Ellery Queen’s Mystery Magazine. Vol. 152, Nos. 5 & 6. Whole Nos. 926 & 927, November/December 2018
- Автор: Ловси Питер, Зельцерман Дэйв
- Год: 2018
- Язык: английский
- Год: Dell Magazines
- ISBN: 0013-6328
- Жанр: Другие детективы
Электронная книга - «Ellery Queen’s Mystery Magazine. Vol. 152, Nos. 5 & 6. Whole Nos. 926 & 927, November/December 2018». Краткое содержание книги:
Athletic, fortyish, with a mop of blond hair and a frizzy mustache to match, Graves walked and talked with the surly arrogance of a retired class bully. After verifying his identity, Auburn turned him over to Michelwicz.
“Public Safety has found conclusive evidence,” Michelwicz told him, “that your car has been used in illegal drug trafficking. Any comment on that?” Graves appeared nonplussed. “That gray coupe over there? There’s no way.”
“The spare tire has been cut open,” Michelwicz informed him, “and there are traces of cocaine inside. As the lessee of the car, you’re presumed to know something about that.”
“Well, I don’t. Look, Officer, I’ve driven that car maybe three times in my life. You say you have proof that it’s been used to haul drugs. Well, the guy that did the hauling had to be my worst salesman, Kent Roveling, and he happens to be dead now.”
“Yes, sir. So I’ll have to ask you to come with me to the office.” Michelwicz still had Graves’s driver’s license.
“Can we make an appointment for sometime later in the week?” asked Graves. He started edging toward the car. “I’ve got a sales conference at the office in Westrup in about forty-five minutes.”
Michelwicz unbuttoned his jacket and casually tilted his body sideways so that the butt of his service revolver just showed in his shoulder holster. “We’re going now, sir,” he said.
Around eleven next morning, Dollinger received a text message from Patrolwoman Cameron: “Does this name ring a bell?” The attached news item from the neighboring town of Wilmot stated that Hayden Lamphere had been admitted Monday evening to Manker Memorial Hospital with a diagnosis of drug overdose. A call to the Wilmot Public Safety Department elicited the information that the drug in question was cocaine. A neighbor had found Lamphere collapsed and hallucinating in his garage around five P.M. Lamphere vehemently denied self-administration of the drug, which had evidently entered his body by the oral route.
Auburn and Dollinger were at Manker Memorial by noontime. Harry Lamphere lay in a doze with oxygen prongs in his nose and an IV line in his left forearm. Monitors winked and chirped. A lunch tray rested untouched on a stand. At the foot of the bed a woman of mature years, stout and flushed, sat crocheting with fingers as swift and sure as the pinions and levers of a grandfather clock.
“Mrs. Lamphere?” queried Dollinger.
“As if!” she retorted with a scowl of indignation, and went on with her crocheting.
Lamphere cocked an eye open. “Ain’t you a little off your beat, Officer? Or is this a social visit?”
Dollinger introduced Auburn. “What happened, sir?”
“I wish I knew. I thought maybe somebody doped my lunch, but the doctor says if I took the stuff at lunch I probably wouldn’t have been able to get home before it hit me.”
“When did you have lunch?”
“About a half-hour after I seen you. Sitting in the car, trying to chill down.”
“Where did the lunch come from?”
“Brought it from the house in a brown bag. Turkey on rye, chips, apple. Soda.”
“It was locked in your car during the morning?”
“Car belongs to the Division of Water. Duplicate keys at the office.”
“Any idea who’d want to do this to you?”
“No, sir, unless one of the guys we had to lay off on routes where they got radio pickup now.”
“Cocaine is a pretty unusual choice for a poisoning,” said Auburn. “Do you know anybody who sells or uses illegal drugs?”
“If I do, they ain’t told me about it yet.”
They had lunch in the hospital cafeteria. Dollinger’s gourmet palate rebelled against the steam-table fare, and he complained that the portions were invalid-sized. But he struck it rich with dessert, finding a colossal serving of pineapple upside-down cake that must have been the last piece out of the pan.
On returning to headquarters, they assembled all available data on the murder and the theft and sat down for a brainstorming session. Preliminary drug screens on Roveling had detected a small amount of alcohol but no cocaine. As Auburn was sifting through a stack of photographs that Kestrel had taken in the basement on Addison Street, something caught his attention. He selected three pictures and laid them out in a row.
“What’s this, Fritz?”
“Looks like a wall to me.”
“Sure, but it’s no outside basement wall. See this header nailed to the joists up above, and the top ends of the studs? This is a partition finished in drywall, and there has to be something behind it.” Auburn had worked as a carpenter’s helper on enough construction jobs in his youth to know what he was talking about.
Dollinger studied the pictures long and carefully. “Best I can remember, it’s just a blank wall. I mean, there’s no door in it.”
“Got a phone number for that real-estate agent?”
Tammy Lee Winter, reached at the company offices in Harmony Heights, confirmed that the house had been remodeled twelve years ago, with the addition of a downstairs bathroom and a den or study off the kitchen. She had a set of construction plans that had been approved by the City Engineer’s office before that work was done.
When they met at her office, Auburn found that Ms. Winter was one of those people whose smiles resemble the expression one makes when there’s too much vinegar in the salad dressing. Maybe that was why she wasn’t wearing any rings.
A review of the remodeling contractor’s plans showed that the foundation of the house had been breached and extended, with part of the original rear wall of the basement replaced with a plastered partition. Behind it remained a rough cavity about three feet by twelve.
Ms. Winter had them sign an elaborate receipt for the key to the house, as if they were rival real-estate agents with potential buyers on a string.
The pungent aroma of mildew in the basement had its usual effect on Auburn, making him sneeze and wheeze like a motorbike running on empty. The first blind snapshot he took, with his cell phone held at arm’s length above the partition, told them all they needed to know.
“What do you think, Fritz?”
“I think we need to get Lieutenant Kestrel back down here.”
“Not to mention Agent Michelwicz.”
By midafternoon Kestrel and Michelwicz were deeply engrossed in a fishing expedition, eventually recovering from behind the drywall partition eleven one-pint plastic jugs of cocaine by snagging their handles with an improvised gaffing hook. Queried by Auburn about Garret Graves of Economy Treads, Michelwicz said he had been released for want of any evidence tying him to the cocaine trade. “But,” he added with a quaint turn of phrase, “he’ll be kept an eye on indefinitely.”
Next morning a steady drizzle of rain, which turned to steam in the tropical heat, temporarily suspended Matt Vandyke’s lawn-mowing chores. They found him lounging at home in front of a TV screen, abundant stocks of popcorn and beer within reach. Since he was out on bail, he assumed they were just seeking a few more details on the burglary on Addison Street.
“Yesterday,” Dollinger reminded him, “you told your lawyer you never fired a gun in your life. How did you know Roveling had been shot?”
“I must have heard—”
“No, sir. No one involved in the investigation told you or your lawyer how Roveling was killed.”
“I just assumed—”
“You assumed nothing. You knew he’d been shot, because you’re the one who moved his body from the basement to the mall parking lot.”
“Wait, wait, wait. When did I do this?”
“As soon as you found the body. Probably around three or four Monday morning, not long after somebody stole the pipe, shot Roveling to death, faked a break-in by taping and popping the window... and left a pipe-cutting tool behind.”