Smart House (19 page)

“Oh, sweet fanny,” Charlie breathed. “Don’t let anyone touch it! Are they all still in the library or television room?”

The officer acted as if a stranger asked questions and gave orders routinely. Without hesitation he said they were.

“Make sure they stay there,” Dwight said. “Let’s go look.”

The mark was hardly visible, a dark smudge against the redwood plank on the balcony. When Dwight started to get too close to it, Charlie automatically motioned him back.

“You’re an expert on burns?” Dwight asked, irritated enough finally for sarcasm to overtake the patient voice he had been able to maintain before.

“Oh yes,” Charlie said softly. “Oh my, yes.” He surveyed the area, a foot in from the edge of the balcony, at the place where the floor was cut away for the stairs to the grounds below. The railing was waist high, with a middle bar; the balcony was fifteen feet wide, narrower at both ends where the stairs began. Ten feet here, five for the stairs. The closest window was to the suite that had been Gary Elringer’s. Satisfied with the general survey, he now dropped to one knee and studied the burn mark more intently, and then he bent lower and sniffed it. He stood up and looked at Dwight.

“This is where he got bashed in the head and dropped his cigar. I think you’ll be able to get enough ash from the wood to cinch it. There’s a bit caught in the grain.”

Dwight was regarding him with a very blank expression. “You are an expert on fires, aren’t you? I read about that.”

Charlie nodded. “For a lot of years. An awful lot of years.” He turned away and gazed out at the ocean, the smell of rotten smoke in his nose, too many memories surging now, too many rotten fires blazing before his mind’s eye. “Can your tech men deal with that?”

“Yeah. We’ll cut out the section, but first we’ll use a vacuum on it.” He began to give orders to his men.

Gazing at the brilliant ocean, Charlie thought of the many smells of fire. The blazing fire without added water or chemicals, almost a clean smell, an autumnal smell; then the filthy odor of plastics and fibers and chemicals, wet wood and paint and insulation… A cold fire was worst. No more blazing, no more heat, but somehow smoldering still, emitting a poisonous vapor, that was the worst stink in the world. Then the builders came in and sealed it, and that was yet a different odor, almost corruption-sweet, and the glare of the sealant, a sickly blue-white with a high gloss…

“Let’s have a look below,” Dwight said at his elbow.

Charlie followed him down silently, thinking: They would find wheel marks that would now take on a significance they had not had this morning, and maybe a broken plant or two that had gone unnoticed before, with any luck a smear of blood. And so it was. They found the wheel marks and the broken plant, and even a very small smear that could have been blood. Lab tests would decide.

Chapter 17

Before Charlie left
Dwight to oversee the removal of a section of the planking, he said, “The gun will turn up. I’d have them go through Maddie Elringer’s room and car again.” A glint of satisfaction showed for a moment in Dwight’s pale eyes.

“Yeah. He could have moved it more than once. See you in a little while, Charlie.”

Charlie walked slowly along the verandah to the sliding door where Constance was waiting for him. She took his hand when he entered.

“Coffee in the garden bar,” she said. “With maybe a slug of something more potent than caffeine. Sound good?”

“Where are they all?”

“In the television room or the library. Seething. I stopped in and left again. Too turbulent for me.”

“Garden bar,” he said emphatically. He indicated the verandah. “You saw?”

“Enough to guess what I didn’t see. But it’s insane, isn’t it?”

They went to the bar where she had coffee and cups waiting. She poured while Charlie scowled at the turquoise pool at the distant end. The waterfall splashed and glittered in the sunlight that came through the dome on the roof; the air smelled of gardenias and chlorine and felt too heavy. She rummaged among bottles and came up with Cognac, added a therapeutic dose and a spoon of sugar to Charlie’s coffee, tasted it, and then slid it across the bar to him.

For many minutes they sat in silence until he grunted. “Milton’s in his room shuffling papers, smoking his cigar. There’s a tap on the window and he opens the door to admit the killer. Milton knows something, probably doesn’t realize that he knows it. The killer talks to him a short time, then coughs on the smoke and suggests they step out on the balcony to continue their conversation. He picks up something heavy in the room and carries it out with him. He says how about we walk down away from the other doors. Beth’s room is next door, she might hear us. They walk to the stairwell and he hits Milton over the head, kills him instantly. The cigar falls, but he doesn’t notice it yet. He runs back and yanks a sheet off the bed, returns to the body and manages to get it wrapped more or less, and drags it off the balcony to the landing, out of sight. It’s foggy; no one’s likely to be out strolling, or if anyone does take a walk on the balcony, there’s nothing to be seen. So far, so good.”

He tasted his coffee for the first time and looked surprised. “You make a mean brew,” he said with appreciation, and drank more of it. “So now he goes back up and sees the damn cigar and picks it up. He could just toss it, but he takes it back with him instead. He’s staging a show, and this is one of the props.” He paused, his eyes narrowed in thought, and sipped his coffee again. “We’ll come back to that,” he said finally. “So there he is, the bed a mess. He makes the bed, the one with a sheet missing now, and puts Milton’s briefcase on it, and turns down the other one, and goofs. He leaves the spread on it, and you spot the mistake. That’s okay, it works. The prints,” he said. “The fingerprints. He shouldn’t have left many, not on the lamps, the ashtray, all the copper stuff. Why clean all that stuff?” He became silent, finally exhaled softly, and said, “He had to wipe them because Milton’s prints weren’t there on any of that stuff.”

He became silent again, this time immobile, staring blindly. Constance poured more coffee for them both and waited. There was no point in her asking anything yet, she knew; he was asking and answering questions in his mind, probably the same ones she would have asked.

At last he spoke again. “It was the ashtray,” he said with conviction. “The murder weapon must have been the ashtray. Either he had already wrapped it with the body, or he carried it back and realized that it would be obvious that it had been used. Blood, or hair, something. Maybe he cracked it. That’s why he had to get a different ashtray and wipe off his own prints, and that meant he had to switch the other stuff, too. Lamps, bookends, all that matching stuff, and not a piece of it with Milton’s fingerprints. So, it wasn’t to hide his prints, it was to hide the fact that none of that stuff belonged there. All right!” He smiled at her and finished his coffee, and then gazed about the mammoth atrium with pleasure. “Not bad,” he said.

“Charlie, cut it out. Finish.”

“Oh well,” he said airily. “The rest is child’s play. He gets the gun, then goes around to the greenhouse and gets the cart and parks it under the landing at the stairs. The landing’s only four feet above the ground level; the cart bed is a couple feet high; no big deal to roll the body off the landing into the cart and trundle it down to the edge of the cliff, where he shoots Milton in the head and rolls him over the side.” He paused again and added, “It wouldn’t take a lot of strength, either, not with that garden cart we saw. It can carry a horse, make it possible for anyone to carry a horse.”

“I’ll roll you off that chair if you don’t fill in the details. First of all, why? It would be no less a case of murder if Milton had been found on the balcony with his head smashed in.”

“But he didn’t dare fire the gun that close to the bedrooms. They would have heard, no matter how tight that house is.”

Constance changed her position slightly, a change that was very subtle, but one that Charlie recognized. He had insisted that she study aikido in the beginning, had even urged her to show him personally what she was learning, but the time had come when she regarded him kindly and said that perhaps she should not demonstrate the new movements her class was studying.

Hastily he said, “Milton was not a small man. We all jumped to the same conclusion, remember? He would not have stood still for someone to push him off the cliff, but a shot? That’s different. There weren’t any powder burns, and that seemed to indicate some distance. Actually the killer was probably real close. When they find the sheet, they’ll find the burns. But, most important, it had to be on the books as murder, and there has to be a weapon to implicate someone most decidedly, and then the rest of them will be out from under. Not another mysterious fatal accident, a possible fall from a balcony, or even from the cliff, but a deliberate murder with a gun.”

She was still considering this when Dwight joined them, his lean face ridged and set. “We found the gun,” he said. “Under Maddie Elringer’s mattress. It wasn’t there yesterday.”

“Do you want coffee?” Constance asked.

He ignored her and continued to regard Charlie with hard eyes. They had become even paler, almost colorless. “I’m beginning to wonder if you don’t know too much.”

Charlie shrugged and looked lazy as he leaned back against the bar counter. “How’s that, Dwight?”

“You’re calling the shots, aren’t you? Leading us where you want us to go, holding back until you get ready to give a little. What are you up to? You’re working for that crowd all the way, aren’t you?”

Charlie grinned mockingly. “Well, you know I’m not here on vacation, and the state of Oregon sure hasn’t hired me.”

“You knew damn well that gun would turn up in his mother’s room!”

“Wrong. I didn’t know it. Let’s say I would have been surprised if it hadn’t. He’s being framed, Dwight.” The captain flushed slightly, but before he could interrupt, Charlie went on meditatively, “Either that, or he’s smart enough to mock up a frame-up.” He raised his eyebrows at the wording he had produced.

Dwight turned to Constance. “Is it hot?”

“Oh yes.” She poured out another cup of coffee.

He sat behind the bar and studied Charlie bitterly. “Okay. I’m the village idiot. The role fits. Explain.”

“The problem is we’re dealing with extremely clever people. They like puzzles and traps and countertraps. That’s how they earn their bread, solving puzzles. Computer puzzles, but the principle’s the same. Anyway, suppose Bruce is our killer and he’s smart enough to grasp early that he’s the prime suspect, just because of who and what he is. Okay, he goes along with that and puts on his Gary act and generally makes an ass out of himself. Offensive, but not a hanging offense, you see. Then he goes further and plants evidence that is all clumsy and amateurish.

“Like the dirt outside his door.” He glanced at Constance who had made a soft noise, an exhalation or a sigh, at his words.

“Ah,” she said, “that’s what I thought of when we found the computer in the flowerpot. Anyone smart enough to know how to uproot the plant and hide it there wouldn’t have scattered dirt around to track to his door. It didn’t make sense. Then I forgot it again. But the point is that when you examine plants that way, you don’t usually scatter dirt at all. I didn’t when I showed you how pot-bound the gardenia was.”

“See?” Charlie said. “That’s exactly the kind of thing I’m talking about. The gun was a cinch, either way. He hid it himself knowing a good lawyer would make mincemeat of your case, or else someone else is framing him. Mom hides murder weapon for killer son. Not very good. Clumsy. Interesting, either way.”

“Charlie, you and I both know that pretty clever people do some god-awful dumb things when it comes to trying to beat a murder one. I say if it walks like a duck, and quacks like a duck, and swims like a duck, then by God it’s time for the orange sauce.”

“They won’t even indict him if you can’t tie him to the other two deaths in a more convincing way than you tried before. Can you?”

“No. Can you?”

“I’m working on it. No sheet yet?”

“No. Where do you suggest we go pick it up?”

Charlie smiled good humoredly. “It’s a big beach, a lot of ocean. When’s low tide again?”

“If it was in that damn rock pile, they would have found it.”

“Maybe they’ve been looking in the wrong rock pile.”

For a period that stretched into a long time Dwight studied him bitterly. Abruptly he got up and headed out of the atrium.

When they were alone again, Constance said, “It was high tide when Milton was killed. The killer must have hidden the sheet somewhere until low tide and then tossed it, or it would have been exposed when the tide ran out. Down there in the driftwood? Who would spot it before he got back?”

“That’s how I see it working,” Charlie agreed. “He probably wrapped rocks in it to weight it down, maybe included the ashtray, and around dawn at low tide he could get out to the end of the rocks and give it a good toss.” He sighed. “If he did, they might never find it, depending on currents, deep holes, how good an arm he had, a lot of things.” He looked at his watch; it was after one. “Getting hungry? Let’s see what plans Mrs. Ramos has for lunch.”

Mrs. Ramos was busily preparing another buffet, hurrying back and forth between the kitchen and the dining room. Ten minutes, she told them brusquely.

“Enough time for another look at that cold-storage room,” Charlie said, and led the way through the kitchen, out the back door into the narrow rear hall, and across it to the door of the room Gary had called the root cellar. Charlie opened the door and switched on the lights and they entered.

The air was cold and dank, oppressive; the lights were the fluorescent sort that turned lips purple and skin a sickly greenish-yellow. Constance shivered and hugged her arms about herself. It hadn’t affected her this way the first time, she remembered, but now it seemed the very air carried a new menace. And that, she knew, was because the murderer was in this house now. Charlie quickened his pace down the stairs, across the room to the dumbwaiter, and she thought he must be feeling the oppression that she felt. He examined the door to the dumbwaiter, then opened it and examined the interior of the cage: a stainless steel cubicle without markings, revealing nothing. He dropped to his knee and felt the floor and wall joints, and then backed away from it, frowning.

“What are you looking for?” she asked, shivering.

“Not sure. If I send it up, the door locks automatically. I wonder…” He took out his pocketknife, opened it, and held it in the door frame with one hand, pushed the close button with the other. The door closed on the knife blade and he could not force it open again. He muttered under his breath and looked around. “Bring one of those carts over, will you? I think I’ve got the sensor here.”

She brought the cart. He pressed the open button and the door swung open smoothly; he withdrew his knife blade. “Now, let’s see if I can fool it,” he said. He turned the cart on its side with the stainless steel handlebar along the edge of the door frame, then positioned himself on the side of it and pressed hard. “Try the close button and then send it up, if it’ll go.” He wedged himself firmly and held a steady pressure against the cart. The mechanism clicked, and then the dumbwaiter cage moved upward.

“All right,” he muttered. “It might come down again when I let go. Let’s see if we can let go and push the cart under the floor at the same time. At the count of three. One, two, three. Now.” He let go and she gave the cart a strong push that sent it into the shaft. The cage did not start descending, and if it did come down, the cart might not hold it, but it would slow it down, Charlie decided, satisfied. He grinned at Constance and fished for his penlight, then got down to his knee again to look at the interior of the elevator shaft.

His satisfaction increased as he examined the side walls, and then edged inward a bit to look more closely at the back wall, the one that abutted the secret elevator. He had thought that elevator was an afterthought, and now he was certain of it. This wall had been replaced, redone. It didn’t match the side-walls in finish work, in craftsmanship; there was even a gap at the bottom. Shoddy, shoddy. And it was damn cold. He knew now that it had bothered him to find a cold wall the first time he had examined the secret elevator. In a house as well built as this one, that had been wrong, and he had been dumb not to follow up. He heard himself repeating silently, Dumb, dumb, and realized he was staring at his fingers, which seemed unable to hold the light steady enough. His fingers felt detached, too large. He tried to look at his hand to see if something was wrong with it, but that seemed to require too much effort. His eyes were detached, he thought, bemused at the idea.

Constance had been leaning over trying to see what he was looking at, but the effort became too great; her head was getting too heavy, she realized, and thought it might become so heavy that it would topple her over, and how would that look to be sprawled out on the floor of the cold-storage room, getting colder and colder second by second, maybe frozen stiff before anyone got around to finding her, and the—