The Burglar Who Counted the Spoons (Bernie Rhodenbarr) (38 page)

“If they think it’s a festive occasion,” she said, “they’ll be leaning the right way when you pull the rug out from under them. I hope they don’t mind drinking out of plastic cups.”

If they did, they were polite enough not to show it. A lanky blonde with bright red nail polish was the first to arrive, around fifteen minutes before the appointed hour. “Oh, I’m early,” she said. “I usually am, and the people I’m supposed to meet with are usually late. I’m Deirdre Ostermaier.”

I recognized her from a photograph, even as I recognized the next arrivals, Boyd Ostermaier and Stephen Cairns. They were both tall and well built, their medium-brown hair buzzed short, their gym muscles shown to advantage in Chelsea Gym T-shirts and tight Levi’s. Boyd, who had a perfectly trimmed beard, gave the cheese platter a professional glance and pronounced it an attractive presentation. Stephen, beardless, had nice things to say about the wine.

Meredith Ostermaier and Nils Calder had a uniformed patrolman as an escort, one Morton O’Fallon, a rail-thin fellow with a sharp nose and a pointed chin. Meredith was a sort of hot Earth Mother type, all flesh and warmth, while her mate was as laid back as a coiled spring; it wasn’t hard to picture him pacing back and forth on a small stage and telling the actors what to do. He filled a cup with wine and skipped the cheese. Meredith, playing Mrs. Sprat, did the reverse.

Patrolman O’Fallon allowed himself neither wine nor cheese, but planted himself where he could size everybody up. It wasn’t long before he had somebody to talk to, when another cop—in plainclothes, but no less identifiable—came in with Jackson Ostermaier in tow. Jackson looked like a lawyer, and a successful one at that, with a haircut that had cost more than the cop’s suit and a suit that cost more than his car.

I didn’t catch the plainclothes cop’s name, I don’t think he gave it, but I heard O’Fallon call him Tom.

Carolyn drifted over to my side and let her eyes move around the room. “They seem like perfectly nice people,” she said.

“They do,” I agreed. “And they’re all talking among themselves, the way people do at a social gathering. You were a genius to think of the wine and cheese.”

“Well, you need something to break the ice, Bern. It’s that or you’ll have Meredith and Nils getting everybody to throw their keys in a hat.”

The conversation by this time had a nice party-time hum to it, enough to drown out the tinkling of the bell when the door opened once more. Still, something must have got their attention, because the room quieted down and heads turned for a look at the new arrival.

It was Ray Kirschmann, accompanied by a middle-aged man in a three-piece suit. He had what looked to be a small brass button sewn to his lapel, but I couldn’t make out the design, or guess what candidacy it was supporting.

“Evenin’, everybody,” Ray said, in a voice that carried the room. “My name’s Ray Kirschmann, I’m a detective with the New York Police Department, but like I told you tonight’s little event’s completely unofficial. I think you all know each other, bein’ as most of you are brothers and sisters. But not all of you know this here gentleman, who’s come along to help us all out.”

Eyes swung from Ray to the man at his side.

“This is Mr. Alton Ogden Smith,” he said, and Meredith Ostermaier passed the cheese even as her sister Deirdre brought over two cups of wine.

“And now I’ll turn things over to our host,” Ray said. “This here is Bernie Rhodenbarr, a man I’ve known for a good many years, and besides bein’ a man with a shop full of old books, he’s got a real knack of separatin’ the hats from the rabbits. Bernie, you want to get things started?”

And now all eyes were on me, and most of them showed puzzlement. With one exception, they were meeting me for the first time.

Still, I knew my cue. “Welcome to Barnegat Books,” I said. “I suppose you’re wondering why I summoned you all here.”

“Not long ago,” I said, “a deeply unfortunate event occurred that touched everybody in this room. Helen Ostermaier, whose four children are present this evening, attended a performance at the Metropolitan Opera. At intermission she told a friend that she didn’t feel well and would make an early night of it.

“She caught a cab and went home, but evidently she’d been exposed at some point to peanuts in one form or another, and she suffered from a severe peanut allergy. By the time she got home she was feeling worse, not better. She attempted to inject herself with epinephrine, to counteract the anaphylactic shock she was beginning to experience, but it turned out to be too little too late, and her weak heart couldn’t handle the strain. She fell to the floor and lay there.”

Deirdre was holding back tears. Stephen had a hand on Boyd’s shoulder, comforting him, and Nils was doing the same for Meredith.

“Now this was all tragic,” I said, “but it was a natural occurrence. Helen Ostermaier had been asthmatic as a child, with multiple allergies. The asthma receded as she matured, and so did the allergies, but they’d returned in recent years, and along the way she’d developed heart problems. While she might well have lived a good many more years, death in one form or another could have come at any time.”

“At least it was quick,” Deirdre said. “She didn’t suffer.”

“And she was active right to the end,” Boyd said. “She’d have hated being bedridden, but she was spared that.”

“Museum openings, the opera, the theater,” Meredith said. “Those things were her life. She wouldn’t have wanted to go on without them.”

“And she still had all her faculties,” Jackson added. “She hadn’t lost a step mentally, and how she dreaded that prospect. When a good friend of hers showed signs of early Alzheimer’s, it shook her.”

“She told me she hoped she died before she got like that,” Boyd said, and Deirdre said she’d been told the same thing.

“Still,” I said, “it was sad.”

There was a murmur of agreement.

“And,” I continued, “it may not have been altogether inevitable. Oh, the allergic reaction, the anaphylactic shock, the collapse—nothing could have been done to forestall that. But not long after Helen Ostermaier crumpled to the floor, someone unlocked her front door and walked in on her. Someone who’d managed to equip himself with a key, and who knew he’d have the house to himself, because the housekeeper had left hours ago and Mrs. Ostermaier would be listening to Wagner for another hour or more.”

“That’s the first thing I thought,” Deirdre said. “When I found her. Everything was strewn around, as if a burglar had been searching for something. I assumed she walked in on him and he killed her. Or if he didn’t actually strike her or stab her, the shock of seeing him there could have brought on a heart attack. That happens, doesn’t it?”

“First thing we thought of,” Ray told them, “once it developed there were no signs of violence on the body.”

“Let’s focus on the intruder,” I said. “What do we know about him?”

“If it’s a him,” Meredith said, “I guess that lets out me and Deirdre.”

“He’s a him,” I agreed, “and not one of the Ostermaier children, or either of their significant others. And, since it wasn’t a policeman, that narrows it down. The intruder has been known to use other names, but he’s here in our midst under the name he was born with. His name is Alton Ogden Smith, and I believe one of you is already acquainted with him.”

I glanced at Jackson, who looked troubled. “I’m Mr. Smith’s attorney,” he said, “and I’m not sure how much more I can say without violating attorney-client privilege.”

“You represent Mr. Smith in tax matters.”

“That’s correct.”

“Then you can speak freely,” I said. “Mr. Smith’s taxes aren’t at issue here, nor was your professional relationship involved in the matter at hand. He wasn’t seeking your counsel, Mr. Ostermaier. You were seeking his.”

“I don’t know where you’re going with this,” Jackson said, “but it might as well end right here. I suppose you’ve found some sort of evidence that Alton has been inside my mother’s house. Well, indeed he has, at my invitation and in my company. It must have been two weeks before the night in question.”

“And was your mother at home at the time?”

“No,” he said. “As it happens she was attending a reception at one of the museums. I’m afraid I don’t remember which one. Does it matter?”

“Not to me,” I said. “Why?”

“Why?”

“Why bring your client to your mother’s home?”

He’d have preferred not to answer, but that wasn’t an option, not with all of his siblings staring at him. “Alton knows a great deal about Early American art,” he said. “My father picked up quite a few paintings over the years. The ancestors, we always called them, and I suppose they may well have been somebody’s ancestors, though they certainly weren’t ours. They were strictly décor, but I was wondering about them.”

“Wondering what they were worth,” Boyd guessed.

“Well, yes. We never paid attention to the subjects or the artists, they were just these forbidding faces that had been on the walls all our lives. Suppose one of them was by Gilbert Stuart or Thomas Eakins or somebody important?”

“Wouldn’t Mother have known?”

“Did she pay any more attention to them than we did? I thought it would be good to know what we had.”

“And if one of them turned out to be good?” This from Meredith. “Then what?”

“Then perhaps she might have been persuaded to part with it.”

“She’d never have sold anything,” Deirdre said. “ ‘When I’m gone, dear, will be time enough to do what you want with what’s here.’ That’s what she’d have said and you know it.”

“On the other hand,” Boyd said, “one of our beloved ancestors could have been quietly spirited out of the house without her noticing.”

“If that had happened,” Jackson said, “and if the work in question had been sold, you’d all have received your shares.” Eyes rolled, but he pressed on. “But it doesn’t matter, because while the ancestor portraits aren’t entirely worthless, they’re a long way from priceless. They’d bring a thousand or two apiece at auction.”

“And just how do we know this, Jacko?”

“I made a list,” he said, “of the artists, when I could read their signatures, and I took a couple of snaps with my phone, and I showed what I had to Alton. He said it seemed unlikely we had anything much, but that a personal inspection would ensure that we weren’t overlooking a masterpiece. So I brought him over—”

“When you knew Mother would be out.”

“Only because I saw no reason to trouble her. We were in and out of the house in less than an hour. It didn’t take Alton long to see all he needed to see.”

“Ah,” I said. “And what exactly did you see, Mr. Smith?”

“What I’d expected, sir. American portraits, most of them Eighteenth Century, all of them by artists who were either anonymous or might as well have been. Some were rather nicely executed, others less so. All would be of passing interest to an interior decorator, or to someone in need of an ancestor or two, but nothing genuinely valuable.” He smiled. “Nothing that would tempt a thief.”

“Nothing you’d want yourself, then.”

“Hardly,” he said. “I know a bit about art, as Jackson has said, especially of the period. But I don’t collect it myself.”

“And yet you returned,” I said. “Unaccompanied by Mr. Ostermaier, at an hour when you knew the house would be empty.”

“How would I know that? And how would I gain access?” His eyes bored into mine. “Some of us,” he said, “don’t need a key to open a lock, but—”

“I had a key,” Jackson said suddenly.

“Well, of course,” Meredith said. “We all had keys. And you must have used yours when you brought Mr. Smith to look at the paintings.”

“And then I looked for it,” Jackson said, “and couldn’t find it. And then a few days later it was back on my key ring, where I’d been unable to find it earlier.” He stared at Smith. “Alton, why in the world did you take my key?”

“That’s ridiculous,” Smith said.

“You borrowed it, didn’t you? You had it copied and then slipped it back onto my key ring. We had three unnecessary consultations in succession, and my time was billable so it was hardly meet for me to object, but I wondered why you needed to see that much of me. You wanted my key.”

“Nonsense.”