A Victim Must Be Found (31 page)

“We all know that Pambos Kiriakis was murdered,” I went on, keeping an eye on Bill Palmer’s fingers as he tamped down the shag from his oilskin pouch. “Few are aware that Arthur Tallon was murdered as well.”

“Tallon! What are you talking about?” There was a general sensation when I said that. Martin Lyster merely expressed it for the company. “We all know he died of a heart attack. I mean, I was there! He had a bloody heart attack. No two ways about it.”

“The symptoms of a heart attack are well known. Anything that appears to have the same shooting pains and so on is often labelled a heart attack when really it is something else. In this case, a dose of penicillin.”

“That’s impossible!” Anna said, slightly raising her self on her elbows. “Everybody knew Arthur was allergic to penicillin. He wore a bracelet.” She encircled her left wrist with the fingers of her right hand in case the reference was obscure.

“I know,” I said. “But the bracelet had been removed from the body when it arrived at the General. I checked the list in the Medical Records Department while I was waiting for news of Mary MacCulloch’s condition. The medical team that worked on Tallon had no hint that he was allergic to the drug, because he wasn’t wearing the medical alert bracelet Anna had given him. Without that, the people in Emerge had no way of knowing that this wasn’t a heart attack.”

“But who would do such a thing?” asked Anna.

“Someone desperate enough. Someone in a corner,” I said. “You see, Arthur Tallon was such an eccentric, he was a walking opportunity for the rip-off artists of this town …”

“Now, Cooperman, see here …!” I tried to calm Mac-Culloch with a gesture and by going on quickly.

“But he wasn’t as dumb as he looked. He began to catch on to some of the things going on around him. When his suspicion of Paddy Miles was discovered, his days were numbered.” I reached into my trouser pocket and found the medical alert bracelet. I handed it to Anna. “Is this the bracelet you gave Tallon?” She looked at it and nodded in the affirmative at once.

“Yes,” she said, “but how did you get it?”

“The night I stumbled across Pambos Kiriakis’s body at the hotel, I found this bracelet hidden in a cold cup of coffee. Pambos had hidden it from his murderer, which leads me to think that the person guilty of killing Tallon also killed Pambos Kiriakis.”

The people in the room weighed the possibility and came up with the same conclusion I’d come to. The proof wasn’t strong, but the logic had a certain compulsion to it. They looked like they wanted me to go on, so I did. “The question arises, how did the bracelet get into Pambos’s possession? Well, we know that he hired me to look for a list of Lambs on loan from Tallon’s collection at the time of Tallon’s death. Clearly, he was curious about Tallon’s affairs. In Alex Favell’s office, Paddy suggested to me that he was hoping to get a free painting from the estate by locating the ones listed on the missing piece of paper. That could be one reason for Pambos’s interest. It also could have been blackmail.”

“Blackmail?” This from Mrs. Kiriakis, without much outrage. She was simply caught off guard.

“I’m not suggesting that Pambos was demanding money from the person who had been stealing from Tallon’s collection. I think he may have been demanding that the stolen property be returned or he would take certain steps. If the medical alert bracelet had come into Pambos’s possession, it would make a substantial threat to Miles. After all it had Tallon’s name on it.”

“This is a high-wire act, Mr. Cooperman,” Alex Favell volunteered “None of this is getting us anywhere. Theories are all very well, but they get short shrift in a courtroom.” He looked to the others for support, and, not finding as much as he’d hoped for, contented himself with draining the melt-waters from his empty Bloody Mary.

“You’re right, of course,” I said. “But there’s somebody here who might be able to stiffen part of the theory.” I turned to Martin Lyster, who began untwisting his long legs as soon as he felt my eye on him. “Martin, you used to work off and on at the gallery. Is that right?”

I could see that Martin wasn’t anxious to put Paddy in more trouble than he was already in, but he could see no harm in my first question. He nodded in the affirmative carefully.

“Good, now the morning after Pambos was killed you told me that you’d fixed up the problem between yourself and your book-loving friend in Boulder, Colorado. Is that right?” Eyebrows went up, wondering how we’d got from Tallon’s gallery to Colorado.

“That’s right.”

“You said you’d told Pambos that it was all fixed?”

“Yes. What’s this in aid of, Benny?”

“I’ll get to that. When did you tell Pambos that, Martin?”

“It must have been that night in his office. When you were there.”

“Are you saying you telephoned Colorado from Pambos’s office?”

Martin tried to look relaxed by interlocking the large fingers of his hands over his jacket “Well, I may have done it the following morning. What’s the difference?”

“And when did you tell Pambos?”

“It must have been after that.”

“On the day he died?”

“Yes, I guess so. He came to the gallery looking for Paddy. I told him then.”

“What happened after that?”

“Nothing. Paddy came back and he took Pambos into the office to talk privately. I didn’t hear what they said, Benny. I didn’t put my ear to the door.”

“Of course you didn’t. Now, you were a witness to Tallon’s heart attack at the gallery?”

“That’s right.”

“Was Tallon wearing this medical alert bracelet when he became ill?” I held it out to him, and he moved his hand towards it, but without taking it from me.

“Benny, I don’t want to say any more about it.”

“That’s right, Martin. I’m sure we all sympathize with your loyalty to Paddy.” Here I looked over at Savas. I’d been avoiding eye contact ever since I confessed to having found the bracelet in Pambos’s office at the hotel. He was wearing his usual scowl with a difference. There was a focus to it and I was it.

“Chris, I’ve placed Pambos at the gallery in conversation with Paddy on the morning of the murder. If the bracelet was there at the time, Pambos had access to it. We know it was in his possession that evening. I think that’s enough to check the tissue samples taken from Tallon at the time of his death. I’m suggesting that you look for an overdose of penicillin.”

Savas sat deep in his end of a leather couch, with his arms folded expectantly. They seemed to be challenging me to make more incriminating disclosures. If he wasn’t going to buy what I’d just said about Tallon’s murder, then I was going to hear more about removing that bracelet from the spilled coffee on Pambos’s desk. I hoped that I still had his curiosity aroused. He’d want to see how this story all tied up together. Then he’d bring out his handcuffs for me. I decided that I probably deserved it anyway.

“With Tallon safely dead,” I went on, “Miles had thought that he could operate more easily. While pretending to be administering the estate, Miles could go on to broader and broader crimes, without any inventory to rein him in. Then along comes Pambos and threatens to blow the whistle on more than even he suspected. Kiriakis only knew about a few Lambs on loan being held and not returned by … by several of our leading citizens. But Miles couldn’t afford to have anybody snooping around for any reason at all. When Pambos threatened to go public and perhaps cause an investigation into either the disposal of the collection or the death of Tallon or both, Miles had to act fast. He went to see Pambos last Tuesday night and killed him with his own antique paper-knife. He put a button from Mary MacCulloch’s jacket in Pambos’s hand, hoping that that would throw the blame in her direction. But the NRP aren’t taken in by such desperate tricks.”

“So Tallon first thought he’d blow the whistle on Miles and then Pambos tried the same thing?” Bill asked, although it came out as a statement of fact.

“That’s right. Tallon may have been eccentric, but he wasn’t retarded. He may have been a chaotic administrator, but he knew his pictures when he saw them, and when they went missing, he began to ask questions.”

“And what about Tallon’s list? The list Kiriakis got you to look for?”

“That’s right, Mr. Abraham, it all started with that list. Pambos came to me and told me he thought that it had been stolen by one of the people whose names appeared on it. He thought that it might be Alex Favell or Peter MacCulloch or you. The fact is, there was no list.”

“What?” This from most of the people present.

“There was no list,” I repeated.

“But why did Kiriakis …?” Jonah began.

“You mean he was
bluffing?”
demanded Favell, showing an unfeeling animus towards the late Charalambous Kiriakis.

“There never was such a list. None of your names were ever given
in writing
to Pambos. Names passed in conversation are hearsay. Pambos only had his memory of a conversation with Tallon. In court that’s less than nothing. So he needed the list. He just needed a hook to get me involved. He hoped that I would uncover the rest of the plot, while looking for the invisible list. After all, Pambos couldn’t start throwing accusations around about what he suspected but couldn’t prove. He needed me to take the heat, to act as a sort of lightning rod.”

Favell and MacCulloch were exchanging words that I couldn’t hear. It was one of the few times I’d seen them speak. They’d both been outwitted by their own guilt. Linda Kiriakis was smiling to herself. When I caught her at it, she turned to me:

“Funny,” she said, “it’s too bad Pambos didn’t live to see you crack this case open. I think he would have got a kick out of the way all the grubs and worms started wiggling once you lifted up the stone.”

“It was an expensive rock for Pambos, Linda,” I said. “But maybe he would have approved the results even though it cost him life. I wouldn’t be surprised if his generalship of this whole business is as impressive as some of the baffles fought by his hero Napoleon.”

TWENTY-SIX

It was an hour later. Chris Savas, Bill Palmer, Anna Abraham and I were sitting looking at placemats in a hamburger place at Turner’s Corners. The placemats offered all sorts of information for no extra charge. Mine showed the whirling planets dramatically orbiting the sun with all their spots, rings and moons neatly labelled. Anna’s showed a variety of mixed drinks and what sort of glasses they are served in. I didn’t see the mats in front of Savas and Palmer clearly. We all ordered hamburgers and coffee. They were hot and tasty when they came, and now, half-eaten and getting cold, they made the hour seem even later than it was. We had been talking about the case, of course. Everybody was praising the late, great Charalambous Kiriakis. Partly because I remembered Pambos as a friend and partly because he was my employer of record in the first instance, I kept my mouth shut. Tributes were heard from Savas and from Bill, who was probably going to write up the case for the
Beacon
. Anna and I kept quiet. She hadn’t known Pambos well, had never known his late-night sessions with Napoleon.

“What are you being so quiet for?’ Savas demanded, taking another sip from his coffee cup. I shrugged.

“He was a wonderful little guy,” I said. “The day before he was murdered, he helped me unpack all my worldly goods. Without him, Miles would have got away with murder.”

“You say it, but you don’t say it like you believe it,” Chris said.

“Aw, he’s just tired, aren’t you, Benny?” said Bill, with his eye on Anna.

“Yeah, I’m tired. I’ll be glad to see my bed.”

“Wait a minute!” Chris said. “You’ve still got some explaining to do.”

“Like what?”

“Like where you got the idea that you can lift things from the scene of a murder investigation and get away with it. Like why you didn’t come forward with that goddamned medical alert bracelet before tonight. Like how you found out that the bracelet wasn’t with Tallon’s other stuff when he arrived at the General.”

“Yeah, Benny, you’ve been scant with the details,” Bill said.

“Okay, okay! I plead guilty to having slipped that bracelet into my pocket. But I did it when I heard Anna’s father coming back into the office. For all I knew it was the criminal returning to the scene of his crime. And since nobody puts a medical alert bracelet into a coffee cup for fun, I got the idea that it was something important to Pambos, something he didn’t want the murderer to find. After that, it just slipped my mind. I didn’t come across it again until I changed my pants. And by that time, Chris, you’d warned me to stay clear of this business.” It was as lame an excuse as I’d ever heard, but I had to go with it because I couldn’t think of anything smarter.

“Oh, great!” Savas groaned. “It’s all my fault!” Anna and Bill smiled and Chris dropped the matter of my culpability. “So, what about the hospital? Having removed evidence from the crime scene, you went on to break Regulation 865 of the Public Hospital Act which regulates access to medical records.”

“Come on, Chris! I saw the records because I had authorization from Tallon’s brother. I had it in writing yet. Don’t give me a hard time.”

“You must have turned on the charm. I’ve drunk a lot of hospital coffee waiting around trying to see records.”

“Well you didn’t go to school with Alison Simmers. She’s a clerk in Medical Records and was once sweet on my brother.”

“You sure it was your brother?” Anna wanted to know.

“She had blonde braids and an elephant bell. She was irresistible in grade five.” Anna shared a look with Bill Palmer.

“Well, Benny,” Chris said, “if you get out of this case a free man, I’ll be surprised. What with withholding evidence and slashing tires …”

“That was just poetic justice. He slashed mind”

“You got proof for that too, Benny?”

“What do you have to do to get the waiter’s attention?” I said.

“Try setting the napkin on fire,” Bill suggested. It proved unnecessary and with fresh coffee all round, we got along better. Bill was looking at me funny. “Tell us, Benny. There’s something on your mind that you’re not saying.”

“What are you, a mind-reader all of a sudden? I told you everything.”