1949 - You're Lonely When You Dead (8 page)

A
s I drove along the beach road that runs at right angles to Wiltshire Avenue, I spotted Benny’s orange-and-red Ford convertible in a parking lot opposite a row of stalls that sold everything from soda pop to sea food, and did a roaring trade at night when the playboys and girls stoked up before having a neck on the sands.

I drove into the lot, took a parking ticket off an old ruin whose hands were so palsied I had to tell him to keep the change, and walked over to the stalls where I had a pretty good idea I should find Benny.

I found him all right.

He was having an engrossing conversation with a slim brunette with large, wicked eyes and a laugh like the slamming of a rusty gate. She was on one side of the milk-bar counter and Benny was on the other, but that didn’t make her safe.

She had on a white overall that was wrapped around her figure like a second skin, and she leaned over the counter so that Benny could look down the V opening and as he seemed to be enjoying himself I had a look too.

The brunette gave me a long hard stare, straightened up, tossed her head and moved off with her nose in the air, while Benny turned on me with a look of outraged surprise.

‘I might have known it,’ he said bitterly. ‘Always at the wrong moment. Brother, didn’t anyone tell you not to come trampling up to a man and a maid when they’re sighing over each other?’

‘Was that what you were doing?’ I asked. ‘It didn’t look that way to me. I thought you’d dropped a dollar down the front of her dress and were going in after it.’

‘That’s because you’ve had a gross upbringing,’ Benny said warmly. ‘I was telling her what a lovely mind she had.’

‘Well, she keeps it in the funniest places,’ I returned. ‘And may I remind you you’re supposed to be working?’

‘For Pete’s sake!’ he exclaimed, reddening. ‘What else do you think I’m doing? You said check every yard of the way from Dana’s place to the spot where she was killed. That’s what I’m at.’

‘Did Dana walk over that floozie’s chest?’

‘Leave it, will you?’ he begged. ‘Don’t drive it into the ground.’

‘Well, did you get anywhere?’

He looked over his shoulder, winked at the brunette who winked back.

‘Sure,’ he said. ‘Come over to the car where we can talk.’

As I got ready to move he went on, ‘Just a second, pally, I gotta fix up a date with glamour puss. She wants me to read her bumps. Join you in a second.’

I went over to the car, lit a cigarette and waited for him.

He came over, rubbing his hands and climbed in beside me.

‘Some doll!’ he said enthusiastically. ‘One little puff of air will blow her over.’

‘Concentrate, you pocket Casanova,’ I said irritably.

‘What have you got?’

‘I haven’t run across one solitary soul who saw Dana last night,’ he said, and leaned over to tap me on the chest. ‘But I’ve found two guys who saw Anita.’

‘Anita?’

‘Yeah. One is the taxi driver who took her to the edge of the dunes. He’ll swear to the flame-coloured evening dress, lie pulled up under a street light and had a good look at her. She interested him because she obviously didn’t want him to recognize her again. He thought it was queer she wanted to be dropped at such a lonely spot and not for him to wait.’

‘What time was this, Ed?’

‘Just after midnight.’

‘And who was the other guy?’

‘A fisherman. He’d just come back from setting lobster pots and saw a woman on her own walking across the dunes. She was too far away for him to see details, but the moon was up and he did notice she was wearing evening dress.’

I flicked my cigarette through the car window.

‘Looks as if Anita was right there when Dana was shot, doesn’t it?’ I said, running my fingers through my hair. ‘No wonder she’s hidden herself away.’

‘It’s a damn funny thing I haven’t been able to pick up Dana’s trail anywhere, isn’t it?’ Benny said, worried.

‘I’ve tried every taxi rank near her place, but no one’s seen her.’

I leaned over the back seat, hoisted up Dana’s coat and skirt and dropped the garments into Benny’s lap.

‘Get a load of this,’ I said His red, rubbery face went the colour of weak tea, and he turned to stare at me, clutching at the garments, his eyes complete circles.

‘Jeepers, Vic!’

‘Yeah,’ I said. ‘Hanging in George Barclay’s cupboard.’ I went on to tell him what I had found out about Mills and the house on Beechwood Avenue and showed him Anita’s photograph. He was so shocked by the discovery of Dana’s clothes in Barclay’s cupboard that he didn’t even crackwise over the photograph.

‘Looks as if Barclay did it,’ he said. ‘Maybe that’s the reason why I haven’t picked up her trail. Do you think he shot her at his place, stripped her and took her over to the dunes in his car? Do you think that’s how it was done?’

‘I don’t know, Ed I’m through with jumping to conclusions. Every time I think I’ve got something, something else turns up and kicks the first something to hell. The only way to solve this murder is to collect every scrap of information we can lay our hands on, keep an open mind, and when there’s nothing else to collect, then, and only then, see what we’ve got. I’m going over now to throw a scare into Leadbetter. You’d better come along.’

As I steered the car through the narrow parking lot exit I said, ‘After we have talked to Leadbetter, we’d better go back to the office. We’re collecting a lot of stuff, and if we’re not careful we won’t know how to use it.’

‘Have you any idea why Mills was nosing around in Barclay’s place?’ Benny asked.

‘Not a clue, but I’m glad I got there first. I bet he wouldn’t have missed that photograph. And Ed, I think I’ll get you to take a trip to San Francisco and check up on Anita’s background. It looks to me she was more a showgirl than a mannequin to judge from that picture. You might dig up something interesting.’

Benny reached over the back of the seat and picked the picture off the floor. He studied it as I drove the car along Orchid Boulevard.

‘Well, a doll doesn’t get herself photographed like this for the fun of it,’ he said. ‘These theatrical photographers don’t have such a dull life, do they? Imagine focusing a camera on a honey like this.’

I grunted.

‘Yeah, I think a trip to Frisco might be an idea at that,’ he went on. He held the photograph at arm’s length and squinted at it. ‘I wish she’d wave at me.’

‘Put it away,’ I said shortly. ‘The trouble with you—’

‘It’s not a trouble, pally, it’s a pleasure. It’d be a nice idea to gum this picture to the end of Leadbetter’s telescope. I bet it’d get his mind off bird’s eggs.’

We had reached the end of the Boulevard and were now bumping over the beach road that led to the sand dunes. I had an idea where Leadbetter’s place was. If it was the place. I was thinking of I had seen it from time to time when I had gone out with a party of friends for a day’s bathing. It was a lonely, two-storey cabin of redwood, bleached white by the sun. It stood on a little ridge of high ground, boxed in by a half-circle of blue palmettoes, but with wide, uninterrupted views of the coast, seashore and dunes.

The road petered out about a quarter of a mile from the cabin, and after locking the photograph and Dana’s clothes in the car boot, we set off across the hot, loose sand at an easy pace.

‘The moon was like a searchlight last night,’ I said as we tramped along. ‘If this guy was at his telescope there’s no knowing what he did see.’

‘Are you going to offer him any dough?’ Benny asked.

‘I don’t know. I think the thing to do is to be very tough. If we can get him going he might spill his guts without it costing anything.’

‘If he wasn’t holding out for dough I think Jack would have got him going.’

‘We’ll see.’

We cut through a thicket of red-and-black mangroves, picked our way over the sprawling, elephant-tusk-shaped roots and came out on to the vast stretch of open sand dunes.

Fifty yards ahead of us, almost invisible against the row of palmettoes was Leadbetter’s cabin.

On the flat roof, half-concealed by a solid wooden screen, the six-inch lens of the telescope glittered like a ball of fire in the sunshine There was no sign of life nor movement in or around the cabin. It looked as forsaken and as quiet as a cross-eyed girl at a beauty parade.

We sloshed through the sand up to the cracked and weather beaten door. It was full of old, plush-covered furniture, and on the table was the remains of a meal. A greasy looking newspaper served as a tablecloth, and amongst the debris was an interesting-looking earthenware jar that might contain applejack.

Benny rapped on the door which hung open at his touch.

We both peered into the dirty, sordid little room while we waited. Nothing happened; no one came to answer our knock.

‘Probably looking for a quail’s nest or watching some doll take a sunbath,’ Benny said.

‘Maybe he’s up on the roof.’

We stepped back and looked up, but all we could see was the glittering eye of the telescope pointing out to sea. Benny unleashed a whistle that sent a Pock of ibis flapping out of the mangroves, but it didn’t produce Leadbetter.

‘Let’s go up on the roof,’ I said. ‘We might be able to spot him through the telescope.’

‘That’s a hot idea,’ Benny said. ‘We might be able to spot something else besides old Snoopy.’

We entered the cabin, climbed the rickety stairs to the second floor. On the landing was a ladder that led to a trapdoor and the roof.

I mounted the three rungs of the ladder, heaved on the trapdoor and it went up with a crash. Hot sunlight poured down on me as I swung myself up the rest of the ladder to the roof. Benny followed mc.

We stood motionless, looking at the big telescope on its brass-wheeled stand. There was a wooden box for a seat set behind the apparatus, and a crate of bee and a lot of empty bottles close by. It was hot up there, and a great swarm of flies buzzed angrily away from us, swarmed above us and then went back to their gruesome meal.

Leadbetter lay flat on his back. There was a hole in the middle of his forehead like the hole you make in a sheet of asbestos if you hit it hard with a hammer. He had bled a lot, and the blood was only just beginning to clot. One thing was certain, he wouldn’t peep at any more courting couples through his telescope: not ever again.

‘Gawd!’ Benny said and clutched hold of my arm.

T
he clock on my desk showed ten past five. Sunblinds making the office dim and airless were drawn against the sun that sizzled the sidewalks in an unexpected and premature taste of the coming summer.

While I wandered about the room, my jacket off, my collar undone and my tie hanging loose, Paula sat at her desk and looked as cool as a block of ice.

‘There was no sign of him,’ I said, moving to the climax of my story, ‘so we went up on the roof. He was there all right.’

I paused to mop the back of my neck, pausing by the window to look into the hot street below. ‘He had been shot through the head with a .45 as he was looking through his telescope. The slug made a hole about an inch wide in his skull and I’d say he’d been dead about twenty minutes - not more.’

Paula didn’t get excited. She held her lower lip between finger and thumb and pulled gently: a sure sign she didn’t like what I was telling her.

‘There’s a big clump of mangroves near the house’ I went on. ‘I reckon the killer hid there, waiting for Leadbetter to show himself and then shot him. It was nice shooting. The slug’s still in his head. It’s my bet they’ll find it’s the same gun that killed Dana.’ I stubbed out my cigarette, yawned and rubbed my eyes. ‘Well that’s about all. We came away quick. There was no one to see us. I’m sure of that.’

Paula gave me a long worried stare, reached for a cigarette, lit it and flicked the match into the ashtray.

‘I don’t like it, Vic,’ she said. ‘Maybe we could have prevented this killing if we’d opened up to Brandon about the Cerfs.’

‘Maybe, but I doubt it,’ I said. ‘Anyway, Leadbetter had it coming to him. He could have told the cops what he knew; he could have told Jack, but he didn’t. He preferred to deal with the killer. I bet he thought he would make himself a little money, only he stopped a slug instead.’

Paula nodded.

‘That could be it.’ She twisted around in her chair and looked through the slots in the sunblinds, thinking. ‘Brandon will turn on the heat when the news breaks. We’re going to be right in the middle of the squeeze.’ She brooded for a long minute, then shrugged, turned to face me. ‘What now, Vic?’

‘I’ve sent Benny to Frisco to see if he can dig up anything about Anita. It certainly looks as if she was on the scene of the murder. My next move is to have a talk with Barclay.’

‘You have a tricky job there,’ she pointed out. That suit of Dana’s was evidence only so long as it was in the cupboard. Taking it puts Barclay in the clear. He can always deny knowing anything about it.’

‘Sure, but it was a risk I had to take. I was hoping we might find something from the suit. Clegg’s working on it now. Besides, Mills might have been looking for it for all I know. When I have Clegg’s report I thought I’d sneak it back and then confront Barclay with it.’

‘Risky, but I suppose it’s the only thing you can do. What happened to her underclothes, shoes and stockings?’

‘I don’t know. They may be hidden in Barclay’s place somewhere. I hadn’t much time before Mills arrived. That’s something I can look for when I go back.’

‘Are you going to Mills’s place?’

I grimaced.

‘I guess so. I’m not over anxious to run into him again, but I’ll have to go out there. He may have nothing to do with the killing. I’m beginning to think he hasn’t, but we’ll have to be sure before we drop him.’

‘It’s all a question of time, isn’t it? We’ve got to get this business straightened out before the police do.’

‘Just as soon as Clegg is through with that coat and skirt I’ll go back to Barclay. Right now it looks as if he’s the killer. If I can crack him it’s in the bag. Give Clegg a ring, will you, and see what happening?’

While she was phoning I went over to the window again.

There were a lot of things that puzzled me. Why was Dana stripped? Why had Anita given her the necklace? To part with twenty grand worth of diamonds seemed cockeyed to me for the return she got. On the other hand she may not have given the necklace to Dana. She may have asked her to look after it for her. She may have been meeting the blackmailer and was scared he might take it from her. Somehow I couldn’t see Dana taking the necklace as a bribe. It looked that way, but the more I thought about it the less likely it seemed. It didn’t fit in with her character.

Paula said, ‘Clegg’s on the line. He wants to speak to you.’

I reached for the receiver. Clegg said he could find no bloodstains, no sand, nothing to give me a lead at all. I thanked him, said I would collect the suit on my way down town and hung up.

‘Nothing,’ I said in answer to Paula’s inquiring look.

‘Then she couldn’t have been wearing it when she was shot. The front of her skull was smashed in. Whatever she was wearing had to get stained.’

‘Maybe he made her strip before he shot her,’ Paula said.

‘If he did, surely there would have been some trace of sand in her clothes.’

‘She might have undressed in the car.’

‘Yeah,’ I ran my fingers through my hair. ‘I better see Barclay. I’ll take Kerman with me. We may have to push that guy around a little, and I have an idea he might be difficult to push.’

As I was moving towards the door the telephone buzzer sounded.

Paula cradled the receiver in her slim white hand and looked at me.

‘Tip from the porter’s office. Brandon’s on his way up.’

I grabbed hold of my coat and hat.

‘Stall him, Paula,’ I said, making for the door. ‘Tell him you don’t know where I am, but I’ll be in some time tomorrow morning. I’ll use the rear exit.’

I jerked open the door and shot into the corridor. I had just reached the bend in the corridor when I heard the elevator doors swing back. I nipped out of sight as Brandon went stamping over to my door and
rapped with impatient knuckles.