John MacDonald - The Girl in the Plain Brown Wrapper

“Aren’t you reaching?”

“I talked to Helen Boughmer the day after he died. She was convinced that a lot of stuff might be missing from the room in back, and she was going to check the file of special orders against the inventory of what was left. She believed he’d been killed. And two days later, she’d changed completely. She said she had changed her mind. She said she believed he’d killed himself. She said she had checked the special orders and nothing was missing. I asked her to produce the file. She claimed she couldn’t find it. And she never did find it. Now somebody, dammit, had to get to her. If Sherman had killed himself, why would anybody take the time and trouble to shut her mouth. She was a changed woman. She acted terrified.”

“Then, why would I come back here, if I was the one who killed Doctor Sherman? What would there be here for me?”

“Now you can say I’m reaching. Why would Tom Pike pay you twenty thousand in cash? It was one of those crazy breaks you get sometimes that one of my partners here saw him giving the money to a man who matches your description. Let’s say Sherman stepped out of line when Maureen Pike was so critically ill at the time of her miscarriage, and gave her something not authorized for use on patients. Suppose he did this with Tom’s knowledge and consent, and whatever it was, the side effect was some kind of brain damage? Hell, it kind of dwindles off because it doesn’t seem as if it would give anybody enough leverage to pry money out of Tom Pike. But you’d seen Tom, and even if we didn’t find a thing except a heavy piece of money on you, that would mean some kind of confirmation.”

“Personal opinion again, please. Do you think Dr. Sherman killed his wife?”

“Ben Gaffner and I — he’s the state attorney — went up one side of that and down the other. Going after him with a circumstantial case just didn’t add up. We could show motive and opportunity, but there was absolutely no way to prove the cause of death. Do I think he did? Yes. So does Ben. The specialists we talked to said it was highly unlikely there could have been such a sudden deterioration in her condition that she could go into deep coma after the amount of insulin she had apparently taken. But ‘highly unlikely’ isn’t enough to go to court with. So we closed out the investigation finally.”

“Who was handling it?”

“The death occurred in county jurisdiction. Dave Broon was handling it, under joint direction of my office and the sheriff. If Dave could have come up with something that strengthened the case, it would still have been a pretty unpopular indictment.”

“Now, to get back to Sherman’s death, do you have the feeling that Penny had any kind of lead at all that she hadn’t told you about yet?”

He looked startled and then grim. “I see where that one is aimed. I don’t really... wait a minute. Let me think.” He leaned back and ground at his eyes with the heels of his hands. “I don’t know if this is anything. It would have been... a week ago. Last Tuesday. She was working an eleven-to-six-in-the-morning shift, a postoperative case, and that was the last time she was on that one. I pulled out of here early. About quarter to four and went over to see her. She’d just gotten up. She had dreamed about Dr. Sherman. She was telling me about it. I wasn’t paying much attention. She stopped all of a sudden and she had a funny expression. I asked her what the trouble was and she said she’d just thought of something, that the dream had reminded her of something. She wouldn’t tell me. She said she had to ask somebody a question first, and maybe it was nothing at all, but maybe it meant something. Very mysterious about it.”

“Can you remember anything about the dream?”

“Not much. Nutty stuff. Something about him opening a door in his forehead and making her look in and count the times a little orange light in there was blinking.”

“But you don’t know if she asked anyone that question?”

“She never brought it up again.”

“While you were... conducting this unofficial investigation of Sherman’s death, were you telling Janice about it, about things like the file the Boughmer woman wouldn’t produce?”

“I guess I was telling her more than I usually would. Hell, I was trying to cover for the time I was spending with Penny. But Janice was turning ice-cold, and fast. She wasn’t buying it. I kept trying, but she wasn’t buying it. She found out, I guess.”

“Somebody told her about it practically as soon as it began.”

“No kidding! Some real pal.”

“Do you think she’s found some other man?”

“I keep trying not to think about that. What’s it to you?”

“Let’s say it isn’t just a case of big-nose, Holton.”

“I get home and that damned Meg is either over at the house with her kids, or the kids are over at Meg’s house. No note from Janice. No message, nothing. So she comes home and I say where have you been, and she says out. Looks so damned smug. But I keep telling myself that when she comes home, she doesn’t have that look. You know? Something about the mouth and the hair and the way they walk. A woman who’s been laid looks laid. Their eyes are different too. If she’s got somebody, he’s not playing his cards right. If she likes him and she’s sore at me, and I know she’s known about Penny, all he’d have to do would be lay one hand on her to get her going, and she’d take over from there. A lousy way to talk about the wife, I guess. But I know her. And she’s no wife now. Not anymore. Never again, not for me.”

“Does she think Sherman was murdered?”

“She was fond of him. She’s sure of it. Not from anything I dug up or any chain of logic I explained. She operates on instinct. She says he couldn’t have and to her that’s it.”

“So she wanted to have you find out who did it?”

“Not because she was hot to have somebody punished, but more because it would clear his name.”

“What do you know about the trouble Tom Pike got into at Kinder, Noyes, and Strauss?”

“What? You jump around pretty fast. All I know is the shop talk I heard about it. He was a very hot floor man. He had people swearing by him. He went in there and built up one hell of a personal following. High fliers, discretionary accounts, a lot of trading in and out, accounts fully margined. And he’s a very persuasive guy. He made a lot of money for a lot of people in this town, in a very short time. But there was one old boy who came down to retire, and he had a portfolio of blue chips. He had Telephone and General Motors and Union Carbide. He signed an agreement to have Tom Pike handle his holdings on a discretionary basis. As I understand it, Tom cashed in all the old boy’s blues and started swinging with the proceeds. Fairchild Camera, Texas Instrument, Teledyne, Litton. At the end of three months the total value of the old boy’s holdings was down by about twelve thousand. And Tom had made about forty trades, and the total commissions came to eight grand. The old boy blew the whistle on Tom, claiming that the agreement was that Tom would commit only twenty percent of his holdings in high-risk investments, that Tom had ignored the understanding and put the whole amount in high fliers, and had churned the account to build up his commissions. He had his lawyer send the complaint directly to the president of the firm in New York. They sent down a couple of lawyers and a senior partner to investigate. Brokerage houses are very sensitive about that kind of thing. Big conference, as I understand it. Complete audit of all trades. Tom Pike claimed that the man had told him that he was after maximum capital gains in high-risk issues and that he had other resources and could afford the risk. The man denied it. It looked as if Tom was in serious trouble. But one of the female employees was able to back up Tom’s story. She said the man had phoned her to get verification of the status of his account and his buying power, and that when he had been twenty-five thousand ahead of the game, he had told her over the phone that getting out of the tired old blue chips and letting Mr. Pike handle his account was the smartest move he had ever made. The old man denied ever saying that.”