The Burglar in the Library - By Lawrence Block Page 0,105
When you called, I thought you might want to come over to my apartment. Or that you’d invite me over to yours.”
“I thought it would be nice to meet here.”
“So you said. But I didn’t expect there would be three of us.”
“Four,” I said, “if you count the cat. And I can’t guarantee there won’t be more. You might find this hard to believe, but every once in a while I actually have a customer walk in here.”
“How nice for you.”
“But that probably won’t happen,” I said, “and until it does we can talk freely. I didn’t get much chance to talk to you after your husband ate his gun.”
She shuddered. “What an unpleasant expression,” she said. “And I wish you wouldn’t call him my husband.”
“You’re the one who married him,” I said. “I suppose you’ve got grounds for an annulment, but he saved you the hassle of getting one, the same as he saved the state the cost of a trial. You’re single again, and you’re in the clear as far as the cops are concerned. How about Mr. Sternhagen? Is he letting you come back to work?”
“He insisted I take the week off,” she said, “but of course he wants me back.”
“I guess he was happy enough just to get his bonds back.”
“He got them back before he even knew they were gone, Bernie. And he realized that I was as much Dakin’s victim as he was. It was indiscreet of me to give Dakin an opportunity to have a copy of my key made, but Mr. Sternhagen knows I’ll never let anything like that happen again.”
“I guess it must seem like a horrible dream,” I said.
“It does.”
“But your eyes are open now, and it’s all over.”
“That’s right, Bernie. It’s just a good thing the police got there when they did. I still can’t understand how they managed it.”
“They used a helicopter,” I said.
“I know that.”
“So the road conditions didn’t matter,” I said, “and the unplowed driveway didn’t stop them, or the lack of a bridge across the gully. They just flew right over everything.”
“I understand all that part. How did they know to come in the first place? And how did they know they would need a helicopter? And the man in charge—”
“Ray Kirschmann.”
“He was a New York police officer, and he seemed to know you.”
“I noticed that,” I said. “Curious, isn’t it?”
“But how did he…”
“Bernie called him,” Carolyn said. “After he faked his own death by lowering a dummy into the gully, he walked downstream until he found a place where he could wade across.”
“No wading required,” I said. “Cuttlebone Creek was frozen solid. The only wading I had to do was through snow, and I don’t think you call it wading when it’s snow. It’s either trudging or slogging, and it seems to me I did a fair amount of both.”
“Then he doubled back on the other side of the gully,” she went on, “until he got to the parking lot.”
“The parking lot?”
“Right on the other side of the bridge, where everybody left their cars. He figured somebody would have a cell phone, and he opened car doors until he found one.”
“Didn’t people lock their cars? I’m positive Dakin locked ours.”
“I guess I got lucky,” I said. I didn’t tell her that a locked car is not the most challenging obstacle you can place in a burglar’s path. “I found a phone, and I was going to call nine-one-one but I couldn’t figure out what to tell them. So I called Ray Kirschmann, and don’t ask me what I told him. Don’t ask him, either, because I woke him up in the middle of the night and he couldn’t make sense of what I was saying. But he got the important part right.”
“And arrived in the nick of time,” Carolyn said.
I crumpled a piece of paper and threw it for Raffles. “Ray didn’t have any jurisdiction up there,” I went on, “but he got in touch with the state troopers, and they tried to reach Cuttleford House and confirmed that the phones were out. So they broke out a helicopter and brought Ray along for the ride. And the rest you know, because you were there for it.”
“Yes.”
“So I suppose you’re wondering why I summoned you here,” I said. “Today, I mean. This afternoon.”
“I thought you just wanted to see me, Bernie.”
“Well, it’s always a pleasure, Lettice. But there was something I wanted to talk about.”