“Sums?” McCorkle said.
“Steady would’ve figured out how to sell them more than once.”
“And Isabelle?” Padillo said.
“If she and Steady were working a con, and if Isabelle decided to solo on after he died, she could’ve made some basic mistake. Steady was always very cautious, very secretive, and he might not’ve told her what step two was. So it could be that Isabelle skipped from step one to step three, missed step two, tripped, fell and drowned.”
Padillo rose, looked at his watch, saw it was 12:32 P.M. and asked, “Who wants a drink?”
Both Haynes and McCorkle asked for Scotch and water. Padillo turned and headed for the small dining room that was really an extension of the living room. To the left of the dining room was the kitchen and, beyond that, the tiny snow-covered backyard. The yard was divided between a ten-by-twelve-foot garden, in which Padillo grew roses and basil, and a one-car alley garage, in which he kept his 1972 Mercedes 280 SL coupe.
His small white brick Foggy Bottom row house sat on a thirty-foot lot and would have had a flat front were it not for a bay window that McCorkle said made it look seven months pregnant. The house had two bedrooms and a bath upstairs. Downstairs were the living and dining rooms, kitchen, a half-bath and another flight of stairs that led down to the full basement, where there was a regulation Brunswick snooker table, at least sixty years old.
The snooker table had come with the house and nobody remembered how it had made it down the stairs and into the basement that also contained the furnace and a washer and dryer. The basement was a place Padillo tried not to visit more than three or four times a year.
He had bought the house the day Richard Nixon resigned and furnished it the following Saturday morning by walking through an upscale furniture store out on Wisconsin Avenue and pointing to floor samples that could be delivered that same afternoon. He had wound up with a lot of leather, tweed, teak and pine stuff that McCorkle told him made the downstairs look like a psychiatrist’s waiting room. Padillo had replied that that was exactly how he wanted it to look.
The only memorable pieces in the house were the dining room’s refectory table, reportedly four hundred years old, and the intricately carved mahogany sideboard that Padillo used as a bar. A young candy heiress, now more than twenty years dead, had given him the refectory table as a birthday present. He had bought the sideboard from a former first secretary at the Finnish embassy who needed the money to pay off some poker debts.
Padillo returned with the drinks, carrying two in his left hand and one in his right. He served McCorkle first, then Haynes and said, “What makes you so sure Steady’s memoirs don’t exist?”
“You saw the so-called manuscript I left in your safe?”
Padillo nodded as he sat back down in the leather chair, but McCorkle said, “I never saw it.”
“Three hundred and eighty-odd mostly blank pages,” Padillo said.
“That should miff the lady with the Sauer,” McCorkle said.
Haynes said, “Let’s come back to her.”
McCorkle shrugged. “No hurry.”
After tasting his drink, Haynes said, “When Erika and I reached Steady’s farm yesterday, his ex-wife was there. The fourth and last one. Letitia Melon. You two know her?”
“We know Letty,” Padillo said.
“But not well,” McCorkle added.
“She was locked in a hall closet under the stairs, bound and gagged.”
“She hurt?” Padillo asked.
“No.”
“Who’d she say did it?”
“Two guys with grocery sacks over their heads. She said they were already in the house when she got there.”
McCorkle asked, “Why was she there?”
“Because of Steady’s horse. She claimed she was worried nobody was looking after it.”
“Why do I get the impression you don’t believe her?” Padillo said.
“Because after she left I called Howard Mott. He told me Letty’d called him right after Steady died to remind him of the horse. Mott told her not to worry, that he’d take care of it, and he did.”
“Where’s the horse now?” McCorkle said.
“Dead.”
“How?”
“Shot. Either by Letty or the guys with sacks over their heads.”
“Why would she shoot him?”
“Why would they?”
Padillo said, “Then what?”
“I reported the dead horse to the sheriff, who seemed to be a member of Steady’s fan club. Then Erika and I searched the house, looking for a true manuscript.”
“You told her what you were looking for?” McCorkle asked.
“Why not?”
McCorkle frowned first, then shrugged and said, “Go on.”
“Erika discovered a new version of the manuscript in Steady’s computer. This new version reads just like the one I left in your safe except for one thing. Instead of three hundred and eighty-odd blank pages, this one has line after line and page after page filled with just one word: endit — spelled e-n-d-i-t. I think of it as the long version of the false manuscript. The woman with the Sauer got the short version.” He smiled slightly at McCorkle. “It would be awfully neat if she were Letty Melon in disguise.”
“It wasn’t Letty” McCorkle said.
“Tell me about her — whoever she was.”
“I didn’t see her hair,” McCorkle said, “because she wore a red knit cap pulled down almost to her eyebrows. I didn’t see her hands because she wore red knit gloves. I didn’t see her feet because she wore rubber boots. I can’t tell you much about her build because she wore a man’s old London Fog raincoat, probably with a zip-out liner. I know it was old because the waterproofing was gone — maybe dry-cleaned away. That leaves her face. She wore yellow-tinted glasses and her eyes were a blue that could’ve come from contacts. She had a regular nose, mouth, chin and no makeup. She had two voices. One was her flibbertigibbet voice. Her other voice was the convincer — uninflected, exact, experienced. It and the Sauer made me do exactly what she said I should do.”
“No scars, moles or tattoos?” Haynes said.
“No, but she did have nice skin,” McCorkle said. “Very few lines and no wrinkles — although she could’ve rubbed her face with Preparation H just before she came through the door. That can tighten things up for an hour or two.”
“She had two walks,” Padillo said. “One was shy and one was bold. She used the shy walk when she came in — a pigeon-toed shuffle, almost clumsy. On the way out: long strides, graceful, even athletic.”
“How old was she?” Haynes asked.
“More than thirty,” McCorkle said. “Less than fifty.”
Haynes finished his drink and turned away from McCorkle to put it down on a side table. Still turned away, he asked, “How’d she know the manuscript was in your safe?”
McCorkle winked at Padillo and said, “That’s been bothering me. It’s been bothering me so much that when I woke up this morning the first thing I asked myself was: Who knew I’d put the thing in my safe?”
“I knew,” Haynes said. “You knew.” He indicated Padillo with a nod. “And so did he.”
“Did Mott know?” Padillo asked.
“He knew I had the manuscript. He didn’t know it was in your safe.”
“Remember when I got out of the cab Friday afternoon and mistook you for Steady?” McCorkle said. “You were headed for Howard Mott’s office empty-handed.”
Haynes nodded.
“The next time I saw you was at the bar — just you, me, Tinker Burns and Karl. And by then you were carrying that folded-over grocery bag.”
Haynes again nodded.
“But when you left with Erika, you weren’t carrying anything. A fairly observant person might’ve noticed this and concluded you’d left the grocery bag with me for safekeeping.” McCorkle paused to sip his drink. “Safekeeping suggests a locked box of some kind. Maybe even a safe.”