The Beverly Malibu, page 12
Kate wondered if Lennart had been the writer of musicals who had made it possible for Mildred Coates to practice her craft one last time.
Paula said, “I do despise the people who made it worse. Hedda Hopper used her column to spread the names that were named. And this man—” She pointed to the photo of Elia Kazan. “With his prestige he could have helped stop the madness. To this very day he defends what he did.”
In the warmth of the apartment Paula was rubbing her arms as if she were cold. Kate restacked the photographs, realizing that she must quickly get their contaminating presence out of this room.
In Owen Sinclair’s apartment, she stared at the pattern of fingerprint powder coating the coffee table as if she could divine from it, like tea leaves, the whereabouts of that photo of Joseph McCarthy and Roy Cohn.
She returned to Paula Grant’s apartment. Paula was sitting with her ankles crossed, her fingers tucked over the bottom of the wine goblet she balanced in the palm of a hand. Aimee was beside her, feet curled up under her, her hair a glossy darkness against the maroon of her sweater, her eyes on Kate in a fixed stare. The women were differently attractive. But Taylor was wrong. It was Paula Grant who was beautiful.
Noticing that the dust from the photos had been expunged from the coffee table, Kate settled herself once more in her chair. She concentrated on verifying the detail of other interviews, the careful intricacies of leading Paula Grant through the events of yesterday at the party. Aimee, claiming immersion in the Dallas - Houston football game that had been on the TV in the community room, did not contribute to the conversation, but Kate was aware of her unwavering stare. Paula confirmed physical details of where Owen Sinclair had stood, and the time intervals of when others had arrived. She gave Kate names of tenants who had attended the Fourth of July party in Owen Sinclair’s apartment, but she could remember nothing of significance about it.
“During the party yesterday,” Kate said, “did you notice anyone leave and then return?”
“Certainly.” The tone held a trace of tartness. “We were all drinking liquid of one form or another. Aimee and Houston have younger kidneys than any of the rest of us.”
Kate smiled. “Do you have any idea who left when?”
Paula returned Kate’s smile. “Of course not, dear.” The tone was indulgent. “Who would?”
Kate looked at her watch. She regretted leaving this apartment and this woman, but leave she must. “I’m afraid I’ll have further questions,” she apologized to Paula.
Paula said, “We’ll look forward to seeing you again.”
After this Thanksgiving weekend Aimee Grant surely would return to her own place, Kate reflected.
She took one of her cards from her notebook. “If anything at all comes to mind about the case, please call me.” She turned the card over and jotted her home phone number on the back. “Feel free to call me anytime.”
Chapter Fourteen
Taylor flung open the door of the community room. Kate put her notes aside as he strode toward her. “News,” he said, “I got news.”
“About time you showed up,” Hazel Turner said following Taylor into the room. She bore a large tray with two steaming dishes.
“Hazel,” Taylor said, “wait a—”
“Be quiet, you.” She put down her tray and swiftly spread out place mats, napkins, cutlery, coffee pot and mugs. Then with a flourish she served two crust-covered dishes. “Chicken pot pie,” she said. “A specialty.” She addressed the grinning Taylor: “A wonder it didn’t dry out waiting for you to show up, buster.”
“Thank you,” Kate said to Hazel’s back as the landlady marched out, thongs flapping. The door slammed behind her.
Chuckling, Taylor picked up his fork and broke through the crust. He inhaled deeply. “Ah, Hazel, you’re a beauty,” he said, digging into his food.
A rich, oniony aroma wafted to Kate. “News,” she said, breaking the crust on her own dish and savoring the smell. “Fill me in.”
“God, this pie is great,” Taylor said, his mouth full. “I took a call for you from Joe D’Amico at the lab.”
Kate looked down at her chicken pot pie to conceal a smile.
“Joe’s working on some of the stuff we collected from Sinclair’s apartment,” Taylor continued, “those plastic bags from the trash out back. One of ’em was done up real neat, remember?”
She did. Its top had been taped securely closed. During the inspection and photography of the Beverly Malibu’s dumpster, lab criminalist Napoleon Carter had taken charge, marking and booking the bag along with two others filled with party trash.
“What’s in the bag is real, real interesting, Kate.”
Taking another mouthful of his meal, Taylor flipped open his notebook. “Get this. An eight by ten silver picture frame, the glass smashed, the photo gone. And a record album, the plastic wrapping open but still on it. Titled…” Taylor squinted and then spelled: “G-o-t-t-e-r-d-a-m-m-e-r-u-n-g. And a pair of surgical gloves.”
Kate, her food forgotten, was staring at him in an electricity of interest. “Surgical gloves?”
“Yeah. The album, the picture frame dusted clean. They already superglued the chair—nothing, all smudges. So we aren’t gonna get prints anywhere, Kate.”
“Right.” She was chilled by the relentlessness, the icy premeditation of this homicide.
Taylor was grinning. He pointed his fork at her. “But our boy blew it.”
Kate smiled, amused and patient, humoring Taylor and his drawing out of his news.
“Sinclair’s apartment—the bathroom garbage—two unfiltered cigarette butts. Camels.”
The image of Dudley Kincaid and his ceremonial smoking clear in her mind, her thoughts racing, she put down her fork. “Ed…”
“Yeah, and I say we put it to him.” Grinning in triumph, he gestured at her lunch with his fork “After we finish Hazel’s chicken pot pie.”
* * *
In one of the small, blue-walled interview rooms in Wilshire Division, Dudley Kincaid sat round-shouldered in a metal chair, his arms crossed over gray western shirt, his eyes a blue glare through the prism of his trifocals.
In his apartment he had reacted with incredulity as Kate told him they had found discrepancies in statements about Sinclair’s death and would take him into custody for further questioning. During the half-hour drive in the Plymouth he had seethed in silence.
Taylor now said in a soothing tone, “Why don’t you make this easy on everybody, Mr. Kincaid? Why don’t you tell us how it happened with Sinclair?”
“You two incompetent fools are beyond all belief. A patsy, you idiots are looking—”
“We know quite a number of facts now, Mr. Kincaid,” Kate interrupted, her tone conversational. “About the music, for one thing. How that was done.”
“Music.” Sighing in exasperation, he sat back from the formica-topped table and hooked his thumbs through his suspenders.
Taylor tilted his chair back and crossed an ankle over a knee. “You wanted him dead,” he said with assurance.
Kincaid looked at him with contempt.
“We know you had your reasons,” Taylor said. “Why don’t you tell us about it.”
Kincaid groaned in exasperation.
Kate looked over the coded notes on her yellow legal pad. She and Taylor would not mention key elements of the crime scene: the handcuffs, the subject matter of the missing photo, the type of poison used. “You removed the picture…” She gave him a confident look, and waited, alert but relaxed. She felt convinced from her earlier impressions of Kincaid that the man would be a clumsy liar, easy to trap in inconsistencies.
“What picture?” He was shaking his head vigorously as if to unclog it of the irrationality of her words. “I don’t know what the hell you’re talking about.”
She gave a shrug of impatience. “You’re playing games. We know you took the picture.”
He rolled his eyes toward the acoustic ceiling of the interview room.
A new angle of questioning was necessary. She said, “Tell us everything you did yesterday. From the moment you woke up.”
From his shirt pocket he pulled out a crumpled half pack of Camels along with a small box of wooden matches. She watched in satisfaction this time as he went through his cigarette-lighting ceremony. If the man was a salivator, his ABO reading could be lifted from that butt and matched with the two butts found in Sinclair’s apartment.
“Okay,” he said, shaking out his match. “This is exactly what I did yesterday.”
Even though this interview was being tape recorded, she took swift notes for her own benefit of his activities: showering, shaving, eating breakfast, working through the morning repairing a script to the accompaniment of radio talk shows, changing clothes to go down to Hazel Turner’s party, returning afterward to again change clothes and continue work on the script to more radio talk shows until he was interrupted by the screams of Aimee Grant from the hallway.
She and Taylor took him twice more through these events, including close questioning of his activities at the party and the argument involving Sinclair, but as Kincaid added more details to his increasingly impatient recital, the basic facts did not deviate. Yes, he and Sinclair had both been drinking from Sinclair’s bourbon bottle during the party. No, he could not remember exactly what Sinclair had eaten—something of everything, and lots of it—but he did remember that Sinclair had lit one of his cheap cigars and had grudgingly extinguished it at the immediate howls from the women, especially Hazel Turner and Mildred Coates. Sinclair had then proceeded to mooch cigarettes from himself and Cyril Crane. Yes, people had come in and out of the community room, but none of the five involved in the argument—himself, Sinclair, Cyril Crane, Parker Thomas and Dorothy Brennan—had left.
Smoking the last two cigarettes in his pack of Camels, he insisted on relating the content of some of the radio programs he had listened to on Thanksgiving afternoon. Kate was not impressed; he could have been in Sinclair’s apartment while the programs were being tape recorded in his own quarters. But she was frustrated that she and Taylor could not manage to ensnare him in any inconsistency. They seemed to be gaining no advantage in this interview.
“Mr. Kincaid,” she said, deciding to play a trump card, “tell us about Jeremiah Ashton.”
His reaction was gratifying: he half-rose from his chair, his jaw sagging.
“Yes,” she said calmly, “we know all about him.”
“Scum,” he spat, “he’s scum. Only the worst kind of Southern trash steals from his own. No better than a mongrel nigger—I said that right to his face. He’s—” His face mottled, he broke off, choked by his outrage.
“They stole from you, didn’t they, Dudley.” Taylor’s voice oozed friendliness and sympathy. “The two of them.”
Kincaid clutched the edge of the table; his eyes were narrowed with pain. “Ashton was the Judas. Owen didn’t have the brains to even fathom what he took. Ashton was the one who knew…”
Kate asked in sudden apprehension, “When was the last time you saw Jeremiah Ashton?”
The pain faded from his face. “How should I know?” His voice was low and harsh. “It’s been fifteen years. I imagine he’s in the Malibu beach house he bought with the blood money from Confederate Night and all the other screen assignments he got out of that film.”
She was angry with herself over her impulsive question; Kincaid was regaining his composure.
“You hated him so much you had to kill him,” Taylor said.
Kincaid turned to Kate. “This arrest smells like the doing of a woman. Unfortunately, of the two of you, it’s quite obvious the male is the stupid one.”
Taylor said, “What Sinclair did to you, it’s been festering over the years. Isn’t that right, Dudley?”
Still peering resentfully at Kate, Kincaid answered, “Of course it’s festered, Bozo.”
She was pleased with Taylor’s composure; he too understood that Kincaid was trying to turn a common technique of interrogation on its ear. Often police interrogators played the role of good guy/bad guy, so that the suspect would turn to the “good” cop for understanding and support. Kincaid was attempting to drive a wedge between herself and Taylor.
“Detective Delafield,” Kincaid said, “what specious logic has your devious female mind concocted to pin this business on me?”
Watching him carefully, Kate said, “While you were in Mr. Sinclair’s apartment yesterday, did you smoke?”
The glacial blue eyes behind the trifocals did not waver. “Is this a logic test? Like, while you were beheading your wife, did you wear a clean shirt?”
“Answer the question,” Kate said coldly.
“I was not in his apartment,” he enunciated with scorn. “Ergo, I did not smoke in his apartment.”
She said with deliberate force, “We have evidence that you were in his apartment, that you smoked in his apartment.”
He leaned toward her, his heavily veined hands splayed out on the formica-topped table. “I did not smoke in his apartment yesterday, I was not in his apartment. Perhaps you found a cigarette he mooched from me. But the more likely scenario is that this is a cheap melodramatic trick.”
She matched his disdainful tone: “We don’t play tricks, Mr. Kincaid, cheap or otherwise.” With angry pressure on her Flair pen, she made a shorthand note on her legal pad to check whether wooden matches had also been inventoried along with the two Camels. How gratifying it would be to slam this insolent bigot behind bars.
Taylor said, “You went in there, Kincaid, and you watched him die.”
Kincaid turned on him. “And how did I accomplish such a feat, you dim bulb? Did I slide in under the door?”
“You stole keys from him,” Kate replied, to deflect his attention from Taylor, whose broad face was beginning to acquire color.
“Oh, I see,” Kincaid said. “You two have made up facts to fit everything.”
“Not quite everything,” Kate replied. “We’d like you to tell us where you got the poison.”
“Why, at the poison store,” he said. “Listen. I’m out of cigarettes, I’m tired, I’m hungry. And this is a sick travesty.”
Kate caught the gleam in Taylor’s eyes. Kincaid had made a serious tactical error in his admissions.
Kincaid continued, “For what it’s worth to your bureaucratic brains, I did not kill Owen Sinclair. I’ll admit that fifteen years ago I wanted to kill him, or myself, or both. But somehow I got through it—not quite intact, my creative flow has been dammed up ever since—but I did get through it.”
“We don’t think so,” Taylor said. “Tell us again what you did yesterday.”
“This is unbelievable,” muttered Kincaid, removing his glasses and rubbing his hands over his face and then back over his few strands of hair. “At least let me have some cigarettes.”
“Sorry, we don’t have any,” Taylor said. His tone was even, but Kate heard the trace of satisfaction. “Neither my partner nor me smoke.”
“How long will these questions continue?”
“Until we hear some truth. We haven’t heard much truth out of you, Mr. Kincaid.”
“Since I’ve told you everything I know,” he said wearily, “then in the words of Pontius Pilate, what is truth?”
Kate replied, “Facts that add up. That make a logical pattern. Please answer Detective Taylor’s question.”
He slammed both fists on the table. “This is an inquisition! A baseless inquisition!”
He was tired, he was without his nicotine crutch, his nerves were being rubbed raw. She decided to goad him. “We seem to have more respect for constitutional rights than you do, Mr. Kincaid. From what you said, the suspected people hauled before Senator McCarthy’s Senate Committee deserved no constitutional protection at all.”
“How dare you equate me with Communists,” he hissed. “With traitors trying to bring this country to its knees. With—”
“Right,” Taylor said. “All we got here is a stupid little homicide.”
“My reputation,” he raged. “Do you know what this will do to my reputation? I don’t deserve this.”
Taylor said, “One more time, tell us what you did yesterday.”
With a sigh of concession, his head down, his shoulders slumping even further, Kincaid obeyed, droning the lengthy reply. Afterward Taylor again questioned him about his activities at the party. Focusing on the interchange with difficulty, Kate took a surreptitious glance at her watch. Four twenty-five. She was tired; she had not slept since the night before last. Taylor also was looking haggard.
“…poison,” Taylor was saying. Kate jerked to attention.
Sitting up straight, Kincaid snarled, “I’ve told you everything, every goddam thing I know. If you think I’ve got some kind of poison pharmaceutical in my apartment, I defy you to find it. Go ahead—search my apartment, goddammit.”
“You’ll sign a consent form?” Kate inquired, keeping the eagerness out of her voice. A bluff, maybe he was running a bluff, and they would corner him.
He looked at her in brief, narrow-eyed scrutiny. “Yes. I can only hope it will help put an end to this…”
She examined her options. In a consensual search, he could at any moment, even during the search, rescind his approval. Then she and Taylor would be forced to obtain an official search warrant. And while they obtained that warrant they would have to release Kincaid because they lacked sufficient evidence damaging to him. And in the meantime, of course, Kincaid would destroy any evidence damaging to him. Police procedure today, Kate thought resignedly, was composed of equal parts criminal investigation and observance of legal niceties; in any major criminal trial police adherence to constitutional rights and privilege came under the closest scrutiny and challenge.
Taylor was getting to his feet. He said, “Sure can’t hurt if you’re telling the truth.” He asked cheerfully, “How about a lie detector test?”
