Emerald Aisle (16 page)

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Authors: Ralph M. McInerny

Tags: #Suspense

BOOK: Emerald Aisle
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IF NORMA WAS GLAD TO SEE Philip Knight, she concealed it well.
“Oh please, not again. I've wasted too much time with you guys already.”
“What guys are those?”
She meant Swenson, she meant the lab people who haunted the still marked-off apartment where Bianca Primero had died, she meant all the fuss of the murder investigation. For it was unequivocally a murder investigation now. It had been a toss-up between the pills and strangulation, and Swensen had chosen strangulation.
“One, I am a private investigator. Two, all this is meant to make life safer for young women like yourself.”
“You mean women cheating on their husbands? I'm not one of those. What if she got what she deserved, and soon he will get what he deserves?”
“The murderer?”
“You know who I mean.”
“You didn't exactly help when you got rid of all those tapes.”
“
I
got rid of them? Did I own them? I just turned them over to the owner.”
“Who requested them?”
“The one who also requested I not say, it being no one else's business.”
“You are in a surly mood.”
Norma lit a cigarillo and her cheeks hollowed as she inhaled. “I just don't want it to be my word that does him in.”
Here was the heart of the matter. Norma had of course identified Dudley Fyte as the young man who had been the dead woman's lover. “It was public knowledge! Any number of people could tell you the same thing.”
But not everyone could place Dudley at the apartment on the crucial day. Not everyone knew that although he had to go through the gate and thus past her if he drove, he could walk to the main door unassisted and unseen and let himself in.
“Anyone with a key could do that. But I didn't know they had found keys on him.”
The keys had been found in the glove compartment of Dudley's car. There had been a key to the front door of the building and a key to the apartment, plus other still unidentified keys.
“So how could you testify that he had been here that day?”
“I couldn't. He signed the visitor's book in the foyer.”
This was true. The visitor's book, placed on a little lectern with a stainless steel pen chained to it, was more ignored than used. But on the day before the body of Bianca was discovered, there was Dudley's name in the book, time of arrival, time of departure. The time span covered the estimated time of death of Bianca. And there were several earlier such entries that could be consulted for comparison. The same signature in all cases.
“So it doesn't rest on your word.”
“They say I will be called upon to testify. The prosecutor has been here.”
The prosecutor, a young hotshot named Jack Cousey, spoke of his case with all the cocky enthusiasm of someone who thirsted for fame as much as justice.
“Tight as a drum,” he described his case. “But any case can be screwed up. That is why it was given to me.”
“To screw it up?”
“I may call you as a witness.”
Phil laughed. “Witness to what?”
“Oh, come on. Primero hired you.” Cousey frowned. “Why have you stuck around?”
“I was hired to investigate a theft of books from his home on Lake of the Isles.”
“As opposed to his little pied à terre in the condo in Highland Village? In my jurisdiction.” Another frown. He seemed to frown whenever he was diverted from touting himself. “The theft's been solved, hasn't it?”
“The mystery is lifting.”
“What the hell does that mean?”
“I don't know who the thief is yet.”
He meant “know” as in know for certain beyond the shadow of a doubt. Roger had told him that the shaven Hermes—the depilated god, as Roger called him—had shown up at Notre Dame. Joseph Primero was also there.
“And I am here in snowy exile, forced to watch the Irish play basketball on television.”
The men's team was at last equaling the feats of the Notre Dame women's basketball team. After the football team lost its bowl game, any Notre Dame victory in any sport restored the wounded pride of Irish fans. But basketball victories were salve indeed.
“Roger, are you sure Waldo isn't our thief?”
There was a long pause during which Roger seemed to be humming a Gregorian chant. “Yes.”
“You're sure.”
“Wasn't that the question?”
“You are sure Waldo Hermes did not steal those items from the Primero Collection?”
“I am sure of that.”
“What
aren't
you sure of?”
“That natural events can ever be as precise as mathematical formulae. There may be as yet unknown but relevant objections to proofs of God's existence …”
Phil's only defense was to sing
La Marseillaise,
off key.
When Roger was in an enigmatic mood, he was hard to shake into clarity face-to-face, but Phil knew it was a losing cause over the telephone. He was in an annoyed and perplexed mood when he hung up and tried to settle down for an evening of televised pro basketball. What was he still doing in the Twin Cities? Everyone else had deserted the place and Roger was down in South Bend imagining possible accounts of what had happened in Bianca Primero's condo. Unable to concentrate as one must in order truly to enjoy a game, he gave up and went downtown to headquarters, where Swenson, almost as smug as Cousey, was happy to go through the case he had built for the prosecutor.
“It's classic stuff, Knight. Young man hooks up with older woman, in this case one who still had a husband. Who can understand the motive in such cases? It doesn't matter. Fyte admits he had an affair with her. Others know about it. The gate guard of the condo knew about his visits there. Everything is just fine until he wants to unload the old doll. But she isn't ready to say quits. Fyte has fallen for a young coworker; they are talking marriage. But Mrs. Primero intervenes. She embarrasses Fyte. There is only one way to get her off his back.”
“Murder her.”
“That's right.”
“Sounds good.”
“And you know something? I don't have to mention the theft, or alleged theft, of any books.”
“I want to talk to him.”
Swenson shrugged. “Why not?”
Adversity had stripped Fyte of the veneer of self-assurance Phil had found offensive before. Humbled, the lawyer accepted Phil's visit as if he himself had no say in anything anymore.
“There's no point in asking me any questions when my lawyer isn't present.”
“Do you want to call him?”
“Not really.”
“Besides, you're a lawyer yourself.”
“But I don't have a fool for a client.”
He meant himself. “My interest is not the murder of Bianca Primero. What did you know of Joseph Primero's rare book collection?”
“Only what Bianca told me.”
“What did she tell you?”
“Mainly what a nut her husband was about musty old books you couldn't get rid of at a garage sale.”
“Actually, they are very valuable.”
“She said he loved those books more than anything, more than her.”
“Did she ever show you any of the books?”
“How could she do that?”
“Never had any of them in her apartment?”
“I told you, she hated those books. Why would she want them around her?”
“I was hired by Joseph Primero to find who had stolen things from his collection. Some items showed up at the Notre Dame Archives, which is destined to get the collection eventually. But the rest are missing, including a very valuable first edition of the
Apologia
of Cardinal Newman. It is not at the house on Lake of the Isles. They are not in the Archives at Notre Dame. So where are they?”
“You're going to tell me.”
“I was hoping you would tell me.”
“What in hell does all this have to do with me?”
“A great deal. You went to the house on Lake of the Isles with a list Bianca had prepared for you. What did you do with the books after you took them from the house?”
“Where do you get such fantasies.”
Phil took out his wallet and opened it, showing Dudley the now smoothed slip of paper he had taken from the wastebasket in Bianca's apartment. Dudley looked at it closely.
“That's her handwriting.”
“The note also has fingerprints on it. There are more fingerprints in the house on Lake of the Isles. Among your keys was one to that house.”
He had suggested fantasies, so Phil gave him fantasies. If Dudley had handled this slip of paper, perhaps his prints could be found on it. If he had been inside the house on Lake of the Isles to take those books, more prints should be discoverable there. And Swensen had mentioned yet to be identified keys in Fyte's possession.
“Is that what you came to tell me?”
“More or less.”
“Can I tell you something now?”
“Go ahead.”
Dudley Fyte leaned across the little table separating the two men. He looked intently into Philip's eye, but his lip trembled and it was a moment before he spoke. “Even if all that you said were true, I did not kill her, Knight. Please believe me. No one else does, but somebody has to. I am innocent.”
Phil showed the poor devil such sympathy as he could. When has an accused murderer failed to proclaim his innocence? Maybe it all seemed a bad dream now and Fyte really believed he had not done what he did. He was led away but before disappearing he flung one last pleading look at Phil.
“WHAT ARE YOU GOING TO do?” Larry Morton asked Dolores. They were in a bar on Grand Avenue with a pitcher of sangria before them. The music was insistently South of the Border, either jangling and jumpy or Lenten and tragic.
“Consulting? ‘The last refuge of the scoundrel.'” She turned her glass as if in search of true north. “I still have these phrases and sayings that I picked up as a student. I don't even remember the name of the class or who the professor was. ‘To understand is to forgive.'”
“Madame De Stael.”
“How did you know that?”
“It was in the crossword puzzle yesterday. No, I just remember. It was the one we called Pom Pom.”
“For pomposity. He taught English.”
Silence. Memories. So long ago. Notre Dame. “Of course, it's not distant to you, Larry. You've been there all along.”
“Arrested something or other.”
“Sometimes I wish I'd never left.”
That could have happened, of course. The two of them married, he in law school, she too, if that's what she wanted. An apartment in married student housing, if they could get one, where fecundity was the order of the day. Or night. He looked away. “Why did we break up exactly?”
He pretended it was just a question asked in the interests of historical
accuracy. Getting it straight. Dispassionate. But how in the present circumstances could it be that for either of them? Dolores sat upright and open faced across from him, a picture of self-possession, young woman on the go. Yet he could feel her straining toward him across the table just as he felt drawn to her. First love is indelible. He tried to think of Nancy and found he couldn't.
She tipped her head to one side at his question. Her eyes lifted and she looked above and beyond him. She shrugged.
“Remember the day we went over to Sacred Heart and made the reservation?”
That broke the dam holding back the memories. They vied with one another to recall in as minute detail as possible things they had done half a dozen years ago and more, where they had gone, their friends, nightly visits to the Grotto, where they'd knelt side by side as if in anticipation of their wedding day. His hand went out for hers, and they seemed to pull one another closer across the table. Her face leaned toward his. And then, after an electric silence, she sat back.
“I guess I wanted more than seemed to be in prospect. Well, I sure got more, didn't I?”
“Look at it this way. You were saved by the bell. What if you had learned all this stuff after …”
“I told you that she actually asked me to lunch? Bianca Primero? We met in Dayton's Tea Room. My fiancé's mistress. A minor version of
The Golden Bowl.
”
“Did Notre Dame play in that one?”
“Pom Pom again.”
“He was cheerleader. We played Southern Cal.”
She took his hands and squeezed, and her face was close to his again. He leaned forward until the tips of their noses touched. They remained like that for minutes.
“We've become eskimos.”
“Stuck in our igloo.”
“Epoxy.”
Her head turned, pivoting on her nose, and then his lips slid onto hers. The table between them might have been the moral law. She sat back slowly, her eyes closed. “What about Nancy?”
“I don't know.”
Meaning, of course, that he did. The only question was how he was to tell her. One thing he and Dolores would have in common was two broken engagements. That was two things. But sitting with her in the booth in the bar on Grand Avenue he did not believe that there had ever been any break in what they had first felt for one another long ago at Notre Dame.
“I'll talk to her.”
“Oh, Larry.” But she was thinking more of Nancy than she was of him. At least Dudley had had the grace to commit murder and be taken out of the picture.
They sat on, conscious that the main issue had been settled; they were once again a couple. No need to think now of the next step, but how could either of them forget that reservation at the Basilica of the Sacred Heart for June 17?

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