SIXTEEN

“I can give you fifteen minutes at the absolute most,” Aunt Mary said sternly some four hours later, when he’d finally bulled his way past Pierce and two fierce secretaries.

Today her bright red shawl livened up a conservative well-cut gray suit. Her bedroom had been converted for the day into its office mode; the peach-colored alcove containing the peach-satin-covered bed was curtained off. The click of computer keyboards, the muffled beat of footsteps, the clang of telephones punctuated her conversation. She stared meaningfully at her chunky gold watch.

“You want me to begin when the second hand hits the twelve?” he inquired.

“Darling,” she said, indicating a desk filled to overflowing with papers, flickering computer terminal, a bank of telephones flashing angry red lights, “the market is in a bit of an uproar—”

“How long would it take you to lift fingerprints off a wineglass?”

She considered the question, eyes narrowed, pointed chin tilted to one side. “Crystal?”

“Yeah.”

“Whose?”

“Oh, forget it,” Spraggue said easily. “You probably don’t have the time.”

“By removing me from this desk at this time, you could conceivably lose fifty thousand dollars.”

“Or gain it. The stock market is a colossal crap shoot; you told me that yourself.”

“True.” She nodded at one of her assistants, a fortyish woman with graying hair and a wide smile. “Helen, if Consolidated hits twenty-six, sell short, ten thousand shares, and buy Xenon no higher than eighteen and a quarter. I have been lured from my duties by a major stockholder. Hold all calls.”

“That,” she said, as her nephew accompanied her down the stairs to the library, “was blackmail, pure and simple. You knew I couldn’t resist. Did you pick up this bit of crystal in Washington? Was it a profitable trip?”

“Possibly.”

“I hope you do indeed possess a mysterious glass with unknown fingerprints on it. Otherwise I shall brain you in the hallway with a hatstand and the police will never pin it on me.”

“Don’t worry. I’ve got it. Where’s your fingerprinting paraphernalia?”

She padded across the room and rang the bell on Davison Spraggue’s mahogany desk. “I haven’t the faintest. It’s been ages since I’ve even thought about it. Soon the man from Sotheby’s will be after me to auction it off as an antique, not that I would ever part with anything that provoked such pleasant memories. But Pierce will know.”

He did, which surprised Spraggue no more than it did Mary. Spraggue sometimes thought that if he asked Pierce for the red rubber ball he’d played with at age ten, the butler would instantly whip it out of a pocket. Pierce didn’t have the fingerprint kit on him, but he did a quick turn, left the room, and returned with it tucked under his arm in less than three minutes—unflustered, walking at his accustomed, dignified pace.

“Thank you,” Aunt Mary said. “I sometimes am overcome by the desire to ask you how you do that, whether you have a complete inventory of the house written down and stowed away somewhere. Item: one fingerprint kit; location: third shelf, north hall closet. Item: one faded teddy bear; location: second shelf, south guest-room closet. No,” she held up one hand as Pierce opened his mouth. “No, I really don’t want to know. I prefer to imagine.”

Pierce nodded and took his leave.

“He’s got it all memorized,” Spraggue said. “He doesn’t need a list.”

Parts of Aunt Mary’s fingerprinting kit would have given the collector pause. The original black bag, very like a doctor’s, had been issued to her during World War II, when she had served in the OSS. She’d kept it up to date by strategic additions, culminating in a frenzy of purchases when her nephew had first become a private eye. Just in case she was ever called on to help, she’d explained hopefully.

She spread yesterday afternoon’s edition of the Globe over the maroon leather blotter in the center of the desk.

“The glass, please,” she said.

“Coming up.” Spraggue retrieved a parcel wrapped in a pink napkin from beneath the folds of his overcoat and presented it to his aunt.

“And don’t get your prints all over it,” she added.

“Yes, Mum.”

“Sorry.”

“You should be. Here I’ve brought you a nice toy to play with and you insult me.”

“I only apologize once. While I play with the toy, you can tell me all about it.”

“All about what?”

“I perceive from the napery that the glass comes from one of my favorite establishments.”

“How discerning of you.”

“Knowing you were in Washington, knowing your fatal weakness for bouillabaisse, seeing a goblet wrapped in a distinctive pink linen napkin, the conclusion that you lunched at Le Provencal is unavoidable. Don’t even try to deny it.”

As she spoke, Mary laid out her tools: a jar of fine grayish powder, several delicate brushes, a few larger ones, glazed white paper, an insufflator, a camera with different lenses and a metal holding contraption to position it above the desk, tongs, magnifying lenses.

“I hope I’m not hunting senatorial fingerprints,” she said.

“No. And the staff at Le Provencal sends its collective love.” “They should have sent bouillabaisse. Go on.”

“After I saw Donagher, I took his campaign manager to lunch. I got him drunk and asked him who was out for his boss’ hide.”

“And?”

“He thinks it’s political.”

“Politicians think everything’s political.”

“This is how he put it: A lot of people hate Donagher’s politics, call him anything from a bleeding-heart liberal to a communist sympathizer, but the man’s opinions haven’t shifted lately—”

“The only thing that’s changed is that someone’s trying to kill him.”

“Right. So Eichenhorn, the campaign manager, ties it to the upcoming election. He says that now’s the time for the conservative political action committees to take Donagher out, because if Donagher wins sixty percent of the vote in Massachusetts, he’s going to be a presidential contender. And a popular one.”

“Do PACs hire assassins?”

“Well, Eichenhorn thinks the whole shebang was a screw-up, stage managed either by Bartolo with help from the mob or our own Governor Edwards with aid from same.”

“A screw-up?”

“Yeah. He thinks somebody just wanted Donagher to look bad, to drop out of the marathon without finishing. Eliminate Collatos’ death from the picture and what have we got? Donagher down on the ground, gasping. You saw the wire service photos: Donagher loaded into an ambulance; senator stuck in ice bath. Those photos sure didn’t make Donagher look like any presidential contender. If it hadn’t been for Pete’s death, nobody would have checked to see if Donagher had been poisoned, there wouldn’t have been any outpouring of sympathy for Donagher. People would have seen him as a failure, not a victim. End result: Somebody neutralizes all the favorable publicity Donagher gets from running the marathon.”

“Ah …” Mary said softly. “There’s a nice clear thumb, a man’s right thumb and three fairly good fingers. I hope it isn’t you, dear.”

“Pretty sure it isn’t.”

Mary pulled a stamp pad from the desk’s center top drawer. “All the same, would you mind? The right thumb should be sufficient.”

Spraggue grimaced, surrendered, rubbed ink on his thumb, pressed it against one of the sheets of glazed paper.

“Then this Eichenhorn doesn’t think you’re up against a killer?” Mary asked.

“He thinks some pol hired himself a dirty trickster, à la the Democrats’ infamous Dick Tuck.”

“Do you think his theory holds water?”

“I don’t know. I tried to sound him out on Donagher’s personal life, but he clammed up. According to him, Donagher’s a candidate for immediate sainthood.”

“So few saints in political life, these days,” Mary said.

“And Donagher’s not one of them. He lied to me. And he did a pretty good job.”

“Isn’t that a requirement of elective office?”

“He was expecting someone to be at the top of Heartbreak with a water bottle—”

“Then he had an arrangement with that woman?”

“No. I don’t mean he was looking for her. He took the bottle from her because he got stood up. Whoever he was expecting didn’t show. He’s protecting somebody—and I’ll bet it’s his wife.”

“Not exactly the perfect political wife, is she?”

“What do you mean?”

“Chronic alcoholism is not an election plus, so I’ve heard.”

“Where do you dig up all this dirt? Is Pierce a gossip?”

“I keep my ear to the ground.”

“The ground right over the sewer?” He peered over his aunt’s shoulder as she gently blew excess powder from the surface of the glass. “How’s it going?”

“Fine. The fingers have not lost their cunning, although the eyes are rather on the way out, I’m afraid. Still, they suffice to tell me that these prints are not yours. Now, do you want me to lift them, so that you can present them to your Captain Hurley without telling him from whence they came?”

“That was the general idea.”

“Ahhhhh. There.” She brandished a white four-by-six card on which she had fastened the plastic tape that held the prints. “Beautiful, if I do say so myself.”

“Lovely.” Spraggue pressed his lips together, then said in a faraway voice, “One more thing. Do you have a VCR?”

“Videocassette recorder. I have two. One VHS; one Beta.”

“Do you have a standing order for every gadget that comes out on the market?”

“Just about.”

“Do you mind if I play a cassette I recorded at home?”

“Not if it’s good.”

“It’s last Sunday’s eleven o’clock news.”

“What a depressing thought.”

“The Channel 4 news.”

“Ed Heineman?”

“The man does interest me,” Spraggue admitted. “He keeps Lila Donagher’s picture in his wallet.”