"Who are you?" she demanded. "And what are you talking about?"
"You know who I am, so let"s get down to cases. And don"t hang up on me, because if you do Scanlon"s going to pick you up. I"ve still got a friend or two there, and he might get a tip; you didn"t invent the anonymous telephone call."
"Just a moment, please," she said sweetly. I heard her put down the phone, and then the rattle of coins from the change dispenser.
She came back. "You wouldn"t dare! I"d tell him where you are."
"Try me and see. After all, they"re going to catch me sooner or later, so I haven"t got much to lose. But you have, haven"t you?"
"What is it you want?"
"The name of the other man."
"What other man?"
"Listen-when you called me, you said Roberts wasn"t the only one. What"s his name?"
"I don"t know."
"All right. You"re asking for it."
"I tell you, I don"t know. All I know is there was one. It was when I was still working for her, before she married."
"How do you know there was?"
"I just do," she said sullenly.
"I said how?" how?"
"I"ve got eyes, haven"t I? The stuck-up witch, she didn"t fool me-"
"You really hated her, didn"t you?"
"So what if I did?"
"Why?"
"That"s my business. And, anyway, she was the one got Roberts killed, wasn"t she?"
"I don"t know. That"s what I"m trying to find out."
"Now, there"s a hot one. That"s a real gas."
"Did you ever tell Roberts about this man?"
"No."
"Because he didn"t exist, isn"t that right?"
"All right, you have it your way. I still know what I know."
"Did Roberts ever ask you anything about her?"
"No. Except once, I think he did ask me what her name was before she was married. And where she came from."
"Did he say why he asked?"
"No."
"When was this?"
"It was way last summer."
"Do you remember exactly?"
"Why are you asking all these stupid questions? I think it was the first time we dated. In July, or June-I don"t know. Stop bothering me. I don"t want to talk about it any more." The line went dead.
The intercom came on, and Barbara asked, "What do you make of it?"
"Not much. Maybe she"s lying about the other man."
"I"m not too sure; though she is bitter about something. It might be Roberts" death, of course. But there"s still something odd about the way she held out on that one point-I mean, how she knew there was somebody else."
"And still doesn"t know who he is. Or says she doesn"t."
"Or who he was was. I just remembered something while you were talking. Didn"t she used to date Junior Delevan?"
I frowned. "Yes. Now I think of it, she did."
"I don"t know what that could have to do with this, but she does have bad luck with her boy friends." The speaker went silent.
Delevan was a wild, good-looking kid with a penchant for trouble; he"d been arrested several times for car theft while still in high school, and later had been convicted of burglary and given a suspended sentence. Then just about two years ago they"d found his body on the city dump one morning with the top of his head broken in. The police never found out who"d done it.
As I recalled now, it was just before Frances and I were married, while she was still running the shop, but she couldn"t have had anything to do with him. She was twenty-five then, and he couldn"t have been over nineteen. She probably didn"t even know him, except she might have seen him with Doris a time or two.
The intercom hummed. "Telegram," she whispered. I grabbed the phone just as she started to dial.
"Sheriff"s office, Mulholland."
"Could I speak to Mr. Scanlon, please? This is Mrs. Ryan."
"I think it could be arranged, honey; but wouldn"t I do?" You could see the smirk on the stupid b.a.s.t.a.r.d"s face. I wondered how it would look with a boot sticking out of it.
"If you don"t mind," she said coolly, "I"d rather speak to Mr. Scanlon."
"Right you are, sweetie."
When Scanlon came on the line, she said, "This is Barbara Ryan again. I"ve just received another telegram-"
"From Warren?" he broke in.
"No. It"s from Houston, Texas, and it is addressed to Mr. Warren. The text reads as follows: DAN ROBERTS BORN HOUSTON 1933, ORPHANED AT AGE TWELVE, RAISED BY OLDER BROTHER CLINTON ROBERTS OWNER DOWNTOWN SPORTING GOODS STORE STOP JOINED HOUSTON POLICE FORCE 1954 BECAME DETECTIVE VICE SQUAD 1957 SUSPENDED AND INDICTED FOR EXTORTION 1958 STOP DREW SUSPENDED SENTENCE STOP APRIL LAST YEAR BROTHER ADVANCED MONEY ESTABLISH HIMSELF IN BUSINESS ELSEWHERE GET NEW START AWAY FROM a.s.sOCIATIONS HERE STOP HAS NEVER BEEN IN FLORIDA UNLESS SINCE LAST APRIL STOP NO DANGEROUS ENEMIES BUT WITH KIND OF FRIENDS HE HAD HE DIDN"T NEED ANY SIGNED CATES."
"What do you suppose it means?" Barbara asked then.
"I don"t know," Scanlon replied wearily. "But I"m getting afraid to open my desk drawer for a cigar; a couple of Warren"s detectives might jump out in my face. We just heard from New Orleans."
"About Denman?"
"Yes. He says he was hired by a man from here by the name of Joseph Randall."
"Randall? I don"t think I know anybody-"
"Exactly."
"But didn"t he meet this Randall? Or doesn"t he have an address, or phone number?"
"No. Randall called him by long distance and hired him to follow Mrs. Warren. Said he"d send him the retainer, which he did-in cash, through the mail. That was Monday. He called Denman Tuesday night and then again Wednesday night, for his report. We"re having the phone company check out the calls now, but they"ll turn out to be from a pay phone. It"s so d.a.m.n characteristic of paranoia-you"ve got to be sly, and fool "em; everybody"s plotting against you."
"But it could have been somebody else. Naturally, he"d want to keep his ident.i.ty secret-"
He sighed. "Mrs. Ryan, did you ever hear of anybody hiring a detective to watch another man"s wife?"
"Then why would Denman take the a.s.signment under those circ.u.mstances?"
"He has the reputation of not being too fussy about who hires him as long as he gets paid."
The last lead was gone now. I slumped over the desk with my head in my hands. I"d have been better off if I"d given myself up in the first place. Heels tapped in the pa.s.sage, and the door opened softly. Barbara had her purse under her arm.
She smiled. "A girl"s ent.i.tled to rebuild her face before the coffee break." Seating herself by the desk, she slid a yellow envelope from the purse. "This just came, and I don"t think I"ve got the nerve to read him another one this soon."
"Thanks." I dropped in the chair behind the desk and tore it open.
JOHN D. WARREN WARREN REALTY CARTHAGE ALABAMA:NO SUCH PERSON AS FRANCES KINNAN STOP HAVE CHECKED VITAL STATISTICS ORLANDO AND DADE COUNTY NO BIRTH NO MARRIAGE NO DIVORCE STOP UNHEARD OF AT UNIVERSITY OF MIAMI AND BURDINES STOP NO RECORD OF A LEON DUPRE NOR SHOP ANYWHERE MIAMI AREA NAMED LEONS STOP ADVISE FURTHER ACTION DESIREDCROSBY INVESTIGATIONS I read it, and silently pa.s.sed it to her.
8
She read it.
"Any ideas?" she asked at last.
"One," I said. "Quit, while I still know who I I am." am."
"Maybe it"s not quite as hopeless as that," she replied. "It seems to me you"ve pretty well established what was at the bottom of it. You have a man with a previous record of extortion, and a woman-" She hesitated, embarra.s.sed.
"It"s all right," I said. "We"ve got no time to search for euphemisms; let"s call "em as they fall. A woman with something to hide, possibly a criminal record. Result: blackmail. But it still makes no sense." I showed her the figures from the bank statements. "I"ll admit the pattern matches what Doris Bentley said-that Roberts first asked about her along in the summer. For the sake of argument we"ll a.s.sume he had some reason to suspect she wasn"t who she"d said she was. Then maybe he started checking, and found out what she was trying to cover up. So far, so good-it was in August the checks she wrote for cash suddenly took a jump. But look at the picayune amounts: $200 a month at most. And all the time she had $6000 of her own she didn"t touch-until this week when she threw it away on a bunch of glue-footed horses. That doesn"t sound very desperate to me. And, finally, she didn"t kill Roberts, anyway; she wasn"t even in the same state."
"No," she said. "But aren"t you overlooking the possibility two people could have been paying blackmail? If Doris is right, she had a boy friend."
I looked at her thoughtfully. "Maybe you"ve got it! And that would account for Roberts" income that Ernie couldn"t figure out. There"s no telling how much he was tapping this other party for."
"It"s about the only thing that fits the facts we have now," she said.
I lit a cigarette, and one for her. "There"s one more thing that puzzles me at the moment," I said. "How did you ever work for me for a full year without my finding out you had more sense than I have?"
She gave me that cynical, lopsided grin. "Hiding that from the boss is the first thing any secretary learns." She went on, "Seriously, though-"
"Seriously, though," I interrupted her, "I"m beginning to think the only smart thing I"ve done in years was hire you, when you left George. Incidentally, why did you quit him? I don"t think you ever told me."
She shrugged. "I just didn"t like legal work, I guess. It"s too fussy-ten copies of everything, and no erasures. But let"s get back to the brainstorming. The next question telegraphs itself."
"Right," I said. "What was the boy friend so afraid of that he"d pay off to Roberts? Scandal? Divorce?"
She shook her head. "It must have been more than that. He not only paid off, he finally killed him. And her, too."
I nodded. "I still think Doris Bentley knows more about it than she"ll admit. Do you suppose it could have had something to do with Junior Delevan? She was still working for Frances then."
She nibbled at her lower lip. "Yes, I think she was. I"ve been trying to remember exactly when it happened. In May, wasn"t it, two years ago? It was Sunday morning when they found his body, and the medical examiner estimated he"d been killed around midnight the night before."
"Sure, I remember now. I was in Tampa on business and didn"t hear about it until I got back, the following Tuesday, I think-" I paused, trying to recall something. "Wait a minute! I"ve got it now. I had a date with Frances that Sat.u.r.day night, to take her to a country club dance at Rutherford, but had to break it at the last minute and drive to Mobile to catch a plane. And now that I think about it, she was acting a little strangely when I came back, as if something were bothering her. I just thought it was because of the broken date."
"Well, she couldn"t have killed Junior-not without an elephant gun. Or carried his body out there to the dump. He was a pretty big boy-around 200 pounds."
A wild idea was beginning to nudge the edge of my mind. It was a forlorn hope, but all I had now. "I"ve got to talk to Doris. If she knows anything, I"ll scare it out of her."
She stared at me. "You can"t leave here."
"I can"t stay here forever, either. None of this has got me anywhere; I started out trying to find out who"d killed Frances, and now I don"t even know who she was. I"m just going backward."
"Somebody"ll see you. Or she"ll call the police."
"I"ll have to risk it. Do you know where she lives?"
She still looked scared. "No. But if you insist, I can find out. And I"ll drive you."
"No. Absolutely not."
She stood up. "I"ve got to get back out front. I"ll talk to you later."
She called Scanlon and read him the telegram from Crosby.