Frenzy (41 page)

Quinn waited three or four seconds, knowing Renz was in love with dramatic pauses. “So tell me, Harley.”

“The fingerprint—right forefinger, incidentally—belongs or belonged to John Wayson Clairmont. Goes by Jack. Three arrests in upstate New York for burglarizing jewelry stores. One conviction. Did a three-year stretch behind walls, was released four years ago.”

“Tell me he's related to Craig Clairmont.”

“His brother,” Renz said.

Quinn paced with the cell phone, wondering about this development.

“You wanna send one of your people to talk to brother Craig?” Renz asked.

“No. Let's not tell Craig, or Ida French, about the owner of the finger yet. See how this plays out.”

“Jack might not have had anything to do with Craig, and Craig might have nothing to do with Alexis Hoffermuth's missing bracelet.”

“Or Jack's missing finger.”

“But it isn't missing—”

“Jack would disagree.”

“The rest of Jack might be as dead as his finger,” Renz said, “tucked away someplace where it won't be found.”

“Jack was at one time in that alley where we found his finger,” Quinn said. “Unless somebody transported the finger there.”

“Always a possibility,” Renz said, “somebody running around with a spare finger. Good for counting beyond ten. But where the finger was found is easy walking distance from Craig's apartment. You believe that much in coincidence?”

“No,” Quinn said. “You got anything else?”

“Ida French. Real Name Ida Beene. From Cincinnati. Used to be a hooker, one conviction, then went to work as a hotel maid in Cleveland. Seems to have cleaned up her act.”

“So many people go to Cleveland to start over,” Quinn said.

“Craig's real name is Lester,” Renz said. “Not much about that couple is real.”

Quinn waited, then said, “That it for tonight?”

“Not quite. Nift's postmortem on the Hoffermuth woman is in. She died of a heart attack.”

“I thought the scarf—”

“Probably it was only used to choke off her screams when the knife was applied to her back. There were a lot of knife wounds along her spine, very precise, between the vertebrae. Nift said whoever wielded the knife was skilled. The insertions must have produced incredible pain. She had her heart attack simultaneous with being throttled to keep her quiet.”

“Hell of a way to die.”

“There are a few good ways, but hers wasn't one of them.”

“Any other cheerful news?”

“That's it for now,” Renz said. “You can sleep on it.”

“But not very well,” Quinn said, trying to hang up on Renz. But Renz had already broken the connection. Renz liked to do that. Thought it made him the dominant party.

When Quinn returned to the living room, he saw that the DVD had timed out and Pearl was now watching a Yankees game with the TV on mute.

Quinn told her about Renz's phone call.

“Sounds as if Craig was in on stealing the Hoffermuth bracelet with his brother,” Pearl said.

“And maybe the cat has the bracelet around its neck. Eloise thought it was a collar.”

“Which is why Craig and Ida Bee—French—are so hot to find Boomerang.”

“But what's the deal with Jack's finger?” Quinn wondered aloud.

“Maybe Jack told somebody something he shouldn't have,” Jody said. She had come downstairs and listened at the living room doorway to Quinn's account of his phone conversation with Renz. Her springy red hair was flat on one side from reading lying down. “He might've fingered somebody, and the severed finger's a mob message to anyone else who might have similar ideas.”

“Sounds plausible, but I've never heard of the mob doing that,” Quinn said, “cutting off somebody's finger because they fingered someone. They usually cut off more than that.”

“But it's his forefinger,” Jody said. “His pointer.”

“Wouldn't they cut out his tongue?”

“You ever try to cut out somebody's tongue?”

“Well, I—”

“She might have something there,” Pearl said, mostly to defend Jody.

Jody glanced gratefully at her mother.

These two were about to gang up on Quinn. He could feel it.

“Let's all sleep on it,” he said, echoing Renz's suggestion. “What's the score on that ball game?”

“Detroit's winning eleven to two in the eighth inning,” Pearl said.

“Let's go back to the DVD and see if that international pharmaceutical company gets convicted of testing that dangerous drug on kids in third world countries.”

“What pharmaceutical company?” Jody asked, her ire obviously up.

Quinn loved to do that with Jody.

 

 

“Have you ever considered,” Jody said, after the pharmaceutical company's entire board of directors were successfully tried in the Hague for murder, “that Alexis Hoffermuth might have set up this whole thing? She might still have the genuine bracelet.”

“And all this running around and bracelet switching is to deceive the insurance company,” Pearl said. “Everyone's so curious about where the bracelet is, they're beyond questioning whether the thing was ever stolen in the first place.”

“I've thought about it,” Quinn said, though he had only briefly. With Alexis Hoffermuth, you'd better be damned sure you have something before opening that particular door.

Jody, whose thirst for justice hadn't been quenched by the downfall of Big Pharma, looked from one of them to the other.

“We shouldn't rule it out,” Quinn said.

Pearl's cell phone chirped, and without thinking to check who might be calling, she answered it.

“Pearl!” her mother's voice said, from Golden Sunset Assisted Living in New Jersey. “I have been trying to get in contact with you in regard to an outrageous change in dining room seating in this nursing home hell—”

“Assisted living,” Pearl corrected, as she often did.

“Anyway, to continue my diatribe—and I know that is how you regard it, unable to conceptualize as you are that nefarious things do go on in this purgatory of pain that reasonable people . . .”

“Is that Grandma?” Jody asked, her face lighting up. “Let me talk to her!”

Pearl tossed her the phone, and Jody snatched it from the air and walked off into the next room, yammering.

Pearl and Quinn smiled silently at each other.

 

 

“Jack is dead?”

Ida seemed astounded.

Craig Clairmont looked suddenly out of breath and sat down hard enough in a patched vinyl wing chair to move the heavy piece of furniture six inches across the hardwood floor.

“We don't know that for certain,” Quinn said. “We only have the finger.”

Ida French went to stand at the back of the chair, over Craig's right shoulder. She appeared ill. “And you know it's Jack's finger?”

“Yes,” Pearl said. “Fingerprints. Print.”

“Jack would never harm anyone,” Craig said. “Not physically, anyway.”

Quinn thought that an odd thing to say but let it pass.

Jody was seated off to the side, observing. She'd wanted to come with them, actually meet these people. She viewed it as research for her own fledgling career in criminal law. You couldn't know too much about the criminal mind.

“It could be theorized,” Quinn said to Craig, “maybe even proved, that you stole Alexis Hoffermuth's bracelet and were also implicated in her death.”

Craig appeared to have been struck a glancing blow. “Wow! That's wild.”

“Jewel theft and homicide are wild.”

“First Jack, then that poor Mrs. Hoffermuth,” Craig said, pacing. “Or maybe it was the other way around.” He seemed unable to sit down.

Jody looked at Quinn and smiled slightly, appreciating the performance.

“Mrs. Hoffermuth was a number of things,” Quinn said, “but not poor.”

“I meant, what she must have gone through.”

“Do you know something about it?”

“How she was tortured. It was on the news. It—”

There was a scratching on the door to the hall. Craig exchanged glances with Ida French.

More scratching. Insistent.

The kitchen window must be completely closed.

Both of them leaped toward the door, bumping into each other. It was Craig who wrestled the door open.

A large black tomcat strutted in, arched its back, stretched, then continued toward a hall leading to what Quinn assumed were bedrooms and a bathroom. It had three white boots and the slightest touch of white between its eyes.

On the welcome mat behind him the cat had left a glittering jeweled bracelet.

This time Ida French managed to elbow Craig aside and snatched up Boomerang's offering.

“Boomerang?” Pearl asked, to make sure.

“There isn't any doubt,” Craig said, staring at the bracelet in Ida's cupped hand. “But that bracelet looks like an imitation.”

“Sure does,” Ida French said, after a slight hesitation.

Quinn and Pearl got up and went over to examine the bracelet. Ida never offered to release her grip on it. The jewels might have been fake, but then no one there was an expert.

“It has to be imitation,” Ida French said.

“Unless Alexis Hoffermuth was trying to pull off an insurance scam,” Craig said.

Quinn guessed that Craig, inspired, was trying to set up a scenario wherein he could convince everyone the bracelet was paste jewelry and it might as well stay with him and Ida French. But if that didn't work, blame might be shifted to Alexis Hoffermuth, dead and unable to defend herself.

“You would know about scams,” Quinn said.

Craig looked at him, surprise on his handsome features. Then he smiled. “Part of your job, I guess, looking into people's unsavory pasts.”

“ 'Fraid so,” Quinn said.

He saw that Jody was leaning forward in her chair, the only one in the room more interested in what was being said than in the half-million-dollar bracelet. She was a people person.

“Where is your daughter, Miss Beene?” Pearl asked.

Ida French seemed not at all fazed. Pearl had to hand it to her.

“Eloise is with my sister in Queens.” She gave a wistful smile. “I didn't think you set up this appointment for just a chat.”

“You planned the theft of the bracelet from the limousine,” Quinn said to Craig, “executed when Alexis Hoffermuth was being driven home from the auction. Ida is the one who actually stole the bracelet, using a confusing exchange of identical purses and a paste copy of the real Cardell bracelet. You and your brother Jack planned to turn the bracelet over to a fence in exchange for cash, only you were greedy. You were going to slip the fence a second worthless replica of the bracelet. Double crossing somebody like that got Jack killed, after his killers amputated his finger.”

“It didn't happen exactly like that,” Craig said.

“The details will be tended to later in court,” Quinn told him. “Ida, here, judging by the expression on her face, didn't know you and Jack were going to take the money from the sale of the second replica and disappear with that and the real bracelet. Boomerang upset that plan when he ran away after Eloise had mistaken the bracelet for a cat collar and put it on him.”

Quinn exchanged a look with Jody.
Divide and conquer
.

“Everything was going to be split three ways!” Craig said.

Ida French appeared dubious.

“The fence spotted the makeshift cat collar at the pickup point, as Boomerang was running away. It looked exactly like the bracelet he'd just bought. That was when Jack ran afoul of the lawless. The fence also came to wonder what we wondered—was Alexis Hoffermuth working an insurance scam from the beginning?”

“Maybe we can work a deal as to who that fence was,” Craig said. “Who killed my brother. Along with whatever else you need to know.”

Ida French stared at him in disgust. She knew he'd give her up in a minute. Even a New York one.

Pearl's phone played its four musical notes from the old
Dragnet
TV show theme.

She checked to see who was calling.

“That Grandma?” Jody asked.

Pearl nodded, furious at her mother. She could pick the damnedest times to call.

“Can I talk to her?” Jody asked.

“You don't have—”

“I
want
to,” Jody said. “You never know when it might be important.”

Pearl tossed her the cell phone. Jody caught it and went out into the hall.

“You can do your plea bargaining with the prosecutor,” Quinn said to Craig. “As can you, Miss Beene.”

“My daughter—” Ida said in a choked voice. But not before Quinn had seen the calculation in her eyes. Eloise was a bargaining chip.

“The people we want—and are going to get—are the ones who killed Jack Clairmont and Alexis Hoffermuth.”

“I can tell you who they are!” Craig said.

“Don't be an idiot,” Ida said. She'd apparently thought this out. “We didn't kill anyone. Didn't have the real bracelet for very long. There might not even be enough evidence to convict us. Especially if I keep quiet and don't testify against you. They can't make a wife testify, you know.”

“You two are really married?” Pearl asked.

Ida grinned. “In Las Vegas, two years ago. We did it so we could file jointly and not pay so much tax on some gambling money we won.” She glared at her husband. “Alexis Hoffermuth can't identify that woman who got into her limo; she's dead. And we don't know where the hell that cat got that bracelet. Or who killed Jack or cut off his finger.” She laughed, staring directly at Quinn. “They don't even have enough evidence to arrest us.”