“No, it’s not his room number.”
Although the popular culture maven was staying at the Winfield, I had a clear recollection that the room number he’d written on his business card began with a seven. I pulled it out of my wallet for a quick confirmation: room 718.
“I bet the hotel won’t tell us who’s in that room if we just call them out of nowhere,” Lynda said, “but there must be some way to find out.”
“Yeah. Mac would find a way.”
I cracked open the door at the front of the Hearth Room about four inches. Noah Queensbury was talking but with the air of a man winding down, while Mac looked on benignly from his throne-like chair across the room. I opened the door wider and signaled my brother-in-law with all the agitated movement of a spasmodic semaphore operator. Finally I caught his eye and he caught my meaning. He shook his head no. I shook my head yes. Glowering, he stalked behind Queensbury and over to the door.
“Jefferson,” he said heavily, “eager as I am for another progress report, this is a most infelicitous time. Couldn’t you tell me about your adventures after the Sherlockian auction?”
“Fine, fine.” For what I had to report so far, I was in no hurry. “But we need some help right now.”
“We’re trying to learn the occupant of a certain room at the Winfield,” Lynda said. “It’s probably one of your colloquium people. Can you help us put a name to the number?”
“Of what possible interest-”
“I thought you were in a hurry,” I said. This was my show, and this time Mac was my assistant.
The sound of applause came from inside the Hearth Room, magnified by the speakers in the corridor. Mac looked toward the room and tugged at his beard. “Blast it, nobody ever did this to Nero Wolfe! I do not have access to the colloquium participants’ room numbers. You will have to call Sandy Roeder at the Winfield and ask her who is registered for that room. Mention my name. Sandy is a former student of mine.”
“R-O-E-D-E-R?” Lynda asked. “Doesn’t she own the Winfield?”
“Not yet. Her mother has that distinction. You shall owe me dearly for this.”
Without further farewell, he slipped back into the Hearth Room (if an elephant can slip).
“He means he was happy to be of help,” I told Lynda, who was already pulling out her Android.
Sandy Roeder wasn’t an easy sell. I could tell that from Lynda’s hand gestures, and never mind what they were. But finally she disconnected and stuck the phone back in her purse with a satisfied look on her face.
“I’m not going to try to guess,” I told her, “so just give. Whose room is it?”
“Molly Crocker.”
Chapter Twenty-Seven - Here Comes the Judge
I don’t know that I expected to hear, but not that.
“Molly Crocker doesn’t seem like his type, does she?” Lynda said, noting the shock on my face.
“Come to think of it,” I said, “why not? She’s female.” In fact, she was an attractive, albeit mature, female. “She’s married, but that wouldn’t even slow Matheson down, much less stop him. There must have been some sort of relationship between them - her room number on the writing pad shows that - and romance is certainly one of the possibilities.”
“Certainly. I withdraw what I said about his type. How would I even know, really?”
“And maybe she went to his room at the Winfield yesterday with her hair tucked up in a deerstalker cap. Somebody who saw her from behind might not have been able to tell she was a woman. In fact, now that I think about it, are we sure the witness said anything about gender? I think Oscar used the pronoun ‘he,’ but maybe he was just making an assumption. We should press him on that.”
“But Crocker was wearing a dress every time I saw her yesterday,” Lynda objected.
She stopped talking as a female student walked by, one of the lost souls from the dorm who hadn’t gone home for spring break. The girl was tall with platinum blond hair reaching down the middle of her back. She wore very short red shorts (at least two months ahead of season) over long, muscular legs, a white T-shirt with no bra underneath, and Nike gym shoes. I barely noticed her.
“Besides,” Lynda said when the student had passed, “what about motive? What do you figure Molly Crocker had to do with the stolen books?”
“I don’t know, maybe nothing at all. This could be a simple crime of passion. It could have been her, not you, that Matheson referred to when he told Queensbury he had business with a lady. We ought to at least talk to her, find out if she knows anything. Her name is on my list from Mac anyway.”
Lynda had to admit it couldn’t hurt.
I went into the back of the Hearth Room, where Bob Nakamora was now holding forth on the subject of Sherlock Holmes on the radio.
“Orson Welles played Holmes in his own radio adaptation of William Gillette’s famous melodrama Sherlock Holmes when The Mercury Theater on the Air...”
After looking around for a minute from the doorway, I spotted Judge Crocker sitting next to Queensbury on a comfortable couch along the far wall. Even in the harsh fluorescent light of the Hearth Room she was a handsome woman. The blue jumper she was wearing seemed casual, comfortable and un-judgelike. Once again I noticed the mound of her tummy, big enough to make me wonder if she were pregnant but not big enough that I’d risk asking her about it.
Feeling conspicuous, I crossed the room and whispered in her ear. “Could you come with me for a minute?”
Molly Crocker looked at me, then at Queensbury, who seemed engrossed in the talk. She rose and picked up her purse, a dark leather contraption with a drawstring top. Not until we were walking toward the door did she speak in a low voice.
“Has something happened?”
There were a million ways to answer that. I settled on, “Nothing new. We just want to ask you a few questions.”
“‘We?’”
The presence of Lynda Teal right outside the door answered for me. Molly had met Lynda at breakfast, and apparently she thought I’d set her up for an exercise in ambush journalism.
“If you want to talk to me about Hugh’s death, I must tell you that I have no interest in being interviewed for your newspaper,” she told Lynda.
“I’m really the one who wants to talk to you,” I said. “Off the record. You could help us solve Matheson’s murder.”
“Mr. Cody, I think I made it quite clear earlier this morning that I highly disapprove of playing games with murder.”
“This is no game.”
“Then if you actually have any pertinent information about this homicide or any other crime you’re legally bound to tell the police.”
“So are you.”
“What’s that supposed to mean?” Her tone of voice would have cut through diamonds.
While I was making a mental note to never do anything that might land me in Maximum Molly’s courtroom, the girl in red shorts walked by again. “I don’t think the hallway is the right place to discuss this,” I said.
After a token protest that there was no right place, Molly went with us to the Study Lounge on the same floor of Muckerheide. With its stuffed chairs and fifty-watt bulbs, the place is about as conducive to study as the drive-in theaters of my father’s youth, and occasionally is the site of similar activities. Not today, though. We had the lounge all to ourselves, thanks to spring break.
As soon as we’d settled into chairs I told Molly, “The number of your room at the Winfield was written on a notepad by the side of Matheson’s body.”
“Good grief, is that what this is about? I already know that. Your police chief - what’s his name, Hummel? - he told me this morning.”
Lynda, sitting where Molly Crocker couldn’t see it, rolled her eyes in the back of her head.