You Never Know With Women (24 page)

“Fine.”

He telephoned for Lu, but he hadn’t come in.

“He’s ditching the car,” I said.

“Tell him I want him as soon as he shows up,” Mick said into the receiver and hung up.

They didn’t trace the gun that shot Brett, did they?”

“Yesit was his.”

“Brett’s?”

“That’s right.”

I slid further down in the chair.

“Brett’s? That’s odd.”

“Why odd?”

“Odd Brett’s killer got hold of it. Almost looks as if Brett knew him. I wonder if Brett knew Gorman? You get what I’m driving at, don’t you? If the gun was Brett’s you can bet he was carrying it in case I started any tricks. He was expecting me, and he was taking care I didn’t double-cross him. Maybe he had the gun lying on the desk where he could reach it if he wanted it. His killer must have known him to have got close enough to grab the gun. See what I mean?”

“Yeah.”

“I’ll have to find out if Gorman knew Brett. Gorman fixed up for Veda to do her act at Brett’s house, but I doubt if he fixed it with Brett personally: He’d work through Brett’s secretary.” Then I remembered the fair girl who had burst into the room as I was making my getaway. “Did they ever say who the girl was? The one who found Brett, and saw me? She was a blonde; a looker.”

“Sheila — Sheila — I forget: She was to be the future Mrs. Brett.”

Was she? Can’t you remember her name?”

“I’ve kept the cuttings: I’ll turn it up.”

While he was pawing through a mass of cuttings, I thought about the gun: I couldn’t imagine Brett letting Gorman get close enough to grab it. This was a disturbing thought. Of course Brett might have been off his guard, but it didn’t seem likely; not a smartie like Brett. The time factor was important, too. I reckoned it took about ten to fifteen minutes, no more, for the guard to escort me to the steps, for me to fool around looking for the compact, to the moment I’d heard the shot. In that time the murderer had to lull Brett’s suspicions to let him grab the gun, shoot him, take the money and beat it. Fast work — unless . . . Suppose, I said to myself, Gorman didn’t kill him. Suppose the future Mrs. Brett had done it. She could have gone into Brett’s room and picked up the gun without giving him the jitters. But why should she? Unless they’d fallen out and she knew I was on my way up and this was as good a way of picking up twenty-five grand as another.

“Sheila Kendrick,” Mick said, and tossed the cutting over to me. “That’s the name.”

There was a photograph of her: she looked cute in a Jantzen swim suit; not that she wouldn’t have looked cuter without it. There wasn’t much about her. She came from San Francisco; would have been the future Mrs. Brett had Brett lived; had been a dancer in the successful musical
I Spy Strangers
, and had won a couple of beauty prizes.

I threw the cutting on the desk as Lu came in.

Mick told him what was wanted.

“Get after him, and if he has an alibi, check it, and when I say check it, I mean check it. There’s five hundred bucks in this for you if you make a job of it.”

Lu fluttered his eyelashes.

“And find out if he knew Brett personally. That’s important,” I said.

“Don’t worry, dear,” Lu said, and sniffed at his cornflower. “I can use five hundred. I’ll make a job of this.”

“He kills me,” I said when he had gone.

“He kills most people, but he’s smart.”

“Well, there’s nothing I can do now until he comes back. I don’t want to get in your way, Mick. Shall I wait in your hideout?”

“No; stick around. No one comes here unless I say so. Make yourself at home. You’re not in the way.” He offered me a cigar, but I wasn’t feeling festive enough. “What happened to the frail?” He had been wanting to ask that question ever since I had arrived. Now his curiosity got the better of him.

“We parted.”

“You did? Well, that surprises me. I thought you and she—” He broke off and grinned. “But I guess I’m talking too much.”

“That’s all right. You know it is. We had a week together, but it didn’t work out.” I wasn’t telling anyone about Max, not even Mick.

“You never know with women.” He shook his head. “And she was a swell looker, too. Shows you, doesn’t it? You can’t tell by looks. I knew a twist once who was magazine cover stuff; but she was no good: colder than an iceberg. Then there was a dame who had a face like a hangover, and a figure like two planks nailed together.” He rolled his eyes. “But was she hot!”

I groped in my hip pocket for my cigarette-case and found Max’s wallet instead. I’d forgotten about it, and while I listened to Mick talking about the women he’d known – always a favourite subject of his – I thumbed through the contents of the wallet. There was a five-dollar bill, a couple of “bus tickets, a letter from his mother, and three obscene photographs. I tossed the pictures over to Mick. On the back of the letter was a pencilled scrawl that brought me to my feet.

I remembered the untidy handwriting of the letter Max had left under his pillow. This note was in the same fist.

It ran:

For Alma from Verne; “A man’s best friend is his wife.”

I felt in my vest pocket and took out the card Brett had given me. The same words. I stood thinking. Two guys write the same dozen words and get themselves knocked off. Did it mean anything? Was I missing anything?

I felt Mick’s eyes on my face.

“What’s biting you?”

“I don’t know . . . nothing, maybe.”

I folded the letter and put it and the card in my pocket.

“Getting kind of cagey, aren’t you?”

I grinned at him.

“I guess so. Once a dick, always a dick. I’m sorry, Mick. I don’t think it’s anything.”

He shrugged.

“Play it the way you like. I’m here if you want me.”

Lu got back late in the afternoon. I was jittery by that time, and when he came in I grabbed him.

“Well? How did you get on?”

He shook his head.

“He’s in the clear. He didn’t shoot Brett. He was at the Casino all the evening. There’re a hundred witnesses who saw him. He didn’t leave until two o’clock.”

“Any chance that he sneaked out and came back again?”

“Not a chance. He was playing roulette and never left the table. I’ve checked until I’m dizzy. He didn’t shoot Brett, and he didn’t know Brett either. He’s never even spoken to him.”

Well, that seemed to be that.

CHAPTER SIXTEEN

THE HOT evening sunshine came through the slats in the venetian blinds and made a pattern on the carpet. The pattern, from where I was sitting, looked like the bars of a prison cell, and added an incentive to my thoughts. I was alone in Mick’s office, and had been alone for the past hour. The office door was locked, and I had no fear of interruptions. I sat in the desk chair; a cigarette burned forgotten in my fingers, a glass of whisky stood neglected on the desk while I exercised my brain until it creaked.

Gorman hadn’t shot Brett. Well, someone had, and it was up to me if I was to save my neck to find out who that someone was. I had already sent Lu out to check Boyd’s alibi, but that was routine. I didn’t believe Boyd was the killer. He had no motive. Whoever had killed Brett had wanted money. Well, if it wasn’t Boyd who else was there to suspect? Sheila Kendrick, the future Mrs. Brett? A possibility. One of Brett’s servants? One of the guards? Or Mr. or Miss X, the unknown? I didn’t know.

Already I had decided the quickest way to arrive at a solution was to begin at the beginning; to ignore anything that was a guess and to concentrate only on facts. If I didn’t hurry and find the killer, the police would find me, and then that would be that.

What facts had I? Not many: Brett knew the killer, otherwise the killer wouldn’t have got near Brett’s gun. The motive for the killing was the twenty-five grand. Then there was the mysterious twelve words that had interested Max as well as Brett:
For Alma from Verne: “A man’s best friend is his wife.”
What did that mean? Did it play a part in Brett’s death? Why had Max also scribbled the words down? Who were Verne and Alma?

Finger-nails tapped on the door. Mick’s voice called softly. I pushed back my chair, opened the door, let him in and locked the door again.

“How’s it going?”

“It’s not,” I said. “My brain feels as if it’s walked miles.”

“What are you working on?”

“I’m waiting for Lu. He’s digging into Boyd’s alibi. It’s a waste of time, but I’m checking everything. You never know. Here, take a look at this.” I tossed over Brett’s card. “Make anything of it?”

He frowned at the words, then shook his head.

“Means nothing to me. Some code, do you think? I wouldn’t say a man’s best friend’s his wife, would you? I thought a man’s best friend’s his dog.”

“Don’t be such a damned cynic. Its the kind of sentiment a guy would have engraved on a wedding ring, isn’t it?”

“I wouldn’t.”

“I’m not talking about you. I’m talking about a guy who is in love with his wife. That’s something you wouldn’t understand.”

“I guess not.” He ran stubby fingers through his hair, frowned again at the words. “How does this figure in the set-up?”

“Brett gave me his card. He wanted me to telephone him. I found that on the back, and it’s got me puzzled.”

Mick shrugged.

“What the hell? Why should it have anything to do with his death?”

“I have a hunch that it has. It must mean something, and I can’t afford to pass anything up. If I could find out who Verne and Alma are it might help. But how do I do that?”

Mick thought, shook his head.

“Well, there are the Baillies of course, but it wouldn’t be them. A guy like Brett wouldn’t know the Baillies.”

“You mean Verne Baillie, the bank bandit?”

“That’s who I mean, but it’s a shot in the dark. It couldn’t be him.”

“No.” I reached for a cigarette, paused and frowned, then lit up. “He had a wife, Alma didn’t he?”

“That’s right. That’s why I thought of them.”

“It couldn’t be them. Brett wouldn’t mix with bank bandits. That doesn’t make sense. Besides, they’re dead, aren’t they?”

“Yeah. Verne was killed by the Feds a couple of years ago. Alma was killed in a car crash a year later.”

I calmed down.

“You know, for a moment I thought we had something. It’s a coincidence though, isn’t it? You’re sure they’re both dead?”

“I guess so. Anyway, Lu will tell you more about them. Hewas friendly with Verne.”

“I don’t think it matters. As you say, it can’t be them. I wish I could question the future Mrs. Brett. She might tell me a lot if I could get at her.”

“You can’t do that. I’d forget it if I were you. It only complicates things. It’s nothing to do with the killing, you can bet on that.”

But then he didn’t know Max had also been interested in those old words. But I wasn’t going to talk to anyone about Max. A tap sounded on the door. It was Lu.

“Any luck?”

He shook his head.

“It wasn’t Boyd. He was at his house all the evening. Anything else I can do for you?”

“Well, it isn’t Gorman and it isn’t Boyd. Who else have we left? There’s Sheila Kendrick. She was right on the spot. But we can’t check what she was doing at the time Brett was shot unless we tip our hand, and we can’t afford to do that. It could have been anyone. I mean someone we’ve never heard of. It’s hell, isn’t it?”

Lu smiled sympathetically.

“I know just how you feel. It keeps coming back to you, doesn’t it?”

“Yeah.” I got up and began to pace up and down. “You knew the Baillies, didn’t you?”

“I knew Verne Baillie. Why bring him up?” He seemed startled.

“How well did you know him?”

“Pretty well. We kicked around together three or four years ago. When he married I didn’t see much of him. But what’s he got to do with this?”

“I don’t know.” I threw him Brett’s card. “Make anything of that?”

Lu gaped at it.

“That’s Verne all right. He was always saying Alma was his best friend. They were crazy about each other.”

I began to get excited again.

“Are you sure, Lu? This is important.”

“Of course I am. I know Verne used those words hundreds of times. All his pals were sick of hearing them. I was, too.”

“Could he have known Brett?”

“Verne? Not a chance. Be your age. Verne wouldn’t mix with millionaires.”

“And yet Brett wrote those words on his card.”

“Looks as if you have something there,” Mick said. “But I don’t know what you’re going to do with it now you have it.”

“Verne never knew Brett,” Lu said with conviction. “He was never closer to the Pacific Coast than Kansas, and that’s a long way from Brett’s territory. I don’t know what this means, but I do know Brett and Verne never hooked up.”

“What happened to him, Lu?”

“He was shot. It was after the Tulsa bank robbery. Maybe you remember it. Verne got away with a hundred grand. It was a sweet job. He and Alma pulled it, but things went wrong. I think she lost her head. Verne had a machine-gun with him. He knocked off a couple of tellers, wounded another, killed two bank guards and wounded a cop.”

“Yeah, I remember now. It caused a hell of a sensation. That must be two years ago.”

“It was. The Feds cracked down on Verne and they hunted him night and day. They finally traced him to a house in Dallas, surrounded the place and fought it out with him. When they got into the house they found he had twenty slugs in his body, and still he wasn’t dead. He died on the way to hospital. Alma got away.”

“What happened to her?”

“She had been out shopping when they trapped Verne. They found the hundred grand in suitcases in the house, so they knew she hadn’t much money. They went after her, but she slipped through their net somehow. A year later they got a tip she’d been seen in Elk City, but she had gone by the time they got there. A couple of days after, the Sheriff of Gallup spotted her and gave the alarm. She’d been hiding in Albuquerque and was once more on the move, so they thought. They found her body a few miles from Gallup in a smashed car. She had hit a tree. The car had caught fire, and she was pretty well smashed and burned. But it was Alma all right. That happened about twelve months ago.”