And 47 Miles of Rope (Trace 2) (19 page)

The dinner party was under way when Trace, Chico, and Sarge arrived at Felicia Fallaci’s desert home. A twelve-foot-long oak table had been erected on the stone walk alongside the front of the swimming pool. Six large candelabra blazed with flame, casting shadows from the dinner guests across the yard and pool and illuminating the eerie parrots, who sat in a nearby tree, their eyes electrically watching, waiting.

Felicia was seated at the head of the table when the three guests stepped onto the patio. Bob Swenson sat next to her with National Anthem alongside him. Walter Marks was on the other side of the porn star, looking very uncomfortable, as if he expected her to make some crazed incursion on his groin at any moment. On the other side of the table, their backs to Trace, sat the Neddlemans and Ferrara and Willie Parmenter.

Hubbaker was not there and the table was barely half-filled. Six more seats at the table were empty.

Felicia saw them and half-rose from her seat.

“Come on and join us, all of you. There’s plenty of room. I’m glad you could make it. Everybody, you all know Trace and his father, and this is Chico. You all know everybody here.”

Trace stepped over to the countess, kissed her cheek, then went with his father and Chico to the other end of the table. Silver covered trays shielded large mounds of food: potatoes, corn, chicken, ribs, small steaks, vegetables, and salads. Chico started filling a plate for herself.

“Not that you’re not welcome, of course, but what brings you here?” Felicia asked.

“Of course,” Ferrara mumbled sarcastically.

“Just sort of revisiting the scene of the crime,” Trace said. “We invited another friend. He’ll be along soon.”

“Any friend of yours et cetera, et cetera,” Felicia said.

“Where’s the baron?” Trace asked.

“Haven’t seen him all day,” Felicia said. “Dig in. There’s plenty of food and more in the kitchen. And if you don’t like the wines, ask, we’ve got others.”

Chico’s plate was already piled three inches high with food, in a masterpiece of balancing to rival Carmen Miranda’s hats. She took a bite of food, then leaned over to Trace. He nodded and she rose, excused herself, and walked toward the house.

“Little girl’s room,” Trace said. “Heh, heh.”

“Little girl’s room,” Ferrara said mockingly. “Would you believe that?” He turned to Trace. “So tell us, Super Shamus, how goes the detecting business? Solve any crimes lately? Commit any?”

“Solved a couple,” Trace said. He poured wine for himself and Sarge, and club soda for Chico.

“Oh. Anything we should know about?”

“A couple of killings and a jewel theft,” Trace said.

The background buzz of conversation at the table stopped.

“What’s that, Trace?” Felicia asked.

“I think we’ve finally got things figured out,” he said.

“You mean…Jarvis…the jewels?” she said.

“Yeah.”

“Well, talk, man. Explain. Get me my money.”

“Let’s finish eating first,” Trace said. “It’s a better story on a full stomach.”

“You can’t do that to us,” Felicia protested.

“Watch me,” Trace said.

“Come on, Tracy,” Walter Marks said peevishly.

“Eat, Groucho. Eat your little heart out.”

Spiro came hustling in out of the kitchen with more food, recharging cold gravy into warm. He saw Trace, passed his end of the table, and whispered into Trace’s ear, “Everything all right?”

“All under control, Spiro,” Trace said.

Chico came back, apologized for her departure, and sat down. She put her purse under the table, nodded to Trace, and started to attack her food.

A large silence hung over the table. Trace realized his announcement had put a damper on the conversation and no one spoke except National Anthem, who kept babbling about her impending film career, and Felicia’s parrots, who suggested once in a while that they might like a hit.

Night had fully fallen and the guests were into their coffee, brandy, and small cakes when Dan Rosado arrived.

Trace stood up and said, “Everyone knows my friend Lieutenant Rosado. Sit down, Dan. You hungry?”

“No, I ate.” He sat in the vacant chair next to Trace and said, “What’s going on?”

“You told me not to do anything without you,” Trace said softly.

“You can eat dinner without me. That wasn’t included.”

“We’re not here for dinner,” Trace said.

“Come on, Trace, we’re waiting,” Felicia’s voice rang out.

“By all means,” Ferrara said in a sarcastic tone. “Night has fallen. Far off, the owls are screeching. Close by, the parrots are crapping all over the yard. We’ve got all the makings of a Hitchcock thriller, so do, let’s get on with it.”

“I’d like to do a Hitchcock thriller,” National Anthem said.

“You’d make a wonderful victim,” said Ferrara.

“Eeeeyou,” National agreed.

“I wish Hubbaker were here,” Trace said.

“Where is he?” Rosado asked sharply.

“Nobody knows,” Trace said. Rosado began to get up from his chair, but Trace put a hand on his arm. “Let it go for a while. It doesn’t matter.”

“So who killed Jarvis?” Walter Marks asked from the other end of the table.

“Come on, Walter. We can’t just plunge into it that way. Where’s your sense of the dramatic?” Trace asked.

Chico was still eating.

“You mind if I start without you?” Trace asked.

Chico kept looking down at her plate, but she waved one hand over her head for him to proceed.

“One of the questions I just kept chewing over was why Jarvis didn’t have a passport on him,” Trace said aloud to the entire table. “It didn’t make any sense that a thief with a million in jewels is going to stop and steal a passport. Well, the thief didn’t. The fact was that Jarvis was traveling under a fake passport. He didn’t want any records to show he had come back to town.”

A deep voice rumbled, “Why not?” and Trace had to look twice to convince himself that the voice had indeed come from the hitherto-silent Francis Neddleman. He spoke and his wife nodded and they both stared at Trace.

“He was coming back on a secret trip to steal the countess’s jewels,” Trace said.

“That’s ridiculous,” Felicia snapped.

Trace said blandly, “I don’t know. I hear a lot of people get jewels by stealing them.”

He looked around the table. The Neddlemans and Ferrara and Willie Parmenter were staring at him. National Anthem was gazing off over the roof of the house, looking as if she expected to see her name being written in the sky at any moment. Marks and Swenson were watching him too, Marks looking disgusted, Swenson smiling slightly and nodding encouragement.

“So Jarvis said he got sick soon after he arrived in London, Felicia. You remember what you told me?” Trace looked down the table at her, their eyes locking for a moment. “That you told him to take a couple of days off in the country? Isn’t that right, folks? Isn’t that what she told him?”

“Yes,” said Ferrara, “but so what?”

“When did any of you find out that Jarvis wasn’t out resting in the British countryside but had come back to the States instead?” Trace asked.

Ferrara was thinking. Parmenter was silent. Mrs. Neddleman said, in a small timid voice, “When we heard he got killed.”

“Thank you. Exactly,” Trace said. “Nobody knew he had gone back to Las Vegas, and Felicia told you about it only when he turned up dead and she had to tell you about it. If he had done what he wanted to do and gotten back to London, all of you would have just believed he was in the countryside resting his poor stomach.”

The other eyes at the table turned toward Felicia, all but Chico’s; she was busy eyeing some glazed sweet potatoes on another tray.

The countess, for once, seemed to have lost some of her poise. Her voice crackled a little as she said. “Are you saying he wasn’t sick?”

Trace nodded. “Yes. And that you knew it.”

“You’re forgetting something. Willie got sick too. I told you, it was food poisoning.”

Trace turned to Willie Parmenter. “How’d you treat it, Willie? Did you go out into the countryside, too, to rest your turn-turn?”

Willie shook his head. “I went to spend a couple of days with friends,” he said. “In London.”

“Swell,” Trace said. “We’ll get to that. Anyway, Jarvis flew back here.”

“You still haven’t told us one thing about his missing passport,” Walter Marks said.

“Jarvis had two passports,” Trace said. “One was under his name of Early Jarvis. He didn’t want to use that one because he didn’t want any record of his coming back into the country. Remember, he came here to steal jewels and his alibi was being overseas. And he had a second passport, in the name of Edward Stark. That’s the name he grew up with. It’s the name he had on a police record in New York before he started working for you, Felicia.”

“Jarvis? I never knew that,” she said.

“Somehow I suspect that you did,” Trace said.

Neddleman’s deep voice rumbled again. “Are you saying Felicia had something to do with Jarvis’ death?”

“No, I’m not saying that yet,” Trace said. “But she knew what he was up to. He was going to fly back here as Edward Stark, steal the jewels, fly back out as Edward Stark, and let all the heat fall on poor Spiro. Why else would he have hired somebody with a police record for theft to work out here? It was all being set up,” Trace said.

“The passport. The passport,” Ferrara said. “So far, a lot of conjecture, but no passport.”

“Remember he had two,” Trace said. “Chico.”

She quickly finished chewing and swallowing a large lump of chicken and potatoes and reached into her purse and handed him a passport.

“Here’s the passport in the name of Early Jarvis,” Trace said. “It shows his trip to London. It doesn’t show any return to this country.” He handed it to Rosado.

“Exhibit A?” Rosado said.

Trace nodded, and Felicia” face, even under the warming effect of candlelight, seemed to lose some of its color.

“Where did you get that?” she asked.

“You know. In your suitcase upstairs. Chico found it when I said she was going to the little girl’s room, heh, heh. The other night you told me you hadn’t unpacked your bags from London yet and I thought you might still have Jarvis’ passport. Because, of course, he gave it to you when he was leaving England. He was using the other passport in the name of Edward Stark. We know that, for sure, by the way. Sarge found the flight manifest from New York to Vegas with Stark’s name on it. Those flight manifests can be dangerous evidence, can’t they, Mr. Ferrara?”

“I’m sure I don’t know what you mean,” Ferrara said.

“So the other passport, Trace? What about that?” Swenson said.

National Anthem seemed surprised at hearing a voice sound so close to her ear, and she looked around with what seemed to be interest, then concentrated on watching Trace.

“I’ll get to that soon,” he said. “I know it’s puzzling. Isn’t it, Mr. Neddleman?”

His voice boomed back. “It sure as hell is, but I like what you’re doing so far.”

“Now we had a problem,” Trace said. “If Jarvis was sneaking back here—”

Neddleman interrupted him. “Why did he call Spiro from the airport, right? If his trip was supposed to be secret, that would reveal his presence here, wouldn’t it?”

“Yes, it would, dear,” his wife said. “It certainly would.”

“At first,” Trace said, “I figured he called Spiro and then rented a car so he could get here while Spiro was out. But that wasn’t so. A minor thing, but for one thing, he rented the car first,
before
Spiro was called. And for another, he had the keys to this place. He could just have come out here and waited for Spiro to go to sleep and then sneak into the house, loot the safe, and beat it. No one would ever know. That’s why he parked his car back up on the road—so that Spiro wouldn’t hear it come up the drive or wouldn’t see it and notice the license plate.”

Trace noticed Spiro watching him from the kitchen door.

“Come on out, Spiro,” he called. “You might as well have a front-row seat.”

Spiro stepped forward, cautiously, and sat on a stone wall planter, back away from the mass of the crowd.

“So why did Jarvis call Spiro?” Felicia asked.

“He didn’t.”

“I swear he did,” Spiro said, jumping to his feet. “I swear.”

“Don’t panic, Spiro,” Trace said. “You didn’t do anything wrong. Somebody called, but it wasn’t Jarvis.”

“But—”

“Remember you told me that he didn’t really talk like himself on the phone. He was too polite? That’s because it wasn’t really Jarvis.”

“Then who was it?” Rosado snapped. His patience had obviously been frayed to breaking.

“Coming to it,” Trace said. “Another reason why the call couldn’t be Jarvis. If he called, Spiro here would tell the police and so much for the secret trip to rob the jewels and make believe he was in England. That would have been stupid and Jarvis wasn’t stupid.”

He looked around the table. “Now everyone pay attention because this is where it gets tricky,” he said. “Spiro goes to get Jarvis. Now the person who actually made the call is waiting, and when Spiro zips out through the electronic gate, he’s waiting outside and he slips in before the gate closes behind Spiro. He’s got a drill and he figures he’ll be safe for a long time because he told Spiro to wait at the airport for Jarvis. He never counted on Jarvis coming back because he thought Jarvis was out throwing up all over the British countryside.”

Trace poured himself more wine. “Anybody else?” he asked, but got no takers.

“So the thief gets into the house and he’s trying to drill open the safe and Jarvis comes back. He’ parks out on the road and walks up the drive to the house. He lets himself in. He’s very quiet because he thinks Spiro is home. Maybe asleep, maybe not. But when he gets inside, he hears the sound of the drill. He drops his bag, goes into the living room, and faces off with the thief. The two men scuffle and the thief slugs him, probably with his drill. Then the thief runs. He doesn’t know if Jarvis is dead or alive or whatever, but he’s no killer at heart, he just wants to get the hell out of here. So he leaves without ever getting into the safe.”

“Then what happened to my jewels?” Felicia asked.