Part 5 (2/2)

”No! It's too early yet. I don't put Jenny away until the lake threatens to freeze. Let's go inside and see if I can help you, shall we?”

He took up the rear, guiding them off the dock like a good captain, and they followed him inside. Theresa ran her fingers through her hair to repair whatever damage the lake's gusty winds had done to it.

Corliss ushered them into an oversize front room done up in russet and gold tones, the colors splas.h.i.+ng against the white walls. Windows made up most of the north wall, from which every whitecap on the lake could be seen in frothing clarity. Scarlet carpeting, jacquard sofas, a vast fireplace.

And trains. Lots of trains.

They collected on every surface, end tables, the high mantel, and circled the room on three high shelves. A mahogany table that could have seated twelve had been given over to a mountaintop village with miniature houses and farms and more train tracks than any real mountaintop village would have. Two engines with several cars wound through it, occasionally pa.s.sing but not colliding with each other. She swore she could smell the evergreens.

”Wow,” Theresa said.

”Yes,” Corliss said. ”I went a little overboard in here. One of the hazards of bachelorhood, not having a wife to stop me. But you're here about my father's building, right? Would you like to sit down?”

Theresa would rather have studied the snow-covered village and its trains but followed her cousin to the crisp settee. Jablonski perched on the edge of a wing chair, pulling a tiny camcorder from one of his two camera bags. He clicked it on and aimed it at Theresa.

”Your father constructed the building at 4950 Pullman?” Frank began.

”Yes. I mean, he contracted for it to be built.”

”Did he have any other buildings in Cleveland?”

”No, no. My father was a railroad man; he only dabbled in landlord-s.h.i.+p that one time, and only as an investment. My father-his name was Arthur-”

”We know.”

Corliss spoke of the large train systems with the same enthusiasm he showed for his miniature ones. ”He started working in the rail yards as a boy, moving through every job they had, from loading to shoveling coal to coupler, eventually to detective-like you-with a small railroad company in Pennsylvania. By the time the line's owner began to fall into ill health, my father had enough saved to buy the line. You see, around the turn of the century there were hundreds of small, limited-span lines. In the 1910s and '20s, bigger companies began to buy up the mom-and-pop lines and turned into conglomerates like the Pennsylvania Railroad and the B&O.”

Theresa fingered a pair of binoculars on the end table, wondering how close they would bring the whitecaps and seagulls. But she didn't pick them up. They looked too heavy and too expensive.

”Oh,” Frank said. Jablonski finally switched the camcorder's gaze from Theresa to Corliss.

”My point is, Pennsylvania bought my father's company and made him one of their vice presidents, as well as a very wealthy man. Rich enough that he could have retired right then, but he loved the trains too much, and besides, the Depression had arrived. He needed a safe investment for his money and figured real estate would be as safe as any.”

Frank made a note. Jablonski, the camera perched on one knee, plucked a gold figurine of a steam engine off the coffee table in front of him. Corliss looked askance, and the researcher put it back with the gentlest clink.

Frank went on. ”He kept an office there for himself?”

”I believe so, yes. He'd take me around there during my younger days, before he sold the place. He also had a desk at the rail yard station-big brick place right on the river, they tore it down in the sixties-and he'd spend a lot of time there, too. He used the office on Pullman more for managing his personal affairs, the building, other investments, and as a place to store his growing collection.” The man waved his hand to take in the room. One of the moving trains gave a toot and released a puff of smoke into the air. The not-terrifically-pleasant smell of burned oil reached Theresa's nose. ”He pa.s.sed a lot of these pieces down to me. Could I serve you some coffee, or tea? Ms. MacLean? You look a bit chilly.”

”No, thank you. I'm fine.”

He seemed to glow a bit at her smile, though it could have simply been from talking about trains. Or his father.

Frank got him back on topic. ”Do you remember the building's tenants? From the 1930s?”

”Oh, my, let's see. I remember the architects most, I guess. They rented a unit nearly the entire time my dad owned it. They were always very late or very early with the rent, depending on how their contracts came along. He also had an artist, just after the Second World War-until the guy ran out of canvases one day and painted all over the walls; then my dad kicked him out. Didn't care for the man's taste, he said, nor his judgment.” Corliss chuckled over that until Theresa laughed with him.

Frank asked, ”How were the units numbered? One through four were the ground floor?”

Jablonski pulled a camera from the second bag. An older digital model, it had double the bulk of the camcorder.

”Yes, and five through eight the second story. He had a medium for a couple of years-a woman who said she could communicate with the dead. My father loved stuff like that. And, as he always said, she paid the rent on time. Unlike the doctor.”

”Doctor?”

”In the office next to his. Every month my father would have to threaten him with eviction to get the rent, but he'd cough it up at the last minute and buy himself another thirty days.”

”What kind of medicine did this man practice?” Frank asked ever so casually. Theresa wished she could hide so much with her voice.

The model train let out another toot. Jablonski took a few quick snaps, all of Theresa. When she frowned at him, he aimed the lens at Corliss.

”Some sort of dietary therapist.”

”A nutritionist?”

”I suppose. A bit of a quack, according to my father-there were plenty of them around in those days. You have to remember that antibiotics hadn't been discovered yet and people would try anything. But my dad must have liked the man, or he wouldn't have put up with the rent always being late. He could be very softhearted.”

”Must have been a lot of people late with the rent then,” Jablonski put in. ”Unemployment in Cleveland reached twenty-three percent during the Depression, and most households had a single wage earner. That's why there were so many homeless and transients for the Torso killer to choose from.”

”Torso killer?” Edward Corliss blinked at the younger man.

”Would you have any records from your father's owners.h.i.+p of the building?” Frank asked before Jablonski could expound upon the infamous murderer and all his crimes.

Now the silver-haired man blinked at him. ”Any receipts from his tenants? Leases? Tax returns?”

”Oh, I see what you mean. No, no, I'm sure I don't. He sold that building in-um...”

”Nineteen fifty-nine.”

”Yes. I cleaned this house from end to end after he died, when I moved back from England. My father was not a pack rat, all the trains notwithstanding. I don't recall finding anything related to the building. He had tax returns, but supposedly you only have to keep those for seven years, so I destroyed them.”

”What about photographs?” Theresa suggested. ”Did your father have any pictures of his building, especially from the 1930s?”

He considered this, hand to chin. ”I don't believe so. People didn't take photos of every single thing the way they do now. But we could look.” He stood up with the energy of a man half his age and held out his hand to her.

After being helped to her feet in such a courtly manner, she followed him from the room, past the mountaintop village.

”This must have taken years to build,” she told her host.

”Oh, this is merely an introduction to my world,” Edward Corliss told her. ”Let me show you my real pride and joy.”

CHAPTER 8.

<script>