Murder Most Strange (10 page)

She didn't know anything about the other clerk.

Higgins let her out and looked around the store,
which was old and run-down and cluttered; this was a block of tired
old businesses, a cleaners', a cut-rate dress shop, a
hole-in-the-wall doughnut shop, a music store offering LP records
below cost. Landers was poking around in the back room. Higgins went
behind the counter at the rear of the store and found the phone in a
little dispensing office there. He called the office.

"Art? Is that Coffman woman still there? Well,
would you ask her . . ."

After an interval Hackett reported, "She was
surprised to hear the other clerk had quit her job. Says she'd been
there about four years, since Parmenter's wife died. Coffman hadn't
been in the store for about two weeks, so she didn't know she'd left.
She's not sure about the woman's name but it was Mac something, she
thinks."

They looked around, in all the drawers and files in
the stockroom, but there didn't seem to be any correspondence, either
business or private; nothing but a shabby store, a clutter of stock
this sort and that, cosmetics, a little stationery, a tobacco
counter, men's shaving lotion and razor blades, all the miscellany
expectable in such a place. "It's a funny one," said
Landers, "by what Art said. Nothing much to get hold of."

"This other woman probably knew something about
him, working here that long." They looked further and found some
boxes of canceled checks on a shelf in the storeroom; among them were
checks made out to Alice McLennan, all in the amount of four hundred
and fifty dollars. "Piddling salary," commented Higgins.
"This is probably her." The checks were drawn on a Bank of
America five blocks down Alvarado, and marked for deposit only. "So
she's got an account there too. Let's see if we can locate her."

At the bank, the badges produced cooperation. Miss
Alice McLennan was one of their depositors, and her address was on
Baxter Street.

It was an ancient eight-unit apartment, and she lived
at the front upstairs. There was no response to the bell, and Higgins
said, "Working-class neighborhood. She won't be rich—she'll
have gotten herself another job. Maybe somebody here will know
where."

Downstairs, the left front door bore a sign,
Manageress. The woman who answered that bell was pleasant-faced,
politely helpful. "Miss McLennan, well, she's gone off for a
little vacation. Somewhere up in the mountains, she said. She said
she'd be back next week sometime. Well, I couldn't say exactly where.
Now Mrs. Bickerstaff might know, she lives across the hall from Miss
McLennan and they're great friends, but of course she's gone to stay
with her daughter, help with the sick baby, and I don't know when she
might be home—it's someplace in West Covina, I don't know the
address."

"I see," said Higgins. "Well, we're
anxious to talk to Miss McLennan. It's about her former employer. I
wonder, when you do see her, if you'd ask her to call this number. Or
if Mrs. Bickerstaff comes back—"

"Oh, surely," she said amiably, taking the
card. "Business of some kind. I know she'd just quit her job.
She said she really needed a vacation, and she just took Mickey and
drove off to the mountains. Somewhere."

"Mickey."

"Her little fox
terrier. She's just crazy about that dog—a nice little dog."

* * *

"And so," said Higgins, "unless she
can tell us something, I wouldn't know where to go on it. There
aren't any personal effects at the store, no correspondence. It looks
as if the place hadn't been cleaned much or straightened out in
years." It was after four-thirty; he and Grace had stayed on at
the wedding reception.

"It didn't look as if the house had been entered
at all," said Hackett, taking his glasses off to polish them.
"Scarne called just before I left last night. They came across a
thousand bucks in cash in one of the kitchen canisters—"

"
¡Como!
"
said Mendoza. "First place a burglar would look. He was supposed
to be a shrewd miser?"

"It shapes up," said Hackett, breathing on
his glasses and polishing absently, "that somebody just drove up
there, spotted him in the back yard, walked down and beat him to a
pulp. And they can't have made much noise, none of the neighbors
heard a thing. That's a damned queer little backwater of a place,
tucked away like that. They were all home too, but it was natural
enough, all of them had reasons why they weren't noticing anything,
everybody—so to speak—doing their own thing, on a nice quiet
Sunday. But there's just nowhere to go on it if we can't get a line
on the people he knew. Damn it, there wasn't even an address book at
the house."

"Or the store," said Higgins.

"This former employee may give us something."

"Mmh, yes," said Mendoza, "a shapeless
little thing. And it'll be a day or two before we get an autopsy
report." He picked up the manila folder from his desk blotter.
"What we have got, just now, is the autopsy report on Marion
Cooper."

He sat back and lit a new cigarette, and blew smoke
at the ceiling. At this end of a day, he needed a shave, but looked
as sharply tailored and neat as when he'd left home, the tie tidily
centered, correct quarter inch of cuff showing. "And what it
tells us is, the fatal old combination of pills and booze. She'd had
about six drinks—scotch and soda—and something like fifteen
phenobarbital capsules, and
terminar
.
I suppose we'll get a lab report on that apartment sometime, they do
take their time. And she'd had sexual intercourse fairly recently
before death."

"Oh," said Hackett alertly, and sat up.
"Wall?"

"I really don't think so, Art. He's the simple
male animal, there is no guile in him. I think he was telling me the
truth."

Mendoza brooded over the manila folder. "She
wasn't promiscuous, I don't think, but—the good-time girl. It
didn't mean that much to her." He thought that over, and added,
"Maybe she'd have gotten down to being promiscuous in another
couple of years. As it was, Wall said she had other boy friends.
Maybe she ran into an old flame that night, at one of those bars."

"Yes," said Hackett, "we haven't
looked at those yet, have we? Well, a job for the night watch."
He stood up and stretched. "At least we've got Nick safely
married off. Nice wedding—pretty girl. I just hope we don't get a
spate of business while we're shorthanded."

"Don't invite
trouble," said Higgins. "We're overdue for a heat wave, and
that always sends the homicide rate up."

* * *

Whether they got called out or not, the night watch
would be busy, the day men leaving jobs for them—on Dapper Dan's
latest victim, the new homicide. Piggott said, "I'll go to the
hospital. You can go barhopping." Piggott was, of course, a
teetotaler.

At the hospital, of course, he heard exactly what
he'd expected to hear from Marcia Currier. She was sitting up in bed
looking a little pale, but otherwise all right, and Evelyn Frost was
there. "Honestly," said Marcia, "honestly! I didn't
hesitate a minute—he was so polite and apologetic for bothering me,
he seemed so worried about his sister, it was all so plausible and,
well, I mean, broad daylight, about four o'clock on Sunday afternoon!
I didn't even have time to scream—"

She offered the expectable description. Tall, dark,
clean shaven, early thirties, the nicely tailored suit, white shirt
and tie. She said she'd be glad to come in and look at mug shots.

Piggott, either because or in spite of his religious
convictions, tended to be a pessimist; this time he had solid reason.
Almost certainly Marcia Currier wasn't going to pick out any mug
shots.

Conway and Schenke hit Barney's Bar and Grill first,
and ran into some pay dirt, but meager. It was a typical third-class
bar, the dim lighting disguising the shabbiness of the cheaply
upholstered booths, the scratched and stained tables, even the
ill-adjusted TV suspended in one corner. It was noisy and friendly.
They talked to the bartender and he pointed out some regulars he
remembered Marion fraternizing with: a young couple who said sure,
they dropped in here a few nights a week, and sure, they knew Marion.
They were shocked to hear she was dead. They pointed out a pair of
men they'd seen her sitting with: Conway and Schenke talked to them.
Bill Voorhees, Joe Otero: they were frank, shocked, puzzled,
unhelpful. She'd seemed like a nice girl; they'd just talked with her
in here, neither had ever dated her. They shared an apartment a
couple of blocks away; they were both orderlies at the Beverly Glen
Hospital. And everybody said that Marion hadn't been in here on
Thursday night.

"Around and around we go," said Schenke
philosophically. "I hope that hair-trigger heister isn't out
again."

Conway just growled. His best girl worked nine to
five, and he hadn't even seen her in two months. They went a block up
to the Ace-High Bar, which was a replica of Barney's except that it
was bigger and had color TV. There, they found the barmaid who had
known Marion. Her name was Amy Hall. She was astonished to hear about
Marion, not apparently especially grieved; she said readily that,
yeah, Marion had been in last Thursday night. She'd left earlier than
usual. Before that she'd been talking with a couple of the regulars,
and they were here now; she pointed out two women sitting at a small
table alone. Conway and Schenke went over and showed the badges.

That pair stuck out as homosexuals: one hard-faced
female in a pantsuit, with an offhand manner and cold eyes, one
vacant-eyed giggler. They said indifferently they knew Marion, and
she'd been here last Thursday. The giggler said, "She left with
that Italiano guy, I think they said something about going somewhere
to dance. Oh, his name's Galloopsi or something. I only heard it
once."

They went back to the barmaid. "Oh," she
said, "well, I didn't notice if she left with anybody—I just
saw her waving at me from the door, and it was early, about nine
o'clock. What? Well, I guess she'd had about three scotches, the time
she was here, call it from seven on. An Italian guy? That could be
Tony Galluci, she knew him, sure."

"Do you know where he works, lives?"

She laughed. "He's one of the custodians up at
the Police Academy in Elysian Park. I got no idea where he lives."

"Well, for God's sake," said Conway
outside. He took a grateful breath of night air, out of the steamy
atmosphere at the Ace-High. "That's a little switch. Shall we
leave the rest of it to the day men?"

Bob Schenke yawned. "Night's still fairly young.
Let's work it a little more, Rich."

The academy, of course, was shut down for the night,
but most people had phones. They found him in the Central book, over
on Burnside Avenue above Olympic. It was an old apartment building,
and he was at home. He was around thirty, superficially handsome with
a dark narrow face and patent-leather hair. At least he was very much
at ease with police, rubbing shoulders with them every day.

He was surprised to hear about Marion; he said
several times he'd be good and damned; he was sorry, she'd been a fun
girl. Not that he'd known her very well, he'd only dated her a couple
of times.

"Including," said Conway, "last
Thursday night."

"Yeah, that's right. I ran into her at the
Ace-High, we had a few drinks, and then she had a yen to go dancing
somewhere. We went to a place out on Olympic that has a combo, but of
course we both had to go to work next day, I guess it was about a
quarter of twelve I dropped her off at her place. No, I didn't go in
with her."

"But you'd already had a heavy necking session
in the car, hadn't you? And I do mean heavy," said Conway.

Galluci wasn't annoyed or
embarrassed at all. "Yeah, that's right. So what, it's a free
country. Matter of fact it was the first time, like I say it was only
the third time I'd been out with her. It's a shame, her dying like
that—she was a real fun girl."

* * *

Mendoza uttered a sharp laugh and pushed Conway's
report across the desk to Hackett and Higgins. "
¿Pues
y qué?
I really don't see any reason for
Galluci to want to murder Marion—just the easy lay. The more you
look at it, it's a very queer setup."

"I don't suppose Cooper could be right?"
said Hackett. "An accident of some sort—it'd be the simple
explanation. If she took a last drink to settle her down, reached for
the aspirin without turning on the light—if she had that stuff 
around—" He stopped.

"Don't gibber,
chico
,"
said Mendoza. He brushed his mustache back and forth irritably.
"About fifteen capsules? And it was in the scotch.”

"Yes, I just remembered that."

"Well, I want to look around that pharmacy some
more. I had one thought, Luis. When Parmenter was said to be so
greedy for money, it could be he'd been dealing in the pills—he
could acquire the stuff all legal. And any unusual amounts might show
on his books."

"Possible," said Mendoza. "It would
also probably be known in the neighborhood. To, I needn't tell you,
the kids. You can go and ask."