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

As with the other times I’d seen him, Griff looked as if he hadn’t slept in days, and his five-o’clock shadow was thick enough to give the bottom half of his face the appearance of being smeared with a coat of bluish-black paint.

“Julius, I’ve been playing nice even though we caught Prescott red-handed in what looks like an open-and-shut case,” the Boston homicide detective said. “Let’s hear your theory.”

“Looks can be deceiving,” Zack offered.

Griff gave the bantamweight lawyer an annoyed look, but before he could say anything cutting, Julius spoke up.

“Mike, I’ve got every intention of fulfilling my obligation, but first, a couple of questions. What sent the police to Jim Duncan’s apartment? A nine-one-one call?”

“Yeah.”

“Did the caller leave his or her name?”

“No. It was made anonymously and with a burner phone. Someone claiming to hear a scream. The operator couldn’t tell whether it was a man or a husky-sounding woman. That type of call isn’t as suspicious as it might sound given Duncan’s neighborhood.” He turned to glare at Zack. “We’ve gotten convictions with less.”

“Did the police find Mr. Prescott carrying a case of Lafite Rothschild?”

“If that’s what that wine is, yeah. They stopped him just as he was stepping out of Duncan’s apartment.”

“Can you describe the apartment?”

“A one-bedroom in a brownstone.”

“What floor?”

“Basement level.”

“So it has its own entrance?”

“Yeah.” Griff fixed his glare on Prescott. “Anyone could go in and out of it without other tenants seeing him.”

Julius turned to Prescott. “Where’d you get the wine?”

Prescott blinked twice and turned to Zack, who nodded for him to answer Julius’s question.

“That should be obvious,” he said. “From Jim Duncan’s apartment.”

“You’re trying to pull his bacon out of the fire, and he has to be a smartass,” I told Julius.

Julius ignored me. He asked Prescott, “You expected to find the wine there?”

“Of course I did. I wouldn’t have gone there otherwise.”

Patiently, Julius asked him why he expected to find the wine there.

Prescott cleared his throat. “I received a text message from Duncan that he had the wine and if I wanted it I needed to go to his apartment.”

“When you got this message you headed straight over?”

“I tried calling him first, but he didn’t answer.”

Julius turned again to Griff. “I’m sure you’ve looked at Mr. Prescott’s text messages and call logs.”

Griff had folded his arms across his chest. “So? It doesn’t prove he didn’t go there and kill Duncan and grab the wine, which is exactly how it looks.”

Julius didn’t bother to agree or disagree with Griff about how it looked. Instead he asked Prescott, “What happened when you arrived at Duncan’s apartment?”

Prescott looked again at Zack and got another nod from the attorney.

“I rang the bell,” he said. “When no one answered, I tried the door, found it unlocked, and saw the stolen Lafite Rothschild on the living room floor. I tried calling out for Duncan. When he didn’t answer I took the wine. I was walking out the door when I was stopped by the police.”

I told Julius that Prescott’s blinking only showed that he was nervous; it didn’t prove he was lying. Since I talk to him over a wireless earpiece, he was the only one who heard me, and he signaled that he agreed with me.

Griff had gone from looking harried to exasperated. “I thought you had a theory you were going to share with me?” he complained to Julius.

“Two more questions for Mr. Prescott, then you will have my theory.” Julius turned again to Prescott and asked, “Has anyone tried purchasing the building where you have your wine shop?”

This caused Prescott to blink three times. “Yes, an offer was made two months ago. A generous offer, in fact. I turned it down. I have no interest in selling.”

“Who made this offer?”

Three more blinks. “I never got the man’s name. He gave me a business card that only had the name of the company he was representing and a phone number. I threw it out the same day. I don’t remember the name of the company.”

Julius had brought along his Boston city atlas. He opened it up to the page he had marked and pointed out Prescott’s building to Griff. “Archie has been trying to determine the ownership of the other buildings on this same block, and so far all he’s come up with is a tangle of shell companies.”

“You’re thinking the same person owns them?”

“That’s part of my theory. In order to prove the most significant aspect of it, I need one of the bottles of recovered Lafite Rothschild, a corkscrew, and two wineglasses.”

Griff gaped at Julius as if he were nuts. “I’m not giving you evidence so you can drink it,” he said flatly.

“Evidence of what? I don’t believe the wine will be able to testify in court, at least not in the way you’re expecting. Besides, I’m only asking for one bottle, not all twelve. If Mr. Prescott, the rightful owner, doesn’t object, neither should you.”

Griff didn’t like what Julius was asking, and there was some stubbornness and seven minutes and eighteen seconds of flat-out refusal. But in the end the worry that there actually might be something about the wine that could lead to Prescott’s acquittal on the stand had him agreeing to let Julius open one of the bottles, and while Prescott wasn’t nuts about the idea either, he gave his permission. I was beginning to have an idea of what Julius was thinking, but since I didn’t have taste buds or olfactory senses, all I could do was watch as Julius uncorked the bottle and poured wine into the two glasses, one of which he handed to Prescott. Both Julius and Prescott sniffed the wine before tasting it, and both spat out their wine in coffee mugs that Griff had provided. Prescott looked stunned after the tasting. Julius grunted in a way to show this was exactly what he was expecting.

“Not bad for a forty-dollar Bordeaux, but it’s certainly not Lafite Rothschild,” Julius said. He told Griff he didn’t expect the wine was poisoned, but it should be tested anyway.

“You’re saying the wine’s been replaced by cheaper stuff?”

“Exactly.”

“And what’s that supposed to prove?”

Julius asked Prescott if having the wine stolen could’ve damaged him seriously enough to be forced to sell his building. Prescott said the loss would’ve stung, but not much more than that. “If the wine wasn’t recovered, I could’ve absorbed the three-thousand-dollar insurance loss,” he added.

“What would’ve happened if you had put the counterfeit wine up for auction?”

“That was what I’d been planning to do, and it would’ve been devastating.” Prescott’s round face deflated even more as he thought about Julius’s hypothetical. “Word of that would’ve gotten out among serious wine collectors, and I’d be finished.”

“And if the same offer was then made for your building?”

“I would’ve had to take it.”

Griff rubbed the thick stubble covering his face as he absorbed this. “Julius, I admit it’s an interesting story,” he said. “But that’s all it is. Interesting. It doesn’t prove Prescott didn’t kill Duncan.”

“Possibly not, but is it interesting enough for you to hold Mr. Prescott for twenty-four hours before charging him? Because I expect to give you the real murderer before those twenty-four hours expire.”

Griff stopped rubbing his jaw. If Julius had a tell, I’d never been able to figure it out, and I was sure the same was true with Griff. He had no idea whether Julius was bluffing, but he also knew you could go broke betting against Julius, except for those rare poker games when the stars are perfectly aligned against him.