(Originally published in 1987)
Pierre?” my Uncle Vartan asked. “Why Pierre? You were Pistol Pete Apoyan when you fought.”
Sixteen amateur fights I’d had and won them all. Two professional fights I’d had and painfully decided it would not be my trade. I had followed that career with three years as an employee of the Arden Guard and Investigative Service in Santa Monica before deciding to branch out on my own.
We were in my uncle’s rug store in Beverly Hills, a small store and not in the highest rent district, but a fine store. No machine-made imitation Orientals for him, and absolutely no carpeting.
“You didn’t change your name,” I pointed out.
“Why would I?” he asked. “It is an honorable name and suited to my trade.”
“And Pierre is not an honorable name?”
He sighed. “Please do not misunderstand me. I adore your mother. But Pierre is a name for hairdressers and perfume manufacturers and those pirate merchants on Rodeo Drive. Don’t your friends call you Pete?”
“My odar friends,” I admitted. “Odar” means (roughly) non-Armenian. My mother is French, my father Armenian.
“Think!” he said. “Sam Spade. Mike Hammer. But Pierre?”
“Hercule Poirot,” I said.
“What does that mean? Who is this Hercule Poirot? A friend?” He was frowning.
It was my turn to sigh. I said nothing. My Uncle Vartan is a stubborn man. He had four nephews, but I was his favorite. He had never married. He had come to this country as an infant with my father and their older brother. My father had sired one son and one daughter, my Uncle Sarkis three sons.
“You’re so stubborn!” Uncle Vartan said.
The pot had just described the kettle. I shrugged.
He took a deep breath. “I suppose I am, too.”
I nodded.
“Whatever,” he said, “the decision is yours, no matter what name you decide to use.”
The decision would be mine but the suggestion had been his. Tough private eye stories, fine rugs, and any attractive woman under sixty were what he cherished. His store had originally been a two-story duplex with a separate door and stairway to the second floor. That, he had suggested, would be a lucrative location for my office when I left Arden.
His reasoning was sound enough. He got the carriage trade; why wouldn’t I? And he would finance the remodeling.
Why was I so stubborn?
“Don’t sulk,” he said.
“It’s because of my mother,” I explained. “She didn’t like it when I was called Pistol Pete.”
His smile was sad. “I know. But wouldn’t Pistol Pierre have sounded worse?” He shook his head. “Lucky Pierre, always in the middle. I talked with the contractor last night. The remodeling should be finished by next Tuesday.”
The second floor was large enough to include living quarters for me. Tonight I would tell my two roomies in our Pacific Palisades apartment that I would be deserting them at the end of the month. I drove out to Westwood, where my mother and sister had a French pastry shop.
My sister, Adele, was behind the counter. My mother was in the back, smoking a cigarette. She is a chain smoker, my mother, the only nicotine addict in the family. She is a slim, trim, and testy forty-seven-year-old tiger.
“Well—?” she asked.
“We won,” I told her. “It will be the Pierre Apoyan Investigative Service.”
“You won,” she corrected me. “You and Vartan. It wasn’t my idea.”
“Are there any croissants left?” I asked.
“On the shelf next to the oven.” She shook her head. “That horny old bastard! All the nice women I found for him—”
“Who needs a cow when milk is cheap?” I asked.
“Don’t be vulgar,” she said. “And if you do, get some new jokes.”
I buttered two croissants, poured myself a cup of coffee, and sat down across from her. I said, “The rumor I heard years ago is that Vartan came on to you before you met Dad.”
“The rumor is true,” she admitted. “But if I wanted to marry an adulterer I would have stayed in France.”
“And then you never would have met Dad. You did okay, Ma.”
“I sure as hell did. He’s all man.”
The thought came to me that if he were all man, the macho type, my first name would not be Pierre. I didn’t voice the thought; I preferred to drink my coffee, not wear it.
She said, “I suppose that you’ll be carrying a gun again in this new profession you and Vartan dreamed up?”
“Ma, at Arden I carried a gun only when I worked guard duty. I never carried one when I did investigative work. This will not be guard duty.”
She put out her cigarette and stood up. “That’s something, I suppose. You’re coming for dinner on Sunday, of course?”
“Of course,” I said.
She went out to take over the counter. Adele came in to have a cup of coffee. She was born eight years after I was; she is twenty and romantically inclined. She has our mother’s slim, dark beauty and our father’s love of the theater. She was currently sharing quarters with an aspiring actor. My father was a still cameraman at Elysian Films.
“Mom looks angry,” she said. “What did you two argue about this time?”
“My new office. Uncle Vartan is going to back me.”
She shook her head. “What a waste! With your looks you’d be a cinch in films.”
“Even prettier than your Ronnie?”
“Call it a tie,” she said. “You don’t like him, do you?”
Her Ronnie was an aspiring actor who called himself Ronnie Egan. His real name was Salvatore Martino. I shrugged.
“He’s got another commercial coming up next week. And his agent thinks he might be able to work me into it.”
“Great!” I said.
That gave him a three-year career total of four commercials. If he worked her in, it would be her second.
“Why don’t you like him?”
“Honey, I only met him twice and I don’t dislike him. Could we drop the subject?”
“Aagh!” she said. “You and Vartan, you two deserve each other. Bull-heads!”
“People who live in glass houses,” I pointed out, “should undress in the cellar.”
She shook her head again. “You and Papa, you know all the corny old ones, don’t you?”
“Guilty,” I admitted. “Are you bringing Ronnie to dinner on Sunday?”
“Not this Sunday. We’re going to a party at his agent’s house. Ronnie wants me to meet him.”
“I hope it works out. I’ll hold my thumbs. I love you, sis.”
“It’s mutual,” she said.
I kissed the top of her head and went out to my ancient Camaro. On the way to the apartment I stopped in Santa Monica and talked with my former boss at Arden.
I had served him well; he promised that if they ever had any commercial reason to invade my new bailiwick, and were shorthanded, I would be their first choice for associate action.
The apartment I shared with two others in Pacific Palisades was on the crest of the road just before Sunset Boulevard curves and dips down to the sea.
My parents had bought a tract house here in the fifties for an exorbitant twenty-one thousand dollars. It was now worth enough to permit both of them to retire. But they enjoyed their work too much to consider that.
I will not immortalize my roomies’ names in print. One of them was addicted to prime-time soap operas, the other changed his underwear and socks once a week, on Saturday, after his weekly shower.
When I told them, over our oven-warmed frozen TV dinners, that I would be leaving at the end of the month, they took it graciously. Dirty Underwear was currently courting a lunch-counter waitress who had been hoping to share an apartment. She would inherit my rollout bed—when she wasn’t in his.
On Thursday morning my former boss phoned to tell me he had several credit investigations that needed immediate action and two operatives home with the flu. Was I available? I was.
Uncle Sarkis and I went shopping on Saturday for office and apartment furniture. Wholesale, of course. “Retail” is an obscene word to my Uncle Sarkis.
The clan was gathered on Sunday at my parents’ house, all but Adele. Uncle Vartan and my father played tavlu (backgammon to you). My mother, Uncle Sarkis, his three sons, and I played twenty-five-cent-limit poker out on the patio. My mother won, as usual. I broke even; the others lost. I have often suspected that the Sunday gatherings my mother hosts are more financially motivated than familial.
My roommates told me Monday morning that I didn’t have to wait until the end of the month; I could move anytime my place was ready. The waitress was aching to move in.
The remodeling was finished at noon on Tuesday, the furniture delivered in the afternoon. I moved in the next morning. All who passed on the street below would now be informed by the gilt letters on the new wide front window that the Pierre Apoyan Investigative Service was now open and ready to serve them.
There were many who passed on the street below in the next three hours, but not one came up the steps. There was no reason to expect that anyone would. Referrals and advertising were what brought the clients in. Arden was my only doubtful source for the first; my decision to open this office had come too late to make the deadline for an ad in the phone book yellow pages.
I consoled myself with the knowledge that there was no odor of sour socks in the room and I would not be subjected to the idiocies of prime-time soap opera. I read the L.A. Times all the way through to the classified pages.
It had been a tiring two days; I went into my small bedroom to nap around ten o’clock. It was noon when I came back to the here and now. I turned on my answering machine and went down to ask Vartan if I could take him to lunch.
He shook his head. “Not today. After your first case, you may buy. Today, lunch is on me.”
He had not spent enough time in the old country to develop a taste for Armenian food. He had spent his formative years in New York and become addicted to Italian cuisine. We ate at La Famiglia on North Canon Drive.
He had whitefish poached in white wine, topped with capers and small bay shrimp. I had a Caesar salad.
Over our coffee, he asked, “Dull morning?”
I nodded. “There are bound to be a lot of them for a one-man office. I got in two days at Arden last week. I might get more when they’re short-handed.”
He studied me for a few seconds. Then, “I wasn’t going to mention this. I don’t want to get your hopes up. But I have a—a customer who might drop in this afternoon. It’s about a rug I sold her. It has been stolen. For some reason, which she wouldn’t tell me, she doesn’t want to go to the police. I gave her your name.”
He had hesitated before he called her a customer. With his history, she could have been more than that. “Was it an expensive rug?” I asked.
“I got three thousand for it eight years ago. Only God knows what it’s worth now. That was a sad day for me. It’s an antique Kerman.”
“Wasn’t it insured?”
“Probably. But if she reported the loss to her insurance company they would insist she go to the police.”
“Was anything else stolen?”
“Apparently not. The rug was all she mentioned.”
That didn’t make sense. A woman who could afford my uncle’s antique Oriental rugs must have some jewelry. That would be easier and safer to haul out of a house than a rug.
“I’d better get back to the office,” I said.
“Don’t get your hopes up,” he warned me again. “I probably shouldn’t have told you.”
I checked my answering machine when I got back to the office. Nothing. I took out my contract forms and laid them on top of my desk and sat where I could watch the street below.
I decided, an hour later, that was sophomoric. The ghost of Sam Spade must have been sneering down at me.
She opened the door about twenty minutes later, a fairly tall, slim woman with jet-black hair, wearing black slacks and a white cashmere sweater. She could have been sixty or thirty; she had those high cheekbones which keep a face taut.
“Mr. Apoyan?” she asked.
I nodded.
“Your uncle recommended you to me.”
“He told me. But he didn’t tell me your name.”
“I asked him not to.” She came over to sit in my client’s chair. “It’s Bishop, Mrs. Whitney Bishop. Did he tell you that I prefer not to have the police involved?”
“Yes. Was anything else stolen?”
She shook her head.
“That seems strange to me,” I said. “Burglars don’t usually carry out anything big, anything suspicious enough to alert the neighbors.”
“Our neighbors are well screened from view,” she told me, “and I’m sure this was not a burglar.” She paused. “I am almost certain it was my daughter. And that is why I don’t want the police involved.”
“It wasn’t a rug too big for a woman to carry?”
She shook her head. “A three-by-five-foot antique Kerman.”
I winced. “For three thousand dollars—?”
Her smile was dim. “You obviously don’t have your uncle’s knowledge of rugs. I was offered more than I care to mention for it only two months ago. My daughter is—adopted. She has been in trouble before. I have almost given up on her. We had a squabble the day my husband and I went down to visit friends in Rancho Santa Fe. When we came home the rug was gone and so was she.”
I wondered if it was her daughter she wanted back or the rug. I decided that would be a cynical question to ask.
“We have an elaborate alarm system,” she went on, “with a well-hidden turnoff in the house. It couldn’t have been burglars.” She stared bleakly past me. “She knows how much I love that rug. I feel that it was simply a vindictive act on her part. It has been a—troubled relationship.”
“How old is she?” I asked.
“Seventeen.”
“Does she know who her real parents are?”
“No. And neither do we. Why?”
“I thought she might have gone back to them. How about her friends?”
“We’ve talked with all of her friends that we know. There are a number of them we have never met.” A pause. “And I am sure would not want to.”
“Your daughter’s—acceptable friends might know of others,” I suggested.
“Possibly,” she admitted. “I’ll give you a list of those we know well.”
She told me her daughter’s name was Janice and made out a list of her friends while I filled in the contract. She gave me a check, her unlisted phone number, and a picture of her daughter.
When she left, I went to the window and saw her climb into a sleek black Jaguar below. My hunch had been sound; this was the town that attracted the carriage trade.
I went downstairs to thank Vartan and tell him our next lunch would be on me at a restaurant of his choice.
“I look forward to it,” he said. “She’s quite a woman, isn’t she?”
“That she is. Was she ever more than a customer to you?”
“We had a brief but meaningful relationship,” he said coolly, “at a time when she was between husbands. But then she started talking marriage.” He sighed.
“Uncle Vartan,” I asked, “haven’t you ever regretted the fact that you have no children to carry on your name?”
“Never,” he said, and smiled. “You are all I need.”
Two elderly female customers came in then and I went out with my list of names. It was a little after three o’clock; some of the kids should be home from school.
There were five names on the list, two girls and three boys, all students at Beverly Hills High. Only one of the girls was home. She had seen Janice at school on Friday, she told me, but not since. But that didn’t mean she hadn’t been at school Monday and Tuesday.
“She’s not in any of my classes,” she explained.
I showed her the list. “Could you tell me if any of these students are in any of her classes?”
“Not for sure. But Howard might be in her art appreciation class. They’re both kind of—you know—”
“Artistic?” I asked.
“I suppose. You know—that weird stuff—”
“Avant-garde, abstract, cubist?”
She shrugged. “I guess, whatever that means. Janice and I were never really close.”
From the one-story stone house of Miss Youknow, I drove to the two-story Colonial home of Howard Retzenbaum.
He was a tall thin youth with horn-rimmed glasses. He was wearing faded jeans and a light gray T-shirt with a darker gray reproduction of Pablo Picasso’s Woman’s Head emblazoned on his narrow chest.
Janice, he told me, had been in class on Friday, but not Monday or yesterday. “Has something happened to her?”
“I hope not. Do you know of any friends she has who don’t go to your school?”
Only one, he told me, a boy named Leslie she had introduced him to several weeks ago. He had forgotten his last name. He tapped his forehead. “I remember she told me he works at some Italian restaurant in town. He’s a busboy there.”
“La Famiglia?”
“No, no. That one on Santa Monica Boulevard.”
“La Dolce Vita?”
He nodded. “That’s the place. Would you tell her to phone me if you find her?”
I promised him I would and thanked him. The other two boys were not at home; they had baseball practice after school. I drove to La Dolce Vita.
They serve no luncheon trade. The manager was not in. The assistant manager looked at me suspiciously when I asked if a boy named Leslie worked there.
“Does he have a last name?”
“I’m sure he has. Most people do. But I don’t happen to know it.”
“Are you a police officer?”
I shook my head. “I am a licensed and bonded private investigator. My Uncle Vartan told me that Leslie is an employee here.”
“Would that be Vartan Apoyan?”
“It would be and it is.” I handed him my card.
He read it and smiled. “That’s different. Leslie’s last name is Denton. He’s a student at UCLA and works from seven o’clock until closing.” He gave me Leslie’s phone number and address, and asked, “Is Pierre an Armenian name?”
“Quite often,” I informed him coldly, and left without thanking him.
The address was in Westwood and it was now almost five o’clock. I had no desire to buck the going-home traffic in this city of wheels. I drove to the office to call Leslie.
He answered the phone. I told him I was a friend of Howard Retzenbaum’s and we were worried about Janice. I explained that she hadn’t been in school on Monday or Tuesday and her parents didn’t know where she was.
“Are you also a friend of her parents?” he asked.
“No way!”
She had come to his place Friday afternoon, he told me, when her parents had left for Rancho Santa Fe. She had stayed over the weekend. But when he had come home from school on Tuesday she was gone.
“She didn’t leave a note or anything?”
“No.”
“She didn’t, by chance, bring a three-foot-by-five-foot Kerman rug with her, did she?”
“Hell no! Why?”
“According to a police officer I know in Beverly Hills, her parents think she stole it from the house. Did she come in a car?”
“No. A taxi. What in hell is going on? Are those creepy parents of hers trying to frame her?”
“Not if I can help it. Did she leave your place anytime during the weekend?”
“She did not. If you find her, will you let me know?”
I promised him I would.
I phoned Mrs. Whitney Bishop and asked her if Janice had been in the house Friday when they left for Rancho Santa Fe.
“No. She left several hours before that. My husband didn’t get home from the office until five o’clock.”
“Were there any servants in the house when you left?”
“We have no live-in servants, Mr. Apoyan.”
“In that case,” I said, “I think it’s time for you to call the police and file a missing persons report. Janice was in Westwood from Friday afternoon until some time on Tuesday.”
“Westwood? Was she with that Leslie Denton person?”
“She was. Do you know him?”
“Janice brought him to the house several times. Let me assure you, Mr. Apoyan, that he is a doubtful source of information. You know, of course, that he’s gay.”
That sounded like a non sequitur to me. I didn’t point it out. I thought of telling her to go to hell. But a more reasonable (and mercenary) thought overruled it; rich bigots should pay for their bigotry.
“You want me to continue, then?” I asked.
“I certainly do. Have you considered the possibility that one of Leslie Denton’s friends might have used her key and Janice told him where the turnoff switch is located?”
I hadn’t thought of that.
“I thought of that,” I explained, “but if that happened, I doubt if we could prove it. I don’t want to waste your money, Mrs. Bishop.”
“Don’t you worry about that,” she said. “You find my rug!”
Not her daughter; her rug. First things first. “I’ll get right on it,” I assured her.
I was warming some lahmajoons Sarkis’s wife had given me last Sunday when I heard my office door open. I went out.
It was Cheryl, my current love, back from San Francisco, where she had gone to visit her mother.
“Welcome home!” I said. “How did you know I moved?”
“Adele told me. Are those lahmajoons I smell?”
I nodded. She came over to kiss me. She looked around the office, went through the open doorway, and inspected the apartment.
When she came back, she said, “And now we have this. Now we won’t have to worry if your roommates are home, or mine. Do you think I should move in?”
“We’ll see. What’s in the brown bag?”
“Potato salad, a jar of big black olives, and two avocados.”
“Welcome home again. You can make the coffee.”
Over our meal I told her about my day, my lucky opening day in this high-priced town. I mentioned no names, only places.
It sounded like a classic British locked-room mystery, she thought and said. She is an addict of the genre.
“Except for the guy in Westwood,” I pointed out. “Maybe one of his friends stole the rug.”
Westwood was where she shared an apartment with two friends. “Does he have a name?” she asked.
I explained to her that that would be privileged information.
“I was planning to stay the night,” she said, “until now.”
“His name is Leslie Denton.”
“Les Denton?” She shook her head. “Not in a zillion years! He is integrity incarnate.”
“You’re thinking of your idol, Len Deighton,” I said.
“I am not! Les took the same night-school class that I did in restaurant management. We got to be very good friends. He works as a busboy at La Dolce Vita.”
“I know. Were you vertical or horizontal friends?”
“Don’t be vulgar, Petroff. Les is not heterosexual.”
“Aren’t you glad I am?”
“Not at the moment.”
“Let’s have some more wine,” I suggested.
At nine o’clock she went down to her car to get her luggage. When she came back, she asked, “Are you tired?”
“Nope.”
“Neither am I,” she said. “Let’s go to bed.”
I was deep in a dream involving my high school sweetheart when the phone rang in my office. My bedside clock informed me that it was seven o’clock. The voice on the phone informed me that I was a lying bastard.
“Who is speaking, please?” I asked.
“Les Denton. Mr. Randisi at the restaurant gave me your phone number. You told me you were a friend of Howard Retzenbaum’s. Mr. Randisi told me you were a stinking private eye. You’re working for the Bishops, aren’t you?”
“Leslie,” I said calmly, “I have a very good friend of yours who is here in the office right now. She will assure you that I am not a lying bastard and do not stink. I have to be devious at times. It is a requisite of my trade.”
“What’s her name?”
“Cheryl Pushkin. Hold the line. I’ll put her on.”
Cheryl was sitting up in bed. I told her Denton wanted to talk to her.
“Why? Who told him I was here?”
“I did. He wants a character reference.”
“What?”
“Go!” I said. “And don’t hang up when you’re finished. I want to talk with him.”
I was half dressed when she came back to tell me she had calmed him down and he would talk to me now.
I told him it was true that I was working for Mrs. Bishop. I added that getting her rug back was a minor concern to me; finding her daughter was my major concern and should be his, too. I told him I would be grateful for any help he could give me on this chivalrous quest.
“I shouldn’t have gone off half-cocked,” he admitted. “I have some friends who know Janice. I’ll ask around.”
“Thank you.”
Cheryl was in the shower when I hung up. I started the coffee and went down the steps to pick up the Times at my front door.
A few minutes after I came back, she was in her robe, studying the contents of my fridge. “Only two eggs in here,” she said, “and two strips of bacon.”
“There are some frozen waffles in the freezer compartment.”
“You can have those. I’ll have bacon and eggs.” I didn’t argue.
“You were moaning just before the phone rang,” she said. “You were moaning, ‘Norah, Norah.’ Who is Norah?”
“A dog I had when I was a kid. She was killed by a car.”
She turned to stare at me doubtfully, but made no comment. Both her parents are Russian, a suspicious breed. Her father lived in San Diego, her mother in San Francisco, what they had called a trial separation. I suspected it was messing-around time in both cities.
She had decided in the night, she told me, to reside in Westwood for a while. I had the feeling she doubted my fidelity. She had suggested at one time that I could be a younger clone of Uncle Vartan.
She left and I sat. I had promised Mrs. Bishop that I would “get right on it.” Where would I start? The three kids I had not questioned yesterday were now in school. And there was very little likelihood that they would have any useful information on the present whereabouts of Janice Bishop. Leslie Denton was my last best hope.
I took the Times and a cup of coffee out to the office and sat at my desk. Terrible Tony Tuscani, I read in the sports page, had out-pointed Mike (the Hammer) Mulligan in a ten-round windup last night in Las Vegas. The writer thought Tony was a cinch to cop the middleweight crown. In my fifth amateur fight I had kayoed Tony halfway through the third round. Was I in the wrong trade?
And then the thought came to me that an antique Kerman was not the level of stolen merchandise one would take to an ordinary fence. A burglar sophisticated enough to outfox a complicated alarm system should certainly know that. He would need to find a buyer who knew about Oriental rugs.
Uncle Vartan was on the phone when I went down. When he had finished talking I voiced the thought I’d had upstairs.
“It makes sense,” he agreed. “So?”
“I thought, being in the trade, you might know of one.”
“I do,” he said. “Ismet Bey. He has a small shop in Santa Monica. He deals mostly in imitation Orientals and badly worn antiques. I have reason to know he has occasionally bought stolen rugs.”
“Why don’t you phone him,” I suggested, “and tell him you have a customer who is looking for a three-by-five Kerman?”
His face stiffened. “You are asking me to talk to a Turk?”
I said lamely, “I didn’t know he was a Turk.”
“You know now,” he said stiffly. “If you decide to phone him, use a different last name.”
I looked him up in the phone book and called. A woman answered. I asked for Ismet. She told me he was not in at the moment and might not be in until this afternoon. She identified herself as his wife and asked if she could be of help.
“I certainly hope so,” I said. “My wife and I have been scouring the town for an antique Kerman. We have been unsuccessful so far. Is it possible you have one?”
“We haven’t,” she said. “But I am surprised to learn you haven’t found one. There must be a number of stores that have at least one in stock. The better stores, I mean, of course.”
An honest woman married to a crooked Turk. I said, “Not a three-by-five. We want it for the front hall.”
“That might be more difficult,” she said. “But Mr.—”
“Stein,” I said. “Peter Stein.”
“Mr. Stein,” she continued, “my husband has quite often found hard-to-find rugs. Do you live in Santa Monica?”
“In Beverly Hills.” I gave her my phone number. “If I’m not here, please leave a message on my answering machine.”
“We will. I’ll tell my husband as soon as he gets here. If you should find what you’re looking for in the meantime—”
“I’ll let you know immediately,” I assured her.
I temporarily changed the name on my answering machine from Pierre Apoyan Investigative Service to a simple Peter. Both odars and kinsmen would recognize me by that name.
Back to sitting and waiting. I felt slightly guilty about sitting around when Mrs. Bishop was paying me by the hour. But only slightly. Mrs. Whitney Bishop would never make my favorite-persons list.
Uncle Vartan was born long after the Turkish massacre of his people. But he knew the brutal history of that time as surely as the young Jews know the history of the Holocaust—from the survivors.
I read the rest of the news that interested me in the Times and drank another cup of coffee. I was staring down at the street below around noon when my door opened.
It was Cheryl. She must have been coming up as I was looking down. She had driven in for a sale at I. Magnin, she told me. “And as long as I was in the neighborhood—”
“You dropped in on your favorite person,” I finished for her. “What’s in the bag, something from Magnin’s?”
“In a brown paper bag? Lox and bagels, my friend, and cream cheese. I noticed how low your larder was this morning. Did Les Denton phone you?”
I shook my head.
“I bumped into him in front of the UCLA library this morning,” she said, “and gave him the old third degree. He swore to me that he and Janice were alone over the weekend, so she couldn’t have given her house key to anybody. I was right, wasn’t I?”
“I guess you were, Miss Marple. Tea or coffee?”
“Tea for me. I can’t stay long. Robinson’s is also having a sale.”
“How exciting! Your mama must have given you a big fat check again when you were up in San Francisco.”
“Don’t be sarcastic! I stopped in downstairs and asked your uncle if you’d ever had a dog named Norah.”
“And he confirmed it.”
“Not quite. He said he thought you had but he wasn’t sure. Of course, he probably can’t even remember half the women he’s—he’s courted.”
“Enough!” I said. “Lay off!”
“I’m sorry. Jealousy! That’s adolescent, isn’t it? It’s vulgar and possessive.”
“I guess.”
“You’re not very talkative today, are you?”
“Cheryl, there is a young girl out there somewhere who has run away from home. That, to me, is much more important than a sale at Robinson’s or whether I ever had a dog named Norah. This is a dangerous town for seventeen-year-old runaways.”
“You’re right.” She sighed. “How trivial can I get?”
“We all have our hang-ups,” I said. “I love you just the way you are.”
“And I you, Petroff. Do you think Janice is in some kind of danger? Why would she leave Les’s place without even leaving him a note?”
“That I don’t know. And it scares me.”
“You don’t think she’s—” She didn’t finish.
“Dead? I have no way of knowing.”
Five minutes after she left, I learned that Janice had still been alive yesterday. Les Denton phoned to tell me that a friend of his had seen her on the Santa Monica beach with an older man, but had not talked with her. According to the friend, the man she was with was tall and thin and frail, practically a skeleton.
“Thanks,” I said.
“It’s not the first time she’s run away,” he told me. “And there’s a pattern to it.”
“What kind of pattern?”
“Well, I could be reading more into it than there is. But I noticed that it was usually when her mother was out of town. Mrs. Bishop is quite a gadabout.”
“Are you suggesting child molestation?”
“Only suggesting, Mr. Apoyan. I could be wrong.”
And possibly right. “Thanks again,” I said.
A troubled relationship is what Mrs. Bishop had called it. Did she know whereof she spoke? Mothers are often the last to know.
Ismet Bey phoned half an hour later to tell me he had located a three-by-five Kerman owned by a local dealer and had brought it to his shop. Could I drop in this afternoon?
I told him I could and would.
And now what? How much did I know about antique Kermans? Uncle Vartan would remember the rug he had sold, but he sure as hell wouldn’t walk into the shop of Ismet Bey.
Maybe Mrs. Bishop? She could pose as my wife. I phoned her unlisted number. A woman answered, probably a servant. Mrs. Bishop, she told me, was shopping and wouldn’t be home until six o’clock.
I did know a few things about rugs. I had worked for Uncle Vartan on Saturdays and during vacations when I was at UCLA.
I took the photograph of Janice with me and drove out to Santa Monica. Bey’s store, like the building Vartan and I shared, was a converted house on Pico Boulevard, old and sagging. I parked in the three-car graveled parking lot next to his panel truck.
The interior was dim and musty. Mrs. Bey was not in sight. The fat rump of a broad, short, and bald man greeted me as I came in. He was bending over, piling some small rugs on the floor.
He rose and turned to face me. He had an olive complexion, big brown eyes, and the oily smile of a used-car salesman. “Mr. Stein?” he asked.
I nodded.
“This way, please,” he said, and led me to the rear of the store. The rug was on a display rack, a pale tan creation, sadly thin and about as tightly woven as a fisherman’s net.
“Mr. Bey,” I said, “that is not a Kerman.”
“Really? What is it, then?”
“It looks like an Ispahan to me, a cheap Ispahan.”
He continued to smile. “It was only a test.”
“I’m not following you. A test for what?”
He shrugged. “There have been some rumors around town. Some rumors about a very rare and expensive three-by-five Kerman that has been stolen. I thought you may have heard them.”
What a cutie. “I haven’t heard them,” I said. And added, “But, of course, I don’t have your contacts.”
“I’m sure you don’t. Maybe you should have. How much did you plan to spend on this rug you want, Mr. Stein?”
“Not as much as the rug you described would cost me. But I have a rich friend who might be interested. He is not quite as—as ethical as I try to be.”
“Perhaps that is why he is rich. All I can offer now is the hope that this rug will find its way to me. Could I have the name of your friend?”
I shook my head. “If the rug finds its way to you, phone me. I’ll have him come here. I don’t want to be involved.”
“You won’t need to be,” he assured me. “And I’ll see that you are recompensed. You were right about this rug. It is an Ispahan. If you have some friends who are not rich, I hope you will mention my name to them.”
That would be the day. “I will,” I said.
I drove to Arden from there, and the boss was in his office. I told him about my dialogue with Bey and suggested they keep an eye on his place. I pointed out that they could make some brownie points with the Santa Monica Police Department.
“Thank you, loyal ex-employee. We’ll do that.”
“In return, you might make some copies of this photograph and pass them out among the boys. She is a runaway girl who was last seen here on your beach.”
“You’ve got a case already?”
“With my reputation, why not?”
“Is there some connection between the missing girl and the rug?”
“That, as you are well aware, would be privileged information.”
“Dear God,” he said, “the kid’s turned honest! Wait here.”
He went out to the copier and came back about five minutes later. He handed me the photo and a check for the two days I had worked for him last week and wished me well. The nice thing about the last is that I knew he meant it.
From there to the beach. I sat in the shade near the refreshment stand with the forlorn hope that the skeleton man and the runaway girl might come this way again.
Two hours, one ice cream cone, and two Cokes later, I drove back to Beverly Hills. Uncle Vartan was alone in the shop. I went in and related to him my dialogue with Ismet Bey.
“That tawdry Turk,” he said, “that bush-leaguer! He doesn’t cater to that class of trade. He’s dreaming a pipe dream.”
“How much do you think that rug would bring today?” I asked.
“Pierre, I do not want to discuss that rug. As I told you before, that was a sad day, maybe the saddest day of my life.”
Saddest to him could be translated into English as least lucrative. A chauffeured Rolls-Royce pulled up in front of the shop and an elegantly dressed couple headed for his doorway. I held the door open for them and went up my stairs to sit again.
I typed it all down in chronological order, the history of my first case in my own office, from the time Mrs. Whitney Bishop had walked in to my uncle’s refusal to talk about the Kerman.
There had to be a pattern in there somewhere to a discerning eye. Either my eye was not discerning or there was no pattern.
Cheryl had called it right; my larder was low. I heated a package of frozen peas and ate them with two baloney sandwiches and the cream cheese left over from lunch.
There was, as usual, nothing worth watching on the tube. I went back to read again the magic of the man my father had introduced me to when I was in my formative years, the sadly funny short stories of William Saroyan.
Where would I go tomorrow? What avenues of investigation were still unexplored? Unless the unlikely happened, a call from Ismet Bey, all I had left was a probably fruitless repeat of yesterday’s surveillance of the Santa Monica beach.
I went to bed at nine o’clock, but couldn’t sleep. I got up, poured three ounces of Tennessee whiskey into a tumbler, added a cube of ice, and sat and sipped. It was eleven o’clock before I was tired enough to sleep.
I drank what was left of the milk in the morning and decided to have breakfast in Santa Monica. I didn’t take my swimming trunks; the day was not that warm.
Scrambled eggs and pork sausages, orange juice, toast, and coffee at Barney’s Breakfast Bar fortified me for the gray day ahead.
Only the hardy were populating the beach. The others would come out if the overcast went away. I sat again on the bench next to the refreshment stand and reread Ralph Ellison’s Invisible Man. It had seemed appropriate reading for the occasion.
I had been doing a lot of sitting on this case. I could understand now why my boss at Arden had piles.
Ten o’clock passed. So did eleven. About fifteen minutes after that a tall, thin figure appeared in the murky air at the far end of the beach. It was a man and he was heading this way.
Closer and clearer he came. He was wearing khaki trousers, a red-and-tan-checked flannel shirt, and a red nylon windbreaker. He nodded and smiled as he passed me. He bought a Coke at the stand and sat down at the other end of the bench.
I laid down my book.
“Ralph Ellison?” he said. “I had no idea he was still in print.”
He was thin, he was haggard, and his eyes were dull. But skeleton had been too harsh a word. “He probably isn’t,” I said. “This is an old Signet paperback reprint. My father gave it to me when I was still in high school.”
“I see. We picked a bad day for sun, didn’t we?”
“That’s not why I’m here,” I told him. “I’m looking for a girl, a runaway girl. Do you come here often?”
He nodded. “Quite often.”
I handed him the photograph of Janice. “Have you ever seen her here?”
He took a pair of wire-rimmed glasses from his shirt pocket and put them on to study the picture. “Oh, yes,” he said. “Was it yesterday? No—Wednesday.” He took a deep breath. “There are so many of them who come here. I talked with her. She told me she had come down from Oxnard and didn’t have the fare to go home. I bought her a malt and a hot dog. She told me the fare to Oxnard was eight dollars and some cents. I’ve forgotten the exact amount. Anyway, I gave her a ten-dollar bill and made her promise that she would use it for the fare home.”
“Do you do that often?”
“Not often enough. When I can afford it.”
“She’s not from Oxnard,” I told him. “She’s from Beverly Hills.”
He stared at me. “She couldn’t be! She was wearing a pair of patched jeans and a cheap, flimsy T-shirt.”
“She’s from Beverly Hills,” I repeated. “Her parents are rich.”
He smiled. “That little liar! She conned me. And what a sweet young thing she was.”
“I hope ‘was’ isn’t the definitive word,” I said.
He closed his eyes and took another deep breath. He opened them and stared out at the sea.
I handed him my card. “If you see her again, would you phone me?”
“Of course. My name is Gerald Hopkins. I live at the Uphan Hotel. It’s a—a place for what are currently called senior citizens.”
“I know the place,” I told him. “Let’s hold our thumbs.”
“Dear God, yes!” he said.
From there I drove to the store of the tawdry Turk. He was not there but his wife was, a short, thin, and dark-skinned woman. I told her my name.
She nodded. “Ismet told me you were here yesterday.” Her smile was sad. “That man and his dreams! What cock-and-bull story did he tell you?”
“Some of it made sense. He tried to sell me an Ispahan.”
“He didn’t tell me that!”
“He also told me about some rumors he heard.”
“Oh, yes! Rumors he has. Customers is what we need. Tell me, Mr. Stein, how can a man get so fat on rumors?”
“He’s probably married to a good cook.”
“That he is. Take my advice, and a grain of salt, when you listen to the rumors of my husband, Mr. Stein. He is a dreamer. It is the reason I married him. I, too, in my youth, was a dreamer. It is why we came to America many years ago.”
Send these, the homeless, tempest-tost to me. I lift my lamp beside the golden door …
I smiled at her. “Keep the faith!” I went out.
My next stop was the bank, where I deposited the checks from Mrs. Bishop and Arden and cashed a check for two hundred dollars.
From there to Vons in Santa Monica, where I stocked up on groceries, meat, and booze. Grocery markups in Beverly Hills, my mother had warned me, were absurd. Only the vulgar rich could afford them.
Mrs. Bey might believe that all the rumors her husband heard were bogus. But the rumor he had voiced to me was too close to the truth to qualify as bogus. It was logical to assume that there were shenanigans he indulged in in the practice of his trade that he would not reveal to her. To a man of his ilk the golden door meant gold, and he was still looking for the door.
I put the groceries away when I got home and went out to check the answering machine. Zilch. I typed the happenings of the morning into the record. Nothing had changed; no pattern showed.
There was a remote chance that Bey might learn where the rug was now. That was what I was being paid to find. But, as I had told Les Denton, the girl was my major concern.
It wasn’t likely that she was staying at the home of any of her classmates. Their parents certainly would have phoned Mrs. Bishop by now if she hadn’t phoned them.
Which reminded me that I had something to report. I phoned the Bishop house and the lady was home. I told her Janice had been seen on the Santa Monica beach on Wednesday and that a man there had told me this morning that he had talked with her. She had lied to him, telling him that she lived in Oxnard.
“She’s very adept at lying. Did you learn anything else?”
“Well, there was a rug dealer in Santa Monica who told me he had heard rumors about a three-by-five Kerman that had been stolen. I have no idea where he heard them.”
“There could be a number of sources. My husband has been asking several dealers we know if they have seen it. And, of course, many of my friends know about the loss.”
“Isn’t it possible they might inform the police?”
“Not if they want to remain my friends. And the dealers, too, have been warned. If Janice has been seen on the Santa Monica beach, the rug could also be in the area. I think that is where you should concentrate your search.”
It was warm and the weatherman had promised us sunshine for tomorrow. Cheryl and I could spend a day on the beach at Mrs. Bishop’s expense.
“I agree with you completely,” I said.
I phoned her apartment and Cheryl was there. I asked her if she’d like to spend a day on the beach with me tomorrow.
“I’d love it!”
I told her about the groceries I had bought and asked if she’d like to come and I’d cook a dinner for us tonight.
“Petroff, I can’t! We’re going to the symphony concert at the pavilion tonight.”
“Who is we?”
“My roommates and I. Who else? Would you like to interrogate one of them?”
“Of course not! Save the program for me so I can see what I missed.”
“I sure as hell will, you suspicious bastard. What time tomorrow?”
“Around ten.”
“I’ll be waiting.”
I made myself a martini before dinner and then grilled a big T-bone steak and had it with frozen creamed asparagus and shoestring potatoes (heated, natch) and finished it off with lemon sherbet and coffee.
I had left Invisible Man in the car. I reread my favorite novel, The Great Gatsby, after dinner, along with a few ounces of brandy.
And then to my lonely bed. All the characters I had met since Wednesday afternoon kept running through my mind. All the chasing I had done had netted me nothing of substance. Credit investigations were so much cleaner and easier. But, like my Uncle Vartan, I had never felt comfortable working under a boss.
Cheryl was waiting outside her apartment building next morning when I pulled up a little after ten. She climbed into the car and handed me a program.
“Put it away,” I said. “I was only kidding last night.”
“Like hell you were!” She put it in the glove compartment. “And how was your evening?”
“Lonely. I talked with the man Denton’s friend saw with Janice on the beach. She told him she had come down from Oxnard. He gave her the bus fare to go back.”
“To Oxnard? Why would anybody want to go back to Oxnard?”
“She claimed she lived there. Don’t ask me why.”
“Maybe the man lied.”
“Why would he?”
“Either he lied or she lied. It’s fifty-fifty, isn’t it?”
“Cheryl, he had no reason to lie. He told me the whole story and he has helped other kids to go home again. He gave me his name and address. Mrs. Bishop told me yesterday afternoon that Janice was—she called her an adept liar.”
“And she is a creep, according to Les. Maybe Janice had reason to lie to the old bag.”
“A creep she is. A bag she ain’t. Tell me, what are you wearing under that simple but undoubtedly expensive charcoal denim dress?”
“My swimsuit, of course. Don’t get horny. It’s too early in the day for that.”
It was, unfortunately, a great day for the beach; the place was jammed. They flood in from the San Fernando Valley and Hollywood and Culver City and greater Los Angeles on the warm days. Very few of them come from Beverly Hills. Most of those people have their own private swimming pools. Maybe all of them.
We laughed and splashed and swam and built a sand castle, back to the days of our adolescence. We forgot for a while the missing Janice Bishop and the antique Kerman.
After the fun part we walked from end to end on the beach, scanning the crowd, earning my pay, hoping to find the girl.
No luck.
Cheryl said, “I’ll make you that dinner tonight, if you want me to.”
“I want you to.”
“We may as well go right to your place,” she said. “You can drop me off at the apartment tomorrow when you go to the weekly meeting of the clan. It won’t be out of your way.”
“Sound thinking,” I agreed.
What she made for us was a soufflé, an entree soufflé, not a dessert soufflé. But it was light enough to rest easily on top of the garbage we had consumed at the beach.
The garbage on the tube, we both agreed, would demean our day. We went to bed early.
The overcast was back in the morning, almost a fog. We ate a hearty breakfast to replace the energy we had lost in the night.
I dropped her off at her apartment a little after one o’clock, and was the first to arrive at my parents’ house. Adele was the second. She had brought her friend with her, Salvatore Martino, known in the trade as Ronnie Egan.
It was possible, I reasoned, that I could be as wrong about him as Mrs. Whitney Bishop had been about Leslie Denton. I suggested to him that we take a couple of beers out to the patio while my mother and Adele fussed around in the kitchen.
We yacked about this and that, mostly sports, and then he said, “I saw three of your amateur fights and both your pro fights. How come you quit after that?”
“If you saw my pro fights, you should understand why.”
“Jesus, man, you were way overmatched! You were jobbed. I’ll bet Sam made a bundle on both of those fights.”
Sam Batisto had been my manager. I said, “I’m not following you. You mean you think Sam is a crook?”
He nodded. “And a double-crossing sleazeball. Hell, he’s got Mafia cousins. He’d sell out his mother if the price was right.”
That son of a bitch …
“Well, what the hell,” he went on, “maybe the bastard did you a favor. That’s a nasty, ugly game, and people are beginning to realize it. Have you noticed how many big bouts are staged in Vegas?”
“I’ve noticed.” I changed the subject. “How did you make out with the commercial?”
“Great! My agent worked Adele into it. And the producer promised both of us more work. We’re going to make it, Adele and I. But we can’t get married until we do. You understand that, don’t you?”
“Very well,” I assured him. “Welcome to the clan.”
My mother had gone Armenian this Sunday, chicken and pilaf. One of Sarkis’s boys hadn’t been able to attend; Salvatore took his place at the poker session.
That was a red-letter day! Salvatore was the big winner. And for the first time in history Mom was the big loser. I would like to say she took it graciously, but she didn’t. We are a competitive clan.
“Nice guy,” I said, when Adele and he had left.
She sniffed. “When he marries Adele, then he might be a nice guy.”
“He told me they’re going to get married as soon as they can afford to.”
“We’ll see,” she said. “He could be another Vartan.”
The day had stayed misty; the traffic on Sunset Boulevard was slow. I dawdled along, thinking back on the past few days, trying to find the key to the puzzle of the missing girl and the stolen Kerman. The key was the key; who had the key to the house and why had only the rug been stolen?
One thing was certain, the burglar knew the value of antique Oriental rugs. But how would he know that particular rug was in the home of Whitney Bishop?
It was a restless night, filled with dreams I don’t remember now. I tossed and turned and went to the toilet twice. A little after six o’clock I realized sleep was out of the question. I put the coffee on to perc and went down the steps to pick up the morning Times.
The story was on page one. Whitney Bishop, founder and senior partner of the brokerage firm of Bishop, Hope, and Nystrom, had been found dead in a deserted Brentwood service station. A local realtor had discovered the body when he had brought a potential buyer to the station on Sunday morning. Bishop had been stabbed to death. A loaded but unfired .32 caliber revolver had been found near the body.
According to his wife, Bishop had been nervous and irritable on Friday night. His secretary told the police that he had received a phone call on Friday afternoon and appeared agitated. On Saturday night, he had told his wife he was going to a board meeting at the Beverly Hills Country Club. When he hadn’t come home by midnight, Mrs. Bishop had phoned the club. The club was closed; receiving no answer there, she had phoned the police.
When questioned about the revolver, she had stated that she remembered he had once owned a small-caliber pistol but she was almost sure it had been lost or stolen years ago.
A murdered husband…. And there was no mention in the piece about a missing daughter or a stolen rug. Considering how many of her friends knew about both, that was bound to come out.
When it did, I could be in deep trouble for withholding information about the rug and the girl. But so could she for the same reason. And spreading those stories to the media could alert and scare off any seasoned burglar who had been looking forward to a buy-back deal. That was the slim hope I tried to hang on to.
I put the record of my involvement in the case under the mattress in my bedroom. I showered and shaved and put on my most conservative suit after breakfast and sat in my office chair, waiting for the police to arrive.
They didn’t.
I thought back to all the people I had questioned in the past week. And then I realized there was one I hadn’t.
I went down the stairs and asked Uncle Vartan if he had heard the sad news.
He nodded and yawned. He had heard it on the tube last night, he told me. I had the feeling that he would not mourn the death of Whitney Bishop.
“You told me you went with Mrs. Bishop when she was between husbands. Who was her first?”
“A man named Duane Pressville, a former customer of mine.”
“Do you have his address?”
“Not anymore. It has been years since I’ve seen him. What is this all about, Pierre?”
“I was thinking that it was possible he still had the key to the house they shared and would know where the alarm turnoff switch was hidden.”
He stared at me. “And you think he stole the rug? That’s crazy, Pierre! He was a very sharp buyer but completely honest.” He paused. “And now you are thinking that he might be a murderer?”
“The murder and the rug might not be connected,” I pointed out. “Tell me, is he the man who bought the Kerman from you?”
“Yes,” he said irritably. “And that’s enough of this nonsense! I have work to do this morning, Pierre.”
“Sorry,” I said, and went up the stairs to look up Duane Pressville in the phone book. There were several Pressvilles in the book but only one Duane. His address was 332 Adonis Court.
I knew the street, a short dead-ender that led off San Vicente Boulevard. Into the Camaro, back on the hunt.
Adonis Court was an ancient neighborhood of small houses. It had resisted the influx of demolitions that had invaded the area when land prices soared. These were the older residents who had no serious economic pressures that would force them to sell out.
332 was a small frame house with a shingled roof and a small low porch in front of the door.
I went up to the porch and turned the old-fashioned crank that rang the bell inside the house.
The man who opened the door was tall and thin and haggard, the same man who had called himself Gerald Hopkins on the beach.
He smiled. “Mr. Apoyan! What brings you to my door?”
“I’m looking for a rug,” I said. “An antique Kerman.”
He frowned. “Did Victoria send you here?”
“Who is Victoria?”
“My former wife. What vindictive crusade is she on now? No matter what she might have told you, I bought that rug with my own money. It was my rug, until the divorce settlement.”
“Why,” I asked, “did you lie to me on the beach?”
He looked at me and past me. He sighed and said, “Come in.”
The door opened directly into the living room. It was a room about fourteen feet wide and eighteen feet long. It was almost completely covered by a dark red Oriental rug. It looked like a Bokhara to me.
The furniture was mostly dark mahogany, brightly polished, upholstered in well-worn velour.
“Sit down,” he said.
I sat in an armchair, he on the sofa.
“Have you ever heard of Maksoud of Kashan?” he asked.
“I think so. Wasn’t he a famous Oriental rug weaver?”
He nodded. “The finest in all of Persia, now called Iran. But in his entire career, with all the associates he had working under him, he wove his name into only two of his rugs. One of them is in the British Museum. The other is the small Kerman I bought from your uncle. I remember now—you worked in his store on Saturdays, didn’t you?”
I nodded.
“You weren’t in the store that day this—this peddler brought in the Kerman. It was filthy! But far from being worn out. My eyes must be sharper than your uncle’s. I saw the signature in the corner. I made the mistake of overplaying my hand; I offered him a thousand dollars for it, much more than it appeared to be worth. That must have made him suspicious. We dickered. When I finally offered him three thousand dollars, he sold it to me.”
“And I suppose he has resented you ever since that day.”
He shrugged. “Probably. To tell you the truth, after he learned about the history of the rug I was ashamed to go back to the store.”
“To tell the truth once again,” I said, “where is your daughter? Where is Janice?”
“She is well and safe and far from here. She is back with her real parents, the parents who were too poor to keep her when she was born. I finally located them.”
“You wouldn’t want to tell me their name?”
“Not you, or anybody else. Not with the legal clout Victoria can afford. Do you want Janice to go back to that woman she complained to when her third father tried to molest her, that woman who called her a liar? I did some research on Bishop, too. He was fired by a Chicago brokerage firm for churning. He had one charge of child molestation dropped for insufficient evidence there. So he came out here and married money and started his own firm.”
“And was stabbed to death Saturday night not far from here.”
“I heard that on the radio this morning.” His smile was cynical. “Are you going to the funeral?”
I shook my head. “According to the morning paper he must have been carrying a gun. But he didn’t fire it.”
“The news report on this morning’s radio station explained that,” he told me. “The safety catch was on.”
“I didn’t hear it. What do you think that Kerman would bring today?”
“Fifty thousand, a hundred thousand, whatever the buyer would pay.” He studied me. “Are you suggesting that the murder and the rug are connected?”
“You know I am. My theory is that Bishop got the call from the burglar on Friday and decided not to buy the rug, but to shoot the burglar.”
“An interesting theory. Is there more to it?”
“Yes. The burglar then stabbed him—and found another buyer. Bishop might have reason other than penuriousness. He might have known the burglar knew his history.”
He said wearily, “You’re zeroing in, aren’t you? You’re beginning to sound like a detective.”
“I am. A private investigator. I just opened my own office over Uncle Vartan’s store.”
“You should have told me that when you came.”
“You must have guessed that I was an investigator when we met on the beach. Why else would you have lied?”
He didn’t answer.
“If Janice’s real parents are still poor,” I said, “fifty or a hundred thousand dollars should help to alleviate it.”
He nodded. “If the burglar has found the right buyer. It should certainly help to send her to a first-rate college. And now I’m getting tired. It’s time for my nap. I have leukemia, Pierre. My doctor has told me he doesn’t know how many days I have before I sleep the big sleep. I know what you are thinking, and it could be true. I’m sure you are honor bound to take what I have told you to the police. I promise I will bear you no malice if you do. But you had better hurry.”
“There is no need to hurry,” I said. “Thank you for your cooperation, Mr. Pressville.”
“And thank you for your courtesy,” he said. “Give my regards to Vartan.”
I didn’t give his regards to Uncle Vartan. I didn’t even tell him I had talked with his former customer. I had some thinking to do.
For three days I thought and wondered when the police would call. They never came. Mrs. Bishop sent me a check for the balance of my investigation along with an acerbic note that informed me she would certainly tell her many friends how unsuccessful I had been in searching for both her rug and her daughter.
I had no need to continue thinking on the fourth day. Duane Pressville was found dead in his house on Adonis Court by a concerned neighbor. I burned the records of that maiden quest.