“Interesting. What did you do that night after Wilkenson told you about Meade?”
“I ran into Roy’s office to see if I could help, but Barney was already there, giving him CPR. Then I went to other offices, telling Mr. Durkin and Carola what had happened.”
“How did Fred react?”
“He was surprised — or at least he acted surprised. I remember asking him if he’d been in that room the whole time. I guess subconsciously I was suspicious of him, even then.”
“Uh-huh. I’d like to go back to the notes for a minute, since they’re what triggered everything else. They were found in the — what do you call them, offering pouches?”
“Yes, for six weeks running.”
“What happens to the pouches after the Sunday services?”
“They’re taken to the vault — that’s in a room one floor below us — and locked up until Monday, when the counting teams come in and sort through the cash and the checks, which then get deposited in the bank.”
“Is it a vault with a combination?”
Elise nodded. “Yes, a dial.”
“Who knows the combination?” I asked.
“Each of us in the Circle of Faith, and nobody else that I’m aware of. But I don’t see what that proves.”
“It may not prove anything,” I said as I stood up. “Remember, I’m just the fact collector. And I’m not even sure that the facts I’ve been collecting will be of any use to Mr. Wolfe. All I can do is feed them to him and let genius take its course. I know you’ve got a lot of work to do, so I’ll leave you alone. I know the way out.”
She looked up at me with a smile that again — just for an instant — made me want to rush to the nearest florist and buy a dozen long-stemmed American Beauties. There are probably a lot of guys around who send roses to other men’s wives, but I don’t happen to be one of them.
Eleven
It was almost three when I got back to the brownstone. Wolfe was in the office, and he looked up from his book when I walked in. His eyes said “Well?”
“Do I report?”
“Have you eaten?”
“No, I—”
“Confound it, empty stomachs make for empty minds, and I have concern enough for your mental capacity when your stomach is full. Fritz has saved you a plate of sweetbreads. We will talk at six.”
Meaning when he came down from his afternoon romp with the orchids, which was fine with me. Wolfe and I are in agreement that Fritz’s sweetbreads amandine in patty shells are worth a postponement of business. For the second time since the Tabernacle of the Silver Spire had intruded on our lives, I ate a late lunch at my small table in the kitchen, lobbing compliments Fritz’s way, which always makes him blush. “How is the case going, Archie?” he asked, twisting a towel in his hands. Fritz worries when we don’t have a job, and when we do have a job, he worries that we won’t get paid.
“Moving along,” I answered between bites. I wasn’t about to tell him that this looked more like a pro bono enterprise every day. I made the sweetbreads and a wedge of apple pie disappear and carried a cup of coffee to the office, where I sat at my desk and played back to myself what I’d dug up. By all accounts, Royal Meade had alienated everybody in the Circle of Faith, in varying degrees. But, I asked myself, why would even his strongest antagonist at the church want to shoot the guy? Sure, he was a royal pain, to indulge in a cheap pun. So are thousands of other people, though, and they don’t have bull’s-eyes pinned to their heads.
I printed the names of the Circle members on a page of my notebook. There was the earnest, insecure, paranoid Roger Gillis, who was positive Meade wanted him tossed out as Christian Education Director. It was hard to imagine Gillis killing anything larger than a spider — a very small spider. But he had been publicly humiliated by Meade, which can sometimes turn the mild wild. I remember the “quiet, bookish” auto mechanic in Newark who made national news by running amok with an Uzi after his boss had chewed him out in front of some customers. Maybe Gillis, too, had been a stick of dynamite waiting to be lit.
And what about Sam Reese, the marketing dynamo who was bitter and defensive about Meade’s trying to muscle him aside? He was an intriguing possibility; I didn’t have to work too hard to visualize Reese smiling as he pulled the trigger and watched Meade slump across his desk. But did he have the nerve — or the motive — to dispatch Meade?
Carola Reese looked like a more likely candidate from where I sat. For starters, she’d been around the course a few times before she and Sam paired up — that seemed clear. Second, either she was one hell of an actress or she was genuinely incensed about the way Meade had been treating her husband. I voted for the latter. I like a woman who goes to bat for her man, but what if her bat becomes a thirty-eight-caliber revolver? This one definitely was worthy of further research.
I penciled a large question mark next to Marley Wilkenson’s name. To be sure, he was an arrogant number, and I don’t like anybody presuming to tell me I’ve got a “sadly misplaced loyalty.” But neither of those character flaws qualified him as a murderer. And to hear Wilkenson tell it, Meade pretty much kept his mitts off the music program. Something whispered to me, though, that there was more between those two guys than I was getting from Wilkenson. The question mark stayed.
Even though he had attempted to become our client, I wasn’t about to eliminate Lloyd Morgan from consideration yet. True, he seemed too stuffy to even contemplate anything as drastic as murder, let alone committing the act itself. Also true, he didn’t seem to have a whole lot of motive I could see for dispatching Meade. I put him down as a long shot.
That left the Bays. I opted to give the padre a pass, at least for the moment. It was bad enough that somebody near the top of the church hierarchy probably killed a minister; I wasn’t about to cast Numero Uno as the villain — not yet, anyway.
Then there was Elise, stunning Elise. She didn’t like Meade, not at all — it didn’t take somebody with Wolfe’s brainpower to figure that out. And it also didn’t take a genius to realize that beneath that wonderful exterior she had the strength of steel. Assuming that her loyalty to her husband was intense and absolute, as it appeared, then anything or anyone threatening his success would presumably be her enemy, right? Right, but I still couldn’t see Elise using Fred’s thirty-eight on Meade. And it wasn’t because she dazzled me, although she did. I’ve known a few other beauties who’ve used handguns to solve their problems, including one who I once thought might make a dandy Mrs. A. Goodwin. But that’s a story for another time.
I looked at the list of names again, shaking my head. Nothing fit. I toyed briefly with the notion that maybe Fred Durkin really did pull the trigger, but within seconds I hated myself for the thought. Fred was no killer — in fact, he was too averse to violence to even be in the business, which is probably why he’s never done all that well at it. His idea of a good time is an evening of TV with Fanny and the kids, and he’s turned down some good out-of-town assignments because he doesn’t like to be away from the family.
Only once that I knew of did Fred go after a man with intent to kill, and I have good reason to remember the episode. Years ago, the owner of a trucking outfit came to Wolfe and asked him to find out who was hijacking cargo — mostly computers and other electronic gear — from his rigs. Wolfe wasn’t much interested, but the bank account was unusually anorexic at the time, and I nagged him into accepting the case. It ended up being more complicated than I had thought, and we hired both Saul Panzer and Fred to help stake out a warehouse and loading dock in Brooklyn where Wolfe and I figured the stuff was being lifted from the trucks.