“Don’t let anyone in except through the front door,” I ordered, still speaking to the sergeant. “You’ll be on the front door. Clear?”
“Yessir.”
I nodded, then walked through the door and into a small entry-way. I was facing a central staircase that curved gracefully as it swept up to the second floor. From above, I could hear voices. Canelli was taking his notes.
The first floor was arranged around a large hallway. Through an ornate archway to my left I saw a large formal living room. The room looked as if it waited for a House & Garden photographer, not for its owners. Each piece of furniture gleamed; each book was perfectly aligned on its shelf. Magazines were arranged on the coffee table in a symmetrical fan. I looked carefully at every sofa and chair. All of the cushions were plump, unmarked.
I turned to an open door that led into a small study, where I saw a tweed hat resting on one corner of an elaborately carved desk. An expensive shearling coat was thrown carelessly across a leather couch. If Jason Booker had parked in the driveway and entered the house through the front door, as Bill had surmised, then Booker must have come directly into this room. Because the clothing, Bill said, almost certainly belonged to the victim.
Careful where I walked, I entered the study and stood in the center of the room. Like the living room, the study was a stereotype: an expensive decorator’s idea of how a study should look. Everything was in its calculated place. Behind glass doors, floor-to-ceiling bookcases held leather-bound books that probably hadn’t been read for years — if ever. Except for the tweed hat, nothing on the desk was disturbed; a calendar, a desk pen, a notepad and a phone were arranged with thoughtful symmetry. Still standing in one spot, I leaned forward to look at the tooled leather calendar. There were no notes, no dates circled. Nothing.
I stepped to the sofa and carefully patted down the shearling coat’s big patch pockets. I couldn’t feel anything: no weapons, no billfold, nothing bulky. After the photographers had finished, I would go through the pockets.
I turned next to a big leather armchair. This was where he’d sat; the heavy leather clearly retained an impression of a body. A side table was placed beside the chair. A large crystal ashtray rested in the exact center of the table.
In the ashtray I saw three filter-tip Winston cigarette butts, smoked almost to the nub. Statistically, the average cigarette represented approximately thirty minutes of “presence,” assuming the subject was an average smoker and was under moderate strain. If the statistics were right, Booker had been on the premises at least an hour and a half before the murder.
Waiting for his murderer — someone known to him, perhaps.
Alex Cappellani?
I made a slow, careful circuit of the room, but saw nothing else. Stretching out full-length on an Oriental rug, I looked under the desk, the sofa, the big leather chair. Nothing. I got to my feet and re-entered the central hallway. Eberhardt’s friend had told me what to do next. A polished walnut door, half open, led to small storage pantry. I stopped in front of the door, turned, looked back at the study.
Was this the way he’d come?
How long ago?
In response to what cue — what ominous sound — what tremor of fear?
I slipped through the doorway and stood in the darkened pantry. The pantry’s second door was open wide, and through it I saw garden tools hanging on a garage wall. For the first time, I caught the odor of death: drying blood mingled with the stench of excrement.
I drew a deep breath and stepped into the garage.
The murder scene was precisely as Bill had described it. Point by point, I recalled the private the detective’s theory. He’d speculated that Booker could have been in the study when he’d heard a noise in the garage. He could have left the lighted study and entered the darkened hall. Then Booker could have crept through the storage pantry and pushed open the door leading into the garage. With a gun in his hand, he could have cautiously entered the garage and switched on the overhead light. Standing where I stood now, he could have been struck by an assailant who’d crouched down behind a shoulder-high stack of oak firewood piled close beside the door.
Why?
Had Booker been an intended murder victim?
Had Cappellani made an appointment with him for six-thirty — then arrived earlier, surreptitiously coming through the garage, instead of the front door?
Or had Booker surprised a burglar — and died by accident, not design?
The facts seemed to fit the latter theory best. If Alex Cappellani had planned to murder Booker, he wouldn’t have called a private detective to witness the crime.
Three strides took me to the body. This would be my last time alone with him — my last chance to touch him with my imagination, and try to learn the secret of his death. I squatted beside the body — and found myself staring straight into Booker’s dead eyes.
He’d been a handsome man. The gray in his hair and the coarsening texture of his skin put his age in the early forties, but a leanness of cheek and jaw gave the face a younger look, and made an intriguing study of opposites. Even with lips distended in death’s last agony, the mouth was well shaped. The chin was cleft. The nose was straight. It was the face of a gracefully aging poet.
He was wearing an expensive silk sports shirt, checkered slacks that were probably pure wool and Wellington boots that could have cost a hundred dollars. He was lying on his right side, with his arm draped languidly over his torso at the waist. His right arm was extended above his head, pointing toward the service door set in the opposite wall. In his right hand he held a small blue-steel automatic. Leaning forward, I sniffed the barrel. The gun had been fired.
A package of king-size cigarettes was tucked in the pocket of the silk sports shirt. I pushed up the package from the bottom until I could read the labeclass="underline" Winston.
Blood matted his hair and streaked the shirt. He’s bled so much that blood was pooled beneath the handsome head. The blood was already coagulated. The private detective had been right: Booker had probably been dead for about an hour.
Still squatting, I minutely scanned the concrete floor of the garage. A blue sock filled with sand lay about a foot from the automatic. The sock was saturated with blood. Judging by the position of the firewood that had been tumbled to the floor, and by the hand tools that had apparently been swept from the top of a nearby workbench, there’d been a struggle that had started the moment Booker stepped into the garage. At least one shot had been fired. The assailant had escaped, probably through one of the two garage doors.
I took a moment to verify that the victim’s wallet was in his hip pocket. The pocket was buttoned; the wallet apparently hadn’t been touched. I stood up and began pacing across the cement toward the open service door. Carefully, I examined the scattering of matches, coins, the package of Camels and the cryptic “Twospot” note — all described by Bill. The items made a random pattern on the floor between the murder weapon and the door.
If Booker smoked Winstons, the murderer must have smoked Camels.
And, if the Camels belonged to the murderer, his prints could be on the cellophane wrapper of the cigarette package.