The Fourth Deadly Sin (29 page)

Which meant, of course, that the detective had to live with doubt and anxiety. If you couldn’t do that, Delaney thought not for the first time you really should be in another line of business.

Detective Helen Venable was having a particularly severe attack of doubt and anxiety. She was uncertain of her own ability to establish the truth or falsity of Joan Yesell’s alleged alibi without seeking the advice of her more experienced male colleagues.

She was nervous about her failure to report Mrs. Blanche Yesell’s possible absence from her apartment on the murder night. She was worried that there were inquiries she should be making that she was not. And she fretted that an entire week had to pass before she could confirm or deny the existence of the stupid bridge club.

But her strongest doubt was a growing disbelief in Joan’s guilt. That soft, feeling, quiet woman, so overwhelmed by the hard, brutal, raucous world of Manhattan, was incapable of crushing the skull of a man she professed to admire. Or so Detective Venable thought.

She met with Joan every day, spoke to her frequently on the phone, went out with her Monday night for a spaghetti dinner and to a movie on Thursday afternoon. The closer their relationship became, the more Helen was convinced of the woman’s innocence.

Joan was almost physically sickened by the filth and ugliness of city streets. She was horrified and depressed by violence in any form. She could not endure the thought of cruelty to animals. The sight of a dead sparrow made her weep. She never objected to Helen’s squad room profanity, but the detective could see her wince.

“Kiddo,” Venable told her, “you’re too good for this world.

Angels finish last.”

“I don’t think I’m an angel,” Joan said slowly.

“Far from it. I do awful, stupid things, like everyone else. Sometimes I get so furious with Mama that I could scream. You think I’m goody-goody, but I’m not.”

“Compared to me,” Helen said, “you’re a saint.”

Frequently, during that week, the detective brought the talk around to Dr. Simon Ellerbee. Joan seemed iilling, almost eager, to speak of him.

“He meant so much to me,” she said.

“He was the only therapist I ever went to, and I knew right from the start that he would help me. I could see he’d never be shocked or offended by anything I’d tell him. He’d just listen in that nice, sympathetic way of his. I’d never hold back from him because I knew I could trust him. I think he was the first man-the first personI really and truly trusted. We were so close. I had the feeling that things that hurt me hurt him, too. I suppose psychiatrists are like that to all their patients, but Doctor Simon made me feel like someone special.”

“Sounds like quite a guy,” Venable said.

“Oh, he was. I’m going to tell you something, but you must promise never to tell anyone. Promise?”

“Of course.”

“Well, sometimes I used to daydream about Doctor Simon’s wife dying. Like in a plane crash-you know? Quick and painless. Then he and I would get married. I imagined what it would be like seeing him every day, living with him, spending,the rest of my life with him.”

“Sounds to me like you were in love with him, honey.”

“I suppose I was,” Yesell said sorrowfully.

“I guess all his patients were. You call me a saint; he was the real saint.”

Another time she herself brought up the subject of the murder: “Are. the police getting anywhere?” she asked Venable.

“On who killed Doctor Simon?”

“It’s slow going,” the detective admitted.

“No good leads that I know of, but a lot of people are working on it. We’ll get the perp.”

:”Perp?”

“Perpetrator. The one who did it.”

“Oh. Well, I hope you do. It was an awful, awful thing.”

They talked about the apartment they might one day share.

They talked about their mothers, about clothes, and foods they liked or hated. They recalled incidents from their girlhood, giggled about boys they had known, traded opinions on TV stars and novelists.

It was not a rare occurrence, this closeness between detective and suspect.

For did they not need each other? Even a murderer might find the obsession of his pursuer as important to himself as it was to the hunter. It gave meaning to their existence.

“Gotta work late on Friday night, dear,” Venable told her target. “Reports and shit like that. I’ll call you on Saturday and maybe we can have dinner or something.”

“I’d like that,” Joan said with her timid smile.

“I really look forward to seeing you and talking to you on the phone.”

“Me, too,” Helen said, troubled because she was telling the truth.

On Friday night at seven o’clock, Helen was slouched down in her Honda, parked two doors away from the Yesells’ brownstone. She could watch the entrance in her rearview mirror, and kept herself alert with a little transistor radio turned to a hard-rock station.

She sat there for more than an hour, never taking her eyes from the doorway. It was almost 8:15 when Blanche Yesell came out, bundled up in a bulky fur coat that looked like a bearskin. There was no mistaking her; she was hatless and that beehive hairdo seemed to soar higher than ever.

Venable slid from the car and followed at a distance. It didn’t last long; Mrs. Yesell scurried westward and darted into a brownstone one door from the corner. The detective quickened her pace, but by the time she got there, the subject had disappeared from vestibule and lobby, with no indication of which apartment she had entered.

Helen stood on the sidewalk, staring up, flummoxed. If Calazo had been faced with the problem, he probably would have rung every bell in the joint, demanding, “Is Mrs. Blanche Yesell there?” And within an hour, he’d have statements from the other bridge club members and know if Mrs. Yesell was or was not at home on the murder night and could or could not testify as to her daughter’s presence.

But such direct action did not occur to Helen. She pondered how she might identify and question the bridge club members without alerting the Yesells that Joan’s alibi was being investigated.

She went back to the Honda and sat there a long time, feeling angry and ineffective because she couldn’t think of a clever scam. Finally, taking a deep breath, she decided she better write a complete report on Mrs. Yesell’s Friday night bridge club and dump the whole thing in Sergeant Boone’s lap.

It was a personal failure, she acknowledged, and it infurated her. But the fear of committing a worldclass boo-boo and being bounced down to uniformed duty again was enough to convince her to go by the book. It turned out to be a smart decision.

If Helen was suffering from doubts, Detective Ross Konigsbacher was inflated with confidence, convinced he was on a roll’ On the same night Helen was brooding unhappily in her Honda, the Kraut was rubbing knees with L. Vincent Symington at a small table at the Dorian Gray.

Symington had insisted on ordering a bottle of Frascati, served in a silver ice bucket. The detective had made no objections, knowing that Symington would pick up the tab. That was one thing you could say for the creep: There were no moths in his wallet.

“A dreadful day,” he told Konigsbacher.

“Simply dreadful.

This is a nice little wine, isn’t it? One crisis after another. I’m on Wall Street, you know-I don’t think I told you that-and today the market simply collapsed. What do you do, Ross?”

“Import-export,” he said glibly, having prepared for the question. “Plastic and leather findings. Very dull.”

“I can imagine. Are you in the market at all?”

“I’m afraid not.”

“Well, if you ever decide to take a flier, talk to me first; I may be able to put you into something sweet.”

“I’ll do that. But my wife has been nagging me about a new fur coat, so I won’t be able to take a flier in stocks or anything else for a while.”

“What a shame,” Symington said.

“Women can be such bitches, can’t they?

Are you still working out, Ross?”

“Every morning with the weights.”

“Oh, my!” the other man said, laughing brightly.

“You’re getting me all excited. And what does your wife do while you’re exercising in the morning?”

“She snores.”

“Now that is dull. Here, let me fill your glass. This goes down easily, doesn’t it?”

“Like some people I know,” the Kraut said, and they both shook with silent laughter.

“Vince, have you had any more visits from the cops about the murder of your shrink?”

“Not a word. But I’m sure they’re investigating me from A to Z. Let them; I have nothing to hide.”

“I hope you have a good alibi for the time it happened.”

“I certainly do,” Symington said virtuously.

“I was at a very posh affair at the Hilton. My company was giving a birthday dinner for the founder. A dozen people saw me there.”

“Come on, Vince,” Konigsbacher said, smiling.

“Don’t tell me you were there all night. I know how boring those things can be. Didn’t you sneak out for a teensy-weensy drink somewhere else?”

“Oh, Ross,” the other man said admiringly, “you are clever. Of course I split for a while. Simply couldn’t endure all that business chitchat. I found the grungiest, most vulgar bar in the city over near Eighth Avenue. It’s called Stallions.

How does that grab you? Rough trade? You wouldn’t believe!

I just sat in a corner, sipped my Perrier, and took it all in.

What a spectacle’ You and I must drop by there some night just for laughs. I’ve never seen so much black leather in my life! “

“Meet anyone interesting?” the detective asked casually.

“Well, if you must know …” Symington said coyly, twirling his wineglass by the stem, “there was one boy … I bought him a drink-he was having banana brandy; can you imagine!-and we talked awhile. His name was Nick. He was one Of those dese, demand dose boys, and said he wanted to be -fleff I asked, but it went right over his head! I an actor.

“Han spent a fun hour there, and then I went back to the party at the Hilton. I’m sure not a soul noticed I had been gone.”

“Oh, Vince,” the Kraut said seriously, “I hope you weren’t gone during the time your psychiatrist was killed. The cops aren’t dummies, you know. They’re liable to find out you left the party and come around to question you again,”

“You think so?” the other man said, beginning to worry.

“Well, as a matter of fact, I was away from the Hilton from about nine to ten o’clock or so, but I can’t believe the cops could discover that.”

“They might,” Detective Konigsbacher said darkly.

“They have their ways.”

“Oh, God!” Symington said despairingly.

“What do you think I should do?

Maybe I’ll look up those two cops who came to question me and tell them about it. That would prove I have nothing to hide, wouldn’t it?”

“Don’t do that,” the Kraut said swiftly.

“Don’t volunteer anything. Just play it cool. And if they dump on you for not telling them about being away from the party, tell them you forgot. After all, that boy-what was his name?”

“Nick.”

“Nick can back up your story.”

“If they can ever find him,” the other man said dolefully.

“You know what those kids are Re-here today, gone tomorrow.

“Well, don’t worry about it,” Konigsbacher advised.

“As long as you’re innocent, you have nothing to fear. You are innocent, aren’t you, Vince?”

“Pure as the driven snow,” Symington said solemnly, and both men laughed immoderately.

“Ross, have you had dinner yet?”

“As a matter of fact, I haven’t. You?”

“No, and I’m famished. I know absolutely the chicest French bistro in town; their bouillabaisse is divine. Would you care to try it? My treat, of course.”

“Sounds like fun,” Konigsbacher said.

“It’s got to be better than my wife’s cooking, She can’t boil water without burning ice, “Ross, you’re a scream!”

Symington paid the bill and they left for the chicest French bistro in town.

The detective told himself he was living high’

off the hog, and plotted how he might make this cushy duty last. Incomplete reports to Sergeant Boone and Delaney would help.

Delaney himself was sinking in a swamp of incomplete data. He couldn’t get a handle on the alibis of Otherton, Bellsey, Yesell, or Symington, and Harold Gerber’s confession was still neither verified nor refuted. Other than eliminating Kane as a suspect, little hard progress had been made.

Delaney found most bothersome about this puzzle wasn’t the factual alibis but the enigmas that showed no signs of yielding to investigation. In his dogged, methodical way, he made a list of what he considered the key mysteries that seemed to defy solution: Major riddles: 1. Who was the late patient Dr. Ellerbee was expecting on the night he was killed?

2. Why were there two sets of wet footprints on the townhouse carpeting?

3. What was the meaning of the hammer blows to the victim’s eyes after he was dead?

4. Who stole the billing ledger-and for what reason?

5. What was the cause of Ellerbee’s change of personality during the past year?

Minor riddles: 1. Did L. Vincent Symington’s sighting of Dr. Ellerbee driving alone on a Friday night have any significance?

2. Why did Joan Yesell attempt suicide immediately after she was questioned about the case?

3. What was the real purpose of Dr. Diane Ellerbee’s visit to the Delaneys’ home-and her unexpected friendliness?

He hunched over his desk, studying the list with the feeling-a hope, really-that finding the answer to one riddle would serve as a key, and all the others would then give up their secrets in a natural progression, the entire case suddenly revealed as a rational and believable chain of events.

It existed, he was convinced, and remained hidden only because he hadn’t the wit to see it.

He was rereading his list of conundrums when the phone rang.

“Edward X. Delaney here.”

“This is Detective Charles Parnell, Mr. Delaney. How are you, sir?”

“Fine, thank you. And you?”

“Having fun,” Daddy Warbucks said, laughing.

“I’m assdeep in numbers, trying to put away a guy who was running a Ponzi scam in Brooklyn. Took his relatives, friends, and neighbors for about a hundred big ones. Interesting case. I’ll have to tell you about it someday. But the reason I called … I promised you I’d follow up on Simon Ellerbee’s will. It’s been filed for probate, and I can give you the scoop.”