But He Was Already Dead When I Got There (6 page)

“Well, consider yourself lucky,” Nicole said soothingly, not certain whether Dorrie meant it or not. “And you know perfectly well that Simon is not having an affair. Especially not with Gretchen—I don't think he even likes her much.”

“Since when did that ever get in the way of sex?” Dorrie cried. Suddenly all the anger drained out of her. “Oh, you're right. I don't really suspect Simon—I've no reason to. Not Simon. I was just letting off steam.”

Nicole looked at her curiously. “Dorrie, you get mad faster and cool down faster than anyone else I know. I think we've had enough true confessions for one evening. Come on—let's go count diamonds.”

They rejoined the men. The two women left with Lionel for Ellandy's while Simon and Malcolm drove away in their own cars, the latter wondering why his sister had been glaring at him so darkly as she left.

Ellandy Jewels took up a great deal of expensive ground floor space in a new building in an old neighborhood. The neighborhood was considered quaint by the upscale segment of the population and was undergoing an extensive renovation process; chic and expensive new shops were sprouting like mushrooms. As an “in” location, it couldn't be better—although long-time neighborhood residents were less than delighted by the invasion. Already graffiti along the lines of “Yuppie Go Home” had begun to appear.

Ellandy's two owners and Nicole Lattimer had checked in with the nightwatchman. Now the vault door in Ellandy Jewels stood open as three nervous people tried to figure out whether they were going out of business or not. Dorrie was studying a printout sheet. “According to the list,” she said, “drawer E-3 is supposed to hold a hundred twenty-five stones. I count a hundred twenty-three.”

“Let me,” said Nicole. Quickly her forefinger flicked each emerald aside as she counted. “One twenty-one.”

“Lionel,” both women said.

Lionel counted. “I get one twenty-two.” The three exchanged a bleak look. “I guess this wasn't such a good idea,” Lionel said. “We're so jumpy we keep making mistakes. We've been here over an hour and we haven't really accomplished anything—let's pack it in.”

Dorrie nodded but Nicole said, “It's not going to be any easier tomorrow.”

“It might. After we get a little sleep.”

“Can you sleep? I don't think I can.”

“I know how you feel,” Dorrie said. “I'm too keyed up just to lie down and close my eyes.”

“Let's try again,” Nicole urged.

They counted the stones in drawer E-3 one more time, separating the emeralds into groups of ten and double-checking. The final count was one twenty-four. “One short,” said Dorrie.

The fate of Ellandy Jewels would not be determined by one missing emerald; but it was the sort of inconsistency that would have to be tracked down through the computer records—a chore none of them was up to at the moment. “Let's go on,” said Nicole.

Two drawers later, Dorrie announced, “I think I've got a Plan D.” She immediately had the attention of the other two. “Suppose we hired whatsisname, Bernstein, or some other detective. To investigate Uncle Vincent. A man doesn't get that rich without leaving lots of dirty footprints behind him. Suppose our detective was able to turn up something Uncle Vincent would rather not have known—”

Lionel was already laughing. “Blackmail him?”

“Well, yes, I guess that's what I mean—”

“Oh, Dorrie, be realistic!” Lionel said. “Don't you think if Uncle Vincent left any
discoverable
dirt behind him, someone would have had his claws into the Farwell fortune long before this?”

“How do you know someone hasn't?” Dorrie said stubbornly. “Someone could have been blackmailing him for years and we wouldn't know about it.”

Lionel shook his head. “That old fox has covered his trail, you can be sure of it. Nobody gets the better of Uncle Vincent.”

“Oh, Lionel—don't say that!” Nicole protested. “Actually, it's not a bad idea at all. Shouldn't we at least try it? It seems to me we ought to try everything we can think of—and I mean
everything
.”

Eventually Lionel agreed that it couldn't hurt to hire a private detective. “I don't know what he can find out in only two weeks—but okay, I'll take care of it tomorrow. And Dorrie, you're still going to try to persuade Uncle Vincent to take a partial payment?”

“I'll try,” she sighed. “But I don't think it'll do any good.”

“Neither do I, but as Nicole says—we ought to try everything.” He looked at his watch. “It's after midnight. I don't know about you two, but I've got the heebie-jeebies so bad I can't concentrate. Let's call it a day.”

Nicole nodded. “I'm ready to quit now.”

They locked the vault and started turning off the lights. Then, as if driven by a single thought, all three of them headed toward the workshop, where Dorrie's and Nicole's designs were translated into finished products. They stood looking for a while at the benches and the tools, the bottles of nitric acid and the small storage bins of jewelry findings. Kilns, centrifuges, vacuum pumps, steam casters. The sawyer's wheels, the brutter's lathe, the expensive new Piermatic Automatic Diamond Polishing Machine. They stood looking, looking and wondering if they were going to lose it all.

Nicole was the first to snap out of it. “Enough of this sentimental journey. We're all acting as if Ellandy's is doomed. Well, it needn't be! We've got a little time—we'll think of something. We mustn't be defeatist now!”

“Yea, team,” Lionel said glumly.

They found the nightwatchman, told him they were through, and left.

Simon wanted a shower. It had been a dirty evening.

As he undressed, he ran over in his mind what he still had to do. Cash some securities tomorrow morning; that was the first thing. Next, take care of the diamonds. Then see a lawyer. Malcolm Conner was a competent enough attorney, but he was too closely involved in Ellandy's affairs to maintain an objective point of view.

Not for the first time, Simon wondered whether Dorrie had been wise to go into partnership with Lionel Knox. Simon liked Lionel, but Lionel did seem to get himself into hot water a lot. And this time Dorrie was getting splashed. An independent audit of the Ellandy books might not be a bad idea.

Another thing. He was going to have to do something about Gretchen Knox. The way she kept coming on to him in public—well, it was getting out of hand. Simon was convinced Gretchen wasn't interested in him at all; she just wanted to embarrass Dorrie. There was a lot of Uncle Vincent in his niece.

Ask her privately to cut it out? She'd pretend she didn't know what he was talking about. Humiliate her in front of other people? Crude, but probably the only thing that would work. He'd give it some thought.

He stepped into the shower and let the needles of hot water massage the tension in his neck and shoulders.

Gretchen Knox sat at the small desk in her old room on the second floor of Uncle Vincent's house and tried to draw the Maltese cross Dorrie Murdoch had been wearing that evening. She couldn't do it; it kept coming out lopsided. She crumpled up the paper in disgust; a fitting end to one bummer of an evening. No material there to be stored away as a beautiful memory.

Gretchen had hoped that the familiarity of her old room would offer some comfort, but it hadn't worked. Mrs. Polk had already retired, so there was no friendly shoulder to cry on. Gretchen had bathed and put on one of her old nighties that had never made the trip from Uncle Vincent's house to her own. She went through all the drawers in her room, looking for something to keep her from thinking about Lionel and Nicole.

Lionel and Nicole! Gretchen would never have believed it if it hadn't been for those pictures. If it had been Dorrie, Gretchen could have understood it, in a way. But Nicole? Ugh. Well, that was the final straw; she'd see a divorce lawyer tomorrow. Secretly, she was more than a little pleased that Uncle Vincent had provided her with such a dandy excuse. If she was going to have to choose between Lionel and Uncle Vincent, Gretchen knew which side her bread was buttered on.

She lay down on the bed and started imagining sexy scenes, starring herself, as a means of relaxing. But every time she got a good one going, Lionel's face would intrude. She tried substituting other faces, but nothing really worked. Simon Murdoch, for instance, had outworn his usefulness as a fantasy object weeks ago.

Outside, a dog barked nearby. Then a little later a car door slammed and an engine started up. After a while Gretchen listened to what sounded like the rattle of garbage cans; who puts out garbage in the middle of the night? Almost immediately the blare of a transistor radio jarred her nerves, accompanied as it was by loud voices talking and laughing, voices that gradually faded as the music-lovers passed on by. The dog barked again.

Gretchen slipped out of bed and felt her way across the dark room to the little desk. She switched on the lamp and rummaged through the lap drawer until she found what she was looking for: a pair of earplugs. She turned off the lamp.

Earplugs in place, she lay back down on her bed and tried again. It was times like these that she saw most clearly the
dis
advantages of being so sensitive.

Malcolm Conner couldn't sleep. He thought he'd heard a car a while ago, but Nicole hadn't come in.

He reached for the remote control and turned on the television. He sat up in bed for a long while, staring at the screen but not listening as a football coach talked about his buddyship with God. Malcolm couldn't stop replaying the scene at Uncle Vincent's in his head.

Legally, the old man had them; there were no loopholes in that promissory note. And as a result the two women who meant the most in the world to Malcolm were going to get hurt because of Vincent Farwell's vendetta against Lionel Knox. There had to be some way of stopping him.

Perhaps if Lionel could win Gretchen back and then she could win over Uncle Vincent—Malcolm knew that was foolish even as he thought it. The Knoxes' marriage had been in trouble for a long time. Also, Uncle Vincent made no secret of the fact that he considered his niece a birdbrain whose opinion was not worth consulting on any subject whatsoever.

Malcolm felt a sudden rush of pity for Gretchen Knox. His own brief affair with her had shown him what a basically focusless person she was. She didn't really have anything of her own. She had no talent, as Nicole and Dorrie did. She did no work, meaningful or otherwise. She had no money, except what her uncle or her husband gave her. She had no purpose, no place to go. And before long she wouldn't even have a marriage, unless something miraculous took place.

But Gretchen's problems were secondary; what happened to Ellandy Jewels was the only thing that mattered now. There had to be some way of stopping Uncle Vincent. Malcolm sat without moving, marshaling all his powers of concentration, seriously considering breaking the law for the first time in his life.

4

Godfrey Daniel stood on tiptoe and hissed at the dark-haired woman, a long and menacing hiss. When she ignored him, he tried growling instead.

“Hush, kitty,” she said. Nicole Lattimer stood in Vincent Farwell's library in front of Vincent Farwell's desk. Staring at Vincent Farwell's body.

Uncle Vincent lay slumped across the desk, his head very efficiently bashed in. Blood discolored the desk blotter as well as the two parts of the broken alabaster Hermes. One piece of the statuette lay on the desk near Uncle Vincent's head; the other had fallen to the floor. A few inches from the fingertips of Uncle Vincent's outstretched right hand was an automatic pistol.

The fire had long since died out; the ashes in the fireplace gave off no hint of warmth. Nicole shivered. When she was absolutely positively certain that Uncle Vincent was dead, she moved around to his side of the desk. She couldn't find what she was looking for on top of the desk. After a moment's thought, she untied the scarf she was wearing around her waist and used it to open the desk drawers. A hurried search through all nine drawers proved fruitless; a second, more careful search was equally unproductive.

Distressed, Nicole looked around the room—and her eye fell on the file cabinet. Again using her scarf, she opened the top drawer and started going through Uncle Vincent's files. Godfrey Daniel leaped to the top of the cabinet and crouched there, watching the dark-haired woman's every move.

Stock reports, correspondence, bank records. Nicole worked her way through the second drawer and then the third without finding what she'd come for. She sat crouched on the floor by the bottom drawer for a moment, staring up at the tortoise-shell cat watching her. Then she suddenly started beating her fists against the file cabinet in frustration. Alarmed, Godfrey jumped away.

Nicole used the scarf to wipe the part of the cabinet her fists had touched. She stood up and hesitated. Then she went back to the desk and very carefully wrapped both pieces of the broken Hermes in her scarf, knotting the ends tightly. Once more she hesitated; then, shuddering, she put down the scarf and picked up Uncle Vincent's right hand. She managed to get the dead man's stiffening fingers around the automatic pistol and used his forefinger to press the trigger.

At the sound of the report, Godfrey shot under the sofa, trembling all over. The bullet had gouged a shallow furrow along the top of the desk before disappearing in the direction of the fireplace. Nicole quickly picked up the scarf with its incriminating contents, turned out the lights, and left the library, closing the door behind her just as the clock on the mantlepiece struck two.

Simon and Dorrie Murdoch crept stealthily along the outside of the terrace wall surrounding Vincent Farwell's house. Each was dressed in black turtleneck sweater, black trousers, black shoes and gloves. Dorrie wore a small backpack made of navy blue nylon. She didn't have a black one.