“I suppose your intentions are good, Cody,” he conceded. “I might even be able to make something out of you if you weren’t under the constant influence of the execrable McCabe.”
The thought had been expressed before, and not just by Ralph. It’s undeniably true that my life would be simpler and less turbulent without Sebastian McCabe in it. But it would be a lot less interesting, too.
“Mac’s right here,” I told Ralph. “Want to talk to him?” There I went again, showing that constant influence.
“Spare me, Cody. I’m warning you, if you can’t get control of this story I’ll find someone who can.”
He hung up.
“Good show!” Mac said. “That was a most convincing performance, old boy, just then and earlier with Oscar as well. Now perhaps you would care to give me the unexpurgated version.”
“Meaning what?”
“Meaning,” Mac said, making a show of studying his unlighted cigar, “the whole story of your personal involvement in the murder - the details of which you did not share with Oscar for quite good reasons, no doubt.”
Chapter Twenty-One - Too Many Suspects
“How do you figure-”
“Hell and damnation, Jefferson,” my brother-in-law thundered, “do not trifle with me at a time like this! I cannot pretend I knew instantly the reason for your strong interest earlier in Hugh Matheson’s argument with Noah Queensbury. I would be doltish indeed, however, if I did not see the implications of it now. That, coupled with your late arrival, your question about who else arrived late, and your sly looks at Ms. Teal - congratulations on your rapprochement with her, incidentally - all make the conclusion inescapable: You are in this mess up to your red eyebrows.”
I raised my hands in protest, speaking quickly as Kate and the Chalmerses appeared among the crowd in the doorway of the President’s Dining Room. “It’s not like I killed the guy or anything, but it’ll look bad if Oscar finds out I’m the one who called 911 and didn’t leave my name. I could say I didn’t have time to tell you about it, but the truth is I wanted to leave you out of it for your own good.”
“People have been trying to do things for my own good all of my life,” Mac said. “Fortunately, I have thus far managed to frustrate them at every turn.”
With my sister and Mac’s friends almost within earshot, we agreed to discuss the matter later at his house. Mac hobnobbed with the other Sherlockians until they’d all disappeared to their own homes or hotel rooms, then piled me and his house guests into his oversized Chevy.
At Mac’s house we checked out the eleven o’clock news to see if the Cincinnati TV stations had picked up the murder of the city’s most famous lawyer. At the same time I was surfing the news websites on my iPhone. Ben and Lynda’s story wasn’t on the web yet, and only Channel 9 had a sketchy “this just in” report of about ten seconds near the end of the newscast. But TV4 used a full two minutes on the colloquium and the Woollcott Chalmers Collection. After a few seconds of me talking about the theft, it focused mostly on Chalmers using his cane to point out the wax bust of Sherlock Holmes and various other highlights of the Sherlockiana display.
It must have been midnight by the time the others went to bed, leaving Mac and me to adjourn to his study. Here I must explain that the study of Sebastian McCabe is a wonderful working room, a large one, not a House Beautiful model of decorating. It has books on all four walls, sure. But it also has the computer he writes on, a bar with a beer tap, and a big-screen TV. When the Big One gets dropped and humanity has to stay indoors for few generations, that’s where I want to be. It’s my favorite room in all the world.
I commandeered a comfortable leather chair while Mac tapped himself a Cincinnati microbrew called Christian Moerlein OTR Ale into a frosted mug.
“Do not just tell me what happened,” he directed. “Re-live your adventures. Spare no details.”
I gave him everything I could remember, right down to the conversation with Queensbury in the men’s room. Okay, I left out the hugs with Lynda because I saw no reason to appeal to his prurient interest. But I gave him everything else.
“You,” Mac said at the conclusion, “are in great peril. And Lynda with you. Pardon the detective story cliché, but if we fail to unmask the murderer without undue delay, Oscar is going to reach his own conclusion and it won’t be pretty.”
“Wow, you really are a Great Detective.”
“Sarcasm is the lowest form of humor, Jefferson, below even puns. As to your actions, I must say that blundering around in the murder room, then concealing it from Oscar as though you had some personal culpability to hide, really was remarkably dense.”
“It seemed a good idea at the time,” I mumbled, steamed that he was right.
Mac drank deeply of his beer and stuck an unlighted cigar in his mouth.
“Besides,” I added, “at least we found the books.”
“Ah, yes. And what do you see as the importance of that?”
“Well, now we know that Matheson stole the books, of course - the last salvo in his ongoing feud with Chalmers.”
“What became of the third missing volume, the Beeton’s Christmas Annual?”
“How should I know?” I pried my eyes open and stifled a yawn, all-too-aware that my brain was on low speed at best. “Maybe the killer took it for a souvenir. Who knows what somebody wearing a deerstalker might do?”
“Then you accept Oscar’s assumption that the earlier visitor to Hugh’s room was the killer?”
I hesitated. “It’s a good working theory, at least.”
“Agreed.”
“So then all we have to do is find the person beneath the hat?”
“Indeed. That task may be simple to state but not necessarily easy to accomplish, however. There are many possibilities and many people who should be interviewed. Take out your notebook, please.” Without thinking, I did so. “Write down these names: Gene Pfannenstiel, Molly Crocker-”
“Hold it.” I stopped with my pen halfway through ‘Pfannenstiel.’ “I’m not your Watson - or your secretary.”
“And quite a good thing,” Mac commented, drawing another beer. His administrative assistant, Heidi Guildenstern, is an insufferable woman whom I have long suspected of being a spy for Ralph Pendergast. “I prefer to think of you as my amanuensis.”
Later, I looked that up in a dictionary and found out it out means “one employed to take dictation,” coming from the Latin word for a slave acting as a secretary. But even that night in Mac’s comfortable man-cave, before I knew exactly what the word meant, I resented it because it was a big word I didn’t know the meaning of.
I handed Mac the notebook and pen. “Do it yourself, genius.”
“Really, Jefferson,” he said with a sigh, “you can at times be remarkably petty and stubborn.” Oh, you think so, too. For the record, I prefer to think of myself as determined, not stubborn.
Despite his feeble protest, Mac wrote a bunch of names and handed the notebook back to me. I looked at the list:
Gene Pfannenstiel
Molly Crocker
Noah Queensbury
Graham Bentley Post
Woollcott Chalmers
Renata Chalmers
Reuben Pinkwater
The person whose phone number was on the notepad in Hugh’s room
“Who’s this Reuben Pinkwater?” I asked.
“A book dealer from Licking Falls. Undoubtedly you’ve seen his display at the colloquium.”
“The bald guy? Yeah, I’ve seen him.”
Maybe Matheson had been killed for the missing book after all. But how would this Pinkwater know Matheson was the thief? And why hadn’t he taken the other two books? After a little sleep I’d probably have other questions, but right now I could think of just one more: