“A Chicago businessman registered at the Mackintosh Inn was found dead in the presidential suite this morning, a victim of homicide. No further details have been released, and the victim’s name is withheld until the notification of relatives. Local and state police are investigating.”
Qwilleran was aware that his newspaper would have reporters out in the field, hounding every news source in time for the noon deadline and afternoon publication. Still, he felt the urge to do a little snooping himself. He dressed hurriedly and walked downtown, without even saying goodbye to the Siamese a courtesy that meant more to himself than to them.
His first stop was the public library, known as the information center of the county not because of its extensive book collection and expensive computer system but because it was the hub of the Pickax grapevine. In moments of crisis its subscribers flocked to the library to exchange questions, hearsay, and rash guesses, all of which would be circulated throughout the county by phone, in coffee shops, and on street corners. It was a traditional system that worked for better or worse.
Qwilleran walked slowly up the broad steps to the library, wondering what information and misinformation would be circulating at this early hour. He found the young clerks behind the desk in a huddle, speaking in hushed voices. Volunteers had their heads together in the stacks. Subscribers stood about in clusters, their solemn faces indicating they were not critiquing a bestseller. Only Mac and Katie, the two feline mascots, were unperturbed, being engaged in social grooming. Qwilleran spoke to them, and they looked up at him briefly with extended tongues. Then he bounded up the stairs to the mezzanine, where Polly could be seen in her glass-enclosed cubicle.
She was hanging up the phone as he entered. “Well!” she said vehemently. “Have you heard the news?”
“Off-putting, isn’t it?” he remarked. “You and I and the Lanspeaks must have been the last outside contacts he had! How did you hear about it?”
“One of our volunteers has a son who’s a day porter at the inn. She knew I’d met Mr. Delacamp.”
“Did her son have any particulars?”
“Only that the assistant hadn’t been around probably upstairs being interrogated. It sounds ominous, doesn’t it? What’s your mission this morning?”
“I’m on my way to see the Lanspeaks at the store.”
“Carol will be flabbergasted!”
At the department store he went directly to the office under the main staircase, standing outside until she had finished a phone call.
She beckoned to him to come in, but all she could say was, “I’m flabbergasted!”
He sat down without waiting to be invited. “How did you hear about it?”
“From Viyella, the morning clerk at the inn. She’s in my Sunday school class and was one of the French maids at the tea. She knew I’d be flabbergasted.”
“Aren’t we all?”
“Do you have any inside information?”
“Only that the police are there, and half the third floor is cordoned off.”
“Viyella says they’re questioning the staff and the guests and cautioning everyone not to talk about the case.”
“How did she contact you?”
“She wrote a note, and the day porter brought it to me.”
“What’s Larry’s reaction to the news?”
“He doesn’t know! I drove him to the airport this morning, and he boarded the eight o’clock shuttle to Minneapolis. There’s a merchandising show there, and he won’t be back until tomorrow night. I’ll phone him, of course. Wait till he hears! He has always had a jealous-husband theory, you know.” She stifled a slight giggle. “At least we know it wasn’t Mr. Woodinghurst. He died twenty years ago.”
Qwilleran said, “Just because it happened here, it doesn’t follow that the perpetrator was a local.”
“You’re so right, Qwill! I’d prefer to think it’s an outside job.”
“What effect will it have on his customers?”
“Those who wanted to buy tomorrow will be disappointed, of course, but I’m concerned about the Old Guard who were expecting to sell to him today. Some of them really need the money. They’re old-timers who thought they were financially set for life. Then along came inflation and dishonest relatives and bad investment advice. It’s sad. They should be notified, in case they don’t hear it on the radio, but his niece has the schedule. The poor girl must be terribly upset.”
Qwilleran next went to Lois’s Luncheonette for the mid-morning coffee klatsch, where caffeine addicts and assorted loafers met to exchange opinions and rumors about current events. Everyone had a connection to the grapevine a son-in-law or neighbor or fellow worker who knew the inside story. Lois, whose son was captain of the inn’s desk clerks, had a direct line to the facts.
“They called him a Chicago businessman on the air,” she announced while bustling around with the coffee server, “but everybody knows he was a jeweler with a million dollars’ worth of stuff in his luggage.”
“They didn’t say nothin’ about his girl! Where’s his girl?”
“Prob’ly took off with the killer and the loot.”
“Coulda been kidnapped. He was her uncle.”
Lois said, “Yeah… well… Lenny says she was no niece.”
“Her and the killer were in cahoots, if you ask me. Somebody from Chicago.”
“‘Tain’t fair! Strangers come up here and get themselves knocked off, and it makes us look bad.”
“Why’d it happen just when we got a nice new hotel and some good publicity? Makes me madder’n a wet hen!”
“Eleven o’clock! Turn on the news!”
Lois switched on the radio that occupied a shelf above the cash register, and her customers heard one additional scrap of news:
“The State Bureau of Investigation has been called in to assist local police in the investigation of a homicide. A Chicago businessman…”
Qwilleran paid for his coffee and went home, taking time to walk through the inn’s parking lot. Delacamp’s Mercedes rental car was still there.
When Qwilleran turned the key in the backdoor lock, he heard the welcoming chorus indoors and realized once more how much he appreciated his housemates. He had lived alone for most of his adult life before adopting Koko and Yum Yum. They were companionable, handsome, entertaining and admirably independent. Sometimes exasperatingly so.
One of the pleasures they shared was reading aloud. He had a good voice, having trained to be an actor before switching to journalism. When he read aloud from the vintage books that filled his shelves, he dramatized the prose in a way that excited his listeners. Currently they were reading the play-script of Night Must Falclass="underline" the smarmy lines of the houseboy, the petulant fussiness of Mrs. Bramson, and the country dialects of the kitchen help.
They had reached Scene Four. Yum Yum was curled contentedly on Qwilleran’s lap: Koko perched on the back of his chair, looking over his shoulder as if following the printed words, purring in his ear or tickling his neck with twitching whiskers. Mrs. Bramson was worrying about her jewel box. Danny was being overly attentive…. Suddenly he picked up a cushion and smothered his rich employer.
“YOW!” came a piercing howl in Qwilleran’s ear.
“Please!” the man protested, putting a hand to his ear. “Don’t do that!” But then he felt a sensation on his upper lip, and he tamped his moustache. It was always the source of his hunches. Now he knew or thought he knew more about the murder than the investigators had revealed.
The Friday edition of the Moose County Something would have the latest at two o’clock. At one-thirty Qwilleran had an appointment with Maggie Sprenkle.
The Sprenkle Building, across Main Street from the Mackintosh Inn, was a stone structure like all the others downtown, and its history dated back to the days when merchants always lived “over the store.” Now the storefronts on the ground floor had been updated into offices for an insurance agency and a realty firm. At one side a door led up to Maggie’s palace on the second and third floors.