Exploit of Death - Dell Shannon (10 page)

"We don't know yet, Mrs. Kohler. You were out
last night?"

"Yes, at our daughter's place in Glendale. It
was my birthday, we had an early dinner about five-thirty and played
bridge all evening, we didn't get home until eleven."

Galeano reflected, so there had been nobody close
enough to overhear any argument in the hall, with that apartment door
open. He talked to her another few moments, but she hadn't any more
to tell him. They hadn't known Rose Eberhart except casually,
exchanged the occasional hellos and that was all.

Galeano came back to the
car and decided it was time for lunch. He stopped at a café on
Silver Lake Boulevard and after debate ordered the chef 's salad.
Marta was too good a cook, he'd put on a few pounds lately and he'd
better watch it. And this Eberhart thing now looked definitely like a
homicide. See what the lab turned up, but before that, have a look
through the apartment for addresses and phone numbers, talk to
everybody she'd known. In fact, the usual legwork.

* * *

THE CAB DRIVERS had been trooping in most of Saturday
afternoon, from two cab companies—Yellow and Checker. Among them,
fourteen drivers had picked up fares at International Airport between
noon and one o'clock last Saturday. They all had a look at the
close-up photos. One of them said, "In the usual way I wouldn't
be sure. You're only looking at the fare for just a minute, but I
think for damn sure I'd have remembered this girl. She's a real
beaut." And several of the other cabbies echoed that in
different words.

Only one of them, who came in at about four o'clock,
shook his head at the enlargement. "I'm not sure. It could be,
it couldn't be. The fare I picked up at International, as far as I
recall, was a girl about this age, I guess."

Cab drivers got around and saw a lot of people and he
didn't remember where he'd taken her, but the dispatcher had the
record. It was an address in West Hollywood, Norma Place. Mendoza
could guess what the fare had been from Inglewood. Most people flying
in here, to any airport in a big city, would be met by friends or
relatives, or rent a car at the airport. Nobody took a cab here
unless it was necessary.

When the last driver went out, he looked into the
detective office and beckoned to Hackett. Higgins was on the phone,
Palliser typing a report. Nobody else was there.

"A possible lead on Grandfather," said
Mendoza. By now all the various police forces had reported in, and
nobody had received any missing report on Juliette Martin. They drove
out to West Hollywood in the Ferrari. The address was a dignified old
Spanish house with a red-tiled roof and neat green lawn, a
well-tended rose bed in front. In a quiet way it said Money. Mendoza
shoved the doorbell and after a moment the door opened and they faced
a nice-looking middle-aged woman with dark brown hair, intelligent
eyes; she was very smartly dressed in a beige sheath and high-heeled
sandals, She looked at the badges in surprise.

"Police—what's it about? Not an accident! My
husband?"I

"Nothing like that, no, ma'am," said
Hackett hastily.

"But then, what is it?"

"Someone took a cab to this address from
International Airport last Saturday, Mrs.—" Mendoza waited,
watching her.

"Lucas, I'm Mrs. Lucas, Mrs. Timothy Lucas. Do
you want to see Linda? What on earth about?"

"Linda who?" asked Hackett.

"Well, for heaven's sake, Linda Barlow, my
niece, she's not here right now, she's at the college, and what the
police want with her I can't imagine. Yes, she got in from Chicago
last Saturday, and my car was in the garage and Tim had to drive up
to San Francisco on business, so I told her to take a cab at the
airport and I'd pay the fare."

Mendoza asked, "She's visiting you, or does she
live here?"

"Well, you could say she lives here now. She's
starting out at U.S.C, the semester begins on Monday. Her home is in
Bloomington, Illinois, but she'll be staying with us during the
college year."

"She's at the college now?"

"Yes, she had to finish up registering for
classes. My husband got her a good used car for transportation. But
what on earth is this all about? Police asking about Linda?"

She was indignant now.

"Sorry to have bothered you, Mrs. Lucas. It was
just a little mistake in the name."

She was still looking bewildered as they turned back
down the front walk. ln the Ferrari, Mendoza automatically switched
on the air-conditioning, but made no move to pull out into the
street. The powerful engine purred in a low voice. He lit a
cigarette.

"Dead end, Arturo. But, Grandfather, where the
hell and who the hell is Grandfather? Damn it, Grandfather's got to
be mixed in somehow."

"I don't exactly see how you make that out,"
said Hackett dubiously. "The little she said, it sounds as if it
was a, well, a friendly relationship, if she hadn't ever met the man
before. She was coming to stay with him, presumably, and now we can
assume that he or somebody met her at the airport with a car."

"And took her where? To Grandfather's? And
subsequently to the apartment. When? Monday? Tuesday? That place all
stocked and set up to be the plausible background for the nonexistent
Ruth Hoffman. I don't think Juliette ever saw it unti1 she was
drugged far enough that she wouldn't care where she was. By the
autopsy, it's a distinct possibility that she'd been kept under
sedatives for several days, since Saturday."

"Yes," said Hackett. "But it's so damn
shapeless, Luis. No rhyme or reason."

"And," said Mendoza savagely, "Grandfather
knew all about it."

"You're picking him for the arch-villain again?"

"Read it, for God's sake. He was expecting her.
He knew which plane she'd be on. She was met at the airport by
somebody. If she didn't reach Grandfather's and he doesn't know
anything about all this, why hasn't he been making waves? Reported
her unaccountably missing? Two plus two. But I'll tell you something
else. There's more than one X. Somebody besides Grandfather. Because
a woman applied for that library card in the Hoffman name."

"Yes," said Hackett. "Yes, it seems to
add up that way. But there's nowhere else to go on it, now. There's
only one more thing I can see. The answers are in France and we'll
have to wait for them. She told Alison she'd be here about three
weeks. Well, somebody in France, the boyfriend, any girlfriends, her
employer, knows when she'd be coming home. They wouldn't expect to
hear from her while she's here and I think airmail takes about a week
to get to Europe anyway. They'll be assuming she's all right for
another couple of weeks, but when she doesn't turn up and they don't
hear anything, somebody will report it to the French police and
they'll ask us some questions, and they'll be able to tell us who
Grandfather is."

"That's a bunch of ifs, Arturo," said
Mendoza. "Or am I being pessimistic? Yes, surely to God, her
fiancé, her best girlfriends knew where she'd be staying here.
You're probably right, we'll have to wait for it. But whoever took
her off, for whatever reason, they'd know that too. That it was only
a question of time before we found out that Juliette was missing and
could trace her to Grandfather and ferret out the substitution."

"Well, I wonder," said Hackett. He hunched
his wide shoulders in the low bucket seat. "Is there a
Grandfather?"

Mendoza turned to stare at him. "That's a new
hare-brained notion. You're saying she told a tale, as an excuse to
fly to Los Angeles, maybe?
Por la gracia de
Dios
, that was a perfectly respectable honest
girl. But more to the point, if the story was a lie, why should she
come out with it voluntarily to a stranger in a plane?"

"True," admitted Hackett. "But so,
somebody tells us about Grandfather and we go to ask and he says I
thought she changed her mind about coming. What's to prove different?
And as far as Hoffman goes, you said it yourself, if you hadn't been
the one to look at the corpse, it's on the cards we'd have bought
that suicide at face value and written it off. Asked Chicago to do a
little checking for a family, but with such a common name we wouldn't
have been surprised when they couldn't find any. There was enough
money left on her to pay for a funeral—and
adidós
.
A month, two months later, what's to connect her with a Juliette
Martin reported missing from France? Even if they wired photos, how
many bodies per week do we see?"

"More than most divisions," said Mendoza.

"I still think we ought to bring the Daggetts in
and grill them, hot and heavy."

Mendoza laughed sharply. "And on two counts I
don't think it'd be any use, Art. In the first place, unless we could
show them proof that we know they're lying, they'll stick to their
story. But more important, I don't think they know much to tell. That
was such a—what's the word I want—a very crafty little
operation."

"How do you mean?"

"So simple, so plausible, but showing the
ultimate cunning. I think all X wanted of the Daggetts was that
convenient apartment, the key to it, the nice rent receipts, and the
story. Somehow I don't think this particular X would lay himself open
to possible blackmail from the Daggetts."

"There is that. All I say is we'll have to wait
for any answers. Eventually, somebody will miss her and ask
questions."

Mendoza stabbed out his
cigarette and at last released the parking brake and pulled the
Ferrari out to the street.

* * *

GALEANO HAD ROPED Jason Grace into helping on the
legwork. They had broken the seal on the door and gone through the
Eberhart apartment. There was an address book with not many names in
it, but among them was an Alice Bickerstaff, an address and phone
number in Cleveland, Ohio. Galeano let Grace do the calling. Grace's
soft voice was always reassuring to witnesses.

It was the daughter. And of course she reacted
expectably. When Grace got her talking coherently, she couldn't tell
him anything useful. She hadn't heard from her mother since last
week, and the letter hadn't said anything about any trouble, any
worry, just how hot it was and how tired the job made her. Her mother
hadn't had any really close friends. She didn't go out much. About
her best friend was a Mrs. Cora Delaney. "But, of course, it
must have been a burglar. The crime rate is so high and that wasn't a
very nice part of town, only it's anywhere these days—and it's
awful to say, but we couldn't afford anything for a funeral, my
husband's been out of work—"

Grace assured her that there seemed to be nearly a
thousand dollars in her mother's checking account. They had found the
bankbook. He told her about the mandatory autopsy. "Would you
like an undertaker here to arrange a funeral, Mrs. Bickerstaff? We
can give you a couple of names."

"Oh, it's just awful to say—" But she
sounded relieved. "Oh would you'? I guess that'd be the easiest
thing to do, thank you."

There were still a couple of hours till the end of
shift. They drove up to Hollywood to locate the only man who figured
in the address book—a Pete Openshaw, at an address on Kingsley. It
was an apartment house very much like the one Rose Eberhart had lived
in, and Openshaw was sitting in a shabby living room with the door
and all the windows open and an electric fan going three feet away.
He'd been reading a paperback western. He was a nondescript fellow,
about fifty, partly bald, with a snub nose and friendly blue eyes. He
was astonished and grieved to hear the news. ‘

"Say, that's a hell of a terrible thing, Rose
dead. An attack of some kind? My God, I'm sorry to hear it."

They asked questions and he answered quite openly.

"Well, she always brought her car into the
station where I work down on Alvarado. That's how we got to know each
other. And since I lost my wife, I didn't fancy getting hooked up
again and neither did Rose, she'd had two marriages go sour on
her—but sometimes it's nice to have somebody to go out with, know
what I mean? Neither of us had the money to go to fancy restaurants
or shows, but we went to a movie now and then or to some place for
Sunday breakfast. You know, like that." The last time he had
seen her was last Sunday. They had gone to a movie in Hollywood.

"Did she mention anything about any trouble with
anybody? Any argument?"

Openshaw said, "Nothing like that, Rose was
easygoing. She wasn't one for arguments or to go fault-finding. She
never said nothing about any trouble."

"Wou1d you know who her closest woman friend
was?"

"I guess I'd say Cora Delaney. They'd known each
other a long time."

That address had been in the book too, Beachwood
Drive. They found it, a modest frame house, but the open garage was
empty and nobody answered the bell.

"Anyway," said Grace, "we'd better see
what the autopsy report says so we know what we're talking about."

They drove back to Parker
Center and called it a day.

* * *

HACKETT WAS LATE getting home. The traffic on the
freeway was murder at this hour. It was farther to drive, to the
rambling old house on a dead-end street high in Altadena, but it was
just slightly cooler up there. He came out of the  garage to
head for the back door, and Mark and Sheila came shrieking a greeting
with the monstrous mongrel, Laddie, bounding after them. Hackett
hugged the children and was nearly knocked down by Laddie, who seemed
to be getting bigger by the day. Fifty-seven varieties all right, and
the new higher fence had cost a bundle, but he was good with the
children. The only member of the household who didn't appreciate
Laddie was the dignified great Persian, Silver Boy, who was a
middle-aged cat and resistant to change. After a few indignant claws
had connected, Laddie had learned to keep his distance, wistfully.
There was nothing Laddie loved more than new friends.