A Lady Never Trifles with Thieves (16 page)

My bleary eyes averted to his captive. I blinked. Rubbed the lids with the heels of my hands. Focusing my gaze at floor level, I let it ramble upward at its own pace.

Knee-high, black, top-grain riding boots. Custom-made, judging by their fit. A pair of black riding breeches. Black silk gloves. A black cashmere sweater…

My eyes roved a soot-blackened face, then met Avilla Abercrombie’s hateful glare.

H
obbling to J. Fulton Shulteis’s office the next morning, it would have taken more than a nasty cold, bruised ribs, and minor burns and cuts from flying glass to dampen my spirits. Not when I’d been right about everything viz the Abercrombie case.

Well, everything except the perpetrator and the motive.

My original and favorite suspects, the elusive Gertrude Hiss and Sam Merck, had been joined in holy wedlock an hour before Belinda Abercrombie’s funeral. When they’d arrived at the manse the night of the murder, Merck was terrified he’d be accused of the crime. He’d served two years in prison for assault and petty larceny and was certain to be a suspect.

Gert guaranteed it by vowing she’d summon a constable to arrest him, then testify for the prosecution if Sam didn’t marry her. A justice of the peace in Salida had officiated the next day.

Sam might not have been a beaming bridegroom, but if he enjoyed German cuisine, starvation would be the least of his worries.

After being startled by the explosion and fall from the trellis into Jack’s arms, Avilla had little choice but to confess. That, and him finding the pillow slip full of Belinda’s jewels tucked in the hollow posts of Avilla’s canopy bed.

The child her stepmother was carrying was Hubert’s. Belinda had suffered two previous miscarriages, thus had sworn her husband to secrecy until such time she felt the pregnancy was enough advanced to announce it. Naturally, Hubert had told Avilla, then extracted a promise that she’d act surprised when Belinda disclosed the happy news.

Jack and I shared our suspicions about the earlier miscarriages, but Avilla denied doing anything to cause them. Perhaps she hadn’t. She was dead-bang guilty of one murder, and like Papa always said, “You can only hang once.”

Money was the motive. With the fifty-fifty chance that Avilla’s half sibling would be male, upon Belinda’s death the child would inherit the entire estate, as Hubert ascribed to the old-fashioned notion that daughters should marry well and sons should carry on the family name and business.

Had the baby been female, Avilla’s inheritance would have been halved—assuming, as she didn’t, that Belinda didn’t fritter away every nickel before Avilla got a crack at it. Ridding herself of Belinda and unborn brother or sister ensured Avilla’s future as a very wealthy young woman.

The modus operandi was simple, although it required patience, then near-perfect timing. When Belinda was too queasy for dinner at the Estabrooks, Avilla slipped a sleeping draught into Hubert’s drink before they went upstairs for the reading.

When Hubert nodded off, Avilla went to Belinda’s room and told her Hubert was ill. When Belinda rose to check on him, Avilla strangled her with the imitation pearls taken in advance from the jewel case. Avilla emptied the case into a pillow slip, stashed it temporarily in the back of her wardrobe, returned to affix the rope to the balcony rail, then hastened downstairs to open the doors and knock the vase off the table to waken the servants.

I’d also been slightly mistaken about the nature of the bruise on Hubert’s hand. I thought he’d barked it on the railing while tying the “burglar’s” rope. In reality, it was the mark left by Avilla’s thumb when she pressured the same point on Hubert’s hand to rouse him as Won Li did to banish my headaches.

Such was an example of yin and yang. Gentle pressure on specific points all over the body had curative properties. A hard gouge effected pain ranging from mild discomfort to excruciating.

Avilla’s sole mistake, which murderers almost always make, was to gild the lily. Bumping into a scraggly stranger on the street—namely, Vittorio Ciccone—and dropping the bar-pin in his pocket was brilliant. What down-on-his-luck drifter wouldn’t believe it to be manna from heaven and cash in on his luck?

Avilla must have danced a merry jig when she heard that the postmaster had identified Ciccone as having mailed a mystery parcel before he attempted to pawn the jewelry.

When the constables delivered Ciccone to his door notan hour after Garret McCoyne’s assistant posted the reward flyer, greed entrapped the postmaster. A share of the bounty offered for information and ridding the city of a derelict non-Caucasian appealed to his bigoted attitude. He was subsequently arrested for bearing false witness in a homicide investigation.

When Avilla later heard that Ciccone had been released from jail, she decided the Ladykiller Thief must strike again. In doing so, she overplayed what might well have been a pat hand.

Like liars parlay too much information, criminals of all kinds tend to cover and recover their tracks with boulders when laying low would hide them sufficiently.

Because she had, I manufactured a reasonably fair excuse to explain to Aaron and Geneva Wilhelm-Oglethorpe why I’d blown the doors off their house and wrestled Aaron to the floor when he’d gone to the window to investigate the presumed earthquake.

“I think you’ll agree that Avilla Abercrombie is not of sound mind,” I’d said.

The Wilhelm-Oglethorpes had exchanged a glance I’d interpreted as meaning my sanity was equally fragile. “We’ll never know whether Avilla’s scheme to re-frame Vittorio Ciccone would have extended to another murder.”

Geneva gasped. “You mean…”

“It’s possible.” I splayed my hands. “I’m not saying this to frighten you after the fact. It just seems common sense that if Belinda Abercrombie was thought to have been killed during the commission of a burglary, Avilla would not have deviated from that theory.”

Aaron clutched his wife’s arm. “Did you hear that, Geneva? Great God, we came a whisker from being slain in our beds tonight.”

“True enough, but…” Geneva frowned up at me. “Was it necessary to dynamite a huge, smoldering hole in the front of our house to prevent it?”

Dynamite was not the pyrotechnic I’d used, but I refrained from correcting her. “I really can’t say for certain, Mrs. Wilhelm-Oglethorpe. I am sincerely sorry for the damage, but might I point out, it was the concussion that prevented Avilla from entering through the window.”

“Yes, yes ’twas,” Aaron said. “The constable caught her on the way down.”

“From my position at the front of the house,” I went on, “I had no idea that she was already in custody. An argument could be waged that she wouldn’t have time to murder both of you, before your butler answered my knock, but…”

Aaron said, “If she’d only got one of us, it would have been you, pet. You sleep nearer the window.”

“I beg your pardon. You snore so loudly, surely she’d have slit your throat first for the tranquility it afforded.”

“That’s a horrible thing to say. Positively macabre.”

“It’s the truth.”

“Not.”

“ ’Tis, too.”

Before the spat escalated further, I apologized again for the damages. Thinking it would enhance my sincerity, I then offered to pay for them.

Geneva accepted with alacrity. Aaron argued that their lives were more valuable than a couple of doors and sidelights, even though they’d been imported from Wales at no small expense.

Geneva suggested I reimburse their cost and leave the balance of the repairs to them. “Five thousand will cover it, I should think.”

“Dollars?”

“That is a bit excessive, love, don’t you think? After all, we do owe our lives to Miss Sawyer.” He beamed up at me.

“Make it two thousand and we’ll call it square.”

The air whooshed from my lungs. I grabbed the edge of a console to keep from fainting dead away.

“Four thousand,” Geneva yelped.

“Three!”

“Twenty-five hundred,” she said. “That’s my final offer, Aaron. Take it or leave it.”

Two hours later, we settled on five hundred, payable in installments for the rest of my natural life.

Won Li said I’d gotten off easy. I told him if I heard another word about it, I’d cut off his pigtail and put it where the sun don’t shine.

Percy wasn’t at his desk when I entered J. Fulton Shulteis’s office to collect the much-needed fee for the LeBruton case. In a peculiar way, the clerk’s absence was a disappointment. I made a mental note to make up for it, next visit.

The enthusiasm with which Fulton greeted me had me glancing over my shoulder to see if, say, Queen Victoria herself were standing in my shadow.

“Allow me to add my congratulations to the multitudes for a job well done.” He grinned around a fat cigar that looked entirely too much like a similarly brown, elongated object. The other hand held up the newspaper. Just like the copy I bought that morning, the headline read “Joe B. Sawyer Captures Killer.”

Jack was quoted as crediting me and Sawyer Investigations with contributing to Avilla Abercrombie’s arrest. Alas, the tin-eared reporter heard the name as “Joe B.,” not Joby. A correction was to be printed in tomorrow’s edition, but the squib would likely appear between advertisements for magnetized trusses and bunion pads.

Shulteis said, “According to the account, your father couldn’t have solved Belinda Abercrombie’s murder without your help. Nor dispensing with LeBruton, for that matter.”

On the surface, they were true statements. But criminitlies, was I weary of Papa’s posthumous reputation eclipsing mine.

Fulton said, “So, the police think the real thief must have skipped town, when news of the murder got out, eh?”

“They do?”

“That’s what the paper says. Took the loot from the McCoynes and Whitelaws and vamoosed.” Pages rustled, then he pointed at a small piece below the third’s fold.

“Wouldn’t have done him much good to stay in the city. To risk apprehension while burgling another house was an invitation to a murder charge.”

The thief getting away scot-free irked my sense of justice and destroyed my bank account. Refunding the victims’ retainer would be my next errand. Wise of me not to spend any of the advance, but I’d had hopes of earning a goodly piece of it. All told, between the damages incurred, expenses unretrievable, and returning the hundred-dollar bank draft, I’d need a loan to buy a bottle of red ink with which to update the agency’s ledger.

I prayed the fee I’d come to collect would cover the rents due. And force a sense of satisfaction at the high odds of the burglar getting caught someday. I smiled to myself. Maybe even by me.

“I, uh, don’t mean to rush you, Joby, but I do have to be at the courthouse in a quarter hour.”

“Something to do with the LeBruton dissolution, I hope?”

“No dissolution needed. The rake is a bigamist, three times over. Penelope’s under a doctor’s care for malaise and attending symptoms of depression, but in time, she’ll be all right.”

With Abelia’s help, I thought she likely would.

Fulton tapped a sheaf of papers on his desk. “So, Joby. Congratulations, again, and rest assured, I will enlist the services of Sawyer Investigations at the soonest opportunity.”

“Thank you, Fulton. For the praise and the promise.”

“You’re very welcome.”

I hesitated a moment, then added, “But aren’t you forgetting something?”

“No…No, I don’t believe so.”

Shyster, I thought. The nickname wasn’t ill deserved.

“The fee. For the LeBruton case. Dissolution or no, I believe the agency is deserving of a fee for services rendered.”

He laughed. “Well, you’re a little too late to collect it.”

My heart stopped, then ricocheted wildly in my chest. “What do you mean, too late?”

Shulteis lofted a box of imported cigars. “I finally had the bona fide pleasure of making your father’s acquaintance, my dear. Lo, we had the most marvelous chat. What a storyteller he is. And what a repertoire of blood-and-thunder stories he has to tell.”

He chuckled, as though recalling an exquisitely bawdy anecdote featuring a cast of buxom Jezebels. “Naturally, when Joe said he must be going and inquired after the fee, I was more than happy to oblige.”

The body contains approximately eight quarts of blood.

As God is my witness, both gallons drained from mine and puddled at my ankles.

As the room faded from a sickly ochre to gray-black, I heard Shulteis say, “Truth be known, I should have doubled the payment for the honor of shaking a genuine hero’s hand.”