The Boy With The Painful Tattoo: Holmes & Moriarity 3 (20 page)

“Uh…”

“Our bedroom.”

He grinned. “Okay. Yell if you need anything.”

“Trust me on that score.”

A good night’s sleep on an excellent mattress and the long, pleasurable backrub J.X. had treated me to that morning had gone a long way to restoring me to health. Not that I felt like dwelling on such unpleasantness.

I read a bit of Jo Nesbø’s
The Devil’s Star
.

In the gap lay a five-kroner coin bearing a profile of King Olav’s head and the date: 1987, the year before it had fallen out of the carpenter’s pocket. But these were the boom years; a great many attic flats had needed to be built at the drop of a hat and the carpenter had not bothered to look for it.

More coins. I sighed and clicked out of the book. Anyway, why had I bought all these books that had to be read on my laptop? I hated ebooks. They took all the romance out of reading. Except on moving day. Then they were a miracle of technology. But the rest of the time I wanted paper and pages and interesting covers. I wanted something I could drop in the bath or forget in the garden for a week without doing serious damage to my credit cards.

“What did you want for lunch?” J.X. asked when he appeared a few hours later.

“I don’t care. I’m too upset to eat. What is there?” I frowned, eyeing him. “And what is so funny about that question?”

J.X. sobered. “Nothing. Are you in the mood for anything in particular?”

I gave it some thought.

He prompted kindly, “Something frozen or in a cardboard box, I assume? Given the contents of the refrigerator.”

“Unfrozen and out of the cardboard box is usually preferable. Do we have any egg rolls left?”

“I’m sure that can be arranged.”

I waved a vague hand. “Whatever.”

That was intended as dismissal, but he came over to the bed and sat down on the side, putting a companionable arm around my shoulders. “What are you doing?”

“I am exercising my little gay cells,
mon ami
. Look. Beck Ladas has a Facebook page.”

Know thy enemy. I had spent most of the morning finding out what I could about Beck. What that amounted to was the story of a not very bright guy with a history of brute violence. Aside from a shared last name, about the only thing he had in common with his older brother was their inability, or maybe simply disinterest, in earning an honest living. I gathered from a number of misspelled Facebook rants, Beck had been in and out of jail most of his life.

“If he wasn’t chasing me all over the state, I’d be tempted to think he killed Elijah,” I told J.X.

J.X. studied the page. “He has four hundred and fifty-two Facebook friends?”

“All female. And look at this. He got a new tattoo.” I pointed to a gruesome selfie featuring a blood-dotted green snake.

J.X. did a double take and peered closer. “Wait a minute. Is that his…” His voice died and he swallowed.

“That’s right, dude. He got a snake for his snake.”

“
Madre mia
. That must have hurt.”

“He says right here he’s got plenty of ladies to kiss it better for him.”

J.X.’s expression grew still more revolted.

“He likes the neo-Nazi party. Good to know. And he collects model trains. That’s sort of sweet, you must admit.” I glanced at him. “What have you been doing all morning?”

“Follow-up from the conference. I’ve got a ton of email. Setting up my office.”

I grunted.

“Rachel called.”

“Tell her I died.”

He said after a moment, “You want to talk about it?”

“Not really.”

He gave my shoulders a squeeze. “You know, there isn’t any pressure on you.”

“Yeah, there is.”

“If there is, you’re putting the pressure on yourself, Kit.”

I sighed. “You don’t know what you’re talking about.” He didn’t answer, and I said, “I’m sorry, but that’s the truth. We’re not at the same place in our careers. You don’t understand what it’s like for me. Your star is rising.”

“I guess what I mean is, this is your chance to decide what you really want for the future. You can write anything you want. Or nothing. You don’t have to decide anything right away. I can carry us both for a while.”

“I don’t need you to carry me,” I said shortly.

“That’s not what I mean. I only mean…”

I waited and he said simply, “I just want you to be happy, Kit.”

I had to look away.

He kissed the top of my head.

I said gruffly, “I am happy—about us.”

I felt his smile. “Are you?”

“Hell yeah. This is me happy. Last night was me unhappy. Notice the difference? It’s a lot quieter today.”

“Mmhm.” He gave me another kiss and rose. “You want anything from the store?”

“I’m fine.”

I listened to his footsteps retreating down the staircase and I went back to finding out what I could about the principals in the case. Not that I really knew who all the principals were. There was the gallery owner, John Cantrell, but everything I’d read seemed to indicate he had simply been in the wrong place at the wrong time. There was Alan Lorenson, the owner of the coin collection, but since the collection was not insured, it was hard to see what he had to gain. There was Elijah Ladas who had come out of retirement for one last score—the score that had gotten John Cantrell killed. And then it had gotten Ladas killed. Now Elijah’s village idiot of a brother was crashing around in his wake and we’d all be lucky if he didn’t kill someone too.

Or, more accurately, someone
else
, because I’d have been willing to bet money, Beck, not Elijah, had killed Cantrell.

There remained at least one other principal. The person who had killed Elijah Ladas. In fact, there were probably two other unknowns because it would have been very difficult, maybe impossible, for one person to cart a corpse the size of Ladas’ from car to moving van.

Stupid people committing stupid crimes. Greed and violence. That’s all this amounted to. Not a real mystery at all. Miss Butterwith would be disgusted. I was disgusted on her behalf.

I must have dozed off at some point because when I woke it was two o’clock and the house felt very quiet. Listening to that deep and comfortable silence, I deduced that J.X. was still not back yet.

For a few minutes I watched the sunlight sparkling through the French doors. A blue jay landed on the balcony railing, cocked his head as he looked in at me, then flew away.

All at once, I felt much more cheerful. I threw on my bathrobe and went downstairs to find something to eat.

The coffee was perking when the phone rang. I reached for it and then stopped. The answering machine picked up and I listened to Jerry asking if he could bring books over for me to sign that afternoon.

My brief sense of well-being disappeared. Along with my appetite.

The door bell rang. I squinted through the peephole.

I was fully prepared to see Jerry standing there with a guileless expression and an armload of books, but I was wrong.

The figure was female. Dark hair and a sunny-yellow short skirt with matching jacket.

Sydney Nightingale, girl reporter.

Chapter Thirteen

I’
m not sure why I opened the door.

Relief that she wasn’t Jerry? Or simple boredom?

Sydney gazed at me—or rather at my sumptuous bathrobe—in surprise. “Hel—oh! I’m sorry. Are you not well?”

“Genius takes its toll. Actually, we got back late last night.” I held the door for her and her face lit up in pleased surprise. She slipped inside before I could change my mind.

I shut the door and led the way to the parlor.

“This is nice!” Sydney said, gazing around the long, airy room.

“It needs pictures.”

She sat down on a long, elegant sofa that I did not recognize as belonging to either J.X. or myself. When had that been delivered? She held up her phone. “Is it okay if I record our conversation?”

“Is that how it’s done these days? On a phone?”

“I’ll take notes too, but yes.” She showed me a small purple notebook.

“Fine. Whatever.” I sat down across from her. I was already regretting the impulse that had me opening the door to her.

“We could just start with something simple,” Sydney said. “How do you like San Francisco?”

“I…think I’m going to like it,” I said.

She put up a hand, pressed her phone. We listened to my voice repeating doubtfully, “I…think I’m going to like it.”

Sydney smiled approvingly. She resumed, “Of course, finding a body wasn’t the best introduction you could have had. But you’re no stranger to crime. There are your Miss Buttermilk books. Forty-eight at last count.”

“Butter
with
,” I said.

“I’m sorry.” Sydney double-checked her notes. “I have it written down as Buttermilk.”

“It’s Butterwith.”

She made a question mark on her notes and continued blithely, “And there’s your amateur sleuthing.”

“I’m
not
an amateur sleuth.”

“But you’ve solved two murder cases in the past year.”

“It’s not how it looks,” I said firmly.

“And now you’re involved in a third murder case.”

“I’m not involved.”

“But you did find a body in your basement. The body of the man suspected of robbing the Quercus Gallery of over ten million dollars in rare antique coins.”

My gaze landed on the Levenger box with the two Reading Bear bookends, still lying where I’d left it. My stomach knotted. I said, “That was sheer happenstance.”

“What did you think when you found the body of Elijah Ladas?”

“That I have terrible luck. And that he had worse luck.”

Sydney’s brows arched. She glanced back at her notes, “Do the police have any suspects in the case?”

“The police always have suspects.”

“Have they given you a hint as to whom they’re focusing on?”

“I’m not in the confidence of the police.”

Sydney’s look was openly skeptical. “It’s hard to believe the police wouldn’t be working with such a well-known amateur sleuth. On top of that, your partner, J.X. Moriarity, is a former SFPD inspector.”

“It would be harder still to believe that the police would take a mystery writer into their confidence. That only happens on TV. Maybe you have me confused with Jessica Fletcher. I have better hair and I do not ride a bicycle.”

“If you were working this case, how would you set about solving it?”

“Which case? The case of who killed Ladas? Or the case of the missing coins?”

“Both. Either.”

“You know more about it than I do. You reported on the robbery to start with.”

She gave me a surprised look. “True. Well, I can tell you what I know. Though Ladas was arrested several times in connection with stolen antiquities, he was never convicted of any crime. He was very proud of the fact that no one was ever harmed in any of his capers.”

“Until John Cantrell and Quercus Gallery.”

“Yes.”

“But that was probably Igor.”

She looked blank for a second, then she gave a short laugh. “You mean Beck? Yes. I agree. Murder was never Ladas’ style. In fact, he liked posing as a gentleman thief. He had a penchant for fine living and a passion for old coins.”

I sniffed. “That sounds like a press release.”

“As a matter of fact, he was working on a book about his exploits.”

I stared at her. “How do you know that?”

“I interviewed him about a year ago.”

She said it so casually. “And he was going to confess in his memoirs to robbing people?”

“Oh well.” She wrinkled her nose. “I don’t believe he planned on publishing the book right away. Not until the statute of limitations had run out on some of his crimes.”

I said gloomily, “It would probably be a bestseller.” Sydney was watching me, apparently waiting for me to make some brilliant deduction. I asked, “When did he start working with his younger brother?”

“I don’t know that he did. I thought he always worked alone, until I saw that security video tape. But he was getting on. He was in his fifties. That’s—”

“Old. For that line of work.”

When I didn’t continue, she said, “So you must have some theories, right?”

“Wrong.”

She laughed. She had a nice laugh. “Come on, Mr. Holmes. You found the body of a famous thief in your own basement. You
have
to be curious about what happened. It’s meat and drink for a mystery writer, right?”

“Only if he’s on a very strict diet.”

“What if Beck killed his brother?”

“No,” I said. “I don’t buy that. Why would he?”

“Maybe they argued.”

“About what?”

Sydney shrugged.

“I don’t think so.”

She frowned. “Why don’t you think so?”

Among other reasons, because if Beck had killed his brother, I couldn’t see any point in him harassing and hunting me. He would have to know that my involvement, such as it was, was incidental. But he did not seem to know this. Clearly, he believed I had information he needed. J.X. was right. I was Beck’s starting point.

But I wasn’t about to share that with Ms. Nightingale.

Naturally she put my reticence down to the wrong thing. “So you
are
working with the police.”

“No. I’m really not. It’s just that people have to have a reason for killing each other. Even crazy people believe they have a reason.”

“You don’t know what reason Beck might think he had.”

“True.”

“Maybe he thought his brother was going to cut him out of his share of their take.”

“Well, maybe.” That wasn’t bad, actually. Except that Beck would know if he had killed his own brother. I kept coming back to that.

“There could be all kinds of reasons for thieves falling out.”

“Yes. I agree.”

She was frowning again. “But you don’t think so.”

I shrugged.

I heard the sound of a key in the front door and a moment later J.X., carrying a couple of plastic bags, walked past the doorway. A second later he stepped back into the doorway, eyeing us in surprise.

“Hey,” I said.

“Hi there.” He put down his bags and walked into the room.