Ed McBain - Puss in Boots

It seemed to Mose and Tick that such news was the stuff of excellent headlines, especially in this day and age when the Attorney General’s Commission on Pornography had decided there was a definite link between obscenity and violence. Was it possible that no one knew she’d been engaged in lighting and framing and shooting delicate footage on the intricate art of tickle and grab? Could that possibly be possible ? Or were the police and the state attorney’s office simply playing it smart? Neither Tick nor Mose had ever met anyone in Florida law enforcement who could be considered smart. Still, were they withholding the skin-flick bombshell till they could explode it to startling effect and great astonishment at the trial?

Mose and Tick strongly doubted this.

Their conclusion was that no one in law enforcement knew about the movie Prudence Ann Markham had been working on since the twenty-ninth day of September.

Which meant that no one in law enforcement was in possession of either the negative or the work print.

Which meant that a very valuable property was kicking around out there someplace in Calusa.

Which was what interested them about the murder of Prudence Ann Markham.

Which was what brought them to Calusa on the afternoon of December 9.

To find Connie.

Because maybe she knew where the film was.

Warren was upset.

He came to Matthew’s office at two o’clock that Tuesday afternoon, and began telling him what was bothering him. Together, the two men had a lot of things bothering them.

“To begin with,” Warren said, “she didn’t use those three guys from Calusa. The crew you gave me. I went out to see them this morning — they’re shooting a commercial out on Sabal Key, using some guy’s house with a swimming pool there. You ever been on a movie set? It’s a madhouse. But I finally managed to talk to all three of them in bits and pieces. None of them worked with her on this film she was shooting. Only one of them — the cameraman, Vaughan Turner — even knew she’d been working on a movie. I think he was annoyed that she hadn’t hired him. But he didn’t know what the project was, thought maybe she wasn’t even shooting it here in Calusa. The other two were surprised to learn she’d been working on something without them. And annoyed. More than annoyed. Outright pissed , in fact. I got the feeling this was a pretty close bunch who’d worked together on a lot of stuff, and they didn’t like the idea of her hiring other people. Anyway, they weren’t on the movie, and they didn’t know who was.”

“Did they have any suggestions?” Matthew asked.

“One of them — the lighting man, Lew Smollet — said there are good people in Tampa, Miami, and Jacksonville, but he didn’t know whether Prue actually knew any of them, since she usually worked out of Calusa.”

“Any names?”

“No, but I can get on that if you want me to. Florida’s a right-to-work state, and none of these guys have to belong to unions if they don’t want to. But I know there are two different unions for all these technicians, and maybe I can get a list of active members in Florida, if you want me to go that route.”

“I think we ought to know who she was working with, don’t you?”

“Sure. You don’t want me to track down everybody who ever made a movie in the state of Florida, though, do you?”

“Well... ”

“Because, Matthew, that would take a long, long time. Has a date been set for the trial yet?”

“Not yet.”

“When are you guessing?”

“The calendar’s pretty full, we may not get on till February.”

“Well, that’s not too bad then. I’ll get started on it, see what unions these guys might have belonged to, get a list of their people. So that’s the first thing. We struck out with her crew.”

“What’s the second thing?”

“The second thing is, crime was up seventeen percent in Calusa County this year, and my cop friends down the old station house tell me it’s mostly drug related, which means there’re quite a few unsolved junkie burglaries, and if the burglary at the Markham house was a junkie on the prowl who later knifed Prue and stole her pocketbook, we’ve got a long, tough row to hoe. I’ll keep snooping around, but turning up the burglar looks very slim. Are you still listening? I’ve got more bad news.”

Matthew sighed.

“I know just how you feel,” Warren said, nodding. “But here it is, anyway. On November tenth, the moon was in the second day of its first quarter. That’s a fairly good moon, Matthew. Plus it was a clear night, lots of stars.”

“How about the night of the murder?”

“Four days past full moon. Full moon was on the sixteenth. Still pretty big on the twentieth. And another clear night, Matthew. In short—”

“Excellent visibility on both nights.”

“Yes.”

“Wonderful,” Matthew said.

“I knew you’d be thrilled. There’s more.”

“Spare me.”

“I went to see Alan Saunders — the friend Markham was planning a fishing trip with? The guy he was supposed to’ve been with on the night of the burglary? From nine to eleven? Remember?”

“Yes?”

“Saunders now seems sure that Markham left him at around ten, a little after ten. Which would put him back at his own house at ten-thirty or thereabouts, just when Mrs. Mason says she saw him breaking into his own kitchen.”

“Terrific,” Matthew said.

“You want the worst of it?”

“How much worse can it get?”

“Much,” Warren said. “When you talked to Markham, did he mention anything about his first wife?”

“No. What first wife?”

“Lady he was married to ten years ago, when he was fresh out of college and living in New Orleans.”

“What about her?”

“She was stabbed to death, Matthew.”

The state attorney’s office used to be a motel.

It sat across the street from a ballpark that once was used for big-league spring training before the team moved to Sarasota. Now teams sponsored by beer companies played there. The old motel sat behind what used to be the old courthouse. You could still see the twin white towers of the old courthouse — now an office building — from the courtyard surrounded by what used to be motel units but were now offices for the state attorney’s staff. There were palm trees and bougainvillea and hibiscus in the courtyard. It was a sunny afternoon, and you expected to see sleepy-eyed lovers strolling out of the old motel rooms into the courtyard. A brown plastic sign with white lettering was fastened to the wall of one of the old motel units. It read:

It was 3:30 p.m. when Matthew opened the door to the office and told the receptionist he had an appointment with Arthur Haggerty. She asked him to please have a seat. He took a seat on a bench and looked around. You could see where the old motel walls had been knocked down to make a bigger space. There were still marks on the ceilings and walls. An open door at the far end of the room revealed a motel bathroom beyond it: pink sink, toilet, and tub. He could see ledgers stacked in the tub.

“Mr. Hope?”

“Yes?”

“Mr. Haggerty will see you now.”

“Thank you,” he said.

She nodded to a closed door. He went to the door and opened it. No walls knocked down this time. A single motel room disguised as an office. Big desk stacked with legal papers in blue binders, shelves crowded with reference books, a wall covered with diplomas. A law office. But you could still see the telltale tub in the bathroom.