Тимоти Уилльямз - Ellery Queen’s Mystery Magazine. Vol. 126, No. 3 & 4. Whole No. 769 & 770, September/October 2005

“Okay, but tread carefully, Cy. Fibbiger’s lawyers are getting paid more to keep him out of court than you and I together are getting paid to... do whatever it is we’re getting paid to do.”

After leaving Savage’s office, Auburn got Gavin Hoopes out of bed to tell him all charges against him had been dropped and that he was free to hit the road again. Then he called Chuck Fibbiger’s office and arranged to meet him later that morning.

The sky was the color of an oyster shell, with a vivid luminosity that hurt the eyes. The air was still, but the threat of a summer storm added a brooding sense of tension and expectancy to the oppressive heat of the dog days.

Fibbiger conducted his real-estate business in a restored row house on Wasatch Court. Like most of the other houses in the row, this one had business premises on the street level and living quarters upstairs. Fibbiger probably owned every building in sight.

An ornate receptionist took him straight back to an oak-paneled office, where he found Fibbiger at a desk surrounded by framed awards, gilded plastic trophies, and pictures of buildings, Irish setters, and grandchildren. His face was familiar to anybody who read the local papers, but in the years since that oft-published photograph had been taken, he had lost some hair and gained a lot of weight. And nothing Auburn had ever seen in the papers had prepared him for the fact that this reputed crime boss was about five feet two. In an old plaid shirt and a pair of faded jeans, he looked like a retired jockey.

Fibbiger made a point of not looking at Auburn’s ID. “Detectives and realtors have to work weekends, don’t we?” he remarked breezily. When he smiled, his brows shut down like a trunk lid, converting his eyes into jagged slits. He waved Auburn to a seat opposite the desk. “What have I done this time?”

“Just a routine investigation, sir. A man who’s been working at the new skating rink up in Wilmot was killed last night on the highway. Maybe you saw it on the news?”

“Somebody who works for me got killed last night?”

“Actually he was working for Welbeck, the heating and cooling contractor. A Roger Mulreedy.”

“Okay. Okay.” He nodded slowly, as if memories were filtering through. “I know who you mean. What happened to him?”

“He wrecked his motorcycle on the Interstate, in the construction zone downtown.”

“Hey, I’m sorry to hear that.” His tone was detached and perfunctory, like that of a realtor pretending to commiserate with a client who waited to read the fine print until after signing the contract. “So how can I help you?”

“We’re trying to figure out what he was doing on the Interstate yesterday between four and four-thirty. Would you have any ideas about that?”

“Not a clue. I haven’t been up to the rink myself for more than a week. And I let my contractors look after their own guys.”

“Mulreedy got a phone call at the shop right before he headed for the Interstate. We thought he might have been coming here.”

“I wouldn’t think so. Anyway, I didn’t call him.”

“Had you had any discussions with him about the job, deadlines, costs...?”

“No, sir. Like I said, my business was with Jerry Welbeck. This guy was just one of his peons. I didn’t even remember his name.”

“There was one other thing,” said Auburn. “Mulreedy told his wife that, about a month ago, up at the rink, somebody turned on a power line while he was working on it. Did you hear anything about that?”

“Oh, yes,” said Fibbiger, again nodding reflectively. “It’s all coming back to me now. Here’s what happened, the way I remember it. The carpenters and plasterers wouldn’t start work until the air conditioning was installed. They said their adhesives and joint compound wouldn’t set up right in the heat and humidity. But you know as well as I do that it was their own sweet selves they were worrying about.

“Anyway, I asked Jerry to get the air conditioning going as quick as he could, and what does he do? He sends in this guy — what’s his name? — Mulreedy, with a chip on his shoulder about the size of Canada. Right away the whole project turns into one big nightmare. The plumbers get in a fight with the flooring contractor. The roofers say the bricklayers stole part of their scaffolding. And then Mulreedy claims one of the electricians tried to fry him because he borrowed some wire.”

“This was reported to you, then?”

“Not directly. I probably heard about it a week or so after it happened.”

“So you don’t know how much truth there might be in it?”

“No, sir, I don’t. And I don’t see what it’s got to do with a traffic accident on the Interstate, either.”

“It wasn’t an accident,” said Auburn. “Mulreedy was shot.”

“Now I know why you’re here.” Fibbiger grinned disarmingly, showing a gold tooth. “I’ll bet you play a fierce game of chess.”

“I could never remember all the rules,” said Auburn with perfect truth.

Welbeck Heating and Cooling was headquartered outside the city limits on Hanover Road, in a district of small factories, machine shops, specialty garages, and warehouses. The business occupied an L-shaped one-story building that was almost completely surrounded by woods. Only a big white sign running along the driveway was visible from the road. Auburn counted eleven company trucks in the parking lot. Three private cars were there as well, two of which Auburn had seen at the cookout the evening before.

He entered the building by a door marked COUNTER SALES. The salesroom was long and narrow. Displays of humidifiers and cartons of furnace filters were arranged along one wall neatly but with little sense of market appeal.

Greg Wamblitt, the arrogant young man who had stood at parade rest last evening while making sure that Auburn knew Patty Mulreedy had been at the cookout, was behind the counter. Auburn’s research earlier in the day had informed him that Wamblitt was a first sergeant in a local National Guard unit. Another man was talking on a phone at the counter, taking an order from a customer.

Jerry Welbeck, who evidently — like realtors and detectives — had to work on weekends, was busy at a computer in a glassed-in office. As soon as he saw Auburn he came to the door of the office and invited him in.

His manner was cooperative rather than cordial. “Find out anything yet?”

“I’m afraid we did. Roger Mulreedy was shot in the neck with a couple of steel balls.”

Welbeck instantly broke eye contact and stared unseeingly through a picture window facing the woods. The long silence that followed reminded Auburn of the intervals in their phone conversation on the previous afternoon.

“Are you sure about that?” he asked finally.

“Well, the forensic pathologist seems to be. That makes it homicide. I’d like to ask you about something that happened a few weeks ago when Mulreedy was working up at the rink. He told his wife that somebody unlocked a circuit breaker while he was working on the circuit. Did you know about that?”

“Did I ever! Roger as much as accused me of issuing him a lock that somebody else knew the combination to. Like I told you, he was a very paranoid guy. My guess is that he didn’t shove the shackle all the way down in the lock. Whoever found it that way figured it had been unlocked and took it off the breaker. So you found Patty?”

“I talked to her last night.”

“Was she okay?”

“She seemed to be doing all right. I understand she was at your cookout when I called you.”

Wamblitt wasn’t visible to either of them at the moment, but Auburn would have sworn that Welbeck’s eyes shifted for a fraction of a second in the direction of the salesroom before he answered. “That’s right, she was,” he said, with a hint of discomfiture. “She came with my sales manager, Caruso, and his wife. They live just up the street from her folks.”