“BY GOD, I THINK YOU’VE got it!” I said. “So that was what those fishing trips were for? He always went alone; Fleurelle didn’t care for fishing—or for Florida, either.”
“Yes, I know,” she said simply. “I’ve been briefed on what Fleurelle didn’t like.”
“So you had the frigid wife bit thrown at you too?”
She nodded. “But it’s not important now. The thing that is, however, is the fact he could have met Frances Kinnan that trip—” She broke off, making a little grimace of distaste. “I don’t like this sort of thing.”
“Neither do I,” I said. “But it can’t be helped. So he met her, only this time he brought the girl home with him. And cooked up that dress shop deal to cover it. He knew about the living quarters in back of the store, and knew the place was vacant—it had been for a couple of months, in fact—” I stopped, realizing we still didn’t know the answer.
“What is it?” she asked.
“We’re as far in left field as ever. There’s no motive for murder in any of this. Take a look. Suppose Roberts did find out something about her—I mean, who she was —and she was paying him to keep it hushed up; it was still nothing to George. By that time she was married to me. She’d have been in a jam, and my face might have been a little red if it suddenly developed the police were looking for my wife because she’d absconded with the assets of some bank in Groundloop, Arizona, but they couldn’t pin anything on George, even if the details of this dress shop setup ever came out. He’s too shrewd a lawyer to get tagged with a charge of harboring a fugitive—he’d probably thought that all out in advance. He’d simply say he had no idea she was a fugitive, and even if she said otherwise, it’d only be her word against his. Admittedly, the scandal wouldn’t have helped his position much here in town, but anybody with George’s mind and legal training wouldn’t have much trouble weighing the risks of first-degree murder against a minor thing like that and coming up with the safe answer, even if he had no scruples against murder aside from the risk. Let Roberts talk, and be damned to him. And, finally, it’s doubtful Roberts even knew there was any connection between her and George. As far as Fleurelle is concerned, she might have divorced him if it all came out, but from my viewpoint that’d hardly qualify as a total disaster.”
“I know,” she said. “There has to be more to it than we’ve discovered.”
“Also, I still don’t think George could have killed her. There simply wasn’t enough time between my calling him and his showing up in the Sheriff’s office.”
“That we can check,” she said. “And we will in just a minute. But right now, let’s look at that Junior Delevan possibility again. I still have a feeling he fits into it somewhere; you can call it feminine intuition if you want, but there’s something very significant in that bitterness of Doris Bentley’s toward Frances. At first, I thought it might be because she believed you’d killed Roberts and of course blamed Frances for the fact. She probably still thinks you killed him, but I don’t think that’s what’s bothering her. She didn’t care that much about him. They dated a few times, but from what I can find out, that’s about all it amounted to. So we have to go back further. She was pretty crazy about Junior, from all accounts.
“I’ve been asking a few questions here and there, trying not to be too obvious about it, and I’ve learned just about all that was ever known or ever found out about what happened to Junior that night. And it’s not very much. Scanlon questioned Doris about him, along with a lot of other people, but she swears she never saw him at all. She had a date with him, but he stood her up.”
Something nebulous brushed against the perimeter of my mind. I tried to close in on it, but it got away. I must have grunted, because she stopped. “What?”
“Sorry,” I said. “I was just trying to remember something. Go on.”
“She could have been lying about not seeing him,” she went on, “but apparently Scanlon was satisfied she was telling the truth. It seems she even called Junior’s house, when he failed to show up for the date when the dress shop closed at nine P.M., trying to find out if his mother knew where he was. She—that is, Mrs. Delevan—verified this. She said Doris called there twice. There’s not much more to tell. They do know where Junior was until around eleven-thirty. He was with two other boys—Kenny Dowling and Chuck McKinstry—just riding around drinking beer. Dowling was old enough to buy it, so he was picking it up by the six-pack, and they were drinking it in the car. They told Scanlon he got out of the car on Clebourne, near Fuller’s, around eleven-thirty, saying he had important business to take care of and couldn’t spend the whole night with peasants. They thought he meant a girl, since he always swaggered a bit over his conquests, but he wouldn’t tell them her name. They swear that was the last they ever saw of him. Scanlon had them in his office for six hours—he had Dowling where the hair was short, anyway, for giving beer to minors— and when they came out they were pretty sick-looking boys, but they stuck to their story and said they had no idea where he was going or what he was going to do after he left them. Apparently that was the last time he was ever seen alive; he must have been killed in the next half hour. Somewhere.”
“Well, our only chance is that Doris knows something about it she hasn’t told. Shall we go?”
“Right. But first we time that route.”
I got in the back again, crouched down between the seats, with a pencil flashlight she took from her purse. She drove back into the edge of town, turned left, ran two or three blocks, turned right, and stopped. “We’re parked on Stuart,” she called softly over her shoulder. Stuart was the next cross street east of Clement’s big house on Clebourne. “Headed toward Clebourne, a half block from the corner. Starting from here would about equal the time it’d take him to back his car out of the garage. Ready?”
I cupped the little light in my hand and focused it on the watch. When the sweep second hand came around to the even minute, I said, “Take it away.”
She pulled away from the curb, and turned right at the corner. A car passed, headed in the opposite direction. I kept down. She turned again, left this time. We were on Montrose. She didn’t appear to be driving fast at all. After a moment, she turned right, and then right again. “I’m going around behind,” she said quietly. “I doubt he would have parked in your driveway.” Probably not, I thought. There were two houses across the street from ours, and he could have been seen. “I’ll park at that vacant lot directly behind your house.” We eased to the curb and stopped. “Mark.”
I flashed the pencil light on the watch, and couldn’t believe it at first. “One minute, twelve seconds,” I whispered. “It doesn’t seem possible.”
“I didn’t go above 30 miles an hour at any time. All right, here we go for the second leg.”
I checked the time as we pulled away. There was very little sound of traffic, even when we turned into Clebourne. In a moment we turned again, went on a short distance, and stopped. “Mark,” she said. “We’re parked right in front of the courthouse.”
I flicked the light on the watch. “One minute and thirty-two seconds. That makes a total of—” I added it quickly. “A total of two minutes forty-four seconds.”
“I thought so,” she whispered. “You see, he had better than seven minutes. It wouldn’t have taken him over two at the most to walk around to the front of your house and then back to the car. He had all the time he needed.”
Then—if it were George—there’d been no argument, nothing. He must have gone there simply for the purpose of killing her, for cold-blooded, premeditated murder. She’d called him, let him in the house when he rang, and then—the first instant her back was turned —he grabbed up the andiron and brought it down on her head. Why? I shook my head wearily, wondering if anybody would ever know. We started up again.
I could see the blinking amber light at the intersection as we crossed Clebourne. She turned left into Taylor. Westbury was in the east end of town, just beyond the edge of the business district. In a moment we stopped. “Nobody in sight,” she whispered.
I sat up. We were at the curb in the middle of the block, in shadow under some trees. All the houses were dark, and there were cars parked ahead and behind us. Up at the next corner, at the street light, was the apartment house. We could see the entrance from here. I checked my watch. It was five minutes of three. “She may be already home,” I said.
“Yes, but we don’t know where Mulholland is. He might have gone in with her. If they don’t show up in half an hour, I’ll drive back to the apartment and ring his number to see if I get an answer.”
We smoked a cigarette. Fifteen minutes went by in silence as we watched the shadowy, deserted street and the empty pool of light at the corner. The night seemed to have been going on forever, and I wondered where I’d be when it ended. In jail? Or dead? They’d take no chances; if I made a stupid move they’d shoot me.
Doris had had a date with Junior, but he hadn’t shown up. Something in that had rung a bell in my mind, very faintly, but I hadn’t been able to isolate what it was. She’d tried to get hold of him; she’d called his house— called it twice, in fact. Was she merely incensed because he’d stood her up, or was it something else, something she had to tell him? Just then, a car turned into Taylor two blocks behind us, its headlights flashing briefly in the rear-view mirror.
“Duck,” I whispered. We lay down on the seats.
The car came on and went past us. We sat up again. It wasn’t a police car, but it was slowing. It went on across the intersection ahead and pulled to the curb before the apartment house entrance. A man got out from the driver’s side and went around and opened the other door, a big man, bareheaded. I felt excitement run along my nerves, and began to tense up. It was Mulholland. He helped Doris out, and they crossed the sidewalk to the doorway. I watched nervously to see if he were going to follow her in. He didn’t. For a moment the two figures blended as they kissed, and then she went inside and he came back to the car. He drove on down Taylor and turned left at the next corner.
“Give him five minutes, to be sure he doesn’t come back,” she said softly. “And, remember—try not to scare her too much. If she panics, she’ll scream. I’ll drop you off right in front, and then go on and park in the next block.”
“No,” I whispered. “If anybody sees me under that light, I don’t want him to see me getting out of your car. I’ll leave you right here, and then you go on home.”
She refused to listen to this last. “All right,” I said reluctantly. “But if there’s any uproar, get out fast, because I won’t come back to the car. You’ve done too much for me now, and I don’t intend to get you in trouble.”
I waited another two or three minutes while my nerves tied themselves in knots. The street remained silent and deserted. I’d better go now, before I got too scared to go at all. I eased the door open and slipped out. “Good luck,” she whispered.
I came out from under the shadow of the trees at the intersection and felt a million eyes on me as I crossed Westbury under the street light. I hurried into the doorway. The door was locked. I pressed several buttons at random, and waited, feeling the muscles in my back grow taut. The door buzzed. I yanked it open, slipped inside, and hurried up the carpeted steps to the second floor.
The corridor was deserted. Apartment 2C was the second door on the left. I pressed the buzzer, and put one hand on the knob. For a moment nothing happened. It occurred to me that if they had safety chains on the doors I was sunk. Then I heard her moving. “Who’s there?” she asked. I mumbled something indistinguishable and trusted to curiosity. The knob turned.
Her breath sucked in as I came in on her, but before the scream could cut loose I clamped a hand over her mouth. She fought, her eyes wide with terror as she recognized me. I shoved the door shut with my foot, and backed her across the room toward an armchair near the old-style pull-down bed. A small, rose-shaded lamp was burning on the table beside it. So far we hadn’t made any noise, but I wasn’t sure how long my luck would last; it was a very small room, too cluttered with furniture for much romping. I pushed her down in the chair with my hand still over her mouth, pinching her nostrils to shut off her breath.
“I’m not going to hurt you,” I snapped. “Keep quiet, and I’ll let you go.” She quit fighting. I turned her loose, but stood over her ready to grab her again. My hand I’d had over her face was greasy with cold cream. She wore nothing but bra and pants and a sheer nylon robe or peignoir deal that had got wrapped around her waist in the struggle. She squirmed in the chair and tugged at it, trying to get some random bit of it down over her legs. The blonde hair was aswirl across her face, and the normally rather sullen brown eyes were crawling with fear as she looked up at me. “Wh-what are you going to do?”
“Nothing except ask you a few questions,” I said. “But this time I want some answers, or I’ll break you in two. You got me into this mess, and now you’re going to get me out. Who was the man coming to Frances’ apartment there in the shop when you were working for her?”
“I don’t know,” she said.
“You said there was one.”
Her eyes avoided mine. “So maybe I was mistaken.”
“But you weren’t; and that’s what intrigues me. Apparently you were the only one who ever found it out, but how did you? Did you ever see him?”
“No.”
“Were you ever back there in the apartment?”
“Once or twice. With her.”
“See any men’s clothing lying around? Cigar butts? Pipes?”
She shook her head.
“I see,” I said. “Now, at that time Frances and I were dating pretty steadily and generally considered to be engaged, so if you had seen any evidence a man had been in her apartment, you’d just have assumed it was me, wouldn’t you?”
“Well, yes—I guess so.”
“Good.” Now we were getting somewhere. “But when you told me about it on the phone, you obviously didn’t mean me. So you must have meant you had reason to believe there was a man in her apartment on some night when it couldn’t have been me? When maybe I was out of town?”
She hesitated. “Look—maybe I was wrong—”
“No, you weren’t. You were dead right, and I’ll tell you how you knew. Junior Delevan was a pretty big boy, wasn’t he?”
She gasped. “I don’t know anything about that business!”
“Too big to be killed, and then loaded into a car, by a 120-pound girl, wouldn’t you say?”
“I tell you, I don’t know anything about—”
“Maybe you don’t. But I’ll bet you could make a pretty good guess as to where he went that night Couldn’t you?”
Her gaze went past me, crawling sickly around the room, looking for some way out. “I—I didn’t even see him at all that night. You can ask the police. You can ask his mother—”
I got it then, the thing I’d been trying to remember, the missing fragment that made a whole picture of it when you put it in place. I grinned coldly down at her. “That’s right. You phoned his house twice, didn’t you, trying to get hold of him?”
“That’s right. We had a date. He was supposed to pick me up when the store closed, but he didn’t come.”
“Quite a night for being stood up, wasn’t it, Doris?”
“What do you mean?”
“I broke a date with Frances, too, remember?”
“No. Why should I?” She tried to brazen it out, but her eyes shifted, avoiding mine.
“You remember, all right. You were in the shop Friday afternoon when I stopped there and asked her to go to a dance Saturday night at the Rutherford Country Club.”
“So maybe I was. I worked there, didn’t I?”
“Did you say anything about it to Junior?”
“How do I know?”
“Did you?”
“How you expect me to remember all the things we talked about? You think I write down every word I say to anybody?”
“You told him, all right.”
“Have it your way; so all we got to talk about is you” and your crummy dates, big-wheel Warren. How would I remember? And if I did, it’s a Federal case, I suppose?”
“I don’t know,” I said. “Scanlon could answer that question for you. But let’s get on to the big item. You were also in the shop around eight P.M. Saturday when I came by to tell Frances I had to go to Tampa and couldn’t make the dance. And you’ve just said you didn’t see Junior at all that night. You tried twice to call him at his home, so you must have had something very important to tell him, didn’t you?”
She said nothing. Her hands began twisting at the robe; she’d forgotten about trying to cover up her legs, even if she remembered she had any.
“You never did get hold of Junior,” I went on, “so it’s obvious he never was warned she was going to be home that night, after all. And the next morning they found him on the city dump with his roof knocked in. Did you know he was going to burglarize the place that night, or just the first night she happened to be away?”
“Junior wouldn’t—”
“The hell Junior wouldn’t! He already had a previous conviction for burglary. And this time he even had a girl friend who could get him a key. Or did he just break in?”
The truth was written on her face, but she tried to bluff it out. “I don’t know what you’re talking about!”
“Since she couldn’t have done it, you knew there had to be a man there. Do you know who he was?”
“No! And you can’t prove any of that junk—!”
I grabbed for her to shake the truth out of her, forgetting she didn’t have on much to take hold of, and this time she cut loose with the scream. It must have come from her insteps, growing in volume all the way. I tried to get a hand over her mouth, stupidly hanging onto the bra and a handful of robe with the other, but the chair went over backward, taking the table and the lamp. The straps of the bra gave way and it all came off in my hand. She threw in another hopper of decibels and let go again, and bounced up and across the bed. I was as crazy now as she was, with no idea of what I was doing. I grabbed for her and got part of the robe just as she hit the floor on the other side of the bed and went rolling and bucking across the room, and then she was in the bathroom with the door locked, still screaming.
I wheeled and lunged for the door. There was nobody in the upper hall yet, but my luck ran out when I hit the bottom of the stairs. One man was already out of his apartment and another had his head out the door. They both recognized me, and yelled. Probably at the moment all either wanted to do was get out of my way, since I was a madman who’d already killed two people and now possibly a third, but the one in the hallway dodged the same way I did and I was going too fast to swerve. I crashed into him and we went down.
Other doors were opening now, up and down the corridor, and a woman with a voice like an air-raid siren was shrieking, “Call the police! Call the police!” Just as I untangled myself and scrambled to my feet, the other man, braver now that reinforcements were in sight, came lunging at me. I knocked him down, but stepped backward and fell over the one who was under me. I bounced up, swung at the other who was already getting to his knees, knocked him over again, and plunged on toward the front door. Another man, in nothing but a pair of jockey shorts, was coming at a hard run now, from the far end of the hall.
I hit the front door at full speed, remembering too late that it opened inward, and slammed into it with my shoulder. Glass shattered and rained with a brittle tinkling sound on the tile. I yanked it open and leaped down the steps. Off to the left, as I ran across the street, I saw Barbara pulling out from the curb in the middle of the block. I made a desperate motion of the arm for her to get away, and ran up Westbury. I looked over my shoulder and saw her headlights swinging as she turned into it behind me. I plunged behind a hedge just before the lights caught up with me, and lay down on the ground. She went on past. I prayed she’d get out of the area before the police cars got here. She turned right at the next corner. People were still shouting and pouring out of the apartment house behind me, but none crossed the street. I cut across the yard I was in just as lights began to come on in the house, climbed the fence, and ran across the vacant lot behind it. When I emerged on the next street, there was no one in sight, but I could already hear the sirens. A police car shot past on Taylor, off to my left I ran to the right and crossed Clebourne.
I heard a car coming this way. There were street lights ahead and behind me. I ducked into the alley back of Clebourne and fell flat behind some garbage cans, sobbing for breath. As the car went past its spotlight raked the shadows, but missed me. I lay still for a moment, trying to collect my wits after all we confusion. I couldn’t go back to the office, even if I could get there. They’d search it, along with the house. But the Duquesne Building was in the next block; all I had to do was keep to the alley, cross one street, and I’d be behind it. I got up and ran again. The intersecting street was clear. I made it across, and ran on toward Montrose. I ducked into the small vestibule at the rear of the building, and collapsed, too winded to move. A car went past on Montrose, flashing its spotlight up the alley.
The door to the left opened onto the stairs going up to the second floor; the one on the right was the rear entrance to Roberts’ apartment, leading into the kitchen. When I could get to my feet, I backed up as far as I could and crashed into the latter with my shoulder. On the third lunge the bolt tore out and it swung open. I stepped inside, closed it, and flicked on the cigarette lighter to look about for something to prop it shut. There was a small table next to the refrigerator. I shoved it against the door, holding the lighter with the other hand, and then stood looking down at the linoleum in horror. There were spatters of blood on it. The lighter went out. I flicked it on again. The blood was coming from a cut on the back of my left hand. I’d left a trail of it all the way from that apartment house that a Boy Scout could follow. I let the lighter go out and stood listening to the drip, drip, drip, as it fell and spattered in the darkness. Even if I could move on the streets now, there was nowhere else to go.