Murder Most Strange (11 page)

Everybody else was out hunting heisters. On impulse,
after Hackett and Higgins left, he went downstairs and drove over to
take a look at the funny little backwater. Hope Lane. It was quiet as
death, all right. Just the twelve little houses, looking prim and
somnolent in the early sun. At the very end, at the house next to
Parmenter's, a dark young woman was out working in a front flower
bed. She looked curiously at the Ferrari as he turned around in the
dead end.

He came back to the office and reread Conway's
report. It conveyed nothing new to him. He went down the hall for
coffee, and was rereading the autopsy report on Marion when Sergeant
Lake buzzed him.

"They want somebody down in Echo Park," he
said. "I don't know on what. There are a couple of squads there
now."

"
¿Qué es esto?
"
Resignedly Mendoza got up, automatically yanking down his cuffs, and
picked up the Homburg. "Don't tell me there's a body in the
lake."

"They didn't say." Lake had temporarily
given up his diet, and was bulging slightly in his uniform. He looked
bored, picking up his paperback.

Echo Park wasn't that much of a park: call it eight
or nine acres, and most of it the lake; and it didn't attract the
custom it once had. There were boats to rent, little putt-putt motor
boats with canvas tops, but such unsophisticated pursuits were no
longer popular with the younger generation, and there wasn't much
else there but a hamburger stand, pretty scenery around the edge of
the lake.

You couldn't drive into the park; he parked in a red
zone along Echo Park Avenue and walked down. There were two squads in
a red zone down from there, and down the little slope, past one of
the cement paths leading into the park, were two uniformed men
standing at the shore of the lake under a big pine tree.

As he started toward them, he remembered that body in
the lake, some while ago. An offbeat case. Occasionally they came
along.

The two uniformed men were Barrett and Zimmerman. It
was probably Gomez's day off. "I don't know if you'll think we
handled this right, Lieutenant," said Barrett, looking
disturbed. "But we didn't want to call you out unless there was
really something to it, you see, and so we did a little looking on
our own. I called for a backup because—well, it could be something
and then again it couldn't, see what I mean. But we both think now
there damn well could be something to it. Look at this." He
gestured. "The fellow who runs the boat concession spotted it,
when he came to open up about ten A.M."

Under the tree, on the largely bare earth where grass
wouldn't spread in the deep shade, was a little collection of
objects. There was a large green canvas tote bag, with a ball of
green wool spilling out of its top, and a pair of white-framed
sunglasses lay near the wool. A foot or so away from the bag was a
half-knitted green sweater, with a pair of knitting needles still in
it where the last stitches had been taken. All around the area in
front of the bag, near to the solid thick trunk of the tree, were
little scuffle marks in the bare earth; and on the bag itself was a
large splotch of blood—a good deal of blood trailing out on the
canvas in a series of little sprayed droplets from the largest
splotch.

"Now that's blood," said Barrett, "and
not just from a nose-bleed or something. It kind of looks as if
there'd been a struggle of some kind here, would you say?"

"I might," said Mendoza, looking at the
exhibits with interest.

"Well, I tried not to disturb it, but I looked
in the bag. There's just a handkerchief and some Life Savers in it,
and there was this." He handed over a letter. It was in an
envelope addressed to Miss Eileen Mooney at an address on Clinton
Street. "It's just a little note from some girl thanking her for
a birthday present, but the address—it's just up in the next block,
and by that time Zimmerman was here so we both went up to look. No
answer, and we talked to a neighbor, a Mrs. Lally. It's a four-unit
place, this apartment is downstairs left, and this other downstairs
tenant knows the girls. Sisters, Rose and Eileen Mooney—and she
says Rose is at work but Eileen came down to the park this morning to
sit and knit, about eight-thirty. She hasn't seen her come back.
Well, in case the girl had been taken sick or something—I don't
know if you think it was the right thing to do, but—I got in. I got
a back window open, and the place is empty, nobody there. All clean
and neat."

"So this Eileen—" said Zimmerman. "That
is blood, after all. And there isn't a soul down here, hasn't been
while we've been here. It looks as if somebody could have, well,
snatched
her."

"
¡Ay de mi!
"
said Mendoza. "I'll agree with you, something certainly happened
here, boys. And I'd like to know if that's human blood. And something
about Eileen. Where does the sister work?"

"Big restaurant up in Hollywood. By what the
neighbor said they both work there, but different shifts."
Barrett added the name.

"What's the address on Clinton? All right. There
just could be something damn serious here, and I think we'll find
out. One of you call up a lab unit, hand this stuff over, and tell
them I want an analysis on the blood pronto. I'll see the sister. You
might go asking around"—there were narrow residential streets
adjoining the park—"whether anybody heard anything,
screams—you never know."

"Okay," and Barrett started back to his
squad.

"I'm glad you don't think we jumped the gun,"
said Zimmerman uneasily.

"No. Something happened here," repeated
Mendoza, staring at the blood splotch soberly. "Maybe we got on
it soon enough—we'll see. Call in anything you get to my office."
He didn't lose time getting back to the Ferrari.

The restaurant where the Mooney sisters worked was a
big one in the middle of Hollywood, almost opposite the Crossroads of
the World shopping complex. It was a middle-priced place with a good
reputation, not fancy, but very far from being a cheap joint. There
was a square foyer where a cashier presided over a glass-cased
counter displaying cigars, mints; the woman there was fat and
gray-haired.

He waited for a couple of departing customers to get
out of the way, asked for Rose Mooney, showed the badge. "It's a
little family trouble. Is there anywhere I could talk to her
privately?"

"I don't know." She looked around vaguely.
"She's in the back dining room—through to the left."

Mendoza went back there, to a large square room past
a dark bar, and accosted the first waitress he saw, neat in
black-and-white uniform. "I'm looking for Rose Mooney, could
you—"

"I'm Rose Mooney," she said. She was a
small pert-looking young woman about twenty-five, with an uptilted
nose and reddish-blond hair. She stared at the badge. "What's it
about? Police—is something wrong with Eileen? What—"

"Is there somewhere we can talk privately?"

She said, "We're not supposed—I'm about due
for a break—I guess we could—" She went and spoke to another
waitress, led him to the last booth at the end of the room. "Now,
nobody wants to worry you unless there's good reason," said
Mendoza, "but you'd better know what showed up a while ago."
He told her about the curious little jumble of evidence in the park,
the blood; she listened, breathing quickly, leaning forward.

“
Oh, my God," she said. "But what could
have— Yes, she went to the park—" She put both hands to her
head, almost as if to hold it on. "Oh, my God. We usually work
the day shift together, but Eileen's on the night shift just
temporary, to oblige the manager—there's a girl off sick. So I've
been leaving the car for her—not safe, taking the bus at night. I'm
on eight to four, and she was on four to midnight. Just the last
week. And since the weather's been so nice, she liked to walk down
and sit in the park, mornings, and knit or read. She was going to
this morning."

"Your neighbor saw her go."

"But what could have— Oh, God," she said
suddenly, and drew a long shaky breath. "Oh, if she just hadn't
had that fight with Randy! So senseless—I just thought, my God, it
could be that awful Bartovic fellow! It could be—he'd been after
her—"

"Now calm down and tell me about it straight,"
said Mendoza sharply.

"Oh, my God. She—she'd been going steady with
Randy Penner a long while, he's a really nice guy, and crazy about
her, but she had this stupid fight with him—last week—because he
lost a hundred dollars at poker—and broke up with him. And this
other one, Rudy Bartovic, he'd pestered her for a date before. I
think she went out with him because she was still mad at Randy—it
was last Friday night, her night off—but when she got home she said
never again, she'd nearly gotten raped and he was mad she fought
back—"

"All right. Do you know where he lives?"

"That's just it, why I thought of him, he lives
right on the same block a couple of houses down—with his mother and
a couple of younger brothers—and he could know about Eileen being
in the park—could have seen her—"

"Now, Miss Mooney. Just to be sure about this,
I'd like you to let me drive you home so you can look to see if any
of her clothes are missing. We have to be sure she hasn't gone
somewhere of her own volition."

"But where would she—why—"

"We have to be sure." He waited while she
saw the manager, got her handbag, and took her out to the Ferrari. On
the way downtown he asked, "Can you give me a description of
your sister?"

"She—we look a lot alike. She's five two, she
weighs a hundred and ten, her hair's the same color as mine and her
eyes a little greener. She's twenty-two," said Rose wretchedly.

He parked on Clinton Street in front of the
apartment.

"Let's see if your car's here." It was, a
middle-aged Datsun inside the locked garage. "She'd have her
keys with her?"

"Well, of course. She'd lock the place when she
left."

"You go and look at her clothes. I'll be back.
Where does Bartovic live?" She pointed out the house a little
way up the street.

He walked up there and pushed the doorbell. After an
interval the door opened and a shapelessly fat woman in a dirty
housedress faced him. "Is Rudy Bartovic here?" She shook
her head, and he showed her the badge. "Do you know where he
is?"

"Police," she said. "He's in some
trouble again, maybe? But Mr. Reiner said he wouldn't do nothing if
Rudy paid it back—" She looked frightened. "I'm afraid to
cross him—you can't do nothing with him—he come home drunk again
last night, and like to snap my head off this morning just 'cause I
asked was he goin' to the employment agency—just slammed out—"

"What time?" asked Mendoza peremptorily.
"Does he have a car?"

"About eight o'clock,
I guess. Yeah—he just traded a couple weeks ago for a different
one, I don't know what—"

* * *

When Landers and Palliser came in at. one o'clock
with a hot suspect for a heist, Mendoza was just putting down the
phone. Hearing them, he came out and told them to stash the captive
away a while. "You'd better hear about this thing. It just could
be—it looks more like it the more we know—we've got an abduction
and rape on our hands." He told them about Eileen. "Those
patrolmen used their heads, but we were late on it, of course. This
Bartovic sounds like a mean hombre. He's been working at a Shell
station, and his ex-boss, Bill Reiner, says he lifted a hundred bucks
from the register and he fired him. Says he's hot-tempered and lazy,
he's glad to be shut of him, but he agreed not to charge him if
Bartovic paid him back. He hasn't so far."

"And right in the same neighborhood," said
Palliser, "he could have seen the girl on her way to the park."

"
Exactamente
.
That place isn't crowded at any time, and at  nine in the
morning it'd be empty. Nobody around to hear her scream. He could
have knocked her out, roughed her up a little, dragged her up to a
car on the street. The sister says none of her clothes are missing. I
got the lab on it fast, and they now tell us that is human blood."

"Bartovic got a pedigree?" asked Landers.

"A little one. Possession as a juvenile,
attempted B. and E."

"And my God, if he's high on something God knows
what he might do to her," said Palliser.

"I got the plate number from Sacramento just
now—it's an old T-bird. There'll be an A.P.B. out on him in five
minutes."

Mendoza sat back and lit a
cigarette with a little snap of his lighter. "Let's just hope we
catch up to him fast."

* * *

About a quarter of two it occurred to Alison that the
twins would be home presently, the school bus letting them off down
the hill at the gate, and she might walk down to meet them. She'd
been painting most of the day. She'd never had a real studio before,
but the little room upstairs next to the master suite was really
ideal space to keep an easel up and shelves for all the odds and
ends. She looked at the canvas critically; she'd tried to get the
view out over the hill, the twisting shapes of the old live oaks. On
the whole she was fairly satisfied with it. She went down the hall.
Just up by the head of the spiral staircase she glanced into the
nursery. Luisa Mary was slumbering peacefully in her crib after
lunch, and Mairi was sitting by the window knitting, her spectacles
on the end of her nose. Downstairs, she had a glimpse of three of the
cats—Bast, Nefertite and Sheba—in a complex tangle in Luis's
armchair, sleeping off the morning's exercise. E1 Senor was brooding
on top of the credenza in the entrance hall, his front paws folded in
tightly.