You Can't Kill a Corpse (18 page)

Clane looked at Lieutenant Mullen. He dunked half a doughnut, chewed and swallowed it before he spoke. He dunked the other half. Marilyn opened her mouth and Clane pushed the doughnut in. He grinned.

“Okay,” he said. “It was self-defense. The big boy blew a hole in Grando and he tried to blow one in me. I didn't want to kill him. I was a little shaky and my aim was too good. If I'd had my way I would have winged him so you could have taken him in. It's good for the voters to see a public heel like that crucified in court once in a while.

“Anyway,” he went on, “that's why Thorne came to Grando's—to kill him. Ballistics prove the gun Thorne carried was the one that killed Wickett, Watson, and Castle.”

“Sure,” Mullen said, digging into kraut, “only you carried that gun. You took it away from Edith Morgan the night she visited your hotel room.”

“Sure I took it away from her,” Clane said. “But, like I told you, I left it at the depot. After Castle was killed I went to the locker. It was still there. But Thorne had taken it once and put it back then. He got the key from my pocket the night I stayed with dear Natalie. You found the duplicate key in his pocket, didn't you?”

Mullen said, “Yes.”

“Thorne,” Clane went on, “took it again to use on Grando. Haven't you broken Natalie down yet?”

Mullen said, “No.”

Clane shrugged. “You won't have to. That rigmarole she gave me on Paul Grando and his motives was exactly right. Except that it applied to Ed Thorne and not Grando. I went up there and shot off about Thorne being the murderer just to get her steamed up. She steamed all right—good and hot. You'll never be able to prove blackmail but you can hook her as an accomplice or an accessory.”

“You nearly fixed that, killing Thorne,” Mullen said.

Clane grunted at him. “You would have got him. He was a smart boy but not too smart to keep clear forever. He almost had you believing I was the murderer. But you did wise up to him before it was over.”

“But not before it was too late—for Thorne,” Mullen said.

“He was trying to keep from leaving enough evidence for a jury to put him away,” Clane said. “And he was shot for the same reason a rabid dog is shot. He was crazy and he was walling to bite all he could to get where he wanted. He saw his chances for power and he went after them. Who knows, maybe he had visions of being Governor or going to the senate.

“He made deals with Pryor, with Grando, and used Watson's picture-taking ability to try and skewer Wickett on a blackmail sword. He didn't give a damn about Castle's affidavits except that they might start me thinking. What he really worried about was Castle's closeness to Watson. Castle knew who took pictures. Castle knew plenty—he made it his business. He cadged his drinks and his flops on a penny ante blackmail system. You can make Betty Castle admit to you that Thorne paid her to keep her mouth shut about her visit to the hotel. She was scared sick of both the Thornes.”

Marilyn poured Clane a cup of coffee as he stopped for breath. She got up and took more kraut from the stove and put it on Mullen's plate. She sat down again.

“When did you start thinking of Thorne, Jim?” she asked.

Clane sipped the coffee gratefully. “When he wanted me to go to bed with his wife,” he said. “Thorne knew damned well the alibi would never work but he was playing safe. If it backfired and Thorne was shown to be hooked up in the mess then he could turn the heat from himself to his wife. She was at Wickett's and she could have been at Watson's in time to kill him. That fake alibi was to make her look guilty—and it did.”

Mullen said, “But I thought Pryor talked you out of suspecting Thorne?”

Clane grinned. “So did Edith, so did her father. Marilyn here almost did, unwittingly. Edith and her father were trying so hard to ring in Bob that I started sniffing around them.”

“They weren't trying to get the kid in a jam,” Mullen said. “They were trying to get him out of one. They thought he was in deeper than he really was, and they were willing to have him in jail to keep him from getting snoopy and getting shot.”

“Bob was secretive because he was working with me—for the governor,” Clane said. “He's just a kid and he got too worked up after things began to happen. It was a pretty hard place to stay on an even keel.”

“I know,” Mullen said. “He deserved credit for doing as well as he did.” He made a wry face. “That tabloid that was supposed to crucify Edith was hard for him to take calmly. It would have been for anyone.”

He paused and filled his mouth with kraut. When it was chewed, he said, “Thorne cooked that tabloid up, by the way. We gathered that much evidence before the case broke. It was to be used to put pressure on Morgan if it looked like he would win the election. Watson did the work, of course.”

Clane nodded. “We each learned a little, Mullen. And with that evidence you would have tumbled in time. My killing Thorne only hurried matters.” He said ruefully, “Hurried them too much. The voters needed the impact of a court trial to make them see the rot in the foundations of their city government.”

“They'll still get a jolt when the papers break this,” Mullen said.

Clane grunted. “If Grando were alive that might help. The thing I couldn't understand was why Thorne killed Grando when Grando was working for him. Only Grando thought it was the other way around. When I realized that I saw the whole thing. It tips the play.”

Mullen looked from Clane to his empty cup. He said, “That's fine coffee, Mrs. Clane.”

Marilyn beamed on him and poured him another cup.

Clane said, “Look, Bob saw Wickett get killed. He saw his father leave for Watson's place. He went in and grabbed the Ediphone record that Wickett rigged up to put the bee on Natalie but which nearly did for Morgan instead. My guess is that Wickett turned the machine on when Natalie came in. But Morgan arrived unexpectedly to call Wickett about his relationship with Edith. Natalie ducked out of sight and Morgan's conversation went on record in error.

“Natalie,” he continued, “was close by all of the time. She put the scandal sheet in Wickett's desk and she planted the two marked fifty-dollar bills in his wallet.”

“Why?”

“It had to be that way,” Clane argued. “You found one bill on Watson. Thorne deliberately tied Watson and Wickett together to make their murders logical. Only he had to hurry to bump off Watson before Morgan got there. When Wickett gave Watson's name to Morgan—as that Ediphone record shows—Thorne knew that Morgan would go to Watson's. Because he was in a rush he had to turn the dirty work over to Natalie. Bob saw her messing around the corpse and naturally, more than ever, believed she had killed Wickett. You got that from him yourself. And that's what he was facing her with when I walked in on them this noon.”

Mullen said, “And when Natalie faded Edith blundered in. She found the stuff she was supposed to find. Did she plant Natalie's picture—the one you saw?”

Clane said, “No. By then Natalie had ducked. Grando was swarming in on Thorne's order. He saw the body; he suspected Thorne but he couldn't prove it. He kept his mouth shut because it gave him a possible pry to use on Thorne. He put the picture there because Thorne told him to. Thorne's idea was to tie Natalie in, just in case. He was tying her in and he tied the Morgans in by swiping their gun and using it. Morgan had his cigar case out when Wickett was shot. He dropped without realizing it. Natalie was quick enough to dump it into Wickett's pocket—and keep me crossed up for some time. Thorne also egged Morgan to accuse Wickett of the supposed love affair with Edith. Morgan was no fool as a business man but in the intrigue racket he was a baby. He fell for everything—up to a point.

“Thorne let Edith find that scandal sheet so she would know there was pressure on her. She wasn't sure of anything about it except that Watson had a hand in making it. She concocted that story of Wickett using it against her simply because she wanted my help through sympathy and because he was too dead to refute her.”

“Paul Grando could have told her the truth about that,” Mullen said.

“Sure,” Clane admitted. “But he wouldn't. Grando was playing for the same thing Ed Thorne was—power. He was going to use Edith for what he could but he wasn't going to tell her anything if he could help it. He made a mistake when he left his cigar on Wickett's desk. That told me he was there shortly before I came in. I tasted every cigar in town, I think, and it was his brand and his alone. A good cigar, too.”

Clane grinned. “Grando was the one who tailed me the day I saw the governor. He tipped off Thorne, but I'll bet Thorne didn't tell him who I was seeing. Thorne was smart enough to figure it out and he tried to pressure me out of town. But Grando wasn't up in his state politics. He had to know as much as Thorne did or go down and out. That's why he tried to sweat me.”

“And he went down and out,” Mullen said in his peculiar soft voice. He finished the last of the kraut on his plate, waved aside another helping and yawned widely.

“It's three o'clock. Don't you two ever sleep?”

Marilyn smiled impishly at him. “Did you, Lieutenant—at first?”

Mullen's flush went unnoticed as a violent clamoring came from the other room. Marilyn jumped up and then sat down again, laughing.

“My clock,” she said. “My beautiful cathedral clock just exploded again.”

Mullen said, “That was a clock? What clock?”

“It's a big clock.” She measured with her hands. “It plugs into the electric socket. And every hour, on the hour, it blows up. Every hour, day and night.”

“It makes enough noise to wake you up,” Mullen said. “A hell of a clock.”

Clane grinned. “It's made that way—to wake you up. It's a honeymoon clock, Mullen.”

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Copyright © 1946 by Phoenix Press.
Copyright © renewed 1974 by Louis Trimble.

Published by arrangement with Golden West Literary Agency.
All rights reserved.

Names, characters, corporations, institutions, organizations, events, or locales in this novel are either the product of the author's imagination or, if real, used fictitiously. The resemblance of any character to actual persons (living or dead) is entirely coincidental.

eISBN 10: 1-4405-4195-7
eISBN 13: 978-1-4405-4195-7

Cover art © 123RF/Konrad Bak