Alfred Hitchcock’s Mystery Magazine. Vol. 51, No. 1 & 2, January/February 2006
- Автор: Бетанкур Джон Грегори, Jr. William J. Carroll,
- Год: 2006
- Язык: английский
- Год: Dell Magazines/Crosstown Publications
- Жанр: Другие детективы
Электронная книга - «Alfred Hitchcock’s Mystery Magazine. Vol. 51, No. 1 & 2, January/February 2006». Краткое содержание книги:
Auburn examined the paper. One side was blank. On the other was printed, under the logo of a firm called Arco-Net Security Limited, a standard work contract to install an electronic security system. None of the blanks had been filled in, and the paper appeared to be a photocopy of an original document.
“I didn’t see any loose papers in that basement,” said Auburn. “This must be something the killer had with him. Has anybody checked on this company?”
“Not yet. I’m still putting my report together.”
“How can I get a photocopy of this form?”
“I’ll put it in a transparent sleeve.”
Doing his own Web search, Auburn found that Arco-Net was still in business but had dropped its local franchisee three years ago. Probably the murderer had used the blank contract form to gain admittance to Ida Blanford’s house on the pretext of giving a sales pitch or preparing an estimate for an electronic security system.
Premeditated murder seemed unlikely. According to her nephew, Ida was a gutsy character. She might have put up a fight, forcing the robber to use a weapon he’d brought along merely as a threat. But once he got hold of her keys, he went straight to the safe and cleaned it out without even bothering to search for loot elsewhere in the big house. Maybe he was somebody who owed Ida Blanford money. In that case, by removing his IOU along with a bundle of cash, he’d reduced the risk that he’d be counted among the suspects.
Dale Blanford presumably wasn’t the killer, since his aunt would have recognized him in spite of her visual impairment, and the ruse about the security system would have been unnecessary. Yet Dale knew about both her safe and her weakness for security devices. And he admitted that she’d lent him money; he didn’t say he’d ever paid it back.
None of the neighbors had reported seeing any visitors or unusual activity at the house. That could mean the killer had arrived after dark. If he parked down the street and went to the back door, nobody on the street or at The Green Fish would have seen him entering the house. He evidently had something with him that had been marked with Rakovy’s name, probably a toolbox in which to carry away the loot, but that didn’t prove he was Rakovy.
Auburn found eighty-one Johnstons in the metropolitan telephone directory. He decided to assume, for the time being, that the alternative name on the tape had been chosen at random. After spending some time in Records consulting a collection of old city directories, he made a call to Pittsburgh and another to the local office of Allied Bell. That second call led to a personal visit to the phone company, which he made on foot.
The day was cloudy and breezy, cooler than yesterday. The air smelled like rain. After leaving the Allied Bell offices, Auburn returned to headquarters just long enough to prepare an application for search and arrest warrants and the necessary affidavits, and then took them across the street to the courthouse.
By eleven thirty he was back at The Green Fish, where he found the table in the window vacant just as if it had been reserved for him. Nothing much had changed. Scotty and Darla were still chanting their enigmatic antiphons and responses above the mutter of voices and the squawk of the radio speakers. The special today was codfish Creole, but the place smelled exactly the way it had yesterday.
The Blanford homicide had been a featured item on the TV news and in the morning papers. Some of the regulars obviously recognized Auburn and did double takes on seeing him back again at the same table. Yesterday he’d been a stranger, an anomaly in this milieu. By now he was becoming absorbed into it, was almost a regular himself. When a juvenile diner accidentally tipped a full glass of water onto the floor, Auburn was on the spot, helping with the mop from behind the serving counter before Darla got there.
“We’re going to have to put you on the payroll, Officer,” she said. “You going to try the codfish today? This time yesterday it was still swimming around in Chesapeake Bay.”
“I think I’ll stick with the Salisbury steak.”
“You want that with soup and salad again?”
“Just coffee today, please.”
There was nothing much to see across the street. Ida Blanford’s Victorian revival house stood as it had for decades, stodgy and aloof. Only a strand of yellow tape caught in a hedge showed that anything unusual had happened there lately. And inside The Green Fish, life went on according to the usual routine as well.
The group of East Indians came in for lunch again, followed shortly by the retiree with the smashed thumb. They sat at the same tables as yesterday, ate the same food. Then the crowd in the dining area gradually thinned out again, so that by half past two Auburn almost had the place to himself. At a few minutes before three, Patrolman Fritz Dollinger entered in plainclothes and took one of the stools at the lunch counter.
Things were already picking up at the bar when Greg Rakovy came in from the back room, tying on a short black apron. He cast a quick eye over the dining room and seemingly made a point of not noticing Auburn.
When Auburn took his check to the cash register, Scotty Casteven interrupted the daily chore of cleaning the grill to take care of him. Auburn waited until he had his change to make the pinch. “Melvin Casteven,” he said, so quietly that only Dollinger and Casteven himself could hear him, “I have a warrant for your arrest on a charge of first-degree murder. There may be other charges as well. You have the right to remain silent...”
Casteven didn’t try to bluff, he didn’t bluster, he just caved in. By the time Auburn finished reciting the familiar formula, his knees had turned to jelly and his face was the color of barley soup. Dollinger stepped into the gap in the counter, prepared to hold him up if necessary. Casteven was stout, but Dollinger was stouter.
“Hey, Darla,” said Casteven, his voice hoarse and shaky, “I need to go downtown with these men. Close the dining room. And call Kriegel’s before four fifteen and cancel that meat order.” He didn’t say anything to Rakovy.
After they left the bar and grill, Auburn looked back to see Darla staring in bewilderment through the window with the picture of the big fish while she mechanically pocketed the tip he’d left and wiped the table with a cloth.
“First we’re going upstairs to look around your place,” Auburn told Casteven. He waited to serve the search warrant until Casteven had unlocked the door to the stairs leading to the apartment over The Green Fish. The apartment was a dump, the typical living quarters of a widower who worked about sixty hours a week. Only the kitchen was more or less presentable, probably because Casteven ate all his meals down in the restaurant. They didn’t find Ida Blanford’s money.
“Okay,” said Auburn, “now let’s go back downstairs and see what’s in your freezer that you didn’t want the meat man from Kriegel’s to find tomorrow morning.”
“Hold on a minute,” said Casteven. “You can’t go poking around in there without a food-handler’s card from the Board of Health.”
“We’re going to risk it. I worked at a deli when I was in high school. I know all about freezers. And freezer bags.”
Buried under cuts of beef and pork they found a bag just like the one the divers had brought up from the river, only this one was stuffed with money. Dollinger spent the entire time it took them to get downtown counting it. There was over thirty thousand dollars, mostly in large bills. Dale Blanford would no doubt be pleased to learn that his aunt’s outstanding promissory notes were there too.
When they arrived at headquarters, they took Casteven directly to an interrogation room, euphemistically styled “Conference A,” on the second floor. At the risk of throwing the central air-conditioning out of adjustment, Auburn opened one of the big frosted glass windows, as he often did at this time of year. Dollinger stood at attention just inside the door like a sentry, even though his main function there was to serve as an official witness.