Crime on My Hands (23 page)

“And two-thirds!” Wallingford spat.

Sheriff Callahan grinned. “Guess that's the best I can get. I'll take it.” He chuckled. “Woulda settled for six bucks. Guess I got the best of ya.”

“Ha!” Wallingford snapped. “I would've paid fifty.”

Nine-thirty a.m. Perhaps Carla wasn't up yet. Somebody had to tell her, and now was a good time, while the bargain hunters settled details in the sheriff's office.

I went to the hotel, where a quartet of Los Angeles reporters leaped at me.

“How's it going, George?”

“Catch him yet?”

“Give us something for your fans. You should see the mail, since we announced that you were going to solve it!”

“You've got the female vote, George. And a whole gallery of pictures.”

I waved them back. “There are no new developments,” I said formally. “A startling announcement is expected momentarily.”

“Oh, come, George. Give us something. The city desk will chew my ears if I don't turn in something.”

“All right, boys. Since my press agent put me out on a limb, I may as well go all the way. You can say this. The same person killed all three victims.”

They yawned.

“What can I say?” I asked reasonably. “We haven't caught the killer. We may or may not catch him. There you have the truth.”

“You can't expect us to print that, George.”

“Why not? The truth would be a novelty to your readers.”

“Look, Sanders, we're not concerned very much over how you do on this. We're giving you a chance to appear in a good light. The announcement of your entrance into the case as a sleuth caused a mild sensation. You're on a spot with your public. If you don't deliver, you'll lose popularity. If you'll be nice to us, we'll gloss over your failure, if you fail. But if you're not, we can sure as hell kill you off with hardening of the adjectives.”

There was truth, all right. It raised right up and took a sock at my bank roll.

“Fail?” I said coldly. “I won't fail. I have no information for you except the usual junk about an early arrest. But if you insist, I'll give you a prediction. I'll have the killer nailed to a warrant day after tomorrow.”

“That's professional suicide, George! You don't dare, unless you have a lot of dope you haven't told us. It's just suicide!”

“I was driven to it,” I said grimly. “I have a hunch, and I'm playing it. So far I've just been playing. Now I'm playing a hunch.”

“Well, if you want to take that chance, we'll headline it. Let the contracts fall where they may.”

“The Sanders luck will bring me through,” I said. “The company is leaving now, boys. We are to be accompanied by the deputy sheriff. I suppose you can call it technical arrest. You can make something of that.”

“Where do we find this deputy?”

I told them. They flocked to the door. “We'll go as easy as possible, George,” one called back.

“Is Miss Folsom in?” I asked Lazarus Fortescue.

“You want to know something?” he asked. “I set here an' I look. I see lots of people, over ten years. All kinds. But I ain't never seen any dopier people than you guys. Where's all this wild Hollywood carryin' on?”

“We've had three murders.”

“Ain't what I mean. That could happen to ladies' sewin' circle. Good thing, too. What I mean is everbody got a room to hisself an' stays in it. An' when you go up to see one o' those babes, you just talk. Tommy told me. He listened.”

“Is he studying to be a press agent?”

“Nope. He just listens 'cause he knows he'll get the hell whaled out of him if he gets caught. He sure got hell yestiddy, from me. I spanked him, an' he can't come here for a week. Don't hold with stealin'. Listenin's fun, but stealin's means spankin's. Even if it was just an old flat tin can, he had no call to take it.”

It was probably only thirty seconds before I could trust myself to speak, but it seemed like thirty years. I said very casually, “Odd thing to steal. Where is it, do you know? I'd like to see it.”

“Oh, I got it here. Figgered somebody would ask.”

He put it on the desk. It was the missing reel, unharmed.

“Where did he get this?”

“He says he don't remember. I told him to take it back, an' he says he can't think which room it was. I whaled him, an' he still wouldn't tell. I don't think you could make him tell now. Stubborn as a mule.”

“This is vitally important,” I said. “Please bring him here and let me talk to him.”

“If you just stick your head out the door, guess you'll see him hangin' around till I let him in.”

Tommy was there. He came in reluctantly, and made a face at his grandfather. “I hate you!” he said.

“Now, Tommy, I'll smack you.”

“I don't care,” Tommy growled, “I hate you anyway.”

I broke into this domestic scene. “Tommy, you took that tin can from a room. I want you to show me which room.”

He scowled at me. “Been whipped already.”

“Nobody will whip you, Tommy. I'll even give you a dollar if you'll show me.”

“Don't want a dollar, want a quarter.”

“If I give you a quarter, will you show me?”

He eyed me craftily. “Maybe.”

“What do you mean, maybe?”

“Ain't got the quarter yet.”

I gave him a quarter. He bit it, tucked it into his pocket. “When I show you, gimme another one?”

“Yes, I'll give you another.”

‘Less see it,” he demanded.

“What do you do,” I asked his grandfather, “lie to him constantly? I never saw such a suspicious child.”

“His ma told him 'twouldn't hurt when th' doctor set his leg. Shouldn'ta lied to him. Can't blame the kid.”

“Well, here's the other quarter, Tommy. It's yours when you tell me where you got the can.”

I tucked the film under my arm and followed him. He led me to Wanda's door. “It was in the wastebasket,” he whispered. “I didn't think it was stealin'. Gimme my quarter.”

I gave it to him, and he ran downstairs.

Carla finished her make-up after she admitted me, and I watched her mirrored reflection. She didn't know about Paul. That was obvious. Her dark eyes were merry, her skin clear and milky.

“So we're going home,” she said.

“Yes, and I came to offer you a ride.”

Her eyes sparkled at me in the mirror. “Thanks, but I have a ride.”

“Carla, I have something to tell you. You won't like it. Paul is dead.”

She caught her breath. All color drained from her face. She fixed her eyes on mine in the mirror. She didn't move for a long time. Finally, she whispered, “When?”

“Last night, about eight o'clock.”

She seemed to relax a little.

“How?”

“He was shot by the same gun that killed Flynne.”

She whirled on me. “No!” she gasped. “That's too much. That's just too much!”

“Aren't you taking the death of your fiance pretty casually?”

“How did you know?” she demanded. “He told you, I suppose. He wasn't taking any chances. Yes, I'm taking it casually.”

“Maybe you'd better tell me the whole story now. Or would you rather tell it to the police?”

Her mouth twisted with bitterness. “I guess I have to tell you. I had to tell Paul. I hope you don't pull the same trick.”

I waited a long time before she spoke again.

“I told you I was a little girl from Brooklyn, George. When I was almost sixteen, I met Sev Flynne. I'd never met anybody like him before, so full of dreams, so gentle and ambitious at the same time. We fell in love, and we got tired of whispering on bus tops and in hallways. We wanted to get married. But I was under age, and I knew my family would never consent. But he explained to me that marriage was never any more than a contract between two people and God. He made it sound very beautiful. I agreed to do what he wanted.”

She paused to twist a little smile. She was lovely.

“We went out on a ferry boat,” she went on, “and climbed up on the top deck. There we made our solemn vows. ‘I, Severance, take thee, Mildred' – that was my name – ‘to be my lawful' and so on. It was wonderful. And all the new experiences were wonderful, too. We had enough money to rent a hall bedroom, and lost ourselves in New York. I changed my name then, because I knew my family would be looking for me. I got in touch with them, three years later. May I have a cigarette?”

I lighted two, gave her one. She nodded, and went on, “He wanted to be an engineer, and was working out his tuition in school. I went to work, and we lived on my sixteen dollars a week. I was a housewife – I was a
wife
, a woman – and I cried, I was so happy, at times. I worshiped him, and he seemed to worship me.

“One day he came home and said he wasn't going back. He had flunked a test, and there wasn't, he said, much future in engineering. The future was in aviation. He went out to a field and washed airplanes for flying lessons. He was going to be a great pilot, and he read all the flying stories he could get. He wrote a poem once, called it ‘Song of the Ace', and it was printed in an aviation magazine. They gave him a three-month subscription for his poem.” She paused, then said reflectively, “It wasn't a very good poem.”

I said, “And then?”

“Then he was suddenly afraid to get off the ground. I don't know what happened, but he lost his nerve. He wouldn't even talk about it. He was going to work in a bank. That was a safe business. But he couldn't get a job, and he started selling vacuum cleaners door to door. He was going to be a salesman whose record would go down in history.

“Well, he couldn't sell, and by this time – nearly four years later – I was sick of my bargain. I guess I still loved him, in a way, but we began to fight. He accused me of thinking he was no good, but he'd show me, just wait. It went on hour after hour until I could scream.

“About that time, Gary Blake stopped me on the street, and I told you about that. Well, right after I got my first important role, I got a letter from Sev. He said he understood, and he had no claim on me. Any time two people couldn't stay together peaceably, they ought to separate, he said. And he had been thinking that he was really cut out to be an actor. He was coming to Hollywood, and he'd show them what acting really was. Could I send him the fare?”

She looked at me, a kind of tender sadness in her eyes. “I knew what that meant, and I couldn't get out of it. It meant that I was to support him the rest of his life. I sent him the fare, and ‘loaned' him money regularly. He told me once that he lived on money that he earned. He was too proud to let me support him. He was investing the money that I gave him, he said.”

I thought of Lamar James' report. Flynne “invested” that money in parties for his friends.

“Well,” she said, “I was in a funny position. We had lived together under common law long enough to be legally man and wife, but if the circumstances were known, it wouldn't do me any good. It would do me a great deal of harm.

“Now comes the clincher.

“Paul had talked to me several times. Once he threw a good role my way. Later, he ran into Sev. Sev got drunk with him and told Paul about me. So Paul blackmailed me into promising to marry him, and we let a few intimate friends in on the secret. But I couldn't get a divorce from a man I'd never really married. It seems silly, but that's the way it was. That's why I was so frightened when I found that Sev had got into this picture somehow, and had been killed. He was the only person standing between Paul and me getting married, and when that gun was found in my wagon–”

“Didn't you suspect Paul?”

“No. Paul wasn't a killer. He didn't have the nerve. I didn't suspect anybody. All I knew was that
I
was the perfect suspect, with motive and everything.”

I provided fresh cigarettes. Was this truth? It could be, but on the other hand, she was capable of dreaming up this yarn. Much as I wanted to believe it, I couldn't accept it unequivocally. She had been frightened when I told her Paul was dead.

“Why were you so scared when I told you about Paul?” I asked. “Why did you ask ‘When?'”

“Because I was in the restaurant from seven until nine. I was downstairs having dinner, and can prove it. My first thought was that somebody knew about the three of us, and was trying to put the killings onto me. I had motive, you must admit. But to have both Sev and Paul killed by the same gun – well, I couldn't believe it.
Why
were they?”

“I just assume that was the murderer's favorite shooting iron,” I said. “Do you want to ride with me back to Hollywood?”

“I guess so,” she said heavily. “If somebody doesn't knock you off before we start. I seem to be bad luck.” 

We passed through hills to the north of Santa Barbara, with the sea veiled in fog on our right, I said, “You're right, Carla; your story makes you the only one so far with motive.”

She didn't turn her head. “I've been thinking about that,” she replied, in little more than a whisper. “But I wouldn't have killed either of them. I didn't mind giving Sev money. I got into the habit when we were married. And as for Paul, even though I resented his methods, I think he forced me into the position he did because he honestly loved me and saw no other way. I didn't especially want to marry him – if and when I could – but I didn't especially
not
want to, either.”

“Assuming that you're telling the truth–”

She turned her head on this. “Assuming?” she asked sharply. “Don't you believe me?”

“I want to. But how can I? I don't know you very well. We aren't, and never have been, really intimate friends. How do I know what your private life is like? By your own admission, you fit the part completely. You had motive, and there is no evidence that you didn't have the means and opportunity. You were only a few feet from where Flynne was shot, and you were out of camera range.”