Date for Murder (14 page)

“Operator haul you down for swearing?” Mark asked.

The Chief nodded. “And me a public official. Well, they got powder samples off the sheets of Jeffers’ bed. That’s something, anyway. They’re going to check on all the dames’ powders now. What a joint they got there. A regular dive, huh!”

Mark said, “Sounds like an orgy to me.”

“I tell you,” the Chief said, “these rich people are all nuts. Plain ordinary nuts! Damned if they ain’t.”

“Is that what got you excited?” Mark grinned.

“Hell, no,” the Chief said. “That ain’t all. They found that soil sample you was talking about. Got it from a rug and from a bathmat. Found traces on the hall floor and on the Major’s rug too.”

“Whose floor?” Mark asked very quietly.

The Chief took a good bite off his cigar before he answered. When it was well chewed, he said, “Like I said, Mark—this stuff came out of young Farman’s room.”

M
ARK
rang the bell of Myra Cartwright’s neat cottage. She opened the door with a tight smile. “I was expecting you,” she said. She stepped aside to let him in. There were glasses and a bottle on a table in front of the divan. She wore a cool summer slack suit with wide-bottomed pants and a bolero jacket that exposed an expanse of warm white flesh between the bottom of the jacket and the tops of the trousers. Underneath the jacket, unless his eyes had gone bad since that afternoon, she wore nothing. He grinned in appraising approval.

“I should be mad at you,” she pouted. She took him by the arm and led him to the couch, where he stretched luxuriously. “The way you let the Chief handle me this evening.” Her eyes were worried. “It isn’t true—what they say about me and the Major. We were just friends.”

He wondered how much of that wide-eyed innocence he could believe. How much cunning and deceit lay behind those sharp features, now softened by her warm, inviting smile. How many lies those soft lips, drawing so close, had told this day and in days past. How many—He gave up thinking about it. Her lips were warm and winy and her kiss was not one he would forget in a long time. It lasted, too, until he heard the clock strike twelve with soft, rhythmic cadences.

“A drink?” she asked, smiling into his eyes. He nodded, and she poured a jigger and a half into each glass, splashed seltzer in. She rose. “I didn’t bring the ice out because I didn’t know when you were coming. I’ll get it.” She moved toward the kitchen, her hips swaying gracefully and a little provocatively. Mark watched her go with amused eyes. So she had waited for him, dressed like that—not knowing when he would come but knowing he would come. How sure she was of herself!

He yawned, and covered it as Myra glided back with ice in the glasses. Mark accepted his with a smile and held it up in a toast.

“To fewer and fewer murders,” he said. “Unless they all cause me to meet charming young ladies.”

She raised her glass and laughed, “You’ve been to France,” she accused him.

“We natives have our moments,” he said. He drank, and the liquor felt good, cooling and warming at the same time. When the first glass was emptied and the second well started, he regarded Myra speculatively. She was looking at him with a warmer smile now, which softened her features and made her light eyes shine a little in the glow from the lamp. They were sitting closely together.

Myra leaned forward and very deliberately crushed out her cigaret. Their glasses made small sounds as they were set on the table at the same time. He found his arms went around her almost without volition. Her eyes drew him; her eyes and her lips.

After a moment Myra’s arm left his waist and moved upward; her fingers caught the cord on the lamp, and the room was closed about them by darkness. Only the faint glow of a distant street light shone through the slightly parted curtains….

When Mark woke up he was startled. He raised his head with a jerk of apprehension. His brain felt thick like soupy molasses churning unsteadily inside his skull. He was in a distinctly feminine bedroom. He could see the dresser across the room with perfume bottles glistening from sunlight splashed across them. Clothing was in a heap on two chairs. He rubbed his cheeks, and they felt numbed. His body ached all over, as if he had slept too hard and had twisted into an uncomfortable position. His mouth was thick and his tongue felt covered with mud. He grunted and rubbed his hands over his eyes.

He raised himself onto one elbow and looked at Myra. She slept quite peacefully, her head thrown on one arm, her yellow hair scattered across the side of her face. Her features were sharp in repose, and he caught a sulky angriness in the line of her mouth that was not there when she lay awake.

He looked at the clock on the dressing table and saw it was after nine. He groaned and got up, went into the bathroom and washed hurriedly. The cold water felt good on his face and down his throat. He located his clothes on a chair and slipped into them.

He groped his way through the darkened living room. The sharp biting odor of burned paper annoyed his nostrils, but he was too dazed to pay much attention. He fumbled yawningly with the front door; finally got it open and walked into the hot daylight. He drove straight to his room. There he shaved quickly, brushed his teeth and changed to fresh white ducks and a polo shirt. After that he felt better. He drove to Babe’s and had coffee and doughnuts and then went back to town to the Western Union office.

“Message for me?”

He was given a bulky telegram, and when the girl told him the price he groaned. Now his head did ache. He gave her a bill, absently scooped the change into his pocket and went into Mickey’s to read it. He ordered ale.

For a long time Mark stared at the message, digesting it. It started out, “You asked for it,” and went on to give the answers Mark had requested. James Link was the son of Bull Link, thirty years old, and didn’t keep his money in banks.

“Played the old man’s game,” the message read. “Handled rich guys from Eastern colleges in for fling in city. Contacts at Frat houses. No mob. Worked by himself. Police investigating case. Information confidential. Remember me when this breaks. Link engaged to Idell Manders, your city. More when police give out information. Known as crooked gambler. Leona Taylor, twenty-eight years old. Strip-tease artist Broadway shows. Real name, Leona Grimes. Small bit of West-Indian blood. Educated Vassar. Money lost stock crash twenty-nine. Seen with Link occasionally. No party girl. Keeps life in background. Rumored with Link at present. Publicity as mystery woman. Police investigating her. More later.”

Mark folded the telegram and thrust it into his pants pocket. He paid for the ale and went to a telephone. The Chief was in his office, and he sounded excited.

Mark found him chewing a good-sized wad of cigar and perspiring freely behind his desk. A stack of papers were apparently wind-scattered before him. He grinned at Mark.

“Well, we got the dope. New York police came through; so did Riverside.”

Mark gave him his telegram. The Chief read it, nodded and handed it back. “I got plenty more’n that,” he grinned. “They got into Link’s safety deposit box and found enough to book the guy for plenty. Get this. Grant Manders owed him forty thousand bucks. Gambling debts and some stock market activities. The old con game, it looks like. None of the stuff Link sold Manders is worth a damn. He was trying to recoup from the gambling losses and got in deeper, I guess.”

“Forty thousand is a lot of money,” Mark said.

“Plenty,” the Chief admitted. “But that ain’t all. Farman owed him five grand for gambling debts … And Maybelle is up to her neck.”

“Gambling?”

“Hell, no, love letters. She wrote ‘em to him about two years ago. N. Y. says they’re plenty hot. Seems she’s engaged to some rich society guy in the East—Sturtevant Bryant IV or something like that—and Link was holding these notes over her head. He’s got letters from other dames, married dames whose husbands are in the bond business. He’s got gambling notes from rich guys with big names. Holds private parties and all that stuff. He’s got pictures’d make your hair curl. Hell, he had his old man beat in the business. There wasn’t nothing that guy wouldn’t do! Got records of illegitimate kids of wealthy people. He must have been drawing plenty.”

“Sounds like half the U. S. had motives,” Mark said. “Anybody could have hired those thugs to gun him.”

“Yeah, but he was poisoned by someone in the house,” the Chief reminded him.

“Anything on Jeffers? He had a gambling debt, didn’t he?”

“That’s cancelled, I guess. But he had something on Jeffers. Seems the guy is married and his old man don’t know it. Jeffers had gone through his mother’s dough, and the old man is about ready to kick off. Jeffers was paying Link to keep quiet about it, because his old man would have disinherited him. I got this straight from the cops back there. Jeffers was in a couple of scrapes while going to school and his old man nearly threw him out. But they made up. The old boy was teetering, though.”

“Secretly married, eh?” Mark mused. “To whom?”

The Chief’s grin was expansive. “Myra Cartwright,” he said.

“Good Lord!” Mark grinned sheepishly. “Jeffers is a big guy,” he said.

“Huh?”

“Skip it. What does that add up to?”

“The reason it was all hush-hush with her,” the Chief said. “She and Jeffers were married over in Las Vegas two years ago when he was out here right after graduation. It was a gin marriage, I guess. She’s five years older than him. Anyway, they didn’t want it to get around to the old man.”

“Her financial troubles were because his mother’s money ran out, eh?” Mark guessed.

“Yeah.”

“That gives Jeffers a good motive,” Mark said. “If he had no more to pay Link with and was threatened with exposure.”

“Hell, yes, and it gives all them guys a good motive. And the dames too. But we got Farman over a barrel.”

“I can’t see why, unless he was trying to get out of a debt like that, which he could pay,” Mark said, “and trying to get Maybelle’s letters back for her and trying to save Idell.” He grinned. “It is a good circumstantial case, all right.”

“Every damned time they take a chance,” the Chief said. “Most of the time, unless the blackmailer is just carrying things on him and the murderer can steal ‘em, the stuff is bound to get found and exposed.”

“Will it be exposed?”

“Hell no! The cops’ll destroy it all,” the Chief grinned. “It’s got around now, and no cop dares take a chance and hold it back to try a little blackmail himself.”

“I guess that makes a lot of people feel good,” Mark said.

The Chief nodded. “L. A. got Wop Conteri last night. He ought to be here pretty soon.” He spit into a spittoon. “And boy, if Conteri picks Farman as the guy who hired him to gun that car, then it’s curtains. I ain’t givin’ him no more rope.”

“If Conteri did it,” Mark suggested.

“You described the car, didn’t you?”

“It was dark and I only made a stab at it,” Mark said.

“He’ll spill.” The Chief grinned. “If he ain’t done it already. Them guys got a goldfish bowl in L. A.”

Mark felt sorry for Wop Conteri for a short moment. He said, “Did New York rake anything up on Leona Taylor?”

“Yeah, I was coming to that.” The Chief spit again and settled back in his chair. The Taylor dame strips, like your telegram said. But that wasn’t her business. She’s society, sort of. Money once, and Vassar, and all that. She ain’t up big, but in with the people that hang on the edge sort of. They don’t mind her stripping, I guess. Anyway, she was contact dame for Link in lots of that gambling.”

“And picked up information for him?” Mark asked.

The Chief held up two fingers. “Like that,” he said. “She got her cut.”

“So she came as a friend of Grant’s,” Mark laughed.

“She was playing him for more,” the Chief said. “So the Taylor dame is out as far as killing the guy is concerned. But she’s got plenty to answer for. Plenty.”

Mark thought of the beautiful, violet-eyed Leona with her mysterious power to draw men like moths to a light. But he was not overly surprised. New York had shown him many women whose beautiful surfaces concealed blackness as foul and rank as any sewer.

There was the sound of a bell outside. The Chief said, “See who it is, will you, Mark?” Mark got up and went toward the double door that opened into the jail offices. He heard the telephone clang as he went out. He found two bulky, red-faced detectives standing there. Sweat ran down from their eyes and their faces and made stains under the arms of their shirts. They looked surly and uncomfortable. Between them was a small, thin man, dark and ugly. His hair was slicked to his head, or had been. Heat had melted the oil and made it run down his neck and face. There was a livid bruise under one eye and his lip was cut. He seemed weak, and hardly able to stand. His eyes spat hatred at Mark.

Mark opened the bottom half of the door. “Come in, gentlemen,” he said. “The Chief is waiting.” He led the way to the Chief’s office. The Chief was on the phone. His eyes were bulging; the fingers gripping the receiver, white.

“Jesus Christ,” he said. “Okay—get things lined up.” He dropped the receiver and stared at Mark.

“Here’s Conteri,” Mark said.

“Hell,” the Chief said, “we gave Farman too much rope.”

Mark waited.

The Chief took a deep breath. “Leona Taylor got bumped off some time last night.”

M
ARK
collapsed into a chair. One of the detectives was speaking. “Olsen,” he said, “and Byers.” He indicated himself and then his perspiring partner. All three men sat on a leather-covered davenport. “Wop here talked,” Olsen rumbled.

The Chief nodded almost abstractedly. “Yeah? What’d he say?”

“Tell him, Wop,” Byers encouraged. He jerked on the handcuff so the little man winced.

“Aw right,” he said. “I didn’t do nothin’. You ain’t got a damned thing on me, see. I didn’t hurt nobody.”

“Who hired you?” the Chief demanded.

“I dunno,” Wop said. “This guy phones me up. He says a guy in New York give me his name. He wants me to do a job, see.” He spread his hands, jerking Byer’s arm as he moved. “He says there’ll be five yards for me at the Post Office, General Delivery, if I want the job, see. I takes it. The dough’s there, so me and the boys go out to do it. That’s all. We didn’t do nothing.”

“You damned near killed a girl,” the Chief said. “You shot hell out of a car.”

Wop licked his lips. “How’n hell I know who it was? The guy says there’s a red convertible with a black top at the Biltmore, see. It’s leavin’ maybe any day in the week for here, see. He gives me the license number. It’s New York.”

“He didn’t say who he was?” the Chief asked.

“He didn’t say nothin’.”

“You heard his voice clearly?”

Wop looked up with a sneer. “He’s got a handkerchief over the phone, maybe. He had a funny voice. No guy’s goin’ to use his right one callin’ for a job like that.”

“And he trusted you to take the money and then do the job?” The Chief sounded sceptical.

“Why not? I didn’t know him, but he knew me, see. I ain’t got a chance if I welch. An’ if one of the boys ever hears I’m doin’ the double-cross—” His face was expressive.

“Who was it recommended you?” the Chief asked. “What mug in New York, huh?”

“He didn’t say.”

“You want this guy here or in Riverside?” Olsen asked.

The Chief shrugged. “Turn him over to them if that’s all he knows. To hell with it.” He got up worriedly. “Thanks for bringing him down. Hope I can do something for you guys some day. Go down to Mickey’s and have a drink. Charge it to me.”

The cops shrugged, jerked their small prisoner to his feet and strolled out. Olsen turned in the doorway. “If he’s holdin’ out—”

“I don’t think he is,” the Chief said.

“Okay.” They eased out, and the Chief held his hands out to Mark, palms up.

“We might use him to identify the voice, but I have an idea our murderer was smart enough to disguise it pretty well,” Mark said.

“You think the murderer hired this guy, huh?”

“I think so, and when he discovered Idell was coming down in the car, it was too late to do anything. So he sat tight and figured another way to get Link.”

“Yeah, maybe,” the Chief said. “Yeah, that’s it all right. Let’s go up to that damned house again. These rich people are screwy as hell. They’re bumpin’ each other off like flies.”

Mark grinned. He stuffed his pipe while they walked to the car. Outside, the full force of the morning sun hit him, and he began to sweat. The Chief groaned and mopped his forehead with a soiled handkerchief. “Let’s take my car,” he said. “I got a cooler in it. Wait—I gotta call Doc.”

“When they got under way, Mark said, “What is this about Leona?”

“Dunno. Bayless called up. Henderson heard nothing all night. The Queen goes to wake the dame when she don’t come down for breakfast at nine-thirty. She raps hell out of the door and nothing happens. She goes in then. The door ain’t locked or nothing. There’s this Taylor dame, spread on the bed, naked as a peeled banana and her figure all ruined with a knife through her breast. There ain’t much blood ‘cause she did most of it inside, Bayless said.” He sighed. “That damned print man’ll cuss me for dragging him back here all the way.”

Mark said, “Maybe we won’t need him, Chief.”

The Chief turned his head in spite of the fact he was crossing the busy highway. “You got an idea, huh? Me, I got lots of ‘em. Farman is my answer still.”

“If I can figure a few things out, I’ll have an idea,” Mark said. “Let it ride until we get there.”

“They all know about it,” the Chief told him. “The Queen squealed like a sliced pig.”

They were silent until they rolled up to the house and went inside. It was cooler in there, and Mark felt grateful for the money that made such superb air-conditioning possible. They trailed into the front room. Bayless nodded worriedly. He had the family and servants in a group.

“I been questioning them,” he said. “It don’t make sense, Chief.” He sounded aggrieved.

“Okay,” the Chief said. “Doc’ll be here in a few minutes. Take him up.” He sat down and mopped his forehead. “Any idea what time she was killed?”

“Right on the dot,” the patrolman said. “It looks like a struggle went on. It’s tore up some in there. An’ the electric clock on the table by the bed was jerked loose from the socket. It stopped at four minutes after two.”

“Hell, that’s something.”

“Yeah,” Bayless said. “That’s the trouble. At two o’clock these guys—” he indicated Jeffers and Farman— “was playing bridge with these dames.” He indicated Maybelle and Idell.

“At two this morning?” the Chief asked. He looked at Idell.

She smiled wearily. Mark thought she looked utterly worn out, and there were shadows of tragedy in her dark eyes and in the darkness beneath them. “We were restless, I’m afraid. Clint and I were down here talking and decided on some bridge. We went upstairs to ask anyone if they wanted to play. Maybelle and Chunk were still awake, so they came down.”

“The others were asleep?” the Chief asked.

“I was,” Grant told him. “I didn’t even hear them come up.”

“Leona didn’t answer,” Idell said. “She was sleeping when I looked in. Uncle Frank was asleep.”

“Very much so,” he confirmed. “I use a sleeping potion, you know. I gave one to Leona, too.” He seemed as haggard as the rest, as worried and fearful and as utterly tired of all the mystery and tragedy that stalked on bloody feet through the house.

“What time you start this game?” the Chief asked.

“About twelve,” Idell told him.

“What time you break up?”

“At three,” she said.

Jeffers said, “You can prove it by Henderson. He sat up there, and every time anyone moved he took it down in his notebook.” He didn’t sound at all put out about it.

The Chief rose. “Let’s go up and see.”

Mark smiled at Idell and followed the Chief into the hall and upstairs. They paused on the landing. The chair Henderson had used, a straight-backed occasional chair, was still beside the stairs.

“Lord,” the Chief said, “if that’s so, then they all got alibis.”

“All but Grant,” Mark said thoughtfully.

“Hell!” the Chief said. “And he says she left the door open between!”

“And then there is Mr. Manders,” Mark suggested.

“Yeah. I’d like to take that cast off his leg to see if it’s still as bad as he says. He could have climbed down and around. Come in through Jeffers’ room, huh?”

“Maybe.” Mark was silent. “That’s everybody but Queen and Sing. Sing had no purpose that I can see, and Queen very little motive.”

The Chief said, “I thought it was that Farman guy. Unless we got two killers running loose.”

“We might have,” Mark said.

The Chief sighed wearily. “What about the Cartwright dame?” he asked. “Maybe she came prowling.”

Mark grinned. “I can alibi her, I’m afraid, Chief.”

The Chief looked at him and laughed. “Like that, huh? Learn anything?”

“Yeah,” Mark said, “I learned why Jeffers married her.”

“And why the Major went for her, huh?”

“That too—if it’s true.”

They went into the room. The door had been closed but not locked. Inside, it was very much like Link’s room, only reversed. The windows were closed and it was cool, but somehow the scent of blood and death was thick in Mark’s nostrils. Leona lay on the bed. Mark stared down at her for a long moment, his breath throbbing in his throat.

She had been beautiful. He could not remember having ever seen a body which came closer to perfection. As a strip-tease dancer, if her act could have been termed so badly, she must have been a grand success. Even in death she gave the feeling of perfect rhythm. Her legs were long and smooth muscled; there was not an ounce of superfluous flesh anywhere on her white body. Her breasts, judging from the unmarred one, were firm even with the collapse of life taking their movement of breathing from them. Her face, beneath its halo of hair now dull with the glorious lights gone from it, was soft and quiet in repose. Her eyelids were closed, and they looked violet, so thin and fragile were they. Her lashes were long and swept far down her cheeks. One hand trailed across the edge of the bed; the other lay crooked near her head. She looked peacefully, utterly asleep. But for that one marring thing, that one jarring note.

An ivory-handled nail file, the kind that go in dresser sets, was plunged to the hilt just below the center and to the right of her left breast. A small amount of blood had flowed from the wound, and had trailed a crimson line, now darkening brownish red across the perfection of her stomach. One foot was still hooked beneath the sheet, as if she had been sleeping half on top, half beneath the covering.

Mark said, “She was asleep when it happened. Look at her face. She didn’t do any struggling.”

“Look at the room,” the Chief said. Near the bed the floor and nighstand looked as if a cyclone had hit them. The rugs were wrinkled up as if by scuffling feet. The end table was turned so it leaned against the wall. The lamp was hanging by its cord. The electric clock lay face up on the floor, pulled from its socket. The water carafe had spilled, and water still puddled on the floor near the bed.

“And with all the racket this would have made, Henderson didn’t hear it?” Mark asked.

“He might have been asleep.”

“But he wasn’t.” Mark lit his pipe and surveyed the scene. He went to the dresser and pointed to its top. “Here’s where the weapon came from. It’s one of a set here.” He strolled on, and stopped by the door that connected the room to Clinton Jeffers’. “Where in hell’s the key?” He tried the knob, utilizing his handkerchief. The door was locked.

“Maybe it’s on the other side,” the Chief suggested.

“Ever see connecting doors where the man had the key on his side?” Mark demanded.

“Maybe she wanted it that way,” the Chief grinned. “Remember the powder on his sheets?”

“That was Myra’s,” Mark said. “I’ll bet a double Scotch.”

“When, for gosh sakes?”

“The night of the murder. Check on powders if she won’t admit it.”

“Yeah. I guess. But what the hell about this?”

“Someone,” Mark said, “tried to make himself an alibi, or tried to create an alibi for someone.”

“You mean that clock could have been set for any time and jerked loose, huh?”

“And the struggle very quietly made. It’s amateurish,” Mark said. “This isn’t the really confusing touch of our killer. He’s slipping.”

Dr. Nesbit bustled into the room, sighed when he looked at Leona and shook his head. “That is a pity,” he said.

“Yeah, ain’t it?” the Chief admitted.

Mark went out of the room and downstairs, leaving them there.