LITMIR.BIZ

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We went to a craft show.” She looked tired, and she was using her brown eye on Young.

      “Yeah, and what about yesterday?”

      “I worked.”

      “You worked? You had both days off.”

      “Staff Inspector Bateman okayed me to do some overtime, so I worked four hours in the afternoon.” She sat down at her desk.

      “You should let me know when you decide to do something like that. I could have—”

      “I wanted you to enjoy yourself. Staff Inspector Bateman told me you worked Saturday.”

      “Yeah, so?”

      “So you worked Saturday, I worked Sunday. You saw Trick, right?”

      “Yeah, I told you, we lost two bills each.”

      “And Debi?”

      “Yeah, she was there. What the fuck—”

      “That’s good. Do you want to know what I’ve got on the Shorty Rogers case?”

      Young arched his eyebrows. “Yeah, of course.” He sat down in the chair opposite Wheeler’s desk.

      “It’s getting pretty interesting.”

      “What do you mean?”

      “Among other things, you wanted me to find out what I could about Shorty Rogers’ uncle, right?”

      “Right.”

      “Well, once I found out that Morley Rogers was Shorty’s only living relative, I drove up there—”

      “Up where?”

      “Up to his farm. In the Caledon Hills. It’s not really a farm anymore, he’s sold most of the land. It’s really just a farmhouse, and a falling-down one at that.”

      “So what happened?”

      “I interviewed the housekeeper.”

      Young shifted in his chair. “Did you talk to the old man?”

      “I tried. I told the housekeeper I was part of the murder investigation and that I needed to talk to Shorty’s uncle, but she wouldn’t let me. She said that even though Mr. Rogers had little use for his nephew, he was too upset about what had happened to see anyone. She said he was in seclusion, praying.”

      “So you talked to her instead.”

      Wheeler nodded. “She told me all sorts of stuff. But the really interesting thing she told me was what happened a month ago. It seems Mr. Rogers held a special sort of top secret meeting at his farmhouse to discuss the possible sale of his property, and the list of people who attended—by invitation only, I should point out—is pretty interesting.”

      “Interesting how?”

      “Well, the lottery winner, Doug Buckley, was there, and Mahmoud Khan, the Internet King, he was there, too.” Wheeler took her notebook from her jacket pocket and flipped several pages into it. “And a man named Richard Ludlow, who’s like a huge land developer and president of the King County Golf and Country Club. And Summer Caldwell, who’s some sort of important socialite. I wrote down here that she’s a horticulturalist.”

      “That’s flowers, right?”

      “Right. Also, a man named Stirling Smith-Gower was there. He sounds like a bit of a nut. He fights for animal rights, that kind of thing. By profession, he’s an ornithologist.”

      “Birds,” Young said.

      “And the housekeeper herself was there. Her name’s Myrtle Sweet. And Mr. Rogers’ bodyguards.”

      “Bodyguards?”

      “Yeah, apparently he’s got two bodyguards.”

      Young nodded. “Okay. Anybody else there?”

      “Yeah, Shorty himself was there.”

      “No shit. When was this meeting?”

      Wheeler referred to her notes again. “May 17. Two weeks before he was murdered.”

      “So tell me about the meeting.”

      “I can do better than that.” Wheeler lifted her briefcase onto her desk and opened it. She held up a VHS cassette. “When I was about to leave, Miss Sweet asked me to wait. I stood by the door while she went upstairs. When she came back, she was carrying this. She said Mr. Rogers wants us to have a look at it. It’s a videotape of the meeting.”

      After the blue screen was replaced first by snow and then by diagonal black bars that rose and fell for several seconds, the face, in close-up, of an old man appeared. “Are we ready, Kevin?” the old man asked in a reedy voice. Another voice, off-camera, said, “Ready, sir.” The old man was wearing a charcoal gray suit coat, a white shirt frayed at the collar tips and yellow at the neck, and a thin black tie dusty at the knot. He was hunched at the shoulders and had difficulty keeping his head up. The camera backed off shakily to reveal that he was leaning heavily on the handlebars of a walker. “All right then, I think we’ll begin,” he said. “Ladies and gentlemen, welcome to Bright’s Kill. Glad all of you could make it. I hope you’re comfortable. Some of those card table chairs you’re sitting on are a bit wonky, but I’m afraid we’re a bit challenged—as the bureaucrats like to say these days—in the furniture department. And I apologize for the humidity, but I thought the solarium would provide a picturesque setting for this little shindig of mine. As you can see, we’re surrounded by a paradise of lilies and orchids and various ferns and other tropical plants. This room is my pride and joy, ladies and gentlemen, my only extravagance, and the rock garden to your left with its statue of a little boy tinkling, and the tiled pool below him, and the Chinese carp which are resident there, are but a sampling of the added touches I have allowed myself.”

      A scraping of chairs was audible as members of the audience moved in their seats to better see the solarium’s features. The camera, however, remained on the old man as he said, “My name is Morley Rogers, which should come as no surprise to any of you, being as you’re all here for one reason and one reason only: to separate me from my property. Some of you, I dare say, think I’m nothing more than a feeble old hermit taking his own sweet time to die, that I’m nothing more than a Bible-beating Baptist and an old miser, that something perverse in my nature makes me hang on to these twelve acres you crave so desperately.” He raised a hand to his mouth and suppressed a cough. “But I forget my manners. While some of you may know me, I doubt that any among you has made the acquaintance of this delightful creature.” He fluttered a trembling liver-spotted hand in the direction of a woman standing a few feet behind him. The camera swivelled and zoomed in slightly on a handsome black-haired woman dressed in a navy jacket, white blouse, and red necktie. “My assistant, ladies and gentlemen, Miss Myrtle Sweet.” The old man coughed into his fist. “Miss Sweet is more than just my assistant. She is my nurse, my secretary, my cook, my housekeeper, my helpmeet, my friend, my companion. If I weren’t a God-fearing man, I’d add rod and staff, because in her gentle ministrations she comforts me. But now to the business at hand.” More scraping of chairs could be heard.

      “My farm, or what’s left of it, is named after a Dutchman, Jacob Bright, who settled here in the 1830s. It’s been in my family a hundred twenty years. According to the deeds, all of which I have in my possession, Bright used to be spelled B-r-i-e-t or B-r-e-e-t, and may have been pronounced Breet. Nobody knows for sure because the signature on the deed of 1834 is smudged, and the township records for that period carry both spellings. Kill, in case you are unaware, is Dutch for creek or stream, and the creek or stream that bears Jacob Bright’s name, and that I once swam in and watered the Clydesdales in and caught perch and sunfish out of, is now part of that accursed golf course next door. All I have left is the house and twelve acres and the grove of black walnut trees you drove past on your way in. My grandfather Anson Red Rogers planted those trees. They’re ninety-seven years old, almost as old as I am!” As his audience laughed politely, he stopped, turned his head to the side, and

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