“Yessir.”
“Just one thought before you go,” he said at the door. “Husband and wife are separated, husband has to lay out cash to live up to their separation agreement. If husband finds out wife is also getting goodies from lovers, he might be tempted to cut off his payments the fast way, with a knife. And he might be even more tempted to stick a couple of Scrabble letters in her hand so as to make things hot for a couple of her lovers, assuming of course that he first took a peek into her diary like you did and found out who they were, or learned some other way. If I were you I’d look into what Mr. Will Umber was doing early this afternoon.”
“Yes, sir! I’ll do that. And thanks again for all your help. And for dinner. See you tomorrow, sir!” They shook hands in the corridor by the elevator and Fred shuffled back into the apartment and into the kitchen where Bunny was finishing the dishes.
“I heard most of what you two were saying,” his daughter said, handing him the meat platter to dry. “You haven’t had that light of excitement in your eyes since the day you retired.”
Fred picked up a dishtowel and wiped the water from the dinnerware with vigorous strokes. “Yes, indeed,” he crowed, “when the kids get stuck they got to call in the old man. And with a lump like that Duffy in charge you can be damn sure it won’t be solved without me! Why, throughout this entire day and evening he’s believed that F. BUFORD on the board downstairs meant me, and never even wondered how an old man on a cop’s retirement pension could afford the rent on a big apartment like this. I threw him enough hints, too, like when I mentioned that a long time ago I’d wanted a son. Just like I said before he came — a flaming idiot.”
Bunny almost dropped a plate laughing. “Oh, Daddy! Were you seriously going to suggest me as a suspect?”
Fred chuckled back at his daughter, enjoying the joke hugely. “Well, as a point of routine he should have covered it. After all, look at the case a really good cop could build against you. When can’t a woman working the badger game do the usual thing and have her male accomplice make the approach to the marks? When the accomplice is a female, too. What’s the most convenient way for the accomplice to operate the hidden camera in the other girl’s apartment? Live in the same building herself and use the fire stairs. When someone’s dying and using her last breath to spell out her murderer’s name, is she going to reach for the killer’s initials or try to spell out the name? Spell out the name, of course. It’s an open-and-shut case — a dispute between the partners over the payoff money like Duffy suggested.”
“Oh, Daddy, you’re beautiful.” Bunny blew a playful kiss at her father in appreciation of the jest. “But I think you’ve been hitting too many whodunits down in that Reading Room. For the sake of my reputation you’d better switch to some nice safe biographies! Seriously, Daddy, who do you think did it?”
“My money’s on Franklin Roosevelt Quist.” The old policeman savored every syllable of the civil-rights lawyer’s name. “That last point I made about the Umber woman going for the name instead of the initials makes a lot of sense, you see. And even if she was going for the initials, if she was trying to name Roger Farris she wouldn’t have been clawing out for more letters at the moment she died, the way Duffy said she was, because she already had Farris’ initials. In the game of Scrabble, daughter, there is only one Q — and she couldn’t find it. That’s what she was hunting around for, desperately trying to add it to the F and R in her hand before the curtain came down. We’ll crack his alibi tomorrow.”
“Be careful drying that meat knife,” cautioned Frederika Buford, known to her father as Bunny. “It’s very sharp.”
The Theft of the Legal Eagle
by Edward D. Hoch[13]
Between new Nick Velvet stories we often wonder: what strange, unusual, but valueless thing will Nick steal next? As you know, Nick is a unique thief. He doesn’t steal money or jewels or art objects or anything else of value, and yet for stealing something worthless he demands and gets a minimum fee of $20,000.
Well, this time Nick “bends his rule a bit” — but only a bit. He is hired to steal a stone eagle that weighs 3000 pounds. One and one-half tons of stone might be worth something as stone, but not much. So why was it worth $20,000 to Hamish Blake? Again Nick Velvet has to be both a thief and a ’tec...
“That’s it, right across the street,” Hamish Blake said. “One-and-a-half tons of stone eagle.”
Nick Velvet peered out the window with some distaste. “It’s not exactly pretty, is it?”
“It’s not meant to be pretty, Mr. Velvet. It’s meant to represent the American eagle in full attack against the wrongdoers who would destroy our system of law and order.”
“And you want it stolen?”
Hamish Blake leaned back in his chair. They were seated in the front window of the High Court Restaurant, finishing a lunch more elaborate and fattening than Nick was accustomed to eat. “Please don’t use that word,” he advised Nick. “I am, after all, an attorney in good standing in this community.”
“What’s so valuable about that eagle? My fee is twenty thousand dollars, you know.”
“I know, Until recently the stone eagle stood on top of a pedestal on the grounds of my uncle’s country estate. He was Judge Norbert Blake. You must have heard the name.”
Nick shrugged. “My home is a thousand miles from here. I don’t follow your local papers with any regularity.”
“Nevertheless, he was an outstanding jurist well known throughout our state. When he died last year at the age of sixty-seven, still active on the bench, it was a blow to all right-thinking people.”
“How did the eagle end up here, in the center of downtown?”
“My uncle willed it to the city, to be placed in this public square in front of the county courthouse. I want it back, Mr. Velvet, and I’m prepared to pay your fee.”
“A three-thousand-pound eagle.” Nick thought about it. “You see, I don’t steal art objects or anything of value. Certainly that statue must be worth money.”
“For estate purposes it was appraised at $3000 — a dollar a pound, you might say. But I was told quite frankly that no dealer would pay even one-tenth of that amount for it. I’ll be frank, Mr. Velvet — you said it wasn’t pretty and I agree. In fact, it’s downright ugly, and poor art besides. The city accepted it only to honor my uncle’s memory. A decade or two from now I’m certain that some excuse will be found to dispose of it.”
“But you don’t want to wait that long.”
“No.”
“All right,” Nick said. “It’s bending my rule a bit about not stealing anything of value, but I’ll do it on one condition. I want your word that there is nothing of value hidden inside the statue — no jewels or money or incriminating papers or anything else.”
“There certainly isn’t, Mr. Velvet. If there were, it would be so much easier to remove them from the eagle where it stands. Someone with a short stepladder could come by in the middle of the night and get them with ease.”
“Very well. Where do you want the statue delivered?”
“Back where it was — on the pedestal in my late uncle’s garden.”
“Hardly the place to hide it from the authorities.”
“Let me worry about that,” Hamish Blake said. “How soon can you do it? I’d like it delivered, if possible, by Monday.”
Nick gazed across the street at the truly ugly stone bird. “Three or four days. I’ll need to locate the right equipment.”