Hunter’s Dance (12 page)

XIX

Women are not so saintly as they seem.

“Ya, what about Wendell Morlen and his family? Damn good question.” Pete Koski pushed himself back in his chair, slamming it against the wall and setting the windows to rattling. “They're about the only ones we're gonna find out anything from, and they've folded their tents and slipped back to Westchester. I told them to keep in touch. That's all I could do.
Keep in touch
. Hell.”

“Are you saying you think Bambi's parents might know something about his death?” McIntire took a seat facing the sheriff and tried to find someplace to put his legs.

“They knew Bambi, I should hope…. At least as well as anybody knows a kid that age.” Koski's eyes wandered to the desktop photograph of his dark-eyed adolescent daughter, and his massive shoulders gave a tiny shiver. “Knowing about the kid's life might help us figure out why he died. And it ain't like his old man's not involved. You can hardly ignore the seventeen grand that ‘seeker of justice' demanded…or the fact that Wendell Morlen came here to face off against Adam Wall.”

That seemed way too simple for McIntire. “The ransom business had to have been a ruse of some sort,” he said, “a way to confuse the issue or to implicate Adam. He'd never be such a moron as to commit a murder and basically sign his name to it.”

“Unless he didn't start out to commit murder. He might have figured he had a way to make his point and nobody would get hurt. You know those people ain't big on thinking too far ahead.”

If skill in plotting chess moves was any indication, Adam Wall could think well into the next millennium without so much as a headache.

“And,” Koski went on, “it don't look like the kidnapper planned on stabbing the kid.”

“No, just poisoning him.”

“Well, ya,” the sheriff conceded, “there is that.”

“Did you have a chance to talk to the parents again before they left?”

“We kept Wendell here all afternoon on Monday and got his wife in before they left yesterday.” Koski shook his head. “For such a big shot lawyer he sure can be dumb as a stump when it suits him. Had no idea where his son was staying, what he was doing, why he wasn't back at some swanky Ivy League college…or why that housekeeper heard his car pull in at three-thirty in the morning.”

“Bonnie?”

“So she finally admitted, when Ryan mentioned that baby blue Cadillacs aren't all that common around here either, and we'd be asking at filling stations.”

“Ryan?”

Koski grasped his ears to pull them away from his head as he continued, “Says she went to Marquette to do some shopping. She decided to stay for a movie and got lost going back to the Club. Ended up on the Triple A road, she says, took hours to find her way out of the woods.”

“That doesn't seem wildly implausible to me. Those roads are like a rabbit warren, and in the dark….”

“What's wildly implausible is that Mrs. Morlen would have even been
on
those back roads. Or that she would have gone to Marquette for anything in the first place, when the punch of a button would have sent good old Baxter scurrying to meet her slightest need.” His eyes took on an expression both thoughtful and slightly lascivious. “Except maybe one.”

“You think Bonnie Morlen was stepping out?” McIntire was dumbfounded. “She hardly seems like the type.”

“How can such a man of the world be so naive? One thing I've learned in this line of work, they're all the type.” He again cast an uncomfortable glance at his daughter's smiling image. “Did you notice the look on Morlen's face when you mentioned Mrs. B. hearing his car come in? That was not the face of a man thinking, ‘Oh, the little woman must have been taking in a movie.' But she must have been telling the truth about driving around for a while. She filled up her tank in Marquette. The kid in the filling station remembered her. She went through an entire tank of gas that night, so maybe she
was
lost.”

McIntire remembered Morlen's exasperation over finding a nearly empty gas tank when he prepared to leave the Club on the trip to identify his son's body. He'd been out of cash, and McIntire had paid the four dollars.

“And, speaking of Wendell Morlen,” the sheriff was saying, “his alibi didn't turn out to be quite so watertight as it seemed.”

“No?”

“No, indeedy. He did take the train to Lansing on Thursday afternoon with one James Harrington III. Borrowed money then, too. Harrington lent him the train fare. But they didn't have any meetings after Friday. Our civil servants don't work weekends. After they left the depot, Harrington didn't see Morlen again until they were on the train going home.”

“So he stole a car, drove all the way back here, stabbed his son, and got back to Lansing in time to board the train to Marquette?”

Pete shrugged. “Who knows what one of those types might do?”

McIntire knew to which of “those people” categories Koski had assigned Adam Wall, but Morlen?

“Ambitious, dog-eat-dog types.”

McIntire nodded. “I guess anything's possible. What do we really know about either of the Morlens?”

Koski pulled a typewritten sheet from the folder on the desk. “This much, for a start. Wendell is the son of a street car conductor. Worked his way through college and law school at New York University. Got a job with a firm that handled Feldman and Levinson, jewelry importers and wholesalers. Then pulled off the big stunt. Married the boss' daughter. In a manner of speaking, anyway. He still works for the law firm, Petry and Bigelow, but hasn't moved up in the ranks much. Was young enough to be drafted into the war, but got out of it, four-F.”

“He looks plenty healthy to me.”

“Yeah, well, maybe money can't buy health, but it can buy a convenient disability if you know the right doctor.” He scanned down the page. “Other than that, not much more to say. He's got a big place in a snooty suburb of New York City, compliments of Daddy. Most of what they have is compliments of Daddy, by the looks of things. Wendell has a good income, but nowhere near enough to live as high on the hog as they do.”

“Did Morlen tell you all this?”

“Nah. State police got it.” Koski flipped to the next sheet of paper. “I ain't got time to do shit since Billy quit.” McIntire wasn't about to make any comment acknowledging Koski's dearth of flunkies, and after a sigh or two the sheriff continued, “Bonnie is the only surviving child of Daniel Feldman. She had a younger brother who died when he was a baby, and her mother died two years ago. Looked like she might have a career as a singer until she gave it up for marriage. Six and a half months later, when bouncing baby Bambi came into the world, it wasn't hard to see why she'd made the sacrifice.”

“How'd they get to be Club members?”

“Shit, they ain't members. Like I said, Morlen ain't in the Club league, and all the money in the world wouldn't get Daddy Feldman in. Wendell got to know one of the Club's officers. He hired Wendell to handle that sticky land deal and threw in his cabin for the summer.”

McIntire said, “I guess if you have to have in-laws, Feldman's the kind to have.”

“You could do worse,” Koski agreed. “Funny thing, Daddy was kind of in the same boat as Wendell. He came into his money by marrying it. He's a partner in the jewelry business and makes a ton, but nothing compared to the Levinson estate, which was controlled by his wife.”

“What did that amount to?”

“Four or five million.” The sheriff reached into his shirt to scratch his chest. “The lion's share of it left by Grandma Feldman in trust to—”

“Her darling grandson.”

Koski smiled. “At twenty-five he'd have gotten the whole shit-load.”

“Who handled it in the meantime?”

“Feldman. And if Bambi died before reaching the age where he'd inherit, it all goes to Bonnie. The Feldman-Levinson clan liked to keep things in the family.”

Maybe so, but Bonnie's inheritance would effectively put a fortune in her husband's pockets.

Koski shuffled the papers into a neat stack and leaned back in his chair. “I see your aunt's still in town.”

“You bet,” McIntire assured him, “and shows no sign of taking off soon. At least not so long as I have a drop of water left in the well.”

“I saw her last night.” Koski yawned. “She was with some old gray-haired guy I didn't know.”

If the sheriff was referring to the matinee idol type in whose company Siobhan had left the Waterfront, he was indulging in some real wishful thinking.

“Yeah,” McIntire said, “I never saw him before last night, but when I mentioned it to Leonie, she knew who I meant.”

Koski cleared his throat. “Well, I don't suppose you came here to engage in idle gossip. What brings you all the way to town?”

“I wanted to find out what you heard from Karen Sorenson.”

“Feeling a little guilty, are ya?”

For someone who physically resembled the proverbial dumb ox, Pete Koski could be quite perceptive.

“I should have talked to her that night,” McIntire said. “I should have found out what started that fight right then and there. But I figured it was only some kids' squabble.”

“That's about what it was. Marvin Wall found something that belonged to her, one of those things women have with the mirror and powder in it.”

“A compact?”

“Christ, you
are
a man of the world. Anyway, according to Marve he found it on the ground and went to give it back. Bambi saw him talking to her, told him in colorful language to get lost, Marve got mad and took a swing at him, and the rest is…you know what.”

“What about later?”

“Karen left with Bambi and Ross Maki. They dropped Ross off and Bambi took her home.”

“Immediately?”

“Shit, I take it all back. You're an innocent lamb. No, not our Bambi. He parked at the gravel pit. Made quite a big play. Said he'd be gone soon, and they might never have another chance.”

“Did she…er, succumb?” McIntire remembered Guibard's mention of abrasions on the victim's neck.

“I didn't ask. Her mother was there.” He snorted. “In that car, I don't see how the hell she could have. But regardless, she's heartbroken now. Figures he must have had some premonition of his own death. And she thought he was just talking about going back east.”

“What was her version of the bothering incident?”

“About the same as Marvin's. She was outside with some of her friends, and Marve came up to give her the compact. Bambi came along and made a fuss, and Marve tried to hit him. She was none too pleased with Bambi for embarrassing her that way, said she tried to tell him it was nothing, but he wouldn't listen. Said she left with him and the Maki kid because everybody was looking at her. It was cold at the gravel pit, and they didn't stay long. She also said she left her purse behind in his car.”

“Was it still there when you found the car?”

“Nope. It was in the Sorensons' mailbox Monday morning.”

“Any idea who put it there?”

“She figured it was Bambi. Except that she says things were all messed up and some stuff was missing. Including that damn…what did you call it?”

“Compact?”

“Ya. It was gone, along with some fingernail junk and a picture of her with a couple of other girls.”

“Fingernail junk?”

“For fixing up fingernails—files, clippers, junk like that—in a case.”

“So maybe the murderer, or whoever, just threw the purse alongside the road, and some things fell out.”

“The picture was in her billfold.” Koski swivelled his chair toward the window, and for the first time McIntire could see the lines of exhaustion in his face. “The billfold was still there. She had an identification card in it. It gave her name, and her address, and said who her parents are. Anybody could of left it in the box, and it could of been any time between Saturday night and when Ma Sorenson went out to get her mail on Monday.”

“No money taken?”

“She didn't have any.”

“I suppose it was checked for fingerprints?”

The sheriff nodded. “The purse and everything in it had been wiped. But we did find a few. Karen's own and one that probably came from one of her girlfriends or maybe her mother. It was small. Too smudged to get a positive ID.”

Koski regarded McIntire with an expression of bemused exasperation, and McIntire suddenly realized what he'd been hearing. “I suppose,” he asked, “that the fingernail junk included a scissors?”

“You suppose right.”

“About three inches long with a slightly curved blade?”

“Something like that. Karen got the kit from Monkey Wards. I got Marian to send for another one.”

Was it possible that Bambi died as a result of an ill advised pass at Karen Sorenson? McIntire asked, “Did Karen say what time she got home?”

“Around midnight. Maybe a little later. Her mother backs her up.”

“A mother would.”

“Well, your switchboard operator, and Karen's friend Diane, and Diane's father who wasn't overjoyed when the phone woke him up at one in the morning, also back her up. So the big question is, where was Bambi between midnight and the time his car ended up off the Townline Road.”

“What
did
you find in his car?” McIntire asked.

“Not a hell of a lot. Well, I don't mean that exactly. We did find a hell of a lot of crap. The kid seems to have been living out of his car most of the summer. But there was nothing in it of any obvious significance, as our man with the ears would say.”

“What kind of crap?”

“You name it. Clothes, cracker crumbs, candy wrappers, beer cans. Ma wasn't around to tidy up after him.”

“Was all the clothing his?”