The Baker Street Letters Page 8

  “I was just about to ring you,” said Reggie as an officer pushed on his head to guide him into the back of the car.

  At the Los Angeles Central Police Station, Reggie stared stonily at the camera for the face-front shot and then squared his shoulders and turned right for the profile.

  When he had seen photos of wanted felons before on news reports, it had always seemed curious that they could manage to look so sullenly guilty. Now he knew that guilty or not, looking sullen was unavoidable.

  The clerkish, uniformed man giving the photography instructions was as matter-of-fact as if Reggie had simply come in for his driving license. That was irritating. Reggie’s own adrenaline was flowing now, more so than when weapons had been drawn at the overpass.

  Now he was ushered into a narrow room with darkened glass in one wall and told to stand with his toes to a yellow line. Along with four other individuals in the room, Reggie stood and faced the glass, and then on instruction he did the profile maneuver again.

  If the young woman with the dog was on the other side of the glass, she would surely have no difficulty picking him out. Of the four other men standing in the lineup, none resembled him in the slightest; one was wearing a policeman’s shoes, and only one stood within two inches of Reggie’s height. And the bruise inflicted by the bloody dog was still visible on Reggie’s forehead.

  After a moment, an instruction came from the other side of the glass:

  “Number one, say something.”

  None of the men said anything. The voice came again:

  “Number one, say, ‘Do you have any Earl Grey tea?’ ”

  This did not sound promising. Reggie had not uttered any such words since arriving in Los Angeles—or at any time that he could immediately recall—but Nigel might well have.

  He looked to the man at the far left, who looked back and shrugged. Reggie looked at the man wearing the policeman’s shoes, at the far right, who displayed a look of intense frustration but stared straight ahead and said nothing.

  The voice again:

  “Number one, would you please say—”

  “No one bloody knows which of us you have designated as number one,” said Reggie.

  This apparently caused some commotion. The intercom crackled, and he was told to step forward and did so. He stared straight ahead at the glass for several seconds and then stepped back again.

  It would have been comforting to see the same procedure repeated with the other individuals, but it didn’t happen. Instead, the side door opened, and everyone but Reggie was invited to leave.

  Reggie was escorted to a plain room and then introduced to Detective Mendoza—a sixtyish man with white-gray hair—and Detective Reynolds—a dozen or so years younger than Mendoza and some fifty pounds heavier.

  Reggie was invited to sit at the table, and Mendoza sat across from him, perusing Reggie’s passport.

  “What’s your address, Reggie?” said Mendoza.

  “Nine Shad Thames. But I didn’t catch your first name.”

  “You here on business or pleasure . . . Mr. Heath?”

  Reggie replied that his visit was recreational. Offhand, he couldn’t think of a business reason that would survive scrutiny.

  “You should have checked with the tourist bureau,” said Mendoza. “There’s no forms of recreation I know of to be had that close to the river channel. Unless, of course, you were interested in purchasing some form of illegal substance, which is something we tend to frown on locally. Is that what you were doing, Mr. Heath—trying to purchase a little chemical recreation?”

  “No.”

  Reggie considered whether to say anything about Nigel. On the one hand, he was concerned that Nigel had not shown at the rendezvous. On the other, there were the bloody Smarties—and the nagging fear that Nigel could be in some way connected to the clammy corpse under the overpass. Best to say nothing—and hope that Wembley had not yet contacted the Los Angeles police about either of the Heath brothers.

  “You seem uncomfortable, Mr. Heath. Is there any reason why you feel you might need the presence of an attorney?”

  “It’s a moot point. I am one.”

  Mendoza raised an eyebrow very slightly and sat back in his chair; the other detective just smirked.

  Altogether they did not seem as intimidated as one might have hoped.

  “That’s fine,” said Mendoza. “Saves you a quarter, if you want to ignore that thing about having a fool for a client. But no one has charged you with anything here. So why don’t you just tell us what happened?”

  “I went for a walk and was handcuffed at gunpoint. But I believe you know that.”

  “You were found in the presence of what would appear to be a homicide victim,” Mendoza said dryly.

  “Charge me with finding a corpse, if you have a law against that. But I know nothing about it.”

  “A witness has already identified you by voice.”

  “In regard to what?”

  Mendoza did not say anything in response; he just leaned back with a show of confidence, folded his hands at the back of his head, and looked appraisingly at Reggie.

  Reggie gave the same look in return and after a moment concluded the detectives were bluffing. The lineup must have failed visually, even though the detectives claimed to have a match on the voice.

  Of course, even at home, strangers had occasionally confused Reggie’s voice with Nigel’s.

  Better to avoid that subject entirely.

  “I’ve done nothing,” said Reggie. “You’ve already had me on display, and your supposed witness could not claim to have seen me before in any sort of incriminating circumstance. Otherwise, you’d have placed me under arrest. So I take it I’m free to go.”

  He stood and reached across the table for his passport.

  Mendoza pulled it back. “If it’s all the same to you, we’ll just hold this here until you’re ready to leave.”

  “No, I’ll take it with me.”

  “I guess you’re not very familiar with the police procedures in the States, Mr. Heath.”

  “I know that you can’t keep that without an order from a magistrate,” said Reggie, hoping it was true here.

  “No problem,” said Mendoza, smiling and handing back the passport. “But when you think you’re ready to leave the city, you be sure to give me a call.”

  Sleep-deprived and unshaven, Reggie left the police station.

  There were now two murders to account for. The police on both affected continents apparently were not in communication yet—but Mendoza might at this moment be checking with Scotland Yard.

  Whether the authorities would eventually try to distribute the culpability evenly—like Mum distributing biscuits, one for Nigel and one for Reggie—or just gang up both murders on one or the other was still to be determined, but neither prospect was appealing.

  Reggie could see one thing in common between the two events, though, and that was the young woman who both wrote the letters and—apparently—knew the second victim.

  He took a taxi back to Mara’s flat. If he was to get any information from her at all, he would have to reach her before the police did.

  He went up the stairs and knocked on the same door he had the day before.

  No response.

  He knocked again, and still no response.

  That had to mean she was out walking that dog. He would have heard it rushing the door otherwise. She would be back. After all, how many places could she go with a 150-pound Saint Bernard?

  Reggie came back downstairs and crossed the street, to wait at the desperately open Joe’s Deli.

  He walked across the plywood excavation covering and stepped over bags of tunnel grouting. When he entered the café, he brought with him a little swirl of gray dust.

  Inside were mustard-colored vinyl booths, a tan-flecked linoleum floor, and fans circulating overhead slowly and unsuccessfully against the heat.

  The near wall was covered with signed photographs of would-be actors
, directors, producers, and other celebrities of types that Reggie could only imagine. Judging from the ties they wore, some of them had been hanging there for many years. One or two of the photographs actually looked just vaguely familiar, though Reggie could not place from where. He guessed that even the locals would not recognize most of them.

  The waitress, a plump woman of about fifty in a dress of tiny red and white checks, hurried over from behind the counter.

  “You can sit anywhere you like,” she said, trying to convey, despite evidence to the contrary, that this was a rare privilege.

  “Should I know them?” said Reggie.

  “What? Who? Oh, on the wall?” She shook her head with a sort of knowing smile. “I have no idea at all who any of those people are. Most of them have been hanging there since the day we opened.”

  “Actors?”

  “All of them movie biz of one kind or another, I guess.” She shrugged. “They could be anything by now. Sit wherever you like,” she said again.

  The establishment had been built to handle fifty or so at rush hour, and from the apparent age of the place, it had survived for some years at that capacity. But at the moment, though it was prime time on a weekday, it was empty.

  This was a bad sign for breakfast, but good for Reggie’s other purposes, and he took a booth by the window, with a clear view of the entrance to Mara’s building.

  The woman came over with a glass pot of some sort of thick black fluid and began to pour a cup of it for Reggie.

  Reggie preferred coffee, even American coffee, to badly made tea, but this stuff looked dangerous.

  “I don’t suppose,” he began, “you would have any Earl Grey—” And then he stopped. The woman was suddenly staring, and now she took a step back, and he immediately knew why.

  “It’s you!”

  “No, it isn’t,” said Reggie. “I’ve never been here before in my life.”

  “From the police station!”

  “Yes, but—”

  “I’ll call them right now if you make another move.”

  “I’m not moving,” said Reggie, “and just think about it. Yes, I was in the lineup, but you did not pick me. And that’s why they let me go. And that makes us friends. Doesn’t it?”

  “But I told them you sound the same,” she said.

  “Do I look the same?”

  She was calmer now, and she took a step closer to study him.

  “You had the same jawline, but you weren’t quite so tall, and—”

  That would be Nigel, but Reggie said nothing.

  “—your hair wasn’t so thin.”

  Reggie wanted to object to that, but he decided to let it go.

  “When did you see me—I mean, this shorter but thicker-haired version of me?”

  She said that he had sat at that same table the day before in the afternoon, and the day before that as well, and she remembered him clearly, because he had tipped very generously, even though they had no Earl Grey tea.

  And then Reggie abruptly asked for the check—through the café window he could see the Saint Bernard coming around the corner, dragging its attractive young owner at the other end of the leash.

  Reggie overpaid his bill and quickly crossed the street.

  Mara was just starting up the stairs as he reached the curb. The Saint Bernard turned around to face him, straining the leash and causing Mara to turn as well.

  “Please,” said Reggie, “I mean no harm. If you don’t trust me, come across to the café and talk with me where others are present. Well, some, anyway. Bring Cujo with you if you want.”

  She looked at Reggie, and then in both directions of the empty street, and then at Reggie again. There was doubt in those burnt sienna eyes, but she was considering it.

  “What do you want?” she said.

  “I must find my brother. He came here believing you were in some sort of trouble. And now . . .”

  “And now—what?”

  “Now he is.”

  She hesitated, pulling back on the dog’s leash. “What kind of trouble?”

  “Well, I’m not sure the exact details are all that important,” said Reggie.

  “Give me a ballpark,” she said. “Are we talking life and death, parking tickets, or what?”

  “He’s gone missing,” said Reggie. And that part was true enough; it wouldn’t do to tell her all of it.

  Mara studied him closely. The dog stood solidly with its weight against her legs and studied him, too.

  “They have lousy coffee,” she said after a moment. “You can come upstairs.”

  She turned abruptly and started up the steps, pulled along rapidly by the dog, leaving Reggie flat-footed at the base. He took the stairs several steps at a time to catch up.

  She opened the door to the flat, and Reggie immediately identified scents of turpentine, paint, and canvas. She had set easels along the largest window. Her paintings depicted a bright yellow wood-frame house; a child alone on a swing at dusk; and a huge backyard pepper tree with fallen clusters of tiny red berries and small green leaves.

  “I work at an art gallery,” said the young woman as Reggie noticed the paintings. “But the owner doesn’t show my work, she says I need to get out of my domestic period. That one’s the house I lived in when I was a kid. But this is the last of the domestic series, so you better buy it now before I get famous and expensive.”

  “The house or the painting?” said Reggie.

  “I meant the painting, of course—my mom and I had to sell the house years ago. But if you’re actually interested, I drove by it last week. It’s vacant and up for sale again. I almost wanted to go in and take a look.”

  “Revisit happy childhood memories?” said Reggie.

  “Yes,” she said, “mostly. You can sit if you like.”

  There was a multicolored braided rug on a hardwood floor, a small table with cane-backed chairs, and a comfortable-looking couch. But the Saint Bernard jumped onto the couch, and Reggie was obliged to accept one of the less comfortable-looking chairs.

  Reggie looked about the room for some hint of bereavement. He hadn’t seen it in her face. So either she didn’t know yet or the dead man meant nothing to her.

  “He was a complete stranger,” she said.

  “Who?” said Reggie.

  She gave Reggie a puzzled look. “The man you said is your brother. He was a complete stranger, and I had no idea what he was talking about, so I sent him away. That was about it. Do you want some water?”

  Reggie said yes, and though he knew she expected him to remain seated, he followed her into the kitchen. Mookie followed also, keeping his substantial girth between Reggie and the young woman and effectively sandwiching Reggie against the kitchen counter as Mara opened the refrigerator door.

  The kitchen was narrow, but it was immaculate.

  There was a wooden sash window at the opposite end of the room. It was closed, but Mara opened it now, revealing the rusted iron railing of the fire escape. Beyond the iron railing was a narrow alley and, across that, what looked to be an abandoned warehouse.

  Mookie stopped staring at Reggie for the moment and began to nose his supper dish about on the floor.

  “Just what was it my brother said to you?” said Reggie.

  She studied Reggie’s face uncertainly for a moment. “He asked about some letters,” she said finally as she handed him a bottled water. “Seemed like a decent guy, actually. But he asked if I wrote a letter to Sherlock Holmes last month.” She stopped with that and glared defensively. “I’m not stupid. I don’t wait up for Santa Claus, and I don’t write letters to characters of fiction.”

  “Perhaps you waited up for Santa Claus when you were a child?”

  She looked at Reggie for a moment, then nodded.

  “Yes,” she said. “When I was only eight and didn’t know any better. I mean, I read a lot, but—you know, it’s not like I knew about the world. And I was desperate. So I wrote a letter to Sherlock Holmes.”

  “
Just the one letter when you were eight? You didn’t write again recently?”

  “Of course not. Why would I?”

  “No reason,” said Reggie. “What else did my brother say to you?”

  “I really didn’t give him the chance to say much of anything,” she said.

  “You’re sure there was nothing else? You’ve told me nothing that can help me find him.”

  “Well, you guys weren’t much help finding my father!” she blurted, and then she quickly recovered. “I mean—whoever got my letter wasn’t. And the police didn’t do jack.”

  “It must have seemed that way when you were eight,” said Reggie. “I’m sure the locals did the best they—”

  “I’m sure you don’t know what you’re talking about,” Mara said heatedly. “First they said they had to wait awhile, then they said he must be on a bender and sleeping it off, then they said he must have run away because he lost at Santa Anita.”

  “Sorry,” said Reggie, “I didn’t mean to—”

  “Well, all right, he drank a little. And he went to the track once in a while. I drink wine with my lunch—well, sometimes—and I bought a lotto ticket once. Does that mean if I disappear, nobody should come find me?”

  “Someone would certainly come find you,” said Reggie, and then he immediately wished he hadn’t—or at least not with the inflection he had given it.

  Her eyes narrowed, and her chin tilted up.

  “But the point now is,” Reggie said quickly, “Nigel came here in response to your letter. If I knew exactly what you sent—it might help me find him.”

  “Why do you need me for that? Don’t you have the letter?”

  “It’s gone, actually. And whatever you sent with it. There was an enclosure, wasn’t there?”

  “There was something I sent with it, yes,” Mara said after a moment.

  “I think if I had that—I’d be able to figure out where my brother is—or at least what he’s trying to do.”

  Reggie moved closer and made eye contact to say that. Mara looked directly back at him.

  “Can you be trusted?” she said.