“Murder’s generally very inconvenient, Boss.”
“Murder?”
“Couple of dead girls, so far. Both members of the con crowd, near’s I can make out. Might be more if I don’t stick with this.”
“What have you found out?”
“Bit here. Piece there. Seem’s as if some interior decorator has been getting inside dope on some of our heavy-dough customers who’re gone away for winter vacations, got stuff shipped to their country places, then transferred it elsewhere. Leaving no trace except a bunch of unpaid bills.”
“Who do you suspect here in the store?”
“Haven’t got to that yet. But you might have someone with discretion in the credit department check over all the charges billed out by the furniture and drapery departments for the past sixty days and make a list of the ones that haven’t been paid to date.”
“Eddrop be all right? He’s absolutely trustworthy.”
“Sure. He’ll have his heart in it, too, after that crack in the mouth.”
Harrison was subdued. “When’ll you be in, Don?”
“No telling. But I’ll have something when I get there.”
“I hope to heaven. These murders — they’ll bring in the police?”
“Sure. I’ll try to keep Nimbletts from being involved too much, Bob.”
He phoned his garage, ordered his car. By the time the doorman called up to say it was at the curb, Don was dressed.
Once over the George Washington Bridge, streaking northward on Route 9W, he began to mull over the question of Benny. The guy was evidently someone Suzanne had depended on — likely the big lunk Eddrop had described as having slugged him and Mary Bayard. But if that was the case, the chances were that Benny was on Nimbletts’s payroll. Only someone who knew the store well, the location of the store protection office and the stairs close by it, could have staged that assault and getaway. It would have been difficult enough for anyone to get in the executive corridor, with that watchful receptionist at the entrance.
The rain lessened, but the clouds were still low and threatening by three o’clock when he parked in front of the General Greene Hotel just off the main highway at the Congers crossroad. A hundred yards to the west, on the intersecting blacktop, he saw a green neon:
He went in the hotel, consulted the thin phone book. There were only a few pages devoted to Congers, so it took no more than five minutes to run down the list. But he found no one whose first name was Clement.
A dime connected him with Sammy’s Package Store. He spoke loudly, as if he’d been doing all right with a bottle.
“Hey, Sammy, sen’ up couple bottles that Spanish brandy, will ya?”
“Yes, sir. Right away. Who’s this?”
“Oh, ha-ha. I’m callin’ f’r Clem. Y’know. Clem.”
“Oh. Okay. Two Fundador, right away.”
“Attakeed.”
He was behind the wheel of his car when a motorcycle with a sidecar whooshed out of the hidden driveway beyond Sammy’s, heading west on the intersection.
The motorcyclist drove like a bat, was out of sight around a curve before Don could get his car up to speed. But he picked the motorcyclist up on the straightaway, a quarter-mile beyond.
A winking red eye and a clanging gong warned of an approaching train at the crossing two hundred yards ahead. The motorcycle bounced across the track boards at seventy. Don had to slam on his brakes as the express thundered into the crossing.
The tires of the sidecar left clear marks on the wet blacktop. If the delivery vehicle didn’t swing off onto some concrete road, Don ought to be able to follow those marks even if he didn’t catch up to the fellow.
It was like trailing a hippopotamus across Central Park. The tracks continued for another half-mile, swung off at a right angle on a wide gravel road beside which was a reflector-marker; “Ayerell.” The tracks went in but didn’t come back.
Don drove on for another mile, turned, took his time returning to the marker. If “Ayerell” was Clem, there was the likelihood the murderer would be on his guard now that he knew someone had sent him a phony order of brandy. There was a certain poetic justice in using that method to trace a man who specialized in having stuff shipped to someone who hadn’t purchased it, Don thought grimly.
There were new marks on the gravel and on the wet tar showing where the sidecar had gone back to Sammy’s.
Don drove down the graveled way.
White-railed fences began to hem in the roadway. This must be quite an estate, Don thought. Big lawns clotted with groves of elm and oak. A huge Quonset hut back there across the plowed field. Evidently Mr. Ayerell was a gentleman farmer of sorts.
Around a bend the white fences came together at a pair of concrete gate posts with a Kentucky lift gate barring the way. At one side a large white square bore neat black scroll lettering:
Jerome Clement Ayerell
Antiques — Interiors — Designing
Don stopped the car, reached out, pulled the hanging cord. The wooden gate swung open. He drove through. The gate closed behind him slowly.
A head was a huge rambling white Colonial farmhouse flanked by sheds, garages, tool houses. No smoke rose from any of the four chimneys, nor were there any tire marks on the driveway except those Don recognized as the motorcyclist’s.
He pulled up in front of a long, low glassed-in porch, honked twice, waited.
No one came out. As far as he could tell, there was no movement at any of the curtained windows.
He unlocked the glove compartment, took out his .38, checked the load, thumbed off the safety.
If there were to be any fireworks this time, he would do the touching off himself.
He walked cautiously around behind the closed garage to the rear of the house. The only thing that caught his eye was a small piece of torn yellow cardboard in the mud of the walk from the tool-shed to the kitchen. He picked it up, knowing what he would find printed on it before he turned it over:
It was the kind of shipping tag used on crated furniture and cumbersome carpets.
Chapter VIII
The driveway that circled the farmhouse to the garage continued on past the tool shed toward the Quonset hut. It was a deeply rutted driveway, as if heavy trucks had cut their signatures in the gravel.
Don went back to his car, drove the quarter-mile to the hangarlike structure. It didn’t seem reasonable that thirty or forty thousand dollars worth of furniture and floor coverings would be stored in the farmhouse; and the garage certainly wasn’t big enough to hold any great part of that amount. But the Quonset could take all the furniture on Nimbletts’s eighth floor and everything in the big Brooklyn warehouse as well.
The double-doors to the metal hut were locked, as he’d expected. The windows were tightly shuttered.
He backed his car a hundred yards, came forward again straight for the doors, bracing himself for the impact. An instant before he crashed the bumper against the building, he cut the ignition.
The doors burst open, the car rolling right into the hut before he braked it to a stop.
If there was anyone around the place, he thought — some caretaker or servant — that crash ought to bring him a-running. He got out, inspected the damage to his car. A mashed left fender, a cracked headlight, the bumper slightly askew.
The end of the high-arched shed into which he’d come like a projectile was fitted up as a paint shop. Electric sprayers and spray shields, an overhead trolley for suspending articles to be sprayed from beneath. Racks of brushes. Enough paint, oil finishes, waxes and varnishes to equip a hardware store. The floor boarding was spattered with cream and buff, white and apple green, blues and chocolates.