Gaslight Grimoire_ Fantastic Tales of Sherlock Holmes - Barbara Hambly [117]
“I beg your pardon?”
“He was the age, you know? Don’t get me wrong, Monica Landau is a doll, but Miles was pushing fifty, and that’s when a man is looking for a little excitement.”
“I believe I understand. Pray continue.”
“Well, when a guy pushing fifty disappears, it’s usually one of three things. Either he’s got a broad on the side or he’s gambling or drinking — something that gets him into trouble. Or, sometimes, he’s had some kind of accident and no one knows it yet.”
“Astonishing,” he said, blandly, lighting another of my cigarettes. “I could, with a modicum of imagination, create hundreds of reasons for a man to disappear, but no matter. I assume you followed your usual lines of investigation.”
“Yeah. Nothing large missing from the bank account. No booze hidden in the office. Vincenzo says no unexplained phone calls. I even went to the cat house four blocks down, you know, on Lindstrom?”
He blew smoke. “I can’t say I do, but I shall take your word for it.”
“Never heard of him. So, I get a picture from the Landau dame and go to each and every hospital and morgue in town. Nothing. Check with the police on the car. Nothing.”
“Come back to the motor car, please. What do you mean, nothing?”
“It could still be on the road, but it hasn’t turned up wrecked or abandoned. A black sedan.”
“I see. So Landau drove to work in a motor car?”
“Yeah. Why?” He just brushed the question aside, so I went on. “So, then I’m thinking that maybe it’s the dame, you know? Maybe she’s getting me in on it, so, after her husband’s body turns up, no one would know she killed him. You know?”
The old man crushed his butt in the ash tray. “It is a considerable deductive leap to suddenly believe this young lady would commit murder simply because you cannot find her husband.”
“Yeah, but you know dames.” He gave me that smile again, really venomous this time. “What’s wrong?”
“Nothing. When I’m around you it’s just a pleasure to be alive. Now tell me. I assume that Monica Landau had also gone to the police and reported her husband missing. I also assume that you found nothing to incriminate her in his disappearance. And, I conclude that you returned to the case with that indefatigable energy that you have thus far demonstrated. Would that be an accurate summation?”
“Yeah. So, then I figured, hell, maybe it was something to do with his business.”
“Ah ha, a colleague after all. Pray continue.”
“As I said, business for Landau had not been so good since the war. I went over his import/export records for the last few years. He shipped all around the world, but there was nothing consistent that got me suspicious. He worked the Orient, but not enough for him to be big into dope, you know? And he did enough with Germany, but that all dried up in the late 30s, so I didn’t think he was a Fifth Columnist, either. And he did just as much with the French and Brits as he did with the Germans.
“For the past few years, though, he’s been concentrating mostly on Canada and Mexico … a little to Alaska, too. Nothing there, though, just business as usual as far as I could make out. And then, going through the records from four months ago, I come across something that got me thinking. He had a client who needed fifty boxes shipped out of Romania. Bam. Out of nowhere, he’s dealing with Europe again.
“So, I looked into it. It was right around the time that the King Michael coup over there deposed Antonescu and got Romania out of the Axis and back with the Allies. It was legit enough, but, like I said, it came from out of nowhere. Fifty boxes, six and a half feet long, three feet wide and three feet deep.”
The old man leaned back in his wheelchair. He looked like I spat on him. “What’s the matter?”
He stared into the distance. “Nothing. Just renewing an acquaintance. Pray continue.”
“Well, I checked the manifests and records. The boxes arrived on Tuesday, April 30.”
“Walpurgis night,” the old