mind.”
“I’m not sure that’s such a good idea-to model herself on me, that is. A very attractive girl-amazing that she’s avoided all that suburban insularity. “She sat on the daybed to watch me pack. “What now? Can-you expose the killer?”
“I’ve got to find a lever,” I said. “I know who did it-not who fired the actual shot, that’s probably a guy named Tony Bronsky, but it could have been any one of several of Smeissen’s crew. But who desired that shot to be fired- that I know but can’t prove. I know what the crime was, though, and I know how it was worked.” I zipped the canvas bag shut. “What I need is a lever, or maybe a wedge.” I was talking to myself more than to Lotty. “A wedge to pry this guy apart a bit. If I can find out that the fiddle couldn’t be worked without his involvement, then maybe I can force him into the open.”
I was standing with one foot on the bed, absent-mindedly tapping the suitcase with my fingers while I thought. Lotty said, “If I were a sculptor, I would make a statue of you-Nemesis come to life. You will think of a way-I see it in your face.” She stood on tiptoe and gave me a kiss. “I’ll walk you to the street-if anyone shoots at you, then I can patch you up quickly, before too much blood is lost.”
I laughed. “Lotty, you’re wonderful. By all means, cover my back for me.”
She walked me to the corner of Seminary, but the street was clear. “That’s because of that Sergeant Mc- Something,” she said. “I think he’s been driving around here from time to time. Still, Vic, be careful: you have no mother, but you are a daughter of my spirit. I should not like anything to happen to you.”
“Lotty, that’s melodrama,” I protested. “Don’t start getting old, for God’s sake.” She shrugged her thin shoulders in a way wholly European and gave me a sardonic smile, but her eyes were serious as I walked up the street to my car.
17
Shoot-Out on Elm Street
Larry and his friend the carpenter had done a beautiful job on my apartment. The door was a masterpiece, with carved flowers on the panels. The carpenter had installed two dead bolts, and the action on them was clean and quiet. Inside, the place shone as it had not for months. Not a trace of the weekend ravage remained. Although Larry had sent the shredded couch away, he had moved chairs and an occasional table around to fill the empty space. He had left a bill in the middle of the kitchen table. Two people for two days at $8.00 an hour, $256.00. The door, locks, and installation, $315.00. New supplies of flour, sugar, beans, and spices; new pillows for the bed: $97.00. It seemed like a pretty reasonable bill to me. I wondered who was going to pay me, though. Maybe Jill could borrow from her mother until her trust fund matured.
I went to look through my jewelry box. By some miracle the vandals had not taken my mother’s few valuable pieces, but I thought I’d better lock them in a bank vault and not leave them around for the next invader. Larry seemed to have thrown out the shards of the broken Venetian glass. I should have told him to save them, but that couldn’t be helped; it was beyond restoration, anyway. The other seven held pride of place in the built-in china cupboard, but I couldn’t look at them without a thud in my stomach.
I tried Ralph again. This time he answered on the fourth ring. “What’s up, Miss Marple?” he asked. “I thought you were out after Professor Moriarty until tomorrow.”
“I found him earlier than I expected. In fact, I found out the secret that Peter Thayer died to protect. Only he didn’t want to protect it. You know that claim draft I gave you? Did you ever find the file?”
“No. I told you I put it on the missing-file search, but it hasn’t turned up.”
“Well, it may never. Do you know who Joseph Gielczowski is?”
“What is this? Twenty questions? I’ve got someone coming over in twenty minutes, Vic.”
“Joseph Gielczowski is a senior vice-president of the Knifegrinders union. He has not been on an assembly line for twenty-three years. If you went to visit him in his home, you would find he was as healthy as you are. Or you could go see him at Knifegrinders headquarters where he is able to work and draw a salary without needing any indemnity payments.”
There was a pause. “Are you trying to tell me that that guy is fraudulently drawing Workers Compensation payments?”
“No,” I said.
“Goddamnit, Vic, if he’s healthy and is getting indemnity drafts, then he’s drawing them fraudulently.”
“No,” I reiterated. “Sure, they’re fraudulent, but he’s not drawing them.”
“Well, who is, then?”
“Your boss.”
Ralph exploded into the phone. “you’ve got this damned bee in your bonnet about Masters, Vic, and I’m sick of it! He’s one of the most respected members of a highly respected company in a very respectable industry. To suggest that he’s involved in something like that-”
“I’m not suggesting it, I know it,” I said coldly. “I know that he and Andrew McGraw, head of the Knifegrinders union, set up a fund with themselves as joint trustees, enabling them to cash drafts, or whatever it is you do to get payments on drafts, drawn to Gielczowski and at least twenty-two other healthy people.”
“How can you possibly know something like that?” Ralph said, furious.
“Because, I just listened to someone read a copy of the agreement to me over the phone. I’ve also found someone who has seen Masters with McGraw on numerous occasions up near Knifegrinder headquarters. And I know that Masters had an appointment with Peter Thayer-at his apartment-at nine on the morning he was killed.”
“I still don’t believe it. I have worked for Yardley for three years, and been in his organization for ten years before that, and I’m sure there’s a different explanation for everything you’ve found out-if you’ve found it out. You haven’t seen this trust agreement. And Yardley may have eaten with McGraw, or drunk with him or something- maybe he was checking out some coverage or claims, or something. We do do that from time to time.”
I felt like screaming with frustration. “Just let me know ten minutes before you go to Masters to check the story with him, will you? So I can get there in time to save your ass.”
“If you think I’m going to jeopardize my career by telling my boss that I’ve been listening to that kind of rumor about him, you’re nuts,” Ralph roared. “As a matter of fact, he’s coming over here in a few minutes, and I promise you, without any difficulty, that I am not such an ass as to tell him about it. Of course, if that Gielczowski claim is fraudulent, that explains a lot. I’ll tell him that.”
My hair seemed to stand straight up on my head. “What? Ralph, you are so goddamn naive it’s unbelievable. Why the hell is he coming over?”
“You really don’t have any right to ask me that,” he snapped, “but I’ll tell you anyway, since you started the whole uproar by finding that draft. Claims that big are handled out of the home office, not by a field adjustor. I went around to the guys today and asked who’d handled the file. No one remembered it. If anyone had been handling such a big file for so many years, there’s no way they would forget it. This puzzled me, so when I called Yardley this afternoon-he hasn’t been in the office this week-I call him at home once a day-I mentioned it to him.”
“Oh, Christ! That is the absolute end. So he told you it sounded like a serious problem, didn’t he? And that since he had to come down to the city tonight for some other reason, he’d just drop by and talk it over with you? Is that right?” I said savagely.
“Why, yes, it is,” he shouted. “Now go find someone’s missing poodle and stop screwing around in the Claim Department.”
“Ralph, I’m coming over. Tell Yardley
I looked at my watch. 7:12. Masters was due there in twenty minutes. Roughly. Say he got there around 7:30, maybe a few minutes earlier. I put my driver’s license, my gun permit, and my P.I. license in my hip pocket with some money-I didn’t want a purse in my way at this point. Checked the gun. Put extra rounds in my jacket pocket. Wasted forty-five seconds changing to running shoes. Locked the new, oiled dead bolts behind me and sprinted
