The Burglar in the Rye

“I figured you did, Bern. And you left it soaking in Clorox to account for the lack of bloodstains. But how did you know what kind of knife to get? Carl said it was a stiletto with pearl trim, but you had already been in and out of Erica’s apartment by then. Did you have a little talk with him earlier?”

I shook my head. “I was just guessing.”

“You were just guessing? And you just intuitively bought a knife that was a perfect match for the murder weapon?”

“It wasn’t a perfect match,” I said. “It wasn’t even all that close. It was your basic generic Times Square switchblade, with a blade a little longer than the murder weapon. It didn’t have a stiletto-type hilt, and the sides were black, not pearl.”

“Oh.”

“But it was a knife the approximate size and shape of the one used to kill the two women, and it was soaking in a bowl of bleach in Erica’s kitchen, and I figured it would be hard for her to explain. What’s she going to say? ‘That’s not the knife I used! My knife was trimmed in mother-of-pearl!’”

“‘I’d never in my life use such a butch knife!’ I see what you mean.”

“I just wanted to shake her up,” I said, “and get her so she didn’t feel in control of the situation.”

“Well, it worked. Bern, I was sleeping with a murderer. I’d say ‘murderess,’ but that’s sexist, isn’t it?”

“Whatever.”

“Whichever word you use,” she said, “that’s what I was doing. And I never suspected a thing. I knew she was over the top, especially that last night, when we picked up those two meteorologists and then rained on their parade.” She shuddered, then reached gratefully for her drink. “It still shakes me up to think of it,” she said. “But that’s not what I’m confused about.”

“Oh?”

“You burned up Gulliver Fairborn’s letters in the fireplace in Isis ’s room,” she said. “Everybody saw you do it.”

“Right.”

“Except all they actually saw,” she said, “was one letter that they’d had a chance to examine get fed to the flames. And they saw the burnt fragments of a lot of other letters on purple paper. But you didn’t burn the letters after all.”

“Well, you already knew that,” I reminded her. “You bought the purple paper and typed out a batch of dummy letters for me, remember?”

“I’m not about to forget the lazy dog,” she said, “or the rabid brown fox. I typed ’em up and you burned ’em.”

“Right.”

“Meanwhile, Henry got to work writing fake letters. I still think of him as Henry, Bern.”

“So do I,” I said. “But he wasn’t writing fake letters, because they were genuine enough. He’s Gulliver Fairborn, so any letter he writes is a real Gulliver Fairborn letter.”

“I don’t see how you can call them genuine, Bern.”

“Well, how about fictional? Not genuine, maybe, but not fake, either.”

“Okay. He went to work writing fictional letters. Then you took the fictional letters and made photocopies.”

“Of one set,” I said. “He fabricated-”

“That’s good, ‘fabricated.’ I like that.”

“-two sets of letters, and I took one set to Kinko’s, call it the A set, and ran two sets of copies.”

“For Lester Eddington and Alice Cottrell.”

I nodded. “I didn’t bother to tell either of them that the other was also getting a copy,” I said. “One of those little white lies of omission.”

“ Alice would probably call it a fib of omission, Bern.”

“She might. Anyway, the A set was the one I gave to Victor Harkness. That way, if Eddington or Alice should happen to show up when Sotheby’s offers the lot for viewing, they’ll see a set of originals that are a perfect match for their copies. And they’ll have one thing the Sotheby’s set doesn’t.”

“What’s that, Bern?”

“A photocopy of the letter everybody saw me burn, the one from High Dudgeon. Proof positive that the photocopies were made before the letters were burned.”

“How’d you manage that?”

“Well, it wasn’t all that hard. I copied the letter that afternoon, before we all got together in Isis Gauthier’s room.”

“Oh, right.”

I sampled my drink. “The other set of letters,” I said, “the B set, went to Hilliard Moffett, and I didn’t make any photocopies of that one. So he’s got a unique item, and it’s only fair, because he paid five times as much as the other three people combined. But look how he’ll treasure what he’s got. I’d call it money well spent.”

“You would? That’s where I really get confused, Bern.”

“What’s so confusing?”

“What’s confusing,” she said, “is how all this money changes hands, and you come out with nothing to show for it. Did you make anything on the rubies?”

“I made a friend,” I said, “and I returned a favor. The favor was Marty’s. He bailed me out, which is one of the nicest things anybody ever did for me, and I managed to do him a favor in return. Cynthia Considine has her necklace and earrings back, and John Considine’s enjoying married life, at least until the next hot-looking actress comes along. Isis doesn’t have the earrings, but she’s got a nest egg that’s immune to whatever impact synthetic stones may have on the price of rubies. And Marty enjoyed a brief fling with Isis and came out of it with good feelings all around.”

“That’s the favor. Who’s the new friend?”

“ Isis,” I said. “We got off to a bad start when I ran into her in the hallway, and it got worse when she found out I stole her rubies, but during the showdown scene in her room the other night I came off a lot better in her eyes.”

“Plus she liked that you had a bear.”

“And one that matched her outfit, too. I’ve got a date with her tomorrow night, and if all goes well she’ll get to see Paddington up close.”

“Where?”

“In my apartment,” I said. “That’s where he lives these days. I suppose I could have returned him and asked for my deposit back, but I decided I’d rather keep the little guy. So that’s something else I got out of the deal, Carolyn. I returned a favor, made a new friend, and acquired a teddy bear.”

“And your new friend gets to meet the bear tomorrow night. Maybe she’ll get to hear Mel Tormé, too.”

“One can but hope,” I said.

“All of that’s great,” she said, “but what about money? Isis Gauthier got money, Henry aka Gulliver Fairborn got money…”

“And don’t forget Ray.”

“He got money, too?”

“We had a deal, remember? Even Steven.”

“Go through the numbers for me, Bern.”

“ Alice paid two thousand dollars,” I said, “and Lester Eddington paid three, which was a little better than his original offer of covering the tab at the copy shop. And Victor Harkness paid five grand on behalf of Sotheby’s.”

“And Hilliard Moffett shelled out fifty K.”

“That’s right.”

“Two and three is five and five is ten and fifty is sixty. Sixty thousand dollars?”

“It’s amazing you can do that without pencil and paper.”

“And you gave Henry…”

“Half. Thirty thousand.”

“And then you went fifty-fifty with Ray?”

“That was our deal.”

“Half of what you had left after Henry got his share, right?”

I shook my head. “Ray didn’t know about Henry,” I said, “beyond the fact that this dapper old guy was hanging around the shop a lot and even spelled me once or twice behind the counter. As far as Ray knew, there was only one set of letters, and it was written twenty years ago by some famous author he never heard of. I faked burning the letters, then sold photocopies to two people and gave the originals to a third. So I couldn’t tell him I’d paid out thirty thousand dollars to Henry. It would only have confused him.”

“So instead you gave the other thirty thousand to him? And wound up with nothing?”

“I never expected anything,” I pointed out. “ Alice flimflammed me, telling me we were doing this big favor for Gulliver Fairborn, but it turned out to be true. I did manage to do him a big favor.”

“So you’ve got a nice warm fuzzy feeling in the pit of your stomach,” she said. “And outside of that you’ve got zilch.”