Part 25 (1/2)
”Yes. I have some more questions, I hope that's okay.”
”Let me check my busy social schedule. Sure, it's okay.”
Theresa waited patiently for the tea routine, trying not to tap her foot. Her mother would kill her if she was late to her own birthday party, and she'd even hear it from Frank, since his mother was to host the s.h.i.+ndig. They would both have to make a showing before cutting out to wait at the valley. But she couldn't rush Irene. Theresa might find herself in a place like this someday, with a visit from a stranger the only entertaining thing to happen that year.
She began, ”We talked about your encounter with Dr. Louis.”
”I've been trying to remember more about him.” The old lady stirred her tea as delicately as any queen. ”I came up with a white s.h.i.+rt with gold b.u.t.tons. The b.u.t.tons had an anchor on them.”
”Really,” Theresa said, just to say something.
”I got rather a close look at them. Does that help?”
”They thought one of the victims might be a sailor, the one they called the Tattooed Man. But I'm here to focus on the room, the little storeroom he put you in. The building is going to be destroyed tomorrow, and it's driving me crazy that we still can't figure out which office the room with the body belonged to.”
Irene tapped her spoon on the cup. ”Dr. Louis had a door behind his desk, and that opened into the closet.”
”I understand that, but the other offices probably had such built-in closets as well. The door behind his desk-was it next to the outer wall, or the inner wall, by the hallway?”
For the first time Irene seemed unsure. ”Neither...somewhere in the middle.”
”Tell me again about the arrangement of the room. When you first walked in from the hallway-”
”His desk was on the left,” Irene said immediately, ”but not touching the wall. He had a chair behind it for him and two in front of it-”
”Closer to the hallway door.”
”Yeah. On the right were two windows and shelves going almost to the ceiling, with books and bottles and things. He had a coat rack in the far corner, way behind his desk. That was about it. Kind of spa.r.s.e, really. That also struck me as odd-most doctors' offices that I've ever seen, even today, are crammed to the gills with stuff.”
”So the desk sat about midcenter along the south wall?”
Her face scrunched up in concentration. ”Yeah, I think that's about right.”
”And the door to the storage room, in the south wall behind it-would you say that was closer to the outer wall, or the hallway wall?”
Irene thought so long that Theresa had to gasp out a breath she hadn't realized she'd been holding.
”The outer one, I guess. Otherwise his desk would have been in the way of the door.”
”Okay. When you entered the room, the little storage room, did the s.p.a.ce open up to the right or the left?”
”I see what you mean. G.o.d, I tried not to think about this for so many years-”
”I'm sorry.”
”Don't be. Okay. I woke up on the cot.... I pushed him and ran past the shelves.... I think the storage area would have stretched between the middle of the room and the outer wall. When you looked into it, it opened to the right. The cot lay in the back corner. I had to get past him, out the door, around the desk, and out the door to the hallway.”
Theresa pondered this with a mix of exhilaration and disappointment. The area in which they found James Miller lay farther into the building. If that section of floor had not belonged to Dr. Louis's office, it moved Arthur Corliss up to number one suspect. Corliss, the adored father of her new friend Edward. Maybe-Odessa could have installed the table after Irene's attack and before James's murder. ”And this was a cot, not a table?”
”A cot, canvas thing about two feet off the floor. Standard military issue, I learned a few years later.”
”Did you see any plumbing in there? A sink, a toilet?”
”I didn't really stick around to inventory the place, dear. I only remember shelves, bare wooden things made out of two-by-fours. I grabbed on to one to haul myself up. It gave me a splinter.”
”What did he have on the shelves?”
”Not much, as I recall. Bottles and jars, like his outer office. A stack of paper and a typewriter, I remember that.”
”Any medical instruments? Like a stethoscope, or...knives?”
Irene grinned to show that the delicacy had been wasted on her. ”To chop up his victims with? I don't remember any, but again, I didn't take the time to look around.”
”And then you ran out.”
”As fast as my chubby little legs could carry me.”
”And you saw no one else? All the other tenants had gone home?”
”Yes. Yes....” Irene sipped tea.
”You seem unsure about that,” Theresa said, pressing her.
”I didn't see anyone. But-oh, that was it. The dog.”
”Dog?”
”The man in the next office must have had a dog. I heard him whining and scratching at the wall next to me, as if he heard us in there and knew I was in trouble. Animals can always tell, you know. They sense it. Or maybe he just wanted us to come and let him out.” She shook her head, the badly dyed locks going every which way. ”Funny, I forgot all about that until now. Probably because when you asked I thought you meant humans.”
James Miller had made a notation about dog hair in his notes. ”And you're sure this dog was in the other office? Not in the hallway or outside the building?”
”No, the scratches were close, and on wood. Real clear.”
”Did he bark?”
”Yeah, once or twice. Obviously no one was there to hear him, except good old Dr. Louis-the b.a.s.t.a.r.d.”
”Why would someone leave a dog in an office overnight?”
”Honey.” Irene Schaffer's eye twinkled over the rim of her teacup. ”People didn't have electric alarms that called the police when a burglar opened the door or smashed the window. And thieves were thick on the ground then. People were desperate.”
”I see. Irene, I'm going to try to get a blueprint of the building and bring it here to show you. Then we can make some notations about the layout.”