Case File - a Collection of Nameless Detective Stories (32 page)

"Do you agree with Mr. Rothman that someone who works here is responsible?"

He shrugged. "So it would seem, given the circumstances."

"Who do you think it might be?"

"I really don't have any idea," Vining said. "For all I know, Mr. Rothman himself could be slipping out with the spoils. Not that I believe that's the case, you understand," he added hastily.
"He's quite above reproach. The point is, the thief could be anyone."

"Even Adam Turner?"

"Adam? I hardly think so. But then, two of the missing items were etchings attributed to Albrecht Dürer, and Adam does
have considerable expertise in that area. He once wrote an article on Dürer's work. He was also the person who arranged for Mr. Rothman to purchase the two etchings from the estate of a private collector."

"Oh? How was he able to do that?"

"The collector was an acquaintance of Adam's," Vining said. "They struck up a correspondence when the article was published."

Lennox returned and called Vining away to the telephone, so I didn't have a chance to press him for any more information.

But what he'd told me was food for thought. If Turner was the guilty party, there was no real mystery in how he'd managed the thefts. He could have cleared the stolen pieces through the sensor at any time, working as he did on the cashier's desk, and walked out with them hidden in his clothes. Or he could have simply arrived early in the morning, as Rothman had told me he did periodically, and removed them from the store before Rothman showed up.

I decided that on Monday I would run a background check on Turner, after all.

The rest of the afternoon passed uneventfully. I spent most of it on the main floor, with occasional trips upstairs to check on
Boyette. He was still uncommunicative, and by four o'clock, when the drinks he'd had for lunch had worn off, he had turned surly; he snapped at me and at a customer who asked him a question about a book. When closing time rolled around, he was the first one out the door.

I stayed until six-fifteen, making myself look busy; Vining and Lennox were gone by then. When Rothman came down he sent Turner and me on our way so he could shut off the sensor alarm and lock up as he usually did. I waited around for him outside. The rain had stopped and there were patches of clear sky among the clouds to the east; with any luck, the weather would be good for my weekend with Kerry.

Rothman came out a couple of minutes later. "Where's your car?" he asked when he finished locking the front doors.

"In the lot two blocks down."

"That's my direction. We can talk as we walk."

He set off at a brisk pace, in spite of his game leg. I asked him, "Everything okay in the Antiquarian Room?"

"Yes. I checked it this morning, and again tonight before I came down. Nothing's been touched. Have you found out anything so far?"

"Nothing specific, no," I said. I saw no purpose in telling him about Boyette's references to him, in making trouble for Boyette, unless it turned out to have some bearing on my investigation. And I didn't want to press him on Turner until I ran the background check. "I'm afraid this is the kind of job that may take some time, Mr. Rothman."

"I don't expect you to perform miracles," he said. "Time isn't important to me; finding out which of them is guilty, and how he's doing it, is what matters."

We had gone a block, and when we crossed the street Rothman stopped in front of a building that bore a sign reading:
Pacific Health Club
. "This is where I'm going," he said.

"You belong to a health club?"

He smiled. "I don't lift weights or play racquetball with Neal Vining, if that's what you're thinking.
Mostly I use
the
Jacuzzi;
it helps me relax and eases the pain in my leg."

"Oh, I see."

"You can join me if you like. Guests are permitted."

"No, thanks. I think I'll head home. I like to do my relaxing with a cold beer."

He glanced at my protruding belly. "So I see," he said, but gently, without censure.

We said good night, and he entered the building and I went and got my car and drove home. I drank two cans of Schlitz—the hell with health clubs and the hell with my belly—and then called Kerry at Bates and Carpenter. But she was busy and couldn't talk more than a couple of minutes. She did say that the presentation was going according to schedule and that she still expected to be done with it by noon tomorrow.

"Is it all right if I stop by the book shop when I'm finished?" she asked. "I like bookstores; and I'd love to see you schlepping books around."

"I don't see why not. As long as you don't tell anybody I'm really a private eye on a case."

"I'll try to restrain myself. See you tomorrow, then."

"Lovely lady, I'll count the minutes."

"Phooey," she said, and rang off.

I made myself something to eat, read for a while and turned in early. It had been a reasonably productive day and I was satisfied with it. I had learned a few things; maybe I would learn a few more tomorrow that would establish some kind of pattern. Maybe tomorrow would turn out, I thought, to be an even more productive day.

Saturday was a productive day, all right.

The thief hit the Antiquarian Room again, and he did it right under my damn nose.

It happened, as before, sometime between eleven-twenty, when Rothman checked the room before going out for an early lunch, and two o'clock, when he went up to check it again. I was on the main floor talking to Kerry at the time he made the discovery. She had been there about a half-hour, browsing, looking terrific in a black suit and a frilly white blouse; she was about to buy a book she'd found—a scarce old one of her father's, one of his early novels—and she was telling me how pleased he was going to be because he was down to only two file copies of that particular title.

I didn't like Ivan Wade—Ivan the Terrible, I called him—any more than he liked me; he was overprotective of Kerry, supercilious, humorless and something of a jerk. So I said, "I'm thrilled for him."

"Now don't be that way," she said. "
The Redmayne Horror
really is a scarce book. And they only want fifteen dollars."

"
The Redmayne Horror
is a dumb title," I said.

"It was a pulp serial, originally. That was the kind of title they put on weird fiction back in the forties, in the pulps and in book editions; you know that."

"It's still a dumb title."

"Oh, stick it in your ear," she said, and made a face at me. "Can't you see I'm excited about this? I almost knocked over a man with a cane upstairs when I found it."

"That would be Mr. Rothman. Nice going."

"Well, I'm sorry. But I —"

And that was when Rothman appeared on the stairs and beckoned to me urgently. I left Kerry and followed him up to his office, and as soon as he shut the door he told me about the latest theft.

"It was another rare map," he said. His face was flushed and his knuckles showed white where they gripped the head of his cane. "A sixteenth-century map by the Flemish cartographer and geographer Gerhardus Mercator."

"Valuable?"

"Very. Damn, I should have put it in my safe months ago."

"Where was it kept?"

"In one of the glass display cases. The lock was broken, just as in the other thefts."

"Whichever of them it is, he's bold and he's quick," I said. "I've been on this floor off and on ever since you left for lunch. He couldn't have spent much time up here; he had to know exactly what he was after."

"What do we do now?"

"What did you do after you discovered the other thefts?"

"Asked the customers to leave, closed up shop for the day, then gathered my people together and questioned them."

"All right. Do the same thing this time, only let me get rid of the customers. When you start the questioning, ask everybody if they mind being searched. If any of them refuses, press him on it. Then designate me to do the searching."

"Do I tell them you're a detective?"

"No. We won't get anywhere by blowing my cover. Just say you want me to do the searching because I'm new and you don't have any reason to suspect me."

"The thief won't have the map on his person," Rothman said grimly. "He's too clever for that."

"I know. But I want to see how they react and what they might be carrying in their pockets. I don't think he'll have the duplicate key on him either—he's probably got it stashed somewhere in the shop—but it's worth checking for."

"And if none of that does any good?"

"Then you'll have to let them go home. And you and I'll search this place from top to bottom. If none of them can leave with the map, then it's still got to be here somewhere."

We went downstairs together. Kerry was still waiting; when I joined her she said, "What's the matter? You look upset."

"Trouble. Another theft. You'd better go now; we're closing the shop."

"Oh boy. Will you still be able to make our date tonight?"

"I hope so. If I can't I'll call you."

It took twenty minutes to clear the store of customers and to get the front door locked. Turner and the others knew right
away what was going on; none of them had much to say at first,
and I could see them giving each other faintly mistrustful glances. Lennox looked aggrieved, as if he took the thefts
personally and the money was coming straight out of his
pocket. Boyette seemed more angry than anything else, but it was a put-upon kind of anger; he was suffering another
hangover and his bloodshot eyes said the last thing he wanted to
deal with was another crisis. Vining was subdued, the set of his face grave and concerned. Turner wore an expression of mingled agitation and worry—the look of a loyal company man whose boss is in trouble. None of the four seemed nervous. Or any more guilty, on the surface, than I was.

The six of us were gathered near the cashier's desk. Rothman started off by explaining what it was that had been stolen this
time. Then he asked if anyone had seen anyone else go up to the Antiquarian Room; nobody had. Had anyone seen anything of a suspicious nature between eleven-thirty and two o'clock?

Nobody had. Who had left the store during that time period? Boyette had, and so had Lennox. But Turner had seen them both leave, through the alarm gateway as always, and nothing had happened.

Rothman said then, "I'm sorry, gentlemen, but these thefts have become intolerable; getting to the bottom of them calls for extreme measures. Do any of you object to being searched?"

The only one who did was Boyette. "Why the hell should I stand for that?" he said. "Even if I were guilty, I wouldn't be stupid enough to have the map on my person."

Lennox said, "Then you shouldn't object to being searched."

"I've had enough of this crap. Thefts, suspicion, body searches—pretty soon it'll be accusations. I won't stand for it; I'm leaving right now and I'm not coming back."

"If you do, Harmon," Vining said, "it will make you look guilty, you know."

"I don't care," Boyette said. He looked mean and belligerent; there was a pugnacious thrust to his jaw. "Is anyone going to try to stop me?"

Rothman glanced at me, but I gave him a faint headshake. I had no right to restrain Boyette, or to search him, without some proof of guilt; if any of us tried, it would leave us open to a lawsuit.

"All right, Harmon," Rothman said coldly. "Consider your employment terminated. I'll mail you what I owe you in salary. Adam, let him out."

Turner went through the gateway and unlocked the front door. The alarm was still operational, and when Boyette stomped through after him the bell didn't go off. It was still possible that he was guilty, but he wasn't walking out of here with the Mercator map.

When Turner relocked the door and came back to join the rest of us, Rothman said, "Does anyone else feel the same way? Or will you all submit to a search?"

There were no more objections. Rothman designated me to do the searching, as we'd agreed, and I frisked each man in turn. Turner first, because I knew he wasn't carrying the map; he'd
gone through the gateway just as Boyette had. Then Vining, and then Lennox. No map. All three men had keys—no loose ones, though; they were all on rings or in cases—and Rothman examined each one stoically. His silence told me that none of the keys was the duplicate to the Antiquarian Room door.

There was nothing to do then but let the three of them leave, too. Turner was the last to go, and he went reluctantly. "If you're planning to search the shop, Mr. Rothman," he said, "I can help . . ."

"No, you go ahead. Marlowe will help me this time."

As soon as Turner was gone, Rothman and I began our search. We started with the Antiquarian Room; it wasn't likely that the thief would have hidden the Mercator map in there, but we gave it a good going-over just the same. No map. We went down to the second floor and searched the stacks, the storage room next to Rothman's office, the bathroom. No map. We combed the first-floor stacks and shelves, the display tables, the cashier's desk, even the window displays. No map. In the basement we searched the paperback sections, the Americana and travel shelves, the stockroom. No map.