“Tell us what you were doing here today,” the chief said. “And how you happened to be in the barn with the deceased.”
I heard the folding chair creak slightly, and I suspected Chief Burke had leaned back, lacing his hands over his slightly rounded belly and staring at Endicott with halfclosed eyelids. I’d been on the receiving end of the chief’s interrogation technique myself some months ago.
“The yard sale,” Endicott said. “I was here on business.”
“You were selling things?”
“No, buying things,” Endicott said, with just a hint of impatience in his voice. “For my shop. Yard sales are good hunting grounds for anyone who sells antiques, as I’m sure you know. After all, why do you think Gordon was here?”
“For your shop, yes,” the chief said. “This would be a new shop? I understand that when you and Mr. McCoy parted company this past November, he kept the shop the two of you had been running.”
“That’s true,” Endicott said. “His name was the only one on the lease. Careless of me, but what could I do?”
“And you didn’t resent that?”
“Enough to kill him, you mean? Certainly not,” Endicott said. “I resented it at the time, of course, but from what I’ve heard recently, the owner’s planning to jack the rents up sky-high when the leases are up. Ironically, Gordon did me a favor, hanging onto the shop.”
“So where have you opened up your new shop?” the chief said. “The one you were buying things for. I don’t recall seeing it yet.”
“That’s because I haven’t opened it yet.”
“Having trouble finding suitable premises?”
“I can find plenty of suitable premises, thank you,” Endicott said. “Frankly, I don’t want to open my new business until I’m sure I’m well and truly rid of Gordon. Purely in a business sense, of course.”
“Oh?”
“The man was a total sleazeball,” Endicott said, his voice growing slightly heated. “If I’d known what he was like, I’d never have gone into business with him in the first place. I haven’t been actively involved in the shop for two years, and I sold him my interest outright a year ago, and yet every time I turn around someone’s filing another suit against him and naming me as a codefendant. Not to mention the bill collectors.”
“Seems like a motive for wanting to get rid of him,” Chief Burke said. “Dead, he can’t do anything else that’ll get people fired up to sue him.”
“Dead, he’s not earning any more money to pay judgments,” Endicott said. “I suspect some of the plaintiffs will try to come after me instead.”
“So you’re telling me you’re actually worse off with him dead?”
“I could be,” Endicott said.
“So why did you go into business with him, if he’s such a disreputable character?” the chief asked.
Endicott sighed.
“I didn’t realize then how disreputable he was,” he said. “I only saw his good qualities.”
“And those were?” the chief asked.
I was curious, myself.
“He was brilliant, in his own way,” Endicott said, his voice sounding oddly melancholy. “He had an encyclopedic knowledge of antiques, collectibles, and especially rare books. That’s how he started out—in books—and then he added other things as he figured out how to make money out of them. And he didn’t just have academic knowledge. He could walk into a room and sort the treasures from the junk at a glance. A phenomenal eye—and the ability to con the owner of a piece into letting it go for a fraction of its value. If he’d just had an ounce of integrity …”
A pause. I heard the chief’s chair creak.
“So what were you doing in the barn with him?” he asked.
Endicott laughed.
“Curiosity killed the cat,” he said, his voice returning to its normal tone. “Or in this case, made him a suspect. I wanted to see what he’d found at the sale. I waited till he left and then ducked in.”
“Just to see what he’d found?” the chief said. “You weren’t appropriating anything for yourself?”
“Just to see what he’d found,” Endicott said. “One of the few things I miss about having Gordon around was that he had an uncanny knack for spotting trends before anyone else. If he was stockpiling something, that probably meant he expected the value to soar. Or, if he was passing up something that looked hot, it might mean the bottom was about to fall out of that particular section of the market. So I was snooping in Gordon’s stash. He came in and caught me at it.”