The Burglar in the Closet - By Lawrence Block Page 0,26

furiously, made the scalpel disappear again. “Just for curiosity,” he said, “maybe you’d like to tell us how you spent the evening, Miss Paar.”

“How I—”

“What did you do last night? Unless you can’t remember.”

“Last night,” Jillian said. She blinked, gnawed her lip, looked beseechingly at me. “I had dinner,” she said.

“Alone?”

“With me,” I put in. “You’re writing this down? Why? Jillian’s not a suspect, is she? I thought you had an open-and-shut case against Dr. Sheldrake.”

“We do,” said Todras.

“It’s just routine,” Nyswander added. His weasel face looked craftier than ever. “So you had dinner together?”

“Right. Honey, what was the name of that restaurant?”

“Belevedere’s. But—”

“Belvedere’s. Right. We must have been there until nine o’clock or thereabouts.”

“And then I suppose you spent a quiet evening at home?”

“Jillian did,” I said. “I headed on over to the Garden myself and watched the fights. They already started by the time I got there but I saw three or four prelim bouts and the main event. Jillian doesn’t care for boxing.”

“I don’t like violence,” Jillian said.

Todras seemed to approach me without actually moving. “I suppose,” he said, “you can prove you were at the fights.”

“Prove it? Why do I have to prove it?”

“Oh, just routine, Mr. Rhodenbarr. I suppose you went with a friend.”

“No, I went alone.”

“That a fact? But you most likely ran into somebody you knew.”

I thought about it. “Well, the usual ringside crowd was there. The pimps and the dope dealers and the sports crowd. But I’m just a fan, I don’t actually know any of those people except to recognize them when I see them.”

“Uh-huh.”

“The fellow who sat next to me, we were talking about the fighters and all, but I don’t know his name and I don’t even know if I’d recognize him again.”

“Uh-huh.”

“Anyway, why would I have to prove where I was?”

“Just routine,” Nyswander said. “Then you can’t—”

“Oh,” I said brightly. “Hell. I wonder if I have my ticket stub. I don’t remember throwing it out.” I looked at Jillian. “Was I wearing this jacket last night? You know, I think I was. I probably dropped the stub in the garbage, or when I was cleaning out my pockets before I went to bed. Maybe it’s in a wastebasket at my apartment. I don’t suppose—oh, here’s something.”

And, amazingly enough, I showed Nyswander an orange stub from last night’s fight card at Madison Square Garden. He eyed it sullenly before passing it to Todras who didn’t seem any happier to see it, his smile notwithstanding.

The ticket stub cooled things. They didn’t suspect us of anything, they knew they already had the murderer in a cell, but Jillian had irritated them and they were getting a little of their own back. They returned to a less intimidating line of questioning, just rounding out things in their notebooks before moving on. I could relax now, except that you can’t relax until they’re out the door and gone, and they were in the process of going when Todras raised a big hand, placed it atop his big head, and scratched diligently.

“Rhodenbarr,” he said. “Bernard Rhodenbarr. Now where in the hell have I heard that name before?”

“Gee,” I said, “I don’t know.”

“What’s your line of work, Bernie?”

A warning bell sounded. When they start calling you by your first name it means they’ve pegged you as a criminal. As long as you’re a citizen in their eyes it’s always Mr. Rhodenbarr, but when they call you Bernie it’s time to watch out. I don’t think Todras even knew what he’d said, but I heard him, and the ice was getting very thin out there.

“I’m in investments,” I said. “Mutual funds, open-end real-estate trusts. Estate planning, that’s the real focus of what I do.”

“That a fact. Rhodenbarr, Rhodenbarr. I know that name.”

“I don’t know where from,” I said. “Unless you grew up in the Bronx.”

“How’d you know that?”

By your accent, I thought. Anybody who sounds like Penny Marshall in Laverne and Shirley could have grown up nowhere else. But I said, “What high school?”

“Why?”

“What school?”

“James Monroe. Why?”

“Then that explains it. Freshman English. Don’t you remember Miss Rhodenbarr? Maybe she’s the one who had you reading Oscar Wilde.”

“She’s an English teacher?”

“She was. She passed on—oh, I don’t know exactly how many years ago. Little old lady with iron-gray hair and perfect posture.”

“Relative of yours?”

“My dad’s sister. Aunt Peg, but she’d have been Miss Margaret Rhodenbarr as far as her students were concerned.”

“Margaret Rhodenbarr.”

“That’s right.”

He opened his notebook, and for a moment I thought he was going to