Private Eye Four-Pack, page 28
I didn’t have to ask who was number two.
“Did you put out an A.P.B.?” I’d described the girl from my memory of the photograph while we were en route from the hotel. It occurred to me as Ralph nodded how George Crowell was going to feel when he heard his niece was a suspect in a murder case. He was my client. Regardless of my personal feelings, I did have some responsibility to the man. “I hope you remember she’s just a kid, Ralph. Maybe it was an accident or self-defense. Getting mixed up with a man like Paul Rinker—” I broke off and stared into the muddy coffee. “Ralph, you still have doubts about my story, don’t you?”
“I’m a cop. I’m paid to have doubts.”
“I wish I could tell you something that would clear them up. I’ve played it straight, crazy as it all sounds.”
“Have you? Listen, Delilah, Jack and I were never close, but I respected him and I owe him for a few things. So I’m going to say to hell with being a cop for a minute and talk to you as a friend. Get yourself a lawyer, Delilah. Now, just be quiet and listen. I’m not saying you aren’t telling the truth. Screwy things do happen. But just suppose little Cathy Crowell is home in bed and—”
“God!” I exclaimed. “Why didn’t I think of it before? No, not that she’s home in bed, but if she panicked, maybe she called her uncle. If he called me—can I use the phone? I’d like to check with my answering service.”
“Of course. You know you’re entitled to a call. There’s a pay phone outside. I’ll go see how Savoni’s getting along. But, Delilah, if Crowell hasn’t called, get yourself an attorney. What can it hurt?”
And what good would it do? Could an attorney change the facts? Could he provide a sound, solid reason why I was in that hotel room with the cold, bloody body of Jack’s murderer? I picked up my purse and followed Ralph out the door. He pointed to the pay phone and left me to fumble for a dime and dial my service. Rita answered on the first ring, as chipper as if it were something other than the middle of the night.
“It’s Delilah,” I said. “Any messages?”
“Ted Lacey called several times. Wants you to call back.”
“Anybody else?”
“No. Of course Midge was on the board from seven to eleven. She’s pretty reliable but I could double-check if it’s important. Is something wrong, kiddo? You sound terrible.”
“Rita, this is important. You’re sure I didn’t get a call from a man named Crowell, George Crowell?”
“No. Like I said, I can double-check. Where are you? Are you all right?”
“I’m up in L.A. at the Westside police station. I’m okay, Rita, but it’s been a rough night. I found the man who killed Jack.”
“Found him? You mean you ran into him on that job you mentioned? Thank God the police have him now. How in the world did you manage it?”
“There was no great detective work on my part. He’s dead, Rita. I found his body.”
“My God! Well, at least it’s over with.”
“Not quite. There’s a bottom line. He seems to be mixed up with the girl I’m looking for. Quite a coincidence, huh?”
“The police don’t think that you—forget your ethics and have them call your client to verify it.”
“They’re working on it, but somebody took the information on the case out of my purse.”
“While you were doing what? Delilah, you’re not telling me everything.”
A door opened down the hall. Savoni marched toward me with a satisfied smirk on his face. He carried a lumpy brown envelope in his hands. Ralph followed, looking grim.
“Talk to you later, Rita,” I said and hung up the phone with sweating hands.
Ralph pushed open the door to the interrogation room, and they waited for me to enter first. Grim silence swelled as Savoni motioned me to a chair, sat across the table, and laid the envelope between us. Deliberately he unwrapped a piece of candy. Cellophane cracked, abnormally loud in the quiet room.
“Did you find George Crowell?” I asked.
“This client of yours, Crowell—” Savoni rattled the candy against his teeth.
“You talked to him?”
“Nope. Funny think about Crowell. Far as we can tell he doesn’t exist.”
“Doesn’t exist?” I echoed stupidly.
I could see the solid existence of George Crowell in my mind as he sat in my office: thin hair fringing a freckled scalp, pale eyes, a huge ruby ring winking redly from the pinkie of his right hand.
“What are you talking about?” I demanded.
“Maybe he’s got an unlisted telephone. I gave you his address—”
“Yeah, Lemongrove Drive you said. Another funny thing—there is no Lemongrove Drive in Tustin. So we got assailants who disappear. Clients who disappear. Whole streets that disappear. How about telling us the truth, Mrs. West?”
“I’ve told you—”
“You’ve told us a lot of crap. Why don’t you tell us how you found out your husband’s murderer was staying at the Altmont; how you waited till he was falling down drunk—hell, maybe you helped get him that way—and how you stuck a knife in his back?”
“You’re crazy!” Fear stamped around on my spine with ice-cold feet and added an edge of desperation to my voice. “Ralph—for God’s sake!”
“Okay.” Ralph crushed his cigarette, made a steeple of his hands and stared at me over them. “Delilah, was there anybody else around when you saw Crowell?”
“No.” Since Crowell hadn’t talked to Rita, she couldn’t vouch for his existence either. “I don’t call in witnesses every time a client walks in.”
“He gave you a retainer. A check, maybe.”
“Cash. I told you he gave me four hundred dollars in cash.” Which was gone.
“All we got is your word,” Savoni said softly.
“He’s right, Delilah. That’s the way it’s going to look to the D.A. You had motive and you had opportunity.”
“I was hit on the head, have you forgotten that?”
“There’s no visible proof of that.”
“I faked it? For Christ’s sake, it’s a frame.”
“Seems like I’ve heard that before,” Savoni murmured.
Ralph sighed heavily. “I don’t like this Delilah. Christ, far as I’m concerned they ought to give you a medal, but—”
“Somebody set me up,” I said. “That guy, Crowell, or whoever the hell he is. It has to be him. Do you think I’m so stupid I’d tell you a phony story you can break as easily as this?”
“You weren’t thinking straight. It was a damn traumatic experience. You just said the first thing that popped into your head, and then you were stuck with it.”
“After all, you didn’t expect to get caught.” Savoni grinned hugely. I was tempted to tell him that all that candy was rotting his teeth.
“What say we go over it again,” Ralph said. “Give it to us straight, Delilah. Maybe there were extenuating circumstances.”
Nerves tingled over my body as if the skin had been flayed away, exposing the raw endings. Savoni wasn’t finished with me. I watched his fingers caress the edges of the brown envelope and knew it.
Drawing a long steadying breath, I forced myself to say evenly, “I have played it straight with you, Ralph. Look, you’re basing a lot of this on the premise that I’m lying about the Crowell girl. I must have talked to a hundred people tonight and showed them Cathy’s picture. You can verify it.”
“Anybody can flash a picture and pin a name on it,” Savoni said.
“Then how about the blood? My God, he bled like a pig. How come I didn’t get any on me?”
“It’s a point. We’ll check it out with the coroner.” Ralph seemed impressed.
Not Savoni. “There is one more thing,” he said. “Take a look at this.”
He upended the brown envelope onto the tabletop. A knife clattered out. It had a smooth teak handle and a shiny blade dulled with rusty red flecks. I stared at it and vomit rose, hot and sour, against my throat.
“Recognize it?”
“No,” I said dully.
It was the first lie I’d told all night.
NINE
I couldn’t take my eyes off the knife. It belonged in a teakwood rack on a kitchen wall in my apartment, part of a matched set, a wedding gift. I remembered how it came wrapped in foil paper embossed with silver bells and a big white bow topped the box.
Now the bloodstained blade threw back little mocking glitters of light. I knew the feel of the smoothly grained handle as I used it to slice a sandwich or split a melon. My stomach flopped and I fought back nausea as I visualized it slipping between Paul Rinker’s back ribs and tearing into his heart. I could feel the shock in my hand as it met the grating resistance of bone and gristle, the smooth slide into soft flesh and vital muscle.
My knife…and the man who murdered Jack. Did I remember it all? Did I—no, dammit. Maybe I would have killed Rinker. I’d done it often enough in my bloody dreams of vengeance. But somebody got to him first. When I went looking for Cathy Crowell, the deadliest weapon in my purse was a nail file.
Coincidence time was over. Somebody had deliberately taken that knife from my kitchen wall; somebody had taken it to the Altmont Hotel, used it to kill Rinker, and arranged that I would be found in room 315 minutes after his death with a motive and a story that would fall apart.
“You recognize the knife.” It was a statement from Savoni, not a question.
“Of course.” How soon could he get a warrant to search my apartment? Could he get it before morning? Would crossing county lines slow him down at all? I had to get out of here and fast. I put some cold assurance into my voice. “I assume it’s the knife I saw in Paul Rinker’s back. Otherwise it wouldn’t be here. Any fingerprints?”
“None,” Ralph said unhappily.
“Wiping off fingerprints is not exactly the action of a frightened teenager,” Savoni said.
Anger welled up, hot and clean. “If I premeditated the murder of Paul Rinker, you can be damned sure I wouldn’t advertise my presence in the neighborhood all night and then hang around the hotel room for the police to find me. There was nothing to tie me to Rinker, and nothing to tie Rinker to Jack’s murder except possibly the gun, and I certainly could have disposed of that. You would have assumed Rinker’s death was just another skid-row knifing.”
“She’s right, Vic,” Ralph said. “I don’t like the feel of it. For instance, Keats and Ellis questioned everybody on the third floor of the Altmont and nobody heard a thing.”
“That bunch of rum heads,” Savoni scoffed. “The way they tell it they’re all blind and deaf.”
“Yet somebody called the police,” Ralph countered. “Who? And why did he bother?”
“So you want to let her go? I can think of a dozen good reasons to hold her.”
“Too many holes at this point. Besides, she’s not going anywhere. Hear that, Delilah?”
“Don’t worry. I want to find Rinker’s killer just as much as you do.”
“No,” Ralph said sharply. “It’s police business, and we conduct the investigation. You stay out of it.”
“Jack’s murder was police business and a hell of a lot of good that was.”
“We can close that case now, Delilah. We know who killed Jack.”
“Do we? I know only one thing: Paul Rinker pulled the trigger. He was a small-time hood, a junkie with a gun. Maybe the gun was for hire.”
“A contract on Jack? Who put it out? Crowell?”
“If I knew that, I wouldn’t be standing here half dead with exhaustion, trying to get out of a murder charge.”
“Well, I don’t see anything that involved. I mean, Jack did have enemies. It goes with the profession. Rinker probably had a grudge against him. Let me see what I can dig up.”
“Okay. Meantime—”
“Meantime you go home and get some sleep and stay out of it.”
“And don’t leave town?” I asked sardonically.
“You know that without my saying it. Now, I’ll ask somebody to give you a lift back to your car.”
“Thanks.”
My legs were trembling with the urgency of getting away, but I forced myself to move casually and pick up my bag. Savoni still sat at the table, sucking on a candy and watching me. I avoided looking at the knife. As if he realized my fascination with it, he picked it up with slow deliberation and put it back in the envelope.
“It’s not over,” he said softly. “I’ll be right behind you, Mrs. West.”
“A comforting thought. Please don’t bother to get up.”
I left him sitting there and went out in the hall. It was empty so I stuck my head into the squad room. Ralph was there, leaning against the water cooler, swallowing aspirin and massaging his neck.
“I really did want to thank you,” I began.
“Just doing my job. Contrary to popular belief, we don’t spend our time figuring out ways to railroad innocent people.”
“Do you believe in my innocence?”
He grunted noncommittally. “The facts aren’t all in. Let’s say I’m reserving judgment.”
“Of course. You said you’d find me a lift.”
“Didn’t have to. Somebody’s here to pick you up.”
“Who?”
“Name’s Lacey. Said he was a friend of yours.”
Ted? I hurried out, thinking that Rita shouldn’t have bothered him, but feeling very glad that she had. I needed somebody who was completely on my side. I pushed open the door to the reception area and stopped dead in my tracks.
It wasn’t Ted who waited for me. It was Edward, pants still perfectly creased, not a hair out of place.
“Well, Mrs. West, I came rushing down here to see if I could help, but like the proverbial cat it seems you’ve landed on your feet.”
His eyes raked me like fish hooks. I felt every nerve quiver and jump to the surface of my skin. I was dirty and sick to my stomach and much too tired to trade insults with Edward Lacey.
“Where’s Ted?”
“At home. He couldn’t come.”
“Why not?”
“Do we have to discuss this here?” Wrinkling his nose in distaste, he took my arm and steered me toward the front door. “I’ll drive you home.”
I pulled away from his touch. “My car’s around someplace. I’ll get a cab to take me there or I’ll walk.”
“Don’t be a fool. Anyway, I thought you wanted to hear about my father.”
“I do.”
“Well, then.”
He ushered me through the front door. His black Mercedes waited just outside, parked in a tow-away zone. No ticket on the window, naturally. He made a mocking little ceremony of opening the door for me. Then, while I ground my teeth with impatience, he leisurely strolled around the car, got in, started the motor, and eased away from the curb.
“Is something wrong with Ted?” I demanded.
“After you left, he was very angry with me. He seemed to think I’d hurt your feelings, though Lord knows I didn’t mean to. He tried to call you several times, the last time was just after you spoke to your girl about this…trouble. She told him what had happened, and of course he promised to come straight here, but I put my foot down.”
“You still haven’t told me what happened.”
“It’s not what did happen, it’s what might have happened. He was really upset, Mrs. West. I didn’t want him to drive in that state. The only way I could get him to take a sedative and go to bed was to promise to come down here and see what I could do for you.”
“Ted’s all right, then?”
“I didn’t say that. Frankly, Mrs. West, my father isn’t young anymore, and this sordid business with you and your husband is too much for him.”
He’s right, I thought as I remembered Ted’s haggard face. I hate his damn guts, but he is right.
“Rita told Ted about this on her own initiative,” I said. “It wasn’t my idea. He needn’t get involved.”
“He will, though, if you go to him for advice, for…comfort.”
“Don’t worry. I’ll keep him out of it. Make a right turn at the next corner.”
“I’d like to believe you, Mrs. West.” He slowed to negotiate the turn. “But after this nasty business tonight, you may need all the help you can get. My father is a very influential man.”
“I don’t go around using my friends that way,” I said coldly.
“Why not? Everybody else does. But I’m warning you. I won’t stand by and see my father’s health jeopardized.”
“Don’t worry. I wouldn’t do anything to hurt Ted.”
“Well, I guess I’ll have to take your word for it. One more thing. Please don’t repeat our conversation. I’m doing this for his own good, but he’d be furious.”
“I said I’d keep Ted out of it. Now, let’s drop it.”
I laid my head back against the soft leather rest. In the rearview mirror a pair of headlights wavered in the fog and stayed a constant block behind.
“Make a left,” I said.
Edward turned and a few second later the car followed close on our tail. It seemed that Savoni was keeping his promise.
Edward’s eyes were on the mirror, too. “Police?”
“Yes,” I said shortly.
“What really happened tonight, Mrs. West? Your girl told us that you’d found the man who killed your husband…or rather his corpse. We didn’t realize this assignment of yours had anything to do with Mr. West’s death.”
“It didn’t.” I smiled grimly. “I just got lucky.”
His eyes swept the mirror. “The police are taking an extraordinary interest in you simply for finding a body. Or is there more? Could it be they suspect you of taking justice into your own hands?”
“The police don’t like coincidences.”
“But surely you have a client. Can’t he vouch for you?”
“Unfortunately my client has disappeared.”
“What a nasty break.” The consoling words were overlaid with just an echo of a gloat.
“It will be nastier for Mr. Crowell,” I promised.
“Crowell?”
“My client.”
“But you said he disappeared.”
