Judas Cat (12 page)

“Where’s the chief?” Alex asked.

“Went out to the toy factory.”

“I thought he wanted me. Did someone call me from here?”

“Not that I know of,” Gilbert said. “He might have done it from out there.”

“Then why didn’t he say so?”

Gilbert shrugged. He nodded toward the wall clock. “He ought to be back soon.” It was twenty minutes to eleven.

Alex asked the operator to reach the toy factory for him. He could hear the phone ringing.

“Thursday,” Gilbert said. “He might have stopped home to give the missus a ride to the church. They’re having a big shebang tomorrow.”

Alex broke the connection and clicked the receiver, trying to signal the operator.

“You’re going to break that thing,” Gilbert said.

“Operator, I’d like some information. Did you have a call to Miss Mabel Turnsby’s house about ten minutes ago? … This is the police station … No, Waterman’s not here … Skip it.” He hung up the receiver. “Gilbert, have there been any calls here for me?”

“Nope.”

Alex looked up Barnard’s number and called him. Again he heard the steady rhythm of the signal. Again he received no answer. This time he waited, asking the operator to ring continually. Finally he gave up. “I’ll be back in a few minutes, Gilbert. If the chief comes in, will you ask him to wait for me?”

Gilbert nodded. “You’re getting the police a bad name talking that way to the operator,” he said.

By the time Alex reached the car, the sudden anger had left him, but he knew that he had been duped. Someone had wanted him out of Andy’s house, if only for a few moments. Why? In the hope that he would leave the door unlocked? He drove back to the old house. Miss Turnsby was sitting on her front porch, knitting.

“Waterman wasn’t there,” he said. “Did you recognize the voice?”

“No. It sounded kind of familiar, but I didn’t think it was Fred. Whoever it was just gave me the message. Why would anyone want to do a thing like that?”

Why, indeed? Her imperturbability galled him. “Was there anyone around Mattson’s house while I was gone?”

“Not that I seen.”

Alex went back to Andy’s then. He could not very well say to her that she had deliberately made mischief. He knew that nothing he could see would be changed in the house. And no one really had a view of the place except Mabel Turnsby, unless from the gas station, and that was too far. He went into the bedroom and looked out. There was only the goldenrod gathering the heat of the sun, and giving out its warm, sweet smell. He realized that a window was open. The upper glass pane had been pried loose from the frame, and the lock opened. Alex went outdoors. Bits of old putty and slivers of wood lay on the hard ground, and there were marks in it from the ladder, but the ground was too hard for footprints. Even the pane of glass was gone, most likely because the housebreaker was afraid his prints might be on it.

Waterman had returned when Alex got back to the station. “Hear you got a wild-goose call,” the chief said.

“They’ve got me bouncing like a rubber ball.” He told him what had happened.

“How long were you away from the house, Alex?”

“Fifteen minutes at most.”

“Whoever broke in there must have done it in the middle of the night,” Waterman said. “I don’t think the call had much to do with it.”

“Can’t you check the call to Mabel’s house? They wouldn’t give me the information.”

Waterman picked up the phone. While he waited, Alex looked at the coroner’s report and the attached report of the examining medical officer. The autopsy had been extensive. There was no doubt of that.

“No way of knowing,” Waterman said. “The board’s been so busy Hazel ain’t had her coffee yet. Any word from Barnard?”

“No, and I called him a few minutes ago. No answer.”

Waterman called the veterinary then. When he received no answer, he signaled the operator. “Hazel, do you have any message on where Doc Barnard is?” While he waited he covered the mouthpiece. “I was out to the barbecue stand this morning. The kid saw a car in back of his place the night Andy Mattson died.”

“How about last night?”

Waterman shook his head. “Thanks, Hazel. Barnard’s out to Allendale Farm on an emergency call,” he said, hanging up. “We’ll just have to wait.”

“How about his wife?”

“Shopping maybe. Alex, I think we better sit here a while and put a few things together.” He took a large tablet from his drawer and tore several sheets from it. On one he wrote “J. Hershel,” on another “Mabel Turnsby,” on the third “M. Altman.” “I wonder how many more of these we’ll have before this thing ends. All right, boy. You scratch my back and I’ll scratch yours. What did Mabel have to say this morning?”

Half an hour later Waterman was reading the notes he had made back to Alex when the mayor’s car pulled up in front of the station. “Thunder and lightning on a summer’s day,” the chief said. “Let me do the talking.”

The mayor got to the point immediately. “Fred, I understand you and young Whiting have been asking questions in connection with Mattson’s death. I thought the county closed the matter.”

“They did as far as the county was concerned. I’m just trying to tie up the loose ends from here.”

“Your ambition is commendable,” Altman said. “I’ll see that the pension board hears about it. But I hope you’re sure of what you’re doing, Fred. People are very impressionable. I had no idea they were so concerned about the old man. Well, a word to the wise …”

“Sure,” Waterman repeated. “A word to the wise.”

“Alex, I presume you’re running the coroner’s report, as I asked?”

“I don’t know whether I am or not, yet, Mr. Altman,” Alex said.

“I recommend it very highly, Alex. It has always been your father’s practice to print the truth. If you’re looking for sensationalism in this thing, I think you’ll regret it.”

“I’m looking for the truth, Mr. Mayor,” Alex said. “And if I’m convinced the whole truth is in the coroner’s report when I study it, I’ll see that it’s printed.”

“I don’t want it next week, Alex. I want it this week.”

“Mr. Altman, I’m publisher of the
Sentinel.
Its integrity depends on what I put into it. So does mine.”

“This is getting us nowhere,” Waterman said, getting up from his desk. “Did you make the arrangements for the funeral?”

“Yes. That’s what I came to see you about. Ten o’clock at the cemetery. I’ll make it a simple service, non-denominational. I think it might be appropriate for you to send your assistant up, Fred, and give it a motorcycle escort. The Addisons will be coming down …”

“Well …” Waterman said. He did not finish. The telephone interrupted him. “I’ll be out,” were the only words he said into it. “I guess you can have Gilbert in the morning, mayor.” He got up from his desk easily. “Alex, want to take a ride over to Three Corners with me?”

The mayor went out the door with them and around to his chambers in the other wing of the building. In the car, Waterman said, “Barnard’s place was broken into this morning while he was out on that call.”

T
HE FRONT DOOR TO
the house was open when Alex and the chief drove up. They pushed the bell and walked in. Even from the doorway to the laboratory they could see the shambles that had been made of the place, cases smashed, instruments strewn around, glasses broken, as though someone had gone through whirling a brick on a string. Barnard was inside the door, going from one broken piece to another. The veins were standing out on his temples.

“Holy God,” Alex said.

Barnard looked up at them and then back at his laboratory. He held his hands palms upward and then dropped them again without speaking.

“Better not touch anything till I go over it for fingerprints,” Waterman said. “You two better go into the other part of the house till I’m finished.”

“Where’s Mrs. Barnard?” Alex asked as the two of them went into the living room.

“Lying down.”

Waterman had come to the door after them. “Was she here when it happened?”

“No. She was very nervous this morning. In fact, she didn’t sleep at all last night, so I suggested she go on my call with me and sit in the car. She sometimes does that.”

“Is there anything missing in there, Doc?” the chief asked.

“Some specimens I was working on. That’s all I can tell.”

“I’ve told the chief I brought Mattson’s cat to you, Doc,” Alex said. “Is that what’s missing?”

“Yes.”

Alex looked at Waterman. “Maybe you better tell me just what happened as far as you can, Doc,” the chief said, “being as particular as possible about time.”

Barnard took the cigarette Alex offered him. “I’ve been attending a heifer a few miles from here. I got a call about seven o’clock this morning. We left right away. I saw it was going to take me some time when I got out there, so Norah took the car and went on up to Masontown and did her shopping. She picked me up about eleven and we came right home. With the groceries we went in the back way. The screen had been pulled off a kitchen window. That’s how whoever it was got into the house.”

“How about the cat?” Waterman asked. “What did you find out about it?”

“Nothing. I hadn’t a chance to get into my lab at all this morning. The truth is, I didn’t expect to find anything. Nothing irregular was evident from the preliminary tests. Now I don’t know … I just don’t know.”

“I’m very sorry I got you into this, Doc,” Alex said.

“I told him he should have sent you away from here last night,” Mrs. Barnard said from the doorway. “I knew something would happen.” Her face was drawn and pinched looking, and as she came in the room with that gliding walk of hers, Alex thought she looked as though she were sleepwalking.

“Norah, why don’t you stay upstairs and rest, my dear? Chief Waterman will do everything he can.”

“Have the police ever been able to do enough in this county, Jeffrey? Answer me that.”

“You will go to your room and rest, Norah. There’s enough confusion in this house now.”

Mrs. Barnard lingered a moment, a pouting defiance on her face, and then wisped out of the room. “She has never been very well,” Barnard explained. “I’m afraid I’ve become more a father than a husband to her. But that has nothing to do with the business at hand. I admit this thing has shaken me. I had some valuable instruments, and some notes on months of research that were destroyed. I suppose I must start over now. But it’s hard to start over.”

“Yes,” Waterman said. “It’s always hard to start over. Doc, had you any notion this might happen?”

“No. No notion. Alex called me last night and warned me that the other package had been taken from his car. But I had no idea they’d go this far.”

“Did you see anybody around the place when you left this morning?”

“No. I’d have been suspicious if I had.”

“Where’d you say you were this morning?”

“Allendale Farm. It’s near Masontown.”

“And they really needed you up there?”

“What do you mean ‘they really needed me?’”

“The call was on the up and up. It wasn’t to get you out of the house.”

“It was quite legitimate.”

“All right, Doc. We’ll see what we can find out. Maybe we’ll get some help out of the county now. But as far as I can see we’d be just as well off without their help.”

Waterman got his kit from the car and went over the laboratory for prints. Meanwhile, Alex went outdoors. In the back yard of the veterinary’s were several runs for small animals. In one of them was an opossum, and in another segregated one, two white rats. The field at the back of the house was stubbled after the recent threshing. Far beyond it were the farm buildings, fronting on another road. To the west was a large signboard advertising the Hillside Inn; to the east was the only house, about half a mile away. He walked down to it, and inquired if anyone had noticed visitors at the veterinary’s that morning. No one had seen anything. When he returned, Waterman shook his head. “Only one strange set of prints, Alex, and I’ve a hunch they’re yours. We’ll check and make sure. But I don’t think we’re dealing with the kind that leave trademarks.”

“I’m going to take my suspicions up to the sheriff’s office,” Waterman said on the way back to town. “If they don’t cooperate then, there’s got to be a reason for it. And maybe we’ll know where to start. You sure needled somebody when you took that cat.”

“Chief, what do you think of Mrs. Barnard?”

“Alex, I give up thinking about women a long time ago. They got more angles than the crazy house at a carnival. Why?”

“Mabel’s her aunt, you know.”

“Almost everybody’s related to everybody else in Hillside, Alex.”

“I know. But she didn’t want Doc in on this, and I’d like to know why. Now I’m beginning to get curious as to what’s wrong between them and Mabel.”

A
LEX WENT DIRECTLY TO
the office from the station. He had less than an hour to decide what was to go into the
Sentinel
about Mattson’s death. He had the copy of the coroner’s report, but he was still reluctant to print it. All the same he realized that part of his reluctance came from his antagonism toward Altman. Joan and Maude were at lunch. He told his father what had happened at Barnard’s, but there was no time then for talking. He went to his desk and began the account of the old man’s death:

HILLSIDE’S OLDEST CITIZEN DIES

Sometime after midnight Wednesday, August 18, Andrew Mattson, 92, died at his home on Sunrise Avenue. Chief of Police Waterman found him at noon the next day. Miss Mabel Turnsby, Mattson’s neighbor, called the police when the old man had not come outdoors that morning.

Little is known of Mattson, who in his thirty-one years’ residence in Hillside had gained the reputation of being a recluse. His one visitor, the late Henry Addison, came once each year to spend a day with him, and since his death, no one is known to have entered the house until Mr. Waterman broke in the day of Miss Turnsby’s call.

Alex stopped and lit a cigarette. He picked up a pencil and jotted notes on a pad, repeating the first notes he had made: “Anne, 1933,” and adding: “cat, missing key, package from the car, painting, car seen that night, toys, house broken into, Barnard’s lab, call from Mabel’s, Hershel’s expansion …”