The Burglar in the Rye

CHAPTER Twenty-two

“Bernie,” she said, as if she’d just been stabbed in the heart herself, and by someone as dear to her as Brutus was to Caesar. “Bernie, I can’t believe you think I’m capable of murder.”

“You’ve been capable of enough other things,” I said. “You got me into this mess in the first place, making up a story about wanting to retrieve the letters for Gulliver Fairborn out of kindness. That way you’d get the letters without laying out a cent.”

“But that’s the truth,” she said. “That’s why I wanted them.”

“Because Fairborn wrote to you at your home in Charlottesville.”

“I may have told a few fibs.”

“Fibs?”

“White lies, then. I don’t live in Charlottesville and Gully didn’t write to me. But I knew how upset he must be, and I knew what a favor it would be to him if those letters could cease to exist. And I had passed your bookstore several times, and knew that its proprietor had a sideline career as a burglar-”

“What he is, he’s a burglar,” Ray put in, “with a sideline sellin’ books.”

“-so I thought I could persuade you to do something nice for a great writer.”

“And a mediocre one, too.”

“I beg your pardon?”

“I get Publishers Weekly at the shop,” I said. “I don’t usually have time to read it, and there’s not much in there for a used-book dealer, but I finally got around to going through some back issues, and guess who’s got a proposal making the rounds? I forget who your agent is, but it’s not Anthea Landau. You’re going to be writing a memoir, aren’t you? All about your affair with Gulliver Fairborn.”

“That’s not all it’s about,” she said. “I’ve led an interesting life, and people will be interested in reading about me.”

“But just in case they aren’t, a little dirt on Fairborn wouldn’t hurt. You gave me a sample of what you were going to be writing, telling me more than I really wanted to know about one of my literary heroes. As it turned out, it was more than you knew.”

“I’m a fiction writer,” she said. “I suppose it’s natural for me to improve on the truth a little.”

“You weren’t going to return his letters, were you?”

“Eventually I might have. Or I might have destroyed them. Or I might have sold them to you, Mr. Moffett, or passed them on to you, Mr. Harkness. And I might have even run off an extra set of copies for you, Mr. Eddington. But what does it matter what I might have done? I didn’t get the letters.”

“You really wanted them, though. Even before I went into the Paddington, you got close to Carl and made him a similar offer. But instead of appealing to his better nature and making it sound like an act of charity, you put your body on the line.”

“That’s not a nice way to put it.”

“You didn’t have much to offer in the way of money,” I said, “but you’re sexy, and Carl was vulnerable. And you made it clear it wouldn’t cost him anything to get the letters for you. You’d copy them and return the originals, and he could do as he pleased with them.”

“Carl gets around,” Carolyn said. “He’s sleeping with Karen, and he still can’t resist Alice.”

“Karen and I were never lovers,” Carl said.

“Just good friends,” Isis said. “You got her to sleep in your own bed and you weren’t even tempted?”

“I always figured Carl was a little light on his feet,” Ray said. “But then why would he go for Alice here?”

Carl rolled his eyes. “If a man has manners,” he said, “or a bearing that’s in any way theatrical, people jump to the conclusion that he’s gay. It so happens I’m not. But some of my best friends are, and Karen was one of them. Not a best friend, exactly, but a gay woman.”

“So you weren’t interested in her sexually.”

“No.”

“But you were interested in Alice.”

“She’s an attractive woman,” he said, “and seductive, and very persuasive. She offered me two thousand dollars, which I’m still waiting for, incidentally-”

“Don’t hold your breath,” Alice said.

“-and she indicated that we’d celebrate success in a manner I’d find very gratifying. The morning after Miss Landau was killed, she called to find out what had happened. And I told her I had the letters.”

I turned to Alice. “I wondered why I didn’t hear from you,” I said. “Everybody else called or dropped in, but you stayed away. If nothing else, I figured you’d want to know whether or not I had the letters. But you already knew.”

“All that’s true,” she said. “But I didn’t kill the Landau woman. I wasn’t even there that night.”

“You could have been,” I said. “You could have sashayed right past the desk while Carl was running around breaking laws and betraying old friends.”

“But why would I kill Anthea Landau?”

“She was an agent,” I said. “Didn’t you say she turned you down once? Maybe you were harboring a resentment.”

“You can’t believe that.”

“Not for a moment,” I said. “Because how would you have known to look for a knife in Karen Kassenmeier’s purse? Besides, the person who killed Landau is almost certainly the same person who killed Kassenmeier. The killer probably used the same knife. And that pretty much lets you out, because Kassenmeier was up at my apartment getting stabbed to death at just about the same time that you were knocking off a quickie with Carl in Room 303.”

“While you were hiding behind the shower curtain,” she said, and the trace of a smile appeared on her lips. “Just like Polonius, except you didn’t get stabbed. And you recognized my voice, Bernie. That’s sweet.”

“You got dressed in a hurry,” I said. “You didn’t waste time unmaking the bed, so you didn’t have to waste more time making it. Carl got the letters from the shelf where he’d stashed them, and he gave them to you and you got out of there. Now I can’t be dead certain you wouldn’t have had time to cab up to my place, meet Karen, and stick a knife in her, but why the hell would you want to? You already had the letters and you were home free.”

“That’s right.”

“And what did you care about her, anyway? And how would you know about the knife in her purse?”

“Carl could have mentioned the knife,” Erica Darby said. “Who knows what kind of pillow talk they had?”

“But I didn’t,” Carl said. “I never even mentioned Karen’s name. We were in Karen’s room when we, uh, made love, because that’s where the letters were. But I didn’t tell Alice whose room it was.”

“You told me it belonged to a permanent resident who was out on the Coast doing a guest shot in a sitcom,” she said, “so you knew the letters would be safe there, and we wouldn’t be disturbed.”

“Let’s get back to Karen Kassenmeier,” I said. “What did you tell her about the letters?”

“I didn’t tell her anything. She told me they were missing from her purse, and I told her the same person must have taken them as killed Miss Landau.”

“This was after she realized she hadn’t done it herself with the Scotch tape dispenser.”

“Right.”

“And what did she decide to do?”

“Well, she decided the letters were gone,” he said, “and there was no sense crying over spilled milk, or spilled blood, either. At least she had the rubies. Then she went to her room and the rubies were gone, and I just couldn’t believe it. She thought maybe I took them, because who else knew they were there? But I hadn’t known where they were, and I couldn’t say if they’d been there when I was in the room leaving the letters in the closet. But I didn’t say that, because she didn’t know about the letters in the closet.”

“No.”

“And then she decided you had them.”

“The letters?”

“No, the rubies. You were a burglar, she said, and the rubies were stolen from a locked hotel room, so of course you were the logical suspect. Anyway, she heard that you had them. I don’t know who told her.”

“It wasn’t me,” Isis said. “I never met the woman, and I wouldn’t have said anything to her anyway.”

“And she knew where you lived,” Carl went on. “She told me she was going to make one last try for the rubies, and if that didn’t work she’d catch the first flight she could get to Kansas City. It was late at night when she told me all this, and she went out, and I immediately called Alice and we went to her room, because I knew she’d be away for at least a couple of hours.”

“And she never came back,” I said. “Somebody met her at my apartment, probably after luring her there in the first place. Somebody who could open the door for her, because she couldn’t do it herself. Karen was a pretty good thief, but she didn’t have burglar skills.”

“Who did?” Ray wondered. “There’s a lot of doors openin’ an’ closin’ in this story, Bern, but so far the only person with burglar skills is you. An’ you wouldn’t need ’em to open your own door.”

“That’s true,” I agreed. “And neither would the person who killed Karen Kassenmeier.”

“You know who it is?”

“Yes,” I said. “I know who it is.”

“Well, you’d better tell us,” Carolyn piped up, “because I for one haven’t got a goddam clue. I followed most of what you’ve said so far, Bern, although it’s pretty complicated. But I can’t see how anybody could have done it. Maybe Karen Kassenmeier killed Anthea Landau after all, and when she got to your apartment she had a fit of remorse and stabbed herself.”

“And ate the knife?”

“What, it was gone? So somebody else came along before the body was discovered and thought it’d be just the thing for peeling apples. All right, somebody murdered her. But it couldn’t have been anybody in this room, and I can’t think of anybody else it could be, so-”

“It was somebody in this room,” I said. “And I wish I didn’t have to do this, Carolyn, but what choice have I got? It was the woman sitting next to you. It was Erica.”

“A longstanding resentment,” I said. “Maybe they were lovers whose affair ended badly. Maybe they both went after the same woman. Whatever the cause, Erica Darby hated Karen Kassenmeier, and she nursed that hatred over the years.”

Erica looked at me. Her expression was hard to read, and she hadn’t said a word since I’d named her as the killer. Maybe she remembered that Ray had Mirandized everybody in the room, albeit in a casual manner. Maybe she just didn’t have anything to contribute.

“Erica wanted revenge,” I went on, “and she was evidently familiar with the Sicilian maxim about revenge being a dish that’s best eaten cold, because she let things cool off so completely that Kassenmeier didn’t even know the resentment was still alive. She got in touch when she hit town, and she let her old friend know what brought her to town and where she was staying.

“And Erica came to the hotel the night Karen was going to make her move. I don’t know how much she’d planned and how much she improvised on the spot, but she must have gotten to the lobby while Carl was away from the desk. She already knew what room Karen was going to hit, so all she had to do was grab a key from the board and go upstairs with it. She got to the sixth floor while Carl was downstairs demonstrating his medical training, and she went into Landau’s room and found the scene as the two of them had left it-Landau in bed unconscious, a gun on the floor, and Karen’s purse on a chair.

“Maybe Landau woke up and started making a fuss, and Erica had to shut her up. But I don’t think the old lady ever opened her eyes. I think Erica saw her lying there, and she remembered the knife her old friend always carried and got it from the purse, wrapping her hand in a handkerchief so only Karen’s prints would be on it. And then she stuck it in Landau’s chest and left it there.

“Then she left the hotel and called the police. They were already on their way when Carl called them after Isis reported her encounter with me in the hallway. That’s how they got there so fast. Erica figured that would do it-Karen Kassenmeier, a known thief who was handy with a knife, was right there on the premises, and her knife with her prints on it was planted in the victim’s chest, and her purse was a few yards away. The cops would be on Kassenmeier like buzzards on roadkill, and if she got a good lawyer she might see the sidewalk again in twenty years or so. If she got a bad one she could figure on life without parole, or a needle in her arm.

“What you didn’t figure on,” I said to Erica, “was that Carl would get to the room before the cops did. By the time they got there, there was no knife in the corpse, no purse on the chair, and nothing that would lead anybody to your old friend Karen. But she wasn’t exactly sitting pretty, either. She didn’t have the letters that had brought her to New York in the first place, and the jewelry she’d picked up along the way had somehow gotten out of her grasp.

“But that wasn’t enough for you. You told her Carolyn had let something slip-you knew I had the rubies, and I might even have the letters, too. And you knew exactly where in my apartment I had hidden them.

“You had her wait at your apartment. You went out for dinner, went home to Carolyn’s place instead of your own, and slipped out as soon as Carolyn was sound asleep. Then you dropped by your place to pick up Kassenmeier and the two of you went up to Seventy-first and West End. Once the two of you were inside my apartment, you just waited for your opportunity-first to get the knife from her handbag, then to use it on her the way you’d used it on Anthea Landau. This time your victim was conscious, so it wasn’t quite as easy. The two of you made enough noise to get my neighbor Mrs. Hesch’s attention, but not enough to make her call the cops right away. Then you let yourself out and went home.”

“How’d they get in?” It was the uniformed cop, and he seemed interested now. “You said Kassenmeier didn’t have burglar’s tools. Is this dame a burglar?”

“Not that I know of.”

“So how’d she get in?”

“She had a key,” I said. “Carolyn’s my best friend. We have keys to each other’s apartment and place of business. She used her bookstore key the other day to feed my cat.”

“And she gave the key to this dame?”

“The dame’s name is Erica,” I said. “Erica Darby, and you’ll want to get it right when you write up the arrest for double homicide. She took Carolyn out for a night on the town, and for once she didn’t show any concern about the way Carolyn was drinking. In fact she encouraged it.”

“It was supposed to be a celebration,” Carolyn said.

“Earlier, she’d shown some uncharacteristic interest in me. Asked you where I lived, and other questions about me. So she knew the address, and she knew you had keys, and she made sure you had enough to drink and enough, uh…”

“Stimulation,” Carolyn supplied. “And I passed out and slept like I’d been clubbed. Then what? How did she know where to find the keys?”

“Where do you keep them?”

“On a hook on the bulletin board next to the front door.”

“And what does the little tag on the key ring say?”

“Bernie’s Keys,” she said. “I guess they wouldn’t be too hard to find.”

“What about the doorman?” the cop demanded. “You got twenty-four-hour doorman service in your building, don’t you?”

“Twenty-hour service is more like it,” I said. “They don’t always man their post every minute of the shift, and sometimes they doze off. But even if he was on the spot and wide awake, so what? Two well-dressed middle-class white women? Getting out of a cab and walking into the lobby together like they belong there?”

“In like Flynn,” the cop said.

“Exactly. Then Erica closes the door on Kassenmeier’s corpse, locks up, cabs back down to Arbor Court, and puts my keys back on the hook where she found them. She would have taken your keys, too, so she could get back in, and she puts them back, too. Then she goes home and sleeps the sleep of the unjust.”

“And that’s that?”

“That’s that,” I said. “End of story. She killed two people because one of them did something a long time ago that really pissed her off. I suppose the DA’ll find out what it is by the time the case gets to court, but I kind of like the fact that we don’t know. It makes the whole thing seem as senseless as it was.”

“It’s quite a story,” Erica said.

“I’m proud of it,” I admitted. “There are probably a few undotted i’s and uncrossed t’s in it, but it stands up.”

“The only thing I’m going to say,” she said, “is that there’s not a shred of proof for anything you’ve said.”

“I thought you’d say that. It’s funny, but innocent people don’t start hollering about lack of proof. They just say they didn’t do it. But the fact of the matter is that there’s plenty of proof, and there’ll be more when the police start looking. There’ll be people who know of your history with Karen Kassenmeier, for example. The cabbie who drove you and Karen to my place will probably remember you, once pictures of the two of you get shown around. Someone will turn up who saw you in the hotel on the night of Anthea Landau’s murder, and I wouldn’t be surprised if the police find your fingerprints, once they’ve got a set for comparison and know what they’re looking for.

“Meanwhile, of course, there’s the knife.”

“What knife?”

“The one you used to kill two people, the stiletto with the four-inch blade. What do you want to bet it’s in your apartment?”

“That is absolute nonsense.”

“I have a hunch that’s where the cops’ll find it,” I said. “Soaking in a bowl of Clorox, right on the counter under the Virginia Slims calendar. I guess that’s to get rid of the blood traces, and that’s not a bad idea, but why not ditch the knife altogether? Throw it down a storm sewer, say, or drop it in a trash can?” I looked at her. “A souvenir? Well, I guess it’s better than the kind Jeffrey Dahmer kept, but it still strikes me as a risky thing to hang on to.”

“There’s no knife in my apartment.”

“I guess I was misinformed. What did you do with the knife, then?”

“I never…How do you know there’s a Virginia Slims calendar in my kitchen?”

“Carolyn must have mentioned the great picture of Martina.”

“You bastard! You planted the knife. But-”

“But how did I get in?”

“I know how you got in. You’re a burglar. But where did you get the knife? It can’t be the same knife. It’s a different knife. You planted a different knife in my apartment!”

“If you think about it,” I said, “you’ll figure out what everybody else in the room already realizes. There’s only one way you could know that.”

“You have the right to remain silent,” Ray Kirschmann intoned. He’d said all this before, to the whole room, but now he was saying it to her, and the boy in blue was fastening handcuffs to her wrists. He had already moved over to her side while I was running it all down for them, and he had plenty of room, because Carolyn had been drawing away.

Then the two cops led her out of the room, and the door swung shut behind them.