Alfred Hitchcock’s Mystery Magazine. Vol. 20, No. 1, January 1975

Captain Leopold Drops a Bomb by Edward D. Hoch

When a well-planned gift backfires, it may be more than a misadventure.

It was not a party that Leopold wanted to attend.

Celebrating fortieth birthdays, or helping others to celebrate them, was not especially his idea of a good time. He was too far past forty himself to want a reminder of it, and of the happy home life that went with it. By his own fortieth birthday he’d been divorced six years.

However, Lieutenant Fletcher had urged him to come. “Hell, Captain, it’s a night out! Pete Garraty doesn’t turn forty every day. His wife especially asked me to urge you.”

“I know,” Leopold said with a sigh. “She phoned me too. But it’s different for you and Carol. For one thing, you’re about his age. And for another, you’ve got a wife to bring along.”

“Millie said you could bring someone if you wanted to.”

Sure.

“Ah, come on, Captain! Pete’s an assistant D.A. It won’t look good if you don’t show up. He’s getting popular at city hall.”

Departmental politics could be even worse than fortieth birthday parties. Leopold surrendered and reached for his afternoon coffee. “All right, Fletcher, I’ll be there. What time?”

“Millie said eight o’clock. And it’s a surprise, so don’t say anything to Pete if you see him.”

Just before he left for the day, in a mild burst of bravado, Leopold asked policewoman Connie Trent to accompany him to the party that evening. She hesitated only a moment and then said, “Sure — it sounds like fun.”

When he picked her up at seven-thirty, Connie was wearing a blouse and long skirt. He’d never seen her so dressed up. “You look great,” he said, feeling a bit like a proud father. “Do you need a sweater or something?”

“No, it’s warm.”

It was indeed warm for late May. He drove with the windows down, enjoying the balmy breeze blowing in from the Sound. It was Friday night, the beginning of the weekend, and though he’d be at his desk as usual the following morning, there was still something festive in the air. Perhaps it was only Connie Trent at his side.

“I only had time to get him a necktie,” she said, holding up her gaily wrapped package. “Is that all right?”

Leopold had never thought about a gift. “Sure. I forgot to bring anything.”

“This can be from both of us.”

They reached the Garraty home just after Fletcher and his wife, and followed Millie Garraty into the big master bedroom of the sprawling ranch house. “Leave your gifts on the bed,” she told them, and explained that Pete had been sent off to the store on some pretext, allowing the guests to assemble in secret. There were almost thirty in all, including a sprinkling of local political figures and some familiar faces from the D.A.’s office. The rest were friends and neighbors, and a brother named Steve whom Leopold hadn’t met before.

Pete Garraty was a popular fellow, a criminal lawyer who’d joined the district attorney’s staff a few years earlier. Though he was one of twenty-odd assistants in the growing department, his skill at trial work quickly made headlines. He was a stocky man with thin blond hair, and a liking for flashy clothes, in contrast to his wife Millie, who seemed a more conservative dresser. She was a few years younger than Pete, and not really attractive. Her face was too thin and her nose too sharp, and her constantly changing hair styles hinted at a search for beauty she’d never quite found.

“Quiet now,” she told the latest arrivals. “I hope you parked your car around the comer so he won’t see it.” She passed them little cups of fruit punch and sent them to the bedroom to deposit their gifts.

Leopold was lingering in the hallway, feeling uncomfortable as he awaited the guest of honor, when Millie passed him carrying her cup of punch and some gifts from other late arrivals. A moment later he heard her give a soft curse from the bedroom. “Damn! I’ve spilled my punch!”

“Can I help?” he volunteered.

“No, no! It’s just that it went all over some of the gifts.”

Two gifts had taken most of the liquid. One was Connie’s necktie, the other looked like a cigar box. “It couldn’t be helped,” Leopold said.

“I have some paper here. I’ll just rewrap them.”

“That’s not necessary, Millie.”

“Everything must be perfect,” she insisted, already stripping the gay paper from Connie’s tie box. “I wonder who brought this box of cigars. Pete will stink up the whole house with them.”

Leopold glanced at his watch. “It’s almost eight-thirty.”

“Oh, no! Go back in the other room, will you, Captain? Get everyone into the family room and out of sight. I’ll be finished here in a minute.”

Leopold found Connie deep in conversation with Fletcher’s wife. “Pete will be returning soon. Millie wants us all to hide.”

Something in his tone of voice caused Connie to whisper, “Don’t be such a grouch, Captain.”

“Am I?”

“At times. Weren’t you ever forty?”

“I think I was four the last time anybody gave me a birthday party.”

In the crowded family room, he found himself pressed into a corner with Steve Garraty. “What I won’t go through for an older brother,” Steve chuckled. “If Barbara ever pulls this on my fortieth, I’ll divorce her.”

“Quiet everybody,” Millie said, returning from the bedroom. “I think his car is coming.”

A station wagon pulled into the driveway and a moment later Pete Garraty opened the side door. “Happy birthday!” someone shouted. “Surprise!”

As the lights went on, Pete Garraty’s boyish face registered surprise and then pleasure. “Millie — did you do all this? Damn it, woman, you might have warned me at least!”

The others were gathering around, shaking his hand and wishing him well. Leopold joined in, and got a smile and a few words from the guest of honor. “Glad to see the police department’s represented here! Without you I’d be out of a job!”

Millie was busy handing but more punch, and some of the others had discovered beer in the refrigerator. Leopold saw that Fletcher had loosened his tie and settled down to some drinking and talking. Connie Trent came up munching a cracker. “This cheese dip is good. I’ll have to ask Millie what’s in it.”

“Do women always do that at parties?”

She gave his arm a little squeeze. “You’re still a grouch.” She glanced around the room, looking over both the house and its guests. “Don’t they have any children?”

“One son. He’s away in his first year at college.”

After an hour or so of drinking and chatting, Millie suggested that Pete open his gifts. He settled into a chair at the far end of the livingroom and she brought them out from the bedroom, a few at a time. Mostly they were the usual joking reminders of turning forty, references to old age or to his sex life, but Pete took it all in good humor. The few legitimate gifts, like Connie’s necktie and a popular best seller, were received with special thanks by the host. He was like a small boy opening his gifts, ripping into them with a haste that left the floor littered with torn paper.

“Now what’s this?” he asked, unwrapping the box of cigars. Then, as his fingers started to lift the lid, Leopold saw his expression freeze into one of horrified disbelief. There was a flash of fire and then an explosion.

Instantly the room was filled with smoke and panic, screaming women and terrified men. Leopold tried to find Fletcher, tried to push his way through the mass of near-hysteria.

When he reached the end of the room as the smoke cleared, he saw three crumpled bodies around the overturned chair. One, a man he didn’t know, was bleeding badly. “Get an ambulance!” Leopold shouted over his shoulder.

The second one was Fletcher’s wife, Carol. She was dazed but seemed to have only minor cuts. He saw that Fletcher was at her side, helping her up.

The blast had hurled Pete Garraty over the back of the chair. The ambulance would do him no good. He was dead.

For the next several hours, the house and the street outside were a mass of churning confusion. The district attorney, the police commissioner, and the mayor all arrived on the scene within an hour, expressing shock and horror. With them came a small army of reporters and television cameramen, lighting up the outside night as they recorded each new arrival and departure.

Connie was with Fletcher’s wife, trying to induce her to go to the hospital, while a number of the other women were comforting Millie Garraty. The injured man, a neighbor, had been taken to the hospital with a shattered left arm, but it appeared he would live.

“What is it?” the commissioner asked Leopold. “You were here. Who could have done such a thing?”

“He had a lot of friends. I guess he had some enemies too.”

“Any prosecutor has enemies, but this must have been a madman.”

“Maybe,” Leopold agreed. “Right now I’m mostly interested in how that bomb got in among the gifts.”

“Do whatever is necessary to crack this case, Captain. Use as many men as you need.”

Leopold found Fletcher in the bedroom, examining the window screen. “Anything?”

“It’s been cut, Captain. At the bottom and the side, where it wouldn’t show right away.”

“The window was open?”

Fletcher nodded. “Because of the warm weather. Someone slit the screen, lifted up the comer, and reached in to leave the bomb on the bed with the other gifts.”

“Or else,” Leopold considered, “a guest brought the bomb and slit the screen to make it appear that’s what happened.”

Fletcher bent closer. “The light’s no good in here, but our lab boys with a microscope should be able to tell us if it was cut from inside or out.”

“Take the whole screen off and give it to them.” Leopold glanced down at the big double bed, suddenly feeling sorry for Pete Garraty’s widow. Then he remembered. “How’s Carol?”

“She’s all right, Captain. Just a few cuts on the arm. Connie’s getting her fixed up.”

“Shouldn’t she go to a hospital?”

“You don’t know my wife! Getting her into a hospital for anything but having a baby is next to impossible!”

“I’d better go see Millie Garraty.”

He passed the technical experts doing their jobs in the livingroom, and sent a couple of men out to check the ground beneath the master bedroom window. Then he went into the spare bedroom where Millie Garraty was stretched out on her son’s bed.

“Millie, I don’t know what to say.”

She opened her eyes and looked at him. They were heavy with sleep and Barbara Garraty whispered, “The doctor gave her a pill.”

Millie roused herself enough to say, “Captain, get the person who did this. Just get the man who killed Pete!”

“I will,” Leopold promised. Then he left the room.

In the morning Leopold’s office was crowded. Some of the men, investigators from the district attorney’s office, were people he barely knew.

“Any luck on the bomb?” someone asked.

“We’re working on it,” Leopold replied. “It wasn’t too strong — a three-inch pipe bomb full of gunpowder, rigged to explode when the cigar box was opened. The detonator was battery-operated.”

“It was strong enough to kill Pete.”

“Yes,” Leopold agreed, “it was strong enough for that.”

“What about the window screen?” The man who spoke was young and sharp, and Leopold disliked him.

“Lab examination shows it was cut from outside the house. The wires were turned in just a bit. Also, we found part of a shoe print in the dirt. Not enough for identification, though. Not even enough to call it male or female.”

“So where are we, Captain?”

Leopold leaned back and looked at the wise men from the D.A.’s office. “I thought you could tell me.”

“He was working on some Mafia things. It looks like a gang killing.”

“Could be.” Leopold considered the possibility. “But wouldn’t his death do them more harm than good? Look what it’s stirred up already!”

“If anybody knows about it, Gonzo does,” Fletcher said. “Should I go see him, Captain?”

“No. I’ll talk to Gonzo myself. I want you to check out every single guest, Fletcher.”

One of the D.A.’s men objected. “I thought you just said the killer was outside the house.”

“I’d like to cover all the angles,” Leopold answered cryptically.

There was more discussion before the meeting finally broke up close to noon. When they were alone, Fletcher said, “You’ve got an angle on this, haven’t you, Captain?”

“Maybe, maybe not. How’s your wife?”

“Fine. I finally persuaded her to stop at the hospital on the way home and have a couple of stitches taken in one of those cuts. But otherwise she’s good.”

“What about that neighbor, Morris?”

“He’ll live, but he might lose the arm. They’re trying to save it.”

Leopold shook his head. “That bomb could have killed everybody in the room. It could have collapsed the house, or started a fire.”

“The guy musta been a real nut, Captain.”

He closed his eyes for a moment, and saw Millie Garraty on the bed again, pleading with him to find her husband’s killer. “Maybe.”

“You wanted me to check the guests.”

“Yes. And Millie Garraty.”

“Millie?”

“She spilled a glass of punch on those gifts, Fletcher, and rewrapped two of them. One was the cigar box — I saw it. She could have put the bomb in it then.”

“Captain, Millie wouldn’t do that! She wouldn’t kill Pete!”

“I don’t think so either, Fletcher, but she handled that box. She rewrapped it and no one watched her do it.”

“None of the guests admit bringing cigars, Captain. Doesn’t that prove the package had to come through the window?”

“Even an innocent person might be terrified at this point. They wouldn’t want to admit bringing a gift that blew up.”

“All right. I’ll start checking them out.”

Leopold stood up. “And I’ll go see George Gonzo.”

If there was a Mafia organization in the city — a question still open to debate at Headquarters — George Gonzo would have been its logical head. He’d spent most of his adult life cultivating an image of himself as a tough guy who liked to order people around. Now, in his mid-forties, he’d softened the image to a godfatherlike despotism that he seemed to imagine was in style. There was no doubt that George Gonzo controlled a good deal of the city’s gambling and vice, but Leopold personally doubted he had any strong ties with organized crime on a national level. Even the Mafia must demand more class than George Gonzo could muster.

“Leopold!” Gonzo said, standing up from behind a steel desk in his dusty office at the rear of the Star Vending warehouse. “Is this a pinch?”

“Have you done anything to be pinched for, George?”

“I’m just getting out my vending machines, like always.”

Leopold tapped the front of a mirrored candy machine that filled one corner of the little office. “Still taking nickels from schoolkids, George?”

“It’s dimes these days. The nickel machines are long gone.”

“What about the quarters for the peep shows? The kids must like all those naked women.”

Gonzo’s face puckered into a frown. “You trying to hassle me, Leopold? The D.A.’s boys have been givin’ me enough trouble already about peep shows. It’s all legit here — candy, cigarettes, chewing gum. No peep shows.”

“I didn’t come about the machines, George. You heard what happened to Pete Garraty.”

“Yeah. Too bad. No life begins at forty for him, huh?”

Leopold held his temper in check and said quietly, “Bombings have always been your thing, George.”

“Who, me?”

“You.”

“You’re crazy!”

“Twenty years ago you spent three years in the pen for blowing up a cigar store that was making book in your territory.”

“That was a bum rap.”

“I dug out the records. You were making bombs in your basement. Pipe bombs, like the one that killed Pete Garraty.”

“Jeez, that was twenty years ago! I was a kid!”

“You were twenty-six years old.”

He licked his lips nervously. “I don’t know nothin’ about Garraty.”

“How about your boys? Any of them do it?”

“Hell, Garraty wasn’t botherin’ us.”

“Downtown, they think he was. They think you had a damn good motive for sneaking up to his house and cutting the window screen and slipping a bomb in with his birthday gifts.”

“I didn’t even know it was his birthday!”

“A lot of people were invited. The word could have gotten around.”

“Well, it didn’t!” He was angry, but on the defensive. He might have something to hide, Leopold decided.

“If Garraty indicted you on an obscenity rap, he could have shut down your entire operation.”

“Nobody gets convicted of obscenity nowadays.”

“Sometimes the supreme court thinks otherwise.”

Gonzo leaned forward across the desk. “Hell, Leopold — you know as well as I do that Garraty was trying to railroad me. An indictment right now, six months before the elections, would have looked damn good in the papers.”

“Pete Garraty wasn’t running for anything.”

“The hell he wasn’t! The word is he wanted the nomination for the state senate. And the primary’s coming up soon.”

Leopold had heard the rumors too, but had discounted them. One always heard political rumors about any successful lawyer. “If he was trying to railroad you, would you sit still for it, George? Or would you get him out of the way?”

“I didn’t kill him.”

“Who did?”

“I don’t know.”

Leopold sighed and stood up. “I may want to see you again, George.”

“You know where to find me.”

Lieutenant Fletcher found Millie with her brother-in-law Steve, going over the funeral preparations. Her face was drawn, and though she seemed calm he knew it was only the result of the doctor’s tranquilizers. Even grief was a luxury these days.

“How are you feeling, Millie?” he asked.

“I’ll survive. How’s Carol’s arm?”

“Fine. No problem.”

Steve Garraty had never really looked that much like his brother, but now, seeing him in the kitchen with Millie, it might have been Pete — taller and slimmer — but still Pete. “I’m trying to get Millie to move in with us for a few days,” Steve said. “This house is no place for her.”

Fletcher glanced toward the closed livingroom door, imagining that he could still smell the odor of burning gunpowder. “It certainly isn’t! I’m surprised you even stayed in it last night.”

“The doctor gave me something to make me sleep, and that’s what I did,” Millie said. “But I suppose you’re both right. I should move out till after the funeral, and until the place gets fixed up. But Johnny, my son, will be home from college today for the funeral. Where will he stay?”

“We’ll fit him in,” Steve said. “Never fear.”

“I wanted to talk to both of you a bit,” Fletcher said, “if you’re up to it.”

Steve looked at Millie. “Go ahead.”

“Just the usual questions. Any enemies? Any recent threats on his life?”

Millie shook her head. “Nothing like that.”

“Did he talk much about his work? The cases he was prosecuting?”

“Not really.”

“Did anyone he sent to prison ever threaten to kill him when they got out?”

“Not that I know of. If they did, he never told me.”

“Did he ever mention a man named George Gonzo?”

“He might have. Gonzo’s name was in the papers sometimes.”

Fletcher hesitated before asking the next question. “You saw that cigar box, didn’t you, Millie? The captain says you spilled a drink on it and had to rewrap it.”

“Yes, I suppose I did. There couldn’t have been two cigar boxes, could there?”

“We didn’t find another one. Nor any cigars.”

“I didn’t look inside. I just took off the soiled paper and rewrapped it.”

“There was no card?”

“I didn’t see one.”

Steve Garraty interrupted at this point. “You’re certainly not implying that she could have had anything to do with this, are you, Lieutenant?”

“Of course not. I just ask questions.”

“I hope so! She’s no more involved than my wife Barbara. If a woman’s going to kill her husband, she doesn’t do it with a bomb at his fortieth birthday party!”

“No,” Fletcher agreed, feeling like a fool. The captain shouldn’t have put him up to this line of questioning. He plunged off on a quick tangent. “Is there any possibility Pete was... well, fooling around with another woman? Could it have been a jealous husband?”

Millie closed her eyes, as if she’d felt a sudden sharp pain. “There was no other woman. If there had been, Pete would have told me. We never had secrets from one another.”

“Never?”

“Never.”

“What about the surprise party?”

She waved her arm. “That was a minor thing, a temporary thing.” Then she lowered her eyes. “You’re right — I couldn’t keep a thing from him. He overheard me ordering a birthday cake for thirty people and I had to tell him.”

Fletcher grunted. “He was a great actor. He really seemed surprised.”

“Pete was great in a lot of ways,” she said quietly.

After a moment’s silence Steve Garraty got to his feet. “Come on, Millie — I insist. Gather up what you’ll need and I’ll take you back to our place. You’ll be better off there.”

“All right,” she agreed finally. The will to resist seemed to have gone out of her.

Fletcher told them he wanted to examine the livingroom and bedroom some more, and he stayed on after they left. Watching Millie walk to Steve Garraty’s car with her overnight bag, he thought that he had never seen a woman quite so pathetic.

The livingroom was as he remembered it: scorched carpet, overturned chair, blistered walls. Half-finished cups of punch still stood on some of the tables.

Fletcher stood in the center of the room, looking around, wondering just why he had stayed behind. Was it Captain Leopold’s half-formed notion of Millie’s guilt? He went into her bedroom and found the window locked. Seeing it by daylight, with the bushes outside, gave him a new perspective. Whoever approached the window had to know exactly what he was doing.

He was about to leave the house when he decided, for no reason at all, to check the basement. He knew Pete Garraty had a room down there, a sort of workshop where he also kept a few guns he used for hunting. Fletcher was never much of a hunter, and he’d hated even having guns around the house ever since his son was accused of accidentally shooting a man. That case had been cleared up, but the memory of it lingered on.

There was a workbench in Garraty’s basement room, and a gun-rack where he kept a rifle and shotgun. Everything seemed neat and orderly. Then he noticed a tall fiberboard barrel obviously meant for rubbish. Peering inside, he saw several shotgun shells lying in the bottom.

He reached in to pick up one.

Leopold had spent the afternoon assigning men to run down the usual number of telephoned tips. They rarely amounted to anything, but on a big case the calls always came in and had to be checked by someone. When Connie found him still at his desk late in the day, she said, “You look tired. Want some coffee?”

“Sure. It might perk me up.”

“Is Fletcher back yet?”

He was about to reply when Fletcher walked in. From the slight smile on his face it was obvious he had something. “What is it?” Leopold asked.

Fletcher sat down and took a shotgun shell from his pocket. “This, Captain. I found a bunch of them in a rubbish barrel in Garraty’s basement. The powder’s been removed from them.”

“Oh?”

“And I just came from the lab. Powder of this type is almost certainly the kind used in that pipe bomb. It was removed from these shells and wadded into that pipe.”

Connie looked somber. “Then we’re back to Mrs. Garraty again.”

“Seems like it.”

“I can’t believe she could have done it”

“Look at the facts,” Leopold said. “I can’t believe it either, but look at the facts. We’re supposed to believe that some criminal like George Gonzo crept up to that house between eight and eight-thirty, when it was just barely dark, cut the window screen, and reached inside with that gift-wrapped bomb. Consider what knowledge was necessary for that. First, the bomber had to know about the surprise birthday party. With thirty guests and all the necessary preparations, that wouldn’t be too difficult, I suppose. But now consider the second bit of knowledge the bomber had to possess — he had to know, beyond doubt, that Millie Garraty would pile the birthday gifts on the bed, within reach of the window. If she had put them in the basement, or a closet, or the bathtub, or even under the bed, his entire scheme would have collapsed. She might have simply left them in the livingroom. In truth, there are a dozen places she might have put them — all just as likely as that bed by the window.”

Connie looked unhappy. “But the screen was slit from outside!”

“After she placed the bomb in the cigar box, Millie could have sneaked out of the house long enough to do it. Or, more likely, she cut it earlier in the day, before the guests arrived. You’ll remember it wasn’t at all noticeable.”

“She made the bomb in Pete’s basement workshop?”

Leopold nodded. “There are enough revolutionary manuals around these days on how to do it. A woman could follow directions as well as anyone, removing the powder from Pete’s shotgun shells and stuffing it into that pipe, then rigging a battery-operated detonator.”

Fletcher was staring at the floor. “Do you want me to pick her up, Captain?”

“I can see you two don’t agree with me.”

“I suppose we agree,” Connie said. “We just don’t like it.”

“Any arguments against it?”

“I got one,” Fletcher replied. “If she was planning to kill him, why would she tell him about the party?”

“Did she tell him about the party?”

Fletcher nodded. “He caught her ordering the cake. She says they never had secrets from each other anyway.”

“Well, you’ve answered your own question. She had to tell him.”

“I suppose so,” he admitted, still not happy about it.

“Bring her in, Fletcher, but don’t tell her why. I’ll just talk to her some more, and see how she reacts to these shotgun shells.”

Leopold had never been a close friend to Millie Garraty, and perhaps he lacked the personal involvement that Fletcher felt in the case. Still, he was trying to view it objectively, trying to weigh the accumulating evidence and arrive at the right conclusion. An outside bomber seemed highly unlikely, especially since Fletcher’s discovery in the basement. That meant Millie Garraty — or someone close enough to the family that they could use the basement workshop.

He wondered about Steve Garraty. He was still wondering when Fletcher returned with Millie.

She sat down opposite his desk and asked, “What is it you wanted with me, Captain? Have you found the person who killed Pete?”

“Perhaps. Tell me about your husband’s basement room, where he kept his tools and hunting rifles and things. Did he ever take people down there, or let people use it?”

She shook her head vigorously. “No, never.”

“How about his brother Steve?”

“No, Steve hasn’t been down there in years.”

Leopold sighed as his last possibility evaporated. “Millie, I have to ask you this. I hope you’ll excuse me. Did you kill your husband?”

That was when Millie Garraty slid out of her chair and slumped to the floor in a faint.

Leopold called for Connie and in a few moments Millie Garraty had recovered enough to return to the chair. Now her face was chalk-white, and her hands were trembling. He saw Connie and Fletcher exchange nervous glances.

“Mrs. Garraty... Millie... I’m sorry, but you understand I’m just doing my job. When you spilled that cup of punch on the gifts, and had to rewrap the box of cigars...”

“Yes,” she said, so quietly that he could barely hear her. “Yes, I killed him.”

“That’s when you did it?”

“Yes. When I rewrapped the cigars.”

“Mrs. Garraty, I must warn you of your rights. I’d suggest you consider phoning a lawyer before you answer any more questions.”

“Yes,” she answered, her face expressionless.

“Do you want a lawyer?”

“Yes.”

“Connie, show Mrs. Garraty to the private waiting room.” He meant the interrogation room, but he didn’t want to use that word.

When they were alone, Fletcher said simply, “I guess you were right, Captain.”

“Yeah.” Leopold somehow didn’t feel the old triumph that a confession usually brought. Perhaps it had been too easy.

“Should I phone the commissioner?” Fletcher asked.

“Wait a bit. There’s plenty of time for that.”

Fletcher was opening a package from the lab. “Here’s the remains of the cigar box. We’d better put it in the evidence file for the trial.”

Leopold glanced at the charred lid. “Havana Supremes. I wonder how they manage to get Cuban cigars into the country these days.”

“They didn’t, Captain. There were no cigars in the box — just the bomb.”

“Yes, but...” Leopold began, and then fell silent. “You searched the place, Fletcher,” he said after a moment. “Surely you found the cigars that were in here.”

“No cigars, Captain.”

“In the wastebaskets?”

“Nothing.”

Leopold grunted. “I suppose she put them down the disposal.” He looked at the box again. Fifty cigars. What in hell does one do with fifty cigars?

Then he knew. He knew what he should have known all along.

Connie Trent came back into the office. “Steve Garraty and his wife are outside, Captain. They heard that Fletcher had picked up Millie and they want to know why.”

“Bring them in, Connie. And bring in Millie Garraty too. I think it’s about over.”

They crowded into his office. It was getting dark now — later than he’d thought. He felt very tired.

“Sit down, please, Millie.” He was aware that he was using her first name again.

“What’s the meaning of all this?” Steve Garraty asked. “Why are you questioning Millie when you should be out tracking down George Gonzo?”

“I’ve talked to Gonzo. He’s clean.” Leopold touched his fingers together. “You see, an outsider wouldn’t have known where the gifts would be, even if they had known about the birthday party.”

“You mean you think Millie killed him?”

“No. As a matter of fact, I know now that she didn’t. Only one person could have killed Pete Garraty, and that was Pete Garraty himself.”

His words fell among them like a dropping bomb. Everyone started talking at once, and he had to raise a hand to quiet them. “It was the cigar box, of course, that told me. I was convinced that Millie made the bomb in Pete’s basement workshop, and then spilled her drink on those gifts so she’d have an excuse to unwrap one. I imagined her emptying out the cigars and planting her bomb in that box. But the idea is just as impossible as the outsider theory, for two reasons. First, Fletcher didn’t find the discarded cigars anywhere in the house. And second, how would Millie have known in advance that the right type of box would present itself? The bomb was too large for a tie box, too heavy for a shirt box. It wouldn’t have fit with a bottle of Scotch. No, it had to be prepared for a cigar box, and therefore the bomber had to know there’d be a cigar box present.”

“You mean the bomber had a confederate?” Steve Garraty asked.

“It would be farfetched to imagine one person bringing a gift-wrapped — and empty — cigar box so Millie could place a bomb in it, when the bomb could have been placed in such a box earlier. No, only one person made the bomb and placed it in that box, and wrapped the box like a birthday gift. Since we’ve found evidence the bomb was made in the basement workshop, and since only Pete and Millie had access to it, one of them must have done it. I’ve already shown that Millie could not have acted on the spur of the moment, hoping for the right-shaped box — so that leaves Pete.”

“But why would he want to kill himself?” Fletcher asked.

“Simple — he didn’t. His death was accidental. George Gonzo told me Pete wanted to run for the state senate. What better way to grab the voters’ attention before the primaries than with a bomb in a cigar box, disguised as a birthday gift? Of course a man who’d do such a thing must be a little nuts. But he figured Gonzo’s people would be blamed, and he’d bolster his image as the crime-fighting assistant D.A. the underworld feared. Political careers have been built on far less. Pete knew about the party. He made his pipe bomb, assembled it in the cigar box with battery and detonator, and took it with him when he pretended to go to the store. He’d have known Millie would put the gifts on the bed, so he sneaked around the rear of the house, slit the screen, and reached in with the bomb.”

“But he certainly didn’t plan for it to go off,” Connie said.

“Of course not. But what happened? Millie spilled a drink on it, and rewrapped it with different paper. Pete didn’t realize what he was opening until it was too late. Instead of pretending suspicion about the cigar box, he went ahead and opened it — and blew himself up.” Leopold glanced now at Millie. “He wasn’t worth protecting with a confession, Millie. He just wasn’t worth it.”

“I...” she began, and then fell silent.

“What will you tell the papers?” Steve Garraty asked.

“In England they’d call it death by misadventure, I suppose. We’ll have to tell the full story and hope the public understands. And pities him just a little.”

After they’d gone, when he was alone with Connie Trent, Leopold sat for a long time staring at the charred cigar box in its plastic evidence bag. It might have been a crystal ball holding untold secrets.

“It’s late,” Connie said. “I guess I’ll be getting along home too.”

“Havana Supremes,” Leopold said.

“What?”

“The brand of cigars. You can’t get Cuban cigars in America, you know. There’s an embargo.”

She’d picked up her purse and was starting for the door. “So? Does it make any difference what brand was on the box?”

“A big difference,” Leopold said sadly.

Something in his voice stopped her. “What is it?”

“This damned case! I’ve never had one like it!”

“What do you mean?”

“When Pete Garraty unwrapped the paper and saw this box, he’d have known it was his bomb. The paper might have been different, but still he’d have known. No one else would have been giving him a box of Havana Supremes.” He looked up at her. “He wouldn’t have opened the box, Connie.”

“But he did open it! We all saw him!”

“And we saw the terrified look on his face. But he would have opened that box, knowing what was in it, only if he knew it wouldn’t explode. If he’d made the bomb with loving care, placed it in the box, and failed to hook up one of the battery wires. The publicity would be just as effective that way, and there’d be no danger to himself or to any of the guests. An underworld bomb, meant to kill him, but it didn’t go off! That’s the way he would have planned it, Connie. And he would have told Millie about his scheme, because they never had secrets.”

“But it did go off! It did kill him!”

“Because somebody opened that cigar box later and connected the wire.”

Connie put a hand to her mouth. “Not Millie!”

“Who else? She spilled the drink, she rewrapped the gift. Hell, she confessed to it!”

They sat in silence for a long time, and finally Connie asked, “What are you going to do now?”

“Go home to bed,” he said with a sigh. “There’s probably not a prosecutor in town who could get a conviction in this case. She confessed once, and perhaps she will again. Otherwise, well, she has to live with what she did.”

He locked away the cigar box and turned out the lights as he left.