How Like an Angel (8 page)

FIVE

Early the next
morning Quinn returned to the motel office. A middle-aged man, with a bald, sunburned pate, was untying a bundle of Los Angeles papers.

“What can I do for you, Mr.—ah—Quinn, isn't it? Seven­teen?”

“Yes.”

“I'm Paul Frisby, owner and manager, with the aid of my family. Is anything the matter?”

“Someone got into my room last night when I went across the road to have dinner.”

“I did,” Frisby said coldly.

“Any particular reason why?”

“Two of them. It's our policy that when a guest checks in without any luggage, we give his room the once-over when he goes out to eat. In your case there was an additional reason: the name on your car registration isn't Quinn.”

“The car was lent to me by a friend.”

“Oh, I believe you. But in this business it pays to be care­ful.”

“Granted,” Quinn said. “Only why the cloak-and-dagger routine?”

“Pardon?”

“The business of disguising yourself with a hat and topcoat and getting the key from the old man.”

“I don't know what you're talking about,” Frisby said, nar­rowing his eyes. “I have my own set of keys. Now what's this about grandpa?”

Quinn explained briefly.

“Grandpa has trouble with his eyes,” Frisby said. “Glau­coma. You mustn't blame—”

“I'm not blaming anybody. I'd just like to know how some­one else could walk in here, ask for my key and get it.”

“We try to prevent things like that happening. But in the motel business they happen occasionally, especially if the im­postor knows the name and car license number of the guest. Was anything taken?”

“I'm not sure. There were two boxes on the desk containing documents lent to me to examine. You must have seen the boxes when you were in the room, Frisby.”

“Well. Well, as a matter of fact, yes.”

“Did you open either of them?”

Frisby's face turned as red as the sunburn on his pate. “No. No, I didn't have to. I saw the label, O'Gorman. Every­body in Chicote knows all about that case. Oh certainly, I was curious about why a stranger should suddenly appear in town with a lot of stuff about O'Gorman.”

There was a long uneasy silence.

“Just how curious were you?” Quinn said finally. “Did you tell your wife, for instance?”

“Well, I sort of mentioned it to her, yes.”

“Anyone else?”

“Mister. Put yourself in my place for a minute—”

“Who else?”

After another silence Frisby said nervously, “I phoned the sheriff, I thought there might be some hanky-panky going on that he ought to know about, maybe something real serious. I can see now I was wrong.”

“Can you?”

“I'm a pretty good judge of character and you don't act like a man who's got anything much to hide. But yesterday it was different. You check in with no luggage, driving a car with someone else's name and address on it and you're toting around a lot of stuff about O'Gorman. You can't blame me for being suspicious.”

“So you called the sheriff.”

“I just talked to him. He promised he'd keep his eye out for you.”

“Would keeping his eye out extend to tricking an old man into giving him the key to number seventeen?”

“Great Scott, no,” Frisby said vigorously. “Besides, Grand­pa's known the sheriff since he was a little boy.”

“Everybody in Chicote seems to know everybody else.”

“It's a fact. There's no metropolis anywhere near, we're not on a main highway and it's rugged country. Here we all are, dependent on each other for survival, so naturally we get to know each other.”

“And naturally you're suspicious of strangers.”

“It's a close community, Mr, Quinn. When something like the O'Gorman affair happens, it affects every one of us. Most of us knew him, went to school with him or worked with him or met him at church and civic gatherings and rhe P.T.A. Not that O'Gorman was much for getting involved with com­munity business, but Mrs. O'Gorman was, and he tagged along.” A small grim smile moved across Frisby's face. “You might say that's a fitting epitaph for O'Gorman: ‘He tagged along.' What's your interest in the case, Mr. Quinn? You going to write it up, maybe, for one of those true-crime magazines?”

“Maybe.”

“Be sure to let me know when it's published.”

“I'll do that,” Quinn said.

He ate breakfast in a coffee shop, sitting at a front table so he could watch his car parked across the road with the O'Gorman file locked in the trunk. Although Frisby had given him no lead about the intruder of the previous night, he'd given him something else for which Quinn was grateful: an excuse to go around asking questions. He was, hereafter, an amateur writer looking for a new angle on the disappearance of O'Gorman.

He bought a pocket-sized notebook and a couple of ball point pens at a drug store before he drove to the
Beacon
office on Eighth Avenue. As soon as he opened the door he could hear John Ronda's voice distinctly above the clatter of type­writers and the ringing of a telephone. The red-haired Miss de Vries would have had no trouble at all eavesdropping even if she'd worn earmuffs.

Ronda said, “Good morning, Quinn. I see you've brought my file back safely.”

“I'm not sure how safely.” Quinn told him about the man with the topcoat and fedora.

Ronda listened, frowning and drumming his fingers on the desk. “Maybe he was just a petty thief after something else in the room.”

“There wasn't anything else. I left my stuff in Reno, I in­tended to be back there by now.”

“Why aren't you?”

“I got interested in O'Gorman,” Quinn said easily. “I thought it might make an interesting article for one of the true-crime magazines.”

“It already has, about a dozen times in the past five and a half years.”

“Maybe I'll find a new angle. I started off on the wrong foot with Mrs. O'Gorman yesterday but I thought you might be able to fix that for me.”

“How?”

“Call her, give me a little build-up.”

Ronda looked pensively up at the ceiling. “I guess I could try it, but I'm not sure I want to. I know nothing about you.”

“Ask questions, we'll get acquainted.”

“All right. First, I'd better warn you, however, that I talked to Martha O'Gorman last night and she told me about your phone call and subsequent visit to her house. What interested me is that when you telephoned Martha at noon you appar­ently weren't aware that O'Gorman was dead.”

“That's right, I wasn't.”

“Why did you want to see him?”

“Professional ethics—”

“Which,” Ronda interrupted, “obviously doesn't include telling whoppers to widows.”

“—forbids me to name names, so I'll call my client Mrs. X. Mrs. X paid me to find out if a man named Patrick O'Gorman lived in Chicote.”

“And?”

“That's all. I was merely to find out if he was still here, not talk to him or give him any message or contact him.”

“Oh, come off it, Quinn,” Ronda said brusquely. “All Mrs. X had to do was write a letter to the city authorities, the mayor, the sheriff, even the Chamber of Commerce. Why should she hire you to drive all the way up here?”

“She did.”

“How much did she pay you?”

“A hundred and twenty dollars.”

“For the love of heaven, she must be off her rocker.”

“That's a good way of putting it,” Quinn said. “For the love of heaven, she is.”

“A nut, eh?”

“A lot of people would say so. By the way, all this is in confidence.”

“Certainly. What's Mrs. X's connection with O'Gorman?”

“She didn't tell me, if there is one.”

“It seems,” Ronda said, “a funny job for a man like you to take.”

“When I'm broke I take funny jobs.”

“What broke you?”

“Roulette, dice, blackjack, casino.”

“You're a professional gambler?”

Quinn's smile was humorless. “Amateur. The professionals win. I lose. This time I lost everything. Mrs. X's money looked nice and green and crisp.”

“Telling whoppers to widows,” Ronda said, “and taking money from nutty old women doesn't make you exactly a hero, Quinn.”

“Not exactly. Mrs. X isn't old, by the way, and except for some rather obvious eccentricities, she's an intelligent woman.”

“Then why didn't she simply write a letter, or make a phone call?”

“Neither is allowed where she lives. She's a member of an obscure religious cult which forbids unnecessary contact with the outside world.”

“Then how,” Ronda said dryly, “did she come across you?”

“She didn't. I came across her.”

“How?”

“You probably won't believe me.”

“I haven't so far. Keep trying, though.”

Quinn kept trying and Ronda listened, shaking his head now and then in incredulity.

“It's crazy,” he said when Quinn had finished. “The whole thing's crazy. Maybe you are, too.”

“I'm not ruling out the possibility.”

“Where is this place, anyway, and what's it called?”

“I can't tell you that. It's one of a number of cults, not un­common in Southern California, made up of misfits, neurotics, the world's rejects. For the most part they mind their own business and stay out of trouble except for some brushes with the local authorities about schooling for the children.”

“All right,” Ronda said with a vague gesture. “Suppose I believe the whole implausible story, what do you want me to do?”

“Try and square me with Martha O'Gorman, for one thing.”

“That may not be easy.”

“And for another, tell me the name of the red-haired woman who was in your outer office yesterday afternoon when you went to get the file on O'Gorman.”

“Why do you want to know that?”

“She picked me up in the El Bocado café last night,” Quinn said, “at the same time that the man in the fedora was search­ing my room.”

“You think there's a connection?”

“I'd be a fool not to. She was making sure I didn't leave the place before the man had a chance to finish his job.”

“You must be mistaken, Quinn. The young woman in question wouldn't dream of picking up a strange man in a place like El Bocado, let alone cover for a sneak thief. She's a respectable woman.”

“That hardly surprises me,” Quinn said dryly. “Everyone involved is, or was, the soul of respectability. It's what makes the case unique—no villains, no crooks, no shady ladies. O'Gorman was a good guy, Martha O'Gorman is a pillar of the community, Mrs. X is a dedicated cultist and the red-haired woman probably teaches Sunday School.”

“Matter of fact, she does,”

“Who is she, Ronda?”

“Dammit, Quinn, I'm not sure I ought to tell you. She's a very nice girl, and besides, maybe you made a mistake. Did you actually see her face when she was in here yesterday afternoon?”

“No. Just the top of her head.”

“That's not enough evidence to prove she's the same woman who picked you up in the café. Besides, Willie's too smart an operator to pull a dumb trick like that.”

“Willie,” Quinn repeated. “Short for Wilhelmina?”

“Yes.”

“Wilhelmina de Vries?”

“Why—why, yes,” Ronda said, looking startled. “How did you know her name?”

“She told me last night at dinner.”

“Actually she's Willie King now, she went through a quick marriage and divorce. . . . She
told
you her name?”

“Yes.”

“Surely that in itself proves she wasn't up to any skul­duggery.”

“Call it what you like,” Quinn said. “She was up to it and enjoying it.”

“What else did she tell you?”

“A number of lies not worth repeating. By the way, does she happen to have a boy friend?”

The question seemed to annoy Ronda. He leaned forward, giving Quinn a long hard stare. “Now listen, Quinn. You can't come into a town like this and start making insinuations about some of our best citizens.”

“So Willie King is going around with one of Chicote's best citizens.”

“I didn't say that. I only—”