Росс Томас - Twilight at Mac’s Place

“Indirectly,” Haynes said. “He’s the dead body Tinker Burns discovered out in Reston. Gilbert Undean.”

McCorkle leaned back in his chair and gazed up at the ceiling. Padillo rose and stood, staring at the fire. Finally, he turned to Haynes and said, “Steady left you a mess, didn’t he?”

“He led a messy life.”

“Our lady of the silenced Sauer,” McCorkle said, still gazing at the ceiling. “I keep wondering just how pissed off she was as she leafed through those three hundred and eighty-odd blank pages.”

“If she is pissed off,” Haynes said, “she’s pissed off at you guys, not at me. She might even suspect you two of pulling a switch. She might even suspect that you know where the true manuscript is.”

“I think,” Padillo said to McCorkle, “that we’ve just been invited to the dance.”

“Summoned is more like it,” McCorkle said. “I wonder if it’ll be fast or slow and if I can remember the steps.”

“You might still manage a waltz,” Padillo said. “If it’s not too brisk.”

“You’ve already accepted, right?”

Padillo nodded and said, “Isabelle,” as if the dead woman’s name explained everything.

McCorkle took a moody swallow of his drink, the last swallow, placed the glass on a table and turned to Haynes. “What d’you plan to do — auction the memoirs off, or at least pretend to?”

“Only the rights to them.”

“What if the bidders demand a quick peek?”

“Each bidder is already convinced of what’s in them,” Haynes said. “If they weren’t convinced, they wouldn’t be bidding.” He smiled then, that charming smile he had inherited from his dead father. “But the important thing now is to convince the bidders that the true manuscript is guarded by a pair of dragons.”

“He means us,” Padillo said.

“Then he means a pair of old dragons with dull claws, missing teeth and not too much fire left in their bellies.”

Haynes smiled his inherited smile again and said, “You could even let it be known around town that for a slice of the gross you’ve agreed to handle — what’s the best thing to call it, the security? — on a very fat but very murky deal.”

“I suppose we could drop a discreet word here and there,” Padillo said, looking at McCorkle, who frowned, as if trying to think of ears a discreet word could be dropped into. A moment later the frown disappeared and he smiled contentedly.

“I believe this is called setting out the bait,” Padillo said.

Haynes nodded. “If the prospective buyer or buyers believe they can steal what otherwise they’d have to pay a great deal of money for, I think they’ll try to steal it.”

“Especially,” McCorkle said, “if they’re convinced that only the Alzheimer boys will be guarding it.”

“It might be better,” Haynes said, “if they hear that I’m guarding the true manuscript and that you two’re guarding me.”

“How easy or hard do you want us to make it for them?” Padillo said.

“Medium hard.”

“And after they get past us — then what?”

“Well, then I suppose I’ll have to make some kind of citizen’s arrest, won’t I?” said Granville Haynes.

It was shortly before 1.45 P.M. that Sunday when the Salvadoran maid appeared on the south-facing glassed-in sun porch where Hamilton and Muriel Keyes were just finishing a lunch of ham salad, with custard still to follow. The maid was carrying a beige telephone, which she plugged into a jack, while informing Keyes in Spanish that a functionary from his bureau was determined to speak with him, even if it meant violating the meal.

Keyes thanked the maid and waited until she disappeared into the house before he picked up the phone and greeted his caller with, “Now what?” After listening without expression for two minutes, Keyes said, “I’m leaving now,” broke the connection and put the phone down beside his scarcely tasted glass of white wine.

“Well?” Muriel Keyes said.

“It’s Undean. Gilbert Undean.”

She frowned and said, “Whatever does he want now?”

Keyes stared at his wife with the unseeing expression of someone who is thinking hard about other things. “Nothing. He’s been shot.”

She bit her lower lip as if in minor penance for the snippiness of her last question. “I’m sorry. Suicide?”

“No,” Keyes said as he rose and looked at his watch. “I should be back by five or five-thirty.”

“Please be careful. I almost spun out twice in McLean this morning.”

“How was she? You never said.”

“Dilly?” Muriel Keyes shrugged. “Well, Dilly’s depressed and Dilly’s despondent. Maybe even suicidal. She’s finally realized he isn’t coming back this time.”

“Can’t blame him,” Keyes said. “But I wish he would so you could resign as her chief hand-holder.”

“Poor Dilly,” she said. “And poor Mr. Undean. Did he have a family?”

“No.”

“He lived alone?”

“In Reston.”

“How very sad.”

It was the forty-three-year-old sheriff of Fairfax County himself who briefed Hamilton Keyes in a small conference room in the Reston Library. A three-man team of CIA specialists was still prowling through Undean’s house, hunting for possibly classified material and ignoring the gibes of the county homicide investigators.

Keyes and the sheriff sat at the six-foot-long conference table, the sheriff at one end, Keyes at the other. The sheriff wore a dark blue suit, white shirt and a red and blue tie. Keyes suspected him of having attended church that morning. Keyes, who hadn’t attended church in twenty years, wore what he often wore on Sundays: a gray tweed jacket, a very old and frayed pink shirt with a button-down collar, gray wide-wale corduroy pants, rather new, and a pair of gleaming fifteen-year-old cordovan loafers that had been resoled three times. The sheriff had given the pink shirt a dubious glance.

“You want it from the beginning, I expect,” the sheriff said, producing a long notebook that Keyes thought resembled those used by newspaper reporters.

“If you would, please.”

After placing the notebook on the table, the sheriff removed his gold-rimmed glasses, held them up to the ceiling’s fluorescent lights for a cleanliness inspection and resettled them over gentle brown eyes that Keyes thought were possibly a disguise.

The glasses rested on jug-handle ears and a born-to-pry nose. The ears were partially camouflaged by a mass of auburn hair that had been shaped by an artist. Below the glasses and nose was a wide thick-lipped mouth, curiously pale, that reigned over a smallish chin. From six feet away, Keyes thought he caught a faint whiff of Canoe aftershave.

The sheriff opened the notebook, studied it for a few moments, frowning, and then used a bass drone to describe how a male Caucasian, identifying himself as Tinker Burns, had used 911 to report the death of Gilbert Undean, 67. After two deputies arrived at the house of the deceased, they determined that Mr. Undean was indeed dead, apparently from a single gunshot wound in the forehead. A quick search revealed no weapon, virtually ruling out suicide.

Mr. Burns refused to give the investigating deputies any information other than his name, age (66) and place of permanent residence (Paris, France) until he talked with his lawyer. The lawyer arrived fifty-seven minutes later and conferred with his client. Mr. Burns then agreed to make a statement.

“Who’s the lawyer?” Keyes asked.

“Howard Mott himself.”

“Well, now.”

Again consulting his notebook, the sheriff said Mr. Burns claimed to have met the deceased for the first time two days before at the funeral of a mutual friend, a certain Steadfast Haynes. This morning, on impulse, Mr. Burns decided to visit the deceased to reminisce about their friend. When Mr. Burns reached Reston, he hesitated to drive down the steeply sloping street to Mr. Undean’s house because of the deep snow. Instead, he had walked. It was while walking to the deceased’s house that Mr. Burns saw someone come out of it, shoulder a pair of skis and start up the street toward him.