Trouble in Rooster Paradise (24 page)

The sight sickened me.

“
Meredith Lane, I presume,” said
Walter.

I nodded.

“
Gunnar, it takes several hours for
rigor mortis. From start to finish, I mean.”

I knelt down and touched her neck. It was
cold.

“
She’s stiff as a board. For all I
know she was killed yesterday or in the early hours of this
morning. We’ll have to leave that detail for the medical
boys.”

It wasn’t likely that someone came in through a
three-story window, but I checked for signs of break-in anyway. I
found none.

“
The door has a peephole. She knew
her killer, but freely let him in,” I said.

“
So she didn’t expect to be
killed.”

“
Looks that way.”

We both stood in the living room again. We were
being careful not to touch anything, but continued to look
around.

“
Any thoughts, Mr.
Pangborn?”

“
If we’re dealing with the same
fellow who killed Miss Johanson, then I’ll wager Miss Lane wasn’t
raped. The murderer probably ripped open her chemise after she was
dead to make it look like he’d had his way with her before he
killed her.”

“
So then he tossed this place to
make it also seem like robbery,” I said.

“
Yes, Gunnar, but tearing into the
under-fabric of a chair indicates the murderer was looking for
something, so it’s very likely that Miss Lane had something in her
possession that he wanted. He may also have been trying to make her
talk and she died before she could do so.”

“
Makes sense. So then he rifles
through her stuff in search and tries to pass it off as the action
of a prowler turned rapist.”

“
Precisely. Our man
is
given
to ruses and misdirection.”

I scanned the disarray again. “Well, Walter,
whatever the killer was looking for, it had to be flat enough to
slide under a rug or into a picture frame, and small enough to
shove in a book. Let’s make our own search.”

We were careful not to touch anything unless
absolutely necessary, and then only while wearing one of Walter’s
leather gloves.

Your average house or apartment has numerous
hiding places. We scouted the obvious ones first. Nothing in the
toilet tank, and underneath the sinks yielded a big
zilch.

Next we checked hiding places the killer might
have missed that included possible false walls in closets, the tops
of doors for keys, loose jambs, moldings or baseboards.
Zip.

I was in Meredith’s bedroom checking for loose
floor covering when Walter called from the kitchen, “I think I’ve
found something significant.”

I’d started to get up off my knees when I also
spotted something significant. It was a few feet to the right of
Meredith’s body. The killer probably flicked it there just before
he strangled her. It was a toothpick. It was bent in half and
V-shaped. I didn’t touch it.

I found Walter pulling a manila envelope from
under a loose strip of linoleum that was cover to a small cranny
and had been anchored by one leg of the small kitchen
table.

Walter handed me the envelope. I slit open its
sealed edge with my penknife and took a quick peek
inside.

“
Your wish came true,
Walter.”

“
How’s that?”

“
We didn’t get it from Meredith’s
mouth, exactly, but she did give us the piece of the puzzle we
needed.” I stuffed the envelope inside my raincoat. “Let’s scoot
with the loot, my friend.”

“
If you don’t mind, Gunnar, I’d much
rather abscond to the nether region.”

S
eattle used to get a pretty
bad rap for its rain, and it still does. But it actually rains less
in Seattle than in New York, Baltimore, and Philadelphia. We just
have more cloudy days.

Then, as now, no one ever mentioned the fog.
The drizzles we got were nothing compared to the fog that rolled in
off Elliott Bay. Sometimes our airports were socked in for days at
a time. One time Sten Larson gave me a ride while carting a carload
of friends to some shindig. For part of the way Sten had his buddy
Kenny Flodine planted on the hood giving him signals with one hand
while he pointed a flashlight with the other at the white shoulder
line. Sten told me they did it all the time. It was so dense
sometimes, it was sure to have made a Londoner homesick. Yet
strangely, Seattle’s rain got the spotlight.

The fog had lifted and the returning overnight
drizzle had formed drops that merged into sheets when Walter and I
left the Ivy Lane Apartments around noon that Saturday. We
scampered out the back entrance that led to an alley. No one saw us
leave as far as we could tell. In a meager attempt at obfuscation,
we circled half the block in the rainstorm to get back to the
Chevy. To any onlooker we were returning to our car from anywhere
else but the Ivy Lane Apartments.

“
I just hope that gal who saw us
coming in doesn’t make problems for us with the police,” I
said.

“
What are the chances, old top?
Let’s analyze it. We’ve got a man-hungry woman living in an
apartment house of mostly females, who happens to see two men
callers dressed in raincoats, with one wearing a slouch hat to
cover an obvious disfigurement and the other looking like the
ravager of her dreams. I’d say we’re home free.”

“
Shut up, Walter.”

We headed for a phone booth. I called the
police and gave them an anonymous tip and felt cheesy doing it. I
always did.

To put some distance between us and the murder
scene, I drove a few miles away before I pulled over so we could
safely examine the items in the envelope. It contained a couple of
news clippings and several eight-by-ten glossies.

I whistled softly as we fanned out the
eye-popping photographs on the seat between us like so many playing
cards. The pictures were the poorly lit and crude work of an
amateur using a good camera. The antics and faces of the players
were so clear, it moved us both to poetry.

“
Lewd, rude, and nude,” said
Walter.

I added a rhyme from my army days. “Laid,
relaid, and parlayed.”

There were two sets of pictures: one of
Christine Johanson and the other of Meredith Lane. All the shots
were taken in the same bedroom, and showed them as enthusiastic
party girls with different men at separate times. Judging from the
clothes discarded by the girls and their varying hairdos, each had
had two partners on completely different occasions. Some of the
shots were of the girls and their respective admirers engaged in
half-naked preambles to the sex act. Other shots were of the
participants in nature’s garb getting right down to
business.

“
Pretty raw stuff. Every one of
these was snapped from the same angle,” I said. “The cameraman was
probably screened off and perched in a fixed hiding
spot.”

Walter was shuffling through the stack again,
examining each shot with a clinical air. “These definitely make the
women in those old French postcards seem like virtuous
schoolgirls,” he said. “If I didn’t recognize two of these men, I’d
think that these were stag pictures made to be sold
covertly.”

“
Who do you make out,
Walter?”

He pointed to one dallying with Meredith.
“That’s Ralph Colbourn. Local industrialist.”

He pointed at another man frolicking with
Christine. “Hugh … Hugh
something
. Hugh
Rundquist
. That’s the name. Rundquist. I’ve seen both these
men in the newspaper over the years. Prosperous men. Society
pillars, old socks. Members of Seattle’s four hundred, don’t you
know. Were you aware, Gunnar, that it was a New York socialite
named Ward McAllister, who is said to have come up with the
original four hundred in the 1890s when—”

I stopped him and told him about the
toothpick.

“
Ah, then it’s very likely that the
black-hearted Mr. de Carter is also our shutterbug,” he
said.

I agreed.

We almost forgot about the two news clippings.
The articles had been mostly cut away, but each showed a clear
photo of Addison Darcy.

“
Kind of odd, don’t you think,
Walter? The connection sort of jumps out at you, doesn’t
it?”

“
Yes. I would say that Mr. Darcy was
probably their next victim.”

I held up a news clipping in each
hand.

“
And these were part of the
briefings.”

“
Yes. So it would seem.”

I headed us for home.

We discussed how it was that a couple of
seemingly sweet young women could get caught up in such a sordid
blackmail scheme.

“
They were young but maybe not all
that sweet,” I said.

“
Yes. Still, I imagine it was a
progressive thing,” Walter said. “They probably started off
flirting with specific male customers. They accepted social
invitations, and one thing just led to another.”

“
Yeah, but Walter, that’s an awful
slope to let yourself slide down.”

“
Admittedly. However, I’d guess that
they were probably
pushed
sometime before that, Gunnar.
Likely Mr. de Carter seduced these young women. Perhaps he raped
them. Someone
did
tell you he abused women. It’s also
possible that Miss Johanson and Miss Lane were themselves initially
blackmailed with compromising photos. Maybe they were even in love
with Mr. de Carter. Who knows what tied them to him? There’s
several possibilities. Somehow he gained influence over them, and
became a puppeteer procurer. In any event, these pictures don’t
lie. Those girls
were
most … er,
cooperative.”

“
Yeah, until something went very
wrong.”

“
A labor strike perhaps?”

“
Bingo. Meredith might have had
seniority. Her new furniture indicates some sort of windfall. Maybe
Christine insisted on a bigger cut.”

“
So, Miss Johanson accused Mr. de
Carter of cheating her. They met and he ended the labor
dispute.”

“
Looks that way.”

A few things seemed clear. Guy de Carter had
good reason to lie about Dirk. After murdering Christine, he’d
probably scouted out Dirk’s apartment, found the kid sleeping off
his drunk, and planted the bloody shoes and gun. It also made sense
that it was de Carter who tried to run me down. Failing that, he
ventilated my office.

“
At least now you know who to be on
guard against, old thing.”

“
Yeah, but now that Meredith’s dead
and he didn’t find what she’d stashed, maybe he feels a little
safer. Maybe he thinks he’s in the clear.”

“
You may be right. By themselves,
these photos and clippings don’t really point to Mr. de
Carter.”

“
Uh-huh. But what I can’t figure is
why would de Carter try to kill Addison Darcy?”

“
Maybe Mr. Darcy wouldn’t pay the
hush money. Maybe he threatened to go to the
authorities.”

“
I don’t think so, Walter. He was
cozying up to Christine the very day she was killed. You’d think if
he was being blackmailed he’d have steered clear of those girls and
that store.”

“
You’ve got me there,
Gunnar.”

“
I think your first thought was
right. Darcy was probably their
next
target, and had yet to
visit their studio love nest. I’m guessing that initially Meredith
thought Christine might have been killed by one of the men she’d
duped. Maybe Meredith worried that she was to be next, and that’s
why she suggested I check out some of the customers.”

“
Hmm. Yes, a preemptive action. And
perhaps later Miss Lane began to suspect Mr. de Carter, and she
threatened to expose him.”

“
Uh-huh. But whatever the case,
Smilin’ Jack stopped smiling and silenced the girl before she gave
up the goods.”

“
So where are you off to now, old
top?”

“
I haven’t quite figured that out
yet.”

We crossed the drawbridge leading into the
Fremont district. The dilapidated houses and buildings made the
area dreary under normal circumstances. Our findings and the wet
weather made it more so.

We cruised toward Ballard, angling northwest on
Leary Avenue. Raindrops the size of marbles battered the top of the
Chevy. The pelting tattoo became a soothing distraction, however
temporary. We drove in silence until we were a few blocks from Mrs.
Berger’s.

“
I just wish that woman hadn’t seen
us on the stairs,” I said. “Maybe she’ll be gone when the police
show up with their questions.”

“
I’ve learned not to bank on small
favors, old socks. You’d better drop me off at Hardy Lindholm’s.
I’ll lay low for a while. Besides, I could do with a couple of
dozen games of checkers.”

To Hardy’s it was.

I dropped Walter off at quarter to one. I drove
to a drugstore on Market Street and used their payphone.

How to expose the guilty without hurting the
innocent? Airing the story of the photos meant bad publicity for
Fasciné Expressions—and that would mean trouble for both my client
and Britt Anderson. I felt Britt deserved a heads up.