A Few Minutes Past Midnight (17 page)

The office was on corner of Sepulveda and Mitchell, a renovated storefront building with a tasteful sign in both of the downstairs windows that proclaimed in flowing black script that the would-be traveler was about to enter the offices of Ann Stewart Travel. Before Ann moved in, the top floor had been leased to a bookie named Cyril Petrano under the name of Smith Enterprises. The bottom storefront floor had been The Culver City Bar. The windows had been painted black when it was a bar. They were now clear and always clean so visitors and passersby could see busy men and women on the phones, hurrying with papers in their hands, talking to customers seated by their desks.

“Can I help you?” asked the receptionist, a thin girl with severe dark hair, large teeth and smile, and a well-pressed dark suit.

You can help me catch a murderer, I thought. You can tell me you’re a specialist in whatever was going to kill my sister-in-law, Ruth. You can try to convince me that I am right up there with Gary Cooper or Robert Taylor or Preston Stewart.

“Ann Stewart,” I said.

“She’s with a client,” the girl said brightly. “Can someone else help you?”

Anita Maloney was the most likely substitute, but Anita was behind a drugstore counter serving BLTs on white toast at Mack’s Pharmacy.

“No,” I said, looking at my dad’s watch on my wrist. It told me that I didn’t know what time it was. “It’s important. Can you tell her Toby is here?”

“I don’t think I can disturb her,” the girl said sweetly. “Mrs. Millbanks can …”

“No,” I said. “Mrs. Millbanks can’t. Just tell her Toby is here.”

“Toby who?”

“The Toby who used to be her husband,” I said.

“Oh,” said the girl. “Oh.”

She picked up the phone and dialed a single number.

Ann Stewart Travel looked like an office movie set with the agents and customers as busy extras. Voices were low. There was no loud laughter.

“I’m sorry,” the girl said softly into the phone, “but there is a gentleman here who says his name is Toby and that he wants to see you.” The girl nodded while Ann talked and then looked up at me. “What did you want to see her about?”

“Matters of love, life, and death,” I said. “Urgent matters.”

“He says ‘urgent matters of life and death,’” the girl said and then listened before saying, “Yes.”

She hung up and looked at me.

“At the rear of the office, up the stairs, first door on the left.”

“Thank you,” I said.

“I think I just messed up,” the girl said.

“How?”

“This is my first day on the job. I was told not to disturb her.” She bit her lower lip. “Oh well, if she fires me, I can go back to being a carhop at Howie’s Drive-In in the Valley. Tips are good but the guys …”

“She won’t fire you,” I said with a grin.

The grin didn’t seem to reassure her.

“I don’t make as much money here,” she said, “but I get to sit all day instead of standing most of the night.”

“And wearing those little costumes,” I said with sympathy.

“You know how many times a night you get your bottom pinched or touched at a drive-in?”

“Me? None.”

“I meant me. Six, seven times, and other stuff. I’m a high school graduate.”

“Louise,” came the voice of a man at a nearby desk.

“Yes sir,” said the former and maybe soon-to-be-again carhop.

He had a sagging face with sad eyes and a head of black hair shining with Wildroot. He didn’t have to say more.

“I’m sorry,” she said.

The guy with the sagging face shook his head at the quality of help one could get nowadays. I winked at Louise the receptionist and moved toward the back of the office and to the stairway. Ann’s office was just where Louise had said it would be. Her name was on it in small, tasteful, black block letters. I knocked.

The door opened and I let a fidgety little man clutching a briefcase to his chest pass by me and head for the stairs. Ann stood about four feet away. I could smell her. It was more than faint perfume.

Her dark suit with a white blouse wasn’t much different from that of Louise the receptionist, but Ann, who was now forty-six, filled it with authority and a full figure.

“Life and death,” she said.

She looked great, dark hair piled on her head without a loose strand, smooth pale skin, full red lips that matched her fingernails, and a barely tolerant look on her face.

“You look great,” I said.

“Thank you. And you look pretty much the same as always.”

“I know a compliment when I hear one,” I said. “And I don’t think I just heard one.”

“Life and death,” she repeated.

I reached back to close the door. She stepped past me and pulled it wide open.

“How are you?”

“Fine.” Her hands arms were folded impatiently across her chest. “Life and death, Toby, remember?”

“Ruth is dying,” I said.

“I’m sorry,” she said, letting her arms drop to her side. “Is she home?” I nodded. “I’ll call her.”

“She’ll like that. She always liked you.”

“And I like her,” Ann said. “Toby, you didn’t come here to tell me about Ruth. You could have done that on the phone.”

“I wanted to see you. That’s the ‘life’ part.”

She shook her head and looked at the ceiling before looking back at me. She was saying ‘not again’ without having to use the words.

“Toby, please …”

“You’ve asked me for help more than once since you left me,” I reminded her. “Now I’m asking you for help. You owe me a few minutes, Ann.”

“All right,” she said, moving behind her desk and sitting down. “You have a few minutes. And don’t close that door.”

“You’re doing well,” I said, looking around the office. “Leather sofa, big desk, nice paintings on the wall.”

She looked at her watch.

“Impulse,” I said.

“What is?”

“Coming here.”

“That’s it?” she said with a sigh.

I shrugged.

“Wanted to see you, hear your voice. I didn’t feel like doing anything but shake your hand and wish you good luck.”

“You did that at the wedding, remember? And?”

“Let’s have lunch, talk. You know.” I said.

“I don’t think so. Are you still seeing Anita …?”

“Maloney,” I said. “Yeah.”

“I like her. I wanted a husband. Maybe she’ll be satisfied with an irresponsible playmate. Don’t lose her.”

I didn’t know what to say.

She stood up again, came around the desk, stepped in front of me, and kissed me. Her smell was the good past remembered. She stepped back.

“Preston and I are having a party next month. His new movie.” she said. “I’ll send you and Anita an invitation. And I’ll call Ruth.”

In other words, she would behave, as always, like a responsible adult. I felt as if my mother, who I never knew, had handed me my school lunch in a brown bag and told me to have a nice day and remember my spelling words.

“What’s the movie? Preston’s new movie?”

“
Dark Streets
,” she said. “He plays a private detective. If it does well, they’re thinking of turning it into a series.”

The unkindest cut of all.

I left. She closed the door behind me.

I stood in front of her door and reached into my pocket. I pulled out Fiona Sullivan’s two-bird locket and held it in the palm of my hand. I had long ago lost the woman on the other side of the door. I had a feeling I had also lost the woman whose locket I was looking at. I went back down the stairs.

“How did it go?” Louise the receptionist asked, glancing back at the saggy-faced man who was on the phone.

“It could have been better,” I said.

“She’s not going to fire me?”

“No,” said. Ann wasn’t the firing kind.

“Good,” Louise said. “Thanks.”

I nodded and went back out onto Sepulveda. I had gotten my periodic dose of Ann. It made me feel worse, but I needed it. As soon as I could, I’d take Anita to the movies. We’d have a burger or maybe even a steak and we’d go back to her apartment and talk. And that would be good.

My Crosley was wedged in between two big cars. At least they seemed big to me. All cars were big compared to the Crosley. It took me six twists and turns in the space before I could escape without touching the bumper of the car in front of me.

No one seemed to be following me. Sawyer was only one man and he had too many possible targets: me, Chaplin, Blanche Wiltsey, and who knows how many others.

I headed for Fiona Sullivan’s house. I didn’t expect to find her there listening to Schubert and jumping out of her chair to thank me for returning her locket. I don’t know what I expected or hoped for.

The street was quiet. The sky was clear. The thick trees around the house kept it in shade. I parked and went to the door. It was locked. I knocked, waited, gave up, and went around to the back of the house. The kitchen door was locked. I peered through a window, saw nothing, and tried to push the window open. It was locked, but the lock was a loose hook held in by a screw. Trees behind the house gave me cover. I pushed the window hard, loosened the screw, pushed again, and felt the window groan open. I climbed in and closed the window behind me.

The phone was ringing. I had a fair idea of the layout of the house and a clear memory of where the phone was. I walked through the afternoon gray shadows to the living room. The phone kept ringing. I picked it up.

“Peters,” came the voice I had heard on the phone at the home of the deceased Elsie Pultman. He had followed me.

“Yes,” I said.

“You got my gift?”

“I got it,” I said, touching the locket in my pocket.

“Would you do me a favor and give it to Blanche for me? Fiona won’t be needing it anymore.”

“We’ll see,” I said.

“You won’t find anything there,” he said. “I took everything I needed.”

“Thanks.”

“Thought I’d save you some time,” he said. “I’ve changed my mind about you. I’m feeling euphoric. I have a deal for you and Chaplin. He doesn’t make his movie about me and I don’t pay a visit to the lovely little Blanche.”

“That’s up to Chaplin,” I said.

“I’ll tell you what,” he went on. “I throw in a promise. I won’t kill any more women. I’ll stop. Just like that. No more. I’ll disappear.”

“That’s not up to me.”

“Sure it is,” he said.

“The police know all about you now,” I said. “And I made a deal with a cop to turn you in.”

“I wish you hadn’t,” he said. “But still, to show my good faith, I promise you I will not harm Blanche Wiltsey. You can believe me.”

“Why not? You haven’t lied to me in the past.”

“Maybe we’re becoming something like friends,” he said, pleased with himself.

“I’m not smart,” I said. “But I’m stubborn. I don’t give up. I’m going to find you.”

“How?” he asked.

That I didn’t know.

“I have to go. Chaplin drops the project, I disappear. That’s the deal on the table. There is no other. There’s no room for negotiation.”

“One question,” I said. “Since you’re so goddamn smart, what difference does it make if Chaplin makes his movie? You’re going to disappear. No one is ever going to find you, remember?”

“You miss the point,” he said. “I’m writing a book about my adventures. When I’m old I plan to find an agent who’ll get it published and a producer who’ll make a movie. It’s a very interesting story.”

“Then you’ll be caught,” I said.

“Then I’ll be old already and famous. My mother never believed I’d amount to anything. My father shared her opinion. They are both gone except in my memory. Their deaths will be in my book. I dispatched them elegantly and with flair. Good-bye.”

He hung up. I had no reason to take his word about anything he had told me. He was definitely nearby. My .38 was still in the holster under my jacket. If I stayed here too long, he’d know I didn’t take his word that he had cleaned everything out. Actually, I believed him, but I didn’t want him to know I did.

I sat in the most comfortable chair in the room with my gun in my hand and waited. I’m not very good at waiting, and I didn’t know how much time was passing. I found an old issue of
Life
with the Sphinx on the cover and read about how they were sandbagging the neck to protect it from German bombers and tanks. I seemed to remember reading it before. I couldn’t figure out why the Nazis would want to blow off the head of the Sphinx, but there were a lot of things I didn’t understand about the Nazis.

When I finished the article, I went back to the kitchen and climbed out the way I had come in, pulling the window down behind me.

Sawyer had said he wasn’t going to kill Blanche Wiltsey. I believed him on that one too, but I wasn’t ready to take his word. I walked around the building and into two cops in uniforms carrying guns in their hands. I stopped.

“Hands in the air, slow and easy,” said one cop, who was about my age, a little on the thin side in a uniform that sagged. He looked as if he had lost some weight recently. The other cop was bigger, a little younger, and wore a snug uniform and a squint.

I put my hands up. The thin cop stepped forward, reached under my jacket, and took my .38 out of my holster.

“I’m a private investigator,” I said. “I’ve got my card with me. I’ve got a permit for that weapon.”

“You have a permit to break into a crime scene?” he asked.

“I didn’t break in anywhere,” I said.

“We got a call from a neighbor saying someone fitting your description had just climbed into this house through a back window.”

“You said this was a crime scene?” I asked.

“Blood all over the bathroom?” said the dull-looking cop with the squint. “No body.”

“Felix,” said the thin cop in a distinctly warning tone.

“I’m a friend of the woman who lives here,” I said.

“Neighbor suggested we might want to search you,” said the thin cop, stepping in front of me carefully and starting to go through my pockets.

He came up with a stick of Beeman’s Pepsin Chewing Gum, my car keys, some change, and Fiona Sullivan’s locket. He held the locket up.

“Yours?” he asked. “Or did you pick it up inside?”

“It’s a gift for my girlfriend,” I said.

“Looks old,” he said. “Looks silver.”