Nets to Catch the Wind

by Dolores Hitchens

  She went back to the kitchen where she had left her purse, the gun in her hand. That was when Fogarty almost had his head shot off.

  He was standing in the kitchen doorway against the dark, his hat pushed back, his stare taking in everything. Amy walked in and saw him. The gun jumped in her hand, came up, leveled off—an instant reaction. Fogarty didn’t move, though something washed out of his eyes: a kind of pleasure, an expectation at seeing her. “Hello,” he said.

  She let the gun down. Her wrist was shaking; she didn’t want him to see it. “Hello. You gave me a surprise.”

  “So I noticed.” He shifted from one foot to the other. “You know, I don’t quite think you’re ready for carrying that. You’re a little quick. Too quick.”

  “It’s not healthy to be slow,” she told him, her thoughts on the man who had died with this gun under his coat.

  Fogarty went over to the dinette table and sat down, and threw his hat down on the micalite table top. “You’ve got a point there, but a good cop would argue with you. I’m not a cop, and I lived through that little thing a minute ago, so I’ll drop it.” He gave her a one-sided grin.

  She went over to the table. She had to stand near him while she opened her purse to put the gun into it. When she had snapped the purse shut she gave him a level look. “What did you come here for?”

  “I was a little curious as to what took you away all day.”

  “Anything else?”

  “Yeah.” He stood up and walked over to the box where the pup was bumbling around, took the pup out and brought him back to the table, sat down again and began to stroke the soft black head. “I wanted to ask your co-operation as a witness. You recall that business in Tzegeti’s bedroom? What Cunninghan’s secretary did?”

  “Yes, I remember.” She didn’t sit down, didn’t unbend.

  “I’ve tried to keep an eye on the girl since then, but I lost her today. She disappeared. I think she might be in trouble.”

  “And you want me to do—what?”

  “Back up the story I’m going to tell the cops. I think they ought to bring her in and sweat it out of her.”

  Amy went over to the stove, lit a cigarette off the burner. “What is she supposed to know?”

  “Something nobody else knows. The appearance of the murderer on the train. You might remember a detail of the testimony given by the passengers. I wrote it up as a gag, comedy relief, but I knew there was something under it, a part of the plot. There was a little old lady in one of the chair cars. She spent the time, the delay before the train started, in taking off some of her petticoats in the ladies’ room. Afterward, after all the excitement and the questioning and the official frazzle-dazzle, she found something in her stuff; it didn’t belong.”

  “A silk stocking.”

  He nodded. “You do remember. Well, it was heavy silk, not the thin kind the, girls wear, not the kind you can see through almost as if it wasn’t there.”

  Amy remembered the way Cunninghan’s secretary had examined her hand through the gauzy web—critically, as though the material failed to match something else she had in mind. Then she had torn a hole in the stocking and fitted it to her eyes. “You’re implying that the murderer made himself a mask out of a woman’s hose.”

  “That’s right. The cops knew it too, and I’ll tell you how I know they knew it. When they got an anonymous tip that they’d better have a look-see at the Tzegeti place, that it had been torn up in some kind of a search, and went over there and found that stocking mask, they went off like a bunch of Roman candles.”

  Mrs. Arkuto’s remarks came back to Amy, the story she had told about the excitement and the secrecy of the police.

  “The cops have had one witness from the beginning that they’ve never let out from under wraps. I think it’s someone who got a look at the murderer, who might have a chance of identifying him if they can ever produce a suspect.”

  Amy sat down slowly, her eyes on Fogarty’s face. “How did Cunninghan’s secretary know about the mask?”

  “That’s what the cops will find out—once we admit we were at the Tzegeti house and tell them what we saw her do there. There’s one further detail that might be important—the old lady on the train isn’t sure that the stray stocking in her belongings was tucked there by a stranger or whether she could have picked it up, along with the petticoats she was discarding, from the floor of the women’s lavatory.”

  “You’re making it sound as if Cunninghan’s secretary actually had, or made, the mask on the train. But in that case she wouldn’t betray such a disguise by leaving such evidence in the Tzegeti bedroom.”

  “We don’t know how she came by her information. But she’s got it. And she’s in danger.”

  Amy smiled thinly. “I don’t think her position is so precarious. No doubt she is playing a game that’s pretty deep. But she’s working for people who are pretty powerful.”

  He looked up at her steadily, and again she got the impression of hard green eyes—tough, knowing—that seemed to see into her soul. “You sound cynical. Who’s she working for? Cunninghan?”

  “Of course. You don’t have to worry about where she went today, either. She was in Ensenada, meeting Schneider’s son on the q.t. They greeted each other with a lot of affection. It would have been touching if Schneider hadn’t just been handing me a bunch of lies about how Cunninghan had defrauded him out of his inheritance.”

  Fogarty went on rubbing the pup’s ears. “That could be. Cunninghan isn’t any angel.”

  “The biggest lie of all, of course, was that Cunninghan keeps in his safe the money his father had on his desk at the Picardy Club when he was murdered.”

  Fogarty’s hand grew still. “Say that again.”

  “Raoul Schneider says that Cunninghan reached the Picardy Club as his father was dying—not when he was dead, the way it came out at the trial. The old man ordered the lawyer to deliver the cash to his son, a sort of down payment on his heritage. Cunninghan took the money, didn’t speak up when Tzegeti was accused of stealing it. He’s supposed to believe that Tzegeti killed Schneider over the blackmailing business, and that the truth couldn’t come out because it would hurt the poker business, and that as long as they caught the right man for the murder the motive didn’t matter. All utter rot. You can see that.”

  “It’s rather complicated for rot,” Fogarty complained. “Lies are usually sort of simple. They sound more convincing that way.”

  “Oh, he was making a trade,” Amy told him. “He wanted to know where the Tzegeti diary was.”

  “You told him?”

  “I sort of let drop that there might be a hidden niche under Mrs. Tzegeti’s monstrosity of a bed.” She jiggled the purse, the gun heavy inside it. “That’s where I’m going now. To wait.”

  Fogarty stood up slowly. The pup slid off his lap; Fogarty had to bend quickly to catch the squirming body. Fogarty took him back to his box. “Are you crazy?”

  “No. I happened, by accident, to see that little scene between Raoul and his girl friend, Cunninghan’s secretary. That blew the lid off. I knew then that he was in with the others, and that all the stuff he’d been telling me was a lie. He wanted a trade. I gave it to him.”

  “This—this story about the money in Cunninghan’s safe—that was his part of the trade?”

  “Yes.”

  “Did it occur to you that you might be making a mistake?”

  Amy felt her teeth showing. He always had this effect on her, like an attack, an outrage; he always put her in the wrong. “I know what I saw—Raoul and the girl making love in the lobby of the big hotel.”

  “She could be on his side.”

  Amy shook her head. “They were making a fool of me.”

  “You’re going to the Tzegeti place now?”

  “That’s right.”

  “Leaving the kid here alone?”

  This was a point which Amy had thought of; she didn’t intend to admit her worries to this hard, green-eyed oaf. “Ther
e’s nothing here that anyone could want. The diary isn’t here; that’s what they’re all after. She’s safer here than anyplace.”

  “You wouldn’t care if she weren’t,” Fogarty said in his tough tone. “You’ve got one thing on your mind. The rest of the world can go hang.”

  She leaned toward him across the table. “If I can clear my husband’s name——”

  “We can all go to hell,” Fogarty put in. “What kind of a guy was he, anyway? Did he have this fixation about keeping the score even? Was he an eye-for-an-eye guy?”

  “You shut up.” She grabbed the purse and ran for the door. Fogarty pounded after her. She stopped in the driveway, turning like an animal at bay. “If you come any closer I’ll let you have it.”

  He had stopped. The light from the kitchen window illuminated the side of his face under his hatbrim; he was grinning. There was no fun in that grin. “I believe you would.”

  She turned swiftly to jerk up the garage door. She opened her purse, fumbled for her keys in it. Fogarty stood in the half-shadow, the light from the window hitting his cheek, teetering on his heels. “I don’t suppose you noticed——” he drawled.

  She threw a scorching glance over her shoulder. “Noticed what?”

  “Something on the back porch when you got home.”

  “No, I didn’t see anything.” She had the car open now.

  “I came out here earlier, just after dark. There was a piece of stuff by your back door. Charred; it had been in a fire.”

  “I don’t know what you’re talking about.” She slammed the car door savagely. The motor roared; the car flew back with a jerk and Fogarty had to jump for his life. At the curb she twisted the wheel. Foggy air rushed in at her as she caught the sea breeze. Then, in the middle of her churning thoughts, something snagged, hung there, and she became aware of what Fogarty had said and what it meant. She thrust her foot on the brake; the motor jumped and died. Through the mist, against the lights reflected from the window, he was a dark shape that didn’t move. She leaned from the car. “What did you say?”

  “It wasn’t important.” The tone chided her, weary and impudent.

  She chewed her lip. There was something else she must remember, a thing that had happened here on her arrival from Ensenada. Elizabeth had been at her heels, carrying the pup. The fog had been wet on her face. In her hurry to get inside out of the night, she’d stumbled across something, kicked it aside. The neighbors’ kids had been playing here, or——

  Amy threw open the door and scrambled out, ran through the dark, past Fogarty’s motionless figure, to the rear of the house. The small porch cast a shadow, cutting out the thin light; it was black down there. Amy scratched around, raking the sandy soil where the geraniums struggled to grow. Then she found it, stood up and lifted it against the light. A piece of rope. It stunk of the fire, of stale ashes grown damp and muddy.

  She threw it out into the drive. Fogarty bent and picked it up.

  After a minute he said, “What happened to it?”

  “We burned it. I mean—we tried to burn it. Elizabeth put it into the incinerator, and this morning, early, I touched a match to the trash there. We had a lot of papers too. It should have been . . . gone.”

  “Is this supposed to be the same piece you found that other night? If it is, I’d say it’s been taking its vitamins.”

  “It’s a crazy joke of some kind,” Amy flung at him. “I think you must have something to do with it. You’re always around when the thing turns up.”

  “No, you’re wrong there.” He grew quiet, as if weighing and studying. “It would seem to be a hint of some kind. Someone’s letting you know he’s got his eye on you.”

  “I’m not going to worry about it now.” Amy brushed the dirt off her coat and her hands, started again for the car out in the street. But Fogarty stood in her way. “Let me by.”

  “Or you’ll shoot? Look, I want to make a deal with you. Let me go and keep watch at the Tzegeti place and you stay here with the kid.”

  “And I can read about what happens in the newspaper? No, thanks.”

  “I don’t think anything is going to happen. I think Cunninghan’s office girl might be on Raoul Schneider’s side. She’s done some peculiar things if she’s working for Cunninghan in her off hours.”

  “You believe Raoul Schneider will sit by, waiting for me to deliver that diary in my own sweet time? Nuts.”

  “Give it a chance.”

  “I’m going over there.”

  They had been walking toward her car. Now Fogarty suddenly seized her and shoved her into the seat, clear across, and then crowded in behind the wheel, turned the key in the switch, got the motor running again.

  She pounded his shoulder. “You let me out of here!”

  “No, we’re going together.”

  “You—you damned nosy snoop!”

  “If I had some soap and water I’d wash your mouth out. You’re getting entirely too tough, Mrs. Luttrell. You’re forgetting to behave like a newly bereaved widow.”

  “I always was tough!” Amy gritted at him.

  “No you weren’t. I know what changed you. It wasn’t your husband getting killed. It was being unable to impose your will on a bunch of people, to force them to talk when, you wanted them to, to tell you the things you wanted to hear, to rat and squeal on each other, and to lick your lily-white hands. In other words, you failed to force them to behave any differently than a bunch of suspects ever behaves. And you’re sore about it.”

  “I hate you!” Amy declared with slow heat, savoring the words.

  “Oh, you’ve always done that.” Fogarty tossed it off in his casual way. He was driving now, fast, making the tires squeal on the corners. “The minute I walked in, that first night, you got out the old hammer and tongs and went to work. I don’t know what it was. I’ve thought about it once in a while, wondering. You were worked up, sure. The cops had you down there and didn’t make any secret about that early theory of theirs, that your husband had been selling his prisoner, haggling over the price. Then—well, when you’ve lived with someone and loved them and they die like that, no reason, no sense to it, you do go a little nuts. I know. My wife and kid got run down by a truck.” There was a moment of silence, as if he remembered something briefly, then put it away. “But I still don’t know why you took it out on me.”

  She said, strangling, “That’s terrible—about your wife——”

  “I don’t go around shooting trucks,” he pointed out. “They let me do an article on traffic safety once in a while. That’s all I get.”

  All at once something hit her, a stunning punch that seemed to shut off her breath. She had remembered the way Fogarty had come, bringing the pup. It was new, bitter, and strange, this knowledge; but she understood now why he had brought the little dog and why he thought she’d needed company in the house.

  There was silence between them while Fogarty guided the car through the dark streets. When he parked he made her sit still in the car while he got out to look and listen. Then they walked softly through the Tzegeti hedge and up to the front door where, in the dark, the boar’s head hung, inviting them to knock. Fogarty reached out, touched the knob, and Amy heard the squeak as the hinges turned. “Somebody’s been here,” Fogarty said. “I don’t like this.”

  CHAPTER FIFTEEN

  THERE WAS no light in the living room except the glow from the vigil candle, a red streak up the wall. Fogarty stood in the middle of the room, motionless; then he lit a match and walked to the bedroom door. He made a muttered exclamation, then vanished from sight. She heard him strike successive matches and caught a recurring brightness against the gloom.

  The house smelled close, unaired, and at the same time unlived-in, the odor of a place put in order and left alone. In the dimness only the big white washing machine stood out; and, as always, Amy was struck with its odd importance in this anachronism of a house. She had started to move toward it when Fogarty came back to the doorway and beckoned.
<
br />   “Come in here.”

  In the matchlight he appeared to wear a sardonic expression, and it flashed through Amy’s mind at that moment that she’d been outwitted. Of course Raoul Schneider had telephoned ahead; he’d had no need to bargain, to quibble; his position with the Cunninghan-Wyse-Schneider combine was much too secure. He’d simply told them what Amy had said might be found under the floor of the Tzegeti bedroom, and even as she drove north from Ensenada they’d been here ripping that floor.

  Fogarty touched her arm. “Over here.” He had to stop then to light a new match; in the intervening moment of darkness she found the bedpost, stepped past it. “Don’t step on what’s over there,” he cautioned. Then the match flared again, and Amy saw the figure on the floor.

  The bed had been pulled aside, away from the wall, and the girl from Cunninghan’s office lay there in a black wool dress, her gold hair outspread. A hammer and chisel lay on the floor beside her. The hammer had blood on it. Amy tried to back away, out of the narrow space, but Fogarty was there hemming her in. “Take a good look,” he said in his tired, tough voice. “You sent her here. She’s your baby.”

  “Is she—dead?”

  “Yeah. Very.”

  Amy fought her way past him to the door, leaned there shakily, clinging to the lintel. “I didn’t have anything to do with it!”

  The green eyes narrowed. “It’s obvious, isn’t it? Raoul Schneider sent her on ahead. Then later, when you told him the lie about the bedroom, he called her and she came to investigate.”

  Amy stuttered, “Th-that proves he was trying to trick me!”

  “Maybe your performance wasn’t too convincing. Maybe he got the idea you intended to trick him too. He might have thought Schneider’s widow would get in pressure on the money angle, buy you out, and he’d be left without the evidence he needed to claim his inheritance.”

  The match died in Fogarty’s fingers. She heard him walk by in the dark. There was no use denying what he had said, since it was true. She had used Mrs. Schneider’s hint at bribery as a prod to force from Raoul the truth about the possible breach between Cunninghan and his client. But Raoul had thought that Amy really meant to sell him out. He had contacted Cunninghan or the secretary at once.