Judas Cat (22 page)

Waterman watched him closely for a few seconds. Then he sighed. “It must have been somebody looking like you in the dark then,” he said. “I take it you aren’t going to tell us anything about Mike Turnsby?”

“No,” Barnard said quietly. “I don’t intend to.”

“Did Mrs. Barnard go over to Chicago to her mother’s funeral in 1933?” Waterman asked.

“No. She was not informed of her death until after the funeral.”

“Funny, Mattson getting word of it and her not.”

“‘Funny’ is not a good word for the situation,” Barnard said.

“No, I guess not,” the chief said, “I ain’t found much to laugh about in anything I’ve turned up. Doc, you got pushed around a lot back at the time of that typhus epidemic here in town. Was there anything personal in that?”

“There’s nothing very personal about an organization the size of Addison,” Barnard said. “There was money involved there. A lot of money. I happened to be the instrument trying to force them to spend it.”

“Just one other thing I’d like to ask you now,” Waterman said. “I’ve asked it before. Could there have been anything wrong with that cat, something you suspect but won’t say because you couldn’t prove it?”

“No.”

“Did you receive any follow-up on that vandalism here, say maybe, a warning to keep your nose clean?”

Barnard quashed out the cigarette, working at it nervously until every spark was out. “I received that warning this afternoon,” he said.

Alex remembered the man in the black sedan he had seen while waiting for the bus. “Was that about four o’clock?” he asked.

“I presume that was the time. When I went out of here to get the Riverdale paper I found a note had been slipped under the screen door.”

“Why didn’t you tell us this, Doc?” Waterman said. “Let me have the note, for gosh sakes.”

Barnard shook his head. “I destroyed the note. I didn’t want Norah to know about it.”

“Doc, do you realize we got about two pieces of evidence in this whole danged thing, and you destroyed the one concrete proof something was up?”

“Of course I realize it,” Barnard said angrily. “Do you think I’m a damned fool? I saved you a sample of the typing if you want it.” He got up and went to his desk. The key to the drawer he opened was on a ring on his watch chain. He brought back a piece of paper on which was written: “You will be most wise to ignore the investigation of Mattson’s death. May I remind …” That was all. The note had been typed, and there was certainly nothing to distinguish it except possibly the phraseology, its precise English.

Waterman read it and handed it to Alex. “Was it signed?”

“No.”

“But you’d be pretty sure where it came from with that ‘may I remind …’ wouldn’t you?” Waterman said.

Barnard looked at him but did not answer. Waterman took the note and put it in his pocket. “I hope you know what you’re doing, Doc. I think you’d be much wiser spilling out the whole story to me, and letting me judge for myself where it fits. I’m not Mabel Turnsby, to be starting a gab-fest on it.”

“Don’t be too hard on Mabel, Waterman. She’s getting old. You forgive old people a lot of things.”

“Not where a man’s death’s concerned, you don’t, not till you know where she stands on it. There’s nothing you want to tell me on it?”

“Nothing.”

“Doc, I’d like …” He was interrupted by a light tapping on the door, after which Mrs. Barnard came in immediately. She was wearing a blue chiffon evening dress with a silver waistband.

“Oh, I’m sorry, gentlemen. I thought Jeff was alone. How are you, Alex? And how is your young lady?”

“Well, ma’m, thank you,” he said, standing up.

“I wanted your opinion on my dress for the dance this evening, Jeff, but I can wait. I think we should have dinner early though, so that you can rest.” Barnard looked as interested in a dance that night as he might have been in a marble game. “Just so, Norah,” he said.

“We were about to go anyway,” Waterman said. “Doc, I’d appreciate it if you would put in an appearance at that council meeting tomorrow morning. I’m going to need all the friends I got.”

“I’ll be there.”

It was Mrs. Barnard who wisped them to the door.

M
RS. WHITING WAS ON
the porch with her shoes off and a glass of lemonade on the railing when Alex and Waterman came up to the house.

“Draw two more,” Alex said.

“Draw them yourself,” she said. “I couldn’t budge from here if somebody turned a hose on me. Sit down, Fred. I want to talk to you.”

Alex went into the house for more lemonade.

Waterman took off his coat and hung it over the back of a chair.

“Ida doesn’t look well, Fred,” Mrs. Whiting said. “She seems to be burning herself out. All that high tension isn’t good for a person.”

Waterman was examining his fingernails. “Sometimes I think that’s what she wants to do, Laura. It’s her way of getting over Freddie.”

“I know that. I know if anything had happened to Alex, well … I don’t know what I’d have done. But I’m just afraid she’s working toward a breakdown.”

“I know. I worry about it. I talked to Doc Jacobs. He says she’ll go on that way till she has a good heartbreaking cry, and then she’ll settle down to living her own life again. I don’t hold much with that. It’s old fashioned. But I’m danged if I know what to do about it.”

“I was thinking I might talk to her about Freddie, about a lot of things—religion, faith and prayer heals many things, Fred.”

“Yes, Laura. But they don’t work alone. They’re like yeast in a cake. You got to have flour, too.”

“I think I’ll talk to her just the same …”

Alex returned then. He gave Waterman a tall glass. “This is good for what ails you, Chief,” he said. “How was the ladies’ bazaar, Mom?”

“All right for them that likes it. I just can’t see the point to playing cards all afternoon on a day like this. Dice either. I kept feeling like I should be down on the floor doing it. And wouldn’t you know, I won a prize?”

“What did you get?”

“Two decks of cards.”

Alex winked at Waterman. “Give ’em to Dad for his birthday.”

“He’s already got them,” she said. “Alex, what’s this I hear about you and Joan in Andy’s house? Every time I came near a group of women this afternoon, there’d be a silence I could cut with a knife. Finally, Mrs. Waterman told me what it was all about.”

“Then I don’t have to tell you,” Alex said.

“Suit yourself. But it isn’t very nice. Joan’s father called a few minutes ago, too.”

“Did he ask my intentions?”

“Don’t be so flip, Alex. Joan’s a nice girl.”

“What in the devil do you think you raised, a monster?”

“I don’t like you speaking like that to me, Alex. Your father says you’ve shown very poor sense in a couple of things here.”

“We all showed poor sense here and there, Laura,” Waterman said. “We just played into the hands of people that want to make trouble.”

Alex took a long drink. “I’m sorry I spoke that way, Mom. There’s no sense in my chewing your head off for my mistakes. Was Mabel there?”

“She was there, poor soul. I felt sorry for her. Fred, she’s aged ten years.”

“She looked bad at the funeral this morning,” Alex said. “I even felt sorry for her.”

“Mark my words,” Mrs. Whiting said. “She’s afraid of something.”

“I wonder if she got a note like Barnard did, Chief,” Alex said. “I think I got a look at the fellow who left his.”

“Would you say it was the same person you saw at Mabel’s last night?” Waterman asked.

“To be honest about it, I just couldn’t say. I didn’t get that close a look either time. I’ve seen fellows on sentry duty in the war that swore stumps in a field at night were people they knew.”

“I guess you’re right. Did Mabel do much talking this afternoon, Laura?”

“She tried. It was kind of pitiful. She’d start off on something and then forget what she was talking about. And you know what a one she is for winning? You’d think her last judgment depended on it. Today she tied for third place in Five Hundred, and they had to cut the cards for the prize. When Nellie Holtz won, Mabel just smiled. She’s always asking for two out of three cuts when she doesn’t win the first time.”

Alex wondered that anyone as transparent as that could be involved in the old man’s death. “Was there any talk?”

“Questions and more questions. Like ‘Take It or Leave It.’ I tell you I got more attention than Elizabeth Arden. She was demonstrating a new cosmetic line. Made Mrs. Pasteriki up to look like Garbo.”

“You really got the works,” Alex said, grinning.

Mrs. Whiting got up and picked up her glass. “Your father wants to go to the dance tonight,” she said. “If I’m going I’ve got to lie down for a while.”

“Strange, the Barnards coming in for that,” Alex said when his mother had gone. “It looks like the Addisons, doesn’t it, Chief, with the old man’s will and everything?”

“We’re just going to have to wait, Alex. We need more than that.”

Joan drove up and parked the car in the driveway. Alex went out to meet her. They had a few words together, and when they came up to the porch, Alex said to Waterman, “Will it help if Joan tells you she found a man who knew Andy Mattson sixty years ago?”

Waterman shrugged. “It won’t hurt none.”

“Addison was an opportunist from the word go,” Joan said.

“How else do you get sixty million?” Alex said. “Can you believe this Bruckner?”

“I think so. The time seems right. Turnsby, Andy and Addison had a shop together in Webber. It was around 1880 or a little later. They perfected some sort of hydraulic machine and Addison filed a request for a patent on it. Someone had just patented a machine along the same lines and they lost out. Addison dropped out of their partnership and pretty soon they found out he’d tied up with a man named Winston, the same man who had filed the patent ahead of them. Addison took with him the complete information on the work Andy, Turnsby and he had done together. Turnsby took it to court. Mr. Bruckner says we could probably find a court record on it if we were to search for it. Andy was married to Addison’s sister, and he had been against the patenting in the first place. He washed his hands of the entire business.”

Alex interrupted. “Did Bruckner know about Turnsby marrying Anne?”

“I don’t think he did,” Joan said. “He’d have mentioned it. He came out here with Addison and Turnsby.”

“I guess Addison put the silencer on that,” Alex said.

“Anyway,” Joan continued, “Turnsby withdrew the suit. Addison was going leaps and bounds with this Winston, and Turnsby went in with them. That’s all there is about Andy in the story.”

“And you felt Bruckner knew what he was talking about,” Waterman said.

“I believed him,” Joan said. “I didn’t coach him or try to put the words in his mouth. And I saw the name Winston before. It’s on one of their products.”

“I wonder what happened to him,” Alex said. “Addison seems to have had quite a turnover in partners.”

“That’s what I meant about his being an opportunist.”

“Round and round and round we go,” Alex said. “What does the county farm look like these days?”

“Like the poorhouse,” Joan said.

A
LEX WAS ABOUT TO
leave the house to drive Joan home when the telephone rang. It was the librarian. She had received an answer to her wire on the painting. When he got to the library, Miss Woods looked more cheerful than anyone he had seen in Hillside that day.

“Alex, did you say Mr. Mattson had one of these paintings?”

“I don’t know whether I said he did, but I think so.”

She handed him the paper listing the dates of known works of the artist, their present disposition, and the history of their ownership from the time they were purchased from him. Andy Mattson had bought four of them over a period of seven years. Three of these were listed as in the Addison collection, the record showing that each of them had passed from Mattson to Addison within a year of their purchase. Andrew Mattson had been in Europe from 1905 to 1912 at least, and during that time he had again been associated with Henry Addison.

“Thank you, Miss Woods. How much did it cost to get this?”

“The telegram out of petty cash,” she said.

He stuck a dollar bill in the barrel bank.

Miss Woods was looking at him peculiarly, as though she were measuring him. “Yes?” he said.

“Alex, is there any truth in what I heard about you, ah … carrying on with the Elliot girl?” She looked immediately as though she wished she had not asked it.

“Enough truth to make gossip, Miss Woods. I took Joan to Mattson’s house to see the painting. On an impulse, I kissed her. Miss Turnsby was impulsive about it too.”

Miss Woods flushed at his frankness. “Oh,” she said.

W
ATERMAN RETURNED TO THE
station after supper. He went over a whole notebook full of notes and questions, theories and counter-theories. He could think of nothing that he had not checked. Mabel’s dishes from the Emporium … she had bought them, all right. It seemed strange for someone of her age to buy dishes. Over the years Ida had collected enough pieces to serve a banquet on … Mattson’s shoes, his glasses, wood and coal man, neighbors … he had checked them all. He was at his desk for a couple of hours. He heard the music start for the dance up by the high school, and the clang of horseshoes outside the fire station. Finally he locked up the station, left the key with the fire chief, and drove over to Mattson’s.

The house was as it had been since he first went into it, except for the two windows, boarded up now. The golden-rod had been mowed, but it lay wilting in the closeness of the night. Mabel’s house, too, was in complete darkness. Her bedroom window was open. The old lady had had a hard day, he thought.

In the workshop, all that had changed was the creeping dust that in time would probably cover everything and weigh it down, and bury it. When, he wondered, had the old man last worked here. There was a half empty bucket of coal at the side of the stove. He went to the stove itself and opened the door. A few crumpled papers had been thrown on top of the uncleaned grate. Waterman took them to the light. They were sketches and scale drawings of toys in the bold lines of Andy’s hand. The paper was sheer, and he held it at varying angles with the light. The reflection caught markings on the paper left from previous sheets used on the tablet. There was only a name, but it had been written several times … Mabel Turnsby.