The Burglar in the Closet

  “Well, that’s not exactly true.”

  “Oh?”

  “I know who he is.”

  “Really?”

  “And I’ve even got some proof.”

  “Indeed.”

  I got up from the desk, opened the frosted glass door, motioned Dennis inside. “This is Dennis,” I announced. “He knew Crystal pretty well and he was a good friend of Frankie Ackerman.”

  “She was a hell of a fine woman,” Dennis said.

  “Dennis, that’s Jillian Paar. And this is Dr. Craig Sheldrake, and Mr. Carson Verrill.”

  “A pleasure,” he said to Jillian. “Pleasure, Doc,” he said to Craig. And he smiled at Verrill.

  To me—to all of us—he said, “That’s him.”

  “Huh?”

  “That’s him,” he said again, pointing now at Carson Verrill. “That’s Crystal’s boyfriend. That’s the Legal Beagle. That’s Johnny, all right.”

  Verrill broke the silence. It took him a while to do it, and first he got up from the chair and extended himself to his full height, and when he spoke the words were on the anticlimactic side.

  “This is ridiculous,” he said.

  What I said wasn’t much better. “Murder,” I said, “is always ridiculous.” I’m not proud of it but that’s what I said.

  “Ridiculous, Rhodenbarr. Who is this oaf and where did you find him?”

  “His name’s Dennis. He runs a parking garage.”

  “I don’t just run it. I happen to own it.”

  “He happens to own it,” I said.

  “I think he’s been drinking. And I think you’ve taken leave of your senses, Rhodenbarr. First you try to manipulate me into defending you and now you accuse me of murder.”

  “It does seem inconsistent,” I allowed. “I guess I don’t want you defending me after all. But I won’t need anybody to defend me. You just have to confess to the two murders and the police’ll probably drop their charges against me.”

  “You must be out of your mind.”

  “I should be, with the kind of week I’ve had. But I’m not.”

  “Out of your mind. In the first place, my name’s not John. Or hasn’t that occurred to you?”

  “It was a problem,” I admitted. “When I first expected you I wondered if maybe your name was John Carson Verrill and you dropped the John. No such luck. Carson’s your first name, all right, and your middle name is Woolford. Carson Woolford Verrill, the man with three last names. But you’re the man Frankie Ackerman was talking about. It’s pretty obvious, when you stop to think about it.”

  “I don’t follow you, Bernie.” Jillian did look puzzled, all right. “If his name is Carson—”

  I said, “‘And now, heeeeeeeere’s Johnny.’ Johnny Who, Jillian?”

  “Oh!”

  “Right. There’s millions of people named John, it’s hardly a rare enough name to make Frankie go into Ed McMahon’s routine every time she met somebody with the name. But Carson, that’s something else again. That’s not so common as a first name, and maybe it struck Frankie funny.”

  “Ridiculous,” Verrill said. “I’m a respectable married man. I love my wife and I’ve always been faithful to her. I was never involved with Crystal.”

  “You’re not that respectable,” Jillian said. “You flirt.”

  “Nonsense.”

  “You’d have made a pass at me last night. You were sort of moving in that direction. But I wasn’t interested and you backed off.”

  “That’s absurd.”

  “You knew Crystal years ago,” I said. “You knew her when she was married to Craig. That’s right, isn’t it?”

  Craig confirmed that it was. “Carson represented me in my divorce,” he said. “Hey, maybe that’s why I got such a reaming in the alimony. Maybe my trusted attorney was already hopping in the sack with my wife and the two of them teamed up to put me through the wringer.” The World’s Greatest Dentist let that thought sink in, and his face took on a new set. Murder was one thing, he seemed to be thinking, but shafting a pal in the alimony department was really rotten. “You sonofabitch,” he said.

  “Craig, you can’t believe—”

  “I wish I had you in the chair right now. I’d grind your teeth clear to the gum line.”

  “Craig—”

  “You’ll have free dental care for the next few years, Mr. Verrill,” I said. “Those penitentiary dentists are terrific. You’re in for a treat.”

  He turned on me, and if those weren’t a killer’s eyes then seeing’s not believing. “You’re out of your mind,” he said. “You have a lot of theories and nothing else. You don’t have any proof.”

  “That’s what the bad guy always says in the movies,” I said. “That’s when you know he’s really guilty, when he starts talking about the lack of proof.”

  “You’ve got the prattling of a convicted burglar and a drunken car parker. That’s all you’ve got.”

  “What’s this car-parker crap? I don’t park the cars. I own the garage.”

  “But as for hard evidence—”

  “Well, it’s a funny thing about evidence,” I said. “You usually find it when you know what to look for. When the police start showing your photo around it’s going to turn out that more people saw you with Crystal than you ever realized. You found a way to get past my doorman last night, and that couldn’t have been the hardest thing in the world, but he or someone else in the building will probably remember you. And then there’s the jewelry. You didn’t plant all of Crystal’s stuff at my place because you’re too damned greedy for that. Where’s the rest of it? Your apartment? A safe-deposit box?”

  “They won’t find any jewelry.”

  “You sound pretty confident. I guess you found a safe place for it.”

  “I never took any jewelry. I don’t know what you’re talking about.”

  “Well, there’s the counterfeit money. That ought to be enough to hang you.”

  “What counterfeit money?”

  “The twenties.”

  “Ah, the elusive twenties.” He arched an eyebrow at me. “I thought we were to understand that the equally elusive Knobby headed south with them.”

  “That’s what he must have done. But I’ve got a hunch there was a sample batch that Grabow ran off in advance, because I’ve got the damnedest feeling there’s a couple thousand dollars’ worth of those phony bills in your office.”

  “In my office?”

  “On Vesey Street. It’s funny how deserted the downtown section is on a Sunday. It’s as if a neutron bomb got rid of all the people and just left the buildings standing there. I’ve got a strong hunch there’s a thick stack of twenties in the center drawer of your desk, and I’ll bet they’re a perfect match to the plates in Walter Grabow’s loft.”

  He took a step toward me, then drew back. “My office,” he said.

  “Uh-huh. Nice place you’ve got there, incidentally. No view of the park like Craig has, of course, but you can see a little of the harbor from the one window, and that’s something.”

  “You planted counterfeit money there?”

  “Don’t be silly. Knobby took the money south. How could I plant it?”

  “I should have killed you, Rhodenbarr. If I’d known you were in the closet I could have set it all up right then and there. I’d have left it looking as though you and Crystal killed each other. You stabbed her and she shot you, something like that. I could have worked it out.”

  “And then you could have taken the twenties from the closet while you were at it. It would have simplified things, all right.”

  He wasn’t even listening to me. “I had to get rid of Grabow. I’d met him. And she might have talked to him. Knobby was just someone who took her home now and then after a hard night’s drinking, but she had a real relationship with Grabow. He could have known my name, could have guessed I was involved.”

  “So you got him to meet you at my apartment?”

  “He thought he was meeting you. I
had his phone number. It was unlisted but of course he’d given it to Crystal. I called him, told him to come up to your apartment. I told him I had his counterfeit bills and I’d give them back to him. It wasn’t hard getting past your doorman.”

  “It never is. How did you get into the apartment itself?”

  “I kicked the door in. The way they do on television.”

  So much for my pick-proof locks. One of these days I’ll get one of those Fox police numbers like Grabow had. Not that it had done Grabow much good—

  “Then when Grabow got there the doorman buzzed upstairs and I told him to send the man up. Naturally the doorman assumed I was you.”

  “Naturally.”

  “Grabow said I didn’t seem like a burglar. But he wasn’t at all suspicious.” He considered for a moment. “He was easier to kill than Crystal. He was big and strong, but it wasn’t hard to kill him.”

  “They say it gets easier as you go along.”

  “I was hoping you’d come. I’d make it look as though you fought and killed each other. But you didn’t come home.”

  “No,” I said. I started to say I was at Jillian’s, then remembered Craig was there. “I was afraid the police would have the place staked out,” I said, “so I got a hotel room.”

  “I didn’t wait that long anyway. I was uncomfortable staying there with his body in the middle of the room.”

  “I can understand that.”

  “So I left. The doorman didn’t notice me coming or going. And I didn’t leave any fingerprints there. I don’t think it means that much, a little counterfeit money planted in my desk. I’m a respected attorney. When it comes down to my word against yours, who do you think the police will believe?”

  “What about these people, Verrill?”

  “What, this drunk from the garage?”

  “I own the damn place,” Dennis said. “It’s not like it was a hot-dog wagon. You talk about a parking garage and you’re talking about a piece of profitable real estate.”

  “I don’t think Craig will want to tell the police everything that’s come to light,” Verrill went on. “And I trust Miss Paar knows which side of her bread holds the butter.”

  “It won’t work, Verrill.”

  “Of course it will.”

  “It won’t.” I raised my voice. “Ray, that’s enough, isn’t it? Come on out and arrest this son of a bitch so we can all go home.”

  The door to the inner office opened and Ray Kirschmann came through it. “This is Ray Kirschmann,” I told them. “He’s a policeman. I let Ray in earlier before I went to pick up Dennis. I suppose that was forward of me, Craig, picking your lock and everything, but it’s sort of a habit of mine. Ray, this is Craig Sheldrake. Jillian you’ve met. This is Carson Verrill, he’s the murderer, and this fellow here is Dennis. Dennis, I don’t believe I know your last name.”

  “It’s Hegarty, but don’t apologize, for God’s sake. Here I had your name all wrong myself. I was calling you Ken.”

  “Mistakes happen.”

  “Jesus,” Ray said to me. “You’re the coolest thing since dry ice.”

  “I’ve got the guts of a burglar.”

  “You said it, fella.”

  “No, as a matter of fact you said it. Do you want to read Carson here his rights?”

  “The guts of a burglar.”

  I let him go on thinking so, but weren’t we all pretty cool? Dennis was positively gelid, identifying Verrill so beautifully when he’d never seen the man before in his life. If I hadn’t introduced him all around, he might just as easily have picked Craig as the elusive Legal Beagle.

  And I’m not so sure I had the ice-cold nerves he’d credited me with, either. I have to admit I got pretty shaky when Verrill drew yet another dental scalpel from his jacket pocket while Ray droned on about his right to remain silent. Ray was reading from the Miranda card and didn’t even see what was going on, and my jaw dropped and I froze, and then Carson Verrill gave out with a desperate little yelp and stuck the scalpel straight in his own heart. Then I went back to being cool again.

  CHAPTER

  Twenty-one

  “The usual thing,” I told Jillian. “He spent more than he earned, he dropped some money in the stock market, he got himself in debt up to his ears, and then he misappropriated funds from a couple of estates he was handling. He needed money, and you’d be surprised what people will do for money. He probably started the deal in motion with the idea of picking up a commission of a few grand. Then he saw a way to get the whole thing. Besides, by this time Crystal was probably more of a liability than an asset. The relationship had dragged on for years and here was a way for him to end it once and for all and pick up a hundred thousand dollars in the process.”

  “He seemed so respectable.”

  “I guess he didn’t kill Frankie Ackerman. He didn’t mention it and it’s too late to ask him now. I thought she might have called him last night but I guess her death was either an accident or suicide. If he’d killed her he’d have done it with a dental scalpel.”

  She shuddered. “I was looking right at him when he did it.”

  “So was I. So was everybody but Ray.”

  “Every time I close my eyes I see him doing it, stabbing himself in the chest.”

  It bothered me, too, but I had an image to maintain and wasn’t about to show it. “It was considerate of him,” I said breezily. “He saved the state the cost of a trial, not to mention the expense of housing and feeding him for a few years. And he gave Craig an opportunity to keep out of the limelight and made Ray Kirschmann a few dollars richer.”

  And that was neat, wasn’t it? A few thousand dollars had changed ownership, moving from Craig to Ray, and as a result certain details of the crime would never find their way into the record books. There hadn’t been any burglary, for example. I was never in the place on Gramercy Park. With the right murderer tagged for the murders and nobody in a position to complain, it was easy enough to sweep unpleasant details under the rug.

  I leaned back, took a sip of wine. It was nighttime and I was at Jillian’s place and I didn’t have to worry about the police dropping in. Sooner or later Todras and Nyswander would collect some kind of statement from me, but in the meantime I had other things on my mind.

  I moved to put an arm around Jillian.

  She drew away.

  I stretched, forced a yawn. “Well,” I said, “I guess it might not be a bad idea to take a shower, huh? I haven’t had a chance to change my clothes, and—”

  “Bernie.”

  “What?”

  “I, uh, well, the thing is Craig’s coming over soon.”

  “Oh.”

  “He said he’d be coming over around nine-thirty.”

  “I see.”

  She turned to look at me, her eyes round and sorrowful. “Well, I have to be practical,” she said. “Don’t I?”

  “Sure you do.”

  “I was upset with him because of the way he acted, Bernie. Well, it’s certainly true that some people are better under pressure than others. And different people work well under different kinds of pressure. Craig’s a dentist.”

  “The World’s Greatest Dentist.”

  “When he’s doing some tricky work on a patient, he’s got nerves of steel. But he wasn’t prepared for being arrested and thrown in a jail cell.”

  “Few people are.”

  “Anyway, he’s serious about me.”

  “Right.”

  “And he’s a fine man who is well established in a decent profession. He’s respectable.”

  “Carson Verrill was respectable.”

  “And he’s got security, and that’s important. Bernie, you’re a burglar.”

  “True.”

  “You don’t save money. You live from one job to the next. You could wind up in jail at any time.”

  “No argument.”

  “And you probably wouldn’t want to get married anyway.”

  “Nope,” I said, “I wouldn’t.”


  “So I’d be crazy to throw away something solid with Craig for…for nothing. Wouldn’t I?”

  I nodded. “No question about it, Jillian.”

  Her lower lip trembled. “Then how come I feel rotten about it? Bernie—”

  It was time to reach out and take her in my arms and kiss her. It was definitely time to do just that, but instead I put my wineglass on the coffee table and got to my feet. “Getting late,” I said. “I’m tired, believe it or not. Had a busy day, all that running around and everything. And you want to freshen up so you’ll be at your best when Mr. Thirsty drops in. Me, I want to get on home and hang a couple of new locks on my door and take a shower.”

  “Bernie, we could still, uh, see each other. Couldn’t we?”

  “No,” I said. “No, I don’t think we could, Jillian.”

  “Bernie, am I making a big mistake?”

  I gave the question some real thought, and the answer I supplied was the honest one. “No,” I said. “You’re not.”

  In the cab heading through the park I had a moment or two where I felt like Sidney Carton. A far, far better thing that I do, than I have ever done. And all that crap about how noble it is to lay down one’s life for a friend.

  Except crap was what it was, all right. Because the World’s Greatest Dentist wasn’t all that much of a friend, and what was I giving up anyway? She was cute and cuddly and she made good coffee, but lots of women are cute and cuddly and into more interesting things than the polishing of teeth. And I’ve never met one yet who makes better coffee than I make for myself, with my filter pot and my custom-blended mixture of Colombian and Guatemalan beans.

  The closest I came to Sidney Carton was that I was showing a little quiet class, which is about what Carson Verrill did when he died neatly instead of doing something gross like taking a header out the window. Because I could have complicated that young woman’s life no end.

  I could have told her, for example, who the ardent lover was who’d been with Crystal while I was cooped up in her closet. I could have said it was none other than Craig himself, and the What’s-Her-Name he’d said he had to hurry back to was none other than Jillian herself, and I hadn’t recognized his voice because the closet muffled it. I don’t know if that’s true or not. It would explain some of Craig’s confused behavior, and I really tried not to hear the voice and might not have recognized it if it was Craig. But I never pursued the question, not then and not later on. To this day I don’t know if it was him.