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“At second glance, you were seeing him for the first time.”
“You know what I mean. If you saw that beard you’d remember it, wouldn’t you? Extinguished an’ all. Bern, speakin’ of familiar. Namely the dame we just saw. I know she wasn’t who you thought she was, but are you sure she didn’t look the least bit familiar?”
“She looked dead.”
“Yeah. Well, there’s not a whole lot of doubt on that score.”
“She looked as though she’d been dead forever, Ray. As though she’d been born dead, and bad things happened to her ever since.”
“‘Cordin’ to what we got on her, she’s forty-six years old. The worst thing ever happened to her was gettin’ stabbed to death last night, but up until then she got arrested a whole batch of times an’ went away more than once.”
“For what?”
“Theft. She was a thief.”
“A thief in my apartment.”
“Yeah, that’s a first. She musta been lookin’ to steal somethin’.”
“I suppose so.”
“You don’t seem concerned. Why’s that?”
“Well, she didn’t get away with anything, did she, Ray?”
“No, but whoever killed her might have walked off with what she came to take.”
“I don’t know what she came to take,” I said, “and I didn’t have anything worth taking.”
“How about your life, Bern?”
“Huh?”
“She had a gun in her purse.”
“A gun,” I said.
“Little bitty one. Hadn’t been cleaned since the last time it was fired.”
“Maybe she shot the person who stabbed her.”
“An’ then put the gun back in her purse?” He made a face. “What it mighta been,” he said, “is the gun she got shot with a couple of days ago.”
“The shoulder wound.”
“Uh-huh. It’s the right size. Twenty-five-caliber, perfect if you want to stop a charging cockroach.”
“If somebody shot her in the shoulder,” I said, “how does the gun wind up in her purse?”
“Maybe the guy who shot her a while ago is the same guy who stabbed her last night. She falls down dead an’ he gets rid of the gun by stickin’ it in her purse.”
“That makes a lot of sense.”
“It makes no sense at all,” he said, “but what does?”
“Maybe she shot herself originally,” I suggested.
“Now that makes sense, Bern. Woman wants to kill herself, she shoots herself in the shoulder.”
“She shot herself accidentally.”
“It’s her gun an’ she has an accident with it.”
“Why not?”
He thought it over. “Whole lot of arrests on her sheet,” he said. “I didn’t see where she was ever charged with possession of a firearm.”
“People change.”
“So I keep hearin’, but I ain’t seen much evidence of it. She got charged twice with assault. Charges dropped both times. Didn’t use a gun, though.”
“She used a knife,” I said.
“How’d you know that, Bern?”
“The way you paused. I could sense the punch line looming in the distance. She did use a knife?”
“Yeah, she stabbed a couple of guys.”
“But I bet she didn’t have a knife in her purse.”
“Nope.”
“Or found on the premises.”
“Well, you got a drawer full of knives in your kitchen. But no, they didn’t find the murder weapon at the crime scene. The thinkin’ is the killer took it away with him.”
“Was it the same knife?”
He smiled approvingly. “Very good,” he said. “You’d make an okay cop, if you weren’t a crook instead.”
“Who says a person can’t be both? Was it the same knife used to kill Anthea Landau?”
“If we had the knife,” he said, “it’d be easier to say one way or the other. All they can tell so far is it’s possible. What do you say, Bern? Any ideas where we might find the knife? Any thoughts on who mighta stuck it in Kassenmeier?”
“No.”
“You know somethin’ about Kassenmeier, Bern. You say you never saw her, an’ you say you didn’t know nothin’ about her, but I saw the look on your face when I mentioned her name the first time. You didn’t look like you were hearin’ it for the first time.”
“I never heard it before,” I said, “but I’d seen it.”
“Seen it where?”
I thought about it. Was there any reason to hold out on him? There had to be, but I couldn’t think what it was.
“She was staying at the Paddington.”
“How would you know that? That’s where you were last night, isn’t it?” He didn’t wait for an answer. “Lemme use your phone,” he said, and he was reaching for it when it rang. “Shit,” he said, and picked it up himself. “Bernie’s Bookstore,” he said. “Who’s this, Carolyn? Sorry, my mistake. Hold on.”
He handed me the phone. Alice Cottrell said, “Bernie? Is that you?” I said it was. “Who was that just now?” A police officer, I said.
“Oh, then you can’t talk,” she said. “That’s all right. Look, I wanted to let you know that everything’s taken care of. I got what we were looking for.”
“How’d you manage that?”
“It’s too complicated to explain. But I called Gully in Oregon, and he couldn’t be happier. I ran the whole batch through a shredder and fed the shreds to the incinerator. I’m at the airport myself. They’re about to call my flight to Charlottesville.”
“Uh…”
“Bye, Bernie.”
The phone clicked in my ear. I held it out to Ray.
“Your turn,” I said.
“Nothing,” he said. “No Kassenmeier. Not at the Paddington.”
While he was on the phone, I’d brought in my bargain table and begun the process of closing up. I could have waited for him to give me a hand, but I’d still be waiting. Cops, I’ve learned, tend to avoid heavy lifting.
“Maybe she checked out,” I suggested.
“We know she checked out,” he said, “because you generally do when somebody sticks a knife in your heart. But she didn’t check out of the hotel because she never checked in in the first place. What makes you so sure she was there?”
“I was in her room.”
“Last night?”
“And once before.”
“But you never met her.”
“No.”
“An’ you didn’t know who she was.”
“No.”
“Then how’d you know it was her room?”
“Her suitcase was in the closet.”
“An’ all you gotta do is look at a suitcase an’ you can tell whose it is?”
“I can if there’s a tag on it with her name and address. But maybe she used another name when she registered.”
“And had her own name on her luggage tag?” He frowned. “She had ID in her purse in three different names. I tried ’em all on that fruit at the hotel just now.”
“Which fruit would that be?”
“The lounge lizard with the Shinola hair. Carl Pittsburgh.”
“Pillsbury.”
“Whatever. He never heard of her, no matter what name she used.”
“Then she used a fourth name. And she couldn’t have checked out of the hotel, because the room was still occupied around four in the morning. She may have been at my place by then, but she must have pla
“Maybe I oughta go have a look,” he said. “You wouldn’t happen to remember the room number, would you?”
I picked up the phone and tried a number. No one answered, and I can’t say I was surprised.
“Sure, I remember the number,” I told Ray. “Want to trade?”