“Could you really hear outer space?” I asked as he opened the door to his office and let me pass.
“I’ll give you one. You try it. Let me know. Truth is, you can tune in outer space on any radio. You just won’t hear much of anything. But the CROS is perfect for AM and FM and has an alarm clock that plays ‘So in Love With You Am I.’ Have a seat.”
I sat, not across from him at his desk but at a table in the corner near a window.
Corkle picked up a glass sphere about the size of a softball. He shook it gently and held it up so I could see the snow under the glass gently falling on…
“Rosebud,” he said. “This is an exact replica of the one in Citizen Kane.”
He handed it to me.
“See the sled?”
“Yes,” I said handing it back. “You sold them for nine ninety-five?”
“No, I didn’t sell them. I had this one made to remind me not to go looking for other people’s Rosebuds. Are you looking for someone’s Rosebud, Lewis Fonesca?”
“My own maybe,” I said.
He made a sound I took as a sign of sympathy or understanding. Then he put the glass ball gently atop a dark wood holder on the table and began rummaging through the drawers of his desk.
“I don’t stay in this house because of any phobia,” he said. “I just don’t find things out there very interesting anymore. You know what I mean.”
“Yes.”
“I wasn’t asking a question,” he said, bouncing from the chair and looking at his shelves for something else to play with. “I know the answer.”
“What’s the answer?” I asked.
“Catherine,” he said. “Am I right or am I right?”
“You’re right,” I said. “Now I’ve got a question.”
“Want a drink? You drink Diet Coke, right? Or how about lemonade?”
“Not now, thanks. The Kitchen Master Block Set.”
“A good seller, not great, but good. Sold seventy-four thousand in 1981.”
“There was a meat pounder in the set,” I said.
“Meat tenderizer,” he corrected.
“A big wooden mallet with ridges on the head.”
“Yes. You want one?”
“My sister has one.”
“Nice to know it’s still in service,” he said. “Sturdy. Made in the Philippines.”
“I think one of them was used to murder Blue Berrigan,” I said. “I saw the postmortem photographs. They left a dent in his skull like a fingerprint.”
“Could be a different manufacturer’s,” he said.
Corkle found what he was looking for in the deep file drawer in the desk. It was a jar full of what looked like pennies. He rolled the jar in his hands. The coins made the sound of falling rain as it turned.
“You give away a lot of Kitchen Master Block Sets here in Sarasota?”
“I give my Corkle Enterprises helpful house, car, and kitchen aids to anyone who comes in this house. I give them for Christmas, Hanukkah, Kwanzaa, and birthdays.”
The rolling coins in the jar grew louder as he moved toward me.
“You’re a generous man,” I said.
“I like to think so.”
“You haven’t asked me about Ronnie Gerall.”
“I assume that you’ll tell me if you have anything to say that will help him.”
“His name isn’t Ronnie Gerall, but you already know that.”
“Do I?”
He was behind me now. I didn’t turn my head, just listened to the coins.
If I were ever to really believe in God, a primary reason would be the existence of irony in my life. There had to be some irony in the possibility of my getting killed with a jar full of pennies.
There is a mischief in me, even with the coins of death over my head. Death wish? Maybe. Ann Hurwitz thought so. Now she thinks I may be getting over it. If so, why did I then say, “Jeff Augustine.”
The coin rattling turned to the sound of a thunderstorm in the Amazon and then suddenly stopped.
“He didn’t leave town,” I said.
Corkle moved back to the wall, deposited the jar, and sat behind his desk.
“He convinced you he was going, didn’t he?”
“Yes,” I said.
“Good actor. C-plus real-life tough guy.”
“Where is he?”
“I don’t know,” Corkle said, “but I do know where your cowboy friend is.”
“Where?”
“Searching the rooms upstairs for Rachel Horvecki.”
He pushed a button under the desk and a section of the bookcase popped open to reveal a bank of eight full color television screens. They were all numbered. On number three Ames was talking to a young woman sitting on a bed.
“Why did you take her?”
“Protect her,” he said. “My daughter and grandson believe in Ronnie’s… What’s his real name?”
“Dwight Ronald Torcelli. He’s still Ronnie.”
“I don’t want her threatened to the point where he feels he can’t proclaim his innocence.”
“You think he’d do the noble thing?”
“No,” said Corkle, swiveling his leather chair so that it faced the window and presented me with the back of his head. He had a little monk’s bald pate you couldn’t see unless he was seated like this and leaning back.
“Don’t ask me why my daughter and grandson believe in him.”
“Their belief may be eroding.”
“I wouldn’t try to talk them out of it,” he said. “On the other hand, I wouldn’t say a word against…”
“Dwight Torcelli,” I said. “You let us steal those documents about Ronnie Gerall while we played poker the other night,” I said. “You dropped a hint about them and left them on your desk. You had a pretty good idea we would come the night I bought into your poker game.”
“Why would I do that?”
“To give us reasons to believe that he was guilty without handing us evidence.”
“You think I’m that devious?”
“You’re that devious,” I said.
He swiveled back to face me and looked up at the television monitors.
“Persuasive,” he said.
I looked at the monitors. Ames and the young woman were coming out of the bedroom. He led the way to some narrow steep stairs just off the kitchen. The young woman followed him.
“Augustine?” I asked.
“You think he killed Horvecki and Berrigan?”
“The thought had entered my mind.”
“Anything else?”
“Are you paying me to clear Torcelli or to find something against him?”
“Given his relationship with your friend Sally Pierogi…”
“Porovsky.”
“Porovsky,” he amended. “Given that, I think you might have an interest in proving Torcelli is not a nice person. There, they’ve left the house.”
I looked up at a screen in the lower left-hand monitor to see Ames and the young woman hurrying across the back lawn.
“You’re good at all this,” I said.
