BEFORE SHE KILLS
1
The door was that of an office in an old building on State Street near Chicago Avenue, on the near north side, and the lettering on it read HUNTER & HUNTER DETECTIVE AGENCY. I opened it and went in. Why not? I'm one of the Hunters; my name is Ed. The other Hunter is my uncle, Ambrose Hunter.
The door to the inner office was open and I could see Uncle Am playing solitaire at his desk in there. He's shortish, fattish and smartish, with a straggly brown mustache. I waved at him and headed for my desk in the outer office. I'd had my lunch---we take turns---and he'd be leaving now.
Except that he wasn't. He swept the cards together and stacked them but he said, “Come on in, Ed. Something to talk over with you.”
I went in and pulled up a chair. It was a hot day and two big flies were droning in circles around the room. I reached for the fly swatter and held it, waiting for one or both of them to light somewhere. “We ought to get a bomb,” I said.
“Huh? Who do we want to blow up?”
“A bug bomb,” I said. “One of these aerosol deals, so we can get flies on the wing.”
“Not sporting, kid. Like shooting a sitting duck, only the opposite. Got to give the flies a chance.”
“All right,” I said, swatting one of them as it landed on a corner of the desk. “What did you want to talk about?”
“A case, maybe. A client, or a potential one, came in while you were feeding your face. Offered us a job, but I'm not sure about taking it. Anyway, it's one you'd have to handle, and I wanted to talk it over with you first.”
The other fly landed and died, and the wind of the swat that killed it blew a small rectangular paper off the desk onto the floor. I picked it up and saw that it was a check made out to Hunter & Hunter and signed Oliver R. Bookman---a name I didn't recognize. It was for five hundred dollars.
We could use it. Business had been slow for a month or so. I said, “Looks like you took the job already. Not that I blame you.” I put the check back on the desk. “That's a pretty strong argument.”
“No, I didn't take it. Ollie Bookman had the check already made out when he came, and put it down while we were talking. But I told him we weren't taking the case till I'd talked to you.”
“Ollie? Do you know him, Uncle Am?”
“No, but he told me to call him that, and it comes natural. He's that kind of guy. Nice, I mean.”
I took his word for it. My uncle is a nice guy himself, but he's a sharp judge of character and can spot a phony a mile off.
He said, “He thinks his wife is trying to kill him or maybe planning to.”
“Interesting,” I said. “But what could we do about it---unless she does? And then it's cop business.”
“He knows that, but he's not sure enough to do anything drastic about it unless someone backs up his opinion and tells him he's not imagining things. Then he'll decide what to do. He wants you to study things from the inside.”
“Like how? And why me?”
“He's got a young half brother living in Seattle whom his wife has never met and whom he hasn't seen for twenty years. Brother's twenty-five years old---and you can pass for that age. He wants you to come to Chicago from Seattle on business and stay with them for a few days. You wouldn't even have to change your first name; you'd be Ed Cartwright and Ollie would brief you on everything you'll be supposed to know.”
I thought a moment and then said, “Sounds a little far out to me, but---” I glanced pointedly at the five-hundred-dollar check. “Did you ask how he happened to come to us?”
“Yes. Koslovsky sent him; he's a friend of Kossy's, belongs to a couple of the same clubs.” Koslovsky is chief investigator for an insurance company; we've worked for him or with him on several things.
I asked, “Does that mean there's an insurance angle?”
“No, Ollie Bookman carries only a small policy---small relative to what his estate would be---that he took out a long time ago. Currently he's not insurable. Heart trouble.”
“Oh. And does Kossy approve this scheme of his for investigating his wife?”
“I was going to suggest we ask Kossy that. Look, Ed, Ollie's coming back for our answer at two o'clock. I'll have time to eat and get back. But I wanted to brief you before I left so you could think it over. You might also call Koslovsky and get a rundown on Ollie, whatever he knows about him.”
Uncle Am got up and got the old black slouch hat he insists on wearing despite the season. Kidding him about it does no good.
I said, “One more question before you go. Suppose Bookman's wife meets his half brother, his real one, someday. Isn't it going to be embarrassing?”
“I asked him that. He says it's damned unlikely; he and his brother aren't at all close. Hell never go to Seattle and the chances that his brother will ever come to Chicago are one in a thousand. Well, so long, kid.”
I called Koslovsky. Yes, he'd recommended us to Bookman when Bookman had told him what he wanted done and asked---knowing that he, Koslovsky, sometimes hired outside investigators when he and his small staff had a temporary overload of cases---to have an agency recommended to him.
“I don't think too much of his idea,” Koslovsky said, “but, hell, it's his money and he can afford it. If he wants to spend some of it that way, you might as well have the job as anyone else.”
“Do you think there's any real chance that he's right? About his wife, I mean.”
“I wouldn't know, Ed. I've met her a time or two and---well, she struck me as a cold potato, probably, but hardly as a murderess. Still, I don't know her well enough to say.”
“How well do you know Bookman? Well enough to know whether he's pretty sane or gets wild ideas?”
“Always struck me as pretty sane. We're not close friends but I've known him fairly well for three or four years.”
“Just how well off is he?”
“Not rich, but solvent. If I had to guess, I'd say he could cash out at over one hundred thousand, less than two. Enough to kill him for, I guess.”
“What's his racket?”
“Construction business, but he's mostly retired. Not on account of age; he's only in his forties. But he's got angina pectoris, and a year or two ago the medicos told him to take it easy or else.”
Uncle Am got back a few minutes before two o'clock and I just had time to tell him about my conversation with Kossy before Ollie Bookman showed up. Bookman was a big man with a round, cheerful face that made you like him at sight. He had a good handshake.
“Hi, Ed,” he said. “Glad that's your name because it's what I'll be calling you even if it wasn't. That is, if you'll take on the job for me. Your Uncle Am here wouldn't make it definite. What do you say?”
I told him we could at least talk about it and when we were comfortably seated in the inner office, I said, “Mr. Bookman---” “Call me Ollie,” he interrupted, so I said, “All right, Ollie. The only reason I can think of, thus far, for not taking on the job, if we don't, is that even if you're right---if your wife does have any thoughts about murder---the chances seem awfully slight that I could find out about it, and how she intended to do it, in time to stop it.”
He nodded. “I understand that, but I want you to try, anyway. You see, Ed, I'll be honest and say that I may be imagining things. I want somebody else's opinion---after that somebody has lived with us at least a few days. But if you come to agree with me, or find any positive indications that I'm maybe right, then---well, I'll do something about it. Eve---that's my wife's name---won't give me a divorce or even agree to a separation with maintenance, but damn it, I can always simply leave home and live at the club---better that than get myself killed.”
“You have asked her to give you a divorce, then?”
“Yes, I--- Let me begin at the beginning. Some of this is going to be embarrassing to tell, but you should know the whole score. I met Eve . . .”