Speak for the Dead (14 page)

Wager counted the cryptic entries in the Crowell appointment book. At first they came one or two a week, then toward November as many as six, sometimes two or three a day. Fashion shows! Somewhere along the way, he had read the initials as men’s names, and to find out that they weren’t made him feel curiously better and worse—better about the name of the victim, worse about losing a possible lead on who killed her.

He dug through the canceled checks for the returned deposit slips and monthly statements. Seldom did she leave more than $100 in the bank at the end of a month, though the September statement noted a balance of $114.51. If the fashion shows brought enough money, then she covered her known expenses—without blackmailing, without whoring. And still without a motive for getting killed.

Turning to the other papers in the small stack, he found the title to her car, the 1976 license number matching the number of his notebook; a call to the Traffic Division told him what he suspected—that the car had not yet been spotted.

Beneath a collection of assorted receipts lay a letter from her parents tucked into an opened envelope. Among the lines of pale blue ink, erect parentheses singled out items that might have been answered. Wager hoped so, because the parentheses brought into focus the image that he had been forming: that the girl ordered her life as straight as a ruled line to whatever goal she wanted. She was dedicated, orderly, persistent. Wager liked those traits. And she had an honesty he could understand, too; Pitkin had brought that out. Yet somehow she carried those traits to someone who had not liked them—someone who hated them enough to kill her. That someone murdered her not for any apparent threat she might hold, but simply because she wasn’t what the killer wanted her to be.

Wager’s pencil tapped gently but insistently on the fiber blotter that held the little stack of papers. There was something like motive. A crazy one, maybe, and no factual evidence led to it. Nowhere in Doyle’s procedure manual would Wager find support for the feeling. And even if he located a suspect, he sure as hell couldn’t get near a courtroom with just that feeling. But it lay there in his mind like a stone under sand—he could feel it in those hazy thoughts, if they could be called thoughts. It was there: a growing sense of what the murderer was like because he was beginning to know what the victim was like. Just as he had seen in his mind’s eye the shadowy figure squat in the dark conservatory to stare at the head, so now he could almost name the motive, almost say what would make someone kill this girl.

“Any homicide detective.” His radio woke him to the two-toned wall of the office. “Any homicide detective.”

“X-eighty-five.”

“We have a ten-thirty-one in the alley behind 1706 East Colfax. Shots have been fired; squad in vicinity.”

Crime in progress. Always something in progress—he wouldn’t put it past Doyle to set up some action just to make sure Wager was on the street. “Ten-Four.”

Quickly gathering the papers, he slipped them into the laboratory envelope, pausing when one near the bottom caught his eye. It was a light tan brochure that opened into eight panels and described the history and holdings of the Denver Botanic Gardens.

H
IS ALARM BUZZED
at
1
:30
P.M
. and his hand groped for the snooze button, then stopped as he remembered: Thursday—one day less. Usually, the faint click of the radio woke him to turn off the station before his mind was invaded by the insistent drawling voice of the afternoon disk jockey with its heavy struggle to be witty, persuasive, and hip. There were better radio stations, but none that woke him more quickly; and when two minutes of that voice failed its duty, the buzzer sounded. Today’s was third-degree weariness, and he began to think that the eight-to-four shift next month would seem like a vacation. Maybe Ross was right about letting the case work itself out. For the night shift, anyway. His hand slid over the pillow with its lingering spot of warmth. To hell with Ross—cases didn’t work themselves out; someone had to work them. He stumped into the kitchen to start the pot of coffee and chop onions and sausage for a Marine Corps omelette.

While he ate, he laid out the four hours left in the normal working day: first, Crowell’s last known job—the modeling agency; then, the Botanic Gardens—that damned key, and now a brochure that said she might have visited it while she was alive. He made the first call after stacking the dishes in a dishwasher that had been too small for Lorraine but was the right size for one user.

“New Faces Modeling Agency!”

“I’d like to talk to Miss Jeri Roberts, please.”

“I’ll see if she’s in! Who may I say is calling?”

“Detective Gabriel Wager of the Denver Police Department.”

“Oh! One moment, please!”

It was more than a moment, but worth it to clear his ear of hot, breathless eagerness. “This is Jeri Roberts.”

Wager identified himself again. “I’d like to talk with you about a girl who worked for you—Miss Rebecca Jean Crowell. She also used the name Tommie Lee.”

“Oh, yes. I saw that in the paper this morning. It’s awful.”

Denver’s morning paper was the
Rocky Mountain News
; Gargan’s paper, the
Post
, was an afternoon sheet. Some rival had beat him to the story, and Wager couldn’t help a tiny smile. “Are you free now? Can I come over?”

“Certainly.”

The office wasn’t what Wager expected; he imagined that modeling agencies featured shiny chrome-and-glass rooms with furniture somehow shaped like the smoothly curved letters seen in mod advertisements. Instead, the New Faces Agency was in a converted two-story home on East Eighth Avenue, complete with lace curtains and a fireplace that held the marks of real soot. The receptionist’s desk was just inside the entry.

“Hello! You must be the detective!”

“Yes, ma’am.” He was relieved that he didn’t look like a male model, then wondered why it was so easy to tell he was a detective.

“Wow! Have a seat! I’ll tell Miss Roberts you’re here!”

He wandered into the living room and stared at the wall of pictures filled with posturing men, women, and children. Behind him, the receptionist pushed a button on an intercom and breathed, “He’s here!”

A door opened and a short woman with cropped black hair strode out quickly; she shook hands like a man. “I’m Jeri Roberts. Come in the office.” It was not an invitation.

She stood beside one of the old-fashioned floor-to-ceiling windows with her back to Wager and stared at the dark red of the brick wall next door. Then she blew her nose and took three quick steps to the desk. A jerking movement thumped a bottle of Jim Beam Green Label on the littered desk. “Sit down. Drink?”

“No, thanks.” Wager had bought the
News
on the way over. The brief article identified Rebecca Jean Crowell and said that last week her body had been found in one place, her head in another. It did not mention Tommie Lee or the New Faces Agency.

She poured a three-finger drink into a tumbler and splashed a touch of water on top of it. In two gulps, it was gone. “You wanted to ask questions.” Most people would have explained a drink like that: the death was such a shock, Rebecca was such a dear friend. But Miss Roberts only poured another one and squeaked the cork into the bottle. “Go ahead.”

“How long did you know Miss Crowell?”

She leaned back in the swivel chair and lifted down a thin volume from a short bookshelf filled with similar black bindings. Each had a name in gold leaf on the spine. The first page gave the information: “Since August 8, 1975. She enrolled with my affiliate, the Famous Faces Modeling School on that date. She had her first employment for us in February of this year.”

“How long has she used the name Tommie Lee?”

“Since we put her file together,” a rapid peck on the book with a blunt fingernail. “‘Crowell’ just didn’t have it, and ‘Rebecca’ sounded too Jewish.” Wager thought that he hid surprise, but she caught it. “A number of our customers equate Jewishness with New York. That works against a local model unless she’s top of the line. They like to think we have enough local talent.”

“Don’t we?”

“Some of the boys are all right. But local girls move like cows. Most of my girls come from somewhere else.”

“I thought the model stood still for pictures and such.”

“Pictures? Photography? There’s not much in that line out here yet. The local money’s still in fashion shows.”

“She did a lot of those?”

“As many as I could book her for.”

“Was she good at it?”

“Not very. But she was one of my hardest workers and getting a little better all the time.”

“So she could make a living at it?”

“Not a good one. Cigarette?” Wager said no; Roberts waved the match out with a snap of her wrist. “Goddamned few models make a good living in this town. If you want to make it as a model, you go to Chicago or San Francisco or New York. Especially New York.”

“Was that Miss Crowell’s plan?”

“That was her plan, yes.”

“But?”

The small head gave a sharp shake. “She’d never make it there. I told her that.”

“Why not?”

“By the time she learned what so many others were born with, she’d be too old. Hell, she was twenty-three already.”

“I heard that more than anything in the world, she wanted to be a model.”

“Most people don’t get what they want more than anything in the world.” The cork squeaked out of the bottle. “I think perhaps Rebecca was a little insane on the subject. It happens.”

“What did she say when you told her that?”

“Nothing. She simply didn’t believe me. I said she’d be better off in Denver doing local stuff because the competition could chew her up anywhere else. You have to understand, Mr. Wager, this is one very tough business.”

He believed her. “According to her appointment book, she had more and more fashion shows.”

“Yes—the advance shows for spring begin as early as October. Then comes the Christmas business—retail customers—which starts around Thanksgiving. She was getting her share of that, and there’s some money in it around here. But in a bigger city she’d have been squeezed out of that market, too.” The head shook once. “She just did not believe me.”

“How much did she make?”

Miss Roberts turned another page or two. “On a good day, she got sixty dollars. That’s three shows at twenty dollars each—standard rate for an inexperienced model. Out of that, she had to pay her own transportation and other expenses.”

The most shows in a week that Wager had counted in the appointment book was twelve—$240 for a good week, and there had been a number of poor ones. “Do you have a lot of people who want to be models?” The question was more for himself than for Rebecca Crowell.

“Hundreds, Mr. Wager. Hundreds ‘right here in River City.’” A small, hard smile widened the corners of her mouth, and Wager half wondered if at times his own mouth looked that way; it was the faint smile of satisfaction at seeing someone get the trouble they deserved. “Every woman between thirteen and thirty-three, and, any more, most of the men.”

“Have you been an agent very long?”

“Too damned long for my health. I was an executive director in a New York agency until two sons of bitches ganged up to push me out. I came here four years ago to start all over.”

“And you’re doing O.K.?”

“You are goddamned right I am.”

He’d heard that phrase recently; he’d heard it from Lisa Dahl, who was also starting all over. And it struck his ear with the same slightly hollow sound as if Jeri Roberts, like Miss Dahl, found that the only difference between the new start and the old was that now she could see her mistakes coming—that nothing really changed for the better. But you either kept trying or you died. It was something that Rebecca Crowell might have learned, too, before she died. “Do you recognize any of these initials or names?” He handed her a slip of paper listing the brief entries from the appointment book. “They might have to do with the modeling business. Some of the initials are maybe store names.”

She settled a pair of large horn-rimmed glasses on her nose. “Yes.” She gave names to the initials; Wager had guessed right on three. “But these first names could be anyone.” The glasses jerked up. “These are Rebecca’s notes?”

“Yes.”

“Then ‘Phil’ must be that wimp of a photographer who was trying to take every cent she made—Phil Bennett.”

“I thought models needed pictures to show customers?”

“You’ve been talking to him. The only models who need that many pictures are TV and publications models. Girls like Rebecca who work fashion shows do most of their advertising live. Local buyers see them at work and hire them for their own shows. The out-of-town trade comes through me. Most salespeople from out of town don’t see the models until the show. That’s what agents are for.”

“She missed a lot of these shows after she was killed. Didn’t you worry about where she might be?”

“I was worried that she wasn’t where she was supposed to be. That’s all. It happens all the time—girls come and go; and while it surprised me that someone like Rebecca missed the shows, it’s just not that unusual.” She sighed and added, “I did call a couple of times. There was no answer, of course. So I figured, screw her.”

“Do you know if she ever went to the Botanic Gardens?”

“Damned if I know. I didn’t know this burg even had any until I read about where they found her.”

“Did she have any boyfriends that you heard about?”

“You mean like ‘Ralph’ or ‘Allen,’ here?”

“Them or anybody else.”

“Most of the girls have husbands or boyfriends. Some have both, some have more than one of each. But Rebecca never talked about these two or anyone else. She was strictly business.” Miss Roberts gazed out the window again. “It really is too bad.”

“What is?”

“Rebecca had the right attitude to make it in this business—she’d cut her mother’s throat… . I guess I shouldn’t have said it, but that’s the kind of insanity it takes. Total dedication, and to hell with everybody else.”

Total dedication did not sound like insanity to Wager. “Was she scheduled for a show tonight?”