Trace (Trace 1) (23 page)

“Swindle? You ought to know something. Buffy was my friend, but she couldn’t come in out of the rain without help. Anything she did in school, I did for her. I got her her degree. It was my work. We lived together and that room was clean because I made it clean. I nursemaided her for four years. All that girl knew how to do was spend money. She had plenty of that and I didn’t have a penny. You know, there’s some poetic justice, Mr. Tracy. She got hit by a car while she was out shopping. That’s all that girl was good at. Do you know I wrote her letters home for her? She was too lazy to even do that?”

“Did you kill her?” Trace asked.

“No. I thought about it a lot. Every time I thought how rich she was. But I didn’t.”

“You decided to kill her parents instead,” Trace said.

“That’s your story. Nobody’s going to believe it. Least of all Mrs. Carey.”

“No, Muffy, it’s your story. Yours and Petey’s. And I’ve got it all here on tape.”

He patted his right hip. For a moment, the girl looked confused, then she smiled and said, “Tapes aren’t any use in court.”

“Some are.”

“But not this one. You’ve been holding a gun on us for the last fifteen minutes. The tape doesn’t show that. If we didn’t cooperate with your silly nonsense, you’d shoot us. The tape doesn’t show that. The tape doesn’t show anything that’s really important, does it?”

“You’re very clever,” Trace said, looking down at his empty, gunless hands.

“Thank you. That’s a step up. Fifteen minutes ago you were saying we were stupid. Now why don’t you put the gun away and leave us alone? We’ve had enough of your fantasies.”

Before Trace could answer, there was a flicker of light on the wall. A ghostly white image began to take shape. And then it came clear. It was Porky Pig, and as Muffy looked first at the image, then toward the window, a voice resounded through the room.

“Th-th-th-th-that’s all, folks.”

“Chico,” Trace yelled.

“And friends,” she yelled back.

A moment later, Chico came bounding into the room. Right behind her were Lt. Wilcox and his wife. Mrs. Carey followed them.

“What are you doing here?” Trace asked.

“When you told me to leave with Mrs. Carey, I thought it might be time to call the cops. The lieutenant and his wife came back with us.”

“Did you have to do Porky Pig? Come on.”

“Best I could do. I wanted to let you know we were here before you started to tangle with that big dude,” she said.

Trace turned to Wilcox. “Did you hear enough, Lieutenant?”

“Enough to hold them. Let the county prosecutor figure out what to charge them with.”

“Think about attempted murder. I saw Petey with the oxygen turned off at Mr. Carey’s bedside.”

“By the way, I’m getting tired of telling you to come into the office and make a statement,” Wilcox said. “Do I have to book you too?”

“No. This statement I’ll give gladly.”

“Don’t be too sure. I just may book you anyway.”

“Why?”

“Why the hell didn’t you give me that apple you found for evidence?”

“Wait until tomorrow and I’ll think of an excuse,” Trace said.

Wilcox turned away toward Muffy and her brother. “Okay, you two, let’s get moving.”

As he led them toward the door, Trace suddenly called out, “Hey, Muffy, wait.”

She turned and Trace tossed her the crystal ball from the mantel.

“Here, look in that. And if it doesn’t tell you the future, I will.”

Chico had taken Mrs. Carey to stay with neighbors, and Trace sat alone, inside the study, thinking. Something was wrong; the whole package just didn’t tie together the way it should have.

He heard a sound at the front door and he called out, “Chico?”

“Yeah.” She came into the study, plopped herself down in the sofa facing Trace, and put her feet up on the coffee table. “It doesn’t hang, does it?” she said.

He shook his head. “Something’s wrong. How do two kids put together a double-murder plot? And what for? Muffy could have lived here with Mrs. Carey forever. You don’t need money if you’ve got the use of money, and she’d have the use of plenty of it.”

“I know,” Chico said. “There’s another screw that needs a quarter-turn to tighten this whole thing up.”

They sat in silence for a few moments until Chico got up and walked quickly from the room.

“Be right back.”

She left Trace thinking about money and who needed it, and he went to the telephone and called police headquarters. He was talking to Lt. Wilcox when Chico came back into the room, smiling, holding the copy of Muffy’s book on drawing wills over her head.

“Thanks, Lieutenant,” Trace said. “See you tomorrow.” He hung up the phone, and Chico said, “Did you look at this book?”

“No, I didn’t have time.”

“Well, look at this. She had this page dog-eared.” Chico began to read: ‘A simple will, bequeathing a wife’s estate to her husband or a husband’s to his wife, can be drafted by anyone who will follow the forms in this book. However, complicated estates, involving large holdings or bequests to persons who are not immediate relatives, should always be drawn in consultation with a qualified attorney.’”

Trace nodded and Chico smiled. “That’s not all. She’s got a note in the book.”

“You’re going to tease me and not tell me what it is, aren’t you?”

“When did the Plesser thing first get in the papers?”

“I don’t know. Two or three weeks ago, I guess,” Trace said. “What’s on that note?”

“Her appointment. Two months ago to see your favorite trombonist.”

“I knew it,” Trace said. “Yule. Yule’s involved.”

“Yeah, you knew it,” she scoffed. “How’d you know it?”

“I just called police headquarters and Muffy tried to call Yule to represent her. She told Wilcox that he was her lawyer. And she told me she never met him.”

Trace went back to the telephone, dialed Las Vegas direct, and asked to be put through to the shift boss on the Araby Casino floor.

When the man came on the phone, he said, “Listen, this is Trace. Something you’ve got to do for me right away. Okay. Check with the central bureau while I hang on. Find out what kind of rating a Nicholas Yule has. He’s a lawyer in New Jersey. I’ll wait. It’s important.”

He drummed his fingers on the tabletop while he waited. Chico was reading through the book on wills. Then the shift boss at the casino was back on the line.

“Yeah,” Trace said, then listened. “Thanks, Carlo. That’s a big one I owe you. Yeah, Chico and I’ll be back soon.”

He hung up the phone and said, “Yule’s credit is cut off all over Vegas. The word is that he’s in hock to the loan sharks.”

“Bingo. Motive,” Chico said.

Trace nodded and grabbed her arm. “Come on,” he said.

“Where we going?”

“To a dance.”

The band was playing “The Alleycat,” and Chico asked Trace to dance.

“The Widow’s Waltz?” he said. “No, thanks, I’ll pass.”

They stood at the rear of the American Legion hall watching Nick Yule lead his band through its final number. He was dressed in a red-white-and-blue-plaid suit. As Yule marched along the bandstand, pumping away on his trombone, his long thin hair flew around his head.

“You hadn’t told me what a great beauty he was,” Chico said. “With those eyeglasses and that electric suit, he looks like something you’d see in an outpatient clinic.”

“Give a kid a trombone and you lead him to ruin,” Trace said.

Yule’s band finished and the hundred people clustered on the dance floor and at tables around it broke into applause.

“Remember, folks,” Yule shouted into the microphone. “I’m Nick Yule, your musical barrister, and we play at parties, dances, and weddings. The number’s in the book. Have a nice night and God bless each and every one of you.”

“Go slide down a barrister,” Chico mumbled.

When she and Trace reached the bandstand, Yule was putting his trombone into its case. He looked at Trace, recognized him, and nodded. When he saw Chico, he asked, “She a singer?”

“No,” Trace said. “We’ve got two singers already.”

“Huh?”

“Muffy and her brother,” Trace said. “They’re down at police headquarters right now, singing away. Don’t you think you ought to be there to lead the band?”

“Are you trying to connect me with something?” Yule snapped. “Impugn my integrity? Is that what you’re trying to do?”

“Something like that,” Trace said.

“I’m warning you. You’d better be careful. This state has tough laws against slander.”

“Against murder too, as I recollect,” Trace said. “Suppose we move it right along.”

“I didn’t do anything, you know. Nothing except draw a will,” Yule said.

“Well, we’ll let you and Muffy and Petey sort all that out for the cops. Anyway, look at the bright side,” Trace said.

“What’s the bright side?” Yule asked.

“You’re not going to have to worry about a booking for the next twenty years or so.”

Trace left Chico in the car when he parked a half-block away from the Plessers’ house.

After doing what he had come to do, he rang the front-door bell. Mrs. Plesser materialized on the porch, inside the screen door.

“Mr. Marks, right?”

“Right. I want to talk to Calvin.”

“Err, he’s not home.”

“His truck’s here, he’s home. Send him out. Or do I call the cops?”

She thought about it for a moment, then went back inside the house, and Calvin appeared. He held a handkerchief in front of his face and was coughing.

“Sorry. I got a cold.”

“No, you don’t,” Trace said. “What you’ve got is a broken nose where I popped you the other night when you and your friend jumped me.”

“What are you talking about?”

“What I’m talking about is that I think you don’t really want to sue anybody, ’cause if you do, all of you might go to jail for assault. That’s what I’m talking about.”

He turned and started away.

“By the way,” he called back, “I let the air out of your tires just now. We’re even.”

Trace drove to police headquarters. He asked Chico, “How’d you figure it out?”

“Well, the guy who hit the lawyer, he grunted, that made karate a pretty easy bet, especially when you had on your tapes that the nurse was reading a karate magazine. But the big guy that hit you didn’t grunt. So it sounded like another guy. And leaving that sanatorium billhead by the car, well, that was just stupid. And when you’re talking about stupid, who else but the Plessers?”

“I thought Yule might have put them up to it,” Trace said.

“I did too, at first. But not when we figured out he was involved in some murder scheme. He wouldn’t want you hanging around town. That’s why he called you. First, he wouldn’t deal with Jeannie Callahan, and then he found out you were nosing around and that Mr. Carey had talked to you, then he wanted you out of town fast. That’s why he offered to make you the same deal he turned down from that Callahan woman the day before. He wanted you gone. No, it was the Plessers’ brainstorm, all by themselves, to pop you. And they left the billhead by the car so you’d take a run at Meadow Vista, thinking the hospital was behind getting you slugged.”

Trace nodded and parked outside police headquarters. “Wait here. I won’t be long.”

When Trace came back out, Chico was eating three hot dogs from a cardboard box she held on her lap, and he stared at her.

“Hey, cut me a break,” she said. “You were gone a half-hour. A girl’s gotta eat, doesn’t she? What’d you do? Bop that lady cop again?”

“Shhhh. You’ll get us shot,” Trace said. “I just gave them a statement and most of my tapes. Let them sort them out. But everybody’s singing, Muffy and Petey and Yule, so we’re pretty well finished with it. Wilcox told me I might have to come back if the grand jury wants to hear from me.”

He started the car’s engine. “Christ, I’ll be glad to get out of this town. Do you realize I’ve been here a week and I haven’t met one person that I’d call really sane?”

“Good. So now we’re going home?”

“One more stop,” Trace said.

When he pulled up outside the apartment building, Chico asked, “Who lives here?”

“The lawyer,” Trace said. “I’ll be right down.”

“It’s Trace.”

“You can’t come in. I look worse than yesterday.”

“I just wanted to say good-bye. I’m leaving.”

He was answered by silence, and then the door opened slightly. Jeannie Callahan stood behind it, peering out with just one eye, hiding one side of her face.

“You heard?” Trace said.

She nodded. “I talked to George this morning. He told me.”

“I didn’t want to leave without saying so long,” he said.

“Yeah.”

“You know, Mrs. Carey’s going to be alone for a while,” Trace said. “You might think about staying with her for a few days. Might do both of you some good.”

“I’ll think about it,” she said.

He hesitated. “Well, so long, then,” he said.

“So long,” she said. “Thanks for making this a one-lawyer town again.”

He started away, but she reached out a hand to stop him.

“Trace?”

“What?” he said as he turned.

“Could we stop drinking?” she asked.

“Could you?”

“I don’t think so.”

“I don’t either,” Trace said.

“We came close, didn’t we?” she said.

“Close but no cigar.”

“If I visit Las Vegas, will you buy me a drink?”

“As many as it takes to drag you into bed,” he said.

“One’ll do it. Kiss me good-bye.”

He took her in his arms and kissed her hard.

“Now get out of here,” she said, “Before I make you change your mind.”

They were halfway to Newark Airport before Chico broke the silence.

“How come so quiet?” she said.

“Just thinking.”

Five miles more, and she said, “Trace, with us, it’s never going to be like it was, is it?”

Five miles more and he said, “Maybe it never was.”