A Matter of Time Read online

  John was playing it too heavy. It was time he stepped in. “You’ll have to excuse John. This case is frustrating. We’re sure the man’s not Jack O’Brien, too. We came because we hoped you could help us prove it. It’s indelicate to mention it, I know, but you knew him best.”

  “It is that. But if I can help, I must.” She was in such rigid control that her accent and structural stumbling all but disappeared. “There is so little to tell. He was like a — what do you call those spring storms? — like a tornado. Here, there, gone before he left a deep hurt. I know what people thought. But love him I never did.... Does that surprise you, Sergeant?”

  “No.” But it did. He had fixed notions about his elders and their times. Casual affairs then? No, not till later, once Prohibition had reached its absolute nadir.

  John horned in. “Would you be willing to look at the body?”

  “For what?”

  “To tell us how it can’t be O’Brien. So we have something to go on.”

  That flustered her. It meant a trip downtown. “I... I don’t know. To going out I’m not accustomed.” Her accent thickened again. She slowed her speech as she groped for words.

  Cash groped too, for the high school German that had been the army’s excuse for sticking him into the AMG operation. Maybe he could catch her off-guard.

  But no useful phrases would come.

  What about maintenance? he thought. A big house like hers, so old, had to have paint, tuckpointing, and repairs all the time. The plumbing had to be crankier than a ’47 Ford. How did she manage upkeep without going out? And, if they did find someone who had made repairs, would they learn anything?

  Harald softened his approach. “I know. I don’t think you’d have to if we could find some other way. Say, fingerprints.”

  She frowned, turned to Cash for an explanation. He tried, showing her the difference between their thumbs. “The natural oils leave marks,” he told her. “I’m sure you’ve noticed, housekeeping. No two people’s are alike. We hoped you’d have something around....” Her housekeeping habits did not appear the sort that would leave fingerprints lying around for fifty years.

  Cash was fishing for an invitation to see the rest of the house.

  She was cool for having been so long alone. Panic scrambled around behind her eyes, like a roomful of mice with a cat thrown in, but she did a good job of controlling it. Time had made her timid, but she refused to be spooked when the world assaulted her privacy.

  “Is no chance, I think. No. But look we can. Where do we begin?” She rose, patted her skirts down.

  “Any souvenirs?” Cash asked. “Something glass might have taken a print. Or paint if he touched it while it was tacky. Or a photo.”

  “Was a photograph once, yes. Just one. Your Leutnant Carstairs never gave it back. I do not remember any painting doing then. Everything has been painted since. Many times. I would not leave a dirty glass sitting for fifty years.”

  “We’re grasping at straws,” Cash admitted.

  Her spectral smile informed him that she was aware of that fact.

  For a moment he felt he and John were being manipulated, that her cooperation was a subtle form of mockery.

  “Well, come then. Upstairs we’ll go and see.”

  Cash didn’t know what to expect. A locked, dusty room, memorially closed in respect for a withered love? Something like that. He just couldn’t take her no love claim at face value.

  What he did see was pretty much what an ordinary visitor would expect: just an old lady’s house.

  Cash stuck close. He was briefly bemused by her spryness on the stairs. John hung back, sticking his nose everywhere. With another of her quiet smiles, Miss Groloch pretended not to notice.

  “Where to look I really do not know,” she said, leading Cash into a bedroom. “But this seems the best place to start. It’s a mess. I’m sorry.”

  “My wife should be so slack.”

  “Most of his time he spent here. Or in the kitchen. He was that kind.”

  Despite her ingenuous claim, the room had been kept with the care of a woman who had little else to occupy her. Cash picked up a perfume bottle that looked old enough, but which was of cut glass. “Any presents?” he asked. “He ever bring you anything?”

  “Presents?” She looked thoughtful. “Now that I think, yes. Once. A porcelain doll. From Germany. Dresden, I think. He stole it, probably.”

  She went to an alcove off the bedroom which seemed to function as storage space, though it had probably been meant for a nursery. She opened a wardrobe which showed flecks of dust, rummaged around the back of a cluttered top shelf.

  Cash noted four dresses hanging inside, all in styles a woman might have worn shortly after the Great War. They appeared to have hung undisturbed since their proper period. Miss Groloch wore appropriate old lady clothing now.

  She might live outside it, but she was not unaware of the world.

  It just keeps getting weirder, Cash thought.

  “Here it is.” She brought out something wrapped in yellowed tissue paper that crumbled when she tried to unwrap it.

  “Hold on.” John appeared genielike, a doily in hand. “Lay it here. You’ll ruin any prints if you handle it.”

  “Fah!” she said. “Filthy it is. Laziness. No excuse is there. Someday to clean this, I will come.” She stirred through the wardrobe, muttering to herself. “Sergeant, your force. It has the... vas ist?... charity?” She held up several sound but ancient shoes.

  “We do.” He forebore saying that he didn’t think anyone was desperate enough to accept something fifty years old.

  John slipped away with the doll, carrying it in front of him, on his palms, as though it were a nitro bomb. Miss Groloch abandoned the wardrobe in disgust, continued giving Cash the tour. John rejoined them as they were about to look into the attic, which proved to be a vast, dark, dusty emptiness. Miss Groloch refused to go up.

  “Up there Tom gets sometimes,” she said. “Filthy he comes back. I maybe should get one of those vacuum sweepers....”

  “Don’t you go climbing around up there,” Cash told her. “If you fell over a joist and broke a leg, who’d come help you?”

  She smiled, but didn’t reply.

  Cash was satisfied. He did not bother going into the attic. As Carstairs had noted so long ago, she was too smart to leave any evidence. If ever there had been any.

  But Harald asked to see the basement. He seemed determined to push till he found the limit of her cooperation.

  The basement had to be entered through the kitchen. Miss Groloch did have a refrigerator, Cash noted. It was so ancient that it had the round radiator stack on top. Ammonia coolant? he wondered.

  To Cash the basement looked as innocuous as the rest of the house. Already certain they would find nothing, he remained at the foot of the steps taunting himself with Miss Groloch’s accent while Harald prowled. What little looking he did was for his own curiosity’s sake.

  As he had suspected, the furnace was a conversion, coal to gas, probably with fuel oil as an intermediate step. The electrical wiring was the old exposed single strand, heavy guage copper wire. He noticed several places where the insulating fabric had become frayed.

  “You see where the cloth on the wires is getting ragged? That could cause a fire someday. And this floor joist. You see where the insulator goes through? By the knot. It’s cracked. You should have a carpenter scab on a sister beam before it settles and ruins your floor.”

  “This house and I, we are alike,” Miss Groloch responded. “Getting old. Coming apart. Nothing lasts forever.”

  It was odd, the way she said that. Her wistfulness caused Cash to examine her expression. For a moment she wore a faraway look, then gave him that ghostly smile. Once again he had the feeling he was being manipulated.

  “Tear it down they will when I’m gone, I expect. A pity that would be. It is a good house. Love and attention it needs, is all. Houses, they are like people, that way.”

  Be
fore she could pursue this unexpected line, Harald said, “Well, sorry to take up so much of your time.” He seemed disappointed. “We appreciate your cooperation.” He made it sound as though he would have appreciated a confession a good deal more.

  “I am happy to help, any time. You will be back, yes?”

  That had the ring of accusation. Harald shrugged.

  “You are always welcome. To being alone one never grows accustomed.”

  John grunted, took a last look around.

  Loneliness. Cash wondered why she had never taken another friend after Jack O’Brien. Or had she? He would have to double-check with Annie.

  Back in the car, after another round of tea and cookies, Harald asked, “What do you think?”

  “What’s to think? It’s perfect. We’ve got to find another goddamned angle.”

  “Something’s out of kilter. Something’s not straight.”

  “How so? I didn’t see anything.”

  “I don’t know. Petty shit, I guess. Maybe it was the basement. You notice anything queer?”

  Cash tried to visualize. “No.”

  “Probably nothing, but there were a couple things I noticed. Like, it wasn’t a full basement.”

  “So?”

  “So the end that would’ve gone under the rest of the house had a wall that looked like it was built a long time after the other three. The stone was different. And it was laid on top of the floor. And the floor was poured a long time after the basement was dug. It looked like it was done in sections. Like somebody mixed and poured it by hand.”

  “So? What can we do about it? Never mind the buried men and the secret rooms. You think Carstairs wouldn’t have found them? Think we should cite her for not getting a building permit? Even then you’d have to prove she violated the building codes. They probably did it before there were any.”

  “You’re no help, Norm. Not a damned bit. We already know Carstairs wasn’t infallible. And there were other anomalies.”

  “Ooh, college words. Like what?”

  “A washer and dryer. And water heater.”

  “That’s a crime?”

  “When the rest of the house is so old-fashioned?”

  “No, now hang on, John. You might think you’ve got to have a telephone, radio, and TV, but somebody who grew up without wouldn’t. The stuff she’s got is practical. And she had an icebox. I mean refrigerator. You take a bushman out of the Kalahari, offer him one modern appliance he could take back, I bet you he’d want a refrigerator....”

  “Okay. Okay. So that explains some of it. Maybe. But not where she gets the money.”

  “You’re bound and determined to nail her for something, aren’t you?”

  That was an aspect he kept worrying about himself, though, technically, it did not relate to their case. “Look into it if you want. Go down to the IRS. Maybe they’ve got something.”

  “If they’ll let me have it.” They swung into the station lot. “But they’ve probably never heard of her.”

  “Take care of the car, hear? I’ll haul the doll upstairs.”

  “Got one for you, Beth,” Cash said, opening the door with his rear while keeping both hands on the doll.

  “What?”

  “Print evidence. Lab stuff. Want to take it to them for me? Okay? You got a box, or something?”

  “Kleenex box okay?” She fished one from her wastebasket.

  “Fine. Anything. Give it to George, all right?”

  “Special?”

  “The Groloch thing.”

  “Your wife left a message. I put it on your desk. I’ll take this over while I’m remembering it.”

  He studied her behind as she left. Not bad. Someday he might give that a try.... He returned to his desk.

  His In tray had had a litter in his absence. It was all routine stuff that could have been handled by a semiliterate, patient chimp. Mostly revenue-sharing record-keeping that no one would ever look at once it left his Out tray.

  Cash got less done than the chimp would have. His mind refused to stay off Jack O’Brien, Miss Groloch, and the certainty of Sister Mary Joseph. Somehow, something had to add up. But it just would not.

  The puzzle of Miss Groloch was, more and more, displacing that of O’Brien’s death.

  And the clock kept capturing his eye. Beth had left the memo, in purple ballpoint, square in the middle of his blotter.

  Norm (in wide, looping script): Annie says she went ahead. A man from

  the Relocation Board will visit you tonight. Try to get home early.

  Beth

  P.S. I guess this is a surprise.

  It was. Despite her talk, he had expected Annie to fold.

  While he was trying to make up his mind whether or not to leave right away, a voice said, “You’ve done it this time, Cash.” Lieutenant Railsback appeared before his desk.

  “You look like Rip Van Winkle the day he woke up. What’s happening?”

  “Your china doll. They got a print off it. Already. Right thumb.”

  “No.”

  “Yes.”

  They stared at one another. All Cash could think was that this was impossible. But if it were true, there was a hole in Miss Groloch’s defenses. She had made a mistake.

  “Hank, I saw that doll come out of her wardrobe. I can’t prove it, but it sure as hell looked like it’d been in there for years.” He recalled impressions of being manipulated. Had the old woman known they would find a matching print? Was she mocking them? No. That would mean too much attention. She wouldn’t want that. “The tissue paper...”

  “I already told them to work on it. Told them to run every test they could think of, and to go to FBI if they had to.” He dragged a chair up to Cash’s desk, flopped in. “There’s got to be a hole. Somewhere, there’s got to be a hole. Or we’re up against a Fu Manchu.”

  “Uhm. You remember Doc Savage?”

  “The old man never let me read that crap. So I read his after he goes to sleep now. Yeah, I know him. Even went to the movie. Too campy. What about him?”

  “Just think it’d be nice if we could put in a call to New York, have him clean this up. You notice how he always gets the job done in a couple days?”

  “Don’t pay any attention to the rules, either. Just busts people up.” He snorted. “Long as we’re wishing, why not go for a psychic? There’s that fat English broad out in the County....”

  Cash thought about it. It was straw-grabbing time, and there were precedents. Then it struck him. “We wouldn’t dare. We’d be up to our necks in reporters. That’s their meat.”

  “Norm, I’m getting close to retirement. I don’t need this.”

  Close? Cash thought. More like five years. Matter of viewpoint, he supposed. “I didn’t ask for it either.”

  “You sure as hell did. You had to keep poking and poking.”

  What was keeping John? Cash had wanted to talk to his partner, but did not feel like listening to Railsback while waiting around. He also wanted supper and time to put his heels up before the refugee placement interview.

  “Look,” he said, “we’ve had it this long and nobody’s popped a cork. Why don’t we just keep it canned? There’s no pressure. Meanwhile, put a hold on that stiff. We’ve got a print from the old lady’s house now. We can put some heat on.”

  “Yeah? All right.” Railsback was unimpressed. “Wish we could just bury him. That’s what I’d do with most of them if it was up to me. Often as not, they need what they get.” He rose. “Give my best to Annie. Have to have you over sometime.”

  “Right. Same to Marylin.” Cash hoped he would never receive a more definite invitation.

  The lieutenant left without responding. Toward the end of the day he always grew depressed and remote, especially when he had no work to keep him overtime.

  Annie got to Cash sometimes, as all wives do to their husbands, but, he felt, if she came on like Marylin Railsback, he would have bailed out years ago.

  John wasn’t going to show, Cash deci
ded. He left.

  “Fish again?” he grumbled as he walked in the door. “I could smell it clean out in the street.”

  “You were expecting maybe filet mignon?”

  “Bad day?” He stalked Annie across the kitchen, put his arms around her from behind.

  “Not really. Just nervous.”

  “Second thoughts?”

  “And thirds and fourths. What’s your problem?”

  “You can still back out.” Then he explained about the case.

  “‘Curiouser and curiouser,’ as Alice said. I thought you’d given up on that one.”

  “We never give up. We just put it away for a while. Getting sorry we came back. Oh. Don’t tell anybody about it. Hank told me not to tell you.”

  “Okay.” She twisted free, commenced setting the table. “What do you want to wear?”

  “You going through with it?”

  “All the way. A little buck fever, that’s all.”

  He was not sure she understood the relationship of Michael to refugee in her own mind, but asked no questions. He never would. It was hers to work out.

  “When’s this guy supposed to show up?”

  “Around eight. They were real nice when I told them about your job.”

  “Sure.”

  “What’s that supposed to mean?”

  “Just that they’re having trouble finding people. You know me. Always the cynic. Bureaucrats don’t make things convenient to be nice. They got a Moses somewhere who brought down a tablet telling them to be horse’s asses.”

  “You’re right. You are a cynic. Don’t get going tonight.”

  The bell rang a minute after eight.

  “That’s them already!” Annie exploded in a frenzy of last second seam-straightening and hair-patting. “They’re early.”

  “It’s eight.” He went to the door. Startled, he said, “Yes?” to the man he found there.

  “Jornall Strangefellow. From the Relocation Office.”

  “Oh. We’ve been expecting you.” Someone, anyway. But not a six-foot-four-inch, roly-poly black man with a bizarre name. Cash tried to cover his reaction. “Come in.” He led the way to the living room. “Annie, this’s Mr. Strangefellow. From the Board. My wife, Ann.”