A Multitude of Sins (12 page)

“All right, Sean, thanks. I’ll see you in the morning, and I’m looking forward to it.”

“So am I. Charlie’s had a lot to say about you, too.” When she hung up, Conan took a long pull on his cigarette, then began dialing again. It was Steve Travers’s home phone, and Travers himself answered.

“Steve, this is Conan.”

“You know, I had a feeling it was when the phone rang. Who else always calls in the middle of the sports report?”

“Give me a schedule and I’ll try again.”

“Never mind. How’re you coming on your current case?”

“That’s what I’m calling about. I have a compliment to pass on to you.”

“Softening me up? Who’s it from?”

“Sean Kelly. She says you’re a jewel.”

“She’s kind of a jewel herself. And good, as well as decorative. She’s really been moving.”

“I was a little surprised at the fast work, but she says it’s all due to your fine cooperation.”

“Sure, and that Irish charm. How come you didn’t pick up any of that from your old man?”

“What do you mean? Just yesterday a very attractive young lady told me I was full of Irish charm.”

“Sure that wasn’t blarney? Oh, by the way, I have something on that first license you gave me. Rental, of course. It was hired out by a man named Roger Garner. Now, it so happens I’ve had some dealings with Garner. He works for a Salem outfit; the Worth Detective Agency.”

“Sean was right; you’re a jewel. What can you tell me about the agency?”

“Oh, they work divorce cases, mostly; nothing big. But here’s something I picked off the grapevine, and considering the questions Sean’s been asking, I thought you’d be interested. They do a lot of work for C. Robert Carleton.”

Conan took a quick puff on his cigarette.

“I’m interested. Who runs the agency?”

“Guy named Everett Worth. He has six men working for him, none of them top grade, but as far as I know, the whole bunch is clean.”

“I could’ve told you they aren’t top grade.”

“So, what else could you tell me about what’s going on down there?”

He frowned, remembering the sugar cannister and the mutilated canvases in Jenny’s studio. But he wasn’t ready to discuss either with Travers yet.

“There isn’t much to tell yet, Steve, so I’ll leave you to your vicarious athletics. Thanks for helping Sean.”

“It was my pleasure, and I mean that.”

After he hung up, Conan put his cigarette out, forehead lined as he considered the fruits of the day’s work. Some answers only breed more questions. He looked down at the list of phone numbers.

“Dr. K.” A Salem exchange. On impulse, he reached for the phone again.

The answer was cool and mechanical.

“Dr. Kerr is out of the office. At the tone please state your name, phone number, and purpose of the call.”

Dr. Kerr. That told him little more than “Dr. K.”

He put the phone back in the compartment. Sean would probably have the answer to that particular enigma. Meanwhile, Isadora was at large in the kitchen, her pianist’s hands at the mercy of assorted sharp instruments.

His smile at that thought faded abruptly.

It occurred to him how odd it was for a pianist to choose cutting her wrists as a means of suicide; the need to protect her hands should be so well ingrained as to be virtually instinctive and impervious to conscious control.

But suicide defied instinctual imperatives.

CHAPTER 11

Beatrice Dobie smiled at him from behind the counter where she was checking out a rental book for a frail, white-haired woman leaning on a silver-headed cane.

“Good morning, Mr. Flagg.”

“Good morning, Miss Dobie—Mrs. Hollis.”

The woman turned and gave him a sprightly smile. “Mornin’, Mr. Flagg. You’re lookin’ chipper today.”

“Not half so chipper as you. How are you?”

“Fit and full of vinegar. Had a bit of a cold last week, and all my relatives gathered ’round for the wake.” Then she laughed gleefully. “But I fooled ’em again.”

“Good for you. Just keep on fooling them.”

Mrs. Hollis, at ninety-odd years, was a local institution, the widow of one Hiram Hollis who had, in partnership with another real estate speculator named Day, founded Holliday Beach, incidentally amassing a considerable fortune.

Conan left the office door open, poured a cup of coffee, and sat down at the desk, musing idly on the chagrin of Mrs. Hollis’s relatives. But a glance at his watch diverted him from that. It was exactly ten o’clock. He looked through the mail, opened one letter and was engrossed in it when Miss Dobie came in. She filled her cup and sat down, favoring him with an arch smile.

“Well, I didn’t expect to see
you
for another week.”

“I said I’d be in and out, not totally out of it. By the way, I’m expecting Miss Kelly. She should be here any moment now.”

“Uh-huh. I’ll evacuate when she arrives, if that’s what you’re hinting around about.”

He smiled at her. “You’re a woman of rare sensibility, Miss Dobie. Where’s Meg?”

“Oh…probably upstairs asleep; resting on her laurels. I found another trophy at the front door this morning. That makes eleven mice this year.”

“You’re keeping a body count?”

“That’s for that snippy IRS man; the one who was complaining about deducting cat food for pest control. Anything in the mail I should take care of?”

He handed her the letter he’d been reading.

“You can answer this. A man in Malheur County; his great-grandfather left a journal which might give me a lead on that Lost Pueblo project.” He looked at his watch again, then at the shop door, while Miss Dobie eyed him curiously. “How goes the new case?”

“It goes, but I’m not sure where.”

“Well…I suppose it’s none of my business, but have you turned up anything exciting yet?”

He sent her a sharp look, then laughed.

“It
is
none of your business, but what do you mean by exciting? A body or two?”

She made an exaggerated shrug. “Of course.”

Before he could respond to that, he was distracted by the bells on the shop door. The young woman coming in was smartly dressed, endowed with long, elegantly formed legs, a pert, creamy-skinned face, and short, curly red hair.

He smiled to himself. “That has to be Sean.”

A glance at Miss Dobie impelled her to her feet. She evacuated as promised, venting a gusty sigh when Conan closed the office door.

Sean Kelly settled herself in Miss Dobie’s chair while Conan eyed her beautifully tailored beige wool suit.

“A very becoming outfit, Sean. City of Paris?”

She looked up at him with a crooked smile.

“I. Magnin, and I know it isn’t exactly beach clothes, but at two o’clock I’m playing the reporter from Back East, and I was afraid I wouldn’t have time to change.”

He laughed. “It’s still becoming. Coffee?”

“Yes, thanks. Black.”

He poured her coffee then sat down, watching her as she took a notebook and a manila envelope from her purse. “The transcripts,” she said, handing him the envelope.

His eyebrows went up. “Well, that was fast. Thanks.”

“I asked Steve to put in a word for me.”

Conan took the transcripts out of the envelope and skimmed through them. Isadora’s presented no surprises, except the electives in anthropology, nor did Jim Canfield’s.

Jim’s major was recorded as “Business Administration: Management.” His choice of electives showed a marked tendency to the path of least resistance, although he’d devoted six hours to psychology courses, and judging by his grades, done well in them. But he apparently found chemistry too strenuous. He’d taken an incomplete in Chemistry I.

“I wonder what Jim intends to ‘manage’ when he graduates,” he commented as he put the transcripts aside.

“His mother’s share of the estate, I suppose.” Sean had her notebook open on her lap, her piquant features intently businesslike. “Let me give you this from the top so I won’t leave anything out.”

“Fire away,” he said, thinking that Sean Kelly could read stock market quotations and make them sound entrancing.

“The license numbers; Steve checked those for me.”

“I called him last night. He told me about Garner and the Worth Agency. I assume Hicks is also on Worth’s payroll.”

“Yes, and that’s all I have on them so far.” She turned a page. “So, on to John Canfield’s will. These are all round figures. I didn’t think you were concerned about exact amounts or specific assets.”

“No, but generally what form do these assets take?”

“Real estate, mostly. Valuable stuff, that Willamette Valley dirt. I wish I’d been smart enough to have some ancestors settle there. There are some stocks and bonds, too; blue chip. The estate totals about seven million. There are quite a few minor bequests to assorted distant relatives, foundations, charities, and the Republican Party. I have a list if you’re interested.”

“I’ll check it later. Let’s get to the
major
bequests.”

She turned another page. “Those go to the immediate family. Catharine Canfield gets the tidy sum of one and a half million; her children are due for five hundred thousand each, but only at age twenty-five
or
on marrying.”

“On marrying? Does that apply to Dore, too?”

“Miss Canfield? Yes, both stipulations.”

“That’s interesting. Jenny’s already eligible for her inheritance, isn’t she?”

“Yes, and I assume she has it; the will was probated with no hitches. Miss Canfield is the only other major beneficiary. She gets the remainder of the estate. That was the wording; no specific amount. Right now, that remainder totals about three and a half million.”

He sighed. “That could buy a lot of piano lessons.”

“And a lot of trouble.”

“True. I understand the estate is controlled by the Ladd-Bush Bank and C. Robert Carleton.”

“Yes, but there’s a clause about Catharine having a say in the management of it. I heard some rumors—I met a very talkative young man from the Ladd-Bush Bank—to the effect that Carleton is trying to ease the bank out of the triumvirate, but the man in charge at the bank, Marvin Hendricks, is fighting it. And Bob Carleton is
not
held in high regard by the local legal fraternity. In fact, one lawyer’s secretary said the word had gone out that Canfield was looking for a new man to handle his legal affairs.”

“That sounds like a very sticky situation.”

“Here’s something stickier: my talkative friend at the bank says he thinks the Senator was considering changing his will a couple of weeks before he died.”

“What brought your talkative friend to that conclusion?”

“Well, this will was written right after Canfield married Catharine, and he hadn’t touched it since, but two weeks before he died, he took it out of his safe deposit box. It was found in his desk in the library after his death.”

“Had it been changed?”

“No. If there were any notes or suggestions of changes they weren’t found.”

“Sticky, indeed.” He paused, eyes narrowed. “By the way, you said something about an inside contact.”

Sean smiled. “Ah, yes. The ineffable Maud McCarty, the Canfields’ housekeeper for the last thirty years.”

“How did you manage to get to her?”

“Well, I checked the household staff, of course. There are only two live-in, full-time employees; Maud and Alma Blackstone, the cook. Anyway, I found out Maud’s a staunch Christian Scientist. Steve told me about a local printer who’ll set up anything short of counterfeiting, and he isn’t so sure about that. So, I am now a card-carrying staff writer for
The Christian Science Monitor,
and I’m doing an in-depth story on the late great Senator Canfield.”

“And Maud fell for that?”

“Oh yes. And Maud’s a doll; a congenital blabber. She keeps forgetting all this supposedly might get into print.”

Conan shook his head. “Sean, you’re amazing.”

“Oh, you haven’t heard the best part yet. I’ve been buttering Maud up. I’m meeting her this afternoon. That’s why I have to be back in Salem by two.”

He eyed Sean suspiciously. “Buttering her up for what?”

“Well, I think I have her persuaded that I can’t write the real story of the Canfield family unless I get to know them personally
without
their knowing I’m a reporter.”

“Sean, exactly what are you planning?”

She smiled enigmatically. “I’m getting to that. Now, Maud has a sister in Calamine-something-Falls.”

“Klamath Falls.”

“Yes, that’s it. God, these names. Anyway, sister has a heart condition, so she’d make a great excuse for Maud to be away for awhile, and with Jenny gone, they’ll need a temporary replacement; Maud’s been tending Catharine. And it just so happens Maud knows somebody who’s looking for a job as a domestic.”

“Look, even if Maud goes along with that—”

“She will. The
Monitor
is willing to pay for her cooperation.” She smiled innocently at Conan. “Aren’t you?”

“That isn’t the point. It’s too risky, and what do you know about being a—a domestic?”

“Conan, back in my CIA days I worked for some of the finest families in Washington, New York, and London.”

He couldn’t muster a smile at that.

“Sean, there’s a new factor now. Harry and I did a quick search of the Canfield cottage yesterday and turned up a cache of morphine.”

She frowned thoughtfully. “Yes, that does put a new turn on things. Is the morphine all you found?”