No Police Like Holmes (11 page)

Chapter Nineteen
-
Oscar the Grouch

“A lady?” Lynda repeated later, almost hissing the words. “That was me!” she exclaimed ungrammatically.

“Shhh. I know that - and you don't have to tell everybody else.” We were standing at the back of the President's Dining Room. Mac was at the front, saying something about the upcoming Reader's Theatre. “The point here, Lynda, is that Queensbury might share that little tidbit with the police. And if he does, and if the police find out you were Matheson's constant companion at the colloquium today, you can expect Oscar to land on you like a ton of bricks.”

“Oscar Hummel
is
a ton of bricks.”

“He's a little overweight.” Maybe sixty pounds or so, not closer to a hundred like Mac. “He's also made his share of high-profile goofs, but don't underestimate him - especially his tenacity. That would be a big mistake.”

“He has all the subtlety of a suicide bomber.”

“Yeah,” I agreed, “and he could be just as destructive.”

We reclaimed our seats as the Reader's Theatre began. Some local acting talent, including a few students, sat on stools at the front of the room and took parts reading a Sherlock Holmes story, “The Adventure of Charles Augustus Milverton.” They wore only symbolic costumes - Holmes was identified by the ubiquitous deerstalker cap, for example. There were two Dr. Watsons - one the narrator and one the character - and both wore bowlers.

The title character of the story, Milverton, is the Worst Man in London, Holmes tells Watson. He is trying to squeeze blackmail out of a female client of Holmes, who refuses to play ball. Instead, Holmes adopts the identity of a plumber and romances Milverton's housemaid. Once he wheedles enough information out of her, he cons Watson into helping him burgle Milverton's house late one night to retrieve a set of embarrassing letters.

Holmes and Watson had just entered the grounds of the Milverton estate when Erin's Finest came into the President's Dining Room.

The beer belly alone might have been enough to make me recognize him out of the corner of my eye, but the headgear eliminated all doubt. Who else in Erin, Ohio, would wear a Panama hat? It had to be Oscar Hummel, a man too vain to show his balding head in public and yet too cheap to buy a wig. He always covers his pate with some tasteless hat or cap.

He sidled up to Mac, who was standing at the front of the room in his role as director of the Reader's Theatre. After a tête-à-tête of no more than thirty seconds, the two left the room together, going past our table on the way out.

“What do you think Oscar wants with Mac?” Lynda asked in a low voice.

“You can bet they aren't talking baseball,” I said. “Oscar probably found out from the Winfield that Matheson was in Erin for the colloquium. Mac organized the colloquium, so he might know the guy, right? Remember, Oscar has a keen perception of the obvious.”

That's what had me worried. Of course Oscar would have his men scour the hotel for witnesses, just as any big-city force would do. How long could it be before somebody remembered seeing a man and woman leaving the hotel or maybe even Matheson's floor around the time of the killing? Hours, not days. I had visions of Oscar throwing Lynda and me in his basement cell and shining lights in our eyes. Suddenly it was hot in the President's Dining Room.

The actors on the stools in front were winding down their presentation of “The Adventure of Charles Augustus Milverton.” Holmes and Watson, nearly caught in the act of burglary, watch as Milverton meets with one of his blackmail victims, a mysterious woman. She pulls out a gun and plugs Milverton repeatedly. With the rest of the household awakened by gunfire, Holmes and Watson run for it. (I kind of knew how they felt.) The out-of-shape doctor barely makes it over the wall and then-

I felt a tap on my shoulder.

My body twitched and I sucked air.

“Man, Jeff, you got a guilty conscience or what?”

“Oscar!” I said. “What are you doing here?”

“Tell you in the hallway.”

Oscar Hummel is forty-seven years old and looks older, never been married and it shows. Sometimes I worry that he's what I could become in another few years of bachelorhood, minus the belly, but then I remind myself that I have better clothes sense. He was wearing a plaid sport coat over hound's tooth pants and a pink shirt, no tie.

I followed him and Lynda followed me. Mac was a few yards outside the door, sitting in a blue plastic chair and making a half-dollar appear and disappear in his oversized hands.

“Cut out the damned parlor tricks,” Oscar growled at him. Turning to say something to me, he finally caught on that Lynda was part of the entourage.

“Oh, joy,” he said. “The press. Just what I need at nine-thirty on a Saturday night when I oughta be popping a beer and watching the Reds in spring training.”

“The game was this afternoon,” Lynda said. “They played the Cubs. I don't know who won.”

Oscar didn't seem to be particularly cheered by this information. He sighed. “At least you can give me a cigarette, Teal.” His mother disapproves of him smoking, so Oscar never buys cigarettes. But that doesn't stop him from smoking them. This time, however, Lynda shook her head. “Sorry, Chief, I quit.”

He favored her with a sour look. “In that case, get the hell out of here.”

“What's going on?” I asked, just as if I didn't know.

Lynda, ignoring Oscar's order to leave, silently offered him a stick of Big Red. He took it without thanks.

“Murder,” he said, putting the gum into his mouth. “Hot-shot lawyer from Cincy. Hugh Matheson. I've heard of him - who hasn't? - and Mac knew him.”

“Indeed,” Mac said, making the coin vanish with the slightest motion of his hand. “The news of Hugh's passing in this unpleasant manner is most distressing.”

“We weren't friends,” I told Oscar, “but I met him this weekend.”

“And I sat next to him during some of the lectures and at lunch,” Lynda volunteered.
Very smart
,
pointing that out before somebody else does
.

Oscar grimaced and took the gum out of his mouth. “I hate cinnamon. Are you trying to poison me or what, Teal?”

“Don't talk like that,” I snapped. The murder had me about ready to jump out of my skin, and I certainly was in no mood for attempts at homicidal humor.

“What happened to Matheson?” Lynda asked Oscar, another smart move on her part.

“Shot in the neck. Hit an artery, spouted blood all over the place.”

“Where did it happen?” Lynda persisted in her best journalist voice.

“In his room at the Winfield. Somebody called 911 with an anonymous tip around seven o'clock. Enough with the questions, Teal. We already got enough of that from your man Silverstein. He picked up the dispatch on the scanner and got there even before my people did - made a nuisance out of himself as usual.”

“That's my Ben.”

“Do you have any ideas about this anonymous caller?” I tried to sound only casually interested.

Oscar shrugged. “The call came from a pay phone not too far from the hotel. I haven't listened to the recording yet but the dispatcher said it was a man talking in a high-pitched voice, like Minnie Mouse on helium.”
Smartass
. “I figure it must have been somebody who was almost desperate to not get involved, maybe somebody whose wife didn't know he was at the hotel.”

Mac caressed his beard. “You are confident it was not the killer?”
Thanks a heap, Mac
.

“That wouldn't make a lot of sense from the killer's point of view, Mac. The sooner law enforcement gets to the scene of a homicide, the better. It would have helped the killer if the body hadn't been found until tomorrow. As it was, we got there less than half an hour after the shooting.”

Oops. I'd unintentionally misled the police about the time of the murder, but it couldn't have been by all that much; the blood was still fresh when we arrived around six-thirty.

“Where do I come into this?” I asked.

Mac said, “I persuaded Oscar that you should be involved in your capacity as public relations director for the college. The murder investigation is likely to spill over onto the campus grounds, given Matheson's reason for being in Erin.”

“He didn't say anything about Teal tagging along,” Oscar added.

“Consider me a bonus,” she said.

Applause erupted from inside the closed doors of the President's Dining Room. If I remembered the agenda correctly, Kate must have been announcing the winners of the costume contest.

“As a working premise,” Mac said, “what do you think happened, Oscar?”

“Well... this is strictly off the record, Teal, understand?”

“Yes, massa,” Lynda said.

“It must have been somebody who knew him, not a homicide committed during a burglary. There was no break-in, for one thing, and it doesn't look like anything was disturbed.”

Give Lynda and me points for neatness.

“Besides,” Oscar added, “we have a witness, another guest at the Winfield, who saw the victim open the door for someone who may have been the killer.”

Damn - just what I had feared. Somebody saw Lynda coming out of the room and me standing there. We must have given quite a show, the big hug. The pit of my stomach felt like a load of concrete had been mixed there. I shot a covert glance at Lynda. She swallowed hard.

“A witness!” Mac bellowed. “Oh, Oscar, you are the sly one, holding that back. Tell us about this witness.”

The chief allowed himself a self-satisfied smirk.

“She's rock solid - an IRS attorney in town to check out the college for her daughter,” Oscar said. “She came back to her room down the hall to take a shower around six and saw Matheson open the door to a visitor. She didn't see the visitor's face, but get this: He was wearing one of those funny Sherlock Holmes hats. What do you call them?”

“A deerstalker,” I said in a choked voice, nearly limp with relief.

Maybe it really
was
the killer this witness saw - it sure wasn't Lynda. Aside from the chapeau she wasn't wearing, the timing was off by half an hour. We weren't even finished with Post by six o'clock.

“Yeah, that's it - a deerstalker,” Oscar said. “I figure it should be easy to find this character. How many people can there be running around Erin in a deerstalker hat?”

Chapter Twenty
-
What We Have Here... (Part Two)

Mac's answer to Oscar was a sound that started as a rumble in his stomach and burst forth from his lips as a hearty, uncontrolled laugh.

“What the hell's so funny?” Oscar demanded.

“Deerstalker caps,” Lynda said, “are about as rare at this little confab as big ears on an elephant.”

Standing between Mac and Oscar, no wonder she thought of elephants. Oscar glowered at her.

“Surely you understand what this colloquium is all about, Oscar?” Mac said. Without waiting for an answer, he added, “Unfortunately, this isn't the only crime that has marred an otherwise delightful occasion. Do you suppose there could be a link between the theft last night of several rare Sherlock Holmes volumes and the murder of Hugh Matheson?”

“Well,” Oscar said heavily, “there sure as hell seems to be some kind of connection to Sherlock Holmes.”

But Oscar didn't know what the link was - his officers apparently hadn't found the hidden books in Matheson's hotel room.

“Obviously, you're going to be conducting some interviews around here tomorrow,” I said. “I'd appreciate it if you would check in with Ed Decker, let him know what you're up to. You know how touchy he is about turf issues.”

Oscar grunted, which I took to be an affirmative response. “If you remember anything that might be important about the victim, give me a call. You have my cell.”

“I'm sure I'll be in touch,” Lynda said, earning a malevolent stare from the chief.

“Good night, Oscar,” Mac said. “And thank you for the flower.”

“The what?”

Mac reached into Oscar's plaid sport coat and pulled a carnation out of the inside pocket. He affixed it to the lapel of his Victorian suit coat while Oscar watched with an expression composed of equal parts surprise and chagrin.

“You ought to stick to magic,” Oscar told Mac. “You're good at it. Leave the detective work to law enforcement.”

With a curt nod to each of us he disappeared down the escalator.

“I'd better go, too,” Lynda said. “I've got to get to the office and help Ben with his story for the website and tomorrow's paper.”

Mac and I wished her good night. It was ten o'clock and I felt a deep weariness, as if I'd been up for at least three days. And, like Lynda, I still had work to do.

“I'd better call Ralph and get it over with,” I told Mac with a sigh of resignation.

“You have my sympathy,” he said.

“I need it. But it would be even worse if Ralph heard it someplace else first. Never let your boss be surprised.”

I pulled out my phone, chose Ralph's name from my contacts list, and tapped his phone number.

“This is Jeff Cody,” I said when the provost had answered in his precise voice. I could hear music playing in the background.
Could that really be Dave Brubeck?
“You aren't going to like this.”

“That I believe. Well, what is it now?”

“One of the participants in this Sherlock Holmes colloquium thing has been murdered.”

“Good God in heaven!”

I winced and pulled the phone away from my ear. The expression on Mac's hairy face showed that he'd heard Ralph almost as well as I had.

“It isn't as if the body showed up in the middle of Muckerheide Center,” I said quickly. “The murder was off-campus.”

“Thank God for that. Give me the details.” I could have sworn Ralph had stopped to drink something between the two sentences.

I summed up the case as Oscar knew it - leaving out, of course, what I knew that the chief didn't.

“What we have here, Ralph,” I concluded, “is a very unfortunate set of circumstances, especially with the murder following the theft so closely. But I'm on top of it. I've spent quite a bit of time discussing this case with the chief of police. I'm sure that when he finds this mysterious visitor in the deerstalker the murder will be solved.”

“And I suppose we can look forward to yet another spate of unfavorable publicity when someone is arrested,” Ralph said. “At least it isn't likely to be a college employee. Is it?” The last two words came out almost as a plea.

The doors of the President's Dining Room swung open. Sherlockians spilled out in a sea of now-familiar faces - Molly Crocker, the deerstalkered (yes!) Dr. Queensbury, Sven Larsen, Professor Whippet...

“Well, Cody?”

I went as far as I could, assuring Ralph that neither Mac nor I nor anybody connected with St. Benignus College had been wearing a deerstalker cap today.

“What you have to do is downplay the college connection with this so-called colloquium,” said Ralph, who had made a speech earlier that day accepting the Woollcott Chalmers Collection as a highlight of what he now dismissed as the “so-called colloquium.”

I promised him I'd use all my influence with the police and the press. It was an easy promise because I have none. But it mollified Ralph, who believes otherwise.

“I suppose your intentions are good, Cody,” he conceded. “I might even be able to make something out of you if you weren't under the constant influence of the execrable McCabe.”

The thought had been expressed before, and not just by Ralph. It's undeniably true that my life would be simpler and less turbulent without Sebastian McCabe in it. But it would be a lot less interesting, too.

“Mac's right here,” I told Ralph. “Want to talk to him?” There I went again, showing that constant influence.

“Spare me, Cody. I'm warning you, if you can't get control of this story I'll find someone who can.”

He hung up.

“Good show!” Mac said. “That was a most convincing performance, old boy, just then and earlier with Oscar as well. Now perhaps you would care to give me the unexpurgated version.”

“Meaning what?”

“Meaning,” Mac said, making a show of studying his unlighted cigar, “the whole story of your personal involvement in the murder - the details of which you did not share with Oscar for quite good reasons, no doubt.”