Vineyard Deceit (19 page)

A man came in as we went out. He was firm of step and purposeful. A Thornberry man, apparently. One of Helga Johanson's underlings, in that case. He looked slightly askance at her arm tucked in mine, but said nothing.

She gave him a stony look as I walked her past him. “We'll be in the . . . we'll be upstairs for a few minutes, George. The list you want is on the big desk.”

“Yes, ma'am,” said George.

We went up the grand staircase. She gestured down a hallway. “The Padishah and his people are there. That is to say, they are occupying that wing of this floor. At the moment I believe they're all in Washington, except for Colonel Nagy.”

“Is the Colonel out checking up on the SDL?”

“What do you know about the SDL?” she asked sharply.

We were walking down a hall leading away from the Padishah's wing.

“Only what I heard from your boss and from Jasper Cabot.” I told her what Cabot had said. “My master plan is to try to track one or two local Sarofimian types down and ask them some questions.”

“The police are doing that now,” she said. “You're probably just wasting your energy.”

I smiled down at her. “I'll save some for the really important things. What's your theory about the missing necklace?”

“Thornberry Security prefers to work from facts, Mr. Jackson, not theories.”

“Call me J.W.”

“Oh, very well . . .”

“Good. I have a couple of ideas, Helga. Want to hear them? They're not much, but they're what I've got.”

“I don't expect them to be much, Mr. . . . J.W., but I suspect I'm going to hear them whether I want to or not.”

We came to the master bedroom and went in. The room was as I remembered it. The wandering Damon's dusty weapon collection was still hanging on the walls. I peeked into the adjoining bathroom. I didn't find the missing necklace lying in the middle of its floor.

“Naturally you've searched the house thoroughly.”

“Naturally. Water closets and all. You were going to tell me your ideas.”

“Well, I figure there are a lot of ways the necklace could have been stolen. First, of course, it might have been stolen before it even got here. Willard Blunt is the obvious suspect since he's been in charge of the necklaces for decades and afterwards apparently shot himself on the beach. Guilt, shame, and all that. Maybe he bought off Dr. What's-his-name of the Sarofimian National Museum to just
say
he put the necklace in the safe. Or, second, maybe Blunt could have stolen it from the safe between the time Dr. What's-his-name put the necklace in there and the night of the party. Who'd have suspected him? Trustworthy old New England lawyer and all that. Maybe he just carried it out in his pocket. Did anybody search him? I don't know. Third, still on old Willard's case, maybe he passed them to a crony from here in this room. What do you think so far?”

“Naturally we have considered all of those possibilities, Mr. . . . J.W. However, Mr. Blunt insisted on being searched that night and the guards on the tower also were searched and nothing was found. No one else could have gotten in there, unless, of course, you assume that someone in a rather complex conspiracy bribed all of our guards or came across the roofs and escaped the same way . . .”

“I'm willing to consider those possibilities. On the other hand, there are a couple of better ways to get the necklace to some cohort.” I gestured. “That slingshot. Open one of these windows and wrap the necklace in, say, a handkerchief, and the right man could throw it clear over the far wall. Or if he was an archer he could have tied the necklace to an arrow and shot it off quite a ways. Remember the commotion at the dock and the fireworks. Which way do you think the guards out on the balcony were looking while all that was going on? Open a window behind them and they'd never have noticed it. Do you know how many arrows there were before the theft? Did you count them afterwards?”

“No. That's nonsensical anyhow. Look at these old bows. They'd snap if they were used.”

“You an archer?”

“No.”

“Neither am I. Was Willard Blunt?”

“I don't know.”

“Could old Willard use a slingshot? He might have been a pretty handy sort of guy.”

“I don't think it makes any difference. Mr. Blunt's reputation was impeccable and he had no motive.”

The best embezzlers almost always have impeccable reputations. “Maybe old Willard had some motive you don't know about. Maybe he needed the money.”

“Willard Blunt left a considerable estate. I assure you he had no need of money.”

“Maybe he wanted to impress a lady friend.”

“Please.”

“Okay. He worked for Stonehouse, Chute, Cabot, and Adams. Maybe somebody in that outfit took it and somehow conned old Willard. Maybe Jasper Cabot did it.”

“I believe that the owners and employees of Stonehouse, Chute, Cabot, and Adams are above suspicion. But inquiries are being made, of course . . .”

“Ah, that's why Thornberry isn't here. He's in Boston where the real action is.”

She colored slightly. “There's plenty of action here, I assure you. We and the police are investigating the case thoroughly.”

“Maybe one of the guards up here that night, or both of them, pulled the theft. Got inside and lifted the ice. Maybe Willard slipped him the combination of the safe . . .”

“You're really something. You can't get Mr. Blunt out of your head.”

“Yes I can. I can think of several other people. How about the Padishah or one of his cronies? Or how about the SDL? Or how about you, for that matter.”

She actually smiled a real smile. “You really are a cop, aren't you? You suspect everybody.”

“Or nobody. It amounts to the same thing. You have to be careful about suspecting particular people too much; it can make you overlook other people. Now, Helga, you know my most secret thoughts on the matter, so tell me yours.”

“Are you through up here? Let's go down, then. I do have work to do.”

“Here you have me at your mercy in the master bedroom and you want to leave? What kind of a seductress are you, anyway.”

“My God!”

“All right, all right. We'll walk and you can talk. Sheesh . . .”

We walked and she talked. “We're running checks on everybody who came to the party. That will take time. So far we have nothing. We're also checking the help who came in for that night. The caterers, maids, and so forth. Most of them are island people who never got above the ground floor. There were maids upstairs, but no one was allowed in the hall to the master bedroom. I don't expect to find the jewel thief among them, although we may re-cover
a few pieces of silverware. We're also working the hotels and restuarants to find out if there are any Sarofimians employed there, our assumption being that any such people might be SDL members.” She touched her yellow hair and looked up at me. “Jason is in Boston, as you know, and the police are working on Blunt's suicide. You can talk to them about that.”

“You think the theft and the suicide are tied together.”

“For the moment. Of course they could be unrelated incidents, but the coincidence seems too great. Willard Blunt was a key figure in the theft and now he's dead. A suspicious guy like you shouldn't have any trouble tying the two things together.”

No trouble at all. “ ‘Once is happenstance, twice is coincidence, three times is enemy action,' ” I said, wondering if I was quoting or misquoting and suddenly thinking of Zee's abduction as I did. Suicide, theft, kidnapping. Three crimes close together in time and space. Hmmmmm. “Do you have any leads?” I asked. “Any evidence I should know about?”

“You mean a clue, like in detective stories?” She seemed to be warming a bit.

“That's the word. I'm Theseus and you're Ariadne. Give me the clue.”

“I know that one,” she said. “As I recall, all she got for her efforts was being abandoned on Naxos.”

“Your fate will be a kinder one,” I said. “You can be abandoned on Martha's Vineyard.”

“Abandoned is abandoned.”

“And a clue is a clue. Do you have one?”

“Well, not really. Not yet. I think the guards upstairs that night are clean. They've been with the firm for a long time and they've been totally reliable. They say nobody else got into the room . . .”

“So Blunt didn't do it and nobody else did it either. And then Blunt shot himself. Do you know why?”

“You'll have to ask someone else about that.”

“I will. Where shall I start?”

She waved a graceful hand in the general direction of Edgartown. “Out there. Talk to the police. The local guys and the state guys and the feds. We're all cooperating with one another.”

“And with me, of course.”

“Of course.” We had arrived back at the library. George was at a table, talking into a telephone. Helga Johanson paused and looked at her fingernails. I looked too. They seemed all right to me. “Maybe we could discuss this further over dinner sometime,” she said.

“Do you see yourself as the hostess or the guest?”

“I beg your pardon?”

“If you're the hostess, I know some terrific expensive places to eat. If you're the guest, it'll be pizza and beer.”

She touched my chest with one of the fingernails she had just been examining. “It'll be on Thornberry Security. Business expense. Choose someplace where they won't let you in in those clothes.”

“The tux was rented,” I said. “This is the real me.”

She smiled and shrugged. “Okay, pizza and beer it is. When?”

“On the other hand,” I said, “I do own some red pants and a tie with little whales on it, so I can get into most places.”

“Great. Wear your tie. When?”

“How about tomorrow night? Maybe by then I'll know something about this case and you'll feel more moral about charging the meal to the firm.”

‘Don't worry about my morals. You just tend your own. What time?”

“I'll pick you up at seven.”

“Seven it is.” She tapped that fingernail on my chest, turned, and walked to her desk. She had a nice shape. And blue was definitely her color.

17

It was almost noon. Zee was safe at work, and I was beginning to loosen up a little. The sun was hot, and I gave some thought to driving out to the Jetties and trying for bonito. Iowa was no doubt out there pulling them in. On the other hand, Jake Spitz of the FBI was meeting with the Chief at one, and I wanted to be there. As I rode the ferry across to Edgartown I imagined myself easing out past the Edgartown lighthouse in Jeremy Fisher's cat-boat. I didn't look too bad. People on the beach watched me enviously. Then, for the second time in two days, I drove to the brand-new police station over by the fire station on Pease Point Way. This time I paid more attention to it. The station was a thing of beauty, with an interrogation room, the Chiefs new office, an armory, a lot more space than the old station had offered, and a computer with which Edgartown's finest could keep track of their records and reports. Today it was lacking only one thing, the Chief, who was down on Main Street trying to keep traffic moving. I walked down to find him.

Edgartown is a lovely village, but it wasn't made for cars. Most of its narrow streets are one way, and cars, especially those driven by tourists ogling the sights and looking for parking places, tend to move slowly if at all. This snail's pace is slowed even more by the notion visiting pedestrians apparently have that the streets are really just wide sidewalks and that the cars on them are make-believe. They pay no attention to the cars and look annoyed or at least surprised when one comes along and forces them to step onto a curb.

I found the Chief at the Five Corners. He was leaning
on the brick wall of the bank watching while a summer cop tried, not too badly, to sort out the walkers and drivers and keep all parties moving somewhere or other.