“Luke was never a dresser,” Doll put in. “And he could get a little lax in the personal hygiene area.”

“I got rid of the gun as well. I’d bought it to protect our home from prowlers, and, in a manner of speaking, it had done its job. I dropped it down a storm drain.”

“An’ then you burglarized yourself,” Ray said, “an’ lit out for London.”

Nugent frowned. “I swear I don’t remember that part,” he said. “Is it possible for a man to do a thing like that and forget it entirely?”

“Darling, you were under a strain,” his wife said.

“I’ve always prided myself on my memory,” he said. “And it’s not like forgetting a telephone number.”

“You did bring two of the bags down, Harlan. And then you went up for the other two, while I waited in the lobby.”

“That’s when I must have done it,” he said. “I could have sworn—”

“What?”

“Nothing,” he said. “It doesn’t matter. And what earthly difference does it make? I’ve already admitted to murder. That’s a far more serious offense than making a false report of a crime.” He heaved a great sigh. “Well,” he said, “I suppose I’ll call my attorney now. And then you’ll want to follow the form and read me my rights, won’t you?”

There was a silence, and I started counting to myself. One. Two. Three. Four….

“Let’s not be too hasty here,” Ray Kirschmann said. “Before we get all caught up in anythin’ official, let’s see what we’re lookin’ at here.”

Someone asked him what he meant.

“Well, where’s our evidence? You made an admission just now in front of a roomful of people, but none of that’s admissible in court. Any lawyer’d just tell you to retract it, an’ that’s the end of it. Far as physical evidence goes, what we got’s a lot of nothin’. There’s a switch plate with no switch box behind it, provin’ somebody coulda been shot in a locked room, but so what?

“An’ as for you, young lady,” he said to Doll Cooper, “we got no doubt in my mind, an’ prolly not a lot in anybody else’s either, that you had somethin’ to do with the disappearance of those baseball cards. But we ain’t got the cards, an’ you ain’t got ’em either, an’ my best guess is they been sold an’ split up an’ changed hands three times already, an’ nobody’s ever gonna see ’em again. This gentleman here, Mr. Gilmartin, he might have a bone to pick with you, on account of it’s his cards you walked off with. If he insists on pressin’ charges, well, I think it’ll get kicked for lack of evidence, but I’d have to take you in.”

“I don’t want to press charges,” Marty said. “I just hope Miss Cooper might narrow her range in the future and limit her acting to stage and screen. She would seem to have a considerable talent, and it would be a shame to see it diluted.”

“You know,” Doll said, “you’re a gentleman, you really are. I’m sorry I took the cards from you. I was playing a part, that’s exactly what I was doing, and I think I fooled myself into thinking it gave me a dramatic license to steal. It’s corny to say this, but I may have actually learned a lesson tonight.”

Carolyn gave me a “get her” look, but the speech seemed to go over well with everybody else.

“So that’s that,” Ray said. “Brings us back to you, Mr. Nugent. What we keep comin’ back to is there’s no evidence, an’ I also gotta say the deceased don’t sound like no great loss. Of course there’s also the matter of makin’ a false report to an insurance company, claimin’ a loss when there was no loss.”

“That bothered me,” Nugent admitted. “The idea of making an actual profit on the man’s death. But once the burglary was a matter of record I could hardly fail to put in a claim.” He thought for a moment. “I could tell them I made a mistake. The jewelry actually turned up.”

“You sure you want to do that, Mr. Nugent? You sorta call attention to yourself that way. You’re in this deep, the shortest way’s straight ahead.” He put a companionable hand on the big man’s shoulder. “Far as makin’ a profit on all of this, believe me, sir, you got nothin’ to worry about. The rest of you folks, I’m thinkin’ maybe you all oughta clear outta here about now. The show’s over, an’ me an’ Mr. Nugent here need a little privacy to work out some of the details on how we’re gonna keep this whole matter private an’ personal.”

CHAPTER Twenty-three

I had a lunch date the following day, so I didn’t get a chance to sit down and talk with Carolyn until we met after work at the Bum Rap. I was a little late closing—a customer, a devout G. T. Henty collector, may his tribe increase—and by the time I got over there she was already at work on a scotch and soda. I asked Maxine to bring me a beer, and Carolyn told me that was a load off her mind.

“You’ve been working up a storm lately, Bern,” she said. “I was starting to worry about you.”

“Not to worry,” I said.

“I went on home by myself last night,” she said, “because I had the feeling you and Patience might want to creep off into the night.”

“On little iambic feet?” I shook my head. “I bought her a cup of coffee,” I said, “and put her in a cab.”

“I was wondering what she was doing there, Bern. I was trying to figure out how she could have stolen the cards or shot Luke Santangelo, and I came up with a couple of real winners. Why’d you have Ray bring her?”

“To save going through the whole thing another time,” I said. “I kind of owed her an explanation, after all the dates I broke and the fibs I told.”

“Lies, Bern. Once you’re past seven years old, you don’t get to call them fibs anymore.”

“Besides, I suppose I was showing off a little. And I thought it might cheer her up. She’s a nice woman, but she’s depressed all the time. She’ll come out of it for a minute or two to sing haiku to the tune of ‘Moonlight in Vermont,’ but then she’s off again, sinking into the Slough of Despond.”

She frowned. “Isn’t that what they called Babe Ruth?”

“That was the Sultan of Swat.”

“Right. It’s hard keeping them all straight. Bern, you gotta remember that Patience is a poet.”

“Who else would sing haiku?”

“And they’re all moody like that, especially the women. It’s a good thing most of ’em have to live in basement apartments or they’d be jumping out the window all the time. As it stands they kill themselves left and right.”

“Sylvia Plath, Anne Sexton.”

“That’s just the tip of the ice cube, Bern. It’s a known phenomenon, poetic depression in women. There’s even a name for it.”

“The Edna St. Vincent Malaise,” I said. “I’ve heard of it, but this is the first time I ever encountered it in person. And I think Patience and I have had a parting of the ways. Still, it didn’t hurt having her there. There were enough chairs to go around.”

She took a sip of her drink and asked me what had happened after the rest of them left.

“What you’d expect,” I said. “Ray’s instincts are pretty good sometimes, I have to say that for him. He had a hunch I could clear it all up, and that there’d be something in it for him. He was right on both counts. You were there to watch me clear it up, and after you left he got his share.”

“Harlan Nugent paid him off?”

“That’s not the way Ray phrased it. According to him, some money had to be spread around to make sure the investigation didn’t go any further. Well, he can make sure of that simply by keeping his mouth shut and not filing a report, so there’s not a lot of spreading that has to be done. Ray’s idea of sharing is to divide the dough up and put it in different pockets.”

“How much did he get?”

“Eighty-three fifty for openers. That’s what cash Nugent had on hand. There’ll be more when the insurance company pays off on the Nugents’ jewelry. My guess is Ray’ll pick up another twenty or twenty-five.”

“Eighty-three fifty.”

“Yeah.”

“That’s a familiar number.”