The Brink of Murder (8 page)

“Honey, the door is open,” she whispered.

“Scream for help,” Simon said.

“I don’t want any help, thank you.”

Simon let go of her long enough to close the door. “Don’t ever leave me for a whole twenty-four hours again,” he said.

“Is anything wrong?”

“Nothing that won’t wait. Did you work late last night?”

“Until four-thirty this morning. I have to go back and finish the album in the morning.”

“Did you get any sleep?”

“Most of the day. I was soaking in the tub when you knocked. It’s good for the nerves.”

“I know something better.”

She smiled warmly and led him into the room. It was very large with windows that looked out over the city where the lights were winking on like Christmas candles. A serving table and a pair of cushioned chairs were placed before the windows. The king-size bed was unmade and the colour television was showing an old historical romance movie without sound. Olivia de Havilland registered a gentle brand of terror while Errol Flynn drew his sword.

“Nice,” Simon said. “Why don’t we order dinner from room service and avoid the dining room?”

Wanda let the chenille robe fall to the floor and sat down on the edge of the bed. She smiled as gently as Olivia without tears.

“Simon,” she said “that’s a wonderful idea. And do you know what’s even better? Room service here is on a twenty-four-hour basis. We don’t have to hurry.”

Simon turned off the television. Those old romantic movies always ended the same way. He didn’t need lessons.

• • •

It was daylight when Simon awakened. He smelled the aroma of hot coffee and sat up in bed. The coffee pot was on the serving table beside a covered dish and china service for two. He looked about for Wanda and couldn’t see her but the water was running in the bathroom. He got out of bed and located his trousers on the floor. He was half dressed when Wanda, looking as fresh as a model at a garden fashion show, stepped out of the bathroom and took her coat from the closet.

“Hi, honey,” she said. “I ordered scrambled eggs and bacon for you. I have to run.”

“Without breakfast?”

“I had coffee and orange juice. Mustn’t lose my figure.”

He caught her at the door and kissed her goodbye. “The next wife I have is going to be a nymphomaniac,” he said.

She winked at him. “What do you mean—the
next
wife? Now let me go. If I start early I should be home tonight.”

“Only if you’re rested,” Simon said. “I don’t want you driving on the freeway if you’re tired. Promise?”

She promised and he let her go. He walked back to the table and poured a cup of coffee. Room service had sent the morning paper in with the order and it was still folded on the tray. He had forgotten about Barney Amling from the instant Wanda opened the door to the room the previous evening but when he unfolded the paper the whole mess screamed at him from the headlines. “Football Hero Sought In S & L Theft”.

The lid was off. Barney Amling’s picture was on the front page and nobody was awarding him a trophy.

W
ITHIN TWO BLOCKS
of the Pacific Guaranty tower traffic began to pile up like cattle herding through a stockyard chute. Simon veered off down the nearest alleyway and approached the building from the rear. He still had to park almost a block away. Mobile television units were grouped about the garage entrance, and the shopping mall was crowded with people gathered in clusters to stare up at the plate-glass penthouse high above the street. Newsvendors were doing a brisk business. Any man who appropriated a million dollars would make news, but this man was a public idol whose name was still used as a yardstick to measure every blossoming grid star, and morbid curiosity transcended mere panic that the savings of a lifetime might be lost. Odds were slight that many of the crowd had invested in the association. But they did have a slumbering volcano of frustration waiting to explode in self-righteous indignation over a hero gone bad.

Simon pushed through the mass of people and convinced a uniformed guard at the express elevator that he had valid business on the penthouse floor. The panic was quieter but more intense in the tower. Every face looked as if the owner had breakfasted on sour apples powdered with alum. The only smile in evidence was stretched painfully on Ralph McClary’s perspiring face as he parried questions from the press. Skirting the cables of the mini-cameras, Simon elbowed his way past McClary. Echoes of the inquisition followed him down the hall.

“Is it true that over a million dollars is missing, Mr McClary?”

“No! That’s not true.”

“A million then?”

“In that vicinity.”

“Mr McClary, is it true that some of the outstanding CDs are forgeries and the holders are uninsured?”

“That’s a lie!” McClary shouted. “Every account with Pacific Guaranty is fully covered by federal insurance. Make that perfectly clear in your reports.”

By this time Simon had reached Mary Sutton’s office. The door opened and Paul Corman, bushy-haired and belligerent, came through the doorway. “What are you doing here?” he demanded.

“I want to see Miss Sutton,” Simon said.

“She’s busy.”

“So am I. I think your boss needs you. The boys from the press are giving him a bad time.”

He shoved past Corman and entered the office, closing the door behind him. It was smaller and less impressive than Amling’s, but it did have windows looking out over the city. Mary Sutton, subdued in a grey business suit, stood before them with her back to the door. She turned her head as Simon came into the room. She wore wide tinted glasses and Simon suspected that she might have been crying.

“Who blew it?” he asked.

Her voice was drained of emotion. “I wish I knew. With so many employees there was bound to be a leak sooner or later.”

“Is the loss really a million dollars?”

“Nine hundred and fifty thousand to be exact.”

Mary Sutton came away from the windows and sat down in the leather chair behind the desk. She opened one of the drawers and took out a small bottle of aspirin. Pouring a glass of water from a carafe on the desk she downed the dosage.

“Care to join me?” she asked.

“Not yet,” Simon said, “but keep me in mind. I have to ask some questions, Miss Sutton. If you care anything at all about Barney, or even about your job, you’ll answer.”

She poured a second glass of water and began to drink slowly.

“First of all,” Simon continued, “how sound is the association? Was Barney’s job in danger?”

“No way,” she said. “The missing money is covered by the federal government. The association is in fine shape. A few years ago a lot of S & L’s in this area were top heavy with real estate which is slow to liquidate, but we came out fine—thanks to Barney. Our major commitments are the best in the business.”

“Such as Pucci Developments?”

“Don’t knock Pucci. A lot of people don’t like what he’s doing, but his developments are always bonanzas. That’s what pays dividends.”

“If the association is that sound,” Simon reflected, “Barney’s motivation must be emotional.”

Mary Sutton sighed wearily. “Now you want to know about ‘the other woman’,” she said. “There are at least one hundred female employees in this onice, Mr Drake, between the ages of seventeen and sixty-five who got goose bumps every time Barney Amling walked through the corridor. Any one of them would have been delighted to go to bed with him and, had he given any of them a tumble, it would have been the sole topic of conversation at the next coffee break.”

“Present company included?”

“Definitely—except that I never attend coffee breaks. The dull truth is that Barney was all business in the office and all family outside. If he has another woman stashed away somewhere it’s the best-kept secret since the first atomic explosion at Alamagordo.”

“Or the million dollar theft at Pacific Guaranty. Who else in the organization has access to the vaults?”

The question intrigued Mary Sutton. “Ralph McClary,” she said, “Paul Corman—myself. Are you insinuating that Barney is the victim of a plot?”

“I’m his lawyer,” Simon answered. “I have to insinuate. It’s a big job to pull alone. He might have a partner. I suppose McClary’s top man with Barney away.”

“That’s right.”

“Did he get along well with Barney?”

Mary Sutton emitted a short humourless laugh. “If you’re dreaming up a conspiracy—forget it. Old Ralphie wouldn’t have the imagination or the guts.”

“It did take guts,” Simon reflected.

Mary Sutton pushed away the glass of water and put the aspirin bottle back into the drawer. Her hand hesitated for a moment and then took a sheaf of typewritten sheets out of the drawer and placed them on the desk. “The last time we talked you asked if Barney had been under any special pressure,” she said. “I was still in a state of shock at the time. Later I remembered a dictation tape Barney made a few weeks ago. It was one of those last-minute things he dropped on my desk as he was leaving for the day. Most of the staff had gone home so I typed it up myself. I typed the entire tape before I realized that Barney’s mind must have wandered while he was recording and he neglected to erase the unrelated passages. Some of it just didn’t make sense.”

“In what way?” Simon asked.

“Read it for yourself. I re-typed the material, of course, making the necessary deletions. This is the original.”

The pages Simon read consisted of a standard business communication. Then, abruptly, the subject matter changed. “There are times when justice is helpless,” Simon read. “Civilization is based on law, but what if the law is savage? What if corruption has become so deadly a cancer that the healthy can be saved only by cutting away the disease? If, in the process, the diseased die—is that so great a crime as the alternative?”

Simon looked up from the paper. “Was this on the tape in Barney’s voice?”

“Yes,” Mary said. “Read the rest of it.”

Simon continued. “Man must sometimes take the law in his own hands. Even murder has its rightful place in sophisticated society when no other course of action is possible.”

“What was he talking about?” Simon asked.

“I don’t know. At first I thought Barney had started to tape a speech in the middle of the dictation. He made many speeches before various organizations. But he never made a speech like that!”

“Didn’t you ask him about it?”

“I never had a chance. Other things came up and the copy I turned in for his signature had none of this in it. I put these sheets away in my desk and forgot about them until this morning.”

“Do you still have the original tape? I’d like to hear the voice inflection during the interpolation.”

Mary noted the date on the correspondence and consulted her files. When she returned with the tape Simon was examining an airline schedule he had found in the open drawer.

Mary smiled wanly. “Silly, isn’t it?”

“You heard about the reservation in the name of Barry Anderson?”

“Yes.”

“Then silly is the right word if you’re thinking of going after Barney. You’re already top banana on Lieutenant Wabash’s list of suspects.” Simon told her about the stakeout at her apartment and watched the colour come up in her face. Nobody likes to be watched—especially a young lady with a gentleman caller. “Did Corman spend the night?” he asked.

“Is that any of your business?”

“Only insofar as it might concern my client.”

“If a girl can’t have caviare, does she have to starve?”

“Not in my culture. Do you mind if I keep this tape for a while? I’d like to study it in the privacy of my home.”

“Go ahead,” Mary said. “After what you’ve just told me the whole office may be bugged. And don’t worry. I’m not about to fly off to Argentina to share ill-gotten gains. I may not live high, but I pay my own way. I like living in a country where a girl doesn’t have to behave like a saint until the domineering male decides to make her another of his legal possessions.”

“Good,” Simon said. “If you do hear from Barney, directly or indirectly, call me immediately. I’ll leave a card with my private number. Remember that your boss is in a very dangerous position.”

“Dangerous?” she repeated.

“Anyone walking about with almost a million dollars in cash is in danger. Even if he doesn’t have the money word is out that he has. That makes him a target for worse trouble than extradition.”

Mary Sutton seemed impressed. Simon started to open the door but she restrained him. “There’s something else, Mr Drake,” she said. “When we talked in Barney’s office I had the feeling something was missing from his desk. This morning I went back to check. He had a double picture frame made from an old silver watch-case—his father’s, I think. There were two pictures in the frame: one of his wife and one of his sons. The frame is gone now. He must have taken it with him—and that’s peculiar because he never took it with him on any of his other trips.”

“His wife and sons?” Simon repeated.

“Frightening, isn’t it? It’s as if he knew he might not see them again and wanted something to remember.”

• • •

Simon managed to get out of the building without being interviewed for somebody’s evening news telecast and drove back to The Mansion. He found Hannah strung out on a back-strengthening exerciser in the gymnasium. At the rate her physical therapy programme was developing, she would soon be the strongest 62-year-old lady in the hemisphere. Karate would be the next step. Opposite the exerciser was a television where a newscaster was relating the sensational theft story over vintage shots of Barney Amling in action at his professional prime. The concluding scene was the last game when virtually the entire opposing team fell on him as he faded back to pass. “Barney Amling never ran again,” the newsman intoned in a theatrical voice-over, “until the day he left his office in the Pacific Guaranty towers to disappear from view.”

Simon snapped off the set. “Barney’s been tried and convicted,” he exploded, “and we don’t even know if he took the money. Have you heard anything from Jack Keith?”

“Two more cables saying that he hasn’t been seen in the vicinity,” Hannah answered. “Wanda called. She has to work again tonight and said you could find her at the same place if you’re in the neighbourhood.”

“Anything else?”

“Chester explained how he got his teaching assignment while he set me up in the machine. The college has a federal grant! Chester says he was hired because they needed a ‘house nigger’ on the staff to qualify for aid. He said a grant is like welfare with dignity. I think he’s being modest. He’s really brilliant. Anyway, while we were talking a call came in from Ojai. It was the Dr Larson who came here with Carole Amling. He sounded upset and asked that you call him as soon as you came in. The number’s on your desk calendar in the den.”

Simon started for the stairs.

“Wait,” Hannah called after him, “I’m not sure I can get out of this rig without help.”

“Keep trying,” Simon called back. “It develops character.”

The number was on the desk calendar. Simon dialled direct and got Larson on the fourth ring.

“I guess you’ve seen the newspapers,” he said.

“Not yet,” Larson said, “but we know the story on Barney is out.”

“How’s Carole taking it?”

“Like a soldier—the way she takes everything. Wait, she’s here now. You can talk to her yourself.”

Carole Amling’s voice was tense. “Si, I’m sorry to lean on you like this but Eric thought you might help us. Kevin’s gone. We came up here to spend the Thanksgiving holidays at Eric’s place. He thought I needed a change from the tension at home.”

“Good thinking,” Simon said.

“It seemed so. We bought no newspapers and Eric doesn’t even own a TV, but we forgot about Kevin’s transistor radio. He must have picked up the news about his father’s disappearance and the theft at Pacific Guaranty because he’s gone.”

“How long ago?”

“Little Jake saw him ride off on Eric’s bike after lunch. That was over three hours ago. We drove into the village and found the bike at the bus depot. There was a bus back to LA two and a half hours ago. We think he was on it.”

“Why don’t you call Reardon and have him check out the depots?”

“I can’t, Simon. Kevin’s hurt and having him picked up by the police would be too much humiliation. I have a feeling that he’s gone home. I would go back and look for him but the house is probably surrounded by reporters at this time and there’s Little Jake to consider.”

“Have you called the house?”

“Yes. Norman, one of Kevin’s friends, is house-sitting for us. He promised to call if Kevin did come back but I can’t be sure. Kids stick together in times of trouble. Si, I’m so frightened.”

“Don’t be,” Simon said.

“But Kevin’s in shock.”

“The young bounce back easier than we do, Carole. But if it will ease your mind I’ll drive over to Palos Verdes later and see if he’s there.”

That pleased her. Her voice came back warm and firm. “Oh, if you could,” she said. “I hate to be so much trouble.”

“I’ll put it on the bill. I think Kevin’s just running in panic. He’ll probably call you before I can get to your house anyway. How are you otherwise?”