Lawrence Block - The Burglar In The Closet

She looked at me. “I’m so glad I called you, Bernie.”

“Well, I don’t know how much help I can really be-”

“I’m really so glad.” Her eyes did a little number, and then suddenly her forehead crinkled up and her gaze narrowed. “I just thought of something,” she said. “You were going to burglarize Crystal ’s apartment on Saturday night, weren’t you? Imagine if the killer had picked that time to strike!”

Let’s imagine no such thing, Jillian. “But Crystal was home last night,” I reminded her, carefully shifting her gears and pointing her in a safer direction. “I would never have gone in if she was home.”

“Oh. Of course. I just thought-”

Whatever she just thought will be forever unrecorded because she didn’t get to the end of the sentence. There was a brisk rat-tat-tat, a loud knock on the clouded glass panel of the outer door. “Open up in there,” said a professionally authoritative voice. And added, quite unnecessarily in my opinion, “It’s the police.”

Jillian blanched.

I, in turn, did the only possible thing under the circumstances. Without the slightest hesitation I grabbed her by the shoulders, drew her close, and brought our mouths together in a passionate embrace.

The knock was repeated.

Well, what the hell. So was the kiss.

I don’t know if Jillian was nonplussed, but she certainly wasn’t plussed. Her face held an expression somewhere between bemusement and astonishment, with pronounced overtones of shock. Have I mentioned her eyes? They were the faded blue of well-washed denim, and they were large, and I had never seen them larger.

Rat-tat-tat.

“Bernie!”

“Police. Open up there.”

I was still gripping her shoulders. “I’m your boyfriend,” I whispered urgently. “You’re not Craig’s girl, you’re my girl, and that’s why you happened to ask me to drop over, and we’ve been doing a little innocent smooching.”

Her mouth made an O, her eyes showed instant comprehension, and her head bobbed in affirmation. Even as I was pointing at the door she was moving toward it. I snatched a Kleenex from the box on Marian’s desk, and as the door opened to reveal a pair of plainclothes cops, I was in the process of dabbing at Jillian’s scarlet lipstick.

“Sorry to interrupt you,” said the taller of the two. He had bigger shoulders than most people, and very widely spaced eyes, as if while in the womb he’d toyed with the idea of becoming Siamese twins and decided against it at the last minute. He did not sound at all sorry to interrupt us.

“We’re police,” the other one said. During the July blackout someone said “Dark out, isn’t it?” That was as unnecessary a sentence as I’ve ever heard uttered, and “We’re police” came a close second.

For one thing, they’d told us as much through the locked door. For another, they damn well looked the part. The shorter one was slender rather than broad. He had black curly hair and a small, inexpertly trimmed black mustache, and no Hollywood casting director would pick him for a cop. He looked more like the member of the gang who turns stool pigeon in the second-to-last reel. But standing there in front of us he looked like a cop and so did the one with all the shoulders. Maybe it’s the stance, maybe it’s the facial expression, maybe it’s just some aspect of the inner self they manage to project, but cops all look like cops.

This pair introduced themselves. The block of granite was Todras, the stoat was Nyswander. Todras was a detective and Nyswander was a patrolman, and if they had first names they were keeping them a secret. We furnished our names, first and last, and Todras asked Jillian to spell her first name. She did, and Nyswander wrote all this down in a little dog-eared notebook. Todras asked Jillian what people called her for short and she said they didn’t.

“Well, it’s just routine,” Todras said. He seemed to be the natural leader of the two, the offensive guard clearing a path for Nyswander to weasel through. “I guess you heard about your boss, Miss Paar.”

“There was something on the radio.”

“Yeah, well, I’m afraid he’s gonna have his hands full for a while now. You got the office closed up, I see. You call around and cancel his appointments yet?”

“For the rest of the day.”

The two of them exchanged glances. “Maybe you should cancel them for the rest of the month,” Nyswander suggested.

“Or the rest of the year.”

“Yeah, because it really looks as though he stepped in it this time.”

“Maybe you better close the office for good,” Todras said.

“Maybe you should.”

“And find somebody else to work for.”

“Somebody who figures divorce is enough and stops short of murder.”

“Or someone who when he kills a former spouse finds a way to get away with it.”

“Yeah, that’s the idea.”

“Right.”

It was really something, the way the lines came back and forth from the two of them. It was as though they had a vaudeville act they were working on, and they wanted to break it in in the smaller rooms before they took it on the road. We were a sort of warm-up audience, and they were making the most of us.

Jillian didn’t seem to think they were all that hysterical. Her lower lip, which now carried less than its usual quantity of lipstick, trembled slightly. Her eyes looked misty. I’m your boyfriend, I thought, trying to beam the thought her way. Craig’s just your boss. And don’t for God’s sake call him Craig.

“I can’t believe it,” she said.

“Believe it, Miss Paar.”

“Right,” came the echo from Nyswander.

“But he wouldn’t do something like that.”

“You never know,” Todras said.

“They’ll fool you every time,” said Nyswander.

“ But Dr. Sheldrake couldn’t kill anyone!”

“He didn’t kill just anyone,” Todras said.

“He killed somebody specific,” Nyswander said.

“Namely his wife.”

“Which is pretty specific.”

Jillian frowned and her lip quivered again. I had to admire the way she was using that lip-quiver. Maybe it was real, maybe she wasn’t even conscious of it, but she was fitting it into a generally effective act. It might not stun ’ em in Peoria the way Todras amp; Nyswander might, but she got her point across.

“He’s such a good man to work for,” she said.

“Been working for him long, Miss Paar?”

“Quite a while. That’s how I met Bernie. Mr. Rhodenbarr.”

“You met Mr. Rhodenbarr here through the doc?”

She nodded. “He was a patient of the doctor’s. And we met here and started seeing each other.”

“And I suppose you had an appointment for some more dental work this morning. That right, Mr. Rhodenbarr?”

It wasn’t right. Tempting, perhaps, but not right, and if they checked the appointment book they’d know as much. Why tell an obvious lie when a less obvious one will do?

“No,” I said. “Miss Paar called me and I was able to get over to comfort her. She was anxious and didn’t want to be here alone.”

They nodded to each other and Nyswander wrote something down. The time and temperature, perhaps.

“I guess you been a patient of the doc’s for some time, Mr. Rhodenbarr.”

“A couple of years now.”

“Ever meet his former wife?”

Well, we were never formally introduced. “No,” I said. “I don’t think so.”

“She was his nurse before they got married, wasn’t she?”

“His hygienist,” Jillian corrected. The two of them stared at her. I said that I understood Mrs. Sheldrake had retired upon marrying her employer, and that by the time I became his patient she was no longer working at the office.