Emerald Aisle (10 page)
PHILIP KNIGHT FLEW TO MINNEAPOLIS with the list Whelan had prepared of the stolen items that had arrived at the Notre Dame Archives. Joseph Primero looked at it in silence, then passed it to Waldo Hermes.
“Check it out, will you, Waldo?”
Primero told Hermes to leave them and when they were alone said to Phil, “I wonder if Waldo is behind all this.”
“The package that was sent to Notre Dame was sent from your wife's address.”
“It was!”
“Of course, anyone could have put down her name and address as sender.”
“You say they were letters?”
“Of Cardinal Newman.”
“I don't recall Waldo mentioning letters. But why would someone do this?”
“What reason might your wife have?”
To ask the question was to have the unspoken answer vibrate in the room. Primero nodded. “She could be playing a little vindictive game with me.”
“By stealing rare books?”
“Can you steal what you own?”
“You think she took these things?”
“Such things mean nothing to her. Even if she has some sense of their monetary value, she doesn't understand what they are.”
Phil felt that he had done nothing Primero had hired him to do. The Newman letters had arrived safely at the Notre Dame Archives through no effort of his own. He was almost glad that not everything had been sent to Notre Dame. If Bianca Primero had the still-missing items, Phil intended to get them back. Joseph Primero might regard his wife as joint owner of his collection, but that is something they could quarrel about after the items were back where they belonged.
It was a short drive from Lake of the Isles to Highland Village but long enough for Phil to talk to Roger on his cell phone and review with him everything that had happened since they first came to Minneapolis to speak with Joseph Primero about the missing items in his collection. Picking up on Primero's own ill-concealed suspicion of Waldo Hermes at the time, Phil asked Roger about the possibility that it was an in-house crime.
“A man as knowledgeable as Hermes could certainly appropriate items in his care and divert suspicion.”
“But he hasn't.”
“I mean serious suspicion. Of course he is at the top of the list. He would know that.”
“Right up there with the flown wife.”
A long pause while the significance of the remark failed to get through to Roger.
“Roger, you saw Hermes.” The curator was what Roger called hirsute, not exactly Lon Cheney as the wolf man but having far more than the average allotment of hair. His beard grew high on his cheekbones, his hairline was an inch above his brows, which formed thatched roofs over his spectacles. His eyes seemed to have just stopped rolling to form a losing combination. An unlit pipe through which he breathed
as if from the bottom of some sea of self-absorption sent out puffs of stale air as he exhaled. But speaking of his metier transformed him. Fluent, even eloquent, he had clearly impressed Roger, and that was good enough for Phil. He found it perfectly plausible that so interesting a fellow might be attractive to Bianca Primero. “It must be a source of constant temptation for him,” Roger mused.
as if from the bottom of some sea of self-absorption sent out puffs of stale air as he exhaled. But speaking of his metier transformed him. Fluent, even eloquent, he had clearly impressed Roger, and that was good enough for Phil. He found it perfectly plausible that so interesting a fellow might be attractive to Bianca Primero. “It must be a source of constant temptation for him,” Roger mused.
“The wife?”
Roger was bewildered. “No, no. Working with such priceless materials, manuscripts, first editions, rare codices. How could their custodian fail to regard them as his own? The so-called owner and collector must come to seem an imposter.”
“So he begins to make them his own?”
“Why should he? Everything is already his insofar as such treasures can belong to anyone. He is closer to them than Primero; it is his whole life.”
“So you think Hermes is out.”
“Not necessarily. It makes little sense if he is the thief, but then crime seldom makes sense.”
That Bianca Primero resented her husband's absorption in his books and manuscripts was clear from his remarks and their earlier interview with her. The more she withdrew from him, the closer he became to his collection. Had she stolen items and then sent them to Notre Dame to get her husband's attention? It was a gesture that fitted in with what Phil had been told of her and with his own impression from his one brief encounter.
There was no answer to his ring, and Phil sought out the manager of the condominium. This turned out to be a thin young woman with a crew cut and a tilt to her jaw that seemed to dare him to say something.
“Bianca Primero doesn't answer her bell.”
“So?” The woman's eyes were green. Phil wanted to comment on them, to move closer and study them. The jaw lifted another degree.
“Tinted contacts,” she said. “The lenses are green.”
“Nice.”
This almost flustered her. “So she doesn't answer her bell. What do you want me to do?”
“Let me into her apartment.”
“Ha!”
“You can be with me all the time.” Phil showed her his license.
“This is a New York license.” But there was respect rather than skepticism in her voice.
“I work for the husband.”
“If you can call him that.”
“They're estranged.”
“You ever meet her?”
“Oh yes. A lot more than tinted contacts.”
“She likes young guys.”
Phil leaned back against her desk. He had a sense they would get along. “Look, Norm ⦔
“How did you know I'm called that?”
Phil pointed at her name tag: NORMA RIGLER.
“But you said Norm.”
Phil shrugged. He could tell her he thought of her as a tomboy, but who knew what reaction that might get? Saying nothing proved wise. She picked up her keys and tossed them from hand to hand. She might have been picking petals off a daisy or flipping a coin.
“I haven't seen her for two days. That's unusual. Her car is in its stall. A Jag-u-ar. There's no one with her now.”
Clearly Norma knew what was going on in her building.
“I was going to check on her anyway. You can come along.”
They went up in the service elevator, and Norma let them in a back door that led into the laundry.
“Hello,” Norma called. “Hello, hello. It's Norm.”
Phil intended to search the apartment for the missing Newman materials but was unsure he would recognize them. But then, there was only one small shelf of books in the living room. Norma had gone into the kitchen and from there to the living room. Phil took the hallway and went back to the master bedroom.
She might have been asleep, lying on the large circular bed as if arranged there for maximum effect. A sheet covered her casually. Venus rising from the waters. Her hair was splayed out on the silken pillow. Pills spilled from several open bottles lying on the spread. It was the open, staring eyes that told Phil she was dead.
“My God!” Norma was beside him and tried to push past him into the room. He stopped her.
“Better not. We don't want to disturb anything.”
“Is she dead?”
Phil nodded.
“Don't you want to check and make sure?”
No need to comment on the odor that competed with the various artificial scents that clung to the room.
“She's dead all right.”
They might have been observing a moment of silence.
“Better call the police,” Phil advised.
“She was old, you know, but she took care of herself.”
“Maybe it wasn't a natural death, Norm.”
Silk fabric drifted scarflike from her throat and lay like her hair upon the pillow. The murder weapon? The pressure eased once she was dead? Her posture could not have been that in which she had died. Phil guessed that someone had taken the care to arrange her almost lovingly on the bed.
Norma called 911 and then Phil called homicide and talked to a Lieutenant Swenson.
“Don't touch anything.”
“Lieutenant, I'm a PI.” He hesitated. “New York license.”
Norma wanted to be downstairs when the 911 crew arrived to hold down the disturbance. Left alone, Phil searched the apartment for the first edition of the
Apologia.
He started looking in the bedroom but it wasn't there. It wasn't on the shelf in the living room, among the travel books. And then there was the sound of the back door opening and Norma appeared, followed by two uniformed cops and a blasé teams of paramedics.
Apologia.
He started looking in the bedroom but it wasn't there. It wasn't on the shelf in the living room, among the travel books. And then there was the sound of the back door opening and Norma appeared, followed by two uniformed cops and a blasé teams of paramedics.
Lieutenant Swenson came within the half hour. Tall, vacant blue eyes, mandatory blond hair.
“What's a New York PI doing here?” he asked, after a quick inspection of the bedroom.
“I was hired by her husband.”
“He worried about her?”
“In a sense.”
“That would be Joseph Primero?”
“You know him?”
“I know who he is.”
“I'd like to be the one who tells him about this.”
“Where you going to find him?”
“At his house on Lake of the Isles.”
“Minneapolis.” Swenson was a Saint Paul cop. “I'll come by there later.”
And so Philip Knight went off to tell Joseph Primero that his wife, Bianca, was dead.
THE NEXT TWENTY-FOUR HOURS were hectic, and Phil wished that Roger was with him.
“I could fly up there, Phil.”
“Alone?”
“I'd have to go first class. Or buy two coach tickets.”
“Let's just keep in touch for now, Roger.”
There was the telephone, of course, but more importantly, E-mail. Phil had finally subjected himself to Roger's instructions on the subject, a blur of unintelligibility.
“Don't ever try to teach someone how to drive a car, Roger.”
“I don't know how to drive.”
“Let's go over it again.”
They went over it until Phil had itâthe skill, and a remarkable little portable computer on which to exercise it. He got on the web via his cell phone and this made for an almost instantaneous method of communication. Thus it was that Phil followed up his phone conversation with Roger with a lengthy E-mail message.
Dear Roger
Bianca Primero was found dead in her apartment, apparently a suicide, though the body seemed arranged on the bed after she had died with a scarf, suggestive of strangulation, around her neck. Perhaps this was a deliberate effort to negate the fact that she was dead. A loving effort.
Joseph received the news in eerie silence. He was in conference with Waldo Hermes when I got there but sent Waldo away. Joseph thought I had come simply to report on my visit to his wife. When I told him she was dead, he sat in complete silence for several minutes, like a statue.
But then tears were running down his cheeks, and his chest shook with suppressed sobs. His expression never really changed. When he did speak, it was to ask if it had been a break-in. That's when I told him about the bottles of pills and how the body was arranged. He swore. I think it was the first profanity I ever heard from him. More later. Phil.
Phil wrote this message on the sunporch, and when he turned from his laptop Waldo Hermes was standing behind him.
“Bianca Primero is dead.”
The curator nodded. “I was eavesdropping.”
“You don't seem surprised.”
“This isn't the best time to say it, but I'm glad she is dead. Glad for him. A man with his interests and the wealth and intelligence to pursue them being jerked around by that aging femme fatale is not a pretty sight. Why couldn't he just accept that she was gone and concentrate on what he truly liked.”
“She was his wife, Waldo. I'm sure he loved her more than his books.”
“You've met her. You've seen what a shallow, vacuous tramp she is.”
Phil smiled. “Reason is not the sole guide in these matters. And they had been through a lot together.”
“The lost son?” The curator made what must have been a face behind the mask of hair.
“It defined his life, Waldo.”
This conviction had come slowly to Phil. Father Carmody had suggested that neither Bianca nor Joseph had ever gotten over the loss of
their only child. The boy had died while Joseph was serving with the navy; and whether or not he blamed Bianca for the loss, she seemed to think he did. Of course she had complained about Joseph's collection of books, but that scarcely accounted for the bitterness she felt toward him. While Phil was telling Primero about the death of his wife, he found himself looking at the framed color photograph of a little boy, standing in sunlight, a bed of hollihocks behind him, prominent on the table behind Primero's chair. Doubtless this was the lost son. When Joseph fell silent, he too turned to the photograph.
their only child. The boy had died while Joseph was serving with the navy; and whether or not he blamed Bianca for the loss, she seemed to think he did. Of course she had complained about Joseph's collection of books, but that scarcely accounted for the bitterness she felt toward him. While Phil was telling Primero about the death of his wife, he found himself looking at the framed color photograph of a little boy, standing in sunlight, a bed of hollihocks behind him, prominent on the table behind Primero's chair. Doubtless this was the lost son. When Joseph fell silent, he too turned to the photograph.
“But did it define hers?” Waldo asked.
“You don't think so?”
“I don't think she thought of anything but her own momentary amusementâever.”
Phil let that go uncommented on.
Waldo said, “What do you know of Dudley Fyte?”
“What should I know?”
“He's Bianca's gigolo.”
“Is that how it was?”
“He was half Bianca's age. She had the money.”
“What does he do?”
“He is a lawyer.”
“Successful?”
“He will never be in the same class as Joseph Primero.”
Waldo seemed to think that loyalty to his employer entailed despising Primero's estranged wife. How ironic that Joseph Primero had half suggested that Waldo might be responsible for the items missing from the collection.
Detective Swenson arrived then, and they all gathered in the kitchen where Waldo made coffee.
“You've already heard the tragic news?” Swenson said to Primero.
“Philip Knight told me.”
“Yes. He found the body, in the company of the manager of the condominium.” Swenson took a cigarette from a package, rolled it in his fingers, and began to stuff it back in the package.
“You can smoke if you want,” Primero said.
“I've quit.” He shoved the package back into his pocket. He asked Phil, “Why
were
you at the apartment?”
were
you at the apartment?”
“I wanted to talk with her as part of an assignment I'm on.”
“I asked him to talk with Bianca.” Primero rose. “Look. I'm in no mood to talk now. I am perfectly willing to speak with you later, but for now ⦔ He took a deep breath. “Where have they taken her body?”
“Downtown. There has to be an autopsy.”
“Don't I have to okay that?”
“Aren't you divorced?”
“Certainly not.”
“Do you object to an autopsy?”
“I object to nothing that helps discover whoever killed my wife.”
Between them, Phil and Waldo told Swenson what they knew. It was easier to speak of the Primeros without Joseph there, off on the terrible errand of seeing his wife laid out in the city morgue, wanting to see her before the autopsy began.
“They were estranged, not divorced?”
“Married in name only,” Waldo Hermes added.
“You work right here in the house?” Swenson asked the curator.
“Yes. I live here too since she left. Over the garage in what were
once servants' quarters.” His beard rearranged itself. A sardonic smile?
once servants' quarters.” His beard rearranged itself. A sardonic smile?
“How long ago did she move out?”
Waldo actually looked at his watch. “Four, five years.”
“Big fight?”
“Fight! He was like Chamberlain at Munich.”
“Explain that.”
“She wrapped him around her little finger. She did unforgivable things and he was the one who felt guilty. She was punishing him for something, maybe for not being an idiot like herself.”
Unobtrusively, Phil looked up Fyte, Dudley, in the telephone directory. A residence number and another for his office. In the kitchen, he dialed the latter and a voice said, “Kunert and Skye.”
“What is your address?”
“I beg your pardon.”
“Where is Kunert and Skye located?”
The receptionist rattled off a downtown Minneapolis address.
After he parked and started up the street to the building in which Kunert and Skye were located, Phil heard someone call his name. He turned and there was Larry Morton.
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