The Missing Chapter

“Apparently not. Did Childress indicate to you that anybody was particularly angry with him, or possibly was threatening him?”

“Not really. Oh, he did mention a fight he was having with a book reviewer.” She screwed up her face. “And, yeah, he also muttered one time about how ticked off he was at his agent. He’d just been on the phone with the man — Ott, I think his name is — when I got there. And he was fuming. Called the guy all sorts of names and said he was going to fire him and get even with him.”

“How was he going to get even?”

“He didn’t say. But I just figured it was Charles sounding off. He did that a lot when he was angry. He had a bad temper.”

“Did you know he kept a gun in his apartment?”

“No, but I’m not surprised. He told me there’d been some burglaries in his neighborhood.”

“Miss Wingfield, can you account for your time on the day Childress was killed? Specifically, up until three in the afternoon?”

Clarice’s face froze. She got to her feet without a word. “I have told you all that I am going to,” she said tightly, raising her chin. “And I’m warning you, Mr. Goodwin: If you try to follow me back to the gallery, I will phone the police immediately.” Her hands shook as she swept her purse from the table and did an about-face, marching out into the sunlight. I made no effort to go after her.

Eighteen

I got back to the brownstone at four-fifty-five, just as the khaki-garbed elevator crew was wrapping it up for the day. “How’s it going?” I asked the straw boss, Carl — he was the tall, bald one who had come to the house to make the first inspection after the breakdown.

“Hey, we’re movin’ right along, nothin’ to it,” he responded brightly, twitching his shoulders as we stood in the entrance hall. “Should be all done sometime next week, I hope by Thursday.” His helpers, including Scarface, nodded. “One thing,” Carl added with a lopsided grin, “I guess we really riled up your boss about half an hour ago. We were all working at the top of the shaft, just outside his greenhouse, and he got sore about the noise, the drilling and all. He poked his head into the shaft and gave us what-for.” The other two nodded woodenly.

“What did he say?” I asked, raising an eyebrow.

Carl rubbed the back of his neck. “Well, something like ‘Gentlemen, will you cease that infernal din? You’ve long since awakened the dead from their eternal rest.’ ”

“And your response?”

He made a stab at laughing. “I didn’t honestly know what to say — given how famous he is and all. And after all, he is the client. I mainly just told him we knew we were noisy, that we were sorry but some of that was unavoidable, and that we’d try to finish up just as fast as we possibly could.”

“Sounds reasonable to me. Don’t worry about it; I’ll talk to him tonight. He’s not big on having a lot of noise around him.”

“Hell, we can appreciate that,” Carl said. “But there’s really no way to get a job like this done without a lot of racket. Usually when we work in a private home, we schedule things when the owner’s away on a long vacation, in Florida or Hawaii or someplace like that.”

“Believe me, no such option exists around here,” I assured him. “Mr. Wolfe is always — repeat, always — in residence. So each of us will have to make the best of the situation, himself included.” Carl smiled and the three of them trooped out the front entrance, undoubtedly delighted to be away from the wrath of Wolfe until Monday.

I went to the office and checked for phone messages; there were none. Wolfe had written several letters in his precise longhand, however, all of which I entered into the PC and printed out for his signature. There also were three bills. I was writing a check for the last one as Wolfe entered at three minutes after six and got settled behind his desk.

“I saw Clarice Wingfield. Do I report?” I said. He nodded grimly, and I gave him the whole works while he closed his eyes and interlaced his hands over his center mound. Fritz entered silently with the standard refreshments. When I finished, Wolfe came forward in his chair and got to really serious business: pouring beer.

“Your appraisal?” he rumbled. When he poses that question — and he rarely does unless the subject is a woman — he’s really asking if I think she is capable of homicide.

“Tough to call,” I answered. “The way I see it, Clarice is operating on several levels. Part of her is, or wants to be, urbane and sophisticated. She’d love to kick over the traces of small-town Indiana. But she’s also frightened — it doesn’t take a genius like you to pick up on that. She’s rearing a child alone, on a salary from that art gallery that is probably keeping her just above the poverty level. True, there is that fat trust fund for the kid that Childress set up. And she doesn’t want to go back home to the Midwest. God knows what kind of reception she’d get if she did.