“I was visiting Geraldine Graham this afternoon. She lives in the same complex as Olin Taverner-the guy who died on Monday or Tuesday. As I was leaving her place, I discovered that someone had broken into Taverner’s apartment.”
“That someone wasn’t you, was it, Ms. Warshawski?”
“No, ma’am. That someone was a man who knocked me to the ground when I went in to investigate. White, maybe forty, lots of hair-I didn’t get much of a look.”
“Okay,” she sighed again. “We’ll send someone over.”
“And, Deputy-Marc Whitby visited Olin Taverner last Thursday night. I don’t know if Whitby came back here on Sunday before he diedbut it seems worth exploring. And Taverner had an anonymous visitor on Monday, someone who washed out Taverner’s whisky glass. Just thought you’d like to know.”
CHAPTER 21
Jigsaw Puzzle
It wasn’t until I was back in my own home that I remembered the wheel tracks going into the culvert. I was bone tired, too tired to think about it further, let alone try to decide whether I should do something about the tracks. I soaked in the tub for half an hour and ate a bowl of canned chicken soup. It wasn’t anything like as good as Mrs. Aguilar’s, but it was what I had.
I was drifting off to an early sleep when Deputy Protheroe called me back. I tried to rise to her level of energy as she explained what she’d done. The guard at the entrance to Anodyne Park couldn’t possibly identify my intruder: too many people came in all day, either making deliveries or visiting families, for him to recognize anyone from my vague description.
She added, almost casually, “You didn’t bust the lock on that desk, did you, during your look-around?”
“Deputy, if I’d gone into that desk, you wouldn’t know about it. You got a crime scene team doing prints and so on?”
“The Anodyne management doesn’t like a big police presence-it lowers morale and leads to lawsuits.” She gave a dry laugh. “But just to keep you from calling six times an hour, I did take the glass into our lab.”
“And you’ll let me know what they tell you? Just to keep me from calling you six times an hour?”
“You never know: I might even do that.”
When she’d hung up, I went back to bed, but I’d woken up too much and couldn’t relax. It was still early, only nine. I phoned Amy Blount to see if she’d had any luck either at T-Square, or from Mare’s other neighbors. Unfortunately, the nursing mother was the only person who’d been up in the middle of the night, or at least the only one who’d seen any sign of activity at Mare’s house.
“When I asked who used to visit him, the kids thought I was some jealous girlfriend trying to stake him out-they could remember seeing me come out of Mare’s house, but not anyone else. They began creating a scenario where I had murdered him. It made me laugh, and then it made me cry-I can’t believe how lonely he must have felt, and I can’t believe he’s dead.”
“Yeah. Investigation sometimes feels like a game, until you remember a person died who was important to their friends and family … What about Mare’s editor-Simon Hendricks?”
“Umh. Cold fish. He had to talk to us, because Harriet was there. We started the way you suggested, with Mare’s assistant Aretha, but she didn’t think there was anything specific to the tension between him and Hendricks beyond professional insecurity. Marc had a contract for a book about Kylie Ballantine-we found that in his desk drawer at the office. Aretha said Hendricks was furious about that because he-Hendricks-had been trying for five years to sell a book about Martin Luther King’s summer in Chicago.”
“So why did Marc tell him about his own book contract?” “Had to-terms of employment.”
“Do you think Hendricks was bitter or jealous enough to kill Marc over it?”
She thought it over. “I’m no expert on why people kill each other. But-well, why would Hendricks lure Marc all the way out to that pond?” “There is that,” I admitted. “What about Mare’s cellmate, Jason Tompkin? Did you get him to say anything about the company relations with Bayard?”
“He runs his mouth so much it’s hard to know whether to trust anything he says. For what it’s worth, the company policy is not to discuss work in progress with anyone outside Llewellyn Publishing. However, he says that
Hendricks really stresses it in relation to Bayard Publishing. J.T. says that comes down from Llewellyn, that there’s some kind of bad blood between Calvin Bayard and Augustus Llewellyn, nobody knows what, but he, J.T., thinks it’s because Llewellyn took money from Bayard to start up T-Square, and Bayard acted patronizing-like Llewellyn was proof of what a goodhearted liberal Bayard was. But here’s something really weird: according to J.T, Hendricks and Marc had a big blowup last week because Marc tried seeing Llewellyn in person.”
I was astounded: you don’t survive corporate life by trying to see the company owner behind your boss’s back. “What was that about?”