A Night at the Operation (29 page)

“Of course it did,” Grace said, a little peeved, wondering who I thought she was. “But Mr. Chapman saw that right away, and he told me he just wanted some company. We’d talked a few times when he’d been in for exams, and we just hit it off, you know. He told me right up front that there’d be no funny business, and he was true to his word.”

“What about the movies? Were they, you know,
real
movies?” I wasn’t just asking if Chapman had shown Grace pornography. I was also asking what a rival exhibitor was programming.

“Yeah, it was all old stuff, you know, like at your theatre.” Okay, so Grace isn’t
always
charitable. “But real serious things, you know, mostly foreign. Fellini. Goddard. People like that.”

“And you’d just sit there and watch movies?”

Grace’s eyes welled up even as she nodded. “Yeah, that was about it. But now, this detective is calling up and saying he found out who I was, and do I want my husband to know I was sleeping with this old man, and what’s it worth to me.”

I could feel my eyebrows drop. “Konigsberg is blackmailing you?”

She nodded, then gathered herself. “He called yesterday. Said he’d just found out it was me. And he wants money.”

“How much is he asking for?”

Grace stammered a bit, but got out, “Fifty thousand.” A woman sending three kids to college at the same time on the salaries of a public relations executive and a nurse.

“What did you tell Mike about all this?” I asked.

It took a few moments, but she pulled herself together. “Not much of anything,” she said. “It was all so . . . innocent. Or at least, I thought it was. But if this guy tells Mike, it won’t sound that way.”

I swallowed the last bite of whatever that was which would comprise my dinner. “Don’t worry for a minute, Grace. I’ll take care of it. Believe me, you won’t hear from Konigsberg again.” Her eyes grew. “Oh, stop it. I don’t mean it like that. Who am I, Don Corleone? But if I were you, Grace, I’d tell Mike about this the way you told me. He’ll understand.”

She sniffed. “You think?”

“Look, I don’t really know the guy, but if it were me, I’d understand. Now, I have to get going. Is there anything I can do?”

“You already did it.” Grace stood up, a changed woman. The old glint was back in her eye. I see it every year when she gives me a flu shot. “I’ll be okay. Thanks, Elliot.”

“I haven’t done anything yet.”

She kissed me on the cheek. “Yes, you have.” And she turned and left.

I went back to the theatre, and immediately called Meg Vidal.

 

 

 

 

ARMED
with my newfound information, I decided on arising the next morning to list the tasks I had to perform today. They included:

The laundry thing seemed least important, and while protecting Sharon was certainly my highest priority, that could probably best be served by taking care of item number four, the unmasking of Chapman’s killer. It would be good to get that one off the agenda.

I wondered how one went about doing so.

The facts I had so far amounted to the following: Russell Chapman had been murdered, a few days after having staged a fake suicide, when someone cut his throat with a scalpel, which the killer had not been considerate enough to leave at the scene.

Inside the room where Chapman had been found, there were signs of a struggle. There was some blood on the rug and on Chapman’s desk, not all of which was his, to indicate he might have injured his attacker. There appeared to be drag marks on the carpet, which could have come from Chapman’s feet or the wheels of his desk chair.

Chapman’s elder daughter appeared to be very concerned about the inheritance they might receive after his death. His younger daughter was concerned with making everyone play nice, an admirable goal that I am convinced is rarely achieved. Neither appeared to be terribly hostile toward the other, but they didn’t appear to be best friends, either. Then there was Lillian’s husband, a repellent man named Wally. But it’s hard to be seriously concerned about a man named Wally.

It was also true, according to Chapman’s attorney, that his will had been altered very soon before his death, after he had spent three days disguised as an insurance investigator for the distinct purpose of determining how much his daughters loved him, if at all.

Chapman had also been having a platonic but personal relationship with Grace Mancuso, the nurse at Sharon’s medical practice. It was possible, however unlikely, that someone might have told Grace’s husband about the suspicious-looking “affair,” driving him into an uncontrollable rage, but considering that even the crack PI Konigsberg had thought it was Sharon until yesterday, confronting Mike Mancuso would be a bad idea. The last thing I needed to do was blow Grace’s cover for her. And I’d met Mike a couple of times; he didn’t strike me as the “uncontrollable rage” type.

All of which left me feeling like I was in a dark room, searching for the doorknob I couldn’t see. And my head still hurt a little, even though I’d changed to a smaller bandage.

The best plan of action I could come up with—and keep in mind, eleven in the morning is early for me—was to go to Chapman’s house and see for myself. I admit, it’s not much, but maybe by seeing the room where the murder took place I could better picture how it happened, and that might lead to why it happened, and that might lead to who was there when it happened.

I
said
it wasn’t much.

And that, finally, was what led me to Moe Baxter.

When I need a car, I go to Moe’s repair shop and test drive something he wants checked. I give him a full report on returning from the trip. It’s a great arrangement, unless you ask Moe.

Moe, for reasons I’ve never fully comprehended, believes that I am merely mooching off his business for a free ride whenever I need one. Apparently, the auto repair business tends to make one cynical. So when I approached Moe’s shop, after a bracing bike ride in twenty-degree temperatures with a wind chill of four (but with snow tires), I girded myself for the usual argument.

I marched into Moe’s office without knocking, and he barely looked up from his desk. “Elliot,” he said. “Long time, no see, which suited me just fine.”

“Where were you on August 19, 1977?” I asked him, and that made him look up.

“Probably on summer vacation from college,” he said. “Why?”

“That’s the day Groucho Marx died,” I told him. “I thought perhaps his soul had migrated to you. You’re such a wit.”

Moe blew a raspberry. “I assume you’re here for a car,” he said.

“Yeah. And I know how you feel about this, but . . .”

“Is this about the Sharon thing?” Moe asked. Things get around quickly in a small town.

“Yeah.”

“Take mine,” he said.

Before I knew it, I was tooling along in Moe’s tricked-out Mitsubishi Galant, enjoying the state-of-the-art sound system playing Corinne Bailey Rae. Normally when embarking on such a mission, one might contact the investigator in charge of the case, but Kowalski would only use that whole “we’re the police and you’re not” defense, and what good was
that
going to do anyone?

Moe’s GPS told me (in a British woman’s voice, which was somehow reassuring) when to turn. I became hooked on the thing during the drive, and wondered whether it was worth putting one on the bicycle I use mostly to go back and forth to the same place every day.

Probably not.

In less than half an hour, it had directed me to the large house, hardly an estate and not the kind of place you’d expect a guy with forty-seven million dollars to live. The home had no gate, but did have a circular driveway. The house was built of light-colored brick, three stories high. I parked the car right at the entrance and zipped up my parka for the ten-yard walk to the door.

I rang the bell, expecting a butler at least as formal as an archduke to answer. Instead, I got Wally Mayer.

“What do you want?” he growled by way of a greeting.

“A steady income, a warm girl by my side, and the six missing minutes of
Horse Feathers
in a thirty-five-millimeter print,” I said. “But at the moment, I’ll settle for being let in the door.”

“Why?” Wally’s conversational skills had not improved since our last meeting.

“Wally, it’s four degrees out here if you count the wind chill. Even a somewhat less-evolved being like yourself must feel the cold. How about we discuss this indoors?”

He thought that over for an uncomfortably long moment, since thinking was not Wally’s strong suit, and finally stood to one side so I could walk in. He closed the door behind me.

“Now,” Wally said, “what do you want?”

“I thought I made that clear. A steady income, a warm . . .”

“Why are you here?” He’d made the leap of logic. If I’d had a liver treat in my pocket, I’d have slipped one into his mouth as a reward. “This is our house now, and we don’t have to let you in if we don’t want to.”

“Wow, Wally,” I said, savoring the alliteration. “You didn’t wait long to move your stuff into the old place, did you?”

“He was Lil’s dad,” Wally said, actually trying to justify his actions. “He’d want us to be here.”

“That remains to be seen, by registered mail,” I told him. “I was wondering if I could have a look around.”

Wally’s eyes became slits. “Why?” he growled.

“I’m looking for a new place, and I heard this one might be on the market,” I told him. I took a quick look around the foyer. “Do those drapes absolutely have to go with you?”

“We’re not going anywhere, and neither are the drapes,” he snarled. Good lord, the man was taking me seriously—what were the odds?

“Oh, that will be awkward,” I said. “I’m not really looking for a live-in couple just at the moment.”

“You’re not moving in,” he said, as if he were actually telling me something I didn’t know. “So what do you want to look around for?”

“Honestly, I want to see the room where Mr. Chapman died,” I said. “I think maybe I can help figure out what happened if I see the room.”

“The cops have been there,” Wally said. “What do we need you for? Somebody cut the old man’s throat. Lil thinks it was your wife, since he was killed with a scalpel.”

“There are so many holes in that theory you could fill the Albert Hall with them,” I said in an obscure
Sergeant Pepper
reference. “Sharon has no motivation to want Chapman dead—she’s not listed in his will.” (Okay, I didn’t know that
for sure
, but I was willing to bet it was true.) “Second, there was blood on the floor and the desk, and it wasn’t all your father-in-law’s, so someone is running around with a very incriminating wound. And third, you’re stupid.”

“Your ex-wife was humping the old man,” he said, then did a double take Joe E. Ross would have thought was over-the-top. “Hey . . .”

“No, she wasn’t,” I said. “But that’s not important, either way. Somebody cut Russell Chapman’s throat. You’re strong enough and dumb enough to do it, if your wife told you to. You know if she did it, she’ll claim you were in on it, even if you weren’t. Why not protect yourself?”

“Hey . . .” he repeated. The man could out-quip Oscar Wilde.

“Just let me up into the room,” I said. “In fact, come with me. If I find something there, I want you to be present to corroborate.”

“I’m not an accountant,” Wally said. It was a miracle he could brush his teeth in the morning.

I dropped my voice half an octave. “I know where you were when you were supposed to be in Japan,” I lied.

Wally’s face turned white as a sheet bleached for a Ku Klux Klan meeting. “No, you don’t,” he said.

“Yes. I do.”

“I . . . I . . . I . . .”

“Come on,” I offered, gesturing toward the winding staircase.

Surprisingly, he followed me. As we climbed the stairs, he said, “I heard they let your wife walk.”

“Ex-wife, and yes, mostly because she’s innocent.”

Wally rolled his eyes, and then, in a triumph of sensitivity on his part, said, “What happened to your head?”

“Like you don’t know.”

At the top of the stairs, Wally guided me to the door at the far left of the hallway. I was beginning to suspect that he’d given in a little too easily when we reached a dark wooden door. “This was the old man’s study,” he said.

I stood there until he turned the doorknob. I was determined not to touch anything I didn’t have to touch.

The room was large, but not ostentatious. Chapman hadn’t done it up in thick oak paneling, and didn’t have a bear’s head mounted over his desk. It looked more like the office of a mid-level executive, but for the gleaming, pristine chemistry set of test tubes, beakers, and burners sitting on a very tasteful shelf behind the desk, which had an iMac on it. Chapman was an Apple man, like me. But his was newer and fancier, naturally.

“Has anything been moved or changed since Sunday?” I asked Wally.

“Huh?” he responded.

I started to act the movements out with my hands, and spoke
veeerrrrry slooooowwwlyyyy
. “Has anything been
moooooved
or
chaaaaanged
since Sunday?” I repeated.

“No. The police had yellow tape up until yesterday, and I don’t think anybody’s been in here since then.” Wally was watching the office door, like it was going to do something interesting.