Love for Sale

Favor needed locks. Several of the mob camped out in the cold had already discovered that not all the doors had locks. They’d found their way into the house by nine-thirty in the morning and scared Mimi, Lily, and Mrs. Prinney half to death asking if they’d seen the body.
    Was there lots of blood? Who else was staying there? What were all the names of the actual residents of the place? Were they devotees of the notorious preacher? Had one of them killed the man?
    Howard Walker had to get rid of them. The house was searched thoroughly. One reporter was located in the master suite bathroom trying to convince Mimi to stage a reenactment of the crime. Mimi had slapped him for even suggesting this. Another was found under Edward Price’s bed trying to find clues.
    When they were all removed from the interior, the reporters took over the guest house that once guarded the entrance. They brought in dead wood to make a fire with and very nearly burned it down.
    Walker went to Robert and said, “Go down in the basement and bring up the oldest, best bottle of whiskey down there.”
    When Robert had done so, Walker went to the guest house and sat down, with the dusty old bottle prominently displayed in his lap. He wiped the dust away from the label.
    “Boys, here’s the situation,“ he said, fondling the bottle carelessly so the label was facing the reporters. “There’s nobody here who knows anything. Goodheart didn’t tell them who he was. He didn’t introduce anyone. They took food up to them and left it outside the door. There’s only a brother and sister who are local teachers, a cook, her husband, and a widow woman who’s the maid.”
    He didn’t think Mimi would like being described this way, but he wanted to suggest an old and possibly dotty retainer.
    “There’s nothing you can learn here.“ He set the bottle of whiskey on a table and said, “I’ll be back in half an hour. I want all of you and the bottle to be gone by then.“
    “Thank heaven they didn’t know about the previous death that took place here,“ Robert said, watching as the reporters drifted away, passing the bottle around. “We don’t want to become celebrities that way.”
    But there was worse to come.

    Most of the reporters had already called in stories about Brother Goodheart’s murder, embroidering it with what little they knew or could get away with saying. When the news was out, mobs of Goodheart’s faithful made a pilgrimage to the Institute, wanting to see “the Divine Body,“ as they’d taken to calling the corpse. They wanted to know where he was to be buried so they could contribute to a wonderful edifice for his eternal rest.
    Chief Coiling dealt with them as well. “He’s already on his way back to Nebraska to be interred where he was born. There’s no one here.”
    The truth was Coiling had no idea where Goodheart was buried and didn’t care.
    When the first wave left, he put a big notice on the front door saying the same thing to those who were bound to arrive later from farther away. His notice mentioned that nobody was in the building and that all the doors were locked and guarded by the police. Which wasn’t true either.
    He called Chief Walker and warned him that the devout adherents of Brother Goodheart, while blinded to his faults, weren’t all entirely stupid. Like the reporters, they would soon find out where he’d been murdered. They were bound to figure out where Grace and Favor was located.
    Whiskey wasn’t appropriate this time. Walker wrote out a statement that the residents of the mansion didn’t know anything about the death of Brother Goodheart. In fact, they hadn’t even known the identity of the guests who were staying at their home.
    He also arranged for Ralph Summer, Harry Harbinger, and himself to go on twenty-four- hour rotation, if it became necessary, to read the statement to the hordes who were bound to be appearing at the door.
    After the bulk of them had been turned away, he’d left the notice on the front and back doors. He told the Prinneys and Brewsters to leave all the lights off in the rooms in front of the house for at least a week and be careful not to be seen coming and going from the mansion.
    There was a path from the kitchen door to the barn where the Duesie was concealed. Strangers wouldn’t know about it, so the residents should take this route when they left or came home.
    Mr. Prinney broke down and asked Walker’s advice about a good locksmith.

    Robert