Mystery Murder

After I first set my eyes on Clara Nest, as soon as I opened the front door and she was coming up the five steps to the stoop, she looked like a problem, though only a minor one compared to what followed.

At this very moment I was unemployed. During the years I worked for Jake Bolton and lived under his roof, I have quit my job and also been fired about the same number of times, say fifteen or twenty. Mostly we have been letting things slip by, but most times we have meant it, more or less, and that Saturday evening in July I was so fed up, I couldn't take it anymore. The main dish at dinner had been sauced steak, which both Bolton and Larry know I didn't like so much and can get along without, and we had left the dining room and crossed the hall to the office, and Larry had brought yea and Bolton had poured it, and I had said, "By the way, I told Jerry I'd phone and confirm his appointment for tomorrow noon."

And Bolton had said , "No. Please cancel it." He picked up his phone which he was previously on.

I sat in my working chair and looked across his desk at him. Since he weighs an eighth of a ton he always looks big, but when he's being unpleasant he looks even bigger. "Do you presume it possible," I asked, " that the steak has a bloating effect?"

"No indeed," he said, and stared back at his phone

If I had been a camel and the phone had been a straw you could have heard my spine crack. He knew darned well he shouldn't have picked up his phone until we had finished with the tea. I put my cup down. "I am aware," I said, "that you are sitting pretty. The bank balance is fat enough for months of paying Larry and Andy and me, and buying steak and beer in car lots and adding more orchids to the fifteen thousand you've already got. I'll even grant that a private detective has a right to refuse to take a case with or without a reason, But as I told you before dinner, this Jerry is known to me, and he asked me as a personal favour to get him ten minutes with you, and I told him to come by twelve o'clock tomorrow noon, If you're determined not to work because you tax bracket is already too high, okay, all you have to do is to tell him no. He'll be here at twelve".

He was holding his phone and his eyes were on it, but he spoke. "You know quite well, Ivan, that I must be consulted on appointments. Did you owe this man any sort of favor?"

"I do now that he has asked me for one and I said yes."

"Did you owe any one before?"

"No."

"Then you are committed but I am not. Since I wouldn't take the job it would waste his time and mine, Phone him to not come. Tell him that I have other important engagements."

So I quit. I admit that on some other occasions my quitting had been merely a threat, to push him into seeing reason, but not that time. When a mule plants it's feet a certain way there's no use trying to budge it. I swiveled, got my memo pad, wrote on it, yanked the sheet off, got up and crossed to his desk, and handed him the sheet.

"That's Jerry's number," I told him. "If you're too busy to phone him not to come, Larry can. I'm through. I'll stay with some of my friends tonight and come tomorrow for all my stuff."

His eyes had slowly left the book to glare at me. "Pfui," he said.

"I agree," I said. "Absolutely." I turned and marched out. I do not say that as I got my hat from the rack hall my course was nearly mapped for the next twenty years, or even twenty hours. Bolton owned the house but he didn't own everything in it, for the furniture in my room and on the second floor had beed bought and paid for by me. All those would have to wait until I found a place to move it to, but I would get my clothes and other items tomorrow, and would I come for them before twelve o'clock and learn from Larry whether a visitor whose name was Jerry was expected, or qould it be a better strategy to come in the evening and learn if Jerry had been admitted and given his ten minutes? Facing that problem as I pulled the door open and walked myself out, I was immediately confronted by another one unknown to me. A female was coming up the five steps to the stoop.