Irish Alibi (18 page)

“Did you read it?”

“Enough to see the kind of thing it is.”

“I'd better take that.”

“Please.” Kitty pushed the book toward him.

Michael Beatty was more wary. “How long is this going to go on?”

“Until it's over. “

“But that boy confessed.”

“We're going to need more than his word that he did it.”

Annoying people at the Tranquil Motel at least kept Jimmy away from Fauxhall. The assistant prosecutor felt that he was being made a public fool of. The collapse of his case against Magnus O'Toole followed by the theatrical confession of Malcolm Kincade had undermined Fauxhall's sense that he was a serious man engaged in a serious profession.

Despite his determination to take the Kincade twins seriously, he had refused to let Quintin Kelly return to Athens, Georgia. “He is a material witness.”

“What did he witness?” Crumley asked.

“Would you prefer that I make him a suspect?”

“You wouldn't dare.”

But in his present mood Crumley was not sure. The upshot was that he would agree, as a professional courtesy to the prosecutor's office, to keep his client in the vicinity and available. That meant the condo where Kelly and O'Toole were still ensconced.

“You didn't tell me that Madeline had left one of her novels in the bar,” Jimmy said to Phyllis Brickhouse.

“She didn't. She gave it to me.”

“And you gave it to Kitty.”

Phyllis smirked. “She sits in there crunching numbers, convinced that this place is Sodom and whatchamacallit. I thought she'd like a little proof.”

“Tell me about the Kincade boy.”

“What a doll.” Her smile faded. “What more can I tell you? He came in, he had a few drinks, he recognized the woman and sat at her table with the bearded guy. I've told you all this. I told your assistant.”

“My assistant?”

“The boy cop. Larry something.”

“Douglas!”

“Larry Douglas. That's right. He said he had gone to St. Joe.”

“After your time.”

“His fiancée came in.” Phyllis made a face. “I thought you had to be in shape to be a cop.”

Jimmy took another look at suite 302, which was still marked off as a crime scene. He would have been better advised to sit at his desk and study the list of things they had taken out of the suite. But that would have put him in range of Fauxhall. He called campus security and told Larry Douglas he was coming out.

“Any help I can be, Stewart.”

Phyllis's remark had brought back to Jimmy the conversation he had had with Casey in the courthouse cafeteria that morning. Casey sauntered around the courthouse as if he owned the place, which was not far from the truth.

“You know a kid named Larry Douglas?” he asked Jimmy.

“What's he done?”

“Ho ho. Feeney in the coroner's office thinks he'd make a good cop.”

“He's already on campus security at Notre Dame.”

“He wants to be a real cop.”

“It's better than working.”

“Ho ho. He thought you'd write a recommendation for him.”

“Who, Feeney?”

Casey was out of ho hos. “I'd consider it a favor.”

Jimmy had agreed, for what good it would do Douglas. If Casey wanted him on the force, he would get on the force.

Douglas was waiting for him outside the entrance of campus security.

“I thought you'd want to talk in private.”

They crossed the road to the eatery in Grace Hall, taking their coffee to one of the outside tables. It was a beautiful day, the trees turning, sunny, students hurrying in dozens of directions.

“So how is the investigation going?”

“I thought you'd want to report to me. Phyllis Brickhouse told me you were at the Tranquil Motel impersonating a cop.”

“I dropped by, sure. We talked. She thought I was a cop?” Larry's smile rounded his cheeks, and his eyes lit up.

“Casey tells me you want to join the force.”

Larry was overjoyed. He owed it to Feeney, he knew that, although he hadn't been sure that the assistant coroner would deliver on his promise to intercede for him with Casey.

“You probably have better perks on the Notre Dame payroll.”

“I'm being wasted here.”

“Will your girlfriend stay here?”

“Where else would she go? Bring me up to speed on the investigation.”

“Well, we have a confession.”

“The Kincade boy? You think he did it?”

“I wonder who fed Grafton all that crap? You didn't talk to him, did you?”

“I've been thinking, Stewart. What if it was an inside job?”

“How do you mean?”

“A theft! Do we know what was missing from that suite? Look, that place is crawling with illegals. Say one of them was caught rifling through the lady's things. She panics, thinking she'll be exported. There is a struggle…”

“You have anyone in mind?”

“How about those cleaning ladies?”

“How about Phyllis Brickhouse? How about the manager?”

“You don't like the idea.”

“It's no dumber than the one I'm pursuing.”

“Rufus James?”

5

Benjamin Evans had located the bearded man who was Rufus James in a motel in Dowagiac, Michigan, after hours of patient phone calls to motels in the area. But it was a clean-shaven Rufus James who came to the door of the unit when Jimmy showed up with the local sheriff. He just looked at Jimmy when he said he'd like to have a few words with him.

“What is this? I'm working.”

“It's about the murder at the Tranquil Motel in South Bend last Sunday.”

“I don't know what you're talking about.”

“You were seen there last weekend. I thought you might be able to help in our investigation.”

“You're kidding.”

“You spent time with the murdered woman in the motel bar Saturday night. She took you to her room.”

“What are you, the morals squad?”

“No. Homicide. What I would suggest, Mr. James, is that you agree to come back to South Bend with me, acting just as a dutiful citizen, to be of what help you can.”

“And if I don't?”

Jimmy showed him the warrant Fauxhall had been almost eager to have made out.

The assistant prosecutor was losing faith that the Kincade twins were the solution to his problem. “I'll nail them for something, by God. You don't make a mockery of the law with impunity.” Meanwhile, Fauxhall thought it would help if they could talk to the other bearded man.

“I do this under protest,” James said.

“Just so you do it.”

Jimmy thanked the sheriff and headed back to South Bend with a silent Rufus James, wondering if the man in the passenger seat was the murderer they sought.

“You shaved.”

“After puberty, it becomes a habit.”

“How much have you read about the killing?”

“Look, I've been holed up in that motel for days, writing.”

“All the witnesses commented on your beard.”

“Maybe I'll let it grow again.”

“Prisoners often do.”

“What the hell does that mean?”

“Just an observation.”

*   *   *

Interrogations have a logic of their own, but it is seldom sequential, going from point A to point B; rather, circuitously, off on one or another apparent tangent suggested by an answer or sometimes just a facial reaction, the exchange meanders on. Rufus James proved to be an interesting subject.

His status as a writer was obviously most important to him, and not just any sort of writer, as Jimmy discovered when he observed that the victim, too, had been an author.

James snorted. “Do you know her stuff?”

“She told me all about it.”

“You weren't impressed.”

“What is my opinion against that of hundreds of thousands?”

“A lot better?”

Jimmy got a little disquisition on the nature of true literature. James made it sound like a religion of which he was one of the high priests. “I don't suppose you know my novel.”

“Tell me about it.”

“You wouldn't like it.”

“What is my opinion against that of hundreds of thousands?”

“Ha. I doubt that ten thousand people have read my novel.” He didn't seem to be complaining. “The Revolt of the Masses took over publishing decades ago. The way that woman described her writing! She just sits down and the story comes. ‘I feel as if I'm taking dictation.'” He seemed to be mimicking Madeline's voice. “I suppose that is the great difference. Some books are written, others are dictated. Meaning that the writer is simply listening to all the echoes of the stuff she has read.”

“The bartender thought the two of you got along very well.”

“Madeline was an appetizing creature.”

James observed a moment of silence. He didn't pretend to be grieving.

“And then you were interrupted by a young man named Kincade.”

“It's amazing. I came north to get away from the South, so I could write about it, and I found myself surrounded by Johnny Rebs. The sentimental South. Pure myth, of course.”

“So the two of you went off to her suite.”

James looked at him.

“No comment?”

“You seem to know all about it.”

“This is my job. You realize that, don't you? I'm not prying into your personal life.”

“Just asking if I went to bed with that woman?”

“Did you?”

“Of course. It seemed the path of least resistance.”

“Did you resist?”

“Not really.”

“And again you were interrupted by young Kincade.”

“He was feeling no pain. He wanted to apologize for interrupting us before by interrupting us again.”

“You went off with him.”

“It was a way to get away. Besides, he offered to give me a lift.”

“Did he?”

“I had a car. A rental.”

“What are you writing now?”

“A novel.”

“A Southern novel?”

“What do you know about the Underground Railroad?”

“Tell me.”

“It's what they called the path runaway slaves took north. Dowagiac was a station on that railway.”

“Tell me about last Sunday.”

“I thought we were talking about Saturday.”

“Madeline O'Toole was killed on Sunday. A bearded man was seen at the motel. A bearded man the witness connected with Saturday. Why did you shave off your beard?”

“Have you ever grown a beard?”

“No.”

“Don't. They're a damned nuisance.”

“Did you return to the motel on Sunday?”

“Yes.”

The answer surprised Jimmy. Surely the fellow got the drift of these questions? “What time?”

“It was afternoon.”

“Madeline O'Toole was killed on Sunday afternoon.”

“I know. She was dead when I let myself into the suite. I had taken the plastic key when I offered to get rid of the boy, telling her I would be back. Once outside, I decided to get back to Michigan.”

“But you returned to the motel on Sunday afternoon?”

“Yes. When I realized she was dead, I just got out of there.”

“Have you any idea what your story sounds like?”

“Tell me.”

“A work of fiction.”

6

And so the murder of Madeline O'Toole seemed solved. Jimmy brought the good news to the Knight apartment, and he and Phil went over what Jimmy had learned, both of them as jubilant as professional detectives ever get. Roger sat at the great trestle table on which they dined, papers spread before him: transcripts of interrogations, the list of things taken from the motel suite, the coroner's report, copies of the series Grafton had written when Malcolm Kincade had seemed the culprit, a copy of
Dixie Coup
. When Jimmy looked at the cover photograph of the author, he said, “That's the way he looks now. A little older, of course.”

“Why do you suppose he admitted returning to the motel on Sunday?” Roger asked.

“I told him we had a witness.”

“No wonder he shaved off his beard.”

“He wouldn't have known that then.”

“He would have known that he could have been seen.”

“I suppose.”

Rufus James's fingerprints were everywhere in the suite—in the sitting room, in the bedroom, in the bathroom.

“What would have been his motive?” Roger asked.

Phil turned to his brother. “You heard Jimmy, Roger. This guy thinks of himself as a Nobel Prize winner, an artist.”

“So?”

“So in his cups he told Madeline that he was a hack as well. My guess is that when he remembered that, he wanted to correct the impression. Or shut her up. What would happen to the reputation of the author of
Dixie Coup
if she blabbed all over the place that James wrote thrillers? And she did blab.”

“I'd like to talk to him.”

“That's all right with me,” Jimmy said.

*   *   *

An hour later Roger was seated across from Rufus James in a visiting room in the city jail. James had been somewhat taken aback when he was led into the room and saw Roger trying to get comfortable in a chair.

“Who are you?”

“One of your readers.”

James sat down. “An exclusive club.”

“I won't say that I enjoyed
Dixie Coup
.”

“I hope not. Literature should not be read for enjoyment.”

“An interesting theory.”

“Let's just say that I'm an acquired taste.”

“You're accused of killing Madeline O'Toole.”

James sighed. “Do you know a lawyer named Crumley? He's offered to represent me.”

“I don't know him. You will need a lawyer.”

“Detective Stewart said my story sounds like fiction.”