Dead on the Level (7 page)

“You’re going to help me find out who killed my father,” she announced quietly.

“Am I?” Casey challenged.

“Yes, and it won’t be hard to do. The hard part will be in proving it. He’s very, very clever.”

“You know who it was?” Maggie demanded.

“I think I know. No, I know that I know! Dad was the only person he was afraid of, the only one who stood in his way. He hypnotized my mother just the way he does all the others, but Dad didn’t fall for his line. He said that I didn’t have to marry him unless I wanted to.”

Casey glanced at Maggie, and she took a slight bow. And to Phyllis he explained, “Maggie thinks you were running away from Lance Gorden when you came here the first time.”

“Do you know him?”

“We’ve met,” Casey answered, rubbing his knuckles thoughtfully.

“Well, Maggie’s right; I was running away from him. He was always after me to marry him, and so was Mother. That’s why I finally gave in.” Phyllis frowned over the thought, then added: “Mother worries too much; she thinks I should settle down. She means well, I guess, but she just can’t see how Lance has her hypnotized!”

“He must be a regular Svengali,” Maggie observed, “and no beard, either.”

There was a warning note in her words that put Casey on guard.
Remember
, she was saying,
this is the kid with the oversized imagination. Remember the ill-fated prima donna and self-sacrificing father
.

“Outside of an obvious reason I won’t go into just now,” Casey queried, “why is Gorden so set on this marriage?”

“Money,” Phyllis said promptly.

“He seems to be pretty well fixed.”

The girl smiled bitterly. “Seems to be is right!” she mocked. “Where do you think he would be without my father’s backing? And even that was Mother’s idea.”

“And so, maybe because he’s tired of paying income tax, he kills off his meal ticket. Is that your theory?”

It was plain to see that Phyllis Brunner didn’t like being challenged. One minute she was a white-faced kid with trembling lips and troubled eyes; the next she was a fireball. “I’m not giving you a theory,” she snapped, “I’m giving you the truth! And it doesn’t matter if you won’t believe me, because you’re to do just what I tell you to do anyway.”

“You might at least say ‘please,’” Maggie suggested, but there was no stopping Phyllis now.

“To begin with, neither one of you is going to report me to the police. I don’t want to be found—not yet, anyway. That’s why I set fire to my car.”

“I’ve got news for you,” Casey said. “You failed your scout test. It didn’t burn.”

That bit of news delayed her only an instant. “Anyway, I’m rid of it,” she said. “And now I’m going to hide out for a while and let Lance worry about where I am and why. You’re going to help me in that, too.”

“I seem to be getting awfully helpful all of a sudden.”

“You’d better, Casey, because if you don’t I’ll just have to go to the police and tell them how you abducted me after killing my father.”

All this time Casey had been waiting for the boom to fall. Some things in life could be argued with, but not the grim determination in Phyllis Brunner’s face. He glanced at Maggie. “I think she has you,” Maggie said, but Casey was mad.

“Maybe not!” he challenged.

He swung back and faced the girl on the couch beside him. Very sure of herself, she was. Very smug and sure. “It’s your story against mine,” Casey countered, “and I like mine better. The police are narrow-minded about murder; they always try to find a motive. The more I think about it, the less I see any motive for me unless you paid me to do the job, in which case you won’t be telling anybody anything. After all, Darius Brunner was nothing to me.”

“Oh, but he was!”

“I missed something?”

A slow smile spread across Phyllis’s face and it boded no good for Casey Morrow. He could feel that in the pit of his stomach. “You missed everything,” she said. “I had to drive all the way to Indiana and prop you up during the ceremony, but I found a justice of the peace who was nearsighted and almost as fond of money as you are. I’ve got news for you, Casey. I’m Mrs. Casey Morrow.”

She let the words stand alone for a moment, taking a brief bow by themselves. Actually, Casey wasn’t surprised. It was the way she’d told him that left him dumb. She obviously had her reasons for doing a thing like that and what those reasons were could mean trouble in the large, family-sized package.

“I paid five thousand dollars for that privilege,” she added.

“I’m flattered,” Casey said.

“You should be. I could have found what I was looking for much cheaper, but when I saw you nursing along that last dollar of yours in the Cloud Room I knew that you were the one. ‘Here’s a man I can understand,’ I told myself. ‘Here’s a man I can do business with.’ I was right, wasn’t I, Casey?”

That was a question Casey was happy to ignore. “The marriage is because of Gorden?” he countered.

“That’s right.”

“Now he can’t marry you.”

“Now he can’t marry me, and he can’t get control of the money.”

“Money?” Casey echoed. “What money?”

Phyllis indulged in a sharp, silver laugh. “I thought that would interest you,” she said. “My money, of course. Father never had much faith in Mother’s business ability and he hated inheritance taxes, so he made over the bulk of the estate to me. A couple of million in case you want to drool. The catch is that I’m not legally of age. I have to have a guardian—or a husband.”

Casey needed a little time to get used to the idea. Yes, now he could see what Phyllis Brunner had in mind; he could also see way ahead of her. Maybe he wasn’t the smartest man in the world but he could recognize an opportunity even if it came wrapped in an army blanket. Suppose the girl was right? Suppose he could prove that Lance Gorden had murdered Darius Brunner? It was an awfully long chance, but the long chances were the ones that paid off and Phyllis Brunner would pay off plenty. She had already paid five thousand dollars to get a husband. She’d pay a lot more than that to get rid of him.

But now she was waiting, eyes bright and head cocked. “Well,” she queried, “what do you think of my story now?”

“Give him time to search his soul,” Maggie advised dryly. “It can’t take long. And I’m sure you children will be very happy.”

THE MURDER OF DARIUS BRUNNER was front page until a small boy with a genius-rating I.Q. took an ax to one of his playmates and gave the public something more interesting to abhor. By this time, the entire city was so familiar with pictures of the missing heiress and descriptions of a “mystery man in gray” (thanks to color distortion of those Cloud Room lights) that they were all but forgotten. Meanwhile, Casey Morrow and his unpremeditated bride had set up housekeeping in a small walk-up on the near north side. It wasn’t much of an apartment, a cracker-box living-room, complete with an African Renaissance divan, a bedroom, kitchen, and a bathroom with anguished plumbing. But it was the best Maggie could find on such short notice.

“You can’t stay here,” she had announced, the moment Casey stopped searching his soul. “In the first place, there’s no room; secondly, the kids from Papa Danikoff’s would be bound to spot Phyllis, and thirdly—” Maggie looked much too grim to be kidding, “I’ve no intention of spending my declining years behind bars!”

And so Maggie had located the apartment—how, Casey would never know—and even managed a bit of shopping. Shirts and such for him, and something a little less conspicuous than mink for Phyllis. “You can keep an expense account,” Phyllis advised, as Casey shelled out the cash. “I’ll pay you back when everything’s cleared up.” And Casey, the reluctant bridegroom, replied, “Don’t think you won’t!”

On the morning after this transition, just two days after the murder, Casey made faces at the breakfast coffee and snapped, “All right, Master Mind, now that we’ve kept out of jail this long, what’s the next move?”

Casey wasn’t happy. He’d known, without being told, that the divan in the living-room was for him, but that wasn’t what upset him so. It was the way Phyllis looked. No woman had any right being beautiful so early in the morning, and none he’d known that well had been; but even in the cheap housecoat Maggie had purchased, even with her hair pinned up in a knot, she was still very special. She was also infuriatingly calm.

“I told you back at Maggie’s,” she said. “Find out why Lance killed my father.”

“Just like that?”

“Just like whatever it takes! You said yourself that he wouldn’t kill off his meal ticket, so there has to be a reason.”

She was so damned matter-of-fact about it that Casey almost forgot what he had just read in the morning paper.

“Gorden says he was out at the country place the night your father was killed,” he repeated. “Claims he drove out for dinner and stayed on all night when word came of your father’s death. What’s more, your mother backs him up.”

“Naturally,” Phyllis said. “If Lance told her that he needed an alibi, she’d lie for him.”

“You’re sure of that?”

“Of course. I told you, he has her hypnotized.”

Casey sighed and folded up the paper. “All right, I’ll stick my neck out and see what I can dig up about your boy friend. I’ll even believe he’s guilty if that’ll help matters along. But while I’m out snooping, you keep under cover. And don’t worry, I’ll be back.”

“I know,” she said.

At the doorway, Casey paused and looked back. She knew, all right. She’d picked the right clay pigeon and knew it.
I
must still be drunk
, he told himself.
Drunk or dreaming
. And then he was walking down the stairs with a penciled address and a phone number in his pocket.

“Mr. Gorden isn’t here. No, I don’t expect him for some time. He’s gone to Darius Brunner’s funeral.”

The funeral. Casey had forgotten all about that. He replaced the phone and shoved back the door of the booth, still thinking of that disturbing reminder. He had told Phyllis to stay in; surely she wouldn’t try a fool stunt like trying to sneak in to her father’s funeral. For a moment he considered turning back just to make sure, and then he recalled that ordeal at Maggie’s, how she had sat there on the couch and told them the whole story without breaks and without tears. A thing like that didn’t mean that she had no feelings; merely that she had control. Control, he decided, was something Casey Morrow could use a little more of.

Maybe going straight to Lance Gorden’s apartment wasn’t the smartest way to go about things; Casey wouldn’t know. All he knew was that he had to start somewhere, and that Gorden was out. Just who had answered the phone was another problem, and one he’d meet when he got there. Odds were in favor that he’d never seen Casey, and Casey had never seen him, and that seemed fair enough.

It was a slight, heavy-browed chap with a bushy head of hair and tiny feet who answered Casey’s ring. Casey was particularly aware of the feet because of the way they were planted in the doorway, effectively blocking his entrance. Above the feet were black trousers, a white jacket, and a totally indifferent face.

“I’m sure sorry to hear that Gorden isn’t around,” Casey was saying. “But I’m in no hurry. I’ll just come in and wait.”

It was a good try, but it didn’t work.

“Mr. Gorden has gone for the day,” the houseman insisted. “He may not be in until very late. He may not be in until tomorrow.”

“Is that so?” Casey manufactured what he hoped would pass for a genuine grin. “Like old times,” he said.

“I beg your pardon?”

“We were in college together. Even then old Gorden didn’t care much about coming home nights. Too bad he didn’t know I was coming so he could get a friend for me.”

But he was still wasting his time. The indifferent face didn’t change, and the feet refused to budge from the doorway. Getting past this watchdog would have been hopeless even if he’d come equipped with a baby picture of Gorden and himself sharing the same teething-ring. If anything suspicious or incriminating was to be found in the highly polished, bleached-wood interior he could glimpse beyond the door, somebody with more ingenuity than Casey Morrow would have to find it. He backed away and returned to the elevator. Halfway down the hall he stopped and looked back, but the door had closed and it was only his nerves that made him feel as if those dark eyes were still watching him.

It was only to be expected that Lance Gorden would take off his shoes in a very fashionable neighborhood, not Casimir Morokowski’s territory at all. The building was one of those sleek, self-satisfied places with a green velvet parkway in front and a private garage to the rear. Chiefly because he wasn’t sure of what to do next, Casey went around to the garage and tried to scrape up a conversation with the Negro who was polishing a nonexistent spot from the front half acre of a Cadillac hood.

“They must keep you busy, the kind of weather we’ve been having,” he suggested.

The man stopped polishing and gave Casey a quick once-over. “You from one of the newspapers?” he asked.

I must have missed my calling
, Casey reflected,
or maybe my suit needs pressing
. “Why?” he countered. “Have they been bothering you?”

“Not me so much, but they’ve been around. Police been around, too.”

“Lots of excitement, eh?”

“No excitement. Just questions.”

“Such as whether or not Lance Gorden went out the night Brunner was killed?”

“Maybe.”

“And he did, of course.”

“Maybe. I don’t mess around in things that don’t concern me, mister.”

The attendant resumed his polishing in a manner that indicated the conversation was at a close, but Casey didn’t feel that way. “That’s usually a pretty good idea,” he conceded, “but it’s too bad about the girl. Quite a looker, wasn’t she?”

“That’s what they say.”

“You never saw her?”

“Listen, mister, I told you I don’t mess around—”

“I know,” Casey said quickly, “and you don’t like questions, either. I have to make a living, don’t I?”

“So do I, mister.”

Casey was beginning to feel extremely depressed. He’d hoped to pick up a little gossip, perhaps, about Gorden and his habits, but apparently he’d chosen the wrong back fence. All right, if he wasn’t going to get anything juicy, he might as well stick to the facts.