Exploit of Death - Dell Shannon (26 page)

"You know," said Mendoza in the Renault,
"that ring is somewhere in the sewers of Los Angeles."

"It is always well to be thorough," said
Rambeau. It was a small jewelry shop in the Rue Lafayette. The
youngish man behind the counter said, "I remember the ring, sir.
M. Goulart brought it in for cleaning, to see if the stones needed 
tightening. My father was interested, for he designed it. He is in
the rear office—you may talk to him."

M. Duprés said, "Indeed, it is a unique ring. I
designed it, it would be some twenty-six years ago. The account book
would give the date." He was fussy and slow, looking up the
record. "I can give you a sketch of the design. My memory is
excellent, despite what the young people say. It is a yellow-gold
ring—eighteen-karat gold—a diamond and two sapphires, all the
stones are of half a carat weight." He insisted upon drawing a
neat little sketch.

Rambeau said at the hotel,
"So, my friend, you go home to find the solution to your
mystery. And when you do, write and tell me, for I am interested to
know. I shall never forget the little Juliette."

* * *

HACKETT AND HIGGINGS had just come back from lunch
when a man from Communications brought in a cable.

Hackett scanned it rapidly POSITIVE PROOF IDENTITY.
BRINGING DEPOSITIONS. LEAN ON DAGGETTS HARD.

Hackett said, "Well, I will be damned. Hie seems
to have got what he went after."

Sergeant Lake looked up from the switchboard. "You've
got a new one just gone down—a body."
 

TEN

 
HACKETT, HHIGGINS, and Palliser confronted
the Daggetts and Helen Garvey in Mendoza's office; there wasn't space
for all of them in one of the interrogation rooms. The two women were
silent and Daggett tried to bluster. Higgins said, "We've
spelled it out for you, Daggett. Now we can prove you've all been
lying. We've got legal proof of who the girl really was. That she
hadn't been living in that apartment—that her name wasn't Ruth
Hoffman—and now we'd like to hear what you know about it. Who
primed you with that story?"

Daggett's Adam's apple was jerking wildly. He said,
"I don't know anything about it. Not a thing. Just what I told
you."

"Don't waste time trying to deny it," said
Hackett. "How did the girl get there and when? Who told you what
lies to tell?"

Daggett looked at his wife and he looked like a
frightened rabbit cornered by hounds. "We never did anything to
that girl. We don't know anything about that girl."

"So what do you know about?" asked
Palliser.

Daggett shifted in the chair, still looking at his
wife. "We never wanted to get into any trouble—"

"Well, you're in a hell of a lot of trouble
now," said Higgins brutally. "You'll have to tell us about
it sometime, and it had better be here and now."

The woman said evenly, "I guess we better tell
them, Fred. I thought we put it over—even when that other one asked
questions. But I guess we'll have to tell them the rights of it now."

He licked his lips. "Well," he said, "it
was the money. I told you that building's going to be torn down and
I'll be out of a job. I'm fifty-seven years old and it won't be easy
to get another. I worked around a lot—construction and clerking in
stores—but it won't be easy to find any kind of decent job at my
age. I managed that apartment for ten years, we get the place rent
free. But it's coming down. They're gonna build a big office building
there. The land belongs to some big company, they couldn't care less
about the likes of me, and we've been worried about it. I've been
damn worried about it. It was around the first of August I got the
phone call." He was hunched forward, clasped hands between his
knees, head down. "And I can't tell you anything about the guy.
I never laid eyes on him. It was just a voice on the phone—an
ordinary voice. He asked me if the wife and me would like to earn ten
thousand bucks each. We wouldn't have to do much, he said. Just tell
a little story to the police. I didn't like the idea of police being
in it. I never had anything to do with the police, but they can be
nosy— and when he said what we'd have to do, I didn't like that so
good either. But he said there couldn't be any trouble, the police
would only come once and they'd believe what we said because there'd
be things to back it up so the police would believe us. He said he'd
let us think it over and call me back. Well, the wife and I talked it
over and decided to do it—for the money. But I thought about Helen,
see. She and Ethel been pretty good friends, time we'd been here, and
I know things hadn't been easy for her either. And I thought it'd
look better if somebody else was to back us up on that story. We
talked it all over and when he called back I put it to him. I said
Helen'd back us up for another ten thousand, and he said that was
O.K."

Hackett said, "Not so much money for a thing
like that, was it? With a dead body involved."

Mrs. Daggett looked at him almost contemptuously. She
was a short fat woman with sandy blond hair and hard pale blue eyes,
a small tight mouth. "Mister," she said, "I don't I
know how old you are or how much you make at this job, but sooner or
later you'll find out like the rest of us, in this life, it's dog eat
dog. You got to look out for yourself first. Sure it was a little
risk to take. But we figured it was worth it for the money, and so
did Helen." Helen Garvey was sitting silent, her much-made-up
face gaunt in the bright sunlight pouring in the window. "The
fellow told Fred just what was going to be in that apartment. There'd
be things to make the story look on the level."

Daggett said, "He told me just what I had to do.
All I had l to do was just what he said. He didn't know exactly when
it would be, but he'd let me know beforehand. He said I was to tell
him the number of the apartment. Well, that was easy. People moving
out the last three months—not five tenants left in the place, and
Helen was the only one left on that floor, so I told him the one
opposite her. He said when he called I was just to leave the key in
the door and the only thing I had to do, make out rent receipts like
the Hoffman girl had been living there. Leave the top ones in the
apartment and have the carbons ready to show the police, and the next
morning I was supposed to go up there and call the police and say how
I'd found her."

"You all knew you were getting mixed up in a
murder, didn't you?" asked Higgins.

"You can't say any such thing! We never—how'd
we know that?"

"When the fellow told you a month in advance,"
said Hackett, "that there was going to be a dead body in that
apartment? You're not that much of a fool, Daggett."

He looked wildly from side to side. "I didn't
want to know anything about it—it wasn't anything to do with
me—with us. I didn't want to think about it."

His wife said, "We'd never have taken the risk
except it looked like he had it all set up so the police wouldn't
think it was a lie. Well, we lost the gamble, that's all."

Palliser asked, "And what happened next?"

"We had to be sure he'd pay up. He sounded like
he meant business all right, and even before I asked him he said he'd
pay us half first. The money came in the mail. It was a little
package came by first-class mail and it was all cash— all in
twenties. Fifteen thousand dollars. I never heard from him again
until just the night before. He called and said we should get
ready—to do it—the next morning. I—right then, I'd have liked
to back out of the whole deal. I hadn't really thought about—about
the body, but we were in it then—and I said O.K." He took a
deep breath. "And he said, leave the key in the door and leave
your own door shut—just sit and watch the T.V."

"And that was what you did?" said Palliser.

Daggett nodded. "And next morning I went up
there. It was all just like he said it'd be, and the rest of the
money was there on the table—another fifteen thousand in twenties.
So I just did what he said to. We all did."

Higgins said, "You know you've laid yourselves
open to a charge of accessories to a murder, don't you? That's what I
it adds up to. Is that all you can tell us about him?"

"We don't know anything about a murder. I never
laid eyes on him. That's all I can tell you. Just a voice on the
phone. We never knew anything about that girl. You can't say we knew
nothing about a murder. It was just a chance to make all that money.
It didn't seem much to do for that much money."

Hackett said, "It's
put you in one hell of a lot of trouble, Daggett. You're all going to
jail and the money won't do you much good there." Mendoza had
predicted something like this, but it was unsatisfactory. It left the
thing still shapeless. They talked it over a little after they'd
booked the Daggetts and Garvey into jail. There had, of course, been
an inquest on the supposed Ruth Hoffman, and at Mendoza's request the
coroner had instructed the jury to leave it open. Now it was to be
hoped that he had enough further evidence to conclude the inquest
with a verdict of murder. He hadn't said when he'd be back. He might
be on the way now.

* * *

ROBERT SHAFTON said to Landers and Galeano, "This
neighborhood's run down in the last twenty years. It was convenient
to my business. But nearly anywhere in the city these days you get
all sorts of crime—the violence. We bought the house on Scott
Avenue twenty-five years ago, it was handy to the store, but we'd
like to get out of the area now. Only who can afford the interest
rates? Any other place we'd get, we'd have to get a loan on. And
nearly anywhere these days—" He spread his hands. They were
talking to him at his store on Glendale Avenue. It was a stationer's
and office-supply store, a fairly big place. He had this little
office at the rear of the store, and there was a woman clerk in
front.

"We talked to the patrolman," said Landers,
"but we'd like to hear what you can tell us, Mr. Shafton."

"Certainly," said Shafton. He was a short
spare man with gray hair and glasses. "I'd been home for lunch.
I like to get a little exercise, and it's only six blocks to the
store—  I usually walk. I was on Scott Avenue—about halfway
up the block from Glendale, and this woman was ahead of me— almost
at the corner. There wasn't anybody else on the street. She seemed to
be having trouble getting along— walking very slowly and bent over,
and I was just wondering if she was ill or perhaps drunk when it
happened. These two—well, I don't know whether to call them men or
boys— I'd say they were around seventeen or eighteen, but both
pretty husky. They came around the corner from Glendale Avenue and
saw the woman,. and just—well—tackled her.

One of them knocked her down and the other one
grabbed her handbag and they ran back up Glendale Avenue. It happened
so fast I couldn't have done a thing, I wasn't close enough. Not that
I could have done much—they were both bigger than me."

"You might have got clobbered too," said
Galeano.

"I went up and looked at her. I saw she was
quite elderly and looked as if she was badly hurt. She'd hit her head
on the sidewalk. So I went up to the corner where there's a public
phone and called the police and an ambulance."

"Would you recognize either of those two? Can
you give us a description?" asked Landers.

"They were just the typical young louts you see
around. Long hair, jeans, sweatshirts— I think they both had dark
hair, but that's really all I can say. Was that ambulance attendant
right—that she was dead? The patrolman thought so."

"Yes, I'm afraid she was," said Galeano.

They had talked to the uniformed man, who had one
piece of information for them. The woman's handbag had been gone, of
course, but she'd been wearing an identification bracelet with a name
and address stamped on it and he had noted it down. Phillips, an
address on Morton Avenue. They went to look there, to notify any
relatives. It was a small apartment building, not new, but well
maintained with a strip of lawn in front. There wasn't a manager, and
they tried the first right front apartment downstairs. A woman about
thirty said they'd just moved there, didn't know any of the other
tenants. Nobody else was home downstairs. They climbed stairs, tried
the first right-hand door there. The woman who opened it said,
"Phillips?" She was stout and henna—haired. "She
lives right across the hall." She was shocked to hear what had
happened. "Well, I don't know about any relatives. There was
some woman came to see her nearly every day, I'd meet her in the hall
sometimes, I don't know who she is. Of course you want to find out. I
wonder if the door's locked. She hardly ever went out, I don't
think." She stepped across the hall and tried the door, and it
was unlocked. "There. I expect there'll be something inside to
tell you about any family," she said brightly.

Landers shut the door on her with thanks and they
looked around. It was a typical place for its age and for the area.
The neutral upholstered furniture, everything orderly, the kitchen
clean. The phone was on one of the end tables by the couch and taped
just above the dial was a neat card with firm printing on it: GREGSON
and a phone number—NURSE and another number. Landers sat down on
the couch and tried the first number. On the sound ring a masculine
voice answered. "Mr. Gregson? This is the police. I believe you
know a Mrs. Phillips on Morton Avenue. I'm sorry to have to tell you
she's met with an accident—Yes, sir, I'm afraid she's dead. We're
at the apartment, sir, yes. If you could tell us about any
relatives-"