Time Off for Murder (22 page)

  To answer her, Johnny Reese dug out a circular, advertising penny-sale specials at the New Deal Pharmacy, another announcing the bargains at the First National Store, and a leaflet of the double features in St. George during the last two weeks of November. He tossed them on the ground. "Peterson can't buy 'em any more," he said. "Got a hairpin?"

  He twisted the hairpin in the keyhole of the postbox. The flimsy door creaked open. A stream of envelopes slithered into his hand. He ran them over quickly. "Tax bill, letter from the mortgagee, tax bill, water tax bills, tax notice, mortgagee, mortgagee, mortgagee. Bet it got them sore as hops when that baby didn't answer the letters." He sorted the letters in his hand according to the dates on their postmarks. "The first of 'em came on the twentieth of October," he announced. "Nils Peterson hasn't called for his mail since the day after he had a date with Phyllis in the New York house." Then he crooked his finger. "Come around to the back," he said. "I never did like burgling from the front."

  The lean-to's screen door swung open. Johnny Reese threw his weight against the wooden door, tried a skeleton key in the key-hole. He went back to his car for his tool kit, pried the door jamb with his screw driver. He said: "No use. Bolted," and took a wirecutter over to the screen on the back window. He cut a square in the wire netting, struck the glass above the latch with the blunt end of a chisel. The pane fell inward with a pleasant tinkle. He reached inside, turned the latch, pushed the window up, and was over the sill.

  Mary heard a splash, a thump, a burst of profanity, then Johnny's voice: "Stay out there. This is a lake."

  She heard him sloshing about, muttering, and after a few minutes: "Go around to the front. I'll open the door."

  When he threw open the door finally, he was barefoot, his coat off, his trousers rolled above his calves.

  "The job needed a plumber, not a detective," he complained. "Water pipe bust in the kitchen. Froze and bust. Sweetest mess you ever saw. Here, you stay in here where it's dry."

  Clean air and sunlight came gingerly with the lady detective into a damp interior that was dining hall, bed-chamber, living room and storage warehouse. Bureaus, chairs, boxes filled every inch of the room. Against one wall stood a huge oak sideboard piled high with crockery; in the middle of the room, a round oak dining table, against the other wall a white enamel bed-stead, covered with a patch-work quilt. Along the quilt's length, one still could see the hollow of a human form. Under the bed was an old-fashioned commode and on the table a kerosene lamp, with blackened chimney and oil bowl nearly dry. In the shadow of the sky-scrapers of Manhattan, Nils Peterson had lived as primitively as his peasant ancestors.

  Johnny Reese gestured cheerfully. "Everything's here but Nils and his clothes. That," he pointed to a cretonne walled wardrobe, "that's where the hangers are. Clothes gone. Stay in here, sister. The muck's up to your ankles in the kitchen. Don't look at my feet. They're a holy show."

  "You're sopping, Johnny. You'll catch cold."

  "I will not. Tough as nails. Don't go in the kitchen."

  From the doorway, Mary peered across a sea of slime, at Nils Peterson's coal range, his iron sink, oil-cloth covered table, shelves, heaped with canned goods, groceries, dishes, pots and pans.

  "Didn't even bother to use up the supplies," she observed. "Washed out the coffee pot and cup and saucer. Still on the drainboard."

  "Yep. Packed up his clothes and beat it," Johnny said across her shoulder…. "Hold everything."…He was listening…. "We're getting company." He whirled around.

  A stooped, cadaverous man in ragged garments, a gray beard down to his navel and a battered hat pulled low over a leathery face, was hurrying up the path from the front gate. The man carried a huge tortoise-shell cat, and as he came, he called: "Hey, Peterson. Hey, Peterson."

  Johnny Reese rolled his wet pants down, went to the door. The stranger stepped back as he saw him. He dropped the cat.

  "Who're you?" the bearded man demanded. "Who're you in Peterson's house?"

  "I'm Reese," Johnny answered amiably. "Who're you?"

  "Me?" The man stuck a bony, dirty, middle finger against his breast. "Don't you know me? I'm Henry. I brung back the cat."

  "You brought back the cat? That cat?" The cat had stepped across the threshold, was padding around the room, mewing forlornly.

  "That's Peterson's cat," Henry said.

  The cat touched a paw daintily to the kitchen slime, raised its whiskers, returned to rub against Henry's leg. Johnny Reese stroked its fur. It hissed at him, arching its back.

  "Friendly beast," Johnny observed. "How'd you come to have it?"

  "He give it to me. To take care of for him."

  "When'd he give it to you?"

  "The day he went away."

  "When he went away, hey? When was that?"

  The old man's fingers combed his beard ruminatively. "Long time ago. Long, long time ago."

  "Did he say where he was going?"

  Henry's faded eyes seemed bewildered. "Why sure. Peterson said he was going back home to Sweden."

  "To Sweden, hey? Say when he'd be back?"

  "Nope." Henry shook his head. "Didn't say. Asked me to take care of his cat. Cat's name is Inga. He said: 'Henry, I'm going back to Sweden. I can't take Inga. Somebody gotta take care of Inga. I can't turn her loose in cold weather. Will you take care of Inga?' I said 'Sure.' He give me Inga, and he locked up the door and he said 'Good-bye, Henry, take good care of Inga.' I was gonna ask him when he's coming back, but he was kinda mad, so I didn't ask him."

  "What made him mad?"

  Henry raised a thin shoulder. "Don't know. Unless it was on account of he fall down on his suitcase."

  Mary Carner stepped out of the interior gloom. She spoke up. "Do you remember whether Peterson was wearing his glasses the day he went away?"

  Henry jerked back as if he had been shot. His mouth dropped open. His battered hat came slowly off a narrow, bald skull. "My gawsh." His voice was awestricken. "A female. In Peterson's house. How'd she get in?"

  "By the front door," Johnny answered. "Come in here, will you, Henry. We gotta talk this thing over."

  Henry stepped over the sill, looking side-long at Mary Carner. He sniffed. He retreated. "Not me," he said decisively. "Not in there. Smells damp in there. Damp as a grave."

  "Pipe bust. In the kitchen."

  "That so?" The visitor seemed mildly interested. "I figgered they turned the water off. I see the man come and turn the water off."

  "Where'd you see him from?"

  "My house," the man said vaguely.

  "Where's your house?"

  Henry's face tightened with caution. "Oh, over there…." His gesture swept the whole landscape.

  "In the big gray house up on the hill?" Mary asked.

  "How'd you know?" The man's little head came forward like a turtle's. "How'd you find out? Who're you anyways?"

  She smiled reassuringly. "You needn't worry about us. We won't bother you. We're looking for Peterson. We're friends of his from New York."

  "New York, eh? Over there?" The bony finger pointed down the road. "Way over there?" The voice was full of awe. "I never been there."

  Mary said: "We haven't seen Peterson for a long time. Came out to see how he was getting along."

  "Haven't seen him, eh? Well, neither've I. He's back to Sweden. That's where he come from. That's where he went back to. He don't like it here. I asked him: 'Peterson why you going back to Sweden?' And he said to me: 'Henry, I don't like this country. Too many bad people in this country.' Kinda lonesome up on this here hill all winter 'thout him. Glad he lef' the cat."

  "Just you and Peterson live on this hill?" Mary persisted.

  "Naw. We got lots of company." He pointed down at the graveyard. "We got them, down there. They give me work. I dig graves for 'em sometime."

  Johnny Reese said: "You could use a dollar or so right now, I bet." His hand went to his pocket.

  The old man's eyes twinkled. "I ain't askin' for it," he said warily. "Could use it. Ain't sayin' no. Ain't got a plug of tobacco in my pants. Ain't got a can of sardines for Inga. But I ain't askin'." His hand closed greedily over a crinkly bill. "Got some work you want me to do?"

  "Nope," Johnny answered. "That's for taking care of Inga."

  "Peterson sent it, hey? Didn't think he would."

  "Why not?"

  Henry's thin lips arched over toothless gums. "Why not? He…he…he. You don't know Peterson good. He'd skin a flea for its hide and tallow. Peterson don't give up nothin'."

  "But he left all these things here," Mary said.

  The old man's head wagged, affirming. "That's what he did. That's just what he did."

  "Then he made up his mind to leave very suddenly?" Mary asked.

  Henry combed his board again. "Suddenly? Why no. No, I don't reckon so. He was all night makin' up his mind. I seen his lamp burnin' all night long. I figgered Peterson wouldn't use up all that oil if he wasn't sick or somethin'. I come to the door couple a times. He would'n' let me in. Not 't all. Till the morning. He had two satchels all packed up and he says: 'Well, good-bye Henry, I'm going away.' I says: 'Gonna be away long?' He says: 'Maybe. Who can tell?' I says: 'Peterson, don't you want me to stay in your place while you're away? Take care of your things?' He says: 'No, I don't.' I says: 'Peterson, don't you want to give me your groceries? If you're goin' away, you ain't gonna need them.' He says: 'I ain't giving nothing away.' But he did. He give me the bread he had left from breakfast and a nice big hunk of cheese. And a can of sardines and a can of salmon. That was for Inga. I give her some of it. I let her have some of it. That was all he give me. He was mean. 'My things can take care of themselves,' he says to me. 'I don't need nobody.'" Henry's face screwed itself into a tight knot of spitefulness. "I'm glad his pipe bust. I'm glad it happened to him. If he'd of let me stay in here, I'd of took good care of it for him."

  "Mister Henry," Mary said seriously, "you're a very good rememberer. There's one thing more we want you to try to remember for us. Was there anyone else beside Peterson in the house the night before he went away. Or the morning he left?"

  "Especially," Johnny Reese added, "a woman. Was there a woman with Peterson? A little blonde woman?"

  "A woman?" Laughter split the seams of the weather-beaten face. "A woman. With Peterson? Hell, no." Mirth cackled in his throat. "Peterson don't believe in women. He don't have nothing to do with them. Him and me. Women's all bad. Women makes nothing but trouble in this here world. Ain't no woman with Peterson. No siree."

  "And so the next move's to the cable office," Mary summed up, as Johnny Reese drove toward the ferry. "If he went back to Sweden, it was, most likely, to the town he came from. You've got to have a passport to sail abroad, with birthplace on it. If he really sailed for Sweden it should be possible to trace him. Peterson must be found."

  "It'll be a lot of trouble to locate that old crab, sister, and I ain't so sure it'll be worth the bother. Because he didn't see the murder after all. He'd ducked out by the twentieth of October, because that's when he stopped taking his mail out of the box. And Phyllis didn't die till a couple of weeks after that, at the earliest."

  "But something happened to Peterson in the house at fifty-nine to scare the glasses off his face and the gun out of his hand. This Henry - that was a character to turn up - old Henry, the Staten Island hermit. Somebody ought to put him in a novel - Old Henry saw him moving around his house all night, packing his things. And early in the morning, Peterson gave away his cat, locked his door, and went down the hill to start for Sweden."

  "Well, what of it?" Johnny interrupted.

  "Let me finish. Henry, the hermit, made quite a point of Peterson's stinginess. Wouldn't give him his groceries. Wouldn't let him occupy his house. You, yourself, brought back the word that he refused to sell his Manhattan property unless he got a good price for it. Peterson hung on to his possessions. Money meant a good deal to him. Now, when a man like that suddenly ups and abandons his property - lets the mortgagee sell his house, lets his bungalow go to mold and ruin - something's happened to him. He's either got an exceedingly important mission to go on - something that means more to him than money - or will bring him money - or else he's scared. Peterson gave Henry no explanation, except that people were too wicked for him in the United States. They weren't too wicked before the nineteenth of October, were they? But on that night when he was so frightened he wouldn't open the door for Henry, they had become too wicked. He was so scared that he walked out on all his possessions and never came back for them. What could have scared him so? Something he saw, or something he did? Did he recognize someone at the table in the basement? Did he see something happen to Phyllis? Or did he do something to Phyllis?"

  "You mean he might have been the one shot her? Peterson himself?"

  "I don't think he shot her, because Phyllis wasn't shot the night she had a date with Peterson. But the wickedness that was too much for him might well have been Phyllis'. We thought of her as his friend and benefactor. But something might have happened to change the relationship. And only one person knows what that was. Peterson himself."

  "And so we go through hell and high water to find Peterson." A shiver rippled down Johnny Reese's spine. The steering wheel wobbled in his hand.

  "What's the matter, Johnny?"

  "Damned if I know. That was a funny one. Me shimmying like a jitterbug."