Joe Gores - Glass Tiger

The evergreens dotting the well-tended lawn towered over the two-story house. At a guess, planted when the place had been built, probably in the 1920s. He paused before he committed himself, then, feeling almost guilty, took out the temporary FBI credentials he had been given when he was approved for the assignment by Dorst’s report. There was a shiny badge, and a commission card with the red, white and blue FBI seal on it.

He rang the bell. The door was opened without hesitation by a handsome late-thirties blonde with big blue eyes and big hair and a full-lipped mouth that looked ready to smile merrily in the right circumstances.

‘May I help...’ She saw his FBI credentials, and grabbed his arm with surprising strength. ‘Oh my God! Come on in!’

A slightly bewildered Thorne was led into a spacious living room with a hardwood floor partially covered by an ancient Karistan rug that had retained its deep, rich colors. She kept on talking over her shoulder as she led him to a leather couch behind an oak-burl coffee table so polished it gleamed with subdued inner fires.

‘Nate will be home in a few minutes! Do you want some coffee? Of course you do! I’m Jewel.’ By this time, somehow, she had him seated on the couch. ‘I’m just glad that someone is still looking into the terrible tragedy that befell Nisa!’ He noted she had mentioned only Nisa, not Damon. ‘If you would prefer tea...’

‘Coffee is fine.’ He knew he had lucked out here, so he added, ‘And yes, their tragedy is why I am here.’

‘There you are!’ she said, departing for the kitchen.

In the corner a stately grandfather clock as tall as a man leisurely tock-tock-tocked off the seconds. Above the smoke-blackened stone fireplace was an oil painting of a cavalier in a stiff ruffled collar and wearing a swash hat with a long plume in it. His right hand rested on the gleaming pommel of a sheathed sword. He looked half-pugnacious, half-confused.

The top of the baby-grand piano was covered with framed photographs. There were four featuring Nisa, moving her through the years, starting with her wedding day — she blonde and beautiful, intense, Damon young and handsome and virile-looking. Hair-styles changed, but not her face: heart-shaped, sensual, with a short nose and intelligent liquid-blue eyes. Nor her figure: a laughing swim-suit shot showed she was taut-waisted, long-legged, full-busted. Which of her attributes had captivated at least three men — Wallberg, Jaeger, and her husband? Four, if he counted her own father’s obsession with her.

He heard a key in the front door lock and turned just as Jewel came from the rear of the house carrying an ornate silver tray with a plate of shortbread cookies and a silver coffee urn and Meissen cups and saucers on it.

‘Here’s Nate now!’ She talked in exclamation points.

Nate Bemel was a slight gentle-faced man in his sixties, six inches shorter than his wife, wearing an expensive wool suit, conservative tie, and gleaming shoes. Jewel briefly hugged him.

‘Nate, this is Mr...’ She trailed off. ‘Oh dear, I didn’t even get your name!’

‘Brendan Thorne.’

‘Mr. Thorne is from the FBI. They’re finally doing something about Nisa’s death!’ She turned to Thorne. ‘Don’t think I’m callous, we liked Damon. But he just rode her coattails! Rode her coattails.’

Thorne and Nate shook hands. When they were all seated and coffee had been poured, Thorne made an almost placating gesture.

‘I hope my coming here today doesn’t raise false hopes. We are still investigating their deaths, but the case is ongoing so I can’t really...’

‘Can’t talk about it.’ Nate gave little bird-like nods of his head, a sweet smile illuminating his face. ‘Just what I tell the authorities when they come around asking questions about my patients. I don’t keep notes of my sessions, so I tell them, Go get a court order, and we’ll talk again. They never do. Verbal reports without written back-up are hearsay. When you go to a shrink you should get confidentiality.’

Unless the FBI invokes National Security, Thorne thought. Then even the shrink didn’t get confidentiality.

He said, ‘How did you and Nisa meet, Mrs. Bem... Jewel?’

‘She was running Gus Wallberg’s campaign for governor—’

‘Hardly running it, Jewel love.’

‘Well, she was too! In everything except title! I was publicity director for Dayton’s, Minneapolis, and she was looking for contributions to Gus’s campaign. We hit it off right away!’

‘Jewel raised a lot of money for the governor,’ Nate said fondly. ‘She knows how to work public companies for donations.’

Jewel gave a wide-open laugh. ‘I grew up on a ranch in Texas, and got my fill of the outdoors early on! The only wide-open space I like is the main floor at Nieman-Marcus. Hiking is what you do between Saks Fifth Avenue and Lord & Taylor!’

‘Have you spoken with Nisa’s dad?’ asked Nate, doing Thorne’s work for him. ‘We met him only once, but we liked him a lot and sort of hoped he’d come to see us here after they were murdered. But...’ He shrugged.

‘That’s actually one of the questions I came to ask, where is Mr. Corwin? Also, although I don’t have a court order, I’m hoping you might be willing to let me see any diaries, notebooks, memos, calendars, things like that — anything Nisa kept when she worked on the president’s election campaign. I’m sure the other special agents took most of it away with them, but—’

‘They took nothing! Just asked a few questions and left!’

Even though Johnny Doyle had given him the probable answer, Thorne wanted their take on a final question.

‘Do you know why Nisa didn’t join Wallberg’s campaign at first, then signed on just before he was nominated?’

‘She wanted to get pregnant,’ said Jewel promptly. ‘She felt the clock was ticking! But Damon had a low sperm count, and wouldn’t hear of artificial insemination. So she went back to the campaign. Just couldn’t stay away from politics!’

Nate started to remonstrate, ‘Jewel, that’s just—’

‘That’s what she told me. And what difference does it make now, anyway? They’re both dead.’

‘Did you notice anything in her papers that might—’

‘Oh, we never looked at them!’ said Jewel. ‘Just too sad!’

‘They’re in my workroom in the garage,’ said Nate. ‘I restore antique clocks as a hobby.’ He gestured at the man-high clock in the corner. ‘A work of art, that one. Pine-faced grandfather, roller-pinion, eight-day wooden movement. American, not German. Early American clockworks were made of wood because they couldn’t get iron, and the brass industry hadn’t started yet.’ Again that shy, sweet smile that Thorne had come to find endearing. Nate got carefully out of his chair. ‘Come on, I’ll give you those papers.’ He added almost wistully, ‘You can fix a damaged clock a lot easier than you can a damaged psyche.’

‘Just too sad!’ exclaimed Jewel Bemel.

Nisa had not kept a diary as such, but Thorne found her notebook had served much the same function: shopping lists, notes to herself, strategies for Wallberg’s campaign all jumbled together. There was also a manila folder with two pages of hand-written notes confirming that she had helped Corwin look for the shooter. Thorne went there first.

January 20th. Damon in Des Moines with the campaign for the Iowa caucus. I knew Dad was looking for the man who had shot him, so I said I wanted in. He finally agreed.

As Thorne had surmised, Corwin had dug slugs out of the spruce from the sighting-in of the shooter’s rifle. Then he had found eight spent cartridge cases at the ambush site up on the hillside that Thorne had uncovered the day before. He took the brass to a hand-loader for analysis and anything distinctive, then canvassed Portage for info on the shooter.