The way this place is built and laid out, it’s an open invitation to a burglar to come in and help himself.
The door opened again a full minute later.
“Miss Peebles will see you,” the maid said. “Will you follow me, please?”
Pekach took off his uniform cap, and put his hand to his pigtail, which of course was no longer there.
Inside the door was a large foyer, with an octagonal tile fountain in the center. Closed double doors were on both sides of the foyer, and a wide staircase was directly ahead. There was a stained-glass leaded window portraying, Pekach thought, Saint Whoever-It-Was who slayed the dragon on the stairway landing.
This place looks like a goddamned museum. Or maybe a funeral home.
The maid slid open one of the double doors.
“Here’s the policeman, Miss Martha,” the maid said, and gestured for him to go through the door.
He found himself in a high-ceilinged room, the walls of which were lined with bookshelves.
“How do you do?” Martha Peebles said.
A fifty-year-old spinster, Pekach instantly decided, looking at Martha Peebles. She was wearing a white, frilly, high-collared, long-sleeved blouse and a dark skirt.
“Miss Peebles, I’m Captain Pekach, commanding officer of the Highway Patrol,” David said. “Inspector Wohl asked me to come see you, to tell you how sorry we are about the trouble you’ve had, and to tell you we’re going to do everything humanly possible to keep it from happening again.”
Martha Peebles extended her hand.
The cop, as opposed to the man, in Pekach took over. The cop, the trained observer, saw that Martha Peebles was not fifty. She did not have fifty-year-old hands, or fifty-year-old eyes, or fifty-year-old teeth. These were her teeth, not caps, and they sat in healthy gums. There were no liver spots on her hands, and there was a fullness of flesh in the hands that fifty-year-olds have lost with passing time. And her neck had not begun to hang. It was even possible that the firm appearance of her breasts was Miss Peebles herself, rather than a well-fitting brassiere.
“How do you do, Captain…Pekach, you said?”
“Yes, ma’am.”
Her hand was warm and soft, confirming his revised opinion of her age. She was, he now deduced, maybe thirty-five, no more. She just dressed like an old woman; that had thrown him off. He wondered why the hell she did that.
“You’ll forgive me for saying I’ve heard that before, Captain,” Martha Peebles said, taking her hand back and lacing it with the other one on her abdomen. “As recently as yesterday.”
“Yes, ma’am, I know,” David Pekach said, uncomfortably.
“I am really not a neurotic old maid, imagining all this,” she said.
“No one suggested anything like that, Miss Peebles,” Pekach said. Oh, shit! McFadden and Martinez! “Miss Peebles, did the two officers who were here yesterday say anything at all out of line? Did they insinuate anything like that?”
“No,” she said. “I don’t recall that they did. But, if I may be frank?”
“Please.”
“They did seem a little young to be detectives,” she said, “and I got the impression—how should I put this—that they were rather overwhelmed by the house.”
“I’m rather overwhelmed with it,” David said. “It’s magnificent.”
“My father loved this house,” she said. “You haven’t answered my question.”
“What question was that, Miss Peebles?” Pekach asked, confused.
“Aren’t those two a little young to be detectives? Do they have the requisite experience?”
“Well, actually, Miss Peebles, they aren’t detectives,” Pekach said.
“They were in civilian clothing,” she challenged. “I thought, among policemen, only detectives were permitted to wear civilian clothing.”