Laurel and Hardy Murders (18 page)

BOOK: Laurel and Hardy Murders
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Butler shook his head, bewildered.

“It means, Old Man, that O. J. was at the correct angle to see who threw the knife.”

The light of intelligence finally flickered in his eyes. He whistled. “You mean O. J. knows
who
?”

“That’s what I think. And he’s protecting the murderer’s identity.”

“Why the hell’d he do that?” Butler wondered. “He liked that louse Poe.” He squinted at me. “You have a notion now who done it?”

“No. I want to take what we’ve got to Hilary.”

He started to object, but Phil interrupted.

“Gene,” he said, “take the phone. Talk to Natie.”

I accepted the receiver and listened as the Sons treasurer gave me his news. I hung up and stared.

“What’d he say?” Butler asked.

“Betterman has arrested the last person I would have picked for Poe’s murder.”

“WHO?!”

“Hal Fawkes.”

The idea of our bumbling vice-president accurately hurling a knife was preposterous.

WINDUP AND REWIND: 16mm home movie.

“Why don’t you do something to
help
me?!”

B
ETTERMAN WAS OFF TILL
the fifth, and Irv Katz was damned if he’d talk to me. Over Butler’s protests, I phoned Hilary, but she was gone for the Independence Day holiday, too, according to Harry. At least, he wasn’t with her.

I knew better than to bother Hilary Thursday morning. Promptly at noon, I rang the bell and insisted that she see me. Harry looked dubious, but he went back to her room and rapped on the bedroom door.

Butler and I sat uncomfortably and waited for her to come out. Harry returned and said she didn’t want to see me.

“She won’t be able to help it,” I said, “unless she stays in her room all day. We’re not budging.”

She appeared ten minutes later. When she saw us, she turned to Harry, one eyebrow arched, and asked why we were still there.

“Because he couldn’t help it,” I said. “We have to talk to you.”

“About what?”

“Wayne Poe’s death.”

She nodded. “Yes. He definitely is dead. What else did you want to talk about?”

“Who killed him.”

“Who did
not
kill him,” she replied, smiling frostily. “Who is on first.”

“Hilary...please! Do you know who did it?”

“I have an idea.”


Well
?”

“It’s only an idea.”

“Do you mind telling me?”

“Yes. It’s none of your business.”

For a fleeting second, I thought about turning her over my knee, but then I remembered the one time I’d tried it and ended up on the floor. She used her own knee on me.

“Look, Hilary,” I said as patiently as possible, “it’s important we talk about it.”

“Not to me it isn’t.”

“What will it take to make you
listen
?” I was becoming exasperated.

Just then the Old Man stood up. “Look, toots, I don’t see where me and Gene need your help, but the kid’s been mooning about you all over my couch, so tell you what—I’ll have you a contest. If you lose, you listen to Gene.”

“What kind of contest?” She sounded suspicious. Who could blame her, considering Butler’s track record?

He tried to talk her into going to The Lambs to play darts, but she wasn’t having any of that, so he ran through a whole encyclopedia of game titles, but Hilary said no to every one.

“If you’re really determined to do this,” she said at last, “come with me.”

She walked back to her bedroom. Butler, mystified, trailed along, and I followed him. Harry wanted to come, too, but she told him to stay by the phones.

She sat down at her desk and pointed to the wall over the bed where there was a large hanging calendar mounted on a square corkboard.

“Target practice. All right?”

Butler readily accepted. I tried to talk him out of it, but when he wouldn’t be dissuaded, I insisted on also being given a shot.

Hilary took a small-bore pistol from her drawer. It used BB-sized cartridges and could be expected to do little damage. The corkboard was thick enough to stop the pellets from marring the wall.

I took the weapon from her, steadied my grip, squinted and fired, then handed the gun back to her. My bullet made a neat hole in the lower loop of the “8” that was scheduled to start the following week.

Hilary’s blue eyes held mine for a moment. I smiled at her.

Suddenly, she swiveled in her chair and in the same incredibly swift, fluid motion, aimed and fired. Her bullet perforated the identical “8” that I hit.

But her shot went through the dead center of the smaller upper loop.

Hilary returned my smile with more than a little mockery.

“All right, now it’s
my
turn!” said the Old Man, drawing his .45. “Stand back and hold your ears.”

“NO! DON’T!” Hilary shrieked—a sound I thought her incapable of producing.

I started to warn him not to use his gun, but it was too late. He blasted the calendar off the wall.

“Migod!” I murmured, awestruck. My ears rang with the deafening explosion. Hilary started to cough and I did my best to wave away the dense white smoke cloud.

When it cleared, Hilary went to the corkboard and ruefully examined the hole in it. The plaster behind had not escaped damage, and I wondered what she would say to the super.

Hilary turned, eyes wide and rather wild. She demanded to know what Butler thought he was doing.

“Well, dammitall!” he howled. “I
hit
it, didn’t I?”

She stared at him, speechless, her mouth working but unable to frame the proper words. I was afraid she’d either commit mayhem or suffer a multiple heart attack.

And then her eyes met mine. We stared at one another; I tried to ignore the ridiculous side of Butler’s action, but I couldn’t manage it. Fortunately, it struck her the same way.

When Harry poked his head in to see what the alarming noise might be, he found the two of us laughing hysterically.

Butler eased him out of the room, then left himself, quietly closing the door. As he did, he grimaced grotesquely at me. I think it was supposed to be a wink.

And then Hilary and I were in each other’s arms.

S
HE LAUGHED FREQUENTLY DURING
the early part of my narration, but as I continued, her bursts of mirth grew more sporadic. By the end, she wasn’t smiling at all.

“All right, Gene, recall time,” she said when I was finished. “We’re going to reconstruct it, piece by piece. I want
everything
.”

I knew it was going to be a long process. Before we started, I stuck my head into the hall and suggested that Butler might go out for sandwiches while Hilary and I were working. He looked up from his cards and said he would as soon as he and Harry finished the hand.

Poor Harry.

The reconstruction lasted close to two hours, and at one point I had to run through my minutes of the committee meeting where Poe’s name was first brought up as an entertainer for the banquet. At the end, Hilary and I both were sweating, in spite of the air conditioning.

“Just one more thing,” she said. “Do you still have the two notes?”

“Yep.” I removed my wallet from my pocket, took out the folded slips of paper and handed them to Hilary. She smoothed them on the desk top and studied them, side by side.

“One is darker than the other, Gene.”

“Yeah, I figure Phil changed his ribbon. It sure needed it.”

She shook her head. “No. Come here and look.”

I examined the two messages. It was the first time I’d compared them next to each other. “Ouch! I should’ve caught that. They were typed on different machines.”

“Uh-huh. That’s what I was afraid of...”

W
IPE TO:

Closeup. Lou Betterman’s boiled-fish stare.

Shaking his head, he rearranged his considerable weight in the leatherette guest chair in Hilary’s office. “If you don’t have any new evidence, don’t bug me. I’ve got my man.”

“What makes you suspect Hal Fawkes?” she asked.

“Bring me a beer and I’ll tell you.”

Waving me to keep my place, Butler got up and went back to the kitchen. I was at my old desk, Hilary at hers. Harry, dead drunk from a protracted session with the Old Man, snoozed in my bedroom.

Betterman sighed. He was on his own time and would have liked to go home. If anyone but Hilary had asked, he wouldn’t have come.

The policeman accepted a bottle of Grolsch from Butler, poured, took a sip, and sat back. Never a ball of energy, he was evidently mildly distressed at the effort it would take to go over the case. He took another swig of beer, withdrew his pocket notebook, flipped it till he found the page he wanted and looked at us.

“You ever hear of a fellow named Samuel Wittenstein?”

Hilary nodded. Betterman looked surprised and dubious.

“He was a circus and carnival performer,” she said. “He billed himself as The Great Witte.”

The policeman nodded, extremely impressed. “You know the damnedest things!” he told her.

“It’s no coincidence, Lou. I did some research on
The Knifethrower
.”

“Aaah.” He poured the rest of the bottle into his glass. “Then you recognized the murder weapon.”

“Yes. The knife that killed Poe looked exactly like the ones thrown at Mae Busch in the old movie.”

Betterman nodded. “I didn’t see the movie till close to the end of the investigation. I had to work it from the long end around.”

“What,” I asked, “does
The Knifethrower
have to do with this Great Witte?”

“He was technical adviser to the film,” Hilary replied.

“Not only that,” Lou added. “He actually throws a knife during the film.”

That surprised Hilary. “You mean when the camera stays on both Mae Busch and the knifethrower? How do you know that?”

“The old guy told me. Billy White.”

“At the AGVA home?”

“What made you think to question him?” I asked.

“Because his brother was The Great Witte.”

William Wittenstein = Billy White.

Betterman’s chain of logic went like this: the knife that killed Wayne Poe once belonged to Sam Wittenstein, but at his death, went to his brother, Billy. Since Hal is Billy’s nephew, the policeman assumed he had easy access to his uncle’s curios. The programming of
The Knifethrower
at the same time O. J. invited Poe to appear at a Sons banquet must have put it into his mind to do away with the comic with a weapon that was virtually untraceable. Hilary pointed out that it was asking a lot to imagine that Hal would allow the movie to be screened, thus implanting the image of the knife on a hundred persons’ retinas, but Betterman wasn’t fazed.

“Killers have done stupider things. Besides, was it so dumb? Only a couple people could be expected to get a good look at the knife, and there was no guarantee they’d recognize it. As a matter of fact, it was more likely they wouldn’t connect a three-dimensional, color object with a dagger seen in a scratchy black-and-white movie made more than half a century earlier. And Hal, by the way, is supposed to be the only person who owns a print of
The Knifethrower
. Even the Museum of Modern Art doesn’t have it.”

“And where do you think Hal learned how to throw a knife that well?” Hilary asked.

Betterman shrugged. “Both his uncles had carny experience. He probably learned from them.”

“Lou, Lou,” Hilary demurred, “he’s the clumsiest klutz on two flat feet.”

“Might be an act. Have any more of this stuff?”

Butler was snoring lustily. I got up and brought Lou another bottle of Grolsch.

“Opportunity, now,” he said, wiping his lips. “Hal claims he was in the john at about a quarter of eleven, but that doesn’t let him out because Poe was stabbed at ten to. There’s no corroboration, either, for his whereabouts. Fawkes claims he heard somebody else come in about then, but doesn’t know who it was.”

I reminded Betterman that I’d seen a pair of feet beneath one of the men’s room stalls, but that didn’t prove anything. Besides, the time factor still had Hal in a bind.

“Gene,” Hilary said suddenly, “did you ever have your watch fixed?”

I looked at her oddly, wondering whether she’d decided to join the side of the loonies who’d complicated the case for me. Then I realized the meaning of the question and put both hands to my head in exasperation. I was thoroughly disgusted with myself.

“You gonna let me in on the secret?” the policeman asked dourly.

“My watch gains time.”

“So? My dog has fleas.”

“Lou,” I said, “you fixed the time of murder according to my watch: ten to eleven. But it was probably closer to a quarter to.”

“So?” He spread his hands wide. “That makes me no never-mind.”

Hilary tried to explain. “Fawkes says he was in the john at a quarter before eleven. If that’s when Poe was actually knifed—”

“If.
If
. If my mother ate peanuts she’d be an elephant. There’s no back-up to where he says he was.”

“But why would he pick the wrong time when he needed an alibi five minutes later?”

“Because he’s dumb!” the officer exclaimed, puffing out his cheeks like a gale on an old sea chart. “He had the means.
I
say he had the opportunity.”

“And the motive?” I demanded.

“That’s easy. Hal’s younger cousin got smashed by a truck a while back. When Billy heard what happened to his nephew, he had a stroke.”

I felt a sudden chill. “Was this a young kid? A singer?”

Betterman nodded. “Name of Bryan Harper. And do you know what Wayne Poe pulled on him in Philly just before the kid was killed?”

T
HE ONLY THING THAT
interested Lou in the least was the probability that O. J. saw who hurled the knife.

We tried to get the Sons president on the horn, but he was still in Pennsylvania, near no working telephones. Della said he’d called her from a pay phone to say he’d probably stop off on the way home at the joint SOTD convention in Valley Forge.

“No hurry,” Lou yawned, rising. “I’ve got Fawkes safe and sound. I can talk to Wheete when he gets back.”

Hilary tried to argue him into listening to her, but he told her he was going home, that was that. And he left.

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