Man on a Leash (4 page)

“What is it?” She had come out and was standing in the kitchen doorway.

He indicated the service sticker. “He couldn’t have driven the car to San Francisco. Or even to Reno to take a plane.” He repeated the figures. “So how did he get there?”

“Maybe somebody else drove him to the airport.”

“You’d think whoever it was would have said so by this time. Anyway, Brubaker checked the airlines; he had no reservation any time in that period.”

She frowned. “Well, we’d better tell him. I didn’t know about this mileage bit.”

“I’ll do it. Maybe he won’t lean on me for the name.”

“Oh, hell, that’s all right. I mean, if it’s important to the investigation. I’m not married, now. Or running for the school board.”

“Was the car this dusty when you got back?” he asked.

“I don’t know,” she said. “It was dark. But I don’t see why it would have been; we certainly didn’t drive on any country roads, going or coming, and it wasn’t dusty like that when we got there.”

He nodded. Then a good part of that 54 miles had been on a dirt road. They went back to the living room, and he retrieved his beer. “How long did you stay in Las Vegas?” he asked.

“That night and the next day. I think we started back around eleven P.M. Anyway, he let me off at my place just a few minutes before five A.M.” She sighed. “Forty hours with about two hours’ sleep. God, I’m glad I didn’t have to try to keep up with him when he was twenty-eight—”

“Wait a minute,” Romstead interrupted. “That’d have to be five A.M., the sixth?”

“Hmmmm—yes, that’s right.”

Just two hours, he thought, before he’d called Winegaard with that sell order. “Well, look, did he go in the bucket in Las Vegas? I mean, on the cuff, for really big money?”

She smiled. “God, no. I doubt he lost twenty dollars. Gambling—or that kind of gambling—bored him to death. He said anybody with any respect for mathematics would have to be insane to think he could beat a house percentage and a limit. He just liked the shows, and the fact that nobody ever goes to bed—to sleep, anyway.”

“Well, did he tell you he was going to San Francisco?”

“No.”

“That’s funny. No mention of it at all?”

“Not a word. If it’d been anybody else, it would have puzzled hell out of me. I mean, if he was planning to take off again just as soon as we got home, you’d think he’d have said something about it, just to make conversation if nothing else, but that’s the way he operated.”

“But nobody knows for sure when he did leave.”

“Oh, it was within a few hours. Don’t ask me how in hell he could do it, but he was gone again before noon.”

“How do you know?”

“That’s when I woke up. When I started to unpack my bags, I noticed the fall was missing, so I called to see if I’d put it in his by mistake. No answer. I tried again several times in the afternoon and gave up.”

“Well, did he say anything about a business deal?”

“Absolutely nothing. But then he wouldn’t have; he never did.”

“You know Brubaker’s theory? That he was mixed up in the drug traffic.”

“Bullshit.”

“I’m glad you don’t believe it. But I guess we’re in the minority.”

“Darling, I have no illusions at all about your old man; I’ve known him longer than you think I have. He was arrogant, pigheaded, and intolerant, he had the sex drive and the fidelity of a stallion, and any woman who could stay married to him for fifteen years the way your mother did could qualify for instant sainthood; but he wasn’t a criminal.”

“You knew him before he moved here?”

“Umh-umh.
He saved my life, a few years back.”

“How’s that?”

“It sounds a little kooky, out here in the sagebrush, but would you believe a rescue at sea?” She glanced at her watch and stood up. “But I’ve got to run. If you’ll stop by when you get through here, I’ll hammer together a couple of bloody Marys and a bite of lunch and tell you about it.”

“I’d love to. Thank you.”

He went out with her and down the walk. As she started to get into the Continental, there was a sudden wild clatter of the pipes in the cattle guard beyond them, and a dusty green Porsche came snarling up the drive. It pulled off and stopped on the other side of her. When the driver emerged and slammed the door, there was more an impression he had simply removed the car like an article of clothing and tossed it aside rather than got out of it, and Romstead thought of the old joke about one of the Rams’ linemen: When he couldn’t find a place to park his VW, he just carried it around with him.

While he wasn’t quite that big, he would have made an ominous hunk of linebacker staring hungrily across the big butts at a quarterback. He was pushing forty now, Romstead thought, and a little gone to belly, but not too much, and the pale eyes were mean as he padded around the rear of the Continental. Something was riding him.

“I tried to call you,” he said to Paulette Carmody. “Carmelita said you were down here. Figures.”

“Lew,” she began the introduction, “this is Eric—”

He cut her off. “I know who he is.” The eyes flicked contemptuously across Romstead and dismissed him along with the rest of the scenery. “Have you seen Jeri?”

“Mr. Bonner.”
The tone was sweetly dangerous. “May I present—” She broke off herself then. “Jeri? You mean she’s here in town?”

“She came in last Tuesday. But when I woke up awhile ago, she was gone. No note or anything.”

“I’ll see you up at the house,” Paulette said.

“Right.” Before he turned away, Bonner swept Romstead with that flat stare again. “Going to take over the family business?”

“Shut up, Lew!” Paulette snapped. Romstead stared thoughtfully after him but said nothing. The Porsche shot back down the drive.

“I’m sorry,” Paulette said. “Usually he has at least as much social grace as a goat, but he’s a little off his form today.”

Romstead shrugged. “Something’s chewing on him.”

“It’s his sister. I’m worried about her, too.”

“Who is he?”

“He used to work for my husband, and before that, he played pro football, one of the Canadian teams. Owns a liquor store now.” She got into the car. “See you in a little while.”

“Hadn’t I better skip it?” He nodded after the Porsche now disappearing around the bend in the highway. “I don’t think we’re going to grow on each other, and it’ll just be unpleasant for you.”

“Oh, he’ll be gone before then.”

She swung the big car and went back down the drive. Romstead returned to the house. He rinsed out the two glasses and dropped the beer bottles in the kitchen garbage can. There was another room in this wing of the house, directly back of the garage, its entrance through a doorway at the rear of the dining area. He went in.

It was a library or den. There was another fireplace, a big easy chair with a reading lamp, a desk, and a coffee table. On the walls were more books, an aneroid barometer, some carved African masks, a bolo, a pair of spears, and several abstract paintings. A magazine rack held copies of
Fortune, Time,
and
Scientific American.
The cigars were in a closet, each box individually wrapped and sealed in plastic.

In the other wing the small bedroom at the front of the house was apparently a guest room. The next door down the hall was a bathroom. He glanced in briefly and went on. The master bedroom was at the rear. He stepped in and stopped abruptly in surprise. After the neatness of the rest of the house it was a mess.

It was a big room containing a king-sized double bed with a black headboard and matching night tables with big lamps on each side. One of the lamps was lighted. The drapes, the same dark green as the bedspread, were all closed. Off to his left, the door to the bathroom was ajar, and he could see a light was on in there too. Beyond the bathroom door was a large dresser, all its drawers pulled open and their contents—shirts, socks, underwear, handkerchiefs, boxes of cuff links, pajamas—thrown out on the rug.

On top of it was a woman’s handbag, open and lying on its side, a kitchen knife, a spoon, a hypodermic syringe, and a small plastic bag containing some fraction of an ounce of a white powder. He strode on in to look at the floor on the other side of the bed. A yellow dress and a pair of scuffed and dusty pumps with grotesque square heels lay on the rug beside it. Next to them on a hassock were a slip, nylon pants, and a bra. There was no sound at all from the bathroom. He felt the hair prickle on the back of his neck as he went over and slowly pushed the door open.

To his left was a stall shower and at the other end the commode and washbasin. The oversized tub was directly opposite, a slender leg draped over the side of it with the doubled knee of the other leg visible just beyond. He stepped on in and looked down. She was lying on her back, her head under the spigot and turned slightly to one side with the long dark-red hair plastered across her face so that little of it was visible except the chin and part of the mouth. There was about an inch of water in the bottom of the tub, but no blood and no marks of violence on her body.

The tub had apparently been full when she fell in, but owing to an imperfectly fitting plug in the mechanical drain assembly, the water had slowly leaked out over the hours, leaving her hair to settle like seaweed across her face. There was no need to touch her to verify it; she’d been dead from the time she fell in. Had she struck her head on the spigot? There was no hair stuck to it, no blood. The heroin, he thought, or whatever that stuff was she’d shot herself with. But, hell, even somebody drugged should be able to climb out of a bathtub before he drowned. He was suddenly conscious of the passage of time and that he was wasting it in disjointed and futile speculation when he’d better be calling the police. He whirled and went out.

There was a telephone on one of the night tables. He grabbed it up, but it was dead; it had been disconnected. It was then he noticed the shards of broken glass on the rug against the far wall. He went over and parted the drapes above it. It was a casement window. She’d knocked out enough glass and then cut away part of the screen, probably with the kitchen knife, so she could reach in and unlatch it and crank it open. There was a wooden box on the ground beneath it, along with the remains of the screen. It was at the side of the house, so he hadn’t seen it when he was out back.

But why in the name of God had she broken in here to shoot herself with that junk? He looked then at the scattered contents of the dresser drawers, at the mute evidence of her frenzy, and felt a little chill between his shoulder blades. But, damn it, Brubaker had searched the house. For Christ’s sake, get going, he told himself. He ran out to the car.

He was out on the highway before he remembered he hadn’t even closed the front door of the house. Well, it didn’t matter. He made a skidding turn off the road and shot up the driveway toward the Carmody house, wondering now what the urgency was, since the woman was dead and had been since last night or maybe even the night before. Bonner’s Porsche was parked in the circular blacktop drive under the big trees in front. He pulled up behind it and hurried up the walk to punch the bell. He heard it chime inside, and in a moment the door was opened by a pleasant dark-haired woman with liquid brown eyes.

“Could I use your phone?” he asked.

“I’ll ask,” she said. “What is your name?”

“Romstead.” At that moment Paulette appeared in the small entry behind her. “Why, Eric, come on in.”

He stepped inside. “I’ve got to use your phone. Something’s happened.”

Paulette smiled at the maid. “It’s all right, Carmelita, I’ll take care of it.” Carmelita disappeared. Paulette led him through a doorway at the left into a long living room with a picture window and French doors at the back of it opening onto a flagstone deck and a pool. Bonner was sitting at a table under a big umbrella. He saw them and got up.

The phone was on a small desk across the room. He grabbed the directory, looked inside the cover for the emergency numbers, and dialed.

“What is it?” Paulette asked. “What happened?”

“There’s a woman in the house. Dead.”

“Oh, my God! Where?”

“Back bedroom. In the tub, drowned—”

“Sheriffs department. Orde,” a voice answered.

“Could I speak to Brubaker?”

“Just a minute.” There were a couple of clicks.

“Brubaker.”

“This is Eric Romstead,” he said. “I’m calling from Mrs. Carmody’s. I’ve just come from my father’s place, and there’s a dead woman in the bath—”

His arm was grabbed by a big paw, and he was whirled around. It was Bonner, his face savage. “How old is she? What did she look like?”

Romstead jerked his arm away. “I don’t know how old she is.” He got the instrument back to his ear to hear the chief deputy bark, “—the hell is going on there? Dead woman in whose bathroom—?”

“Captain Romstead’s. She broke in a window.”

“We’ll be there in five minutes. Stay out of the house!”

He dropped the phone back on the cradle. Bonner lashed out at him, “God damn you, what did she look like?”

“I don’t know,” Romstead said. “Except she had red hair.”

The big man wheeled and ran for the doorway. “Brubaker said to stay out,” Romstead called, but he was gone. The front door slammed. Before he and Paulette could reach the walk outside, there was a snarl from the Porsche’s engine and a shriek of rubber, and he was tearing down the drive. They got into Romstead’s car and ran down the hill onto the highway. By the time they’d turned in through the cattle guard the Porsche had already come to a stop, and Bonner was running in the front door. He stopped behind the other car, but they did not get out. When he looked around at her, there were tears in her eyes.

“Maybe it’s not,” he said.

“Yes,” she said. “She was one of the most beautiful girls I ever saw, and she had dark red hair.”

“Was she on drugs? There was a needle in there.”

“He was afraid she was.”

“Where did she live?”

“San Francisco.”

“She knew the old man?”

“Yes. How well, I don’t know, but she was with my husband and me on that sailboat when he picked us up at sea. Could you tell what happened to her? Did she fall in the tub and knock herself out, or what?”

“I don’t know,” he said. “But my guess would be an overdose.” He told her about the packet of heroin, or whatever it was, and the way the dresser had been ransacked.

“I don’t get it,” she said, baffled. “I just don’t believe it—”

She broke off then as Bonner emerged from the house and walked slowly toward his car. They got out, but there was no need to ask.

“I’m so sorry, Lew,” Paulette said.

He made no reply. He leaned his arms on top of the Porsche and stood, head lowered, staring at the ground. It wouldn’t do any good, Romstead thought, and he might be just asking for it, but he had to say something.

“I’m sorry, Bonner,” he said. “I’m sorry as hell about it.”

Bonner spoke without looking around, his voice little more than a ragged whisper. “Don’t bump me,” he said. “Don’t crowd me at all.”

It was hot in the room, and there was a strained, tense silence as they waited for Brubaker and the others to finish in the bedroom. Romstead had drawn the drapes and opened the sliding glass door to get a movement of air through it, but it didn’t help much. Bonner stood with his back to the others, looking out at the terrace. Paulette Carmody was smoking a third cigarette. Romstead stared at the rows of books without seeing them. The coroner had gone now, as well as a deputy with a camera, the picture taking completed. Two men came out through the vestibule carrying the sheeted figure on a stretcher. Brubaker was behind them. He watched the body go out to the waiting ambulance, his face bitter.

“Junk,” he said. “Goddamned junk.”

Bonner spoke without turning. “Nice she knew where to find it.”

Romstead said nothing. What could he say? He asked himself. There was no use trying to kid himself or anybody else the girl had had the stuff with her. She hadn’t walked four miles in the dark and illegally broken into a house to take a bath. There was no use even conjecturing on how it had got here, but there it was. The girl was dead because of it, and Bonner was running very near the edge, so this might be one of the really great opportunities of a lifetime to keep his mouth shut.

“It looks like just another overdose,” Brubaker said. “There are no marks on her of any kind, she didn’t fall and hit her head, and there’s no evidence anybody else was in the room. We’re checking for prints as a matter of routine, but we’re pretty sure what happened is that it was pure heroin instead of being cut four or five to one, and she took too much. The autopsy and lab tests should verify it.”

“But,” Paulette interrupted, “why was she in the tub?”

“Don’t forget she’d just walked four miles, probably running half the time, and she was suffering withdrawal symptoms—a couple of which are profuse sweating and screaming nerves. And she’d just walked into an addict’s paradise—at least a week’s supply of junk and a place nobody could find her and take it away from her. All she wanted was to get some of it into a vein, relax in a hot tub while her nerves uncoiled, and then float off for days. So just about the time she got the tub filled it hit her. She was probably sitting on the side of it testing the water, and she went over backward into it. She drowned, technically, but she’d have been dead anyway.”

“If you want to ask me any questions,” Bonner said harshly, “ask ‘em. I’d like to get out of this place.”

“You say she came back last week? How?”

“On the bus. She said she’d quit her job and wanted to stay a few weeks while she made up her mind what to do. But she worried me, the way she acted.”

“How?”

“She couldn’t seem to decide on anything. One minute she was going to New York; then it was Los Angeles, and then Miami. She was going to try modeling; then she was going to study computer programming. I told her I’d lend her the money for any kind of trade school she wanted or even for college if she wanted to go back. She’d be all for it, and half an hour later it was out; she was going to get a job on a cruise ship or hook up with some couple sailing around the world. The only thing she never mentioned was going back to San Francisco, which was screwy, because she was always crazy about it.”

Brubaker frowned. “Well, did she see any of her friends?”

“No. She didn’t even want anybody to know she was here. She was nervous as a cat, pacing all the time, but she wouldn’t budge out of the house. I told her she could use the car any time she wanted it and asked her why she didn’t drive out to Paulette’s and visit and have a swim, but no, she didn’t want to see anybody. She’d jump six feet when the phone rang, or the doorbell—”

“And you didn’t know she was on the stuff? There were needle tracks all over her arm.”

“God damn it, maybe I didn’t want to know! Anyway, she always wore things with sleeves like so—” Bonner made a slashing gesture with one hand across the other forearm.

“Three-quarters,” Paulette said.

“When was the last time you saw her?” Brubaker asked.

“About two o’clock this morning.”

“When you got home from the store?”

“Yeah. Her bedroom door was closed; but I looked in, and she was asleep.”

Brubaker shook his head. “Probably faking it so you’d cork off and she could slip out. If she was desperate enough for a fix to walk four miles and burglarize a house, she wasn’t sleeping, believe me.”

“Well, why did she wait till I got home? I was at the store from six P.M. on, and she could have taken off any time.”

“Maybe it still wasn’t unbearable then, and she was trying to sweat it out. She probably had a little she’d brought from San Francisco. Also, after two A.M. there’d be no traffic on the road and she wouldn’t be seen. Did she ever mention Captain Romstead?”

“No, not that I recall.”

“But she did know he was dead?”

“Yes. At least, I told her, but you could never be sure she was paying any attention to what you were saying. It didn’t seem to interest her.”

“Do you know whether she’d ever been in the house here?”

Bonner’s face was savage. “What do you mean by that?”

“Well, obviously she knew the stuff was in here and right where to find it.”

It was Paulette who answered. “No, I don’t think she was ever in here. As far as I can recall, a few days last Christmas was the only time she’s been home since Captain Romstead moved here, and he was in San Francisco then.”

Brubaker nodded, his face thoughtful. “That still leaves the question, then, of how she was so sure she’d find it here ... But I guess that’s all, Lew, except I’m sorry as hell about it.”

Bonner started out. He turned in the doorway and asked Paulette, “You want a lift home?”

“No, thanks, Lew. There’s something else I want to see Mr. Brubaker about.” She got up, however, and went out with him.

“How old was she?” Romstead asked.

“Twenty-four or twenty-five. Jesus Christ, that’s what tears you up.” Brubaker took a cigar from his pocket and started removing cellophane. They heard the Porsche go down the drive, and Paulette came back in.

“Good God, not that smudge pot,” she said to Brubaker, “unless you want us to yell police brutality. Here.” She flipped up the top of the black case, dug in it for the box of cigars, and held it out. He took it, completely deadpan, lifted out one of the tubes, and pulled the cap off, watching as she started to close the case again. Innocence itself, she flipped the robe out full length, folded it carefully, and replaced it so she could bring the lid down. He sighed.

“All right,” he said. “Let’s hear it.”

She told him about the trip to Las Vegas. He went out to the garage to verify the mileage on the Mercedes. When he came back, he looked thoughtful, but he shook his head.

“So he just went to San Francisco with somebody else,” he said. “Probably one of the outfit he was dealing with.”

“But where did he go on that dirt road?” Romstead asked. “And why? If we could find the place—”

“You got any idea how many old ruts there are out there through the sagebrush and alkali flats in a radius of twenty-seven miles? To windmills and feeding stations and old mining claims? And if you did find it, I think what you’d see would be the wheel tracks and tail-skid marks of a lightplane.”

“Why?”

“A lot of junk comes in from Mexico that way. And it could be how your father got to San Francisco.”

Romstead tried once more, with the feeling he was only butting his head against a wall. “Look—he got back here at five A.M., and two hours later he was on the phone to his broker to raise two hundred and fifty thousand dollars in cash. There hadn’t been a word about going to San Francisco or about a business deal. I think something happened in those two hours we don’t know about.”

“Sure. Because he hadn’t said anything,” Brubaker said wearily. “You ever hear of anybody on his way to pick up a shipment of junk that bought time on TV or took out an ad in the paper? Anyway, what is there to argue about now? I’d say Jeri Bonner had settled it once and for all.”

It would always come down to that, Romstead thought, and it was unanswerable. Brubaker went on, “I’ll admit I goofed to some extent; I searched the house, and I didn’t see it; but I was looking for something the size of that suitcase, not a teabag.”

“Incidentally,” Romstead asked, “where was the suitcase? Did you find it right here?”

“No. It was in the trunk of the car. We brought it inside. They must have been waiting for him when he drove in.”

“Since you keep begging me for my opinion—” Paulette said.

“All right. Go ahead.”

“Your whole theory’s horseshit. I don’t have the faintest idea who killed Captain Romstead, or why, but he wasn’t a drug peddler. And if Jeri found that heroin in this house, I say he didn’t know it was here.”