The Suicide Murders

ELEVEN

I parked my car around behind my office building, which formed part of an arch of brick and stone structures put up on the high ground above the old canal at the end of the nineteenth century. The fieldstone looked green and wet on the lintel of the backdoor leading to the cellar. The unpainted wood of the door looked rotten. I walked up the lane and then climbed the twenty-eight steps to my big front door. I wasn’t even breathing hard.

I put in a call to Martha Tracy at Scarp Enterprises, and in doing so, I remembered a batch of questions I’d meant to ask Myrna Yates. I was sorry that I had to take it out on her, especially since she was signing my cheques, but I needed to know more about the business end of Chester’s involvements. If he was in the middle of something when he got knocked off, there must be more than several people around town sucking in air and not letting it out. Martha was out to lunch, the receptionist reported. I left my number. To kill time, I put in another call to Pete Staziak, at the Regional Police.

“What’s with you, Benny?”

“What do you mean?”

“Don’t answer a question with a question.”

“Tell my mother. What’s wrong?”

“Well, how come you’re always calling me up at work lately, and for a couple of years before this week I hardly ever heard from you?”

“What are you talking? I’m always interested in how you’re doing. How are you doing? There, I’m asking.”

“I thought you were supposed to be a private investigator?”

“What’s that supposed to mean?”

“Well, Ellery Queen and Perry Mason aren’t always phoning the cops to see what the latest developments have been.”

“That’s in books. Besides they were related to the cops or practically. Nobody tried to freeze them out. Come on, Pete, don’t hold out on me. Have you got a report back from the Forensic Centre in Toronto yet?”

“Yeah.”

“Well?” He took a long breath like someone who had just given in to lighting up his first cigarette in three weeks, two days, seven hours and fifty-five minutes.

“Okay, Zekerman was clubbed to death.”

“Stop the presses! You didn’t have to go to Toronto to find that out. I could have told you. Even that washed-up drunk Hildebrandt could have told you that.”

“Leave our former shady coroner out of this. Do you want to know when he died or don’t you?”

“Surprise me.”

“Don’t be the smart ass, Benny. He was killed just after five, as close as they can place it.”

“Could it have been just before?”

“Sure. There’s a margin in these things.”

“So, he was knocked off by someone after getting his full hour of therapy or by someone who didn’t bother to get into the nice soft leather chair.”

“Looks that way. We are trying to get some help from Medicare to help us find out who his patients were yesterday, but they are reading us a lot of stuff about confidentiality and like that. They are very sensitive about that kind of thing. We got lots of his files here, but it sounds like they all could have done him in. He was seeing some weird people, Benny.”

“Is that all you’ve got?”

“You complaining? If you weren’t a private eye, you’d have to go out and get a job.”

“I never thought I’d hear that from a cop.”

“Hey, there is one funny thing we found out about your good dead friend the doctor: he was cooking the Medicare accounts.”

“How can you tell?”

“Interesting, huh? Well, we took what was left of his office downtown and looked at it most of this afternoon. We found a few bill which didn’t quite tally with the jottings about appointments. He was charging everybody we could match up with about three or four visits a month more than they actually made. No skin of the customers’ noses, because in the end they collected from Medicare. Nice fellow, eh?”

“Maybe he was killed by a bunch of hit boys from the Medical Association for giving them a bad name?”

“I’ll tell Harrow you suggested it.”

“Don’t spoil my supper. So long. I’ll be talking to you.”

“Don’t rush. Goodbye.” Pete was a good guy most of the time. But he was a sucker for a queen’s side opening.

I called Martha back. I never really believe that receptionists pass out messages as liberally as they are paid to do. And with someone like Martha Tracy, I wouldn’t be surprised to find people holding out on her in little ways. I was right. She was at her desk.

“Martha?”

“Who wants her?”

“Cooperman.”

“Well, why didn’t you say so in the first place. I just got back from drinking my lunch. Has something happened?”

“Nothing you haven’t read about. But I wanted to ask you about a girl who used to work in your office: Elizabeth Tilford. Does that name ring a bell?”

“I only wish they’d stop. Sure I remember her. I put her up after she came to work for us. She stayed six months and left owing me two months’ rent. I can scarcely manage the mortgage as it is, and she leaves like that without a word.”

“Exactly when did she come to work at the office?” I could hear the loud sounds of finger arithmetic for a few seconds.

“I think she started around the end of July last year. She moved in with me a month after that. I had the back room empty anyway, and I thought the company might be cheerful.”

“When did you see her last?”

“I told you, two months ago. End of February.”

“I hear she was good-looking.”

“What do you expect me to say? She had all the right equipment in just the right proportions. Red hair, long legs, smart but cold. Not what you call a good mixer. Not one to go off in a romantic fog and marry the third assistant to the boss in the mailroom. She was after big game.”

“You mean Ward?”

“For a little guy, you get around, don’t you? Yeah, she picked out her man the first time she set eyes on him, and she didn’t want a second or third string to fall back on. They were a hot number for a couple of months. She played him smart, like a trout fisherman. He never saw her drool once; he thought it was all his idea. That kind of smart.

“And it went on until she left?”

“M’yeah. Without a word to anybody. At first we thought she’d been fired. I remember that Mr. Yates spent part of a day talking to her in her office. That was the last day or near it. I thought she’d come out with a pink slip and a letter of recommendation. That’s the way Mr. Yates did things.”

“You’re serious about her disappearing? I mean, she didn’t just vanish, did she? Somebody must know where she went. Ward for instance.”

“Ask him if you dare.”

“I may have to do that. But I can’t get over this business of her lamming out of there without anybody raising a fuss. She owed you money …”

“I’m just soft in the head, trusting people. I should be put away.”

“Didn’t anybody get in touch with the police about it?”

“Well, Mr. Ward wouldn’t have been the one to call them in. Chester asked me if I thought that we should report her as a missing person, but, hell, she didn’t seem to me to be the sort of girl that got herself raped or murdered. The other way round maybe. I thought more than likely she’d just gone off somewhere. She didn’t leave much behind her. Not many clothes, no furniture, just a few books. And if you dragged me to court, I’d have to admit that even the back rent wouldn’t add up to much in real money. Still, she could have said goodbye.”

“What was she like?”

“When she wasn’t out with Mr. Ward, she stayed home reading. She didn’t have much fun, didn’t like jawing like I do, or drinking, like I do, or even watching TV. She didn’t even smoke. She was too serious for me. I don’t know what Mr. Ward saw in her, apart from the obvious. Chester liked her too. She played up to him, and he licked it up like cream.”

“Martha, you don’t miss much. Be talking to you. Goodbye.”

“Cooperman, come back here! What’s she got to do with all this?”

“If I find out, Martha, you’ll be the first to know.”