“Somebody must have set him up,” Ed concluded. “But who, and why?”
It was then that I remembered seeing Violet at the police station earlier that day. When I mentioned this to Ed he said, “Yeah. After you asked me about her I found out why she was there. She was waiting for that guy Gilbert Carver. I guess she’s his girlfriend because she walked out with him after you questioned him. They were having a big argument.”
“She’s the only possible link between Reggie and this case,” I pointed out. “Maybe you’d better pick her up.”
“Done,” Ed said, reaching for his phone.
I went on home after arranging for Reggie to be released as painlessly as possible. Ed said he’d call me when they brought Violet in.
Late the next morning, I was not surprised when Reggie, looking more haggard than usual, floated into my office. I could see he was still in shock.
“It was awful,” he breathed heavily as he sank into a chair. “They treated me like a criminal.”
“You were caught with the loot,” I reminded him.
“But it wasn’t mine,” he said. Then he calmed down and reverted to his usual style. “It is extremely deflating to one’s ego, you know, especially if one’s response system is unaccustomed to unwarranted stress.”
“How do you suppose the jewelry got hidden in your place?” I asked.
“I can’t imagine. I’m away a lot. Anyone could have sneaked in and put it there, but I don’t know why.”
“What about Violet?” I asked. “Any chance that...”
“Oh, no! How would she have access to stolen... loot?” he demanded. “Why would you suspect her?”
“She wears a lot of jewelry, for one thing. How well do you know her?” I asked. But I was unprepared for the rush of color that rose up from his starchy collar.
“Why, uh...” he said, with some indignation and so much embarrassment that it told me more than I had intended to find out.
“I mean,” I said with a quick wave of my hand to get him on another track, “what do you know about her background?”
“She doesn’t have much background,” he said innocently. “I know that her mother is in a nursing home here, but I think that’s all the family she has.”
He got my attention with that. “Wait a minute. What nursing home? What’s her mother’s name?” I demanded.
He thought for a minute. “I don’t know the answer to either question.”
“Does she have a lot of brothers and sisters?” I asked.
“She’s never mentioned any.”
Assorted facts ran loosely through my mind, but they didn’t fit together until much later.
That afternoon, I went down to the station to interview another unlikely suspect from whom I got nothing. Then I stopped by Ed’s desk.
“Several store owners have identified the pieces we found at your shrink friend’s place last night,” he said. “But that’s all the progress we’ve made.”
“What about Violet? Did she provide any useful information?” I asked.
“Haven’t been able to locate her yet.”
“Well, she was here yesterday afternoon, and you said she walked out with Gilbert afterwards, so why not pick up Gilbert again, and...”
“I thought of that, but we can’t find him either.”
I told Ed about my visit to the nursing home, and what Reggie had told me about Violet’s mother’s being in one.
At that point Ed’s phone rang. It was a short conversation, but before he put the receiver down, I knew the news was bad.
“They’ve found Violet,” he said in a flat voice. I waited expectantly until he added, “Her body was stuffed in a Dumpster. She’s been dead since last night.”
I winced. Poor Reggie was going to have another blow.
“And her mother is Mrs. Carver at the nursing home,” Ed continued. “I guess we’d better go and see her. She’s got to be notified of her daughter’s death. And maybe she can tell us more about all this.”
I doubted it, but at least, I thought, her mental condition might mercifully spare her from the full realization of what had happened to her daughter.
We went to Mrs. Carver’s private room but the door was locked. Knocking brought no results, so we found a nurse who helped hunt for her.
“She’s here somewhere,” the nurse assured us. “I saw her wheeling down the hallway not more than half an hour ago.”
When the sun room and patio revealed no Mrs. Carver, the nurse acquired a worried look, pulled out a batch of keys, and went at the door to Mrs. Carver’s room. As it swung open, she gasped, and so did Ed and I.
Signs of a hasty exit were everywhere: drawers hung open, the bathrobe Mrs. Carver had worn yesterday was flung on the floor, the mattress was half off the bed, and there were several empty brown paper bags strewn around the floor.
“She couldn’t have done this by herself — she’s practically helpless,” the nurse cried.
Then things began to click in my head. I ran toward the front of the building. We were on the second floor, and as I started down the stairway, I glanced out the window. There was Mrs. Carver, hurriedly stuffing two small suitcases into the back of a cab and scrambling in after them.
Ed and the nurse, who were right behind me, saw her too. “Is that her?” Ed asked.
I nodded as the astonished nurse said, “For two months I’ve been pushing her around in that wheelchair and she can walk as well as I can!”
“Where’s the nearest phone?” Ed barked.
The nurse quickly led him to a small, empty office where he called the taxi company for the destination of the cab that had made the pickup at the nursing home. When he found out it was headed for the airport, he called his office, briefly filled in an officer, then told him to tail the cab, and keep Mrs. Carver in sight after she got out.
His police officer’s eye had picked up an amazing amount of detail about her clothing and appearance. He gave all this again to the airport security office, asking them to detain anybody she met after she got there. He was particularly interested in the two small bags she was carrying.
Then he and I hopped into his car and headed for the airport, hoping we might at least be in time to catch the last act in this drama of the smiling old lady who had suddenly recovered her lost youth. Ed tuned in his radio, and we advised airport security of where the cab was entering the terminal so they could have a reception committee on hand if Mrs. Carver met anyone there.
We were in luck. She got out of the cab tailed by several of Ed’s men and rushed in to a ticket counter. Then she hurried down the concourse, the two bags clutched tightly in her hands, and met a group of five of her “children,” all grown men. Just as the boarding call sounded for her plane, another man and a woman joined the group and all headed for the gate.
At that point, airport security and Ed’s men moved in and surrounded the happy family. A few bolted, but were quickly caught. By then, Ed and I had arrived at the terminal and headed down the concourse to the gate where the family gathering had gone sour.
We immediately spotted familiar faces: Gilbert was there, as was the nervous, twitchy Bob Colvin, and Cliff Dorgan, the former jewelry store employee. Ed noted others whose acquaintance he had made in the course of his work. “Mother” Carver was holding forth in some of the gamiest language I had ever heard. Gone were her engaging smile and her vacant stare. In fluent street language she reviewed the stupidity of some of her “children,” the calumny of the police, and various breeding problems of the rest of humanity.
One of Ed’s men was holding both her bags, and this piqued her no end. She kept announcing her legal rights of privacy and other irrelevancies. We were sure that much of the remaining stolen jewelry was there.
“Do we book the whole group for burglary, captain?” one of Ed’s men asked as we approached.