Donald Westlake - What's The Worst That Could Happen?

“So you were saying good-bye to the house.”

“Yes.”

“And your wife was also saying hello to it, wasn’t she?”

Max gaped. “What?”

“Wasn’t that the first time your wife had ever been in that house, the first time she’d ever seen it?”

How on earth had the fellow found that out, and what in hell did it have to do with this burglary? Max said, “Well, as a matter of fact, she’s always wanted to get out there, but her own schedule, you know, so that was the last opportunity.”

“Before you sold the house.”

“That’s right.”

“Why are you selling the house, Mr. Fairbanks?”

Be careful, Max told himself. This man knows the most unexpected irrelevant things. But why does he care about them so much? “It’s part of a court settlement,” he said. “A legal situation.”

“Bankruptcy,” Klematsky said.

Ah hah; so he did know that. “We’re in,” Max said, “part of my holdings are in a Chapter Eleven—”

“Bankruptcy.”

“Well, it’s a technical procedure that—”

“Bankruptcy. Isn’t it bankruptcy, Mr. Fairbanks?”

“Well yes.”

“You’re a bankrupt.”

“Technically, my—”

“Bankrupt.”

Sighing, Max conceded the point: “If you want to put it like that.”

Klematsky flipped a page. “When did you and your wife decide to make this sentimental journey to Carrport, Mr. Fairbanks?”

“Well, I don’t know, exactly,” Max said. He was beginning to wonder if he should have an attorney present, any attorney at all, perhaps even a couple of them. On the other hand, what essentially did he have to hide from this fellow? Nothing. He’s here to investigate a burglary, nothing more. God knows why he’s going into all this other stuff, but it doesn’t mean anything. “The sale of the house was decided . . . recently,” he said. “So our going out there had to be a recent decision.”

“Very recent,” Klematsky said. “There’s nothing about it in your wife’s datebook.”

“Well, she doesn’t put everything in her datebook, you—”

Klematsky, surprised, said, “She doesn’t? You mean there’s even more stuff she does than what’s in there?”

“I have no idea,” Max said, getting stuffy with the fellow, wondering if he dared just stand up and walk out on him, yet still curious as to what all this was about. “I don’t make a habit,” he said, “of studying my wife’s datebook.”

“I have it here, you wanna see it?”

“No, thank you. And, to answer your question, I think the decision to go out there was quite spur of the moment.”

“It must have been,” Klematsky said. “Thursday night you had dinner with people named Lumley and some other people at the Lumleys’ apartment uptown.”

“You are thorough,” Max said, not pleased.

Klematsky’s smile was thin. “That’s why I get the big bucks.”

“You’re going to say,” Max suggested, “that Lutetia didn’t mention to anyone at the dinner party that we were going out to Carrport later that night.”

“Well, no,” Klematsky said. “I was going to say your wife told Mrs. Lumley she felt overtired, felt she’d been doing too much, and was looking forward to a good night’s sleep that night here in her own apartment.”

Max opened his mouth. He closed it. He opened it again and said, “We made the decision in the car, coming downtown.”

“I see. That’s when you talked to her about it.”

“We talked about it.”

“Who brought the subject up?”

“Well, I suppose I did,” Max said.

Klematsky nodded. He turned to another page in his damn notebook. He read, nodded, frowned at Max, said, “Wasn’t there a little something else about the house at Carrport recently?”

“Something else? What do you mean?”

“Wasn’t there a robbery there?”

“Oh! Yes, of course, in all this I’d completely forgotten—”

“Funny how memory works,” Klematsky said. “You were out there during the robbery, weren’t you?”

“Well, no,” Max said. “Just before. He broke in again after I left. The police caught him once, when I was there, but then he escaped from the police and went back to the house, after I’d left.”

“You mean the two of you were in the house—”

Good God, he even knows about Miss September. “Yes, yes, all right, the two of us were there, for perfectly innocent reasons—”

Klematsky stared at him. “You and the burglar were there for perfectly innocent reasons?”

Max stared, lost. “What?”

Klematsky spread his hands, as though all this were obvious. “The two of you were there, we agreed on that.”

“Not me and the—Not me and the burglar ! I thought you were talking about—Well, I thought you meant someone else.”

“And the police,” Klematsky went on, as though Max hadn’t spoken at all, “came in because the house was supposed to be empty and they saw it was occupied, and—”

“Not at all, not at all,” Max said. “I called the police. I captured the burglar, I held a gun on him, and I called the police. Check their records.”

“Well, I did,” Klematsky said, “and they’re very confusing. These small-town cops, you know. First there’s a report that the police found a burglar and nobody else there. Then there’s an amended report that the police found the burglar and two other people there, you and somebody else. And after that, there’s another amended report that the police found the burglar and one other person there, meaning you. And there’s also a 911 call, originally said to be by you, and then said to be by somebody else.”

Now Max had truly had enough. Much of this was embarrassing, some of it was less than forthcoming, but none of it had anything to do with what had happened in this apartment right here on Thursday night. “Detective,” he said, putting on his stern manner, the manner that usually preceded somebody being fired, “I applaud your enterprise in digging up all this irrelevant material, but that’s what it is. Irrelevant material. Somebody broke into this place Thursday night. They took well over a million dollars’ worth of property. I’m not sure yet how much they took. Why isn’t this your concern? Why do you keep going on and on about Carrport ?”

“They’re both burglaries, aren’t they?”

“Burglaries take place all the time! Are you saying these two are connected ? That’s absurd!”

“Is it?”

Suddenly a suspicion entered Max’s brain. The burglar; the ring. Could it be the same man, come back looking for his ring, following Max around? Was that, in his bumble-footed fashion, what this clown of a detective was getting at? Max said, “You think it’s the same people.”

“I don’t think anything yet,” Klematsky said. “I see all sorts of possible scenarios.”

He doesn’t know about the ring, Max thought, that much he can’t know about. So he doesn’t know about the burglar, and could the burglar be chasing me, chasing the ring? It seemed impossible, ridiculous. Distracted, he said, “Scenarios. What do you mean, scenarios?”

“Well, here’s a scenario,” Klematsky said. “You’re bankrupt.”

That again? “I’m technically—”

“Bankrupt.”

Max sighed. “Very well .”

“There’s a house full of valuable possessions, that you’re not supposed to be in, and you are in, while there’s a burglary going on.”

Is it possible the burglar could be hanging around now , somewhere nearby? A man batting too many gnats, Max said, “Before. I was there before.”