Cat With a Fiddle (9781101578902) (8 page)

Chapter 11

The party should have been over, or at least on its last legs. It was past ten in the evening. But new blood had arrived in the form of three people—two men and a woman—whom everyone seemed to be making a terrible fuss over. I was too weary to inquire who they were.

Lulu was nowhere to be seen. I hoped she was finally tracking down field mice as Nature intended.

I couldn't bear that seat in the window another minute. When the crowd rushed forward in adoration of the newly arrived trio, I saw my chance to leave the party and call Tony. If I wasn't mistaken, this was one of the nights he'd be staying with my cats in the apartment.

There was only one telephone on the second floor and it was on a low table in the hallway, just outside the Polikoffs' room. I sat down cross-legged on the worn carpet, took the phone into my lap, and dialed my own number in New York. Tony answered on the third ring.

“Well, stranger, it's about time,” he said.

“I've been bad about keeping in touch, Tony. I'm sorry. Is everything okay there?”

“Everybody's fine. Except you're interrupting a rehearsal of my new play. Bushy is appearing in the Stanley Kowalski-type role. I'm the aging female lead. And Pancho is directing—when I can find him.”

“Are they eating?”

“At every conceivable opportunity.”

“Do they miss me?”

“What are you, kidding? They lapsed into horrendous feline depression the day after you left. I've had to put the pair of them on antidepressants. Matter of fact, we're all on them.”

“Any messages?”

“Yeah. Your agent called. Said not to worry about the
Beast
review, that everybody knows that critic is demented.”

“He happens to be an excellent reviewer, Tony.”

“Okay, Swede. Be a martyr. Let's not call him demented. Let's just say he's a man who plays badminton every Tuesday and Thursday.”

“What the hell does that mean?”

“Nothing, really. Just making conversation. It's good to hear from you, Swede. I miss you, no kidding. What's going on up there?”

“Well, it's cold.”

“Invite me up. I'll get you warm.”

I didn't answer.

“So what's the story up there—really? You sound strange.”

“Do I? In what way?”

“You know—you've got that abstracted kind of sound. Which usually means the hunt is on . . . Hey, Swede, are you okay?”

“I'm quite all right. But there
has
been some trouble up here.”

“Oh, shit. What?”

“Let me call you tomorrow, Tony. I don't have time to explain it all now.”

I hung up after convincing Basillio that I really was all right. I sat listening to the sounds of merriment downstairs. The party was still flying. And I was still alone upstairs.

All alone. That fact suddenly intrigued me. At the end of the hall, up a few steps, was the bedroom Will Gryder had stayed in. It was possible, I realized, for me to go in and have a look around, and no one would ever know. And what would I be looking for? I had no idea. It was just something that ought to be done. No doubt about that. It wasn't even illegal—just a bit illicit.

I climbed the two stairs quietly and entered the room, which had one of those dramatically slanted ceilings. For a tall person like me, the exposed beams posed a danger of major concussion. As I stooped a bit to avoid that danger, it occurred to me that the more removed you were from the center of the Riverside Quartet the further down the hall you slept. Will had been an occasional guest artist and accompanist, so it figured that he'd had this quiet little room. I suppose they'd have assigned it to me if he hadn't been in residence when I arrived.

I closed the creaky door to hide my trespassing and felt my way in the dark till I found the old wall lamp I'd sighted a moment before. When I flicked the light on it sent an eerie glow through the room—which was a mess.

The mess was understandable: according to Ford Donaldson, someone had rifled the room and then the police had searched it again. There was one outsized dresser in the corner. Each of its six drawers were open, the edges of clothing sticking out. Other clothes were scattered on the bed and the floor, but a jarringly modern clothes stand held a suit jacket neatly waiting for its owner, who of course would never again wear it. There were other things obviously preserved exactly as Will had left them the evening he'd walked out of this room for the last time: an uncapped fountain pen on the headboard, three books stacked on the small, rough-hewn bed table, and several booklets of sheet music on the pillow.

I looked through the books. One of them was in fact not a book but a copy of
The Massachusetts Review
, a literary journal. The issue was a couple of years old, and, oddly enough, the list of contributors on the back cover included the name Will Gryder. I turned to his piece and took ten minutes to skim my way through it. It turned out to be a decently enough crafted short story, one of those adolescent betrayal tales focusing on the father. Here was yet another aspect of the victim I hadn't known about: he'd had literary aspirations.

I glanced at the sheet music long enough to see that all three were by Chopin—two sonatas and a mazurka. I didn't examine it further, for I can't read a note of music.

Then I went through all the drawers. Will had brought along more underwear for his vacation up here than most men owned. Next I moved on to the old armoire, a knotty pine thing with splinters galore, just waiting to jab the uninitiated. Inside was an expensive London-tailored suit, a sports jacket, three shirts, and a wind-breaker. I searched every pocket. Nothing there.

At the bottom of the armoire were three pairs of shoes. I tried to recall what kind of shoes he had been wearing when we found his body, but I couldn't. One of the pairs were old sneakers; then there were suede chukka boots; and finally a pair of black dress shoes. The moment my fingers went inside the black shoes I felt a surge of excitement. There was paper inside. A hiding place for something important? Something the unknown searcher and the state police had missed? I pulled out the rolled-up newspaper, feeling utterly stupid. Will Gryder had simply stuffed his shoes with newspapers to help them keep their shape—as many well-brought-up children are taught to do. Disgusted, I pushed the shoes back and closed the armoire door. At least I had avoided the splinters.

There was a little bathroom at the rear of the room, without a door. An old-fashioned wash basin was visible from where I stood, and a leather toiletry case lay unzipped on top of it. I went in and picked through the completely anonymous items in the case: toothbrush, disposable razors, nail clip, condom.

I walked slowly back to the small bed then, sat down, and stared around me. As I looked down at the sheet music on Will Gryder's pillow, I began to feel, for the first time, the full weight of his death, a man I had never met. I felt the sheer, inexplicable sadness of it all. And for some reason I thought of something one of my acting coaches had once told me. He had been an excellent teacher, weaning me away from the Method, but he was prone to making murky philosophical pronouncements and he suffered from recurrent bouts of crippling depression. He'd told me once that he was obsessed with a comment of Camus. To paraphrase it: No matter how perfect a society human beings construct, there will always be trolley car accidents in which young children are killed.

That's what I thought about as I sat in that dead, attic-like room, a steady cold rain pattering against the little blacked-out window near the ceiling. I had found nothing in the room. I had trespassed and found nothing. That was a very bad sign.

Chapter 12

Breakfast at eleven! That sounds pretty decadent for a weekday. But this was the morning after the impromptu party, and no one, other than Mrs. Wallace, had stirred before ten.

Mat Hazan had gone out for a morning jog, and the bruised Benjamin Polikoff was still soaking his weary limbs in the tub. It was girls only at the table, and we must have looked like a group photo from a day camp for retired chorines.

Breakfast was plentiful and soothing: hot cereal with heavy sweet cream, raspberries, fresh-baked biscuits, newly squeezed orange juice with plenty of pulp, eggs baked with cheese and tomatoes, savory country sausage.

The ladies were all hung-over and tired from the party, but the group seemed for the first time to have broken free from the shock that the violent death of their friend had induced. They had grieved, and would grieve. But the party had somehow pointed them in another direction—toward the future.

Of course, they didn't know that another murder had almost occurred, in the Mercedes. Perhaps knowing that might have kept their grief alive a bit longer. On the other hand, one of them
had
to know about the rigged car accident, because he or she had been responsible for it.

I watched them closely as they ate breakfast. I listened to them carefully as they bantered at the table, remarking on incidents from the party and teasing each other in the way sober adults tend to do after a night of uncommon drinking. It was hard to believe that one of these people had driven the chisel into Will Gryder's chest. Harder still to believe he or she would gladly have exterminated three of us at one blow, even if only one of the occupants of the car was a danger to that person.

Motive? It seemed that many of these people had some petty reason for disliking or resenting the late pianist. But a negligible motive doesn't usually result in a stake through the heart. I grimaced, thinking about “motives.” My friend Detective Rothwax used to tell me that motives are meaningless; that motives are ridiculous; that good homicide detectives ignore the concept of “motive” completely. They want to know how the murder was committed, when, and by whom. They want every bit of crime-scene evidence they can suck up, but motive means nothing to them. It's a luxury they can't afford.

Rothwax used to tell any one of a dozen stories to illustrate his point. He particularly liked the one about the sociopath who has just been released from prison after serving eight years. He goes into a bar and gets drunk. The bartender eventually throws him out. On the street, he follows a man who he feels has insulted him. He picks up a thick wooden slat and brains the man, killing him instantly. He's walking away from the corpse when he realizes he may as well take any valuables that may be on the body, so he empties the poor man's pockets. The next day the newspapers report the murder and claim the man was killed during an attempted robbery. Point, set, match.

But Rothwax's world was not my world. I collected motives. I needed motives—big ones and small ones.

I snapped out of my somber thoughts about the complexities of motive just in time to hear Darcy scolding her colleagues in a mock-serious voice, “We all behaved very badly last night, ladies.”

“Whatever it is you're referring to, Darcy dear, I'm sure we're guilty as charged,” Roz said happily.

“I mean,
very
badly,” Darcy reiterated.

“Don't get too carried away,” Beth cautioned. “I doubt we did anything that terrible.”

Darcy, her mouth full of raspberries, said, “Oh yes, we did! We didn't drink a single toast to Aunt Sarah!”

A collective groan went up from the assembled. I didn't understand a thing, and it must have shown on my face.

“We're being a little rude, people,” Beth admonished them all. “Alice doesn't know what we're talking about.” And then she leaned in to me and explained, “Aunt Sarah was Roz's aunt. She's the one who gave us the seed money we needed to get started as a group—fifteen thousand dollars—to buy clothes, rent halls, buy ad space, everything. She underwrote our first tour, which was New England, by the way, so she's sort of our patron saint.”

Miranda lifted her coffee mug high and intoned, “To Sarah, who was there when we needed her most.” Everybody drank to Aunt Sarah.

“Has Aunt Sarah passed away?” I inquired.

“Yes,” Roz told me, “several years ago. And we don't honor her the way we used to. A shame.”

Ben and Mat joined the table then. Not that they were responsible for the ensuing dissension, but soon after they sat down the conversation did turn acrimonious. Some members of the group wanted to abort the “retreat,” given the circumstances, and go back to New York. I listened for a while to their arguing, which seemed to result in a complete deadlock, and then, feeling very ill at ease, I left the table, grabbed the heavy coat I'd adopted, and walked outside.

I walked to my rented car, climbed in, and ran the engine for a few minutes. I had been thinking of driving into Northampton alone, but then I thought better of it and decided instead to take a walk over to the sheds and pay a visit to my rocking friend, the toy camel. I gave Will's studio extremely wide berth this time, frightened that I'd hear that music again. I was in no mood for occult experiences.

My friend was right there on top of the cartons. Soulful as ever. I reached up and set him rocking. “Nice to see you again, you murderous dromedary,” I whispered. And it
was
good to see him. He was something concrete—visible, tangible evidence of the murder attempt. Well, maybe not to anybody but me. But at the very least he signaled the existence of a mad person somewhere in the vicinity, who thought it was fun to wreck moving vehicles.

It was a little too raw in the shed to carry on an extended petting session with the stuffed beast. I stilled his rocking and started to leave. Obviously, I could come back and see him anytime I liked—he was going nowhere. And that suddenly struck me as very peculiar. If the camel really had been part of a murder attempt, why had the guilty party left it there in the shed for just anybody to find? Sure, the door to the shed was always closed, but it was easy for anyone to get in. The local kids did it all the time, according to Lieutenant Donaldson.

If I'd been the one who'd caused a near-fatal wreck using the camel, I most certainly would have hidden it—buried it, burned it, given it to an orphanage, anything. Unless, of course, Ford Donaldson was right and it was just my delusion that the toy had been used to cause the accident. But I knew, all his logical objections aside, that Ford was
not
right, that someone
had
tried to kill the occupants of that Mercedes, me included, even if I was just an afterthought, a wild card.

So why did he leave the damn thing here, more or less in plain sight? Maybe the man—or woman—was simply a fool. Many murderers are. Surely that's why they're caught.

Was the camel's master just careless, sloppy?

Or was it quite the opposite? Perhaps the individual was wise rather than foolish, fastidious rather than careless. Perhaps the camel had been placed here on purpose, even methodologically, as in the “purloined letter” ruse. That old saw from the Poe story seemed to be timeless: If you want to hide something, place it in plain view.

I thought of all the futile searches that had been made of Will Gryder's room: the killer's, the law's, and mine. What if Will
did
have something in his room he wanted to hide? What if he knew the room might be searched, and so used the same purloined-letter procedure as the would-be killer who had “hidden” the toy camel?

If any of that was true, I already knew exactly what constituted the purloined letter in this case: three booklets of sheet music, all by Chopin. Two sonatas that looked mighty daunting, and a “mazurka,” whatever that was, lay right out in the open, on Will Gryder's pillow.

***

They were still arguing when I walked into the house. They either didn't know or didn't care that I'd returned. Or perhaps they had never noticed that I'd left. I walked quickly upstairs without removing my coat. The moment I hit the second-floor landing I rose on my toes and moved along the wall until I was inside Will's room.

The music was exactly where I'd last seen it.

In the first booklet, two pages from the end, was a small, tissue-thin envelope, the kind you sometimes get at the post office when you purchase stamps. It wasn't even sealed. In the middle of the second booklet, there was an identical envelope. The third piece of music held some sheets of onionskin paper, not in an envelope at all but simply tucked in between sheets of music. My heart was beating like a drum. I had un-purloined the purloined letter.

I slipped everything I'd found up my sleeve and walked back to my room, locking the door behind me. Sitting on my narrow bed, I opened the first envelope with hands that were just slightly trembling.

Inside the first envelope was a photograph of each of the members of the Riverside String Quartet, all taken when the women were much younger. Their clothing and hairstyles made it a pretty good bet that the shots had been taken during the early 1970s, or maybe even a bit earlier, the late 1960s.

The second envelope contained a computer disk. That was all.

The two folded sheets from the last piece of music turned out to be badly water-damaged. They appeared to me to be some kind of genealogy, or breeding chart—of the kind one might see for thoroughbred racehorses, tracing sires and dams back several generations to the foundation stock. But nearly all the names on the paper had faded, washed away, and the only visible marks left were the lines that apparently signified the branching—like tree limbs—from one generation to the next.

At the top of each sheet some lettering was visible—visible but cryptic. The first sheet was headed by the word SUZY in capital letters. The second carried the heading BRIT.

None of it meant a damn thing to me. I was furious, disappointed, and swept the whole pile to one side, very nearly onto the floor. Then, a little embarrassed by my own petulance, I gathered the material and neatly reassembled it as I had found it. And then I placed it all
under
my pillow. Will Gryder had left it all on top of his pillow, but he knew exactly what these mystifying documents meant. And he was dead.