Corpses in the Cellar Read Free Page B

protection.”
    “I can protect myself.” Grand stood up, glass in hand. “Drink?”
    Lockwood shook his head no, and Grand walked over to the bar and poured himself another, a stiff one.
    “When you told him no, did he make any threats?”
    “Sure,” Grand said, still at the bar. “Sure, he made threats. People like him, they’re always making threats.”
    “You didn’t take them seriously.”
    “Mr. Lockwood, I’m not an idiot. Of course I took them seriously. With a mental case like Griese, you know anything’s possible.
     But I also shrugged it off. I’m a club owner. That kind of stuff goes with the territory. In the old days, it used to keep
     me up nights. You get older, you shrug it off, and,” he added wryly, returning to his seat, “you let other things keep you
     up nights instead. At my age, you don’t sleep too good, no matter what.”
    Lockwood continued to dig. “Were any of the threats about a fire?”
    “Nah. That kind don’t have no imagination,” Grand said, for a moment slipping into night club vernacular. “Just a lot of ‘you’ll
     be sorrys’ and ‘wait and sees’. If Griese set the fire, the reason he was so long getting around to it is that it probably
     took him a month to come up with the idea.”
    “You may be underestimating him.”
    “Punks. They’re all punks,” Grand snarled, shrugging it off.
    “All right,” Lockwood said. “Anyone else who could have done it?”
    “Sure,” Grand grinned, without much humor. “My ex-wives. Only they’d have made sure I was in the place.”
    “Who else?”
    “You don’t quit, do you, fella?” Grand asked, amusement mixed with exasperation.
    “That’s my job, Mr. Grand. It’s the nature of it. Going one step at a time, touching all the bases, just kind of slogging
     through. You’ll find I’m not easy to shrug off.”
    “That’s for certain. Okay. Who else, eh? Let me see…” He took another swallow of his drink. “No, that’s it.”
    “You’re sure? No one else you know who might have done this—even for vindictive reasons?”
    “Vindictive…” Grand considered. “Well, all right, you want vindictive, I’ll give you possible vindictives, but I wouldn’t
     worry too much about them, if I were you. I fired a couple of people last week.”
    “Who? Why?”
    Grand laughed, “I’ll bet you’re good at what you do, Mr. Lockwood. You certainly know how to strip things down to their essentials.
     Okay, who? A waiter, Len Claypool. Why?. For cheating on the tabs. Who else? Tawny Tourette, the head chorus girl. Why? For
     moral reasons.”
    “Moral reasons?”
    “Beyond that I don’t want to go.”
    “Do you know where I can reach them?”
    “Sure. They’re in my book. I’ll copy down their addresses. Don’t either of them have a phone, I don’t think.”
    “You mentioned your ex-wives as possibilities,” Lockwood said, as Grand took out his fountain pen.
    “Just a joke.”
    “What about your present wife?”
    Grand’s pen stopped in mid-motion. “Don’t be stupid.”
    “Just a question.”
    “A stupid question.” Grand was getting edgy. “Look, I’ve got things to do…”
    “Your wife said you’re normally at the club at three-thirty in the morning, going over the books,” Lockwood continued, voice
     level, eyes coolly on Grand, watching him.
    Grand glared, and reddened. “So what?” he asked aggressively.
    “So where were you at three-thirty yesterday morning?”
    “I don’t have to answer all this.”
    “My company doesn’t have to pay you, either. Not a single penny of that $100,000 policy,” the detective said. “I’ve already
     told you that.”
    Grand slumped back onto the couch. “Okay. For no reason at all, I decided to leave early, all right? Life’s full of odd little
     coincidences like that.”
    Lockwood continued to study Grand. It was hard to tell whether or not he was lying. “What time did you leave?”
    “About three. Maybe a little before.”
    “Mmm.