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

She squared her shoulders, let out a ragged breath. “No need to be. You couldn’t have prevented it. You see, Dad truly believed in this ‘alpha wolf’ self-image that he had. And an alpha is supposed to breed and produce next-generation alphas to lead the pack.” A grunt that, in other circumstances, might have been a laugh. “All you have to do is take one look at me and know the ‘aura’ isn’t there. Colin didn’t have it, either. And Dad really couldn’t... accept that. So he pushed both of us into trying to be something we weren’t, and when we couldn’t, he... well, kind of abandoned us.”

The opening I needed. “If that’s the way your father treated you, why are you interested in my investigating what the police’ve already branded a burglary gone bad?”

Now the tears did begin to flow, and Sinclair delved awkwardly into her handbag, probably for some tissues. “Because he was all I had left as family, Mr. Cuddy. And despite his being a cold and insufferable son of a bitch, God, I still loved him, you know?”

As Tamara “Tammy” Sinclair plucked out her tissues, I told her I’d give it a few days. Then, “Do you have any ideas on who might have wanted your father dead?”

A sniffle and another dip into her handbag. “I brought a list.”

Of not only names, but addresses and telephone numbers, as it turned out. If I ever have the money to hire an assistant, Tamara Sinclair would find herself on the top of that list.

But first, I pulled my old Honda Prelude — the last year of the original model — into the parking lot of the Boston Police Headquarters at Shroeder Plaza to avoid a longish walk in the wintry air. Slipping the guard there twenty dollars to avoid a tow, I made my way into the building. I was approaching the reception area, a raised wooden bulwark like an old district-station booking counter, when Sergeant Detective Guinness — I realized I’d never heard his first name — came out of the elevators to the left and walked toward the security turnstiles.

And, therefore, toward me.

He’s younger than I am, but his puffy features and long-lost hair made him look five years older. I hoped.

“Cuddy, get out of my sight.”

The personality hadn’t changed any. “What makes you think I’m here to see you?”

“Congratulate me on making sergeant, maybe.” A glance around, a drop in decibel level. “Now that some judges with brains in their heads finally decided that the Ubangis aren’t entitled to every slot in the department.”

No change in personality or prejudice. “I’d like to talk with you about the Sinclair case.”

“ ‘The Wolfman’?”

Leave it to Guinness. “That’s the one.”

“For who?”

No sense in not disclosing my client. “The daughter.”

You could almost see the smoke coming out of his ears as Guinness processed the options.

“Tell you what, Cuddy. You buy me lunch, and I give you a couple of appetizers. No look at the file, just some background.”

“Okay.” I turned. “Since we’re both already here, how about the commissioner’s banquet room?”

Sour expression. “Cheap bastard.” But he led me down the main hall to the cafeteria.

After we’d gone through the line and taken a table, I registered that nobody else in the large, half-full room had said hello to Guinness, or even acknowledged him with a nod or smile.

No surprise.

Chewing with his mouth open, my lunch date said, “So ask.”

I swallowed first. “I seem to remember from the news coverage that Sinclair was found stabbed to death.”

Now Guinness pursed his lips. “You could say that, yeah.”

“Meaning?”

Another forkful of food. “Try seventeen times.”

The police almost always withhold certain details, to help them screen out nutcases who come in to confess but won’t have all their ducks in a row on the murder itself. “Sounds kind of enthusiastic for a burglar caught in the act.”

“Hey, Cuddy, I feel like I’m turning on the wheel of life in this job, get me? When I first come on the force, it was heroin. Then angel dust. Then coke. Then crack. Now we’re back to heroin again. Who knows what goes through a junkie’s head when he needs money for a fix?”

“Odd choice of loot, though, don’t you think?”

“What, the little statues and stuff? You think only lowlifes go on the junk? Heroin’s chic, or haven’t you heard? For all I know, somebody from an art gallery did this one.”

“Any prints in the decedent’s loft?”

“Just the ones you’d expect. Sinclair’s, his student sweetie of the semester, and a cleaning woman’s got a birthday-party alibi for our professor’s time of death that you couldn’t break with a backhoe.”

Sinclair’s lover was on my client’s list. Which made me think about something else Tamara Sinclair had mentioned. “How about the suit and school key the daughter says are missing?”

“Look, Cuddy, I got the impression from both the people we talked to and Tammy herself that the old man thought she was kind of an ugly duckling, get me? And, for all I know, she’s the one who did him.”

“And then Ms. Sinclair hires me to investigate, when you already have her off the hook?”

“Hey, what do I know? The daughter tell you she works at an art gallery?”

Kind of a conversation-stopper, I admit.

Sergeant Detective Guinness grinned with his whole puffy face as he stuffed another wad of food into his mouth. “I didn’t think so.”

I left the rest of my lunch on its plate and went out to the Prelude. Unfolding Tamara Sinclair’s list, the people at Corbin University won first place, being the most clustered and the closest as well.

As I pulled up to the guard shack at the entrance to the school, I was reminded of why it was such a little gem in a city of many jewels. Coed, good academic standards, beautiful buildings and grounds behind a high granite perimeter wall.

Only problem? The neighborhood outside that wall.

Fortunately, the campus policewoman who slid open the window of the shack had gone to high school with me back in South Boston. “Deirdre,” I said, “how’ve you been?”

“Glad to get off my feet and onto this stool, truth to tell. What’re you here for?”

“I drew the daughter in the Sinclair case.”

Deirdre glanced around. “Since he wasn’t killed on campus, and there’s no thought someone here’s involved, I’ll let you by. But anybody raises a fuss, my fellow centurions will toss your butt over the fence.”

“Fair enough.”

“Here’s a parking pass. On your dashboard, facing forward.”

“Got it. And thanks, Deirdre.”

She just waved me on.

From a space sandwiched by a minivan and an SUV the size of an Abrams tank, I walked to the Science building designation under the name of “Jillian Wayne, Associate Professor” on Tamara Sinclair’s list. The structure was red brick, the ivy climbing around its white-framed windows now browning and thinning from the first hard frosts. Wayne’s office turned out to be on the second floor, but when I knocked on the closed door and got no answer, a student-type male in baggy cargo pants suggested I try “Dr. Sinclair’s” instead.

I found it farther down the hall, occupying what I guessed to be a corner position that would offer cross-vent in hot weather and nice views year-round. The door was ajar, but I knocked anyway.

“Yes?”

A female voice, modulated for public speaking. I pushed gently into the office.

And into a combination of the magazine National Geographic and the television series Wild Kingdom.

In front of a fireplace, wolves were depicted in the kind of realistic taxidermy I associate with museum exhibits. Skulls and skeletons graced the tops of bookshelves going swaybacked from the weight of the volumes on them. And framed photos and paintings of wolves with their cubs — or pups, maybe? — on all three walls I could see.