Booking In. Jack Batten

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СКАЧАТЬ Fletcher said. “We lock and chain the front door and leave by the back. There’s an alley out there.”

      “That where you park your car?” I asked.

      Fletcher shook his head. “There’s no parking allowed in the alley. I have a regular city permit to park on the streets in the neighbourhood.”

      “The guy upstairs,” Maury said. “I haven’t spotted any way he could get directly into the store from his place. There’s nothing I’m missing, right?”

      “As you also no doubt noticed, his name is Hamilton Carruthers,” Fletcher said. “And no, Ham’s access to his office is up the stairway from the street, and that’s all.”

      “Where’s Ham now?” I asked. “I haven’t heard any sounds from above.”

      “He’s not up there,” Fletcher said.

      “Maury and I might want to talk to him.”

      “That probably won’t be for a day or two.”

      “The guy’s vamoosed?” Maury said.

      “Not as you mean it,” Fletcher said. “Ham came in here an hour ago to tell me he’s fed up sleeping in his office. He’s taking his wife on what he called a makeup overnight in Niagara on the Lake. I hope it works out. She’s a lovely girl.”

      The matter of the architect now apparently put to rest as far as Fletcher was concerned, he closed the safe door and reset the combination. He turned and waved for Maury and me to follow him down a short hall toward the back door. In the hall, a step or two from the door, a couple of dozen books, all fat reference volumes, as far as I could tell, lay scattered across the floor.

      “These books were what Ham must have heard in the night,” Fletcher said. “They were stacked in two neat piles, but it’s close to pitch black in the hall with the lights out. Whoever intruded probably knocked the piles over. That would have made for some very loud bangs.”

      “Bumping into the books would most likely have happened on the way in,” I said. “I’m supposing Ham up there needed a few minutes of deep thought before he phoned you. You answered the call. Then what? You took how long to get dressed and drive over here?”

      “I live in one of the waterfront condos near Spadina,” Fletcher said, closing his eyes in concentration. “I was still half asleep. Not feeling very efficient after being awoken like that. I must have needed ten minutes to get organized and another ten or fifteen to drive to the store.”

      I looked at Maury.

      “A half hour altogether?” Maury said. “Man, in a half hour, a burglar with a little experience could have ransacked the National Mint and made a getaway.”

      “Okay,” I said, “you figure the timing part’s settled, Maury?”

      Maury nodded. “Now I wanna have a look at the back door.”

      “Gentleman,” Fletcher said, “I’ve already satisfied myself that no breakage was necessary for the robber to get in the back way.”

      “Just let me see the friggin’ thing,” Maury said.

      Fletcher opened the back door. Beyond it, there was an alleyway that ran behind the College Street shops and restaurants, ending in north-south streets at either end.

      Maury hovered over the lock on the outside of the door. He murmured to himself and squatted down until he was eye level with the lock. It was bright enough in the alley, but Maury took a magnifying glass and a miniature flashlight out of his black briefcase and used both for a more intense and better-illuminated examination of the lock at very close range. After three or four minutes of squatting, Maury straightened up and then went through a stretching routine until he felt nimble enough to repeat the squatting and the close eyeballing of the lock.

      “This is clean as a whistle,” Maury finally said.

      “May I ask that you be less cryptic?” Fletcher said.

      “You got a nice Abloy on here,” Maury said. He was standing erect now. “Very good security with a lock like an Abloy. High-class Swedish product. Whoever came through here last night didn’t leave a mark on this particular Abloy, not a scratch when he picked it, which is what he would have had to do. But there’s no giveaways I can see that the Abloy was opened in the last weeks or probably ever by somebody without a key.”

      “You seem unnecessarily impressed.”

      “This would have to be a super talented person at work.”

      “I suppose I should feel complimented.”

      I said to Maury, “Biscuit might be worth consulting for ideas about guys who could have done the job on the safe and on this door we’re looking at.”

      Maury said, “I’ll set up a lunch with him for you and me in the next couple days.”

      I turned to Fletcher. “But first,” I said to him, “I know Maury will agree we have a significant question to ask you.”

      “Very friggin’ significant,” Maury said.

      In tandem, Maury and I stepped closer to Fletcher.

      “Anything within reason,” Fletcher said, giving Maury and me nervous looks.

      “Just tell us, Fletcher,” I said, “what in the name of sweet Jesus was in the safe?”

      Chapter Five

      For lunch, Maury and Fletcher ordered what were in all respects hamburgers. I asked for something that was really a grilled vegetable sandwich. These descriptions weren’t how the menu listed our dishes. The restaurant was a French place Fletcher took us to a block west of his store, and everything on the menu had a French name. In truth, it was more a Frenchified lingo than the real thing, but the language was easy enough to interpret. Each of us also ordered a glass of wine, white for me, red for other two.

      “Do you gentlemen care to take notes, written or digital?” Fletcher said.

      “No bother,” I said. “With Maury and me, the kind of material you’re going to lay out for us has a tendency to stick.”

      Fletcher didn’t look happy with this note of informality, but he pitched in anyway.

      “Before I get down to specifics,” he said, “what I’m going to tell you must remain confidential until I say otherwise. Tell no one the information I’m about to impart.”

      Maury and I looked at one another, then back at Fletcher.

      “Not always possible, Fletcher,” I said. “But we’ll do our best to keep mum on whatever you say.”

      “If you hire us, man,” Maury said, “you got to give us a little rope.”

      Fletcher spread his hands on the table, palms down. “Very well,” he said. “But I don’t want to be left hanging in an embarrassing position.”

      “That’ll work for us, Fletcher,” СКАЧАТЬ