Snowjob (22 page)

She smiled the same flash of pain and turned to the pot. He led me back into the living room. “We’ve had people here all day,” he explained. “First the police, of course. Then friends and well-wishers, the minister. I finally asked him to organize a telephone chain to ask our friends to give us some room until tomorrow. Jean’s mother is coming from Florida in the morning. She’ll be able to help.”

“They mean well,” I said. Here, in his home, I could share his distress. To me and the other cops involved in the case, young Grant had been another body and I’ve seen my share of them. But the hole he had left in this family would never heal.

“Where do you want to start?” he asked.

“First off, did he have any enemies who might have done this?”

“Lieutenant Cassidy asked the same thing. I’ve been trying to think. Sure he had people mad at him but none who would have killed him.”

I phrased the next question very carefully. “Was he in any kind of money trouble?” I hoped he wouldn’t see at once that Maloney had told me about the gambling debts.

“He’s had money trouble in the past, we all have. But I don’t think he had any pressing problems right now.”

“Okay. Now, he was seen at Cat’s Cradle in the company of someone from the New York area. Did he have dealings with anyone from there, do you know?”

Now his lean face tightened. “Maloney’s been talking, hasn’t he?”

I dodged the bullet. “I was with Detective Hinton this morning when he called on Jack’s companions from last night. That information came from one of them.”

“All right,” he said grimly. “That’s fair enough, I guess. But just so you know I’m not holding back, let me say this.” He set down his coffee, untasted. “My son was a gambler. He got in deep a couple times. I’m not sure who his bookie was but once before he got a call from a slick sonofabitch in a thousand-dollar suit. At the store. Came in here like he owned it. Jack was shaking when he saw the guy come in.”

“Did you get a good look at him?”

“As close as I am to you. He said, ‘Nice place you got here. Must be worth a bundle.’ Then he helped himself to something off the counter and I said, ‘Hey, what’s going on?’ and he said, ‘Put it on my tab,’ and walked out.”

“What was it he took?”

Grant almost exploded. “What does it matter? He acted like he owned the place. Then Jack told me he owed twenty-seven thousand dollars to the man and if he didn’t pay they were going to break his legs.”

“So you paid?”

“Of course I paid.” He got control of himself again and picked up his coffee cup. His hand was trembling.

“What did the man look like?”

“Five-six, thereabouts. Good dark suit, even though this was summertime. He’d be around thirty-five, dark, land of a moon face.”

“Would you recognize him again?”

“After what he cost me?” His voice was a snarl. “You can count on that.”

“Did you mention this to the police?”

“Yes. They want me to go in and look at their picture books. I said I would as soon as I can.”

“The sooner the better, Mr. Grant. He sounds a lot like the man that was seen with your son yesterday.”

He sipped his coffee. It seemed to soothe him, “I’m going this evening. Our neighbor will come in and stay with Jean.”

“Good. It could help. If this is the same man, he’s got organized crime connections. After the threat he made to your son earlier, he’s the prime suspect. And that makes him the prime suspect in the killing of Ms. Tate as well.”

He sat there, nodding quietly. “That makes sense.”

“Now there’s one thing that’s more important than it seems. What did he take from your store?”

“A pocketknife,” Grant said. “The best little knife we sell. Took it right out of the display case.”

“Could you describe it to me?”

He frowned. “What’s all this about?”

“Humor me, please. I need to know.”

“Okay. It’s a bone-handled pocketknife, made by the Apogee company of Detroit. Retails for twenny-nine ninety-five. Two blades. Got a little shield on the side.”

“Thank you.” I put down my coffee cup. “Could I take a look at your son’s room now, please?”

“The police already did,” he said with a touch of anger. “They took away a plastic sack of stuff.”

“I’d still like to look, if that’s okay?”

“Sure. Come on.” He led me up the stairs which were wide and lightly painted over the oak, giving a ghostly effect. “I’ve done a lot of work on this place,” he said almost automatically. “It’s kind of a hobby and my wife likes new things.”

“Your home is beautiful,” I said politely. It was a little too modern for my taste, but the work had been done well. He was an excellent craftsman.

He opened the door of a room at the head of the stairs. It was big, about fourteen feet square, and had a bathroom attached. “I built this suite for Jack when it got to the point we figured he was going to be at home for keeps. He spent most of his time here.”

“Very nice,” I said. I stood in the doorway and looked around. There was a bed which had obviously been stripped by the police searchers, a good sound system and a TV set. There was no bookshelf but a couple of copies of
Sports Illustrated
were lying on the bedside table. There was a small desk under the window.

“Did the police say what they’d taken?”

“They emptied his desk,” Grant said flatly. “I don’t know why. Cassidy said they were going to check to see if any names turned up that they could check on.”

“A good thing to do,” I said. “But I’d like to look anyway. Do you want to stay?”

He didn’t answer and I thought for a moment he hadn’t heard. Then he said, “This used to be two rooms. Jack and I gutted them and built this for him. He worked along with me. Did a lot of the finish work himself. He was a craftsman, my son.” He sighed. “No. I don’t guess I need to stay. I’ll be downstairs with Jean when you’re through.”

He left, closing the door, and I went over to the desk and opened the top drawer. It was empty and I pulled it completely out, turning it over. There was nothing taped underneath. I did the same with each of the other drawers. They were the same. Then I stooped and looked up inside the open space. Nothing had been taped there either. After that I flickered through both magazines to see if anything had been leafed into them. It hadn’t.

Slowly I searched the whole room. I checked the cistern of the toilet, the bathroom medicine cabinet, the whole space. Then I opened the closet and went through all his clothes. Some of them had the pockets inside out, a sure sign that the police had searched before me. There was nothing in any of the pockets except for a couple of tissues in one jacket. I hadn’t known what I was looking for but I felt flattened by finding nothing at all. So I stood, thinking and looking around the room.

It was dark outside by now and I went to the window and turned the venetian blind slats down. As I stood there, absently considering everything I knew about Grant, I found myself looking at the trim around the windows, work he had done with his own hands. His father was right. He had been a good carpenter. The work reflected it, no gaps anywhere, smoothly mitered corners on the trim around the windows. I do some carpentry myself, not too bad for an amateur, but this work was streets ahead of mine. Out of some kind of admiration for the dead man’s skill I reached down and tapped the windowsill. And the sound stopped me cold. It was hollow.

In any work I’ve done, I’ve always put the window directly onto the frame I’ve built underneath. Your new window is always true, and if you get the frame true, you set the glazed section flat on it, leaving about five-eighths play at the top to allow for settling. But this sounded hollow. Slowly I squatted on my heels and looked at it. Under the window-sill was a piece of molding, four inches wide, stretching to within an inch of the end of the sill on both sides. I put my fingernails under the bottom edge and gave it a tentative tug. It slid toward me, revealing a little drawer about three inches deep by almost the thickness of the wall. And it was full of papers.

It came right out and I looked inside the gap it had left to see that nothing remained inside, seeing that Grant had compensated for the drawer space by notching the sill and hanging the window on heavy steel brackets. This hidey-hole had been his own secret I wondered what he could have had that was important enough to hide so carefully. I took the drawer and went to the bed and sat down to find out.

THIRTEEN

There was a pile of small papers in the drawer and on top of them was a book, the classic little black book that bachelors are expected to keep. I opened it and found it was a sexual diary, full of names, all of them women. With each there were dates and notes on their performance. At the top of each entry was a cumulative number. I shook my head disbelievingly. I’ve heard of guys who keep a life list, running up numbers like a kid with baseball cards, but I’d never before seen the evidence.

He had scored on an A to F scale although only one woman rated an A+. Her name was Helen Stringer and he had made the note “Good stuff. See you again, H.” The others were mostly C’s, inducting Wendy Tate. He had slept with her a month before. But it was the last name on the list that stopped me cold. It was Cindy Laver.

The date was only a week or so ago. And his note was triumphant. “B+. Must have learned something from her big black boyfriend. Well, I showed him! Thanks for the help, good buddy. Mission accomplished.”

I copied down the entire note and closed the book thoughtfully. Who was the good buddy? Was he referring to Doug as some kind of bird dog who had pointed out the sexual importance of a new woman? Or was it someone else? And if so, who, and why?

I leafed through the rest of the papers. They were typed records of his bets, going back a couple of years as far as I could judge. I don’t follow sports very much and I couldn’t tell whether he had won or lost but I noticed that the sums had increased in the middle of the last year when he’d made one bet for five thousand dollars.

After that there were no more for almost two months and then they had started up again at a more modest level. Two hundred dollars was the average for a while. Then he must have regained his confidence and the amounts increased until they reached two thousand. It was on a hockey game played in Toronto. He had backed Toronto and I did remember that one. Chicago had beaten them in the last minute of play. Without question, Grant had been in debt again to his bookies.

At the bottom of the drawer I found two other papers. They were IOUs in his writing. They were not made out in anybody’s name, just IOU for the amount and signed by Grant. I assumed they must have been for betting debts. One was for eleven hundred dollars and it was crossed through and marked “Paid in cash” and signed with a big theatrical squiggle that I couldn’t read. The other was for seventeen hundred dollars and was crossed in the same way and marked “Discharged” and signed in the same hand. The date on this one stopped me cold. It was for the previous Thursday, the day after Cindy Laver had been killed. Had that been the price of her murder? Seventeen hundred dollars?

I sat for a few minutes, wondering what to do with my find. I had told Grant that I would not do any whitewashing but he was going to be sad about all of this and I might have to get very firm to take the papers and book away from here. For sure he wouldn’t want me doing any more digging after this.

So before I showed him my find I checked the other windowsill, and any other places where Grant might have pulled the same trick with carpentry. I couldn’t find anything. Then I put the rest of the stuff back in the secret drawer and replaced it before going downstairs.

Grant and his wife were sitting in the living room, dry-eyed and silent. He got up when he saw me on the stairs. “Did you find anything useful?”

“Jack had a hiding place. I found it,” I said. “Would you like to search it with me?”

His wife got up then but he put his hand on her arm. “I’ll go, dear.” She started to say something but he patted her arm gently and said, “Please.”

She sat down and he came back upstairs with me. “Where did you find it? The police searched for two hours.”

“I was just lucky. When you told me Jack had done the finish work I checked and found a drawer under the window. There may be other places as well but I didn’t find them.”

I showed him the place, tapping the windowsill first. “It sounded hollow so I looked underneath.” I bent and eased the drawer out. “There.”

“Have you looked at this?”

“Yes. It’s full of betting slips and there’s his black book with girls’ names,” I said, “They may mean something.”

“Let me look,” Grant said wearily. He took the drawer and sat with it on the edge of the bed. Surprisingly he checked the betting slips first. “Good God,” he said disgustedly. “He was betting thousands of dollars all through ’91, while I was struggling to keep my head above water in the recession. How could he have done that?”

“There’s a bet for five thousand, last July. Is that when the man came to call on you at the store?”

“July 11. Jean’s birthday. I’ll never forget that as long as I live,” Grant said. He was rigid with anger and disgust, handling the slips as if they ware dirty. “Jack promised me he’d never bet anymore. And look at this. Not three months later and he was back at it again.”