Cat on a Cold Tin Roof (14 page)

I wiped my feet on the rug that was just inside the door.

“This way,” she said, leading me to a huge living room, where every piece of furniture and artwork looked like it cost more than a replacement to the Ford would run. “Sit down,” she said.

I was about to sit on a beautifully carved chair.

“Not there!” she snapped. “On the couch.”

I sat on the couch, sank in a few inches, and waited for her to sit down on a chair that was the littermate to the one I'd been forbidden to touch.

“All right, Piston,” she said. “What have you got to say?”

“The first thing I've got to say is that it's Paxton,” I replied. “Eli Paxton.”

“Get to the point!” she snapped. “I'm a grieving widow.”

“The point is that we both want those diamonds recovered,” I said. “And with all due respect, I'm probably in a better position to find them than you are.”

“Why should I trust you?”

“There are three parties looking for them,” I said. “One party consists of three killers from Bolivia. The second is an enforcer from your late husband's Chicago employers. I'm the third.” I smiled at her. “Who would you rather trust?”

“None of you,” she said.

“So you're going to find them yourself?”

“I might.”

“You're the number-one murder suspect, Velma,” I said. “You start looking too hard and they're going to conclude that's why you killed him.”

“It wasn't me,” she half-snapped and half-bellowed. “I loved the bastard!”

“Yeah, I can tell.”

“And even if I didn't, he was a source of money. I don't know where he kept it, except for the collar, but whenever I wanted some he gave it to me. Why would I kill him?”

“I don't care if you killed him,” I said. “I'm not the police. Try to remember that. I'm just a private eye, trying to focus that eye on some missing diamonds.”

“If you think I'll ever let
you
keep them . . .” she began harshly.

I shook my head. “This isn't a game of finders keepers, Velma,” I said. “If I keep them, you or the insurance company will charge me with theft, and I won't be able to talk my way out of it.”

“With that kind of money you'll hire the kind of lawyers Jim hired and get off scot-free.”

“Even Jim's lawyer couldn't prove I had a right to the diamonds,” I said. “I just want to find them before the other parties do, and turn them in for a reward.”

“Fine,” she said. “Go. I'm sick of the sight of you.”

“I thought you'd like to make my job easier,” I said.

“Fuck you.”

“Or at least faster,” I continued as Fluffy walked into the room and began rubbing herself against my left leg.

“Oh?” she said, arching an eyebrow.

“I know they're valuable diamonds,” I began. “But they aren't the only ones in the world, or even in the Grandin Road area. There's a lot of money within a mile or a mile and a half of here, and probably a lot of diamonds as well.”

“So?”

“So if I find them, I need to know if they're the ones that were on the collar,” I continued.

She frowned. “How do you do that?”

“Did he buy them after you'd left the mob and moved to Cincinnati?”

“Yes.”

“Then they weren't hot,” I said. “And if he bought them legitimately, he probably insured them.”

“So?”

“So every valuable diamond has an identifying mark, something you need a jeweler's loupe to see. The insurance will describe the marks, so if I come across what looks like the right batch I can make sure of it.”

“So you want . . . ?”

“The policy or a copy of it.”

“I don't know if he had one.”

“Makes sense that he would,” I said. “Money was his business.”

“But the cat never went out. Well, until . . .”

“But she
could
have darted out,” I said. “Or some maid or handyman or anyone else who could spot that the diamonds were real could have taken it off her and left with it. You don't just let ten million dollars go riding around on a cat's neck without some protection—and the most logical protection is an insurance policy.”

“Like I said, I don't know if he insured it.”

“Has he got an office, a desk,
something
?” I said. “I can check.”

“Bullshit!” she snapped, getting to her feet. “You stay right where you are.
I'll
check.”

She got up, walked to the staircase, and began climbing up to the second floor, while I spent the next ten minutes petting Fluffy, which I had a feeling was the only thing in the house I was allowed to touch.

She began purring like a buzz saw and didn't climb onto the couch and try to push me off the softest part, which put her one up on Marlowe.

Finally Velma came back down the stairs with a manila envelope in her hand.

“You found it,” I said.

“Of course I found it.”

I got up, walked over, and reached for it.

“Not so fast!” she snapped.

I looked at her curiously but didn't speak.

“You can make a copy of it. I want the original returned.”

“Fair enough,” I said.

“If it's not back in ninety minutes, I'm calling the police and telling them that you stole it.”

“Have you always been a trusting soul, Velma, or has it just come with . . . ah . . . maturity?”

“Get the fuck out of my sight!” she yelled.

I walked to the door, and Fluffy decided she'd had enough of Velma too. I stooped down, gently pushed her back into the house, and closed the door before she could follow me out.

I got in the car, drove to an office supply shop a couple of miles away, just past Hyde Park Square, made a copy of the policy, and was back at Velma's place twenty minutes later. I rang the bell, and same as last time I waited a minute and then rang it again. Clearly she'd either fired the help or given them the week off to celebrate Big Jim Palanto's unfortunate demise.

The door cracked open.

“Don't come in,” she said. “Just hand me the policy.”

I passed the envelope over to her.

“I'll be in touch,” I said.

“Not until you get the fucking diamonds,” she said and slammed the door shut.

I decided, driving home, that I envied Big Jim. Not the money, not the lifestyle, but the fact that he'd never have to see his Velma again.

14.

I actually made it to my bed and spent the whole night fighting Marlowe for the pillow, which was annoying as all hell because I knew that if I'd fallen asleep for the night in front of the TV I'd have been fighting him for the softest cushion on the couch.

I woke up when Bettie Page, who had miraculously morphed into Marlowe half a second earlier, sneezed in my ear, and since my watch, which I'd forgotten to remove as usual, said it was 9:30, I figured I might as well stay up. Marlowe figured so too and started prancing nervously while I climbed into those few clothes—my shirt, my tie, and one sock—that I hadn't slept in and raced me to the door.

“Yeah, yeah,” I said. “I know. You gotta go first.”

So I clipped the leash onto his collar, tried to ignore my own bladder, and took him out for a walk. This time he didn't even make it to Mrs. Garabaldi's, which was fine with me, since it was drizzling again. As soon as he was done pretending to be a lawn sprinkler I turned around and headed for home.

Mrs. Cominsky was waiting for me.

“It's working!” she announced excitedly.

“The furnace?” I said. “I hadn't noticed that it had stopped again.”

“No!” she said. “Our ruse!”

“Which ruse was that?” I asked, still half-asleep.

She pointed to a huge box of mail. “Our ad! There was so much that the mailman left it in one of the post office's white plastic boxes.”

“Look, it wasn't the best idea I ever had,” I said. “Counting today's mail, and what's doubtless coming tomorrow, we've got hundreds of people who swear they found the cat and turned it in, and would like their reward.”

“Oh,” she said, frowning. “I hadn't considered that.”

And suddenly I saw a way to simplify my life for a few days.

“Still,” I continued, “there's always a chance that one of them has made a telltale blunder. As long as we're partners in this little enterprise, why don't you give them a first run-through and then pass on any that look truly suspicious?”

“I'll get on it right after I do the laundry!” she promised.

“Good,” I said.

“Great!” she said. “Gonna catch us a cat thief, we are!”

“Let's hope so,” I said, walking past her and climbing the stairs with Marlowe. When we got inside he explained to me that his food bowl was empty, so I opened the fridge, pulled out a couple of not-quite-stale jelly donuts, and tossed them in his bowl.

Then, while he was growling at and terrorizing the donuts prior to eating them, I finally made it to the bathroom and pulled out the insurance policy to see if it made any more sense in the daylight than it had the night before. Oh, there was no question that Palanto—well, Pepperidge—had taken it out, and no doubt it was for ten diamonds. It was dated three years ago, and that made sense too, since he'd been retired when he'd moved to Cincinnati, probably started working for the Bolivian drug lords seven or eight years ago, and hadn't started siphoning off money until three or four years back.

But after that it got confusing. If Sorrentino's information was correct, he should have been sitting on ten million dollars' worth of diamonds . . . but the policy was for only
one
million.

That didn't make sense. If they were worth ten million and you were going on record as insuring them, why insure them for just 10 percent of their value? And if they were only worth a million and you were worth, I don't know, maybe thirty or forty million, why insure them at all?

My only conclusion was that it was some tax dodge I didn't understand, not having been a multi-millionaire in this particular lifetime, and I made up my mind to talk to an accountant about it later.

The other thing that baffled me was the description of the diamonds. Not the
actual
description—so many centimeters, so many grams, so many carats—but the
technical
description, with terms and symbols that looked like some alien language. I don't mean French or German; I mean Martian or Saturnian.

I read the thing through a few more times, realized I had to meet Sorrentino for lunch before long, and headed out.

I got to the Skyline Chili joint a couple of minutes ahead of him, ordered a coffee, and wished newspapers were still worth reading so I'd have something to do besides stare at the other diners. Finally Sorrentino showed up, walked over, and took a seat.

“Anything?” he asked.

“Yeah,” I said. “I got the insurance policy from Velma yesterday.”

“She
gave
it to you?”

“Unhappily, but eventually of her own free will,” I replied.

“Anything interesting in it?”

I nodded. “I thought you told me that the diamonds were worth ten million.”

“Yeah,” replied Sorrentino.

I frowned. “Then why did he only insure them for one million?”

“That's gotta be wrong.”

“I just read the damned policy twenty minutes ago,” I said.

“My first thought is that he did it to throw potential thieves off,” said Sorrentino. “But that's crazy. If it's one million or ten million, it's still worth stealing. And who the hell was going to look at the insurance policy first? A good guess is that no one except Velma and his insurance agent ever saw it.”

“Okay,” I said. “I'm open to suggestions.”

“The best suggestion I've got is that it's a typo.”

“Come on, Val,” I said. “Even if it
is
a typo, don't you think Palanto or his agent would notice in three years' time that all his payments were based on a one-million-dollar policy?”

He shrugged and displayed his hands, palms up. “You got me.”

He was about to say something else when the teenaged waitress came by. He glanced at the menu and frowned. “I love this stuff, but three-way, four-way, five-way, what the hell's the difference?”

“Try 'em all and decide which you prefer.”

“Hopefully I ain't gonna be in town that long,” he answered.

“C'mon, mister,” said the waitress. “I got other customers, y'know.”

“Okay,” said Sorrentino, jerking a thumb in my direction. “I'll have what he's having.”

She turned to me and even stopped chewing her gum for a minute.

“I'll have a four-way,” I said.

“Me, too,” Sorrentino chimed in as she was walking away from the table.

We sat in silence for almost three minutes until she returned with the food.

“Damn it, Eli, Palanto wasn't lying!” he half-shouted, startling the other diners. “I'd bet everything I have on that.”

“I believe you,” I said. “I just don't know if I believe
him
.”

“Everyone else does,” he said.

I shook my head. “Who the hell is ‘everyone'? The Bolivians are here for the money he siphoned off, but to this minute they don't know anything about the cat or its collar. If they'd killed him and they knew about it, they'd have removed the collar, and if the cat got by them and they thought it might jump, they'd have shot it. I mean, hell, if they'd already killed Palanto, how much more trouble could they be in for killing a cat?”

He sighed heavily. “I know.”

“And as for Velma, whether it was worth ten million or one million, there's no way she'd be acting any differently. It's loaded with diamonds, they're probably legally
her
diamonds now unless we can prove he stole them, and from everything you've told me about her, and all that I've experienced myself, she'd have had them arrest me if the diamonds were only worth a thousand apiece.”