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Somebody knocked on his door. Since his entire apartment was one room and a bath, Mitch didn’t have to move. “Come in,” he called and looked up to see his best friend and sometime partner close the apartment door behind him.
Neatly pressed and stern with disapproval, Newton was the epitome of a stockbroker who had just caught his best client buying lottery tickets. His pale blond eyebrows rose up his well-bred forehead, a forehead already so high it seemed limitless, and his pale blue eyes glared behind his gold-rimmed glasses. “You know, it is not a good idea to live in this neighborhood with your door unlocked. Extremely impractical. Foolhardy. There’s no reason for this. The bet didn’t say you had to live in penury.”
“I’m supporting myself with the profits of the agency, Newton. That was the deal.” Mitch glanced around the room before he grinned at his friend. “It’s not so bad. I actually like it better than my old River Road place. It’s got more character.” He stopped for a moment, thoughtful. “You know, I’m glad I sold that condo. At least that’s one part of my old life I won’t have to go back to.”
Newton’s nostrils flared as he took in the stained wallpaper and cracked floor tile. “This is abysmal.” He turned his survey on Mitch. “I see you finally did your laundry.”
“I had to.” Mitch went back to the diary. “Somebody noticed I was going without underwear. There’s food on the table.”
“You bought authentic food?” His friend’s voice was incredulous, and Mitch looked up, annoyed. Newton was staring in amazement at the remains of June’s care package on Mitch’s rickety table. “Truly astounding.” He bent his attenuated frame closer to the table, his beautifully cut suit refusing to crease even as he moved. “These are cookies.”
“Yes.”
Newton’s patrician nose quivered like an upper-class rabbit’s. “Homemade?”
“Yes. There’s milk in the fridge. Oh, and there’s this.” Mitch dropped the diary on the bed and rolled over to pick up his pants from the floor and pull his wallet from the back pocket.
Newton took a plastic bottle of milk from the refrigerator. “You didn’t buy milk in this. Who’s giving you food?”
“The same woman who gave me this.” Mitch handed over Mae’s check.
“My God.” Newton sank into the kitchen chair, milk in one hand, check in the other. “You did it. You won the bet.” He smiled. “Our friend Montgomery is not going to be pleased.”
“Then he shouldn’t have made the bet.” Mitch smiled back as vast satisfaction spread through him. “You know what part I like best? I did it all by starting completely over as Mitch Peatwick. I made it without using Mitchell Kincaid’s credit or connections. Montgomery is going to hate that part. That’s the part of the bet he thought was going to sink me.”
Newton’s smile widened. “I’ll mention it when I call him tonight.”
“Why the rush? You didn’t by any chance make a side bet?”
“A substantial one.” Newton’s smile widened. “He implied that I never took risks, and I let him manipulate the stakes.”
“I’m touched.” Mitch’s voice was light, but he really was moved. “How much did you risk on me?”
“Twenty thousand.”
Mitch’s smile vanished. “Forget touched. I’m stunned. How the hell did you ever bring yourself to risk that much?”
Newton blinked at him. “It wasn’t a risk. I was betting on you.”
Mitch closed his eyes. “Never bet that much on me again. What if I’d just given up?”
Newton shook his head as he put the milk bottle down and pocketed the check. “I’ll deposit this in the account. And as for giving up, that would never happen.” He stood and crossed to the cupboard and took out a Flintstones glass, looking at it dubiously before he rinsed it out in the sink and went back to the table to pour the milk.
“Well, at least tell me next time.” Mitch leaned his head against the iron bedstead. “That way I’ll know what’s riding on my impulses.”
For a moment, Newton seemed to lose himself in judicious reverie. “No,” he decided. “I don’t want to affect your thought processes.”
“Newton, most of the time I don’t have thought processes.”
“I know.” Newton gazed at him with respect. “I admire that.”
Mitch gave up. “At any rate, the game’s over. I made the detective agency solvent in a year and supported myself with the profits, you’ve got your money back, and I’ve soaked Montgomery for ten thousand. Now we can all go back to real life.” Mitch’s glance fell on the diary. “As soon as I’ve figured out this last case.”
Newton stopped, his cookie halfway to his mouth. “You’re quitting the agency?”
Mitch nodded, understanding. “I know. I’m not all that excited about turning back into a yuppie stockbroker myself, but I’ve got to tell you, Newton, being a private detective sucks. You’d hate the people.”
Newton’s face fell. “No Brigid O’Shaughnessy?”
“Well, almost.” Mitch called back the image of Mae walking into his office. “You should meet Mabel.”
“Mabel?” Newton bit into his cookie. “Sounds like a barmaid.” Then the taste of the cookie registered on him. “These are excellent. Really epicurean.” He chewed methodically and endlessly, evidently savoring the bouquet of the cookie as if it were a fine wine.
“June made them. She’s Mabel’s housekeeper and cook.”
“Tell me all.” Newton took another bite.
“A very attractive woman with fantasy breasts came into the office today and hired me to find her seventy-six-year-old uncle’s killer. After that, things went downhill.”
Newton chewed his bite of cookie for the thirtieth time and swallowed. “Murder? That seems farfetched. Who’s the uncle?”
“Armand Lewis. It seemed farfetched to me, too, at first, but now I don’t know. He kept diaries, Newton, and there’s some very interesting stuff in them.”
“Armand Lewis.” Newton frowned. “He has a very shaky reputation.”
“Had. He’s dead. What do you mean, shaky?”
“People had a tendency to lose money in his vicinity. Do you really think he was murdered?”
“I’m open-minded on that.” Mitch picked up the diary. “I’m only on the third one of these, but there are a hell of a lot of people who are not going to be weeping at the memorial service on Friday.”
“Such as?”
“Well, June the cookie-maker, for one. She had a fifteen-year-old son named Ronnie who got into drugs back in 1967. Summer-of-love stuff. She asked Armand for help sending him to a detox place, and Armand said no. Four months later, Ronnie OD’d.”
Newton frowned. “It was ungenerous of him, but hardly a motive for murder.”
“The kid was Armand’s son.”
Newton blinked.
“June gave her notice as soon as Ronnie was buried.” Mitch handed Newton the diary marked 1967. “It’s all in there. He just says that he’s glad Ronnie’s off his back, but he’s worried because the only reason June stayed was so that the boy would be with his father. Then she gives notice, and he says flat out that the reason he wants his orphaned niece to come live with him is because he thinks it will keep June.”
“Orphaned niece?”
“Our client.” Mitch smiled and then realized he was smiling and stopped. “Mae Belle Sullivan. She was six in 1967 when June’s son died. Armand took Mae to give June another kid to raise so she wouldn’t leave.”
“Do you think June killed him?”
Mitch shrugged. “Could be. But we also have Harold Tennyson, the butler. He came at the same time Mae did to keep an eye on her, and immediately fell hard for June who is still quite a looker. Back then, she must have been a knockout.” He stopped, distracted. “Mabel is not a knockout. She is merely very attractive, which is why she has little or no effect on me.”
Newton blinked at him. “What?”
“Nothing. Anyway, Harold’s smitten-ness amused Armand, so he tried to get June back again to spite Harold, even though they hadn’t been any more than employer and employee since he’d found out she was pregnant years before. Only June wasn’t playing.” Mitch grinned. “Armand sounds truly annoyed in the diary. It’s toward the back. You should read it. I enjoyed it immensely. Anyway, Armand pushed his luck one night, and Harold roughed him up a little. Armand fired him, but June threatened to quit, and little Mae cried, and the guy who sent Harold in the first place leaned on Armand, so Armand had to take him back. And they’ve hated each other ever since. There are a couple of places in the diary where Armand says he thinks Harold is trying to kill him. Accidentally backing the car over him, stuff like that.”
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