Bill Pronzini - Schemers

Yeah, sure. I should’ve known better.

I forgot about that insidious invention, the telephone. Silly me. If my brain had been functioning properly, I would have turned off the cell, unplugged the house phone, and drowned the answering machine in the bathtub.

The damn things, cell and house phones both, kept up a steady clamor from nine o’clock on. Three calls from Tamara. Three calls from media people, starting with Joe DeFalco, my old muckraking Chronicle buddy. Barney Rivera. Gregory Pollexfen. Even a damn telemarketer.

After the first two calls-Tamara, with a progress report from Jake Runyon on the Henderson investigation, and DeFalco-I wised up and cannily began to monitor the barrage of incoming calls. So I didn’t have to talk to two of the relentless media, or the telemarketer. Or Rivera, whose sadistic imp I could hear lurking inside his message: “Call me. We need to talk.” I knew what he wanted; Tamara had already told me he’d phoned the agency asking for a status report on the missing books and reminding her that the claim investigation was still open. I’d deal with him at my convenience, not his.

The other calls I answered. Tamara’s second had to do with another agency matter. I picked up when I heard Pollexfen’s voice because he sounded upset and didn’t say in the message he started to leave why he was bothering me at home. Curiosity is sometimes one of my strong points, sometimes one of the weak.

“The police haven’t found my first editions,” he said without any preamble. “They searched Jeremy’s records and the Coyne woman’s apartment and there’s no sign of them or what was done with them.”

“So I’ve heard. That’s too bad.”

“Too bad? Is that all you have to say?”

“They’ll turn up eventually. Or some evidence of disposal will.”

“The police don’t care about rare books. They won’t even let me into the library to clean up the mess. Blood spattered everywhere… more than a few volumes may be irreparably damaged.”

Some cold bird, Pollexfen. His brother-in-law had died in that room, apparently by his wife’s hand, and his primary concern was possible damage to his books.

“Why tell me, Mr. Pollexfen?”

“Why? Why do you think? You’re the only investigator I have any faith in.”

“It’s not my case any longer. The police-”

“Hang the police. What happened to my first editions is still an unresolved insurance matter. I’ve already spoken to Mr. Rivera at Great Western and he agrees. The investigation, your investigation, is to continue as long as the eight books remain unaccounted for.”

That little son of a bitch. He’d keep me on the hook as long as possible so he could laugh all the harder when I failed. Well, screw him and screw Gregory Pollexfen.

“If it continues,” I said, “it’ll be by somebody else. As far as I’m concerned, I’m no longer employed as an independent contractor by Great Western Insurance.”

“But you can’t quit,” he said angrily. “You have to keep investigating-”

I said, “No, I don’t,” and hung up on him.

The satisfaction was premature. I wasn’t done with the Pollexfen case, much as I wanted to be; Tamara’s third call convinced me of that.

“I just heard from Paul DiSantis,” she said. “Wants to see you ASAP. Urgent.”

“What about?”

“Mrs. Pollexfen. He says she’s innocent. Says her defense team wants to hire us to prove it.”

“Defense team?”

“Him and the criminal lawyer he got for her. Arthur Sayers. Only the best for the rich folks, huh?”

“Yeah.”

“I think we should do it, and not just for the money. High profile, you know what I’m saying? Good for business.”

Arguable, but I let it pass.

“I told DiSantis I’d get back to him as soon as I talked to you. Wouldn’t do any harm to listen to what he has to say, right?”

I tightened my grip around the receiver’s hard plastic neck and strangled it a little, just for fun. “My office,” I said. “One o’clock.”

A ngelina did not kill her brother,” DiSantis said. “She couldn’t have.”

“No? Why not?”

“Because she was unconscious for three hours before the shooting.”

“Passed out drunk? Pretty flimsy defense.”

He leaned forward in the client’s chair. He didn’t look quite as suave and self-possessed today. Angry, earnest, more than a little worried. He wasn’t just playing bed games with Angelina Pollexfen, I thought; he genuinely cared for her.

“She wasn’t drunk,” he said, “she was drugged.”

“Drugged? She reeked of gin.”

“Two martinis, that’s all she had. You saw how much she drinks-two martinis wouldn’t give her a mild buzz, much less cause her to pass out. Drinking the last one in the library is all she remembers until she woke up in police custody.”

“That doesn’t mean she was drugged.”

“The tox screen we had done does. Clonazepam. It’s still in her system.”

“What’s clonazepam?”

“It’s prescribed for anxiety disorders, among other things. A large dose mixed with alcohol makes a person sick and disoriented. And it can result in short-term memory loss.”

“You must have told the police about this. What did they say?”

“That it doesn’t change anything. That she took it herself, willingly.”

“Well?”

“She wouldn’t and she didn’t.”

“But she had a prescription for it?”

“Yes. For Klonopin, a trade name for the stuff,” he said. “Her doctor gave it to her a while back, when she was having mild panic attacks at night. There’s a supply in her bathroom medicine cabinet. She swears she hasn’t taken any in weeks, and that she’d never voluntarily take it with alcohol.”

“No? Why not?”

“She did that once and it made her sick. Very sick. She had to have her stomach pumped. That’s not an experience anyone would want to repeat.”

The time the EMTs had been called to the house, I thought. Matter of public record and a point in her favor.

“What’s her claim?” I asked. “That her brother spiked her martinis?”

“No. Her husband. He made the martinis, but he drank scotch himself.”

“So she’s saying Pollexfen drugged both her and Cullrane?”

“She’s not sure about Cullrane. We asked the police to have a tox screen done on him, but they said it wouldn’t make any difference if clonazepam is found in his system, she could’ve given it to him as well as to herself.”

“Why would Pollexfen drug the two of them?”

“Isn’t that obvious? To frame her for the murder.”

“How could he do that, Mr. DiSantis? Cullrane was shot in a locked room, Mrs. Pollexfen was the only other occupant, and I was outside with Pollexfen and his secretary when the round was fired.”

“I know that, I know it doesn’t seem possible. But I believe that Angelina is telling the truth. She didn’t kill her brother. And she had nothing to do with those books being stolen.”

“She think her husband is responsible for that, too?”

“Yes.”

“Why? Why would he dream up such an elaborate scenario to frame Cullrane for theft and her for Cullrane’s murder? What does he stand to gain?”

“He hated Cullrane and he hates her.”

“There’d have to be more than that. And there’s still the fact that he couldn’t have fired the shot that killed Cullrane.”

DiSantis spread his hands. “That’s why I’m here. If anybody can find out the truth and prove Angelina’s innocence, it’s you.”

“I’m not a miracle worker.”

“Mr. Rivera at Great Western Insurance thinks you are.”

Rivera again. I said between my teeth, “I’ll want to talk to Mrs. Pollexfen before I make any commitments. Has she been formally charged?”