The Faberge Egg Read Online Free Page B

crossed his hands over his paunch as he had often seen Miles do. Vandenhof took his old comrade in out of gratitude, then a few years later threw him out. This pissed off old Otto, so he went out and shot a total stranger right between the suspenders? It made no more sense now than it had then.
    “Unless -!” McGuffin said, reaching again for his notes.
    He found what he was looking for at the bottom of the page, pressed tightly against the right edge, “‘25 S.” It was McGuffin’s shorthand for “born in 1925 and single.” Otto Kruger was approximately the same age as his roommate and precisely single. When one heterosexual throws another out of the house, it’s not serious. But when a homosexual throws his lover out of the house, hell hath no fury to match. Could that have been the blow that hurtled Otto Kruger over the edge? And could McGuffin have overlooked something at that sexually innocent and youthful time that might have been significant?
    Maybe Otto Kruger didn’t just wander in off the street, after all. Maybe he came to Dwindling’s office seeking some form of redress for a broken heart. Miles tried to explain that California was a heart balm state, but even if it wasn’t, there was still no remedy for breach of contract between homosexual lovers, no matter how unjust the situation might be. Otto blamed Miles for the unjust state of the law, grabbed Miles’ gun and shot him. Of course! Miles had to have talked to Kruger for a bit in order to have come to the conclusion that he was out of his bird. If a stranger had walked in and shot him without a word, Miles would have assumed he was a professional hit man, not a crazy.
    Suddenly, it was all grotesquely clear. Kruger’s madness had festered in the hospital. For eighteen years, he lived only to take vengeance on the man who had sent him there. He had researched McGuffin’s life throughout that time, just as McGuffin was now researching his. By consulting the San Francisco phone book, he knew when McGuffin had moved his office from Post to Sansome Street. By reading the papers and watching the local news on television, he had remained abreast of the detective’s more notable cases. He had probably read of his marriage to Marilyn and the birth of their daughter, Hillary, a few years later. It was unlikely, however, that he had read of their divorce, as that had appeared only in the Law Journal. When Kruger was released, he assumed that McGuffin was still living with his wife and child in North Beach. And when he arrived there and saw the name McGuffin under the bell, he was sure that vengeance was finally about to be his.
    Kruger must have talked his way past Marilyn, expecting to find me in the apartment. Then when he found out we were divorced, and I was no longer living there, he came unglued. He knew he couldn’t let them go because they’d tell me he was out to kill me, so he did the only thing his deranged little mind would allow. He snatched my ex-wife and my daughter. Things were happening so fast he couldn’t even compose a ransom note, so he left the yellowed clipping he’d been carrying around for eighteen years, knowing I’d know who had taken them. And the fact that he had allowed them to pack a bag offered at least some hope that he didn’t intend to kill them.
    It’s possible that he hasn’t yet figured out what to do with them, McGuffin told himself. I’m the one he wants, not them. He’ll have to come to me to make a trade, and that’s when he has to slip. I may be an accidental detective, but I’ve had eighteen years at it, while he’s spent the last eighteen years being told what to wear and when to eat. It’ll be no contest.
    There was, of course, an additional scenario, which McGuffin was aware of but chose not to dwell on. Unstable as Otto Kruger was, and frustrated in his carefully laid plan, he might have already panicked and killed them. No, McGuffin said to himself as he reached for the phone. He couldn’t