“He says what the old so often say, he says, `I will die soon, the time to hold secrets is over.”’
I thanked him, but when I tried to offer him money for his time, he drew himself up to his full height and said quietly he did not take money for such things. I felt embarrassed, as one does in making a social mistake, and left the room ahead of him, stopping at the administrator’s desk to get Taverner’s address.
Rivas caught up with me at the exit. “I am thinking someone has been visiting Mr. Taverner on Monday night. Not Sunday, when this black man dies, but the next night. On Monday, I leave Mr. Taverner as always at nine-thirty, ready to go to bed but not in bed, that he likes to do by himself He likes to sit in his chair with his whisky, to read or sometimes to write, and then move into his bed when he is ready for that. For the private functions in the night, he has a bottle on his chair and one on his bed.
“But Tuesday morning, when I find him, when he is still in his chair and I know he has never gone to bed, also his glass is clean. He never has washed a glass in his whole life, I think, and now that he is old and he walks so badly, he will not start now washing glasses. When I was finding him, then everything was too-too much drama, I didn’t think about the glass, I didn’t think until tonight, until now when you ask me did this black man come back on Sunday. But someone did visit Mr. Taverner on Monday.”
My heart beat faster. “What did you do with the glass?”
“I put it in the cupboard, with the others. When someone comes for his things, they will find all of his glasses just so, everything just so.”
“Do you still have a key to Mr. Taverner’s apartment? I know you’re meeting some people, but could you take five minutes to show me which glass? It’s possible we might find something in it still, some fingerprint or something.”
And then I could stay behind and break into the drawer where Taverner had locked the papers he’d shown Marc Whitby. The weariness that enveloped me an hour ago had vanished. Excitement made my fingers tingle.
Rivas led me solemnly from the nursing facility to a nearby apartment building. He said little, except that he was meeting his “new gentleman’s” family in this same building, so he had enough time.
From the outside, the assisted living building looked like Geraldine Graham’s, but inside it had been designed for people in wheelchairs and walkers, with handrails bolted into extrawide halls. Taverner had lived on the ground floor. Rivas took a key chain from his pocket and, with the compact motions that characterized him, opened the front door.
When he turned on the lights, I saw we were in an apartment similar again to Geraldine’s, but again with wider halls and doorways to accommodate wheelchairs. The rooms as a consequence were smaller. Rivas led me past a sitting room to the kitchen, which was, as he had boasted, spotless, and opened a cupboard where the glasses stood at attention. It was only after he’d pointed out the relevant glass that he spoke.
“You think there is a problem with Mr. Taverner, with his life ending, because of this glass?”
“I’m like you: the washed glass makes me suspicious. Can you show me where you found Mr. Taverner?”
Rivas led me into the bedroom, a large room with heavy drapes covering a set of sliding doors. The bed was still as he’d left it on Monday night, the sheets turned down so that an old man could easily get under them. A leather easy chair was placed about five steps from the bed. A table stood next to it with two canes hanging from a rack; on the polished tabletop were a phone, Monday’s newspapers and a bottle of Berghoff’s fourteenyear-old bourbon.
“You’ve seen many people die, haven’t you?” I asked. “Was there anything unusual about Mr. Taverner’s body when you found him?”
He slowly shook his head. “He has gone in his sleep, I think, as we all hope will happen, without the hospital, the-the equipment, all of those things that hurt us.”
“But something wasn’t right,” I suggested, seeing his troubled frown. He looked around the room, again shaking his head. “You are right. It is something, not only this glass. Is it the pillow? I think it is, it has the”—he fumbled for a word, showing with his fist the way the head makes a hollow in the pillow after sleep-“yes, the hollow; the pillow looks like he sleeps on it, but he is in his chair. Now”-he crossed to the bed-“now it is normal, but-not quite right, not where I have been leaving it. And also, I think someone has moved this chair.”