Exploit of Death - Dell Shannon (3 page)

They started to ask for
names, get the people sorted out. One of the patrolmen had called the
lab; Scarne and Horder came out in a mobile truck and took some
photographs, dusted the counter and cash register for any latent
prints. Presently the morgue wagon came for the body. The other
pharmacists said that Bryan had been a widower but had a married
daughter in Pasadena. So they'd have to break more bad news.

* * *

ALTOGETHER, THERE WERE fifteen people to question,
get the formal statements from, and it was going to go on a good part
of tomorrow. Wednesday was Hackett's day off. By the end of shift on
Tuesday afternoon, Mendoza and Galeano had taken four statements and
set up appointments for the other witnesses to come in tomorrow.

On Wednesday morning Mendoza had just finished
getting a statement from one of the clerks and had seen her out when
Lake buzzed him from the switchboard. "You've got a new corpse,"
he said tersely. "Fourth Street."

"Oh, hell," said Mendoza. That was another
thing about this job. It was like women's work, always more of it
coming along. He looked into the big office. Grace, Galeano,
Palliser, and Landers were all talking to witnesses, and Higgins had
taken a couple more down to Records to look at pictures. Somebody had
to tidy up the corpses as they came. He collected his gray Homburg
and got the address from Lake.

It was a little way out on Fourth, in a very shabby
block of old buildings. Most of the others along here were empty and
boarded up and very probably the whole block was ready to be torn
down to make way for the new high rises. The address he wanted was a
desiccated-looking old six-story apartment house. The squad was
parked in a red zone in front. In the little lobby, Patrolman Hunter
and three other people were waiting. Hunter stepped forward. "I
kept him from going back into the room, sir. Not that I suppose it's
important. Looks like a straight suicide." He added in a louder
voice. "This is Lieutenant Mendoza. Mr. and Mrs. Daggett,
they're the managers here, Mrs. Garvey," Daggett was a thin,
medium-tall man in the fifties, with a lantern jaw and a prominent
Adam's apple. He looked anxious and shaken. His wife was plump and
maternal-looking, right now a little pale. The other woman was tall
and thin with too much makeup and a lot of cheap costume jewelry
Daggett burst into speech rapidly.

"Iike I was telling the officer here, I just
found her. Never thought the poor girl would do such a thing. Take
poison or whatever it was. She seemed like a nice girl. Her name's
Ruth Hoffman, she rented the apartment last month, said she was from
Chicago. See, I explained to her—it says apartment hotel in front
but the last ten years we just had permanent tenants—I explained to
her I couldn't rent except on a weekly basis, the building's going to
be torn down and we might get notice any day, but she said that was
O.K. She seemed like a nice quiet girl. l don't think she had a
job—she didn't go out regular—"

"Fred," said his wife, "don't get all
upset now. It's nothing to do with us. I'm sorry for the poor girl,
but it was her own doing."

"For love," said Mrs. Garvey unexpectedly
in a dramatic tone. "All for love and the world well lost! I'm
one of the few remaining tenants here, Lieutenant, and her apartment
was just across from mine. I had met her when she asked to borrow
some coffee once and the poor darling had confided in me." She
sniffed into a handkerchief smelling violently of lavender. "How
she had followed her true love here and he had spurned her. My heart
went out to her, tru1y."

"Anyways," said Daggett rather desperately,
"her rent was up yesterday and she hadn't come to pay me and I
went up about maybe half an hour ago, forty minutes, to see if she
was in, and the door was unlocked and, well, there she was, dead.
Killed herself, with poison or something. And so I called the cops."

"All right," said Mendoza. "Which
apartment?"

"It's number twelve—the right front. I don't
have to go up again, do I?"

"Don't upset yourself," said his wife
soothingly.

Hunter followed Mendoza up the uncarpeted stairs.

"Dilapidated old place," he said. "Just
what I could see, it looks like a straight suicide." The
apartment door was open. Beyond it there was the expectable cramped
living room, the tired old furniture, couch and one upholstered
chair, a couple of small end tables. Visible through a doorway was a
tiny narrow kitchen with just space for a minute table and two
chairs. An old-fashioned wall bed which would fold up into the wall
overnight was pulled down. The body lay on that, the face turned to
the wall. On the bedside table was a half-full glass of water and a
small plastic prescription bottle. Mendoza bent to scrutinize that
without touching it.

Whatever label it had borne had been torn off. It was
empty. On the cheap painted bureau were a worn billfold and two
sheets of paper. Mendoza flicked through the billfold. Two hundred
and twelve dollars in cash, a Social Security card with the name Ruth
Hoffman. He took up the first sheet of paper. They were both letters.
The first one was a half sheet of cheap stationery, evidently torn
from a tablet. It was written in an overlarge, careless script, the
writing of someone who did not often use a pen.

Dear Ruthie, I told you before you better
just forget this guy. He is no good for you. You think he's serious,
but believe me it isn't so what you tell me he said. You know the
boss was kind of put out when you quit so sudden and he would take
you back like a shot so you better come back home and forget this
guy. You know we've been friends a long time and I'm just thinking of
what's best for you. Love, Jean.

The other letter was typewritten by somebody who
wasn't a proficient typist, on a sheet of ordinary typing paper. It
began abruptly without salutation.

Look Ruthie, I'm sorry if I hurt you. But I
never was serious like you. I'm not ready to get married and settle
down, and anyway, not with you. I'm sorry but you better stop
pestering me about it. I like you all right, but nothing serious. You
better go back to Chi where you got friends. Jim.

"
Asi,
"
said Mendoza to himself. The straightforward suicide. The silly girl
in love. The lover spurning her, and a deliberate overdose. Where had
she got it? And kaput. Just more paperwork.

For the first time he looked at the old-fashioned
pulled-down bed where the body lay. He went over to look at the body,
and it was the body of the girl who had traveled with them on the
flight from Chicago. Juliette Martin. She was unmistakable. The neat
cap of dark hair, the tip—tilted nose, the wide mobile mouth. It
was Juliette Martin, the girl from France.

And the identification said, Ruth Hoffman.

Why?
 
 

TWO

"WELL, OF COURSE it's the same girl, the girl on
the plane," said Alison. The strip fluorescent lighting turned
her fiery red hair nearly gold where she looked down unflinchingly at
the white face in the cold tray in the morgue. "She was really
lovely, a beautiful girl. But what a queer thing, Luis."

"You're sure. So was I." He steered her out
to the corridor. They sat down on the bench along the wall and he lit
cigarettes for both of them. "So tell me everything you remember
about her. You're the one who talked to her. I was half asleep."

"We were both dead tired. She seemed like a very
nice girl." Alison sounded troubled.

"Echoing Mr. Daggett," said Mendoza. "Yes,
those Daggetts and the Garvey woman— And you know something
cariña
,
it's fate—destiny or g something. If I hadn't gone out on it to
recognize her—well, I don't know that I caught all she said to you.
Tell me what you remember."

Alison said dubiously, "Well, it wasn't much.
All pretty casual. I was so sleepy, and I got the impression she was
a little shy, not a chatty type—a nice girl, educated—well, a
lady, I think"— Alison drew on the cigarette and looked at it
thoughtfully—"well, that she said as much as she did because
she was a little excited, a little nervous. She wasn't the type to
come out with private affairs to a stranger—and she said that, that
she was nervous. It was the first time she had ever flown. And she
was going to visit her grandfather—"

"No name mentioned?"

"No. The grandfather had disowned her mother
because she wanted to marry a foreigner. The mother had gone to
France for some postgraduate study—and she said her mother had
written to him when she was born, Juliette, I mean, but never heard
from him. But when her parents were killed in an accident of some
sort she had written to tell him, and they'd corresponded, and now he
was sorry about how he'd treated her mother, and wanted to meet her.
And she worked in an office somewhere. She had three weeks' vacation
coming that she hadn't taken because they'd been busy—"

"No mention of what kind of office?"

"No. And she was engaged to a man named Paul. At
first he didn't want her to come here, but she said there was the
family feeling. Her grandfather, the only family she had—except for
two uncles ."

"Who might," said Mendoza, "have been
either her mother's or her father's brothers."¡
Mil
rayos!
"

"Wel1, I suppose," said Alison. "And
her boss was at Mr. Trenchard, Treuchard, Tenchard, something like
that. I don't remember exactly."

"Helpful," said Mendoza. "It's a damn
queer setup altogether. Somebody went to a little trouble."

"But why?" asked Alison. "She seemed
an ordinary sort of girl. Prettier than average, but ordinary."

"Why indeed. Do you remember anything else?"

Alison considered. "I was so sleepy- I remember
asking her if she lived in Paris and I think she mentioned a street
name, a rue de something. But it was about then that I dozed off. I
think you were already asleep."

"A handful of nothing," said Mendoza. "And
the three helpful, innocent witnesses to back up the straightforward
suicide—and those letters—
¡Dios!
Ordinary is the word, so very damned plausible. But I can't see
exactly where to go on it except—mmh—yes, those Daggetts and
Garvey, but—"

"Well, I hope you can find out what's behind it,
but what a very funny thing, Luis."

"I could think of other words for it," said
Mendoza in a dissatisfied voice. "Take care on the freeway home,
cariña
."

He had left the lab men going over the tired old
furnished apartment. Now he drove back to headquarters, collected
Higgins and Palliser into his office and told them about it. They
were intrigued but doubtful.

"That's a damn queer setup if you're right,"
said Higgins. "But could you be absolutely certain it is the
same girl?"

"Yes, yes," said Mendoza irritably, "and
so was Alison."

"But that apartment manager, the other woman,
telling the tale all straight-faced— She was supposed to have been
here at least a month."

"That's right, and what's to say any different
except that it's the same girl who was on the plane with us last
Saturday. Juliette Martin. And they say that everybody's got a
double, it's just my word and Alison's that it is the same girl, damn
it."

"You're absolutely sure?" asked Higgins.

"Don't dither at me, George. Yes, I'm sure. Not
going senile yet."

"Well, if we lean on those witnesses, they may
come apart."

"And maybe not." Mendoza brushed his
mustache back and forth in habitual irritated gesture. "Somehow
I think they're—background. Just there for effect."

"I don't get you," said Palliser blankly.

"I'm not sure I know what I mean myself, John."

But there were a few obvious things to do. He went
down to Communications and dispatched a cable to the
Sureté
in Paris, requesting any information on Juliette Martin, French
citizen, probably resident in Paris, probably on a plane from Paris
to New York last Thursday or Friday, and appended a description. He
sent a request to the U.S. Customs in New York asking for any record
of her arrival. Did they take down the numbers of passports? He
hadn't any idea. He seemed to recall that when they landed in England
the Customs officers had simply glanced at the joint passport and
waved them on.

They drove back to the ancient apartment house in
Higgins' Pontiac. The lab men were just packing up to leave and it
was getting on for three o'clock.

"Why the full treatment on a suicide,
Lieutenant?" asked Duke. "And what a hell of a place to
die. Damn pretty girl, too."

Horder said with unaccustomed violence, "And so
damn silly, by those letters. Stupid. No real reason to kill herself,
over the silly love affair, but they will do it."

"I trust you got those close-up shots,"
said Mendoza.

"Yep," said Duke. "Doubt if we'll make
any latents except maybe hers. Place looks neat enough on the surface
but probably hasn't had a good cleaning in months. So it's all
yours."