Partners In Crime (35 page)

Auntie Lil carried herself tensely, as if
she were in a terrible hurry. She eyed her original path and it
seemed a long way out in the afternoon shadows. She turned and
surveyed the low stone wall that marked the cemetery's far
boundary, only a few yards from where she stood. She walked
carefully over the spongy ground and stared down at the sidewalk. A
three-foot drop. Could she pull it off?

The kneeling woman's eyes slid slowly to one
side, then she turned slightly and gazed at Auntie Lil poised at
the top of the wall. She put a hand down to the earth and started
to rise, but when the Asian man stepped quietly out of the shadows,
only his silhouette visible against the fading sun, she relaxed and
turned back to her praying. The man moved silently toward the wall
and stood a few yards behind Auntie Lil.

"Oh, dear." Auntie Lil clenched her hands
into fists and banged her thighs in frustration. She leaned over
the wall and eyed the nearby comer. A phone booth, miraculously
empty, stood waiting. Gritting her teeth, she first sat on the top
of the wall and then gave a quick hop. Although the distance wasn't
great, it was far enough to hurt when she hit the sidewalk with a
painful jar. The Asian man stepped away from the edge and back into
the shadows, watching as Auntie Lil rubbed her ankle and hobbled
toward the comer phone. He looked behind him at the praying woman
and at the sidewalk crowded with people hurrying home. Having
reached a decision, he leapt lightly over the wall and, blending in
with the bustling crowd, hurried toward the comer and Auntie
Lil.

She was too busy searching for quarters to
notice Herbert Wong walk quickly past, hat pulled low over his
face. He turned the comer and disappeared in the crowd.

Where could the blessed file have gone? T.S.
searched every drawer in his makeshift office, knowing he would not
find it. It had been taken deliberately. But by whom? By Miss
Fullbright to give to Lieutenant Abromowitz? Was he having second
thoughts about his own theory? After several fruitless minutes of
search, T.S. sat back in his chair. It was useless. The file was
gone. Taken by someone here at Sterling & Sterling.

He sighed. There was no use comparing files
now. There was only one thing left to do until he could find
Sheila. He would talk to Frederick Dorfen again.

For once, the old man was clearly sober. He
answered his phone immediately, almost jauntily, in fact.
"Frederick Dorfen here," he said cheerfully. "At your service."

"Frederick? It's T.S. Have you got a
minute?"

"I don't really know," the old man replied
happily. "I'm terribly busy these days. Filling in for poor
Cheswick and Boswell, you know. Business must go on and it appears
that I'm about the only one who completely understands their areas
and has the time. Would you believe it? The clients still remember
me!"

"That's wonderful, Frederick. I'm not
surprised at all. But it is important. Shall I come down?"

"No, no. I'll pop up now," Frederick Dorfen
declared. "Plenty of energy in these old legs yet. Won't take but a
minute, you say?"

"Just a minute," T.S. promised.

"That's good," he said cheerfully. "Because
I've really got to get back to work."

Frederick Dorfen was a changed man when he
entered T.S.'s office. He walked tall and proud, his shoulders
thrown back. A clean handkerchief poked elegantly from his breast
pocket and his hair was carefully brushed. He sat with great
dignity in the visitor's chair, carefully straightening the crisp
crease of each pants leg.

"What can I do for you?" he asked T.S.
graciously.

He had to quiz the old man on Patricia
Kelly. But he did not want to scare him off or elicit a horrified
reaction like Edgar Hale's.

"Do you remember the last time I talked to
you?" he asked the older partner.

"Certainly I do," Dorfen replied with calm
dignity. "It was right after Boswell's death, I believe. Day before
yesterday, was it?"

"On Monday," T.S. corrected him. "You made a
remade. A curious remark."

"Did I?" He waited quietly for T.S. to
continue, composed but watchful.

"About meeting you for margaritas at
Magritte's." In the silence that followed, T.S. stared at him
carefully. It seemed like the old man's shoulders stiffened.

"Maybe I did," the partner admitted slowly.
"So I did. It was careless of me."

"You said you could not remember where that
saying had come from," T.S. prompted gently. "Have you thought
about it since?"

"No need to," the old man replied very
quietly. "I'm quite well aware of where that saying came from now.
Being sober has its advantages."

"It's of life-or-death importance that you
tell me."

"I know. Sinclair's death has proved it."
The old man sighed with such sorrow and intensity that his backbone
seemed to float out of him with the sound. He leaned back against
the soft leather of the chair and rubbed his eyes. His shoulders
slumped and he shook his head. "The world has changed, T.S.," he
said. "It will never be as it once was. I remember when I was a
young man just starting out. What responsibility and dignity there
was attached to a job here at Sterling. How each one of us felt
keenly aware of our role to protect and advise clients."

His voice grew heavy with memory and regret.
"Now money is the name of the game. Forget honor and integrity."
His shoulders straightened slightly and he stared at T.S. "It
changed very quickly. By the time I was a partner, nothing was the
same. The men you see now, heading up this firm, are as different
from me as night and day. And the young men beneath them even more
different. Each year is worse."

"About Magritte?" T.S. prompted gently.

Frederick Dorfen shook his head. "I don't
really know what happened there that night. I guess I never wanted
to know. Their fathers were friends of mine. She was just a young
secretary from Queens, I think it was, or maybe Brooklyn. Her word
against theirs. And Ralph Peabody assured me... Later, when she
wrote those things about me, I knew she was lying. So I became even
more convinced she'd been lying back then." His voice trailed off
into silence.

"It's Patricia Kelly you're thinking of,
isn't it, Frederick?" T.S. kept his voice soft and low. The old
man's sorrow was nearly contagious.

"Yes." He sighed again. "Patricia Kelly.
That poor child. She hadn't a chance. She wasn't very strong.
Mentally, I mean. But lovely. Very lovely."

He coughed and his voice
took on new strength. He sat up straighter and looked evenly at
T.S. "Magritte isn't a person.
Magritte's
was the name of a private
club that used to be just around the comer. The building's still
there, but it's been called something different for years. Now
it's
The Bull Pen
or some kind of nonsense like that. Something happened there
one night to Patricia Kelly. In a private room upstairs. I don't
know what. It was long ago. I was only told because I was Managing
Partner at the time. It was my first inkling that the world was
changing and that I wouldn't be able to keep up. Ralph Peabody
handled the situation. He said he investigated thoroughly. That her
charges were unfounded, not true. The product of a sick
imagination."

"What were her charges?" T.S. asked firmly.
"What were the charges?"

"Rape," Frederick Dorfen answered simply. "I
believe she accused the men of rape. Sexual assault they called it,
in those days. It was all we could do to persuade her not to go to
the police."

"Who were the men she accused, Frederick? It
is most important that I know."

He looked up at T.S. in surprise. "Why, it's
obvious. Robert Cheswick. John Boswell. Stanley Sinclair. And Edgar
Hale."

"Edgar Hale?" T.S. repeated automatically.
"No one else?"

"No one else but Edgar," Dorfen confirmed.
"He has always been their leader."

As soon as Auntie Lil left the graveyard,
the young woman with blonde hair rose from her position and moved
to where Auntie Lil had knelt. She approached the site slowly,
feeling her way forward over the ground as if she'd been struck
suddenly blind. She leaned forward and moved her long fingers over
the name chiseled into the stone. In an imitation of Auntie Lil's
earlier gesture, she knelt before the simple epitaph and raised the
withered bouquet in the air. Objects tumbled to the ground before
her and she picked up each one in turn. Her head bowed low as she
examined the collection and remained bowed for many minutes. When
she raised her head again, tears ran slowly down her cheeks and
glittered in the waning afternoon sun. She ran a trembling hand
through her closely cropped hair, pushing the scarf off her head
and back around her shoulders. Lost in thought, she searched the
sky for an answer, absently picked up each sad object again in
turn. Her lower lip had started to bleed, she was biting it so
tightly, and tears glistened on her cheeks as brightly as the
diamond necklace.

Ignoring the book, she tucked the necklace
and its box into her purse. She weighed the heavy silver spoon
paperweight thoughtfully in her palm, then placed that in her purse
as well. Rising from the grave, she headed for the low wall. She
stopped at the edge and stared down the sidewalk. Spotting Auntie
Lil at the comer phone, she melted back into the shadows beneath
the trees, much as Herbert Wong had done only moments before.

Auntie Lil was in great pain—her ankle
throbbed from the jump. She wrapped her coat more tightly against
the growing cold and waited anxiously for T.S. to answer. To her
intense relief, he picked up after the third ring.

"Theodore," she cried breathlessly into the
phone. "I've hurt my ankle, but we've really found it this
time."

"Found what?" His voice came faintly over
the wire and she strained to hear.

"The connections. The proof. It is the
daughter. I'm absolutely sure. I can't talk about it now." Auntie
Lil stopped and looked around suspiciously. "I may be watched for
all I know."

"Don't get carried away," T.S. said wearily.
His mind was preoccupied with what Frederick Dorfen had told him.
The world was turning nasty all round him and he didn't like it one
bit. "What exactly did you find out?" he asked.

"The paperweight and the necklace and one of
Sinclair's library books," she explained. "Arranged across the
grave as a kind of offering. It was terribly sad."

"Get out of there immediately," he ordered
her, his voice growing sharp. "And leave things just as you found
them. We can't let her know she's been discovered, whoever she may
be."

"Of course," she promised, rather affronted
at having her story broken into so rudely. "I'm on my way now. We
must warn the men on that awful list from Patricia Kelly's
file."

T.S. sighed. "You better be absolutely sure,
you know."

"I am. I saw the objects. What did you find
out from rechecking the files?"

"Nothing. Someone took Patricia Kelly's file
off my desk this morning."

There was a brief silence on the other end.
"This morning?"

"This morning." His voice was dull. "I'm
sure. It was here earlier this morning and now it's gone."

"Well, that's good news," she said
hesitantly.

"It is?"

"Yes. That means the killer is probably at
Sterling & Sterling."

"How reassuring," he told her drily.

"Better there than right behind me," she
explained indignantly.

"Yes, yes. You are quite right." He was
relieved by her reasoning. "At least I have people around me."

"What did you find out from Frederick
Dorfen?"

"You were right about there being fire where
there's smoke. He says that Magritte's was a private club near the
bank. Around the comer. Something happened there one night to
Patricia Kelly. There were allegations of rape involving her,
Cheswick, Boswell and Sinclair. Plus one more."

"One more what?"

"One more man."

"Who?"

"Edgar Hale."

There was a silence on the other end, then
her voice came through sharp and clear. "This is not a game,
Theodore," she said. "I found objects on the grave belonging to the
dead men. Edgar Hale is next. You must warn him."

"He'll never believe me," T.S. said simply.
"I made a fool of myself last time."

"Then I'm coming in to tell him myself."

He stared helplessly at the clock. "He'll be
gone by the time you get here," he pleaded. "Let's call the
lieutenant. Tell him what we have."

"You call the lieutenant. Then call Edgar
Hale and tell him to wait. We have to talk to him today."

She hung up before he had a chance to
protest, her abrupt action prompted more by the shock of sudden and
unexpected recognition than hurry. She had been staring across the
street at a tiny church while she talked, her mind unconsciously
noting every detail of its small but charming facade. It was a
skinny stone church squeezed between two enormous apartment
buildings, and its spires, not more than several stories tall, were
dwarfed by the high-rise neighbors.

But it was not the architecture that caught
her eye. It was the name. An unusual name for a church. One she had
heard before. It was etched deeply in stone. Not even centuries of
smog would be likely to ever erode the letters: "Our Lady of
Perpetual Help."

"That's what we need," Auntie Lil thought.
"Perpetual help." But where had she heard that name before? She let
her mind roam over the days since Robert Cheswick had been found
stabbed. Someone, somewhere had mentioned that name. It was
maddening to be so near. She pulled her notebook out of her
pocketbook and began to flip through it quickly, then stopped just
as suddenly.