Judas Cat (18 page)

“I think so,” Alex said.

“Think Addison’ll be down?”

“Probably.”

“I think I’ll run out there myself,” Harry said. “I’d like to see what sixty million bucks looks like.”

“He wears it like an old pair of shoes,” Alex said, starting for the door. He stopped. “Did the old man buy his papers from you?”

“Sure did. Thirty years of ’em. Last couple of years I’d save them for him. He’d come in two or three times a week.”

“Ever have anything to say?”

“Two words. Every Saturday he’d say, ‘how much?’”

“Thanks,” Alex said, going out. Sixty million dollars, he thought. Addison didn’t look like it, but how should he expect him to look? The probate session of county court met today. He let himself into the
Sentinel
office and shoved the stopper under the door. The office was stuffy. He went through to the plant and threw open the windows. The clouds were breaking and then reforming. All the wind was up there with not a breath of it in Hillside. Returning to his office, he glanced at the
Sentinel
on his desk. The coroner’s report, with its marginal space, stood out more boldly than if they had bordered it in black. He turned it away from him on the desk and picked up the Jackson paper. It was on the first page: the estate of the late Henry Addison, inventor and industrialist, would be filed in Riverdale county court, probate session, today, August 20. It was estimated at sixty million dollars by the executor, George Addison. There was no word yet on the provisions of the will. Once again he wondered who knew of them. If anyone in Hillside did, he was not letting it out. There had been quite a few words against the Addisons for not doing something for Andy, and not even a rumor about the twenty-five-thousand-dollar bequest. Maude Needham was the first of the staff to arrive.

“Hi, Maudie,” Alex called.

“Hi yourself. The phone ringing yet?”

“They’re waiting for you,” Alex said.

“I’ve a good notion to start my vacation today.”

“Maude, what’s your schedule today?”

“We’ve got all the handbills to run off for that dollar day next week. Everybody’s in on it this year. Even the agency stores.”

“That’s what we make our money on,” Alex said. “It certainly doesn’t come from the
Sentinel
.”

“Don’t try to teach your granny to milk ducks,” Maude said. “I was running handbills when you were in rompers.”

“Can I buy you a cup of coffee, Maudie?”

“No. I just had two of them. They didn’t help.”

“I wanted to ask you a favor,” Alex said.

“Ask. I’m not going to eat your head off.”

“If you could manage without her, I’ve got a few things on the Mattson business I’d like Joan to look up for me today.”

“You want to get her into trouble too?”

Alex did not answer that.

“All right,” Maude continued, “if she wants to that’s her business. I can manage without her today. There it goes.”

The telephone had started to ring. “Have the first one on me,” Alex said, picking up the receiver. It was the mayor, and Alex could have held the phone at arm’s length and still heard him. He let him finish before he tried to say a word, and as the mayor’s voice rose, so did Alex’s temper. “Mr. Altman,” he said at last, “the
Sentinel
is not your propaganda sheet. You put the heat on me to publish that report. Let’s not kid ourselves. You wanted the whole matter of Mattson’s death dropped there. That was too rich for my blood. I ran the thing as I did because it was the only honest protest I knew. If it embarrasses you, I think you’ve got yourself to thank for it.”

“That is enough of your impertinence, young man. And I wouldn’t be solicitous about my embarrassments. You’ll have enough of your own before this matter’s closed.” Alex heard the bang of the receiver at the other end. Maude had been standing at his desk. “Here we go again,” she said.

Joan came in then. She was wearing a yellow linen dress, Alex noticed, fresh and cool looking. “Maude says you can help me today, and we’ve got plenty to do.”

Joan took a booklet from her purse and gave it to him. “I found this last night,” she said. “It’s the catalogue on that Addison art exhibit.”

Alex looked through it. “Here,” he said. There were three Pissarros in the collection. “Andy’s thing didn’t come from their show, anyway. Joan, I’d like you to get a look at that painting of his. If Waterman’ll give us the key, let’s pick it up now and go over there. Damn it, I still feel there’s something in that house we missed, something that holds the whole story, and we’ve got to get it soon.”

Mr. Whiting came in and hung his hat on the hall tree in the office. “Hell’s a-popping,” he said. “The mayor’s rounding up council members.” He threw the keys of the car on Alex’s desk. Alex took them.

“I’ll pick you up in time for the funeral, Dad.”

Joan waited in the car outside the station. Waterman was at his desk, drumming the end of his pencil on the pad. “I was thinking I might as well be playing tick-tack-toe,” he said when he saw Alex. “I’m just as liable to come out with the truth.” He opened the top drawer and took from it a telegram which he handed to Alex. “Add this to your collection.”

It was from the Chicago police department. Alex read:

3467 PAULA AVENUE RESIDENCE HOMER THORESON. PURCHASED 1933 FROM WALTER TURNSBY. ADDRESS THEN GIVEN WALTER TURNSBY 231 WEST AVENUE DENVER COLORADO.

“Is that Mike Turnsby’s son?” he asked, giving the wire back.

Waterman nodded.

“They certainly have a way of selling out and vanishing, don’t they?” Alex said. “At least it definitely links Andy with them beyond coincidence.”

“I thought we were out of coincidences a long time ago,” Waterman said. “The bank’s refused to give me any information without a court order, by the way.”

“I made a mistake crossing Altman like we did on the
Sentinel
story,” Alex said.

“We’d have crossed him anyway.”

“Chief, I can’t help thinking there’s something in the house still that we’ve missed. There was a reason they came back and broke in that north window. There was a reason I got that call to take me out of there, whether it was Mabel who was responsible or not.”

“I was thinking of that, too, Alex. But if they didn’t get it, why didn’t they come back last night?”

“How do you know they didn’t?”

“I got every window and door there marked so’s I’d know if they were touched. I checked them this morning.”

Alex thought for a moment. “I think they did come back, chief.” He told Waterman about Mabel’s late visitor.

“That a fact?” Waterman said. “It begins to look kind of bad for Mabel, don’t it? I’m about at the point where I’m going to ask some straight questions. So far I’ve been pussy-footing around so’s I wouldn’t step on anybody’s toes. I was out to Allendale—that’s where Doc Barnard was the morning his lab got smashed. They got a sick cow all right. Lost her calf. They don’t think much of Doc as a vet, but I guess they wouldn’t right now. I’ve been wondering, Alex, if Doc ain’t afraid of something. He’s acted strange on this.”

“I think there’s a skeleton in the closet there some place,” Alex said.

“Maybe. Maybe that’s it.”

“I’d like to go over Andy’s place again. Right now, if I can. And I’d like to show Joan that painting.”

Waterman gave him the key. “I’d steer clear of Mabel if I was you, Alex. I want to give her enough rope to hang herself, as the saying goes.”

“Right.” At the door he remembered the letter Casey had mailed to the lawyer. He told Waterman about it. “Call him up now,” the chief said. Gautier was going directly to court that morning, but his secretary made an appointment with him for Alex at two.

“I
WONDER WHAT THE
old man would say if he knew the amount of traffic into this house these last few days,” Alex said, as he unlocked the door.

“Maybe he would have liked it,” Joan said. “Who knows?”

Alex opened a kitchen window for while they were in the house. Mabel was not at her window that morning. He missed her.

“There’s a terribly empty feeling about the house, isn’t there, Alex?”

“As though we were opening it for the first time in fifty years,” he said. He took her from one room to the other. In the dining room they stood at the window seat for a moment. “This is where the cat begged for its deliverance.”

Joan turned her back to the window and sat down where she could look at the room. “It’s not as dirty as you’d expect,” she said.

Alex sat down beside her. She continued to survey the room. “A case of dishes nobody’s eaten from, four chairs nobody’s sat upon, a rug only the moths enjoyed.”

Alex’s eyes moved from one item to another as she mentioned them. He looked at the floor and remembered commenting when he and Waterman had first come into the room that it had been swept. From where they sat he could see the dust heavier in some places than others. Actually the entire floor had not been swept, only the section between the hall to the kitchen and the living room. He got up and went over to where it was cleaner. He lifted the edge of the rug. Beneath it had been swept too. There were the marks of dust from the rug where it had flopped into place. He laid it down gently. Joan was watching his every move. He wondered if Mabel Turnsby was too, from one of her upper windows. His mind moved from one sequence of events to another, from one object in the room to another, fastening presently onto Mabel’s fingerprints and the chair on which they were found. He pulled it out from the table and turned it upside down. The furniture tacks were marked from the hammer. He set the chair down for a moment and examined one of the others. The springs showed against the bottom cambric in them. There were no springs in the chair in which he was interested. He got a knife from the kitchen and pried loose the tacks. Before he had removed half a dozen of them, the stuffings began to seep out. He lifted out the entire padding and laid it on the floor. There was enough room for a box the size of the one in which he had found the tax receipts and money in the living room drawer. But the space now was tightly stuffed with excelsior.

“I know now why Miss Turnsby got me out of here yesterday,” he said, “and why her temper changed. She was afraid she’d left a speck of excelsior, and I’d seen a bit of it on her step. She swept up behind me and then burned the rest of the stuff and I came back to ask her about Addison while she was doing it.”

“It’s hard to believe she’s involved in anything like this, Alex.”

He was putting the chair back together. “Can you think of anybody it’s easy to believe involved?”

“No.” Joan looked out the window. “The sun’s trying to come out,” she said.

“Let’s go into the living room while it’s lighter.” He took her hand and led her to the old man’s chair. “I want you to sit down there and then look at the painting.”

He watched the changing expression on her face. Her lips were parted a little and the light seemed to grow in her eyes. He stood beside her and looked at the picture again. Then he went back to where he could see only her, small, visibly moved by the picture, and herself more lovely to him than the painting.

“It’s frighteningly beautiful, Alex.”

“Yes,” he said without taking his eyes from her. “Joan.”

She looked at him then. He came and leaned down, his hands supporting him on the arms of the chair, and kissed her.

Neither of them spoke for a few seconds. “This isn’t why I brought you here,” Alex said, “but it might have been.” He kissed her again, this time lingering a bit longer. Through the medley of sounds that might have been of their imagining, came a low hissing. Alex straightened up and turned. Both of them saw Mabel Turnsby in the doorway, her disapproval and hatred escaping with the breath through her teeth. She whirled around without speaking and left them.

“We don’t have much luck, do we?” Alex said. “She’ll do us up right for this.”

Joan got up from the chair. “Magic was never meant to last long,” she said. “It’s a lovely painting.”

Alex lit a cigarette. “We aren’t going to run out of here like a couple of birds she’s flushed out of the bushes. There’s a stack of newspapers in the kitchen. I want to go through them while we’re here.” He looked at his watch. “Five minutes to nine.”

In the kitchen Alex lifted the papers out one at a time. The top papers were dated a few days before, but suddenly, the dates dropped to 1943. He took one after another to the table and went through it sheet by sheet. Joan did the same. Once their hands touched. Joan did not look up to meet his eyes. She continued turning the pages. There was nothing marked in the papers. Nothing. “I guess this is a waste of time,” he said. The dust was drying his throat.

“Wait a minute, Alex. There’s a page missing in this one.”

“Probably wrapped his garbage in it,” he said.

“Let’s not lose patience,” Joan said. “Look at the variations in these dates.” Some of them lagged as much as three years.

“Looks like he saved those particular papers?”

Seven papers were missing one page each. Alex wrote down the dates in his notebook and the number of the missing pages. They covered a span of six years.

“Let me have them,” Joan said. “I’ll look them up while I’m after the Industries’ report.”

“Something else you might tackle,” Alex said. “Andy went to the address of Mike Turnsby’s son in 1933, in Chicago. The Turnsbys moved again then. I don’t suppose it was something to get in Chicago papers, but it might be worth checking.”

“Maybe the death notices,” Joan said.

“That might be it.”

“I’ll have to go to Riverdale for that. Miss Woods doesn’t get those papers.”

“I have to be up there at two. You could go with me. Joan … I’m sorry if Turnsby starts some gossip about us. She’s on the defensive now. She probably came in to see if we’d examined the chair, and now she knows we did. I didn’t clean that place up in there …”

“Don’t worry about it, Alex. If Mattson’s death is solved, nothing else will be important.”

T
HERE WERE NOT MANY
who came to Andrew Mattson’s funeral who came to mourn the old man, Alex thought. People did not mourn someone they did not know. A few were there out of respect. But more came out of curiosity. It should please Altman, the crowd that was on hand to appreciate his conduct of the services.