“What a curious fantasy.”
“I don’t suppose you’d care to open the drawer for us?”
“Nothing,” he said, “would please me more.” He opened an unlocked drawer on the opposite side of the desk and rummaged through it. “Damn it to hell,” he said.
“Is something wrong?”
“I can’t find the fucking key.”
“How convenient.”
He cursed colorfully and imaginatively. If I’d been a key and somebody talked to me like that, I’d do whatever he wanted me to do. This key, however, remained elusive.
“Bern,” Carolyn said, God bless her, “since when did you ever need a key to open a lock? Use the gifts God gave you, will you?”
“Well, I can’t do that,” I said. “We’re guests in Mr. Nugent’s home, and it’s his desk and his drawer and only he knows what’s in it. I couldn’t possibly try to open it without his permission.”
He looked at me. “You can open a lock without a key?”
“Sometimes,” I said.
“Then for God’s sake do it,” he started to say, and then I think he finally got it, and that made it perfect. “Wait a moment,” he said. “Of course you have no legal right.”
“No, sir,” I said. “We’d need your permission.”
“Which if we don’t get it, the next step’d be a court order,” Ray added.
The big shoulders sagged. “There can’t be…I can’t imagine…go ahead, damn you, open the fucking thing.”
Guess what we found?
“I completely lost my head,” Harlan Nugent said. “Just as you said, I came home that Tuesday afternoon and found Joan sprawled naked on the daybed in her studio. She was unconscious, and in an awkward, unnatural position. I took one look at her and thought she was dead.”
“Oh, darling!”
“And there were these clothes piled on the floor, as if they’d been removed in a great hurry. Her clothes, and some male clothing as well. And my eye was drawn to the bathroom door, which was closed. It’s usually open when she paints.”
“When I use acrylics, I wash my brushes in the sink.”
“I tried the door, and of course I couldn’t open it. I shouted for whoever was inside to open the door. Of course he didn’t. If he had, I think I might have torn him limb from limb.”
“So you got your gun.”
“From the locked drawer. If I’d misplaced the key a little earlier, Santangelo might be alive.” He thought about it. “No,” he decided, “I’d have broken down the door and killed him. I was completely beside myself.”
“But you remembered a way into the bathroom.”
“The switch plate, yes. And I shot him. I don’t think I even knew who he was when I pulled the trigger. I didn’t care. He’d killed the only woman I ever loved, and he was damn well going to die for it. Then I would call the police and let them take over.”
“Instead, she came back to life.”
“Thank God,” he said. “She moved an arm, she was breathing, she was alive. I didn’t know what he’d done, whether he’d knocked her unconscious or drugged her or what—”
“He sometimes gave me these pills,” she said, “that made colors a lot richer. They had a very stimulating effect on my painting, but sometimes I would get very tired and have to lie down and take a nap.”
“The swine,” Nugent said. “I can’t say I’m sorry he’s dead. It’s hard to believe the world’s a poorer place for his having left it. But I wish I hadn’t killed him. It shook me badly.”
“That’s why you were so moody in London, darling.”
“I tidied up and tried to figure out what to do next. Then Joan awoke smiling and still a little groggy, asking when I’d come in and where Luke had gone. I said I just got in and he must have let himself out. When she turned in for the night I went out and draped his clothes on the gate of the church on Amsterdam Avenue. People leave clothing there all the time, and homeless people help themselves to it. I’ve left things there before, shirts with frayed collars, trousers that have gone shiny in the seat. I must say I’ve given away things of my own that were in better shape than what I hung on the gate that night. Dirty jeans gone at the knee, a sweater rank enough to gag a billy goat—”
“Luke was never a dresser,” Doll put in. “And he could get a little lax in the personal hygiene area.”
“I got rid of the gun as well. I’d bought it to protect our home from prowlers, and, in a manner of speaking, it had done its job. I dropped it down a storm drain.”
“An’ then you burglarized yourself,” Ray said, “an’ lit out for London.”
Nugent frowned. “I swear I don’t remember that part,” he said. “Is it possible for a man to do a thing like that and forget it entirely?”
“Darling, you were under a strain,” his wife said.
“I’ve always prided myself on my memory,” he said. “And it’s not like forgetting a telephone number.”
“You did bring two of the bags down, Harlan. And then you went up for the other two, while I waited in the lobby.”
“That’s when I must have done it,” he said. “I could have sworn—”
“What?”
“Nothing,” he said. “It doesn’t matter. And what earthly difference does it make? I’ve already admitted to murder. That’s a far more serious offense than making a false report of a crime.” He heaved a great sigh. “Well,” he said, “I suppose I’ll call my attorney now. And then you’ll want to follow the form and read me my rights, won’t you?”
There was a silence, and I started counting to myself. One. Two. Three. Four….
“Let’s not be too hasty here,” Ray Kirschmann said. “Before we get all caught up in anythin’ official, let’s see what we’re lookin’ at here.”
Someone asked him what he meant.
“Well, where’s our evidence? You made an admission just now in front of a roomful of people, but none of that’s admissible in court. Any lawyer’d just tell you to retract it, an’ that’s the end of it. Far as physical evidence goes, what we got’s a lot of nothin’. There’s a switch plate with no switch box behind it, provin’ somebody coulda been shot in a locked room, but so what?
“An’ as for you, young lady,” he said to Doll Cooper, “we got no doubt in my mind, an’ prolly not a lot in anybody else’s either, that you had somethin’ to do with the disappearance of those baseball cards. But we ain’t got the cards, an’ you ain’t got ’em either, an’ my best guess is they been sold an’ split up an’ changed hands three times already, an’ nobody’s ever gonna see ’em again. This gentleman here, Mr. Gilmartin, he might have a bone to pick with you, on account of it’s his cards you walked off with. If he insists on pressin’ charges, well, I think it’ll get kicked for lack of evidence, but I’d have to take you in.”
“I don’t want to press charges,” Marty said. “I just hope Miss Cooper might narrow her range in the future and limit her acting to stage and screen. She would seem to have a considerable talent, and it would be a shame to see it diluted.”
“You know,” Doll said, “you’re a gentleman, you really are. I’m sorry I took the cards from you. I was playing a part, that’s exactly what I was doing, and I think I fooled myself into thinking it gave me a dramatic license to steal. It’s corny to say this, but I may have actually learned a lesson tonight.”
Carolyn gave me a “get her” look, but the speech seemed to go over well with everybody else.
“So that’s that,” Ray said. “Brings us back to you, Mr. Nugent. What we keep comin’ back to is there’s no evidence, an’ I also gotta say the deceased don’t sound like no great loss. Of course there’s also the matter of makin’ a false report to an insurance company, claimin’ a loss when there was no loss.”