No Police Like Holmes (10 page)

Chapter Seventeen
-
Going Home Again

We put the books back where we found them. We were halfway out the door in some haste before I remembered what Max Cutter never would have forgotten - fingerprints. I stepped back in and spent a fast two minutes applying my handkerchief to every surface we had touched.

Downstairs we unchained my bike from the NO PARKING sign in front of the hotel and tied it on top of the Mustang.

In the car, I tried to come to grips with the idea of Hugh Matheson as a thief - and such a small-scale thief by the standards of his huge net worth. Valuable as it was, it was a pittance for a guy who owned three homes in different cities and four antique Duesenberg roadsters.

“It made sense all along in one way, because he was the only big-time Holmes collector on the scene,” I mused aloud. “But he was so rich and successful. Why would he risk all that to steal something that was worth less than his take on just one good lawsuit?”

“Ego and lust, I guess,” Lynda said. “I was around enough to see both of those.”

I studied Lynda's pretty profile. “You really didn't like him, did you?”

“No. He was too full of himself. For that I actually felt kind of sorry for him, though. Still do.”

By this time we were sitting in front of the last pay phone in downtown Erin, which looks like the TARDIS in
Doctor Who
. I got out of the car and called 911 to report a disturbance at the Winfield. “It was a noise, almost like a shot,” I told the dispatcher who answered, talking in a squeaky voice unlike my own. “It seemed to come out of room 943.”

“Did you call the hotel desk?”

“Just check it out.”

“Where are you calling from, sir?”

From the TARDIS, lady.
Fortunately, I saw a trap in the question. Wouldn't 911 have industrial strength Caller ID? I hung up.

Back on the road, mentally going over all that had happened, I was struck by a glaring omission.

“The third book,” I told Lynda. “What was it? Oh, yeah, that Christmas annual with the first Sherlock Holmes story. Why wasn't it with the other books?”

“That's easy,” Lynda said without taking her eyes off the road. “The killer took it.”

“But why just that one book?”

“Maybe he'd only gotten that far when he heard me starting to come in the door.”

“Okay, then how did he-”

“Or she,” Lynda added.

“-get out of the room. Unless...”

Lynda darted a glance at me. “Yeah. Unless she or he never left. We didn't get around to checking out the bathroom.”

“So for all we know the killer could have been just a few feet away the whole time we were in the hotel room. There's a creepy thought for you.”

Right away I had another thought as well: If that scenario had actually happened, then the killer would be as late for the banquet as we were. I wanted to drive straight there and check out the crowd, but Lynda insisted on continuing to her apartment first.

“I've got to change my clothes and redo my hair,” she said. “I'm as eager to get back to Muckerheide as you are, Jeff, but I described my whole outfit for the evening to Kate. If I don't show up dressed that way, she'll wonder why. Besides, I need a shower. After what we've been through, it's the only way I'll feel, I don't know,
clean
again.”

I argued the point all the way to her place, but she was the one driving and I didn't want to leave her any more than she wanted to leave me.

Lynda's apartment is on the second story of a two-family home in a comfortable Erin neighborhood of wide lanes and big trees. I mean comfortable the way your favorite piece of old clothing is comfortable - nothing fancy, it just feels right. The house is brick and stucco, with three gables and a small octagon-shaped room on the first floor. Its owners have lived there since 1974, and they bought it from the wife's parents.

While Lynda cleaned up, I sat on her wicker couch and looked around, feeling as if I'd come home again after a long absence. Not that I was even on first base again with Lynda, but at least I was no longer in the dugout. The room hadn't changed much in the few weeks of my exile from her life: tall bookcase, overflowing with books; a couple of wicker chairs on either side of the bricked-up fireplace; flat-screen TV above the mantle; brass spittoon with sunflowers poking out of it; wicker and glass coffee table. But the picture of Lynda and me on the mantle was gone, along with the stuffed frog holding a red heart that I'd given her for Valentine's Day one year.

Stifling a mad impulse to pick up a sunflower and play “she loves me, she loves me not,” which wouldn't have worked too well considering that they were artificial, I forced my mind back to what we'd done in Matheson's hotel room. It had seemed the right thing to do at the time, but now I wasn't at all sure. First of all, if our actions ever came out, we would look guilty as hell. Plus, we'd been in such a hurry to get out of there we might have left the murderer behind. Not that I was really
sorry
we hadn't encountered the armed killer, I admitted to myself gloomily.

How differently Mac would have reacted, I thought. The big man would have been in his element, playing the role of amateur sleuth to the hilt with never a sick feeling in the pit of
his
stomach. And then at some point he would have pulled a rabbit out of his hat, leaving me feeling like a fool for not even knowing he had a hat, much less a rabbit.

Mac had known all along that Matheson was the thief. Or at least he'd
said
he knew the identity of the thief. With him you can never tell when he's just blowing smoke. Even now I didn't understand Mac's hocus-pocus about the keys to Hearth Room C - those questions that he'd asked Decker. Not that it made any difference, of course. Still-

I pulled out my phone and called Decker's office. He was gone for the day, so I tapped the home number next to his photo on my contacts list.

“Cody,” the lieutenant growled by way of greeting. “Don't you ever quit working, for crap's sake? It's nearly seven-thirty.”

“Thank you, Big Ben. I want to know what you found out about that key to the room where the Holmes books were stolen. Was it shiny?”

“I already told McCabe that-”

“Tell me, damn it.”

“-it wasn't.”

Okay. Now I knew the answer to the question, but I still didn't know what it meant. “So what the...”

“A real cute idea McCabe had, it just didn't work out. Phil Oakland - you know, the locksmith over on Spring Street - he tells me that when a key's been copied it gets shiny on top. Based on that, it looks like neither key to Hearth Room C was copied.”

And both of them were accounted for on Friday, so they couldn't have been used by the thief. That was an interesting fact. Maybe it was a semi-good thing that the keying system in Muckerheide was a decade or two overdue for a security update, unlike the one at the Winfield Hotel. Before I had a chance to digest Decker's information any further, I heard Lynda's bathroom door open.

“Thanks, Ed,” I said in a rush. I disconnected and put the phone back in my pocket.

But it was eternity before Lynda made her appearance. When she did, the sight of her almost made me forget to breathe. She was decked out in a dress with a vaguely Victorian air, creamy satin with lots of white lace, and not even her ankles peaking out at the bottom. It was as feminine a garment as I'd ever seen, accentuating Lynda's curves - which are considerable - while revealing nothing. The contrast of the dress against her dark complexion was stunning. Lynda paused in the doorway, one hand upon the frame like a countess in a painting.

“You look great, Lyn,” I said, a catch in my voice. I used to call her that sometimes, but not for a while.

The painting came to life as she moved out of the doorway. “Sorry it took so long. It was the hair. This isn't just once-over-lightly. It takes time.”

“You should wear it like that more often. I mean, if you want to.”
See, I'm not bossy
.

Lynda had swept her hair off her face, clipped it with pins, and supplemented it at the back by a chignon bun tied with a lace bow. Curly tendrils framed her face. She wore a cameo on a black ribbon around her throat, which I found quite fetching.

I stood up and moved close enough to hear her heart beat - or maybe it was mine, pounding in my ears. To my surprise she put her arms around me and hugged me, not in passion but in search of comfort. In heels, she was almost my height. The seductive scent of Cleopatra VII, Lynda's favorite fragrance and mine, made my legs weak.

“How do you feel?” I whispered.

“Better,” she said. “Not good, but better. I could really use a stiff bourbon on the rocks, though.” One of her favorite blogs is called
Bourbon Babe
.

“Sorry. No time for Knob Creek. Besides, you're driving.”

“I keep remembering-”

“Try not to,” I said.

Session Three

The President's Dining Room

Chapter Eighteen
-
Costume Party

We captured the last two seats open at Mac's table in the President's Dining Room. It was as if he had been waiting for us.

My brother-in-law was dressed in a brown and tan checked suit with short lapels, a buff-colored waistcoat, an old-fashioned stiff collar and a big tie. The only thing missing was a bowler hat, and he probably had that on his lap or someplace close. He looked up from tucking into his roast beef as we pulled out our chairs.

“Jefferson! Lynda!” he said. “What a delight to see you. I am afraid, however, that you have entirely missed the Sherlockian sing-along and the traditional toasts.”

“I'll get over it,” I murmured.

“Sorry we're late,” Lynda said.

Renata Chalmers leaned over to her. “The hair always takes longer than you think, doesn't it?”

Lynda answered with a polite and meaningless affirmative, never mind that homicide had a lot more to do with her tardiness than did hair care. Renata herself was wearing her hair in fancy ringlets, the creation of which, she informed us, had caused her to miss the entire cocktail hour.

“Still,” she said, “dressing up was fun.”

The rest of Renata's outfit, like Mac's, was suitably Victorian - a dark blue-green dress with a short fitted jacket on top. The sleeves of the jacket were puffed at the shoulders and tapered at the wrists where they ended in a frilly, cream-colored cloth. The blouse was also cream, topped with a black bow around the neck.

Lynda complimented her on it, generating a lively discussion of Victorian fashion. But while most of the table was talking bustles and bowlers, Mac whispered in my ear, “Please report on your discussion with Mr. Post.”

“The hell I will,” I whispered back. “I'm not your errand boy.”

“Jefferson, I said ‘please.'”

“Oh, all right. There's not much to tell, anyway. Post is an arrogant stuffed shirt, but I'm convinced he had nothing to do with the theft either before or after the fact. That interview was a wash-out, just like your cute idea about duplicating the key to the room where the books were stolen.”

Mac looked at me with infinite sadness in his brown eyes. “The key was only a hope; I never really believed it would prove to be the solution.”

A waitress hustled by with my roast beef, and the mood was broken. By the time she disappeared again Mac was engaged in the general conversation and I'd lost him. I picked at my dinner - I try not to eat too much red meat - and looked around the room getting a fix on familiar faces. Kate was at our table, of course, dressed in an enchanting black velvet dress with a high collar and silver buttons up to the top. I was only vaguely aware of two other couples next to her, people who were unfamiliar to me. Around the room I saw that Judge Crocker and Dr. Queensbury were in costume, but Al Kane and Bob Nakamora weren't. And Woollcott Chalmers...

Dressed in tails, Chalmers was just now coming toward our table, limping badly without his cane.

I kicked my brother-in-law under the table. He grunted and inclined his head in my direction.

“Has Chalmers been out of the picture since this banquet business started?” I asked in an urgent whisper.

Mac guffawed, causing Lynda to visibly strain her ears our way. “By no means, Jefferson. We spent the entire cocktail hour together in a spirited discussion of chronological problems in ‘The Red-Headed League.' He is merely returning from a short hiatus, undoubtedly provoked by the demands of personal biology. Why do you ask?”

“I'm taking a census.” Max Cutter could play mysterious sleuth as well as any amateur. For once I knew something Mac didn't know, and I was going to play that out as long as I could. “Is there somebody else here who wasn't here at the beginning, somebody who came in late?” The killer didn't have to be one of the Sherlockians, but it was a good bet.

Mac pulled on his beard, as if stimulating his hair follicles would do the same for his brain cells.

“There is at least one person,” he decided. “Hugh Matheson. I haven't encountered him for hours, not even at the bar.”

Others around the table heard the comment and nodded their agreement. Nobody had run into Matheson since just after the last session of the colloquium - except, of course, Lynda and me, and we weren't saying.

“I am quite certain that the last time I saw Hugh was during his set-to with Noah,” Mac said just as Chalmers rejoined the table.

“He had an argument with Queensbury?” I said. “When? Where?”

“At the back of the room, right after Kate's talk,” Chalmers chipped in.

“What were they arguing about?”

Chalmers shrugged his ignorance.

“Eavesdropping is a loathsome habit,” Mac said. “Perhaps you should inquire of Dr. Queensbury as to the nature of the contretemps.”

“In other words,” I said, “you couldn't get close enough to hear and you're annoyed.”

He didn't deign to answer. I let the subject hang there, hoping somebody would pick it up and enlighten me on what had happened between the surgeon and the lawyer, but no one did. The conversation drifted off into other channels.

Somehow the topic got on to Sherlock Holmes in the movies. Names like Basil Rathbone, Arthur Wontner, Jeremy Brett, and Robert Downey, Jr., and somebody named Cumberbatch were bandied about, along with a bunch I don't remember. I was familiar with Basil Rathbone - he looked like Queensbury - and I'd also seen a couple of the Brett TV shows and the over-the-top Robert Downey, Jr. movie. But the other names left me in the dust. It was like being on the outside of an inside joke. I was only half-listening anyway.

While it was going hot and heavy Mac leaned my way again, hand over his mouth. “Are you going to tell me what this is all about?” he demanded in a low voice.

“No,” I said absent-mindedly.

My mind was on the dust-up between Queensbury and Hugh Matheson, a man who stopped breathing no more than an hour or so later. Lynda and I had been assuming that greed was the emotion behind the murder, a robbery gone wrong. But suppose there was some other passion involved - whatever had caused those two men to raise their voices in a public place.

I watched for Queensbury to leave the table where he was seated next to Molly Crocker, determined to question him as soon as possible. When my bladder started crying for relief I ignored it, afraid I'd miss a chance to corner Queensbury if I left the President's Dining Room. Finally the tall surgeon made a bee-line for the exit, apparently in a big hurry. I excused myself to Lynda and followed him.

Into the men's room.

Now I was glad I had a legitimate reason for being there. Once I took care of that I met Queensbury at the wash basins. He greeted me as an old friend while he washed his long-fingered hands. Before I could ask a question he offered his solution to the book thefts.

“It's that Pfannenstiel fellow,” he said, a gleam in his gray eyes. “There was no sign of a forced entry because there was no forced entry. The thief used a key. Who had a key? The very person who set up the exhibit with the Chalmerses. Elementary, really.”

“I don't believe it,” I said, holding my hands under the hot air blower. “Not Gene.”

“As Holmes himself said, ‘when you have eliminated the impossible, whatever remains,
however improbable
, must be the truth.' Something similar happened at the University of Pennsylvania in 1990. A part-time library employee was charged with stealing more than a hundred rare books with a total value of almost a million and a half dollars. I clipped the story for my scrapbooks.”

I knew that Gene couldn't be guilty because Matheson was - unless, of course, Gene had been Matheson's inside man. But in that case why stop at three books? With Gene's access they could have practically loaded up a truck and cleaned the place out.

I shifted gears.

“I understand you had a bit of a confrontation with Hugh Matheson this afternoon.”

With a shrug of his shoulders, the surgeon pooh-poohed that description of the incident. “I guess you'd say we had a few heated words, as usual.”

“What was it about?”

“He accused me of spoiling the colloquium for him by insisting at every turn that Sherlock Homes was a real person,” Queensbury said as he pushed open the restroom door. “Apparently the last straw was when I stood up at the end of Kate's talk to dispute her attribution of Conan Doyle as the author of the Holmes stories.

“Really, Hugh was intolerably rude about it and totally lacking in humor. I particularly objected to his characterization of me as, quote, ‘a prissy piss-ant.' However, I gave the fellow the benefit of the doubt. Perhaps he was having a bad day.”

Remembering the sight of the lawyer's blood-drenched body, I could confirm that. But I didn't, of course.

“The exchange was heated and rather loud,” Queensbury continued, “but it only lasted a few moments before Hugh said he didn't have any more time for such foolishness. He was in a hurry.”

“Did he say why?”

“Oh, yes. He was rather gleeful about it. He told me with a distinct leer that he had business with a lady.”