Philly Stakes (15 page)

“Mackenzie, this is silly. Clausen’s study or his night table would be better hunting grounds.”

“You have no patience,” he mumbled.

“It’s junk. Who wants melted drummer boys? And if anybody does, let them pick through themselves.”

“What about this?” he asked.

I shrugged. It was a crystal, with its wire hanger burned away, but who cared? Who cared about any of it—a gray snowflake of something like iron? A colorless lump that might have been anything? An oversized duck head?

Is there such a thing as a double think, as in a doubletake?

“Mackenzie?”

“You’re right.” He wiped his filthy hands on his jeans. “Time to move on. That was fun, though.”

“About this duck.”

“Must have sentimental meaning. Kind of funny looking. Heavy, too, for an ornament.”

“It’s not an ornament. Not for a tree, anyway.” I turned it over. The base of the head, the duck’s neck, was hollow.

Mackenzie shook his head. “Body’s missing?”

“Not a duck body. Something long and round that burned.”

“Like a cane,” he said softly.

“Exactly like a cane.” I could see him, the ghost, tapping Alexander Clausen on the shoulder. He had held the cane up high and used the head of it—I remembered a flash of silvery metal, maybe even a beak.

“Maybe it was ornamental,” Mackenzie said.

“It wasn’t. He could stand without it, but not walk.” The morning’s queasy anxiety flooded back.

We didn’t theorize. Instead, we found the richly paneled study and searched the drawers and shelves. I checked out his books, a compulsion of mine. This was a pip of a library, featuring gold-tooled editions of Reader’s Digest Condensed Books, the twelve-volume autobiography of one Hon. Alfred Pettywell, a book on diseases of the ear, a two-part religious autobiography of a Welsh woman and the bound proceedings of the 1948 conference on maritime law.

“He bought books by the yard,” I said. Another act against humanity on his part.

“Or by binding. Notice that they’re all brown and green?” Mackenzie was fiddling with the computer, looking for disks or file directories with something suggesting guest lists.

“I give up,” he said. “I never thought we’d find anything, anyway.”

“This trip was to humor me?”

“Also to charm you, seduce you into remembering how honorable and fahn I am. Things like that. You’ve been pretty testy lately.”

“You weren’t really looking for anything? Just enjoying play digging!”

“That’s what I mean—did you always have this temper? Are you sufferin’ from holiday stress?”

“Damn, Mackenzie, you’re so hung up on your stupid theory that Laura did it that you’re never going to look any further. Even that lady next door—”

“My, my,” he said. “I think you’re letting your emotions cloud your vision. Like maybe I wasn’t looking for something, but I at least know that I probably found something.”

“Like what?”

“Like why do I have to tell you, Sherlock? You losin’ it? Listen, I am dyin’ of thirst. Let us wend our way back to the kitchen, and maybe I’ll tell.”

“What did you mean?” I asked as we headed for the sink.

“When still attached to a cane, a duck would be a pretty effective head-basher, don’t you think? But you were supposed to think of that. You were supposed to get Nancy Drewish, whoop it up and win your sleuthing medal. How come I have to say my lines and yours, too? You must be stressed out. Florida’s going to do you a world of good.”

“The old man did it, then?” I felt lighter than I had in days.

He turned the faucet. Nothing happened. “Turned the water off,” he said. “Drained the pipes.”

“Forget it.” I wrapped my arms around him and kissed him solidly. “I’ll buy you a drink. Let’s go.”

“What’s the occasion?”

“You are at last considering the idea of an unknown killer. You have actually broadened your line of vision. A holiday miracle.”

“Right. My vision’s now broad enough to notice that you look like Al Jolson singing ‘Mammy.’ Talk about doin’ something dirty. That kiss set new records.” He looked like a miner himself.

I touched my face, and he grinned even more. “Now you have streaks, too,” he said. “Go the other direction and you’ll be plaid.” My hands had ashy deposits on every finger. “Interesting. You should see yourself. No place you’d want to be is going to let us in. And we don’t have water.”

I remembered the laundry-room lean-to. There should be some rags that could help remove the grit.

“Do not think I don’t appreciate the return of your admiration,” Mackenzie called out. “But in all fairness, there is still a problem.”

The laundry room did indeed have a box of authentic rags. And surely even servants were given a small mirror in their bathroom?

“Because,” he said, walking into the shed and shivering, “if the old man did it—where’d he go?”

It was bothering me, too. Marley couldn’t have been the “prowler” rushing away, not if his cane were still inside the house.

The bathroom’s amenities were as minimal as I’d expected them to be. Bare linoleum floor. Tub with white plastic curtain. Toilet, sink, a thin-looking towel, a small square of mirror and a window that looked out at the unlandscaped, utilitarian part of the grounds. I stared through it, wondering, while I worked on my face.

So Marley wasn’t the rushing-away prowler. Maybe there hadn’t been any interlopers, not in front, not in back, not on the stairs. Maybe they were a variety of upper-crust delirium tremens.

My mood wasn’t sparkling to begin with, but the view from the maid’s bath was not designed to lift it. What a switch from the cultivated grounds I’d seen at the entrance and from the bedroom windows, whence, even in the dead of winter, the view was organized and planned. All the unfortunate tenants of these quarters would be able to see in any season were trash and garbage cans, an unused dog run, a clothesline and a storage shed. Even the prying neighbor was spared the dismal sight by a high hedge. I shook my head, mesmerized, watching a gust of wind make the clothesline shudder and the door of the storage shed bump open and flap closed.

No, not closed, because something was out of place, lying on the ground, partially out of the shed. Bad housekeeping, to leave gardening tools exposed that way to winter.

“Well, your soot is evened out,” Mackenzie said, coming into the small bathroom with me. “Now you are exotic and dusky skinned.”

“Look,” I said. “Over there.”

He looked and shrugged.

“The door’s unlatched.”

He looked at me quizzically, his frown lines accentuated by soot.

“Mackenzie, there is absolutely nothing out of place in this house, except for fire damage. The kitchen drawers were perfect, the cabinets, Clausen’s study, Laura’s bedroom. But that—” I pointed at the window. “That is gross mismanagement. Everything in there is going to rust, or decay, or whatever form its ruination takes. I can’t quite make out what it is blocking the door, but I think—”

The wind blew again, and again the dark object, partly shiny, partly dull, was visible. We leaned toward the window and squinted. And then, without saying anything, we hurried out the back door.

“I have a terrible feeling,” I said, my feet crunching on frozen grass.

He nodded.

“She said there was a prowler out back. But of course, she could have been mistaken. Probably was.”

“Uh-huh,” Mackenzie said. “And probably, some people store shoes outside for the winter. With socks, and legs, still in them.”

And then we were at the shed, and Mackenzie opened the door and there he was, a frozen sculpture of a crumpled man, contorted as if someone had tried to shove him onto a shelf, mouth open, expression confused.

“Marley,” I said. Definitely. And definitely as dead as a doornail. Perhaps this wasn’t the year to try for seasonal joy. The season certainly wasn’t doing its fair share. It was hard to manage even a feeble “fa-la-la.”

On the plus side, which was harder and harder to find, it’s good to be with a cop when stumbling over corpses. Saves lots of official pestering and suspicion.

I stood on the frosty front lawn, near the remnants of the sofa on which Gladys and I had relaxed three nights ago, and on which Alexander Clausen had been immolated later that same night. I watched uniformed police transport poor frozen John Jacob Doe to a wagon, and then to the morgue, and sighed for his ignominious end, for his anonymity, for the whole wretched mess. Mackenzie stood at the curb, talking to the neighbor woman, who had swooped down on us, this time carrying a trowel and shouting “I knew it! I just knew it!”

I stayed out of it. The police hadn’t hassled me, hadn’t questioned me, hadn’t intimated that I had placed the old man in the toolshed. I was with Mackenzie and my virtue was a given. I tried to take comfort from that, but even now that he was out of our hands, no longer our concern, the man I had referred to as Marley’s ghost haunted me. Perhaps that’s who he really was.

I tried to perk up on the ride back into town by searching for clever or imaginative Christmas trimmings, but the spirit of the season eluded me. Maybe I needed to do something more active about it. If I couldn’t be jolly, I could at least give.

We parked, washed, changed and, at my request, walked the five blocks to Laura’s aunt’s apartment. It was early. I didn’t think we’d interrupt dinner or whatever Christmas Eve plans they might have. Besides, the book of poetry was a good excuse to touch base with Laura again.

“Be careful,” I said as we rang the bell. “Tread gently.” Mackenzie looked annoyed. “Sorry,” I said. “You didn’t need to be told that. I just needed to say it.”

Laura answered the door, looking even less substantial, more swallowed by her clothing than was normal for her. Maybe I’d take her shopping when the sales began. We’d get her out of her father’s camouflage and into something that let her look real.

She ushered us into a spacious, rather spare living room. It was all colorless gleam—bare waxed floors, subdued fabrics, sepia prints in metal frames, clear surfaces with no ornaments, souvenirs or books. The decor was chic and generically correct, but not a style that went well with flesh, let alone human imperfection and unpredictability. A Christmas tree, small but green and with brightly wrapped packages below it was the only oasis of color.

From somewhere in the far reaches of the apartment, I heard the splutters of a television set. In this room, all was silence, except for Alice Clausen, who sat sobbing on a gray flannel chair. She murmured hello and returned to heavy sniffling.

“She hasn’t been…” Laura said. “Since yesterday, she’s…”

“This must be Laura’s teacher and the detective.” A vigorous version of Alice strode toward me. Her hair was a darker blond, her eyes a deeper blue, her voice and step surer, the whole bone structure a shade less fine. I couldn’t determine whether she was the older or younger sister. “I’m Alma Leary.” She extended her hand. “And I hope this isn’t official business.”

“I’ve brought a Christmas gift for Laura,” I said.

Alice buried her face in her handkerchief, but I still heard unhappy squeaks.

“However, ma’am,” Mackenzie said, “since we are here, I hope you won’t mind discussin’ a few points with us.” Alma and Laura looked at him intently. “See, it appears there is a new problem. Somebody else,” he said in his slow, unthreatening manner. “An unidentified elderly gentleman.”

“What about him?” Alma demanded. “Wait—what do you mean unidentified? Is he—you mean he’s—”

Mackenzie nodded. “Dead, ma’am.” He spoke with no hint of urgency, but Alice Clausen swiveled her head and changed her focal point to the detective.

“Somebody else? Another dead person?” she wailed. “Where? Who? What are you talking about?”

“We don’t know who. He was, ah, in the toolshed.”

“The service port?” Alice looked stunned.

Alma took over. “Inside it? But I know where it is—and it’s shut up, isn’t it? Didn’t we talk about keeping it locked, Alice? People steal mowers and leaf blowers and things. Didn’t the gardener take care of it? How would anyone get into it? And why?”

We were still all standing in the middle of the sterile room. Alma edged closer to Mackenzie. She was either belligerent or protective, I couldn’t tell. She looked at Mackenzie in a manner that made him seem shorter than she was. “He must be a homeless person who broke in, went to sleep and died. Froze, or something. You always read about such things. Could have happened at any time. It’s been a cold winter.” She didn’t actually brush her hands together as if wiping away that topic, but that was the effect. You got the idea that Alma solved things. And quickly.

“Interestin’ theory,” Mackenzie murmured. “However, this man was at the party. Miss Pepper here remembers him. White haired, with a limp. Used a cane with a duck-head handle?”

Laura nodded. She remembered him, too, murmuring that he hadn’t eaten his dinner, and she’d joked with him about it.

“Sit down,” Alma said. She was a rather brusque hostess.

We obeyed, settling on an unyielding sofa covered in pinstripe. “You have a housekeeper living in that room, Mrs. Clausen?” Mackenzie asked. There had been no sign of life in the tiny cell-like quarters.

Alma nodded vigorously. “Marta,” she said, answering for her sister, who was preoccupied with sniveling. “Nice girl, if a little slow.” She paused, wrinkled her forehead and turned to Alice. “Wait a minute. Where is Marta? Where did she go? Where is she living now?”

It seemed a little late to think about a woman who had presumably been wandering around, homeless, for days.

Alice shook her head. “Oh. I remember. She quit.” She wiped her eyes. “Wouldn’t live there. Not even with a TV in her room. Left last Monday, but don’t tell—” She looked stunned, then almost smiled. “I was going to say don’t tell Alexander. He gets so angry when they quit, and they always do. It isn’t my fault, either.”

“So your husband would have assumed this Marta was still there?” Mackenzie asked.

“Well, not on Thursday night, it was her night off. She came back Friday mornings, but yes, he would have assumed she still lived with us.”

“Do you know who the man in the toolshed was, Mrs. Clausen?” Mackenzie asked abruptly.