Murder Most Strange (5 page)

"Yes, sir, that's right, Dan's my daddy. It's El
Centro Street in South Pasadena."

Back in the Ferrari, Mendoza lit a cigarette and used
the phone on the dashboard while Higgins made some notes for a first
report. He got a sensible-sounding female who took the news calmly
with only a few exclamations and questions. She said her son drove a
city bus, on a Hollywood route; he wasn't due home until seven
o'clock, and she didn't have a car available. If the neighbor could
kindly keep Harriet until then, her father would be right over to
pick her up. Would that be all right? Mendoza reassured her,
resignedly climbed stairs again to pass that on to Mrs. Werner.

It was a quarter past five. There would be places to
ask questions on this, but they probably couldn't ask intelligent
ones until they'd heard what the lab had to say. Higgins agreed with
that and said he'd half promised to take the family out to dinner and
it would be nice to get home early.

"The city pays you to put in eight hours,"
said Mendoza, and swung the Ferrari onto Beverly Boulevard.

The coffee shop where Marion Cooper had been a
waitress was one of a chain, a bright and scrupulously clean big
place.

Just inside the front door was a cashier's counter;
the girl perched on the stool behind it was about thirty,
synthetically attractive with a little too much makeup, slightly
protruding teeth. She stared at the badge. "The m-manager?"
she said. "Mr. Boatman? He's in the back—what's it about?"

Higgins said they were sorry to tell her that Mrs.
Marion Cooper was dead. "We understand she worked here."

"Marion? Dead? Oh, my God!" she said. "Oh,
my God—how? How could she be dead? She's only thirty-one—"

"We're not sure yet," said Mendoza, "but
it looks as if it could have been suicide."

She drew her head back stiffly, and her expression
was utterly blank for ten seconds, and then she said, "Marion?
She'd be the last person in the world—I'll never believe that!
She's always right on top, I never knew her to worry about
anything—that just couldn't be—I can't believe she— Oh, Mr.
Boatman!" She tumbled down off the stool and ran around the
counter toward the man just emerged from the door marked Private at
the back of the restaurant. "Mr. Boatman, it's police—and they
say—"
 
He was a big
egg—shaped man with shrewd dark eyes and the remnants of a Brooklyn
accent. He ushered them out smoothly to the foyer, away from the
customers inside, and listened to what they had to say with obvious
astonishment.

"Now I don't know what facts you got hold of,"
he said, "and I don't know what you want from me, gentlemen. I
just knew the girl as an employee. But one thing I'll tell you right
off the bat. That one a suicide? Like Sam Goldwyn put it, in two
words, impossible. That little nitwit didn't have the brains to get
depressed enough."'

"Which," said
Higgins back in the car, "is also interesting. And it's five
past six. If you don't want to go home, I do, and seeing I missed my
day off this week I think I'll stay home tomorrow."

* * *

When Mendoza got home, Alison informed him that she'd
found the people to install the electric eye, but they'd also have to
take all the cars in to a garage to have a gadget installed to make
the electric eye work. And it would take about a full day, but it
couldn't be helped.

"Oh, hell," said Mendoza. But it would be
worth it, for the convenience.

"And they can't come until next week. But when
we know it'll get done eventually . . . I never realized how awkward
it was going to be, having to open and shut those gates—"

"Just," said
Mendoza, "one thing leading to another again,. my love."

* * *

Landers was off on Saturday, and with the wedding
this near, Galeano wasn't much use as a detective. There had been
another heist at a pharmacy overnight; the clerk would be coming in
to make a statement, look at the mug shots. Before he did, the
cashier from the chain coffee shop, whose name was Marge Colbert, and
one of the waitresses, Rena Hiller, showed up as arranged to answer
some questions. They had both known Marion Cooper well. She had
worked at the coffee shop for four years or so. "Ever since she
got the divorce," said Marge Colbert. "Maybe she wasn't the
brainiest girl around—I heard what old Boatman said to you
yesterday—but she was always nice, nice to be around, everybody
liked Marion, she was always so cheerful and happy."

"All right, what about any boy friends?"
asked Hackett.

The two girls exchanged glances. The Hiller girl was
a defiantly bright blonde, a little buxom. "Well, yeah,"
she said. "We double-dated a few times. But it wasn't anything
serious with Marion, she didn't want to get married again. She just
liked a good time, good company."

"Some names, please," said Mendoza.

"Just one lately," said Rena Hiller. "Jerry
Wall. He's a nice guy, we all know him, he's in for lunch nearly
every day, he works at a garage up on Vermont. That's how Marion met
him."

"Were they shacking up?" asked Hackett
bluntly.

Both girls looked a little shocked. "No, of
course not," said Marge Colbert. "You cops. Talk about the
way your minds work. No, Marion wasn't that kind—honestly—and
besides, she didn't want to lose the support money. Her husband had
tried to get the kid, see, and if he could show she wasn't living
straight, maybe he could get custody even now, and she knew that."

"We've heard," said Mendoza, "that she
was out most evenings, at some place called Barney's, a bar
somewhere. And you're telling us she was playing it all straight and
virtuous? Had she been hitting the bottle at all?"

"Cops!" said Rena. "Listen, I know
about that, but it wasn't the way you think. Marion—she just
couldn't stand  to be alone, you see? She liked people around,
and talk. She didn't have a TV at home, and of course the kid is old
enough so Marion could leave her—"

"Alone," said Hackett. "She's eleven,
isn't she?"

"I guess so, around there. Marion knew one of
the girls at that Ace-High place—one of the waitresses. And she
could walk up there, and to the other place—she didn't have a car,
she never could pass the driver's test. She'd just go up there for
the evening to watch TV, talk to people. And no, she didn't drink
much. She'd gotten to know some of the regulars at both those places,
they're not cheap bars, really sort of family places—it was just,
what was she supposed to do alone at home most nights?"

"What about her husband? Had he been bothering
her any way?"

They both shook their heads. "If you mean did he
want her to come back to him, no," said Rena. "And as long
as he came through with the alimony and support, that was the way she
wanted it. It wasn't all that much—he just drives a bus for the
city—she had to work besides, but it made a difference."

"All right. Had she been worried or disturbed
about anything recently?"

"Marion?" said Marge. "I told you, she
never was. Nothing ever got her down. She was just the same as
always, last time we saw her on Thursday. When she didn't come in
yesterday, I tried to get her on the phone even before Mr. Boatman
told me to, but no luck. We thought maybe she was sick—she hardly
ever was, but just after Christmas she had an abscessed tooth and was
off three days, I thought maybe—"

All that didn't give them much. They got down the
statements, as preliminary information; they might or might not hear
something from the lab today. And they'd want to talk to the
ex-husband as well as the boy friend.

"And I suppose," said Mendoza meditatively,
"we ought to talk to Harriet again. And ask around at those nice
family places about anybody she might have picked up there."

"But, Luis—it's all the wrong shape,"
said Hackett. "If she'd been biffed on the head, something like
that, it'd be easy to read—the good-time girl picking up with the
wrong guy. But an O.D. of some kind?"

"I know, I know.
Arguing ahead of data again. Wait to see what the autopsy says—and
the lab."

* * *

"You haven't had any luck yet?" Palliser
slid the car into the curb and stepped on the brake. They both got
out.

"It is," said Jason Grace gloomily, "all
these goddamned abortions. Aside from the fact that it's morally
wrong, it's made it practically impossible to find a baby to adopt.
It's not as if we're being fussy—it'd be nice to have a boy, but
another girl would be just fine too." The Graces already had a
much-loved little girl, Celia Anne, who'd be over two years old now.

"We've had applications in all over for six
months, damn it."

"That's tough," said Palliser.

"And you're just lucky you can produce your
own," said Grace amiably.

Palliser laughed. "I wouldn't have agreed with
you when he was still waking us up at two A.M. every night." But
young David was long past that stage now, starting to walk. "I
hope this fellow's home."

"What you tell me, it's a handful of nothing,"
said Grace.

"If funny."

"Oh, yes," said Palliser. "That all
right."

The apartment house on Miramar Street where Joe Kelly
had lived was old but so1id-looking, and fairly well kept up, with
some sketchy landscaping in front and an old-fashioned front porch.
In the little lobby was a block of twelve mailboxes along one wall,
but Palliser didn't glance at it, made for the stairs. The place was
very quiet. Upstairs, he led Grace down to the middle of the hall and
stopped, reaching for the bell beside the door marked nine.

"Right here?" said Grace.

"Yep." In the center of the worn carpet was
an irregular dark stain, where Joe Kelly had fallen and died. The
door opened. "Mr. Moreno?"

"That's me." He was a tall thin old man
with a little fringe of gray hair around his ears. "What can I
do for you?" He peered at Palliser. "Oh, it's the sergeant
again. I don't know what more I could tell you, but come in."

"This is Detective Grace."

"How do. Set down. The wife's out, but I could
get us some coffee—"

"Never mind, thanks. We heard something a little
queer from Mr. Simms, and we just wondered whether Mr. Kelly had
mentioned it to you. You knew him fairly well, I take it."

"That's so. You don't mean what Joe thought
about some fellow following him around?"  Moreno slid a
veined old hand up his jaw. "That's foolish. Yes, he did mention
it to me. Sure I knew Joe—lived across the hall four-five years. It
is hell to get old, can't do much no more, and everything so damned
expensive, can't afford to go any place—nice weather, I'd go down
and sit on the front porch most afternoons, and Joe'd stop to chew
the fat now and then. I saw him Wednesday afternoon when he come
home, he told me about that. I thought he was imagining
things—foolishness."

"What do you think about it now?" asked
Palliser.

Moreno said soberly, "I don't know, Sergeant."

"What exactly did he say?" asked Grace.

"Said he noticed this fellow first at the public
library, and then he was at the market at the same time, and got on
the same bus. Well, nothing in that—a lot of people live around
here and go the same places. But Joe said the fellow kept staring at
him."

"And since Thursday, what do you think about
it?" persisted Palliser.

"Well, I was shook up all right, about that
happening to Joe," said Moreno slowly. "Never so
flabbergasted in my life. We hadn't heard a thing—I heard his door
slam about an hour before, when he left, but this place is pretty
well built. The wife asked me to go see if the mail had come, we was
expecting a letter from our daughter in Oakland—and then when I
opened the door, there's Joe bleeding like a stuck pig." He
shook his head. "Crime rate up, and this isn't the best part of
town. Well—somebody following Joe? Somebody with a reason to kill
him? Excuse me, Sergeant, but it still sounds like foolishness. Joe
was a nice guy, but he wasn't anybody special. He didn't have
anything anybody wanted—where was any reason to kill him?"

It was a reasonable question, considering that Kelly
hadn't been robbed of the little he'd had on him.

Downstairs, Grace said, "He was imagining
things. And some punk followed him in to grab his wallet, Kelly
fought back and got stabbed, and the punk lost his nerve and ran."

"Off the top of your mind, Jase. The punk
followed him all the way upstairs and Kelly didn't notice? The punk
would have tackled him as soon as he got inside—and that's very
unusual behavior for a punk, following somebody inside a building.
The general rule is, the quick shove and grab for the wallet."

“
True," said Grace. "You're right, John,
the setup is very funny. How do you read it?" ·

"As far as I can see," said Palliser,
"there's only one way it can have happened, which makes it all
the funnier. Kelly came in with his bag of groceries and got
upstairs, nearly to his own door, before X stabbed him. Which says
that X was up there waiting—down at the end of the hall, it's
fairly dark up there—and rushed him, probably as he was getting out
his keys."