Nightmare Town: Stories (27 page)

I said, “Not now. You’d better go home and get some more sleep, so your insomnia won’t keep you awake tonight.”

He said, “I feel almost as bad about you and Wally losing all that dough as you do,” and went out chuckling.

Ted Carroll came back from lunch with the notion that perhaps there was some connection between Furman and the two men who had robbed Heck Jones. That didn’t seem to make much sense, but I promised to look into it. Naturally, we never did find any such connection.

That evening a fellow named Rising, assistant manager of the Trans-American Detective Agency’s Philadelphia branch, arrived. He brought the dead man’s lawyer, a scrawny, asthmatic man named Wheelock, with him. After they had identified the body we went back to my office for a conference.

It didn’t take me long to tell them all I knew, with the one additional fact I had picked up during the afternoon, which was that the police in most towns in our corner of the state had received copies of the reward circular. Rising examined the circular and called it an excellent forgery: paper, style, type were all almost exactly those used by his agency.

They told me the dead man was a well-known, respectable, and prosperous citizen of Philadelphia. In 1938 he had married a twenty-two-year-old girl named Ethel Brian, the daughter of a respectable, if not prosperous, Philadelphia family. They had a child born in 1940, but it lived only a few months. In 1941 Furman’s wife had disappeared and neither he nor her family had heard of her since, though he had spent a good deal of money trying to find her. Rising showed me a photograph of her, a small-featured, pretty blonde with a weak mouth and large, staring eyes.

“I’d like to have a copy made,” I said.

“You can keep that. It’s one of them that we had made. Her description’s on the back.”

“Thanks. And he didn’t divorce her?”

Rising shook his head with emphasis. “No, sir. He was a lot in love with her and he seemed to think the kid’s dying had made her a little screwy and she didn’t know what she was doing.” He looked at the lawyer. “That right?”

Wheelock made a couple of asthmatic sounds and said, “That is my belief.”

“You said he had money. About how much, and who gets it?”

The scrawny layer wheezed some more, said, “I should say his estate will amount to perhaps half a million dollars, left in its entirety to his wife.” That gave me something to think about, but the thinking didn’t help me out then.

They couldn’t tell me why he had come to Deerwood. He seemed to have told nobody where he was going, had simply told his servants and his employees that he was leaving town for a day or two. Neither Rising nor Wheelock knew of any enemies he had. That was the crop.

And that was still the crop at the inquest the next day. Everything showed that somebody had framed Furman into our jail and that the frame-up had driven him to suicide. Nothing showed anything else. And there had to be something else, a lot else.

Some of the else began to show up immediately after the inquest. Ben Kamsley was waiting for me when I left the undertaking parlour, where the inquest had been held. “Let’s get out of the crowd,” he said. “I want to tell you something.”

“Come on over to the office.”

We went over there. He shut the door, which usually stayed open, and sat on a corner of my desk. His voice was low. “Two of those bruises showed.”

“What bruises?”

He looked curiously at me for a second, then put a hand on the top of his head. “Furman – up under the hair – there were two bruises.”

I tried to keep from shouting. “Why didn’t you tell me?”

“I am telling you. You weren’t here that morning. This is the first time I’ve seen you since.”

I cursed the two hoodlums who had kept me away by sticking up the Red Top Diner and demanded, “Then why didn’t you spill it when you were testifying at the inquest?”

He frowned. “I’m a friend of yours. Do I want to put you in a spot where people can say you drove this chap to suicide by third-degreeing him too rough?”

“You’re nuts,” I said. “How bad was his head?”

“That didn’t kill him, if that’s what you mean. There’s nothing the matter with his skull. Just a couple of bruises nobody would notice unless they parted the hair.”

“It killed him just the same,” I growled. “You and your friendship -“

The telephone rang. It was Fritz. “Listen, Scott,” he said, “there’s a couple ladies here that want a look at that fellow. Is it all right?”

“Who are they?”

“I don’t know ‘em – strangers.”

“Why do they want to see him?”

“I don’t know. Wait a minute.”

A woman’s voice came over the wire: “Can’t I please see him?” It was a very pleasant, earnest voice.

“Why do you want to see him?” I asked.

“Well, I” – there was a long pause – “I am” – a shorter pause, and when she finished the sentence her voice was not much more than a whisper – “his wife.”

“Oh, certainly,” I said. “I’ll be right over.”

I hurried out.

Leaving the building, I ran into Wally Shane. He was in civilian clothes, since he was off duty. “Hey, Scott?” He took my arm and dragged me back into the vestibule, out of sight of the street. “A couple of dames came into Fritz’s just as I was leaving. One of ‘em’s Hotcha Randall, a baby with a record as long as your arm. You know she’s one of that mob you had me working on in New York last summer.”

“She know you?”

He grinned. “Sure. But not by my right name, and she thinks I’m a Detroit hoodlum.”

“I mean did she know you just now?”

“I don’t think she saw me. Anyway, she didn’t give me a tumble.”

“You don’t know the other one?”

“No. She’s a blonde, kind of pretty.”

“O.K.,” I said. “Stick around a while, but out of sight. Maybe I’ll be bringing them back with me.” I crossed the street to the undertaking parlour.

Ethel Furman was prettier than her photograph had indicated. The woman with her was five or six years older, quite a bit larger, handsome in a big, somewhat coarse way. Both of them were attractively dressed in styles that hadn’t reached Deerwood yet.

The big woman was introduced to me as Mrs. Crowder. I said, “I thought your name was Randall.”

She laughed. “What do you care, Chief? I’m not hurting your town.”

I said, “Don’t call me Chief. To you big-city slickers I’m the town whittier. We go back through here.”

Ethel Furman didn’t make any fuss over her husband when she saw him. She simply looked gravely at his face for about three minutes, then turned away and said, “Thank you,” to me.

“I’ll have to ask you some questions,” I said, “so if you’ll come across the street…”

She nodded. “And I’d like to ask you some.” She looked at her companion. “If Mrs. Crowder will -“

“Call her Hotcha,” I said. “We’re all among friends. Sure, she’ll come along, too.”

The Randall woman said, “Aren’t you the cut-up?” and took my arm.

IN MY OFFICE I gave them chairs and said, “Before I ask you anything I want to tell you something. Furman didn’t commit suicide. He was murdered.”

Ethel Furman opened her eyes wide. “Murdered?”

Hotcha Randall said, as if she had had the words on the tip of her tongue right along, “We’ve got alibis. We were in New York. We can prove it.”

“You’re likely to get a chance to, too,” I told her. “How’d you people happen to come down here?”

Ethel Furman repeated, “Murdered?” in a dazed tone.

The Randall woman said, “Who’s got a better right to come down here? She was still his wife, wasn’t she? She’s entitled to some of his estate, isn’t she? She’s got a right to look out for her own interests, hasn’t she?”

That reminded me of something. I picked up the telephone and told Hammill to have somebody get hold of the lawyer Wheelock – he had stayed over for the inquest, of course – before he left town, and tell him I wanted to see him. “And is Wally around?”

“He’s not here. He said you told him to keep out of sight. I’ll find him, though.”

“Right. Tell him I want him to go to New York tonight. Send Mason home to get some sleep. He’ll have to take over Wally’s night trick.”

Hammill said, “Oke,” and I turned back to my guests.

Ethel Furman had come out of her daze. She leaned forward and asked, “Mr. Anderson, do you think I had – had anything to do with Lester’s – with his death?”

“I don’t know. I know he was killed. I know he left you something like half a million.”

The Randall woman whistled softly. She came over and put a diamond-ringed hand on my shoulder. “Dollars?”

When I nodded, the delight went out of her face, leaving it serious. “All right, Chief,” she said, “now don’t be a clown. The kid didn’t have a thing to do with whatever you think happened. We read about him committing suicide in yesterday morning’s paper, and about there being something funny about it, and I persuaded her to come down and -“

Ethel Furman interrupted her friend. “Mr. Anderson, I wouldn’t have done anything to hurt Lester. I left him because I wanted to leave him, but I wouldn’t have done anything to him for money or anything else. Why, if I’d wanted money from him all I’d’ve had to do would’ve been to ask him. Why, he used to put ads in papers telling me if I wanted anything to let him know, but I never did. You can – his lawyer – anybody who knew anything about it can tell you that.”

The Randall woman took up the story. “That’s the truth, Chief. I’ve been telling her she was a chump not to tap him, but she never would. I had a hard enough time getting her to come for her share now he’s dead and got nobody else to leave it to.”

Ethel Furman said, “I wouldn’t’ve hurt him.”

“Why’d you leave him?”

She moved her shoulders. “I don’t know how to say it. The way we lived wasn’t the way I wanted to live. I wanted – I don’t know what. Anyway, after the baby died I couldn’t stand it any more and cleared out, but I didn’t want anything from him and I wouldn’t’ve hurt him. He was always good to me. I was – I was the one that was wrong.”

The telephone rang. Hammill’s voice. “I found both of ‘em. Wally’s home. I told him. The old guy Wheelock is on his way over.”

I dug out the phoney reward circular and showed it to Ethel Furman. This is what got him into the can. Did you ever see that picture before?”

She started to say “No,” then a frightened look came into her face. “Why, that’s – it can’t be. It’s – it’s a snapshot I had – have. It’s an enlargement of it.”

“Who else has one?”

Her face became more frightened, but she said, “Nobody that I know of. I don’t think anybody else could have one.”

“You’ve still got yours?”

“Yes. I don’t remember whether I’ve seen it recently – it’s with some old papers and things – but I must have it.”

I said, “Well, Mrs. Furman, it’s stuff like that that’s got to be checked up, and neither of us can dodge it. Now there are two ways we can play it. I can hold you here on suspicion till I’ve had time to check things up, or I can send one of my men back to New York with you for the check-up. I’m willing to do that if you’ll speed things up by helping him all you can and if you’ll promise me you won’t try any tricks.”

“I promise,” she said. “I’m as anxious as you are to -“

“All right. How’d you come down?”

“I drove,” the Randall woman said. “That’s my car, the big green one across the street.”

“Fine. Then he can ride back with you, but no funny business.”

The telephone rang again while they were assuring me there would be no funny business. Hammill said, “Wheelock’s here.”

“Send him in.”

The lawyer’s asthma nearly strangled him when he saw Ethel Furman. Before he could get himself straightened out I asked, “This is really Mrs. Furman?”

He wagged his head up and down, still wheezing.

“Fine,” I said. “Wait for me. I’ll be back in a little while.” I herded the two women out and across the street to the green car. “Straight up to the end of the street and then two blocks left,” I told the Randall woman, who was at the wheel.

“Where are we going?” she asked.

“To see Shane, the man who’s going to New York with you.”

Mrs. Dober, Wally’s landlady, opened the door for us.

“Wally in?” I asked.

“Yes, indeedy, Mr. Anderson. Go right on up.” She was staring with wide-eyed curiosity at my companions while talking to me.

We went up a flight of stairs and I knocked on his door.

“Who is it?” he called.

“Scott.”

“Come on in.”

I pushed the door open and stepped aside to let the women in.

Ethel Furman gasped, “Harry,” and stepped back.

Wally had a hand behind him, but my gun was already out in my hand. “I guess you win,” he said.

I said I guessed I did and we all went back to headquarters.

“I’m a sap,” he complained when he and I were alone in my office. “I knew it was all up as soon as I saw those two dames going into Fritz’s. Then, when I was ducking out of sight and ran into you, I was afraid you’d take me over with you, so I had to tell you one of ‘em knew me, figuring you’d want to keep me under cover for a little while anyhow – long enough for me to get out of town. And then I didn’t have sense enough to go.