“There was a meat pounder in the set,” I said.
“Meat tenderizer,” he corrected.
“A big wooden mallet with ridges on the head.”
“Yes. You want one?”
“My sister has one.”
“Nice to know it’s still in service,” he said. “Sturdy. Made in the Philippines.”
“I think one of them was used to murder Blue Berrigan,” I said. “I saw the postmortem photographs. They left a dent in his skull like a fingerprint.”
“Could be a different manufacturer’s,” he said.
Corkle found what he was looking for in the deep file drawer in the desk. It was a jar full of what looked like pennies. He rolled the jar in his hands. The coins made the sound of falling rain as it turned.
“You give away a lot of Kitchen Master Block Sets here in Sarasota?”
“I give my Corkle Enterprises helpful house, car, and kitchen aids to anyone who comes in this house. I give them for Christmas, Hanukkah, Kwanzaa, and birthdays.”
The rolling coins in the jar grew louder as he moved toward me.
“You’re a generous man,” I said.
“I like to think so.”
“You haven’t asked me about Ronnie Gerall.”
“I assume that you’ll tell me if you have anything to say that will help him.”
“His name isn’t Ronnie Gerall, but you already know that.”
“Do I?”
He was behind me now. I didn’t turn my head, just listened to the coins.
If I were ever to really believe in God, a primary reason would be the existence of irony in my life. There had to be some irony in the possibility of my getting killed with a jar full of pennies.
There is a mischief in me, even with the coins of death over my head. Death wish? Maybe. Ann Hurwitz thought so. Now she thinks I may be getting over it. If so, why did I then say, “Jeff Augustine.”
The coin rattling turned to the sound of a thunderstorm in the Amazon and then suddenly stopped.
“He didn’t leave town,” I said.
Corkle moved back to the wall, deposited the jar, and sat behind his desk.
“He convinced you he was going, didn’t he?”
“Yes,” I said.
“Good actor. C-plus real-life tough guy.”
“Where is he?”
“I don’t know,” Corkle said, “but I do know where your cowboy friend is.”
“Where?”
“Searching the rooms upstairs for Rachel Horvecki.”
He pushed a button under the desk and a section of the bookcase popped open to reveal a bank of eight full color television screens. They were all numbered. On number three Ames was talking to a young woman sitting on a bed.
“Why did you take her?”
“Protect her,” he said. “My daughter and grandson believe in Ronnie’s… What’s his real name?”
“Dwight Ronald Torcelli. He’s still Ronnie.”
“I don’t want her threatened to the point where he feels he can’t proclaim his innocence.”
“You think he’d do the noble thing?”
“No,” said Corkle, swiveling his leather chair so that it faced the window and presented me with the back of his head. He had a little monk’s bald pate you couldn’t see unless he was seated like this and leaning back.
“Don’t ask me why my daughter and grandson believe in him.”
“Their belief may be eroding.”
“I wouldn’t try to talk them out of it,” he said. “On the other hand, I wouldn’t say a word against…”
“Dwight Torcelli,” I said. “You let us steal those documents about Ronnie Gerall while we played poker the other night,” I said. “You dropped a hint about them and left them on your desk. You had a pretty good idea we would come the night I bought into your poker game.”
“Why would I do that?”
“To give us reasons to believe that he was guilty without handing us evidence.”
“You think I’m that devious?”
“You’re that devious,” I said.
He swiveled back to face me and looked up at the television monitors.
“Persuasive,” he said.
I looked at the monitors. Ames and the young woman were coming out of the bedroom. He led the way to some narrow steep stairs just off the kitchen. The young woman followed him.
“Augustine?” I asked.
“You think he killed Horvecki and Berrigan?”
“The thought had entered my mind.”
“Anything else?”
“Are you paying me to clear Torcelli or to find something against him?”
“Given his relationship with your friend Sally Pierogi…”
“Porovsky.”
“Porovsky,” he amended. “Given that, I think you might have an interest in proving Torcelli is not a nice person. There, they’ve left the house.”
I looked up at a screen in the lower left-hand monitor to see Ames and the young woman hurrying across the back lawn.
“You’re good at all this,” I said.
“Couldn’t have sold forty-eight thousand copies of the Guitar Master 12-Lesson Plan and almost twenty thousand guitars to go with it if I weren’t good at sizing up the potential customers.”
“What are you trying to sell me?” I asked.
“I’m buying,” he said.
“What?”
“The truth,” he said. “Not the big truth. Just a small one about who killed Horvecki. If it clears the dago weasel, so be it. You don’t believe me?”
“No. Police will be coming to talk to you about what they found in Torcelli’s apartment.”
“The meat tenderizer?”
“The meat tenderizer.”
“They’re waiting for you in your car,” he said.
He got up and so did I.
“You get your choice of items in the closet,” he said.
“Some other time,” I said, going to the office door.
“D. Elliot Corkle has irritated you,” he said following me. “The dago remark? I was just pulling your chain.” He reached up and pulled once on an invisible chain.
“I know,” I said.
He grinned and pointed a finger at me to show I had hit the mark.
“Answer four questions and we’re friends again,” I said.
“Ask.”
We crossed the foyer to the front door.
“You know a policeman named Essau Williams and an Evangelist named Jack Pepper?”
“D. Elliot Corkle knows who they are,” he said. “Wait a moment.”
He hurried to the closet off the front hall, opened it and disappeared for no more than a few seconds before coming out with a white cardboard box and handing it to me. Second question?”
“Have you given money to either one of them?” I asked as we went out onto the redbrick path.
“Nothing to Williams but I did volunteer to put up a suitable headstone of his choice for his mother when they die. Five thousand dollars to Pepper to help support his ministry.”
“In exchange for?”
“Nothing, but I did indicate to both of them that I appreciated their efforts to bring Philip Horvecki to justice.”
“Blue Berrigan?” I asked.
“Unfortunate. No, tragic. No, shocking. A terrible coincidence. If you see my daughter…”
“Yes?”
“Nothing,” he said. “She’ll come back here. She always does when her funds get down to the level of the gross national product of Poland. Another question.”
“Does Jeff Augustine play golf?”
“Why? Do you want him to join you on the links at the Ben Hogan Gulf Club? I don’t know if he plays golf. I do know that if he does it will be a bit difficult for him now with but one eye.”
He closed the door and I carried my prize to the car, where Rachel was sitting in the front passenger seat. I got in beside Ames and Darrell.
“Where are you taking me?” Rachel Gerall said.
“Wherever you want to go,” I said.
“To see Ronnie,” she said, her voice in twang from the center of the State of Florida.
She was frail and pale, red of hair and green of eyes. She should have been Irish. She had a pinched face and thin lips. She could have been cast as a tubercular resident of an Irish mining town a century ago. Either that or a hardcore drug user.
“Who are you people?” she said, half turning to look at me.
“People trying to help the police find whoever killed your father,” I said.