Питер Ловси - Ellery Queen’s Mystery Magazine. Vol. 152, Nos. 5 & 6. Whole Nos. 926 & 927, November/December 2018

He made a face as if he’d just tasted a fine Cabernet that had gone bad and deleted the e-mail without reading it.

“I don’t see what choice you’ve got,” I said. “There are no imminent cases offering a big payday, and with the way you’ve been turning down every well-heeled potential client over the last six months they’ve gotten used to going elsewhere and it might take me weeks or longer to find you a client, which won’t help with the property-tax bill that’s due next week.”

Julius didn’t bother answering me. So he was going to be that way. Fine. I still spent the next hour making calls and trying to drum up business, but the problem was, everyone had gotten used to thinking of Julius in the past tense. He might’ve once been Boston’s most brilliant detective, but thanks to the Philip Vance murder case paying off as much as it did, it had been over six months since he had taken a case and he’d become yesterday’s news. I didn’t mention any of this to Julius, but after he had lunch and was back in his office, I asked him whether I should scare up some publicity.

“I could see if one of the local papers wants to do an interview,” I suggested.

At this point, Julius picked up a biography about the writer Shirley Jackson. Without bothering to look away from the book, he muttered, “Not necessary.”

I gave up. What was the point?

For the rest of the afternoon Julius appeared immersed in his book while I spent the time trying to figure out Hodge’s conjecture, which was one of the Millennium Prize problems and paid a million bucks to anyone who came up with a solution. By five, I’d gotten nowhere with it. Julius, though, surprised me by marking his place in the book. He got up and searched a bookcase before removing from a bottom shelf a leather-bound Boston city atlas. He brought this back to his desk and searched through the atlas until he found the neighborhood he was looking for, and then gave me a list of addresses.

“Archie, please find the owners of these buildings.”

One of the addresses was for Donald Prescott’s wine shop, and I knew Prescott owned the building. The other addresses were for the rest of the buildings within the same block. This task turned out to be a lot tougher than I would’ve thought, and it wasn’t until after Julius had eaten dinner and was back in his office drinking cappuccino that I told him that with the exception of Prescott’s building, the rest appeared to be owned by shell companies.

“I’ve hacked into hundreds of different databases and unraveled their ownerships as much as I believe is possible, and I can’t tell you if any of these shell companies are owned by the same person,” I said. “I’m guessing you’re thinking Grushnier owns these buildings. What else are you thinking? That he wants Prescott’s building and the missing wine is somehow tied to that?”

Julius grunted as he took another sip of cappuccino and leaned further back in his chair. “Archie, I was only satisfying a curiosity, that’s all. Please call Prescott and tell him I wish to speak to him.”

What a load of bunk! He must’ve had something more concrete in mind, otherwise he wouldn’t have been asking me to call Prescott for him. But I would’ve had better luck solving Hodge’s conjecture that night than getting anything else out of him, so I did as he asked, and told Julius I had to leave a message. I spent the next two hours wasting my time, first trying to connect Desmond Grushnier to the shell companies I had uncovered and then trying to figure out how stealing a case of wine — albeit expensive wine — could pressure Prescott to sell his building, if in fact that was what was behind the pilfered wine. It made no sense. Prescott had insurance for his store, and while he would’ve had to take a three-grand loss because of the deductible, he’d be able to absorb that. In fact, the fee I had worked out with him earlier was that three-grand deductible if I was successful, since his main concern was finding out which of his employees was a thief.

By ten o’clock I had given up. Julius had long since returned to the Shirley Jackson biography, but I could tell from the way he had started drumming his fingers on the chair’s arm that he was beginning to get antsy. At two minutes past ten, he cleared his throat and asked that I try calling Prescott again.

I made the call, and a harried but familiar voice that wasn’t Prescott’s answered. We talked for a minute and then I told Julius that I had Detective Mike Griff on the phone. “Prescott was arrested and is being processed as we speak. Griff wants to talk to you. Should I patch him through?”

“What charge?”

“Homicide. I didn’t get that or any of it from Griff, but from hacking into the Boston Police Department’s computer system. At eight twenty-three this evening police responded to a nine-one-one call and found Prescott leaving the apartment of his employee, Jim Duncan, carrying a case of the previously purloined Lafite Rothschild. Inside the apartment they found Duncan dead in his bedroom with his head bashed in by a tire iron.”

“Who made the nine-one-one call?”

“The report doesn’t say. I searched through the call logs and it appears to have been made by a burner phone. What should I tell Griff?”

“Patch him through.”

Julius picked up his cell phone and I did as he asked. Griff sounded more harried than earlier as he tried to get Julius to tell him why he was calling Prescott. Julius played dumb and asked Griff why a homicide detective was answering Prescott’s phone.

Julius said, “Was Donald Prescott murdered?”

“No.”

“I see. So he must’ve been arrested for homicide. Was a case of Lafite Rothschild found at the murder site?”

Now Griff’s voice became more suspicious than harried. “What do you know about that wine?” he demanded.

“My assistant, Archie Smith, took a freelance job from Prescott four days ago to find out which of his employees was responsible for the theft. Archie told me about this today and it sparked my curiosity, which I have since satisfied, at least to a degree. I wanted to speak to Prescott because if a theory I’m working on turns out to be correct, his stolen wine would be turning up soon.”

“What’s your theory?”

“Perhaps it would be better if we spoke in person.”

Julius was lucky the murder happened in Boston and not Cambridge, because if he had been dealing with Detective Mark Cramer instead of Griff, Cramer would’ve told him to go to hell and hung up on him, or possibly even tried having him arrested for interfering with a police investigation. Griff, though, understood the value of having Julius’s eyes on a case, and after some grumbling, he agreed to Julius’s terms.

Fifty minutes later Julius, his attorney, Henry Zack, and a worn-out looking Donald Prescott met in a holding cell at the New Sudbury Street police station, which was one of the conditions that Julius had insisted upon with Griff.

Prescott, sixty-two, looked as badly rumpled as the dark blue suit he was wearing. His tie had been removed, but he hadn’t bothered to unbutton the top shirt button, and his jowls drooped over the collar as he sat slumped on a steel cot. After nodding bleakly to Julius, he tried to profess his innocence, but Julius stopped him and instead focused on the matter at hand: namely, having Prescott hire Zack as his lawyer, and further, hire Julius to get him out of the mess he was in. While Prescott blanched at the terms Julius demanded, he nonetheless signed the contract that was presented to him. After that, Julius made a phone call, and the three of them were brought to one of the precinct’s conference rooms, where Griff sat waiting. Another condition that Julius had insisted on was that Griff delay Prescott’s processing until after they met, so Prescott hadn’t yet officially been charged with murder.