The Collection (126 page)

I went through the stack of canceled checks once more. I
didn't know what I was looking for, but my subconscious must have noticed
something my conscious mind had missed. It had. Not many of the checks were
over a hundred dollars, but all of the checks to one outfit, Vogue Shops, Inc.,
were over a hundred and some were over two hundred. At least half of Eve's four
hundred dollars a month was being spent in one place. And other checks were
dated at different times, but the Vogue checks were all dated the first of the
month exactly. Wondering how much they did total, I took paper and pencil and
added the amounts of six of them, for the first six months of the previous
year. The smallest was $165.50 and the largest $254.25, but the total---it
jarred me. The total of the six checks came to $1,200. Exactly. Even. On the
head. And so, I knew a minute later, did the six checks for the second half of
the year. It certainly couldn't be coincidence, twice.

Eve Bookman was paying somebody an even two hundred bucks a
month---and disguising the fact, on the surface at any rate, by making some of
the amounts more than that and some less, but making them average out. I turned
over some of the checks to look at the endorsements. Each one was
rubber-stamped
Vogue Shops, Inc.,
and under the rubber stamp was the
signature
John L. Littleton.
Rubber stamps under that showed they'd all
been deposited or cashed at the Dearborn Branch of the Chicago Second National
Bank.

And that, whatever it meant, was all the checks were going
to tell me. I rebanded them and put them back as I'd found them, took a final
look around the room to see that I was leaving everything else as I'd found
it, and went back to the living room. I was going to call Uncle Am at the
office---if he wasn't there, I could reach him later at the rooming house---but
I took the chain off the door first. If Eve walked in while I was talking on
the phone, I'd just have to switch the subject of conversation to printing
equipment, and Uncle Am would understand.

He was still at the office. I talked fast and when I
finished, he said, “Nice going, kid. You've got something by the tail and I'll
find out what it is. You stick with the Bookmans and let me handle everything
outside. We've got two lucky breaks on this. One, it's Friday and that bank
will be open till six o'clock. Two, one of the tellers is a friend of mine.
When I get anything for sure, I'll get in touch with you. Is there an extension
on the phone there that somebody could listen in on?”

“No,” I said. “There's another phone in Ollie's office, but
it's a different line.”

“Fine, then I can call openly and ask for you. You can
pretend it's a business call, if anyone's around, and argue price on a Miehle
vertical for your end of the conversation.”

“Okay. One other thing.” I told him about the two alleged
nitro pills I'd appropriated from Ollie's bottle. I told him that on my way in
to town for dinner, I'd drop them off on his desk at the office and sometime
tomorrow he could take them to the lab. Or maybe, if nitro had a distinctive
taste, Doc Kruger could tell by touching one of them to his tongue.

It was five o'clock when I hung up the phone. I decided that
I'd earned a drink and helped myself to a short one at the bar. Then I went to
my room, treated myself to a quick shower and a clean shirt for the evening.

I was just about to open the door to leave when it opened
from the other side and Eve Bookman came home. She was pleasantly surprised to
find me and I told her how I happened to have the house key and Ollie's car,
but said I'd been there only half an hour, just to clean up and change shirts
for the evening.

She asked why, since it was five thirty already, I didn't
stay and drive her in in Ollie's car. That way we wouldn't be stuck, after
dinner, with having both the Buick and the MG downtown with us and could all
ride home together.

I told her it sounded like an excellent idea. Which it was,
except for the fact that I wanted to get the pills to Uncle Am. But there was a
way around that. I asked if she could give me a piece of paper, envelope and
stamp. She went to her room to get them and after she'd gone back there to
dress, I addressed the envelope to Uncle Am at the office, folded the paper
around the pills and sealed them in the envelope. All I'd have to do was mail
it, on our way in, at the Dearborn Post Office Station and it would get there
in the morning delivery.

I made myself comfortable with a magazine to read and Eve
surprised me by taking not too long to get ready. And she looked gorgeous, and
I told her so, when she came back to the living room. It was only six fifteen
and I didn't have to speed to get us to the Pump Room by seven. Ollie wasn't
there, but he'd reserved us a table and left word with the maître d' that
something had come up and he'd be a bit late.

He was quite a bit late and we were finishing our third
round of Martinis when he showed up, very apologetic about being detained. We
decided we'd have one more so he could have one with us, and then ate a
wonderful meal. As an out-of-town guest who was presuming on their hospitality
already, I insisted on grabbing the check. A nice touch, since it would go on
Ollie's bill anyway.

We discussed going on to a night club, but Eve said that
Ollie looked tired---which he did---and if we went clubbing, would want to
drink too much. We could have a drink or two at home---if Ollie would promise
to hold to two. He said he would.

Since Ollie admitted that he really was a little tired, I
had no trouble talking him into letting me do the driving again. Eve seemed
more genuinely friendly than hitherto. Maybe it was the Martinis before dinner
or maybe she was getting to like me. But it was an at-a-distance type of
friendliness; my radar told me that.

Back home, I offered to do the bartending, but Eve overruled
me and made our drinks. We were drinking them and talking about nothing in
particular when I saw Ollie suddenly put down his glass and bend forward
slightly, putting his right hand under his left arm.

Then he straightened up and saw that we were both looking at
him with concern. He said, “Nothing. Just a little twinge, not an attack. But
maybe to be on the safe side, I'll take one---”

He took a little gold pillbox out of his pocket and opened
it.

“Good Lord,” he said, standing up. “Forgot I took my last
one just before I got to the Pump Room. Just as well we didn't go night-clubbing,
after all. Well, it's okay now. I'll fill it.”

“Let me---” I said.

But he looked perfectly well now and waved me away. “I'm
perfectly okay. Don't worry.”

And he went into the hallway, walking confidently, and I
heard the door of his room open and close so I knew he'd made it all right.

Eve started to make conversation by asking me questions
about the girl in Seattle whom I'd talked about, and I was answering and
enjoying it, when suddenly I realized Ollie had been gone at least five minutes
and maybe ten. A lot longer than it would take to refill a pillbox. Of course
he might have decided to go to the John or something while he was there, but
just the same, I stood up quickly, excused myself without explaining, headed
for his room.

The minute I opened the door, I saw him and thought he was
dead. He was lying face down on the rug in front of the dresser and on the
dresser there wasn't any little bottle of pills and there weren't any amyl
nitrite ampoules, either.

I bent over him, but I didn't waste time trying to find out
whether he was dead or not. If he was, the ampoule I'd got from Doc Kruger
wasn't going to hurt him. And if he was alive, a fraction of a second might
make the difference of whether it would save him or not. I didn't feel for a heartbeat
or look at his face. I got hold of a handful of hair and lifted his head a few
inches off the floor, reached in under it with my hand and crushed the ampoule
right under his nose.

Eve was standing in the doorway and I barked at her to phone
for an ambulance, right away quick. She ran back toward the living room.

Ollie didn't die, although he certainly would have if I
hadn't had the bright idea of appropriating that ampoule from Doc and carrying
it with me. But Ollie was in bad shape for a while, and Uncle Am and I didn't
get to see him until two days later, Sunday evening.

His face looked gray and drawn and he was having to lie very
quiet. But he could talk, and they gave us fifteen minutes with him. And they'd
told us he was definitely out of danger, as long as he behaved himself, but
he'd still be in the hospital another week or maybe even two.

But bad as he looked, I didn't pull any punches. “Ollie,” I
said, “it didn't work, your little frame-up. I didn't go to the police and
accuse Eve of trying to murder you. On the other hand, I've given you this
break, so far. I didn't go to them and tell them you tried to commit suicide in
a way to frame her for murder. You must love Dorothy and Jerry awfully much to
have planned that.”

“I---I do,” he said. “What---made you guess, Ed?”

“Your hands, for one thing,” I said. “They were dirtier than
they'd have been if you'd just fallen. That and the fact that you were lying
face down told me how you managed to bring on that attack at just that moment.
You were doing push-ups---about as strenuous and concentrated exercise as a man
can take. And just kept doing them till you passed out. It
should
have
been fatal, all right.

“And you knew the pills and ampoules had been on your
dresser that afternoon, and that Eve had been home since I'd seen them and
could have taken them. Actually you took them yourself. You came out in a
taxi---and we could probably find the taxi if we had to prove this---and got
them yourself. You had to wait till you were sure Eve and I would be en route
downtown, and that's why you were so late getting to the Pump Room. Now Uncle
Am's got news for you---not that you deserve it.”

Uncle Am cleared his throat. “You're not married, Ollie.
You're a free man because your marriage to Eve Packer wasn't legal. She'd been
married before and hadn't got a divorce. Probably because she had no intention
of marrying again until you popped the question to her, and then it was too
late to get one.

“Her legal husband, who left her ten years ago, is a
bartender named Littleton. He found her again somehow and when he learned she'd
married you illegally, he started blackmailing her. She's been paying him two
hundred a month, half the pinmoney allowance you gave her, for three years.
They worked out a way she could mail him checks and still have her money
seemingly accounted for. The method doesn't matter.”

I took over. “We haven't called copper on the bigamy bit,
either, because you're not going to prosecute her for it, or tell the cops. We
figure you owe her something for having tried to frame her on a murder charge.
We've talked to her. She'll leave town quietly, and go to Reno, and in a little
while you can let out that you're divorced and free. And marry Dorothy and
legitimize Jerry.

“She really will be getting a divorce, incidentally, but
from Littleton, not from you. I said you'd finance that and give her a
reasonable stake to start out with. Like ten thousand dollars---does that sound
reasonable?”

He nodded. His face looked less drawn, less gray now. I had
a hunch his improvement would be a lot faster now.

“And you fellows,” he said. “How can I ever---?”

“We're even,” Uncle Am said. “Your retainer will cover. But
don't ever look us up again to do a job for you. A private detective doesn't
like to be made a patsy, be put in the spot of helping a frame-up. And that's
what you tried to do to us. Don't ever look us up again.”

We never saw Ollie again, but we did hear from him once, a
few months later. One morning, a Western Union messenger came into our office
to deliver a note and a little box. He said he had instructions not to wait and
left.

The envelope contained a wedding announcement. One of the
after-the-fact kind, not an invitation, of the marriage of Oliver R. Bookman to
Dorothy Stark. On the back of it was scribbled a note. “Hope you've forgiven me
enough to accept a wedding present in reverse. I've arranged for the dealer to
leave it out front. Papers will be in glove compartment. Thanks for everything,
including accepting this.” And the little box, of course, contained two sets of
car keys.

It was, as I'd known it would be, a brand-new Buick sedan,
gray, a hell of a car. We stood looking at it, and Uncle Am said, “Well, Ed,
have we forgiven him enough?”

“I guess so,” I said. “It's a sweet chariot. But somebody
got off on his time, either the car dealer or the messenger, and it's been here
too long. Look.”

I pointed to the parking ticket on the windshield. “Well,
shall we take our first ride in it, down to the City Hall to pay the fine and get
right with God?”

We did.

It all started with one cat, one small gray cat. It ended
with nine of them. Gray cats all---because at night all cats are gray---and
some of them were alive and others dead. And there was a man without a face,
but the cats didn't do that.

It started at ten o'clock in the morning. Miss Weyburn must
have been waiting for the shop to open, because she came in as soon as I'd put
up the shades and unlocked the door. I knew her name was Miss Weyburn because
she'd given it to me three days before when she'd come in to leave her cat with
us. And she was such a honey that I remembered her name almost as well as I
remembered my own or that of the shop. Incidentally, it's the Bon Ton Pet Shop,
and I think it's a silly name myself, but my mother has a half interest in it,
and you know how women are. It was all I could do to keep it from being a pet
shoppe,
and to avoid that I settled for the Bon Ton part with scarcely more of a
murmur than would have caused the neighbors to send in a riot call.