked them all he could have changed jobs three or four times. Anyway, I'll send Collins out to Mid-City to find out what they have on Carlos.”

Harriet opened her refrigerator door and decided that nothing in it was worth the trouble of eating, much less cooking. She grabbed a piece of celery, ran it under the tap, and nibbled at it as she wandered around the apartment. A sick sense of guilt was hovering somewhere around her stomach, and she was trying very hard to isolate it, somehow wrap it up and tuck it away somewhere. It can't have been just that she felt that she had been unpardonably rude to Nikki, could it? Most of the unforgivable things that she had thought had remained silent screams in her head. She had the tact, surely, to suppress the most obvious signs of her impatience. Maybe she
had
told Veronika she would meet her for lunch, but where? She went out onto the deck and shivered in the cold September wind while she ran through a mental list of all the restaurants she could have possibly had suggested. None of them rang a bell.

She walked back in, rubbing her arms briskly against the chill, and decided that perhaps she was suffering from hunger, not guilt. She opened the refrigerator again, looked seriously this time, and finally pulled out a piece of aging cheddar wrapped in plastic. It felt unpromisingly hard, as though it had been drying out in her refrigerator for weeks, but it might just be grillable. She set it down, and it hit the counter with a thud. “Really, Harriet,” she muttered, “that cheese isn't just old, it's mummified.” She stopped dead. “Good God. The museum. I was supposed to meet her at the museum. This afternoon.” She looked at her watch and then walked quickly over to the telephone.

Carlos tucked the yellow parking tag into his pocket and got into his car. In spite of all that had happened this afternoon, he drove with his usual judgment; he couldn't understand the stupidity of people who drew attention to themselves by parading their aggressions on the road. As he wheeled the car neatly into an opening in the traffic on St. Clair, the faint stickiness on the fingers of his right hand caught the steering wheel unpleasantly, and he frowned. He should have been wearing gloves. That was stupid. He wondered where his knife had fallen. Not onto the floor. He'd looked. So he must have kicked it into one of the grottoes, and that meant it might be found today or lie there until the next major renovation of the area. But the whole goddamn scam was coming apart, anyway. It was time to drift on. Before he was connected with it. It should be safe enough back in Arizona. He could work in the antiques store for a few months; that would make his mother happy. Besides, another winter in this place and he was going to crack. Just clean out the papers and things he'd left at Manu's, pick up as much cash as he could get from the fence, pack up his suitcase, and he'd be gone. They'd still owe him plenty, but under the circumstances . . .

He saw the police cruiser almost before he had made the right turn onto the street. He took a deep breath, completed his turn, accelerated very gently, slowed, and turned into a narrow alleyway that provided access to the shabby garages behind each house. Still at the same measured pace, he took another turn between two houses that led him out onto the next block and began a tortuous path back to his own little flat.

Meanwhile, the bored constable in the cruiser jotted down the license number of the car that had driven into the alleyway. On this quiet street of hardworking families, once the sun had set and day shifts were over, there wasn't much activity. He recorded it all.

The clerk at Iberia Airways was doing her best. Yes, a flight had left for Spain over an hour ago. The constable read out the description on the page in front of him, looked up, and smiled hopefully.

She stared at him with an expression that mixed exasperation and amazement. “I'm sorry, sir,” she said, “but half the men on the flight could be described like that. Slender, dark haired, brown eyes, and moderately tall. Not young, not old. With a small mustache. You haven't anything else?”

“Well,” said the constable unhappily, “his name seems to be Manny or Mano or something like that.”

“Manuel?” prompted the clerk hopefully.

“Yeah, that sounds right,” said constable. “You got anyone like that on your passenger list?”

“I'm sure we do,” muttered the clerk. “Several, in fact. Manuel isn't an unusual name, you know. Here,” she said, running her finger down the page. “One, two, uh, no, I remember him, he was just a little kid, and that one was quite elderly, in a wheelchair. Could your person be elderly?” The constable shook his head. “Then”—she flipped over a page—“three. Three men who might fit your description, all named Manuel.”

“Then how about someone who looks sort of like him, but shorter. Named Carlos.”

She muttered something that, perhaps fortunately for his morale, the constable did not catch. “Not a very helpful description,” she snapped. “It covers about every other male on the plane. Including the crew. Dark hair and eyes are fairly common in Spain, you know, sir. And Carlos is about as common a name as Manuel.” The constable shrugged his shoulders unhappily. “We'll see what we can do,” she added, remembering her obligation to be helpful. “I'll put you in touch with security.”

While the harassed team at the airport were plodding through their unenviable task of tracking down two Spaniards with dark hair named Manuel and Carlos, Collins was contemplating throwing the man on evening shift at Mid-City Security Systems in jail for the night. It had taken ten minutes for the man to be convinced that he had to call someone in authority; it had taken twenty minutes for him to locate the relevant telephone lists and, finally, to reach a vice-president, who promised the imminent arrival of someone else with keys to the personnel files. Fifteen minutes after that, a very irritated personnel manager, smelling slightly of Scotch, turned up and tried his best to look cooperative.

Harriet was about to slam the telephone down, drive over to the shiny new police building on College Street, and run up and down the halls screaming Sanders's name when she finally got him on the other end of the line. “My God, but you're a hard man to reach, John,” she said. “I was beginning to think your story about being a cop was just an elaborate excuse for never being available.”

“Sorry,” he muttered. “I really do work here. Sometimes, anyway. All hell broke loose while I was over at your place.” His voice had dropped so low she was having trouble making out the words.

“So people noticed you were gone, eh? Well, don't fret. This call is legit. I just remembered something about Nikki. I promised to meet her at the museum today, I think. I can't remember if we actually set a time or not, but she may have gone there looking for me.”

“The museum? Well, she wouldn't be there now, would she?” He looked at his watch. “It's eight o'clock. When does it close?”

“I'm not sure,” said Harriet. “Some nights it stays open late, I suppose. Do you want me to call?”

“No. Official business. I'll call you when I know something. But I wouldn't count on anything. She won't still be there, even if she did go to meet you.” Sanders cut the connection and looked up.

“Now what?” said Dubinsky.

“It seems the von Hohenkammer girl might have gone to the museum this afternoon. We'd better put someone on it.”

“Listen, she's been gone less than twelve hours. She's not a five-year-old kid,” protested Dubinsky.

“Maybe not. But she's still a possible suspect in a murder case. And an essential witness,” he snapped. “I'd like to keep tabs on her. Get someone to call the museum.” He scribbled down the relevant information.

“Here,” he said. “You, what's your name?” A blond young man who was lounging uneasily against a desk in the middle of the noise and confusion jumped and reddened slightly.

“Lucas, sir. Rob Lucas. I was sent over in case—”

“Right. You might as well beat your head against this one and find out what it feels like. Call the museum and ask if Veronika von Hohenkammer, five foot three—”

“I know what she looks like, sir,” he interrupted.

“Oh, keen, eh? Then find out if she was there this afternoon and when she left.” He handed him the piece of paper with his indecipherable scrawl on it. The telephone rang again, and this time Dubinsky reached over and picked it up. “It's Collins,” he said, looking over at Sanders. “He's got something.” Dubinsky took neat and rapid notes for a minute or two. “Great,” he said. “Bring me back a corned beef on rye.” He glanced up, caught Sanders's signal, and added: “Two corned beef on rye.”

“What's he got? Besides food,” said Sanders.

“Ah, he has a name, address, and previous employer for Carlos. Very interesting, too.”

“Well, for chrissake, don't just sit there grinning. What in hell did he find out?”

“His name is Carlos Ramirez. He gave as a reference his previous employer. He used to work at the Royal Ontario Museum as a security guard. Coincidental, eh? And his address was 142 Palmerston Avenue. That sounded familiar to me. Didn't a witness in this case live on Palmerston?” Dubinsky reached for the file.