Leopold's Way (10 page)

“What?” He looked up, a bit startled. “Oh! It's you again.”

“It's me. Still learning the script?”

“We're doing another play next week, a modern comedy by a local author. I've got a part in that, too.”

“You fellows are ambitious.”

“Our teachers are.”

“How are you getting along without Karen in the cast?”

“Terrible! The girl who took her place doesn't know
anything!”

“You haven't heard anything about Karen?”

“Not a word.”

“I suppose the story's all over school that she's been kidnapped.”

He averted Leopold's eyes. “I might have mentioned it to one or two kids.” Then, defensively, “I thought it was going to be in the papers.”

“It will be, soon enough. Right now I want to ask you some more about your relations with Karen.”

“What relations?” he asked suspiciously.

“The beer parties over in the park. I know all about them.”

“God, I didn't do nothing wrong!” He was scared again.

“That depends. How many times did you take her there?”

“Once, just once, I swear. We stopped at the Blazer's for some beer and went over there to neck awhile. That was all. I got sick on the beer and she had to drive home.”

“Did Karen drink much?”

“No. A sip or two, that's all. Her mother and dad watch her like a hawk.”

“All right,” Leopold said. “Keep your nose clean.”

“Sure. That's all you wanted?”

“All for now.” Leopold left him among the costumes, reading his script. Then he drove back downtown, trying all the way to keep from thinking of the case, trying to keep from cursing Thomas Sane who was dead now and beyond the care of curses.

The lobby of the Hudson Hotel was large and cluttered, filled to overflowing with the inevitable leather sofas and tables and lamps and potted palms. The homey touch. Magazine counter, flanked by stairs up to the fateful typewriter, stairs down to the men's room. The ladies could stay right on the main floor, as befitted ladies.

“There's no other way out?” Leopold asked.

“No way,” Dain Moore told him. “Clement dropped the package of money in the basket ten minutes ago, and nobody's been down since.”

“No attendant?”

“He goes home at eight, after the dinner crowd starts to thin out. And don't think our guy didn't know it. I have a man up on the mezzanine with a camera in a box. That's as close as we could get.”

“With luck you won't need him.”

“You'll know him?”

“I'll know him.”

“You've been holding out on me, Captain. Is there just one, or will he be leaving somebody with the girl?”

“There's just one. There's been just one all along, ever since Sane was killed.”

They watched a limping man cross the lobby and start downstairs. “Sane had a limp, didn't he?” Moore asked.

“Don't jump at coincidences,” Leopold said. “It might be a long night. Where's Fletcher?”

“Covering the outside. Just in case.”

Leopold settled down in his corner sofa, effectively shielded by a potted palm. His eyes were almost closed and he might have been sleeping.

At twenty minutes to eleven, Moore said, “I don't think he's coming. I'm going down and check on the money again.”

“Wait a few minutes more. There's somebody down there now.”

“You're sure you can spot this guy?”

“I know what to look for,” Leopold answered.

A little man wearing a raincoat and a limp hat came up the stairs. Leopold looked, looked again, and jumped to his feet. Moore was right behind him. “That our guy?”

The small figure saw them coming and turned suddenly, seeking escape. Moore signalled his men, but Leopold was already covering the ground fast. “No guns!” he called out to Moore, and then he hurled himself forward at the hatted figure.

The air was suddenly full of money as the raincoat came open, as Leopold pinned his captive's arms and tore the hat from the struggling head. It was over in an instant. “No case for you, Dain,” Leopold said. “But I've still got a murder. Let me introduce Miss Karen Clement, age fifteen, the killer of Thomas Sane….”

Later, they gathered again in Leopold's office. There had been far more cheerful endings to cases than this. Fletcher summed it up with a sour grunt. “Hell, they should give her a medal instead of a juvenile sentence.”

“They might have,” Leopold agreed, “if she hadn't gotten the crazy idea of going through with this kidnapping scheme.”

“Run through the whole thing for me, will you?” Moore said. “I've got a report to write.”

“It's a bit complex until you sort out the pieces,” Leopold said. “Of course I was suspicious of the set-up right away. The kidnapper had no getaway car and no weapon. Sane was killed with a garden tool that was in the garage, and his own car was used for the getaway. Why? Well, the note tipped me off a bit—the first note. Obviously it was written before Sane was killed, because it mentioned not telling the police. It was not only written before he was killed, but placed in the mailbox before then. Otherwise, the killer would certainly have changed the wording. But why wasn't the note removed after the murder? Simply because its writer was dead.”

“Sane!”

Leopold nodded. “Sane. He wrote the note, left it in the mailbox, and planned to transfer Karen to his car back at the garage. I confirmed the fact that he wrote it when I found some of the same ruled paper in his apartment desk. Also, a ransom as low as ten thousand dollars certainly sounded like a one-man operation. Anyway, when he told Karen he was kidnapping her, she put up a bigger struggle than he'd figured on. She picked up the garden tool and killed him there in the garage. And in a moment of blind panic at what she'd done she decided to take his car and go into hiding. Not knowing he'd already left a ransom note in the mailbox, she sent one herself the next morning. She figured to get five thousand from her father and go to California or someplace. She got the man's clothes from the costume room at her school. She sneaked back there last night.”

“Crazy kid,” Fletcher mumbled. “But how'd you know for sure it was her and not some partner of Sane's sending the second and third notes?”

“Everything pointed to Karen as the one who drove Sane's car away after the murder. The seat had been moved up for a short person, which she certainly must have been, and I found out from Harry Waygon that she knew how to drive.”

Fletcher shook his head sadly. “It's hard to believe that any girl of fifteen could kill a man, even more or less in self-defense, and then go off to carry out this mad scheme.”

“Karen Clement is a very special sort of girl,” Leopold said. “Let's hope an understanding judge and the right sort of confinement can do something for her before it's too late. I imagine she could be quite an actress, even if she couldn't fool me in her male disguise. After all, a fifteen-year-old girl who can bring off the lead in
Macbeth
deserves some sort of help. Even if it was the mood of that play which probably infected her conscience. I suppose it was all one big play to her after a while. Murders on-stage and off.”

“What about the L. M. she signed to the notes?”

Leopold smiled a bit, in spite of everything. “The final, all-important clue. The clue that finally convinced me my fantastic theory was true. It was, really, the sort of thing only a fifteen-year-old girl would think of doing. What part did she have in the play?”

“The lead.”

“And what
is
the female lead in
Macbeth?”

They looked at each other. Nobody needed to answer.

(1963)

C
APTAIN LEOPOLD'S OFFICE WAS
tucked away at the rear of the second floor in the dingy, smoke-scarred building that served as police headquarters, and perhaps for this reason he was rarely bothered by social callers. The detectives, like Fletcher, who worked under him would occasionally stop in for a chat or a gripe, and when election time neared, the politicians came out of their holes. But mostly those who occupied the worn straight-backed chair opposite his desk were there on the most specific of business. They were there because they were suspected of murder.

Harry Tolliver was not a cop or a politician—nor, so far as Leopold knew, was he a murderer. He was, actually, a boiler salesman—and Leopold had not seen him in almost twenty-five years.

“You haven't changed a bit,” he was saying. “I'd still know you anywhere.”

Leopold smiled and offered him a cigarette. “Well, my hair is a bit thinner on top. And I'd hate to think that my middle bulged like this in high school.”

Harry Tolliver waved away the cigarette. “Stopped smoking three years ago, when I turned forty. This stuff you read in the papers scares you after awhile.”

“In my business, Harry, walking down a dark street at night scares you more.”

“Yeah. You're the head of the homicide squad or something, aren't you?”

Leopold smiled at the popular misconception of his position. “Not really. There's no such thing in this city. It's more of a violent crimes squad, I suppose. But most of the cases do seem to be murders of one sort or another. Let's not talk about me, though. It's a dull subject. What about yourself? What brings you around to see me?” He had a half-day's work waiting, and Harry Tolliver had never been that good a friend, even in high school.

“Well, it's been twenty-five years.”

Leopold looked blank. “Since what?”

“Since we graduated from high school. Some of us got together and decided we should have a reunion of the whole class, all the guys and gals.”

“Oh?”

“Sure. Sounds great, doesn't it?”

Leopold tried to think back twenty-five years, to recapture those faces and names so buried now in his memory. He'd traveled in different circles during those intervening years—away to college, and the army, and a job with a police department out west, then back east for ten years of marriage that didn't work, until finally he'd found himself a middle-aged captain of detectives, back in his old home town. He liked it here, always had. He liked the breeze off the Sound in the summertime, and even the occasional heavy snows of winter. Perhaps, he sometimes thought, being back home made him feel less lonely—at least until moments like this.

“I don't know how it sounds,” he answered frankly.

“We were thinking of a big picnic at Venice Park, just like the old days. Wives and kids and everything.”

“I'm afraid I don't have any family to bring.”

“Oh. Well, come anyway. It'll be great to see the old crowd. Hell, my kids probably won't even come themselves. They're all in high school now.”

“When is this going to be?”

“First Saturday in June, right close to the actual graduation date—just a few days early.”

“I'll think about it, Harry.”

“Hell, I want you to do more than just
think
about it. I want you to help us find people, contact them.”

“Well, I really don't have much time…”

“Sure you do. Look, I brought along my old yearbook.” He bent to a zipped brief-case and produced from it the slick-papered volume with thickly padded covers which had all but vanished from Leopold's memory. “Remember?”

“I remember.”

Harry Tolliver ran his fingers lovingly over the imitation leather with its gold stamping now dulled and blurred by age. “Those were the days, boy! Those really were. So look, what we want you to do is take a few names—just a dozen or so—and contact the people. Hell, if anyone can find them you should be able to! You're a
detective!”

“Yeah. Well, you see…”

“Come on! For the old crowd!”

Leopold looked into those middle-aged eyes and knew it would be useless to refuse. “All right. Maybe I can call a few people for you.”

“Good, good. Look, why don't you take everyone whose name starts with
F
and
G?
There are only thirteen of them.”

“Sure. You'd better leave me your book, though. I doubt if I could find mine any more.”

Tolliver passed over the book a bit regretfully. “Take good care of it, huh? I wouldn't want anything to happen to it.”

Leopold nodded. “I'll see if I can get a list of names typed up from it. Then I can give it back to you.”

“Thanks. You'll get right on this? We've only got about five weeks, you know.”

“Sure, Harry. Don't you worry about it.”

Tolliver stood up and shook hands. “Good to see you again, Leopold, after all these years.”

“I'll be in touch with you.”

The little man nodded. “Say, when they going to give you a new building? This place is getting pretty shabby.”

“Talk to the city council, Harry. They probably think it's pretty plush.”

For a time after Tolliver left, Leopold sat alone at his desk, letting the pages flip through his fingers, stopping now and then at some familiar face, some scrawled greeting addressed to Harry Tolliver. The class of George Washington High School, in that good year just before the coming of war.

He remembered how it was, and the memory depressed him.

During the next two days, Leopold ran quickly through eleven of the names on the list he'd made. Eight of them were men whose names were still in the phone book, and a ninth phoneless man was located through the city directory. Two of the women had been tracked down with some help from Tolliver, and Leopold had phoned one of them in New York City to convey the invitation. Each phone call was an adventure of sorts, even when he hardly remembered the people. It made him feel old, but he'd never been one to close his eyes to reality.

The man without a phone was named Jim Groves, and he lived in an apartment on the west side of town. Leopold stopped to see him one sunny afternoon on his way home, and caught him just as he was leaving for the night trick at a nearby factory. Jim Groves in his day had been the star quarterback of the Washington High football team, and even Leopold remembered him well. The man hadn't changed much in twenty-five years.