China Trade (27 page)

He asked that not because he couldn’t come up with half a dozen theories of his own, probably the same as mine, or different but as good. He asked it because this is the point when you can’t just make it up anymore, when you have to talk it all out and poke holes in each other’s theories until you find ones you can’t poke holes in. This is the point when you’re talking about people’s lives. This is when you have to be right.

“The other p.i.,” I said, breaking off a piece of bagel. “Jim Johnson, whoever he is and wherever he came from. His questions made her suspicious, and she started to look.”

“And who is he, and where did he come from?”

“I wish I knew.” I sighed. “If he did start her thinking and she ended up dead, he’s got something to answer for.”

“And she found … ?”

“Well, she found something, because she made plans to meet Johnson later on, according to Steve.”

“Why did she act so strangely about the bowl with Steve’s dog on it?” Bill wondered.

Licking butter off my fingers, I was hit by a thought. My
eyes met Bill’s, and I realized he’d been hit too. I said it first: “Because she already knew.”

“She was part of it,” Bill said. “She would have to have been. She acquisitioned the porcelains.”

I could almost hear the clink as pieces dropped into place.

“She was part of the laundry,” I said, my words tumbling fast. “She didn’t want to admit to the dog bowl for the same reason Dr. Browning didn’t tell us about the tiger cup. So no one would find out it had been stolen twice.” I gulped some tea and started up again. “But she panicked after Johnson came. She was afraid it would all fall apart. She wasn’t worried when we were there because she didn’t know why we’d come. But after Johnson, she was ready to get out. I’ll bet she was going to sell information to him and split.”

“Sell Caldwell, you mean,” Bill said.

“Exactly. Only Caldwell showed up before Johnson, found out what was going on, and took care of her.”

“Her, and the computers too, at the same time.”

“Destroyed the records!” I said. “Damn. You’re right. So now his little scheme is in the clear. We can’t prove it. We can’t prove anything.”

Something else occurred to me. “That rat,” I said. “That’s why he didn’t say anything about Steve being gay when Bernstein had that stupid idea about a romance between Steve and Trish. It’s not that he didn’t know or wanted to protect Steve’s privacy. He was just figuring the more suspects, the merrier.”

We looked at each other. I felt deflated and frustrated. Finally Bill said, “What do we do now?”

“You mean,” I filled in, “do we go to the police?”

“It’s homicide. It’s Bernstein’s case.”

“It’s just a theory. We have no proof.”

“It’s his job to find proof.”

“If he doesn’t tell us to go to hell.”

“That’s his job, too.”

“I know,” I said reluctantly. “It’s just…”

Bill settled back in his chair to finish his coffee. He said,
“It’s just that you’d like to keep Dr. Browning out of it if you can.”

“For Nora,” I said. “Because of Matt. She cares so much, and she works so hard, and this is going to be such a mess. If there were some way we could get Caldwell to trip over himself, then maybe at least Dr. Browning wouldn’t have to get involved with the police. Then whatever had to happen would just be between himself and his conscience.”

“Uh-huh,” Bill said. “And also maybe then Bernstein wouldn’t tell us to go to hell.”

“Well, there’s that,” I admitted.

“And that,” Bill grinned, “is what I love about you.”

“What? My competitiveness? My fighting spirit? My eagerness to show the world that Lydia Chin does so know what she’s doing?”

“No,” he said. “Your absolute obviousness.”

We ordered more coffee and tea, and after the waiter-shaped storm cloud had descended on our table and whirled away again we worked out our plan of action: not an elaborate plan, a let’s-try-this-and-see plan.

My favorite kind.

“But,” I said, after we’d gotten ourselves organized, “I have to call Nora. Don’t I?”

Bill didn’t answer. The conflict was mine; the resolution would have to be mine, too.

I hadn’t spoken to Nora since I’d seen Matt. I hadn’t told her about Matt, because I hadn’t been able to think of a way. Your brother’s a gangster, I could have said, your very own gangster, right here on this corner. The good news is, he didn’t steal your porcelains. The bad news is, he probably killed the boy who did.

Now, added to that, was this other news: Your favorite professor is a thief.

But if Bill and I were going to go ahead with what we wanted to go ahead with, Nora, the client, would have to be in on it.

* * *

My conversation with Nora, carried on through the grace of a pocket full of change—Bill’s pocket—on a pay phone where I had to keep pressing myself against the wall to accommodate the turbulent stream of waiters, was short and ultimately satisfactory. I didn’t tell her about the tiger cup, or about Dr. Browning’s little ones; that was the deal, and anyway as far as I was concerned the later in her life Nora learned those things the better. I didn’t tell her about Matt, either, though I knew that sooner or later—and probably soon, though I’d be told it was already late—I’d have to tell Mary, and then Nora and the rest of Chinatown would know.

But right now, I had a case to solve for Nora, and all I told her about was that.

She was silent on the other end of the phone when I finished my outline.

“Dr. Caldwell?” she finally said, incredulity ringing in her voice. “Roger Caldwell? I can’t believe it. I can’t believe this, Lydia. I’ve known him for years.”

You think that’s a surprise, I said silently, wait until I tell you about some other people you’ve known for years. “Well, it’s possible we’re completely wrong. But if my sources are right about the faked dates and provenances, it all leads right to him.”

“But murder,” she said, her voice still shocked. “How could he do that, kill someone to protect his reputation?”

I felt such a pang of guilt when she said that that I had to fight an urge to hang up the phone. “People do,” I said gently. “But listen: The point is this. We can’t prove any of this yet. We’ll have to tell the police, soon, so you’d better be prepared for that. But first, I want your permission to try something else.”

“Try something else? What else?”

“We want to go to Mrs. Blair and get her to help trap Dr. Caldwell.”

“You mean, without the police? Absolutely not. If he’s a killer we have to tell the police right away.”

“They won’t be able to prove it either. All the computer records at the Kurtz are destroyed; we need some kind of evidence.”

“It’s dangerous.”

“Not the way we’re going to set it up. If she agrees we’ll bring the police in on whatever we’re going to do.”

I stepped aside for a barrelling waiter, traded a few more sentences with Nora, and hung up the phone. Back at the table I didn’t even sit down. “Okay,” I said, grabbing up the check and the tiger cup’s box. Bill had already left the tip money under the salt shaker. “Let’s go.”

“All systems?”

I nodded. He stood. We swam upstream to the front counter, paid the check, and strode out into the bright, cold, promising day.

T
W E N T Y - N I N E

W
e took a cab to the Upper East Side. Wind tossed the bare branches of the Central Park trees and the sun sparkled on everything. The cab dropped us at Eighty-second and Park; we walked the block to Mrs. Blair’s.

Rosie O’Malley, answering the door, gave Bill a big smile.

“My,” she said, “I didn’t expect to be seeing you so soon.”

Does that mean you expected to see him later? I found myself asking silently, my eyes narrowing; but then I told myself sternly that that was none of my business and besides, we had work to do.

“We’d like to see Mrs. Blair,” I announced, before Bill said anything.

I thought Rosie O’Malley lifted her eyebrows slightly before she smiled politely and said, “I’ll just go see if she’s in.”

Rosie O’Malley showed us into the parlor with the satin-striped furniture and the gauzy sunlight. As we had the first time, Bill and I both remained standing after she left, looking around at the small, polished objects displayed in their well-chosen places. I examined the portrait of the younger Mrs. Blair, proud and aristocratic, gazing steadily out from the canvas. I was watching her eyes, those portrait eyes that seem to be seeing you back, when Bill said, “What’s wrong with this picture?”

“Nothing,” I said. “It looks just like her.”

“Not that one,” he said. “The one that isn’t there.”

I looked where he was pointing. He was right.

The silver-framed photo of Mr. Blair, the fishing picture, wasn’t there.

“Well,” I said. Then: “Maybe she broke the glass?”

Bill didn’t get a chance to answer. The front hall echoed with high-heeled steps, and Mrs. Blair opened the parlor door.

“Ms. Chin.” Dressed in a severe, elegantly simple navy wool dress, she gave us a smile of greeting. “Mr. Smith. Good morning. Please, sit down.”

We thanked her and sat. Arranging herself with not an extraneous movement on the chair with the delicate arms, Mrs. Blair asked, “I assume you’ve come about the case?”

“We have,” I acknowledged. “It’s a little delicate. We need your help.”

“Of course.” She nodded. “I’ll do whatever I can. Delicate in what way?”

“We’ve found the man who stole your husband’s porcelains,” I said. From habit, I watched her closely as I spoke. It seemed to me her eyes widened a bare fraction and the tiniest of frown lines appeared and then disappeared instantly on her brow.

“We think we know why, and something about how,” I went on. “But we’re going to need your help proving it.”

“You’ve found him?” Her voice was controlled, shadowing something that might have been excitement. “Who is he?”

“Roger Caldwell.”

She missed a beat before she spoke. “Roger Caldwell?” She seemed to hold confusion in her voice. “From the Kurtz? Why would—what makes you think it was he?”

I was about to launch into the whole explanation—keeping my sources anonymous—when it suddenly struck me that Mrs. Blair probably knew nothing about the status of the porcelains her husband had bought from Dr. Caldwell. To find out that Mr. Blair had been duped, at the end of his life, into merrily purchasing an armload of stolen goods would be a shock to her, and, I realized, a disappointment I’d like to spare her. Well, but what are you going to do, Lydia? Make up a story? Or say, trust me, just do what I tell you, don’t ask questions? Bill and Mrs. Blair both sat, saying nothing, while the gauzy curtains swayed almost imperceptibly in the heat rising from the bronze grille on the floor.

Oh, go ahead, Lydia, I growled at myself. Just do it.

But tell her the worst part first.

“Have you heard,” I asked carefully, “about what happened at the Kurtz last night?”

“No,” she answered. “I don’t believe so.”

“There was what seemed to be a break-in,” I said. “The office records were destroyed and a woman was killed.”

“Killed?” Her face went completely pale, but she didn’t move. “Someone was killed?”

I nodded. “I’m sorry. Yes. Trish Atherton, a young woman who was one of Dr. Caldwell’s assistants. She seems to have been killed by the person who destroyed the records. Mrs. Blair, I’m sorry to tell you this, but we have reason to believe that that person was Dr. Caldwell.”

“Roger Caldwell? He killed her?” Her hand went slowly to her mouth. She sat completely still for a moment, moving
nothing, not even her eyes; then she lowered her hand to her lap again, laying it carefully over the other. Seeming to have won a battle within herself, she said sternly and with complete control, “Ms. Chin, that is a very serious accusation. I assume you have something you regard as proof when you say things like that.”

“Mrs. Blair, believe me, I don’t say things like that often. And we don’t have proof. We have what we think is a very convincing explanation for a set of facts. But it’s circumstantial. That’s why we need your help.”

Her black eyes, cold and appraising now, caught and held mine. All the intimidating Chinese women of my youth—my mother; my grandmother; my mother’s unmarried older sister, who came from China, speaking no English, to live with us when her hair was already white and her back bent—were in that look.

Breathing in my best controlled manner, I forced myself into the same self-possession she had, though mine was only, like beauty, skin-deep. I returned her gaze.

“Very well,” she finally said. “Tell me what you have in mind. We’ll decide then how to proceed.”

I forced myself not to breathe a sigh of relief. Okay, that’s the first hurdle, Lydia. Now tell her the rest.

“Thank you.” I recrossed my legs, keeping my posture as straight as I could make it, and began. “Dr. Caldwell wasn’t happy when he found out you’d given your husband’s porcelains to the Chinatown Pride Museum, was he?”

“No,” she said evenly. “He was not.”

“Did he tell you why?”

“He said he’d hoped to acquire them for the Kurtz.”

“Were you aware that a number of them had come from the Kurtz just recently? That that’s where your husband got them?”.

“Not until Dr. Caldwell came to see me. He told me.”

She said that with no change of manner, with the same steady gaze. I wasn’t sure what to make of it.

“Didn’t it seem strange to you that he’d want back pieces he’d just sold to your husband?”

“Perhaps it was the rest of my husband’s collection in which he was interested, and he would have sold again the pieces my husband had recently acquired.”

“Perhaps. Or perhaps it was those pieces he was interested in.”

“Please make your meaning clear, Ms. Chin.”

Oh, go on, Lydia. You’ll only break the woman’s heart. It’s no worse than a swan dive into the Hudson in January.

I took a breath. “Those pieces, Mrs. Blair. The ones your husband bought from the Kurtz. Those are the ones you called the ‘new acquisitions,’ the ones that were in the crates stolen from Chinatown Pride. The point is, we think the thief chose them on purpose. And we think that’s not the first time they were stolen.”