No Police Like Holmes (13 page)

Chapter Twenty-Three
-
Personal Space

With stealth and caution I passed through the hallway toward the guest suite at the back of the house, where the noise had appeared to originate.
Down these mean streets a man must go...
Along the way I picked up my nephew Brian's baseball bat from the kitchen. It was only aluminum but it felt comforting in my hand. I held it like a club.

Outside the suite, added on by the previous owners for the wife's parents, I paused. My stomach was one big mass of knots and my heart was pounding in my ears from the adrenaline rush. I wiped sweaty palms on my khaki slacks.

Strangely, from this close up the noise in the suite sounded like water running in the bathroom.

Should I knock first and give the traditional “Who's there?” or should I barge right in, bat at the ready?
WWMD - What Would Max Do?

Opting for the element of surprise, I tightened my grip on the bat with my right hand and pushed in the doorknob with my left. And I walked in.

The empty bedroom was large and bright, with sun pouring in from a window overlooking a spectacular view of the Ohio River. There were two dressers opposite the bed (one of them with a mirror), a clothes tree draped with clothes, a couple of modern lamps and a captain's chair. At the far end of the room, to the right of the big window, was an alcove that I knew led to a small sitting room with a TV and several bookcases.

The dresser with the mirror was clearly Renata's domain. Across the top of it were spread all the tools of the womanly arts - a hair brush, a jewelry box, a wig, and a tray full of lipsticks, eye shadows, powders, and other elements of witchcraft. The other dresser top was blank by comparison; it only held a set of keys, some spare change, and a large container for pills marked off by the days of the week.

I had gotten about that far in my visual survey of the room when I heard the gasp, a sharp intake of breath behind me to the right. I jerked around, simultaneously swinging the bat into position for action.

And saw Renata Chalmers.

She stood in the doorway of the guest bathroom, her deep brown eyes dilated in surprise. Her right hand was on a middle button of her green and white blouse, as though she'd stopped dead in the act of dressing. The pale pink of a lacy bra was just visible. Okay, I noticed; I couldn't help it.

For a long moment, with her eyes fixed on me, I felt like a butterfly mounted on a pin in somebody's collection. The room was hot and my mouth was dry and this should have happened to somebody else, like maybe Ralph Pendergast.

“Jeff!” Renata said at last. Her eyes traveled down to the bat in my hand. “What are you doing in my room? And with that thing?”

I let my right hand and the bat drop to my side. “I thought I heard a noise,” I said lamely.

“I pretty much always make a noise when I take a shower.” The temperature of her voice was just this side of frigid. Her hair was damp from the steam of the shower and the Victorian ringlets from last night were gone. She buttoned her top two buttons as I avoided her eyes, certain that my face must be turning the color of her underwear.

“But there wasn't... there shouldn't have been anybody here,” I stammered. “Mac left fifteen minutes ago. I was sure he would have taken everybody with him.”

“He had to set up some things early,” Renata said. “My husband and your sister did go along, but I wasn't ready yet. You could have knocked, you know.”

“It's this murder business and the robbery, I guess. It has me on edge. I'm sorry. I feel ridiculous.”

“You look it, too,” she said. “A baseball bat, yet!”

She laughed and I managed a smile. “It was the nearest weapon I could grab to defend myself.”

“Well, thanks for not using it on me. Are you going over to the colloquium or do you have more sleuthing to do?”

Both, actually
. The colloquium is where I would see and interview the people on Mac's list. Without telling Renata that, I offered to give her a lift in my seldom-used 1998 Volkswagen New Beetle, but she demurred.

“On a morning like this I'd just as soon walk,” she said. “It isn't that far.”

True enough, so I decided to leave my bike at home and walk with her. It was still cooler outside than you'd expect from the brightness of the sun, but it was perfect for a brisk walk. The long-legged Renata, swinging her huge handbag, set a pace I had to work to keep up with.

“It's hard to believe Hugh's dead,” she said. “He was so lively.”

“Maybe too lively. He had quite a reputation for playing to win, no matter what the game.”

She nodded. “The reputation was well deserved. And what you must have heard about his success with the ladies - that was true, too.”

I let that pass. “Your husband and Matheson didn't get along, did they?”

“Well, you saw them yesterday.”

“Yeah, and I've also heard stories.”

“Probably true.”

I shook my head and said I found it amazing that grown men could be so venomous over a shared hobby.

“There's a little more to it than that,” Renata said.

“Meaning?”

She shook her head. “It doesn't matter now.”

I supposed she was right. Chalmers was on Mac's list of people to suspect or at least interview, but Mac himself had provided the old man's alibi for the period when Matheson was murdered.

But there were other members of the Anglo-Indian Club on that list, people Renata would know.

“Tell me about Molly Crocker,” I said.

“She's one smart cookie, Jeff - plus ambitious, aggressive, and tough. She was especially tough on deadbeat dads when she was a prosecutor. Her fans call her Maximum Molly.”

“Are you one of her fans?”

“You could say that. I'm going to be the treasurer of her re-election campaign.”

Bias noted.

“What were her relations with Matheson?” I asked.

“I have no reason to think that she had any outside of the club, other than the fact that she's female - which, come to think of it, is a pretty compelling reason. And I guess Hugh might have tried some cases in front of her. You ask a lot of question, Mr. Cody. Shades of Sherlock!”

“Now that hurts, Mrs. Chalmers. I'm not the Sherlockian here - you are.”

She shook her head. “Not me, my husband. Don't get us confused. I have my own interests.”

“Music and art and things cultural, right?”

“That's another question.”

“I have more. For instance, is Noah Queensbury for real?”

“His wife must think-”

“I mean about Sherlock Holmes,” I interrupted, impatient.

“He's a gifted surgeon. I suspect that he works hard and plays hard. That Holmesmania stuff is his way of playing. He may act crazy, but I think it's just an act.”

I paused at an intersection, waiting for a WALK light. Renata, seeing no cars coming our way, jaywalked. I scampered to keep up.

“Were any of your friends, or just people you know from the colloquium, late for the banquet last night?”

She shrugged. “I wouldn't know. I got held up fixing my hair into those ringlets I wore last night.”

We were within sight of Muckerheide Center now, the flat slabs of some architect's tribute to Frank Lloyd Wright rising above the horizon before us.

“But your husband was there as early as the cocktail hour,” I pointed out. “Mac said so.”

“Sure. When I saw how long it was going to take to fix my hair, I told him to go on without me. He and Kate and Mac were all dressed, and they're more social creatures than I am anyway. And even a husband and wife need a little personal space between them now and then, don't you think?”

Personal space... it sounded like an echo of Lynda's constant complaint that I was too clingy, too jealous, too bossy - and after a while, just too
too
. Maybe things between us never would have gone off the rails if I had lightened my touch a bit. Maybe that was still possible.

“I guess I'm not qualified to answer that one,” I said. “I mean, I've never been married.” Not that I was against the idea.

I glanced in her direction, trying not to look like a man looking at a woman. I'm sure I failed miserably. It was hard to get away from the fact that Renata Chalmers was a stunningly attractive and sensuous female married to a man about forty years older than she was. I'd have bet he felt no such craving for personal space.

Sunday, March 13

Session Four

Chapter Twenty-Four
-
Bacon, Eggs, and Suspicion

I took my leave of Renata at the registration table outside the Hearth Room. She continued on to the President's Dining Room, although we were too early for breakfast, while I lingered to talk with Popcorn.

My administrative assistant, four feet eleven inches of romantic imagination wrapped up in a grandmother of three, was still swept up in
Love's Savage Desire
.

“Is this your first time through that book or are you re-reading the steamy parts?” I asked, as if I didn't know the answer. In her opinion, I don't put enough sex and violence in my books. She's a widow.

Popcorn sighed and set down the paperback. “I saw Lynda earlier.” She wasn't at church, then, at least not any more. “Are you two an item again?”

“I'm not sure,” I said, “but keep an eye on her Facebook status.”

Turning away from Popcorn's blue cat's eyes, I found myself looking at the coat rack next to the registration desk. There were only a couple of coats on it, and no hats at all. I strained to remember what it had looked like yesterday.

“Did you notice anybody taking a deerstalker off of that rack yesterday afternoon?” I asked Popcorn.

Anybody who had a thing like that at a program like this would most likely want to wear it all the time, like Queensbury, not warehouse it on a coat rack - unless maybe he was saving it up to wear as a sort of disguise during the commission of a murder.

But Popcorn shook her head. “I don't think so. I couldn't swear to it because I was taking money and handing out name tags when I wasn't reading my book, but I don't think so. Why, is there one missing?”

“Probably not. It was just a thought.”

I left Popcorn to her book, planning to join the breakfast crowd in the President's Dining Room. Before I got very far in that direction, though, I saw the bald-headed bookseller go in the second door of the Hearth Room with a box under his arm. Reuben Pinkwater, Mac had said his name was, and he was on Mac's list of people to interview.

I sidled up to him casually as he pulled books out of the box and stacked them on the long table. He was wearing gabardine pants, a small brown bow tie and white shirt with the sleeves rolled up. When he heard me coming he looked up and gave a cheery “Good morning.”

The smile, showing off his gold tooth, put wrinkles in his face to match the soft indentions at the back of his head. It occurred to me then that all bald men over the age of thirty-five look alike, from Daddy Warbucks to Lex Luthor to Kojak.

But a deerstalker would hide a bald dome nicely.

“Morning,” I agreed. “I haven't seen you around Erin.” This was content-free chatter to get the ball rolling.

“Probably not. My shop's in Licking Falls. The Scene of the Crime. Here.”

He handed me a business card with the name of the store and the unmistakable silhouette of Sherlock Holmes, the man in the deerstalker.

With the card in my hand I gestured to the small stack of deerstalker caps on one end of the table. “Do you sell many of those?”

He looked where I pointed. “A few a year. I thought I'd get rid of them all this weekend, but no such luck.”

Pinkwater fussed with the books in jerky movements, squaring off volumes that already looked perfectly aligned to me. There were paperbacks and hardbacks of every size, some hot off the press and some barely held together with rubber bands. About ninety percent had either “Sherlock Holmes” or some obvious Sherlockian reference like “Baker Street” in the title.

“Isn't this kind of a narrow specialty?” I asked.

“Oh, I just brought the best of the Holmes stuff for this symposium or whatever it's called,” he said. “We sell all kinds of mysteries. In fact, Al Kane's doing a book signing for us tomorrow night. See anything you like?”

Resisting the impulse to calculate the odds on that one, I said, “You have some old books here. There must be a few gems for collectors among them.”

Pinkwater smiled. “Nothing that would excite a Woollcott Chalmers, that's for sure. I shy away from real rarities. You have to know what you're doing there or you can get burned. That happened to me once on a copy of
The Misadventures of Sherlock Holmes
, edited by Ellery Queen and very rare because it was suppressed by the Conan Doyle Estate. It turned out to be a modern bootleg reprint.” He shook his head. “There's not much margin for that kind of error in this business.”

What was that volume Pinkwater had showed me yesterday about a rare book that turned out to be fake? There it was, still on the table -
The Adventure of the Unique ‘Hamlet.'
There was the beginning of an idea there, if only I could put my finger on it.

“I never again bought a so-called rarity and I never will,” Pinkwater concluded. “That's not the business I'm in.”

“Never?”

“Never.”

“But what if you did happen to acquire a book like that?” I pressed. “Say it just fell into your lap, something unique and worth thousands of dollars. Would you know where to resell it?”

“Sure.” That smile again.

Now I was getting somewhere.

“Well, where?”

“Woollcott Chalmers. He'd buy it.”

With a frustration bordering on despair, I thanked Mr. Clean and headed for the President's Dining Room in hopes of at least getting breakfast out of this deal. On the way I pulled out my notebook and struck a line through the names of Reuben Pinkwater and, now that I thought about it, Renata Chalmers.

For all of Mac's baloney about not having time to interview the people on his list, several shared his breakfast table - Judge Crocker, Dr. Queensbury, and Woollcott Chalmers. Kate and Renata were there, too, along with Al Kane, Bob Nakamora, and Lynda.
So there she was
.

As I joined them they were in the midst of an animated discussion that could only have concerned the late Hugh Matheson.

“He was a slickster, a trickster, and a damned womanizer,” Chalmers said with a fire in his blue eyes, as if daring anyone to disagree.

Judge Crocker, seated immediately to Chalmers's left, concentrated on applying strawberry jam to a biscuit.

“Worst of all,” Chalmers added, “he was a poseur. Most of what he knew about Sherlock Holmes he must have picked up from some old Basil Rathbone films. And the fact that he's dead doesn't change any of that.”

“I fear that Hugh, rather like the victim in Agatha Christie's
Murder on the Orient Express
, had a more-than-ample share of detractors,” Mac rumbled.

“Somebody must have liked him,” Lynda said, “or he couldn't have been a womanizer.”

She wore a short-sleeved yellow and blue dress with a bright floral design that was giving me spring fever. I tried not to give her too much eyeball time.

Mac paused from attacking his extremely unhealthful hash browns long enough to praise Lynda for clarity of reasoning “bordering on the Sherlockian.” If she objected to his cheap flattery she didn't say so, but then she's always had a soft spot for Mac, regarding him for some mysterious reason as an adorable screwball.

“So who do you think killed Matheson?” Al Kane asked, directing the question at Chalmers.

“Perhaps some narrow-minded husband,” the old collector said acidly.

“One who just happened to be wearing a deerstalker?” Mac said. “Come now, Woollcott, you ask us to believe too much.”

“The way you talk about Matheson,” Kane said to Chalmers, “are you sure you didn't do it yourself?”

Renata Chalmers sucked in her breath.

“Nonsense,” her husband snapped. “Why would I do a horrible thing like that?”

It was hard to read the look behind Kane's rimless spectacles. He was either having a great time putting the old man on, or he was back to playing amateur sleuth and assigning Chalmers the role of villain.

“How about revenge?” Kane suggested. “That was a favorite motive of the late Sir Arthur Conan Doyle, if I recall correctly.”

“Watson,” Queensbury corrected under his breath.

Chalmers snorted. “Revenge for what? Revenge is for losers, not winners. If Matheson and I went after the same thing, I'm the one who inevitably walked off with it. Everyone knew that. I built a collection that Matheson would have paid a fortune to get his hands on, then I gave it away.”

“Stop it - stop it, all of you!” Molly Crocker's voice was strained. Looking weary, she shoved strands of graying hair out of her eyes. “You're all playing fun and games with the death of a man most of us knew. As a jurist and a human being, I find that distasteful and unconscionable.”

“I didn't know the victim,” Bob Nakamora said, “but I think the lady's right.”

“Indubitably,” Mac concurred. “In letting our passion for sleuthing get the best of us, we have been insensitive louts.”
Speak for yourself Mac; I wasn't in this for fun and games.

“Maybe so,” Queensbury said, “but the question remains: Whodunit? We all have a stake in the answer. You heard what Mac said earlier: A witness saw Hugh open his door to somebody wearing a deerstalker. Doesn't that make it look like one of us?”

In the awkward silence that followed, I wanted to point to the cap lying on the floor between his chair and Molly Crocker's and say, “You should know, Dr. Queensbury.” But, of course, I politely restrained myself.

Then Bob Nakamora pointed out, “We still haven't solved the mystery of the stolen books. Maybe whoever took those books was also stealing something from Matheson, and Matheson caught him. Couldn't a clever burglar have noticed a lot of deerstalkers around the hotel and put one on so he'd fit in? They're not hard to buy.”

Mac thumped the table. “Ingenious, Bob! But not, I fear, the truth. You see” - he knitted up his bushy eyebrows in concentration - “the killer demonstrably was not a burglar. A burglar is one who burgles something, a thief in the night, a cowardly creature of stealth. Not even a novice at that dishonorable craft knocks on his victim's door.

“Nor,” Mac added, leaning forward, “would a man of law be likely to admit a stranger to his hotel room. The implication is clear: It was a friend or, at minimum, an acquaintance who killed Hugh Matheson.”

That much I'd been sure of all along.

And now I was beginning to get a notion about why Matheson had had to die.