The Missing Chapter

Nine

The walk home from Keith Billings’s office cooled me off, so by the time I mounted the steps to the brownstone, I conceded that turning Rowcliff loose on the sawed-off, smart-mouthed editor would be a form of cruel and unusual punishment, the kind that was frowned upon by the framers of the Federal Constitution. Maybe I’d make my anonymous call to Sergeant Purley Stebbins instead; unlike Rowcliff, Purley is neither mean nor stupid. But the man sure loves to use his handcuffs.

It was almost a quarter of six by the time I settled in at my desk. Wolfe had left two handwritten letters on my blotter, to orchid growers in Marietta, Georgia, and Madison, Wisconsin. I dutifully entered each into the PC and printed them out twice — one for his signature and the other for our files. After I’d finished, I glanced at my watch, which told me it was eight minutes past the hour: It’s a terrific watch, a quartz job Lily Rowan got me for my birthday two-plus years ago, and it’s never been off more than a second or so — until now. I accused it of galloping until I shot a peek at the wall clock, which also read 6:08. Just as I began contemplating the implications of all this, Fritz appeared at the door, alarm both on his face and in his voice.

“Where is he, Archie? He did not ring for beer, and he did not call down on the house telephone to say he would be delayed.”

“I was wondering the very same thing myself. I’ll go up.”

I took the stairs two at a time to the fourth floor. When I got there, I found Wolfe standing in the little hallway that led to the plant rooms, glowering into the darkened interior of the one vehicle in the world he trusted. Theodore Horstmann stood behind him, his face longer than the men’s-room lines at Shea in the seventh inning on a warm Sunday afternoon when the Mets are playing the Dodgers.

“It doesn’t work,” Wolfe muttered.

I stepped into the elevator and pressed each of the buttons. He was right.

“Oh, well, at least the trip is southbound,” I told him, trying to make light of the situation. “Beer awaits at base camp.”

Wolfe was not amused, as his expression indicated. But he made the best of it and began the descent behind me. I beat him to the first floor by at least a minute. Fritz was at the bottom of the stairs, kneading his hands in his apron and looking up at me with a question mark on his face.

“The elevator’s on the fritz, pardon the expression. He’s coming — on foot. Have beer on his desk when he arrives,” I ordered. I swear Fritz saluted before doing a snappy about-face and darting into the kitchen — probably a vestige of his days with the Alpine Patrol.

When Wolfe arrived in the doorway, two bottles of beer and a frosted glass awaited on his blotter, and I was back at my desk. He marched into the office and got settled in his chair.

“I’ll call the elevator maintenance outfit,” I told him. “There’s a chance somebody can come tomorrow, although it probably will cost extra because it’s a Saturday.” He grunted what I took to be his approval, so I found the number in my telephone file and punched it out. A recorded female voice informed me the office was closed but that I could try an emergency number, which I did. The guy who answered sounded like he’d just been roused from a deep sleep. I told him the problem and he responded with a few sluggish “uh-huhs.” He was equally unenthusiastic when he said they’d send a crew out first thing in the morning — no later than nine. “Hafta charge you the weekend rate,” he warned, and I responded that we would live with it.

I hung up and told Wolfe help was on the way, but he didn’t appear to be impressed, so I changed the subject. “I talked to Keith Billings,” I said as he set down his glass of beer, licked his lips, and picked up his current book, Byzantium: The Apogee, by John Julius Norwich. “Do you want a report?”

He scowled and closed the book. “Proceed,” he said icily. I forgave him silently, knowing it had been an unsettling day for him, and gave him the conversation verbatim while he sat with eyes closed and hands on his chair arms. When I finished, he opened his eyes, drained his glass, and poured more beer before uttering a single word. “Indiana.”

“Yeah, two people now have told me Childress seemed different when he came back from there. Like I told Billings, maybe that’s understandable, though.”

“I detected no appreciable change in your personality or demeanor when you returned from your mother’s funeral several years ago,” Wolfe observed.

“True, but no two people react to a personal loss in the same way.”

“Manifestly. How would one get to this place?” To Wolfe, any travel, even a few blocks by car, is an act of outright recklessness. I went to the bookshelves and pulled down the big atlas, taking it back to my desk. “Mercer, Indiana, population, four thousand six hundred eleven. Here it is, southeast of Indianapolis about fifty or sixty miles, say an hour’s drive.”

Wolfe shuddered. “And to get to Indianapolis?”

“Something over an hour by air, ninety minutes at the outside. Do I go?”

Another shudder. “I believe you are visiting Miss Rowan’s dacha this weekend?”

Wolfe calls it a dacha, and Lily herself refers to it as “my country cottage.” It actually is a spacious, stone-and-timber, tile-roofed, four-bedroom villa with an Olympic-sized pool and stables set on forty rolling and wooded acres near Katonah. “We were supposed to drive up around noon tomorrow, but I can cancel,” I told him.

“No, Monday is soon enough. Make the necessary arrangements,” he said, returning to his book. You might think he was being considerate by letting me keep my weekend plans, but he had a couple of ulterior motives: One, he wanted to be sure I was around in the morning to deal with the elevator repair crew; and two, he knew that if I were away toiling on Sunday, he would have to give me a day off somewhere along the way as compensation, and he doesn’t like it when I’m not around on weekdays to carry out whatever duties he dreams up. Actually, there was a third factor, too. Wolfe, despite his overall opinion of women, approves of Lily Rowan — whenever she comes to the brownstone, she asks to see his orchids, a request that is sure to get a positive response from him. She had a weekend planned, and he did not want to cast himself in the role of bad guy by messing it up.

The next morning, after devouring a breakfast of sausage, eggs, and pancakes with wild-thyme honey at my small table in the kitchen, I finished packing my overnight bag for the trip to Katonah and went to the office to tackle some housekeeping odds and ends. At nine-twenty, the doorbell rang. It was two men from the elevator outfit we’ve used through the years, one of whom, the tall bald one, I recognized. I ushered them in, and we hoofed it up to the fourth floor, where the car stood open and dark. While they surveyed it, I went into the plant rooms to confirm that Wolfe had walked up the two flights from his bedroom on the second floor. Sure enough, there he was, on his usual stool at the bench doing something with the stuff in a pot, while Theodore looked on, frowning. His frown predictably deepened when he saw me. “Just thought I’d let you know that the elevator grease monkeys are here. Things may get a little noisy,” I said. Wolfe glowered in my direction and turned back to the pot.

I went down to the office, where I balanced the checkbook and read those parts of the Times I hadn’t gotten to at breakfast. At ten-thirty-five, the tall bald repairman stuck his head in the door and delivered the bad news.

“Sorry, but you’ve got problems big-time.” He shook his head like an auto mechanic telling me that my car was on life-support systems. “I remember workin’ on this baby years ago, and it was ancient then. They quit making this model before I was born, and I’m sneaking up on retirement. Howie and me have just now been on the roof of the cab, in the shaft from top to bottom, checked the cables, the counterweights, the motor, the bearings, the bushings, the electrical system, the works. And I gotta tell you, the thing’s just plain dangerous the shape she’s in right now. I’m surprised the city inspectors didn’t whistle you on it the last time they was here. But I see by the certificate in the cab that they gave it a pass. Come on up — I’ll show you just how bad it is.” He — his name was Carl — and I walked up the three flights, where his partner Howie was packing up his tool box.

“See here?” Carl said, stepping into the elevator, crouching and playing his flashlight along the floor. “It’s rusted through in four or five places where the wall joins the floor. Thing’s ready to come to pieces. And the door” — he grabbed it and shook it — “is hanging on by its imagination. I’m surprised none of you had noticed how bad it is.”

“How long will it take and how much will it cost?” I asked.

“Depends. There’s so much wrong that we strongly recommend a new unit — including a cab. If the platform — the base of the cab, that is — was in better shape, maybe we could salvage it, but” — Carl shrugged — “that’s not the case, not by a long shot.

“I know it probably sounds drastic to you, but startin’ over’s actually cheaper than tryin’ to patch this old bus together, especially because a lot of the parts aren’t even made anymore. And the motor’s totally shot, too — totally. You may want to get a second estimate, but I think anybody else’ll find the same stuff wrong that we did. If you go the whole nine yards, and I really think you should, we can start, oh, probably next Monday, assuming everything is in stock. We can have the new setup operational in ten working days, twelve at most. And we won’t have to tear out any walls; the new cab can be assembled right in the shaft — after we dismantle the old one, of course, which is a big job. If you call our emergency number today with the go-ahead, I’m pretty sure that a crew can be here early next week.” He thrust a clipboard at me with a list of things needing fixing and the cost of each. The figure at the bottom made me glad that we currently had a client.

I told Carl that I would check with Wolfe and get a decision, probably later today. He gave a thumbs-up, and the three of us descended the stairs to the front hall, where we said good-bye and I let them out.

Wolfe can be a trouper when times are tough, I’ll give him that. It was only 11:04 when he strode into the office, and he wasn’t even breathing hard from the mind-boggling exertion of walking down three flights. He placed a raceme of Phalaenopsis in the vase on his blotter and dipped his head in my direction but did not say “Good morning,” since we already had seen each other earlier. I got up from my chair and walked to his desk, laying the estimate in front of him. He picked it up, pressed his lips together, and set it down. “Pfui. Exorbitant.”

“Pfui, indeed,” I agreed. “You’re the only one who ever uses the elevator. Didn’t it seem to you that the thing was getting pretty rickety?”

Wolfe shrugged away the question, ringing for beer.

“The work will take two weeks, maybe a little more, beginning early next week, or so the guy who was here thinks,” I went on. “Do you want me to get a second estimate?”

“Would it be appreciably different?”

“Probably not. This outfit has a top-flight reputation, the best in the city — or at least they did. The reason we called them originally, you may remember, was that I checked with a high roller Lon Cohen knows who’s in real estate, and he recommended them. But that was several years back, although we’ve used them for minor repairs three or four times since without any problems. I can do some calling around to see if they’re still well-thought-of.”

“No,” Wolfe responded, holding up a palm. “Proceed.” I did, and when I called them to give the go-ahead, the still-sleepy voice at the other end promised that a crew would be on the job Monday morning, “no later than eight-thirty.” I reminded Wolfe that I would be on my way to Indiana on Monday and asked if he’d like me to get either Saul Panzer or Fred Durkin to fill in for me at the desk, as has been the case sometimes when I’ve gone out of town. “How long will you be gone?” he asked.

“That is a question I should be tossing at you,” I said with a smile. “It all depends on what you expect me to accomplish while I’m there.”

“Your notebook,” he grumbled. “Instructions.”