You are here: Webley Page > The Spirit of Exmas Sideways > Part 3Sat 24 Dec 212 A.L., 05:40 O'Clock
I tried calling Clarissa, but the 'com at home stuttered and produced a pleasant-looking young woman with blue-gray eyes and dark brown curly hair.
"Raukerk, may I help?" She looked familiar. It annoyed me not knowing why. From the circled cross on one tunic shoulder, insignia Clarissa wore on most of her own clothing, she was a Healer. She must have been on housecall, her image had that jiggly quality associated with hand-held 'coms.
"May I ask why you're answering Clarissa Olson's calls?"
She reached in a pocket and held up a card which told me she was Loranna Kay Raukerk, H.D. I recalled meeting her at a dinner gathering of Greater Laporte Healers Clarissa had conscripted me into. "Clarissa didn't tell you? She's cancelled her appointments for the next several days. I'm taking new business for her. And before you ask, I don't know where she can be reached."
I don't know why I felt embarrassed not knowing where Clarissa was. "You may not remember me, Healer," I told her, displaying one of my own cards, "but we've met. I'm Win Bear, a detective, um, associated with Clarissa. When she calls for her messages, tell her I'm looking for her, will you?"
"You bet, Win."
As she rang off, I watched the answer-light blinking again. Someone had called while I was on the 'com with Loranna Raukerk. Certain it had to be Clarissa, I punched buttons. Trouble was, I was wrong. What I got was an anonymous, synthetic voice, the kind used to sell insurance policies: "You don't need the grief fooling around in other people's business will get you. Give up this investigation now, while you still have a choice in the matter."
Whoever it was, they knew I didn't have any other jobs at the moment. Pounding panic back wherever I store it, I reminded myself, from Stateside experience, that only one call like this in every ten ever turns out serious.
Worried about Clarissa, I spent the next half hour checking everywhere she might be. I talked to Mrs. Grundy, rather, she talked at me. Desperate, I even called Clarissa's mother. She was gleefully unwilling to tell me anything of her daughter's whereabouts. She'd been instructed not to talk to anybody, and put a lot more emphasis on the word "anybody" than I suspected Clarissa had. In a way, that sounded like good news, more like Clarissa was sore than that she'd come to any harm. I had no choice but to continue the investigation I'd committed myself to, nursing the forlorn, stupid hope that her disappearance only meant she'd decided to end our relationship. I was willing to settle for that, provided she was otherwise okay.
Sat 24 Dec 212 A.L., 06:10 O'Clock
On the way to see my client, I stopped at the address listed for Deejay's assistant, about what I'd expected for a guy working his way through college, being paid in education and lab space. Imagine the home of a moderately successful Beverly Hills plastic surgeon and you'll get an idea of what passes, in Laporte, for the low-rent district. Back home, most land west of the Mississippi belongs to federal, state, county, or municipal governments, horribly inflating the price of what little's left. No such artificial scarcity prevails here. Every square inch is private and untaxed. I left the Neova in the drive (it's foolish to park any vehicle along a hundred-mile-per hour street) and followed ankle-lamps along a self-defrosting walk. A pushed button got me a happyface display and the same "Life is an intelligence test -- beeeeep!" which had been funny the first time on the 'com.
Onward and Mottward: imagine the home of a moderately successful Roman emperor and you'll get an idea of the door which was answered by the lady of the house, at the home my client had shared with her former brother. If I'd left my car on that street, I'd still be crossing the lawn to get there.
"Come in, young man, may I take your wrap? My, it's cold out, would you care for something warming to drink?"
I doffed the felt. "No thanks on both counts, Miss Mott. I need to ask a few more questions, if you don't mind."
Halfway across her entrance hall, I was wishing for one of those moving sidewalks they install beneath intersections. It had been a long night. She ushered me into a room that would have looked well-furnished in Astroturf and goal-posts. "Ask whether I mind or not. Isn't that what a detective does?"
I grinned, seating myself on a sofa-edge. It occurred to me that one way to tell rich people from the rest of us is that they put their furniture in the middle of the room. "Right you are. I'd like to confirm some information I've gathered. Then I'll have a better idea what to do next." Seated across from me, she nodded. I told her, not attributing, what I'd learned of her brother's dislike for innovation, citing Confederation, rejuvenation, non-human sapience, political uses of the broach. His attitude might not be crucial, but it was odd enough to warrant attention.
"He wasn't above changing his mind," she told me with an unhappy look on what had been a prunish face to begin with, "given sufficient motivation. For example, he had recently reversed himself on the issue of rejuvenation."
My eyebrows went up by themselves. "Did he offer any reason?"
She pursed her lips. "He planned to undergo the process as a sacrifice to necessity, pursuing his dispute with Professor Thorens and the President."
Don't ask how I knew, years of experience, maybe. She was lying.
Sat 24 Dec 212 A.L., 06:55 O'Clock
"Dear Lysander, of course she was lying!" the Laporte Paratronics chairman was living up to his title, leaning back in the same impressive recliner I'd seen on the 'com hours ago. Maybe he slept in it. Clamped to one arm was a tray with a teacup and a bowl for the dead bag. Mine was in there, too. In a similar chair, I sat, simultaneously warm and dry for the first time since last night, struggling not to fall asleep after twenty-plus hours on my metaphorical feet. This was the penthouse atop the mile-high pyramid, Aztec Modern decor, located at the north edge of Greater Laporte I'd visited before. Montezuma and the Egyptians would have died of envy, if they hadn't already been dead. TransAmerica might have joined them.
I raised an eyebrow. "But not about her brother's rejuvenation."
"Nor his determination where the probability broach was concerned." He set his cup aside, drew a cigarette holder from the pocket of his smoking jacket. "But I assure you, Seaton Mott had another reason besides politics, one his sister was all too well aware of, for wanting to be young again."
"Something," I accepted a cigarette; you can only smoke so many cigars in one night, "feminine." En route to this place, I'd checked on Clarissa again without reaching her. To my annoyance, there'd been another nag from Littleshin, which I ignored. I'd stopped at the graduate assistant's humble abode a second time, inquiring with the few neighbors conscious at that hour. In a transient student neighborhood, they'd proven unable to help. Now I was paying a visit on my old friend and former enemy, Freeman K. Bertram.
"For the first time in years, I gather," he screwed a cigarette into his holder, lit mine, then his own, "he was seeing a young woman."
I inhaled and exhaled. "Anybody I'd know?"
Outside, through a window half the size of my living room, the winter sun blasted up over the prairie horizon without so much as a contrail in the aching blue sky. I knew that meant it would be colder today than last night. I'd be spending all my time afoot, taking tiny little Oriental steps to avoid falling on my big fat Amerindian ass. People who "Think Snow" are perverts.
He shook his head. "Watanabe was the name I recall, Violet Watanabe. Something to do with the university faculty, I think. A 'fortune-hunting bit of fluff' in Alberta's estimate -- those were Seaton's words. Our political differences on the Board, his and mine, weren't personal, and he talked to me. I suspect that Alberta, who doted on him, was the slightest bit jealous of the plans her brother was making after his coming rejuvenation."
I grinned. "No pun intended. You and Littleshin were conversing about the time Mott was killed. Mind telling me about it?"
"I did most of the talking the first time. He wondered whether he'd taken the right tack with Deejay. He wanted to understand everything about the issue, perhaps to modify his position. I told him all I knew of the physics, its history and potential. It must have taken half an hour or so."
I frowned. "What do you mean 'the first time'?"
"Only that our conversation was interrupted."
"I see," I nodded, "About how long between halves?"
He considered. "Not more than minutes. Merse said he had a visitor or a call on another line, I forget. I suspect he wanted to use the bathroom. He called me back almost immediately. We continued for another half hour."
"Any witnesses to this conversation?"
"None at his end, I think. It was after hours. His secretary had gone for the day. Plenty at this end, though. I work in what amounts to my home. Several of my staff live in the building and are in and out of this apartment pretty much around the clock. More than one came in while I was talking to Merse. I was using, as I often do, a wall-screen, so he'd appear life-size, sitting against that big office window of his with the trees outside."
"Think there was enough time to get in his car, go kill Mott, then come back and finish with you? Mott's place isn't that far from the university."
He shook his head. "What you describe would take at least fifteen minutes. I don't think the interruption lasted more than two or three."
"Hmmm. Was sister Alberta jealous enough to serve brother Seaton a high-velocity jell-tip bullet, right in the old cerebellum?"
He looked startled. "How's that?"
"Thin nylon shell outside," I explained, "jellied liquid teflon inside. Melts in your brain, not in your gun." He paled, offering no reply. Living with a Healer had encouraged bad habits I'd acquired during years on Homicide. For most people, it was way too early in the morning for terminal ballistics.
"Change of subject: your company helped the university develop the broach in the first place. You're on the Board of Trustees. You also make no secret that you're fond of Deejay. Yet you say your differences with Mott weren't personal. How did you feel about his other plans for after his rejuvenation, which included cutting Deejay off from her work?"
"Great Albert's ghost, I'm a suspect!" He flicked ashes into the teabag bowl. "I suppose I ought to be flattered. As to what you ask, it's difficult to explain. My difference with Seaton wasn't personal, yet I felt personally about the difference itself, if you take my meaning. In any event, it isn't so much how I feel as what I plan to do. I'll continue funding Deejay, offer her working space here, if need be, regardless of what the Board does."
"She'll be glad to hear that -- or has she already?"
"She has," Bertram replied, "Regardless of what Merse says, that ought to remove her from suspicion once and for all, don't you think?"
My own suspicions of Deejay had been minimal to begin with. I couldn't help it that I knew the woman. It was ludicrous to imagine she'd murder anybody for the reason suggested. Violet Watanabe, however, might turn out to be a hot lead. Thanking Bertram for the tea and sympathy, I departed from the pyramid, which is more than any dead Egyptian ever managed on his own.
Sat 24 Dec 212 A.L., 07:28 O'Clock
The same damned light was blinking when I climbed in the Neova. A quick call told me Clarissa was still out of touch. I watched the light, hoping one of the messages which had come while I was cutting up touches with Bertram was from the love of my life. No luck. Two were Littleshin. Sandwiched in between was another anonymous threat. Directory Assistance (this time a Rocky Mountain bighorn in a tuxedo) gave me an address for Violet Watanabe. She was a neighbor of Deejay's, as I expected, a professor of history in Laporte University's Department of Praxeology. I was there in five minutes.
"Odd," I said to the woman who greeted me at the door, "you don't look a history professor. We've got to stop meeting like this. Clarissa will get suspicious. Speaking of Clarissa, have you heard anything from her lately?"
"I'm just a smidge busy at the moment," Loranna Raukerk replied, not inviting me in. "Is there something I can do for you, Win?"
"It's possible. I didn't mention it before, but I'm investigating a murder. I'd like to have a few words with Violet Watanabe."
She shook her heads. "I'm afraid Violet isn't seeing anyone today. May I give her a message?"
I shook mine right back at her. "I'm up to here with messages, giving and taking. I need to see Miss Watanabe as soon as possible."
She paused, thoughtful. "Come in a minute. I'll show you why Violet isn't receiving."
I followed down the hall to a bedroom, where a young woman who did look like a history professor, from the bridge of her cute little nose to the top of her bright-colored comforter, lay with a sleep inducer taped over her eyes. The comforter was cheerful where sunlight streamed in from a nearby window.
"Shocked," the Healer told me in a whisper, "inconsolable with grief. She's been this way since she heard about Seaton Mott. That's why I've got her under sedation. Isn't it the saddest thing you ever saw?"
"Saddest thing I ever saw," I told her, "was a guy, flat broke, who sat two hours with his head in an oven before he realized they'd turned the gas off." I didn't say I couldn't imagine anyone being so inconsolable over my demise they'd require this kind of care. I don't know what the old goat had, but I was ordering a double.
Interviewing an unconscious subject didn't strike me as productive. I admit I walked around and peeked in the window, making sure Violet didn't hop out of bed to congratulate her accomplice on the fast one they'd pulled. That was what things had come to. At that, things might have been worse, I told myself. Violet might have had a second floor apartment. For that matter, this might have been a hit and run case. I might even have found a smoking gun at the murder scene, or a fired cartridge case. One man's evidence is another man's non sequitur: nobody collects fingerprints in the Confederacy, and they think license plates are something you put food on at an orgy.
With that thought, something Bertram had implied switched on a small, dim bulb over my head. Another five minutes got me back to the Caesar Rodney subdivision for the third time in twelve hours.
Sat 24 Dec 212 A.L., 07:45 O'Clock
"You said 'ask,' Miss Mott, so here goes: what was the exact nature of your relationship with the deceased?"
We were in what I'd begun thinking of as the AlbertaDome. Afraid I'd nod off on a couch, I'd taken one of those spindly parlor chairs that never look like they're meant to sit on. On a nearby sofa, Miss Mott was holding up well, if my guess was right. I wondered what sedation she was taking.
"Why," my client told me, apparently puzzled, "he was my brother."
"And maybe a little something else, besides?" I took a deep breath, ready to kiss off the first decent fee I'd had a crack at, "Who was it said incest is fine game as long as you keep it in the family?"
She sat up, stiff. "How dare you sully my brother's memory by jumping to such wild, irresponsible conclusions!" She trembled. I kept an eye on the little pistol, a .444 Willis, she wore crossdraw at her waist.
I shrugged. "Look, when you won't tell me the truth, I can't be held responsible for my conclusions. It wouldn't be the first time my client turned out to be a killer." It would, in fact, unless you count the habitual killer I'd drawn paychecks from for twenty-seven years, but I never overlook the value of a well-placed lie. I must have said something right, despite the fact I'd all but accused her of being a murderer, she started relaxing.
"Listen," I continued, "Where I grew up, every second breath you take is against one law or another. But even when I earned a living enforcing those laws, I figured -- and it damn near got me fired more than once -- that a person's private life is his own business. Her own business. I'm not here to do anything except find out who killed you brother. Believe me, I don't give a rat's ass how you two entertained each other unless it's relevant."
It was her turn for one of those deep-down kamikaze breaths. "I've often heard it said, young man -- Win -- that custom's a thousand times more powerful than any law. I loved my brother more than eighty years, in the manner -- which is to say the degree of intimacy -- you suggest. You're the first, as far as I know, even to suspect. I suppose that means I hired a competent detective. I was a girl of fifteen when it began. Custom can also be stronger than the absence of law: neither Seaton nor I ever felt particularly proud of what we were doing."
"And along came Violet. Were you angry it was over after eighty years?"
"Eighty-eight years. I was, although I limited my vindictiveness to supporting Professor Thorens' position on the Board of Trustees."
Despite myself, I laughed. "I hate to ask, but, as you say, I'm a competent detective. I try to be, anyway. Tell me again where you were, what you were doing, when your brother ... "
"As a matter of fact, I can. There is some advantage, after all, to being my age and the sort of person I am. I don't rattle. It occurred to me, when Seaton was killed, that someone would be asking me that before too long. I was preparing the house for a social gathering. Between servants and guests, I was never alone the entire time Seaton went for his walk until I heard his body had been discovered."
I'm hopeless: a detective should be more suspicious of people than I ever manage to be. I'm always the one most surprised when I discover that the soft-spoken shoe-salesman is the culprit who chain-sawed his mother-in-law into chunks and mailed her to starving Ethiopians. I was impressed with Miss Mott and found myself wondering what she'd be like after rejuvenation.
Next: Sat 24 Dec 212 A.L., 08:39 O'Clock
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