Ed McBain - Three Blind Mice

“I thought… out of the rain…”

“Well, I can’t get any wetter, can I?” she said.

She was, in fact, thoroughly wet. Dress soaked through to the skin. This was the scene where they’re in Africa, he thought, and the gorgeous starlet falls in a pool near a waterfall, and when she gets out of the water you can see her nipples through her wet clothes. Matthew could see her nipples through the wet red dress. He looked away.

“Why don’t we… uh… at least get in the car, okay? Out of the rain. Really. There’s no sense standing here in the rain. The papers’ll get all wet.”

“Yes, you’re right,” she said. “I hadn’t thought of that.”

He went around the VW to the door on the driver’s side of the Acura, and was starting to open the door when he realized…

“It’s locked,” he said. “My keys are in the house. My wallet, too.”

I normally put it on the dresser. With my keys and my change.

“Well, okay,” she said, and reached down to take off first one shoe and then the other. “These are totally ruined,” she said as she followed him to the house, walking barefooted through the puddles that had gathered on the walk, a shoe in each hand. “Brand new,” she said. “Two hundred dollars.”

Brand new, he thought.

And took another look at where the VW had its nose buried in the Acura’s fender. Shaking his head, he opened the door of the house and stepped aside to let her by.

“Come in,” he said. “Please.”

And realized by the sound of his voice that he hadn’t quite succeeded in quashing his anger.

She caught the tone.

“I really am sorry,” she said.

She looked like a drowned rat. Hair hanging straggly and limp on either side of her face, mascara running under her blue eyes, dress hanging on her like a sack. He felt a sudden wave of sympathy.

“It was an accident,” he said gently. “Accidents happen.”

“Oh shit !” she said.

He looked at her, startled.

“My purse is in the car. With my driver’s license in it. And my insurance stuff is in the glove compartment.”

“I’ll go get it,” he said.

“No, don’t be ridiculous,” she said. “I’m soaking wet as it is.”

“So am I.”

“Well, that’s true, but…”

“I’ll be right back,” he said, and went out into the rain again.

He shook his head as he came around the rear fender of the Acura where the VW was still snuggled up against it, brand new, he thought. On the passenger seat he found a beaded red handbag, and in the glove compartment he found a folder containing, among other papers, the car’s registration and insurance card. He came out into the rain again, the terry robe soaked through now, his hair plastered to his head, this was truly ridiculous.

She was standing just inside the door to the house when he came in. As if afraid of intruding further on his privacy. He placed a call to the police, reporting the accident, and then they exchanged driver’s licenses and insurance cards, which is when he learned that her name was Patricia Demming, and that she was thirty-six years old, and that she lived at 407 Ocean, which was on Fatback Key.

It had stopped raining by the time the police car arrived. One uniformed officer in it; in Calusa the police patrolled solo. They gave him all the details of the accident, and then they ascertained that Patricia Demming’s car was still drivable, and Matthew watched her as she backed its nose out of his fender and drove off up the street to her party.

Brand new, he thought again.

I’m the only black man in Calusa with a high-top fade,” Warren Chambers said.

Matthew thought he was talking about an automobile. A High-Top Phaed. Some kind of foreign convertible. Automobiles were very much on his mind this Friday morning. He was waiting for a call from his insurance adjustor.

“Next one I’m going to get will be a ramp,” Warren said, and ran his hand over the top of his head. It was then that Matthew realized he was talking about his haircut. A high-top fade. Which looked like a flower pot turned upside down and sitting on top of Warren’s head, the hair below it shaved very close to the scalp. He did not want to ask what a ramp might possibly be. He figured a man’s hair was as sacrosanct as his castle; too many battles had been fought over hair in the sixties. This was the here and now.

“How was your trip?” Warren asked.

“Wonderful.”

“So you came back to this , huh?” Warren said, and indicated the copy of the Calusa Herald-Tribune lying on Matthew’s desk. There was another picture of Stephen Leeds on the front page; the paper had been running his picture every day since his arrest. The headline read: WITNESSES SAW LEEDS. The Subhead read: Wife Questioned Again .

“Who’re these witnesses?” Warren asked.

“Bannister hasn’t yet sent me his list. I’ll be stopping by there later today.”

“You think they’ve really got anyone?”

“I hope not.”

“Why do they keep questioning the wife?”

“She’s his alibi. But there’s also a rumor running around town. To the effect that they were in it together. Leeds and the wife.”

“Uh-huh,” Warren said, and nodded thoughtfully, giving the impression that the idea might be worth consideration.

He was a soft-spoken man in his mid-thirties, his shy, reserved manner and horn-rimmed glasses giving him the look of an accountant (even with the high-top fade) rather than what one imagined a private eye should look like. Beanpole tall and thin, a former basketball player for the University of Missouri — which he’d attended for two years before joining the St. Louis P.D. — Warren still moved like an athlete and somehow appeared graceful even when he was sitting, as he was now. He was a meticulous investigator and a dead shot; Matthew had seen him put away a raccoon and a human being with equal aplomb. His eyes were the color of his skin, as dark as loam, pensive and serious now.

“How’d the rumor start?” he asked.

“In yesterday’s Trib . Some guy wrote a letter.”

“A nut?”

“Sure. But you know the Trib .”

“And this time around they’ve got a real ax to grind.”

“Oh?”

“Leeds’s father once tried a hostile takeover. This was ten years ago, before he died. A big chain in the South won out. But the publisher’s still pissed about the old man’s move.”

“Where’d you learn this?”

“At the Trib’s morgue,” Warren said, and grinned.

“So you think we may be in for a media trial, huh?”

“Let’s say you might start thinking about a change of venue. How’d Leeds explain his wallet at the scene?”

“He said he may have left it on his boat.”

“When?”

“The afternoon of the murders.”

“Very flimsy,” Warren said, shaking his head. “If a person plans to do murder, he doesn’t first go to the Leeds boat on the off chance he’ll find a wallet there.”

“Not necessarily a wallet. Anything personal.**

“Even so.”

“Something he could plant at the scene. To link the murders to Leeds. It’s easier to get onto a boat than into a house, Warren.”

“Granted.”

“We’ve got to find out how that wallet got at the scene. Because if Leeds himself dropped it there…”

“Goodbye, Charlie,” Warren said.

“Mm,” Matthew said, and nodded gravely. “So what I’d like you to do…”

“Where does he keep the boat?” Warren asked.

In the city of Calusa, Florida, the State Attorney’s office used to be a motel. It still sat across the street from a ballpark that once was used for big-league spring training before the team moved to Sarasota; nowadays, teams sponsored by beer companies played there. The old motel sat behind what used to be the biggest hotel in town. You could still see the twin white towers of the hotel — now an office building — from a courtyard surrounded by what used to be motel units but were now offices for the State Attorney’s staff.