Ed McBain - The House That Jack Built

“For Christ’s sake, Morrie…”

“I was nowhere near the Parrish house last night,” Hurley said.

“Then where were you?”

“Home in bed with my girlfriend. Who by the way is pregnant.”

“We send lots of guys to jail who have pregnant girlfriends,” Rawles said.

“No kidding?”

“In case you expected us to break into tears or anything.”

“No, I didn’t expect that , don’t worry.”

“What’s her name? Bloom asked.

“Helen Abbott. Call her right this minute, go ahead. She’s back at the motel, she doesn’t know why you picked up me and Billy. Ask her where I was last night, whatever time the cop got killed, go ahead, ask her. Pick up the phone and ask her. She’ll tell you I was home in bed with her.”

“What time was this?”

“Was what?”

“That you were with her. From what time to what time?”

“All night.”

“From what time to what time?”

“What time did the cop get killed?”

“Answer the fucking question ,” Rawles shouted.

“Listen, you,” Hurley said, “I’m answering these questions voluntarily, you don’t have to…”

“From what time to what time ?” Rawles said.

“We got back from supper it must’ve been nine o’clock. We watched some television and went to sleep. Billy was in the same room, in the other bed. You ask him where we were all last night, he’ll tell you. Ask them both. There wasn’t any one of us anywhere near that Parrish house last night.”

“What time did you go to breakfast this morning?” Bloom asked.

“Around eight o’clock.”

“All three of you?”

“All three of us.”

“Where’d you go?”

“Burger King.”

“Why were you watching the Parrish house?”

Fourth time around.

“Helen’s grandmother says she doesn’t believe us,” Hurley said.

Which was the same as saying “The weather in Southern California is so beautiful.” Or “My mother has angina pectoris.”

Both cops looked at him.

“Which is bullshit, of course,” Hurley said.

“Just what I was thinking,” Rawles said.

“I mean, her saying she doesn’t believe us. She knows we’re telling the truth.”

“About what?”

“That Helen is her granddaughter. The point is, we need proof.”

“Proof,” Bloom said.

“Yeah.”

“Of what?”

“That she’s the granddaughter.”

“Uh-huh.”

“Which the baby pictures would prove,” Hurley said.

“Uh-huh.”

“We think maybe they’re inside the Parrish house. Which is why we were watching the house. But we weren’t going in there when we knew there was somebody already in there.”

“ What baby pictures?” Rawles asked.

“Helen’s. Her pictures when she was a baby. With her mother, you know? Helen and her mother.”

“Uh-huh.”

“Pictures of them both together. So the grandmother can’t say this girl nursing the baby isn’t her daughter. Because she is . I mean, there’s her picture, her face . Which means Helen is telling the truth. Which the grandmother knows anyway. But that’s the proof we needed. The pictures. And we thought they were inside that house. Which is why we were watching the house.”

“But you didn’t go inside there, huh?” Bloom asked.

“No way,” Hurley said. “With somebody sitting it? No way.”

The cops looked at each other.

“What do you think?” Bloom asked.

“It’s dumb enough to be true,” Rawles said.

Vacuum cleaner going now.

The housekeeper was in the living room.

Toots’s mind raced like sixty. Carpet here in the master bedroom, extending clear into the closet. Meant she’d be vacuuming in here, too. Maybe she wouldn’t open the closet door. But suppose she did? Hang up something that came back from the cleaner’s, put away a pair of shoes or a robe someone had left under a chair or draped over it, any number of reasons she might come into this closet and find a frizzied, twenty-six-year-old blonde wetting her pants. Had to get out of here before she came in. But how?

The telephone rang.

On the shelf above her head, there was a tiny click . The sound of the ringing phone had triggered the mechanism. The recorder reels began whirring. The vacuum cleaner suddenly stopped.

“Coming!” the housekeeper yelled to the phone.

Toots was out of the closet in a wink.

Slithering herself cautiously and minutely around the door-jamb, a snake or a roach couldn’t have done it better, one eye and a nose showing, part of her chin maybe, housekeeper’s fat ass swinging down the carpeted corridor toward the wall phone over the kitchen’s passthrough counter. Toots stepped into the corridor. Housekeeper reaching for the phone. Don’t turn this way, Toots thought, and tried to orient herself. Open door to a second bedroom across the hall, street side of the house. The garage would be…

“Hello?”

A glance toward the kitchen. Housekeeper leaning on the counter, big fat ass mooning the dining room.

“Yes, this is the Summerville residence.”

The garage would be near the kitchen. No way to get to the garage without passing Brunnhilde.

“I’m sorry, Mrs. Summerville isn’t here just now. May I take a message, please?”

Study across the hall was worthless. Dead end room, high windows.

“Yes, Mrs. Horowitz, I’ll remind her. A meeting tonight, yes. Could you spell that, please?”

But maybe…

“The league to what ?”

Run across the hall, pop into the study. Stay in there till Brunnhilde vacuumed her way up the corridor and into the master bedroom, then run like hell for the front door.

“Florida wildlife, yes, ma’am. The league to protect Florida wildlife, yes, ma’am, I’ve got it. And the meeting is tonight. Yes, ma’am. Mrs. Colman’s house. Yes, ma’am. Eight o’clock. Yes, ma’am, I’ve written it all down. I’ll leave the message right here by the phone in case she’s not back by the time I leave. Yes, ma’am, thank you.”

Click of the receiver being replaced on the hook.

The housekeeper came up the corridor and switched on the vacuum cleaner. She vacuumed her way past the study and the second bedroom and then vacuumed herself into the master bedroom.

And opened the closet door.

And vacuumed around the shoe racks there.

Toots Kiley was already across the hall in the study.

Two minutes later, she was out the front door and walking very quickly toward where she’d parked the Chevy.

“How’re we supposed to get back to the motel?” Billy wanted to know.

“We take a bus,” Hurley said.

“They got buses in this two-bit town?”

“I saw buses,” Hurley said.

It was a long walk to U.S. 41. It was almost twelve noon, the day cloudy and uncertain, the temperature hovering around seventy degrees Fahrenheit, twenty-one centigrade.

“This means we zeroed out, you realize that?” Billy said.

“Yeah,” Hurley said.

“I mean, we steered wide of the murder rap, but we both told them about the pictures…”

“Yeah.”

“I mean we had to.”

“I know.”

“Otherwise why were we watching the house? To kill a fuckin’ cop was inside there?”

“I know, I know.”

“So we had to tell them about the pictures.”

“Nobody’s blaming you.”

“Who’s saying anybody’s blaming me? I’m saying unless we told them about the pictures, they’d have been all over us about the dead cop. ’Cause they knew we were casing the Parrish house.”

“Yeah. And you know where they got that , don’t you?”