Verdict Suspended (19 page)

“And so I knew that I must have made two trips to Sheilah’s house the night she died. Knowing that was like opening a locked door. Everything came flooding back. I remembered returning from the building site. Sheilah was on the floor … dead. I found her in what I thought was the same spot she’d fallen when I tossed the glass. She’d tried to duck and caught her foot on something. I was too angry to help her up. But when I came back, there she was—with the blood still on her face from where the glass cut her. I couldn’t see the poker wound: her hair covered it. I thought the fall had killed her. I thought I had killed her. That’s why I ran away—that’s the terrible thing the crash blotted out of my memory.”

“But how did you know Steve killed her?” Lennard asked.

“He told me. He knew when we found the missing whisky glass … he must have been on the extension when Greta called Trench. He thought it was important enough to get Greta out of Sheilah’s house and wait for me in the kitchen. When I came back he gave me a detailed account of his visit to Sheilah—all of it false.

“He told me he was with Sheilah from the time Trench left the house until he heard my car coming back. He followed her into the bedroom, pleading for Greta and me. Generous Steve! Then they heard my car, and Sheilah went out to meet her guests. He couldn’t face the party yet. He ducked out via the balcony…. It was a good story, but I knew he was lying.”

“Why, Jaime?”

Jaime smiled crookedly. “Because I knew Sheilah. She wouldn’t have been with Steve—or any other man—five minutes, let alone forty-five minutes, without washing that blood off her face. It wasn’t very pretty…. And so I decided that Steve killed Sheilah shortly after I left the house, and left over the balcony to avoid meeting any early arrivals for dinner. I must have reached that conclusion at about the same time he decided to kill me.”

“Because he knew that you suspected him?”

“I don’t think he was certain, but he was afraid. He’d gone to too much trouble to alibi about the glass … it had to be important.”

Dr. Curry’s face resembled a sleepy pug dog, but it was suddenly vitalized by a broad smile of satisfaction.

“It
was
important,” he announced. “It was proof of my theory: a criminal always leaves a signature. I explained it to Mr. Quentin the day after I came to Cypress Point. He didn’t want you to go back to the house. He wanted to sell.”

“To cover his debt to the estate,” Jaime said.

“That was part of it. But his real motive, one he wasn’t aware of, was to keep anyone from finding what he left behind the night he killed your sister. It placed him directly on the scene at a time when he’d sworn he was at home. Imagine his reaction when he heard your wife call Trench! Everything I told him must have gone ringing through his head like a fire alarm. All the police had to do was find the glass and ask Trench when he put it out on the bar. He had to get rid of it … and he had to get rid of you because you found it.”

“What about me?” Greta demanded. “Was I next on the list?”

Jaime swung toward her protectively. She had been out in the night air without a hat. Her hair was bedraggled and her eyes were deep hollows surrounded by shadow that didn’t come from a mascara box. Her face was pale and she had gnawed off all her lipstick. He had never loved her so much as at that moment.

“Steve wouldn’t have gone that far,” he said. “He knew my death would be accepted as proof of guilt … but he had to make it look like suicide.”

“And so you beat him to the punch,” Lennard concluded. “Very clever, Jaime. Did he pull the gun on you in the car?”

“He started to—just before I pushed him out. I dumped the car as soon as I could. I hoped it would explode and burn, but it nosed into the water and sat there. When Steve came he couldn’t see if I was in it or not … but he was suspicious. He started down the hill with the gun in his hand.”

“And you jumped him?”

Jaime grinned wearily. “Not me! I was hiding in the brush, shaking in my shoes. I didn’t move until he fired at me and I had to! I’m no hero.”

“Well, that’s something to be grateful for,” Greta said. “Now come down from that table and let’s go home.”

Nobody gave him an argument. Jaime slid off the table and picked up his jacket. At this point he wasn’t sure where home was, but it was as good a time as any to start finding out.

“I suppose you’ll be wiping the dirt of Cypress Point from your feet,” Lennard said. Lennard was always good at picking minds.

“If I do,” Jaime said, “won’t I be wiping dirt from my feet all the rest of my life? … No, I’ve got a construction job to finish. If I light a fire under Cy we may break even.” He turned to Dr. Curry. “There’s something I want to ask you,” he said. “You came here the day we returned from our honeymoon. It was no coincidence. Did you come to watch me or Steve?”

“You,” Curry said.

“Then you believed the confession?”

“There was no reason not to. Mr. Quentin had a semiconscious client two psychiatrists couldn’t rouse. He knew about experiments with drugs in obtaining confessions. He knew the susceptibility of patients to suggestion. What did he have to lose? If he planted a seed in your mind and you confessed—good. His troubles were over. If you didn’t confess, the experiment was just the act of a conscientious lawyer trying to protect the interests of his client … which is the way I felt about it when he retained me.”

“Is that the way you felt about it yesterday morning on the beach?”

Curry reflected. “I’m not sure how I felt about it yesterday morning. I had talked to Quentin on his home ground. He was too anxious to get rid of the house. There were others involved. They behaved well in the courtroom, but offstage the fangs began to show. I felt guilty. You were walking about with a pressure inside you that had to explode sooner or later. I wanted to help you. I couldn’t do anything but make suggestions. In fact”—Curry smiled impishly in remembrance—”I broke into your sister’s house myself. I didn’t find anything except a spare poker in the kitchen closet. I put it in the living room, where I hoped it would prod your memory when you returned.”

“Then Steve never intended to save me,” Jaime said.

“It seems not. I remember how shocked he was when I told him he had a confession that couldn’t be used. I think he expected that you would be indicted. He meant to plead you guilty and throw you on the mercy of the court. His crime would be paid for and the gossiping tongues of Cypress Point would be appeased. But his plan didn’t work. That’s the heartening thing about science, Jaime Dodson. It doesn’t always work. There’s still the human element.”

The human element was beginning to stir itself awake when Jaime and Greta left the police station together. It was morning. Shops were opening. Trucks were delivering. School buses where making pickups. Greta had commandeered Steve’s car. It was waiting in the parking lot. Jaime drove. They turned down the main street of Cypress Point and headed uptown.

“I suppose,” Jaime reflected, “I should have consulted my wife before I told Lennard how I felt about leaving town. I haven’t had one very long. I wonder how she feels.”

“Pull over to the curb,” Greta said.

Jaime didn’t argue. He pulled to the curb and turned off the motor. He looked at her expectantly. She was leaning back against the seat, completely relaxed, smiling at him with that unrouged mouth and out of those tear- and wind-reddened eyes. He leaned forward and kissed her, long and deep and happily.

She moved her head. “Jaime,” she said, “did you notice where you parked?”

Reluctantly he left his work and looked up. They were directly in front of Chad Winter’s store. Chad was raising the blinds … and his eyebrows. Mrs. Moore stood just outside the door waiting for it to be unlocked. A schoolboy on a bicycle stopped at the curb, gawking.

“People will talk,” Greta murmured.

Jaime worried about it for all of ten seconds, and then closed her mouth with his. It was still better than science.

If you liked Verdict Suspended check out:

The Severed Key

T
HE MORNING FLIGHT
from Las Vegas arrived at Los Angeles International Airport ten minutes behind schedule due to a strong headwind bearing in from the Pacific. Dropping phantomlike from the low ceiling of a steadily darkening sky, the huge silver plane roared down the runway and manoeuvred artfully to its place at the disembarkment satellite. Inside the glass-enclosed waiting room, Jack Keith snuffed out a cigarette with one suède-booted toe and moved in closer to the arrival gate. He was a tall, husky man of thirty with an unruly mop of red hair and quick grey eyes that had already noticed more about the cluster of people who had come to meet the plane than they imagined could be evident to a casual observer. A professional observer. The weathered trench coat Keith wore over his flannel shirt and levis was loosely belted to conceal the snub-nosed detective’s special strapped to his hip. He was a private investigator and his mission was to deliver the confidential report he carried in a flat leather zipper case to Simon Drake who had telephoned instructions from Las Vegas before boarding the incoming plane.

As the first passengers began to straggle through the gate, a dark-haired young man, theatrically elegant in a fawn-coloured suit, pushed ahead of Keith without apology. Keith glared at his profile: arrogant, deliberately rude, confidently handsome. There was something irritatingly familiar about the face that set him scratching at his memory like a dog trying to locate a buried bone, and the distraction was enough to make him miss Drake’s appearance at the gateway until a lusty shout snared his attention.

“Keith! You made it! Hey, why so grim?”

Simon Drake’s wide grin took a decade off his thirty-five years. He had picked up a movie star tan under the Nevada sun. Wearing a white turtle-necked sweater and madras slacks, he looked as if he had stepped directly from the golf course on to the plane and was waiting for the rest of the foursome to show up.

“I see you’ve got the Meechum report,” he added, taking the zipper case from Keith’s hand. “Good. I’ll have time to go over it before the board meeting in San Diego Monday morning.”

“How’s Wanda?” Keith asked.

“Great! Didn’t you see the press notices after her opening? Sensational. My girl’s found her voice at last. She’s being held over for two more weeks at the Sahara.”

“What about your wedding?”

“After the Sahara engagement. We want some time to ourselves.”

Keith shook his head. “Too late,” he said. “You should have married her before she was a celebrity. You’ll live in a fishbowl now.”

“That’s better than living in the woodwork with a mouse. Didn’t I ever tell you how much I hate home cooking? Come on, let’s get downstairs and see if the baggage is coming through. I’ve got work to do.”

Simon Drake was one of the busiest young lawyers on the west coast. Athlete that he was, his body was still barely able to keep up with his mind. He started towards the down escalator but Keith remained motionless, eyes fixed on the gathering of people at the gate.

“There’s a storm coming in,” he murmured. “Small craft warnings are out.”

“So?” Simon queried.

“Didn’t you tell me on the phone that you were taking your boat home from Marina Del Rey? What’s it doing there anyway?”

“I loaned it to Cappy Anderson,” Simon said. “You know Cappy. He’s a sky pilot on this line. He’s having a thing with one of the new stewardesses and boats are romantic. I left it with him when I went to Vegas with Wanda.”

“You’ll have a rough trip home.”

“Maybe not if I hurry.”

Keith was still loathe to leave. Simon followed the direction of his gaze and frowned. “I don’t see her,” he mused. “It has to be a girl to keep you that fascinated.”

“It’s not a girl,” Keith said. “It’s the profile in the ice cream suit. I know that face.”

Now that he knew what to look for, Simon located the man in the light-coloured suit. “I know him too,” he admitted, “but I didn’t see him on the plane with me.”

“He wasn’t on the plane. He’s been waiting here for it to come in.”

“Then he must have come in on an earlier flight because I saw him in Vegas yesterday. He’s been there all week—about as inconspicuous as a Marine band. I heard that he dropped $40,000 at one dice table and acted as if it were small change. They call him Johnny Sands.”

“Johnny Sands,” Keith repeated. “It doesn’t ring a bell.”

“It would be a pseudonym. Wanda says the rumours have him as an international playboy who’s been seen making the rounds in London and Madrid.”

“Is that so?” Keith mused. “Why then, I wonder, is he greeting Angie Cerva like an old fraternity brother?”

The man called Johnny Sands had stopped searching for faces in the dispersing crowd and stepped forward to grasp the arm of a barrel-chested giant with steel grey hair and a strong, swarthy face. The good arm, the arm that carried a neatly-folded camel-tan overcoat, not the right arm that hung loosely under the sleeve of a dark, expensively tailored suit. Simon watched the meeting with puzzled eyes.

“Are you sure that’s Cerva?” he asked.

“I couldn’t mistake the big boy himself,” Keith insisted. “The organization calls him ‘the banker’. He’s the financial wizard of the east coast branch.”

“This isn’t the east coast.”

“That’s what I’m thinking. Times change. Operations grow. See that limp arm. There’s a dozen stories about that. Some say he was knifed in an intra-family feud. Some say a jealous mistress took a shot at him and was never seen again. Others say a shark got it when one of the Miami brothers had him thrown off his yacht. But that was ten years before Angie moved up to the boardroom. The international playboy plays with a rough crowd.”

“There was talk in Vegas that Sands was dickering for a Strip hotel,” Simon said. “Cerva could be selling.”

“It’s possible. Anyway, it explains the presence of the screws over near the telephones. See how interested they are in the glad-hand greeting?”

Jack Keith was right. Two men were standing near the row of telephones in view of the gate. One was about six foot four, ruddy faced and clean shaven. He was wearing a nondescript grey suit, a black raincoat and rubbers on his size twelve shoes. He was about fifty and did have the look of a veteran policeman. His companion was about twenty years younger, of a much lighter build, wore tortoise-rimmed glasses and a small dark beard. His clothes had an ivy league cut and he might have been a professor or a drop-out from a peace march.