Ed McBain - The House That Jack Built

Silence.

“Wade?”

More silence.

Leona put the receiver back on the cradle.

At eleven o’clock sharp that morning, an unmarked sedan belonging to the Calusa Police Department pulled up to the gate outside the Brechtmann mansion. Detective Morris Bloom was driving the automobile. Matthew Hope was sitting beside him.

The security guard locked at Bloom’s shield.

“Tell Elise Brechtmann the police are here,” he said.

Karl got on the pipe.

Sophie Brechtmann answered.

“Send gentlemen in,” she said.

Mother and daughter was waiting in the living room.

Charles Abbott had described Elise Brechtmann a beautiful woman.

His description was almost on the money — but not quite.

A woman in her late thirties, Elise wore her blonde hair in a virtual crew cut that emphasized high cheekbones and intensely green, luminous eyes. Her full-lipped mouth seemed set in a perpetual pout that added a hint of turbulent sexuality to a face spoiled only by its subversive nose. Despite Elise’s German ancestry the nose could have been American Indian in origin, a trifle too large for her face, its cleaving tomahawk edge destroying the image of an otherwise pale and sudden beauty. It was, Matthew realized, the same nose that imparted a sense of obstinate strength to the face of her grandfather, Jacob Brechtmann, whose portrait glared down at them from the chimney wall.

“I’m sorry” we missed each other yesterday.” she said.

“ Yes , so am I,” Matthew said.

“Apparently,” she said, and smiled. “But surely, Mr Hope, a broken appointment needn’t have prompted call to the police.”

Eyes twinkling. She was making a joke. But there was nothing funny about Matthew’s visit here today.

“Miss Brechtmann,” he said, “I wonder if you’d mind answering some questions for me and Detective Bloom.”

“Does this have to do with the Parrish case? Mother told me you were here the other…”

“Yes, it has to do with the Parrish case,” Matthew said. “Did you know him?”

“Who? Your client?”

“No. The victim. Jonathan Parrish.”

“No.”

“You did not know him,” Matthew said.

“I did not know him.”

Matthew looked at Bloom.

“Miss Brechtmann,” Bloom said, “according to what Mr. Hope has told me, there seems reasonable cause to believe that you did know Jonathan Parrish.”

“Oh?”

Pouting mouth forming the single word.

“Yes,” Bloom said.

“And what has Mr. Hope told you!’”

“Miss Brechtmann,” Matthew said, “I spoke to a man named Anthony Holden… you do know Anthony Holden?”

“ That rodent, yes, I know him.”

“Who claims that the reason you fired him…”

“I fired him because he was a thief!”

“Not according to him.”

“The man was a thief! He was getting kickbacks from our maltsters. He was stealing , Mr. Hope. Which is why I fired him.”

“Did you have proof of this theft?”

“Of course I had proof!”

“Then why’d you settle out of court’ If Holden was in fact a thief, then you hadn’t libeled him when you called him a thief.”

“Well, of course, don’t you think I knew that? But what would a prolonged legal battle have done to the Brechtmann name? We’re in the business of brewing beer, Mr. Hope, not manufacturing sensational headlines. I paid him off. And felt it was well worth it.”

“You settled for five hundred thousand dollars,isn’t that right?”

“Yes.”

“Exactly what you paid Charles Abbott,” Matthew said.

“Oh, my,” Sophie said, “here’s that scurvy dog again.”

“I’m afraid so,” Matthew said.

“Young man, you already know that I refused to give Mr. Abbott a penny!”

“Yes, you had him thrown out.”

“Yes. So now you come here again, and you tell me…”

“I’m talking about 1969,” Matthew said. “The money you gave him in 1969. Haifa million dollars.”

“Is that what he told you?” Elise said. “That we gave him…?”

“Yes.”

“He’s a liar. Why would we have…?”

“To get rid of him,” Matthew said.

“Don’t be absurd!”

“And to take the baby off your hands.”

“What baby?”

“Your daughter,” Matthew said. “Helen Abbott.”

“I have no daughter,” Elise said.

“Miss Brechtmann,” Bloom said, “I have here…”

“Get out of here,” Sophie said, “both of you. You have no right intruding on our privacy. You have no right coming here and…”

“Miss Brechtmann,” Bloom said again, “I have here a warrant that authorizes me to…”

“A what ?” Sophie said.

“A search warrant, ma’am. I’d appreciate it if your daughter read it. It authorizes…”

“She’ll do no such thing,” Sophie said. “What you’ll do is leave this house at once.”

“No, ma’am, I’m not about to do that,” Bloom said, and shook the warrant at her. “This was signed by a magistrate of the Circuit Court, and it authorizes me to…”

“Then I know you won’t mind if I call my lawyer,” Sophie said, and reached for the phone.

“You can call the Attorney General if you like,” Bloom said, “but that’s not going to stop me from searching these premises.”

“For what ? What in hell do you want here, Mr. Bloom?”

“Two things,” he said, and again offered the warrant to Elise. “If you’ll just read this…”

“Don’t touch that piece of paper!” Sophie shouted. “Get out of this house, Mr. Bloom! And take this shyster with you!”

“It’s all right,” Elise said suddenly.

Her voice sounded hollow. Her eyes looked vacant.

“Elise…” her mother said.

“Let me have the warrant.”

“Elise!”

“Give it to me, please.”

She held out her hand.

Bloom put the warrant into it.

She unfolded it, and began reading it silently.

She looked up.

“A thirty-eight-caliber Smith and Wesson revolver,” she said.

“Yes, Miss. Which is the caliber and make of the pistol that killed a police officer named Charles Macklin on Wednesday night.”

“And you think that pistol is in this house?”

“We think it may be here, yes.”

“And these photographs?”

“Yes, Miss.”

“You think they may be here as well?”

“Yes, Miss.”

“Photographs of a baby and her mother, the warrant says.”

Her voice caught on the word mother.

“Yes, Miss.”

“Photographs of me and my baby, the warrant says.”

“A little girl named Helen Abbott,” Bloom said. “With baby beads on her wrist. Spelling out her name.”

Elise looked at her mother.

“They know,” she said.

There were tears in her eyes.

From the shelf in Frank’s study, Leona removed the copy of Corbin on Contracts .

Behind it, just where she’d hidden it, was the .22-caliber Colt Cobra.

She took it in her hand, turned, and placed the gun on Frank’s desk. She put the book back on the shelf. She knelt to where Frank kept his volumes of Black’s Law Dictionary . She took down two volumes, and then removed the box of cartridges from the shelf, and placed this on the desk, too. She slid the volumes back into place on the shelf. A place for everything, and everything in its place. Aristotle. Or somebody.

She smiled.

And then she sat at the desk in Frank’s swivel chair, and she loaded the gun the way the chubby little man in the gun shop had showed her. Bobby Newkes. Cute little man who knew all about things lethal. One cartridge at a time. Nice and easy. Squeeze off your shots, he’d told her. Don’t pull the trigger, just squeeeeeeeze it gently.