Nets to Catch the Wind
Page 20
Pop licked his lips. “That’s a—it’s just a lie, something you made up to frighten Amy.”
“Oh, I don’t think so,” Fogarty argued, almost ironically friendly. “You wanted to warn her off, since her dead father had been your friend, and her husband too, until you had to kill him. You had a touch of conscience about Mrs. Luttrell. You wanted her scared off, yet in scaring her you couldn’t come out into the open. A nice subtle hint might do it. No one mistakes the significance of a rope, always turning up, always a bit longer. That was neat.”
Neece had drawn himself up. “This doesn’t look too good for you, Bronson. I see that I might have trusted you without reason.”
Pop flared back: “My buying a length of hemp doesn’t convict me of murder!”
“Oh, can it, both of you,” Fogarty said irritably. “We’ve got better than that.” He waited, the imp’s light in his eyes, while the silence stretched out, humming.
He went on casually, “Mrs. Schneider thought that she was dying when they first brought her to the hospital and before they used the stomach pump. I wasn’t there, and the cops think it’s a secret—but of course a newspaperman has to be resourceful.”
Amy wondered briefly which nurse or orderly had yielded to Fogarty’s mixture of wheedling and coercion.
“Mrs. Schneider made a statement regarding Mrs. Tzegeti. She claims she saw you leaving the Tzegeti house on the day Mrs. Tzegeti died, grew curious, went in to investigate. She found Mrs. Tzegeti trying to clean some stuff off her face—obviously the poison you’d just forced down her throat. Mrs. Schneider got scared and cleared out, went downtown to contact her lawyer and ran into Neece instead.”
Neece said quickly, “She didn’t mention any name to me. By the time I could investigate for her, the police were on it.”
“Cunninghan in on it?”
Neece shook his head. “No, I handled things on my own. We were interested in getting the diary, of course. Mrs. Tzegeti’s death seemed to remove a source of information about it.”
“You sure Mrs. Schneider didn’t mention Bronson?”
“No, not once.”
Fogarty looked over at Pop, who stood halfway between the sink and the table, as if hung there and not sure which way he should move. “What have you done with the kid, Bronson?”
Pop shook his head, a sudden sureness coming over him. His glance flickered in the direction of the stove, the spot where the electric controls were missing. The thought pounded through Amy’s head that every time the child’s name came up he took on an interest in the time.
She said to Fogarty, “I’m sure that Elizabeth is here—but I can’t find her. He has put her somewhere where”—she pinned down all at once her impression of Pop’s manner—“where something will happen to her if he isn’t free to release her at a certain time.”
“What do you mean?” Fogarty demanded, flashing a glance at Pop.
Pop had grown still, the way he had at the sink; an animal quietude that waited, examining the danger.
“Look at the stove,” Amy commanded. “It’s the kind that has a clock control, an electric device to turn the oven on and off mechanically even if the cook isn’t at home—you must know what I mean.”
“Yeah,” Fogarty said, going over to the range. “One of those gadgets. I used to have one—when I had a home. They’re nice. Only this seems to be missing.”
“He says it was sent to be fixed.”
“Where?” Fogarty demanded, turning like a flash to Pop.
Pop’s face looked shrunken, withered. Under the wire-wool eyebrows his eyes stared vacantly at nothing.
“He’s listening!” Amy cried. She ran to the back door. Outside lay the garden, the plot of soil fresh—dug but hiding nothing, the clutter of tools on the path, the garage, the shed—— Her eyes flicked back to the jumble of things on the path, tossed down, she thought suddenly, as if Pop had been interrupted—as if he hadn’t put them away in time because of her unexpected appearance. The clue was there, among the shovels, the hoes, the wire, clippers——“Wait a minute! He has a hose nozzle out there on the path, but I haven’t seen the hose anywhere. It wasn’t in the shed. He isn’t using it to water the garden——” She ran desperately, heard Fogarty pounding after her. She stopped in the path, all but stumbling over the clutter of tools. The wire—the clippers—those had been used to rewire the electromagnetic clock in some new location. She rushed for the shed. Perhaps under the floor——
Fogarty’s grip on her arm spun her around. She clawed at his hand, wrenched away, but he grabbed her again. “Be quiet for a moment!” His eyes were on the garage. “What’s over there? His car?”
“She isn’t in it!”
“Listen!”
He jerked her close and held her, almost too tight for breathing and she could see the hard green eyes, a little inhuman in their fixity, their glitter, and the stubby lashes like a fringe. She wanted to scratch again, to force a way out, but his grip was like steel. She opened her mouth to say something, and then a sound stopped her. It was a brief whine not unlike the pup’s . . . then a purr A motor was running, somewhere close.
Fogarty pushed her aside as though she were so much excess baggage and ran for the garage. He got the door up, ran in, looked into the car. She saw the momentary setback, the astonishment. Then he dropped to the floor and peered upward. His hat fell off and the last glow of sunlight from over the hill settled in his red hair and set it ablaze. He reached under the car, jerked and tugged, brought out the end of the garden hose.
He jumped to his feet and turned, pivoting on his toes, to reach for the handle of the trunk compartment. He tore at it; it didn’t move. He ran back to the clutter of tools and took a short-handled ax and came back. There was something indecent, starkly cruel, in the way he attacked the car. The fresh paint splintered and dents appeared in the smooth hull of the trunk compartment. Then the lock snapped and he had the lid up.
He stopped, forcing himself to be calm in the face of the girl’s fear. “Hi, there. We’ve been looking for you.” He carried her out into the air. She’d been wrapped in a blanket, tied up like a cocoon. He laid her on the path and looked into her face. “Okay now?”
She couldn’t speak because of the gag; she nodded her head. Then her eyes settled on Amy. She tried to say something through the wad of cloth. Fogarty threw a glance over his shoulder. “Yeah, that’s her. She never gives up.” And for just a moment Amy saw something in his eyes that wasn’t hard or tough or smart at all.
She knelt beside Elizabeth and they began to untie the knots that held her.
The car ran on and on until Fogarty went in to investigate. Pop had done the wiring cleverly, concealing the join where the wire connected to the house current, putting the electric clock under the hood.
“He’s pretty cute,” Fogarty said grudgingly. “Let’s go and see how he and Neece are getting along.”
Pop was sitting at the table, sprawled forward, his head in his hands, his hair matted with fresh blood. Neece was holding Amy’s gun. “He tried to grab the book and run. I had to stop him.”
Fogarty jerked Pop’s head up. “We got the kid in time. What good was killing her going to do you? Or had murder gotten to be a habit?”
“If—if you and Neece hadn’t spoiled it, I was going to make a deal with Amy——”
“Like hell you were. If you weren’t free by six o’clock, you made sure the kid would die of carbon monoxide in the trunk compartment. She couldn’t talk then. Maybe you had a place prepared for her——”
Pop’s glance flickered over to Amy; she answered his look stonily. Yes, he’d had a place prepared—the fresh-dug soil, easy to displace in a matter of minutes.
She turned her back to him. She had her arm around Elizabeth, and the pup danced at her feet. She didn’t want to look at Pop any longer.
Fogarty walked around the table and thrust the diary into Elizabeth’s hands “Here. It was your dad’s book. Now it belongs to you.”
Fogarty grinned the lopsided grin, slipped the book into his pocket, and headed for the phone. “You can depend on me.”
It was next morning before they saw Fogarty again. Breakfast was over. Elizabeth was on the couch, wrapped in Amy’s robe, the pup on her lap asleep. Fogarty knocked and Amy went to the door and let him in. He didn’t take the straight chair this time; he sat down on the couch beside Elizabeth and said, “Hello, there. How are you?”
She smiled, her eyes thanking him for that moment yesterday when the trunk had sprung open and he’d reached to lift her out. “I’m fine. How are you?”
“Oh, I’m a little tattered around the edges. Been up most of the night.” He looked over at Amy. “You want to hear it?”
“Yes, very much.”
He threw his hat down on the coffee table. He fished for cigarettes, brought up an empty pack, said blankly, “I’m fresh out.”
There was a delay while Amy gave him one of hers. The pup opened one eye, decided that Fogarty was a friend, went back to sleep. Fogarty blew smoke at the floor. Then he leaned back and went slack and Amy sensed how tired he was. “You could have phoned,” she suggested.
He gave her a glance she couldn’t read. “Yeah, you’re right, I could have. Only I decided I might as well do things up in style.” He went on smoking, gathering words in his mind, perhaps, his face thoughtful under the red disheveled hair.
It occurred to Amy then, for some reason, that she would not be apt to see Fogarty again.
“The affair actually had its beginnings years ago,” Fogarty said, “when Schneider and Pop Bronson were young and knew each other in Mexico. They were a couple of wild young bucks, living in a rough country where life was cheap and excitement was apt to be bloody. I guess there were a few escapades neither of them wanted to come out. Pop Bronson had more to lose, of course, when they met again, since by then he’d already set himself up as a town father and power behind the throne. The gambling interests needed someone to keep the town in line, to keep civic virtue burning bright. You can’t have bum streets, and dirt, and shabby schools, while the dough pours in over the poker tables; the citizenry won’t sit still for it. Pop had a nice little income, of course, in addition to his police pension, and there isn’t any doubt that he enjoyed his role as father-confessor and unofficial mayor. Only when Schneider showed up, he felt obligated because of old times to see that Schneider got a permit to build the Picardy Club. It probably took some doing, but Pop managed.”
“Of course the more clubs, the bigger the pay-off for him.”
“Yes, only he expected more of Schneider than Schneider was willing to give, which led to arguments. And finally Schneider stopped paying altogether and said that Pop’s reward could be his—Schneider’s—silence about those rackety days in Mexico.”
“So Schneider was pulling a kind of blackmail too.”
“That’s right. Only Schneider got wind of the fact that someone was shaking down one of the club patrons—the woman who tried to kill herself—and he jumped to the conclusion that Bronson was behind it, getting the pay-off in some other fashion. That started the fight that ended in Schneider’s murder.”
“Pop confessed to this?”
Fogarty nodded. “They got it out of him. I’ve never seen a madder bunch of cops. Of course he’d betrayed everything a cop is supposed to stand for, plus killing one of his own. Your husband.”
“What about Tzegeti?”
“He was around, finishing his job. Pop didn’t think he’d killed Schneider but just wounded him, and that Schneider would be all right and that the thing would be hushed up. He threatened Tzegeti’s wife and kid, scared the old man, made him keep his mouth shut. Tzegeti didn’t doubt that Bronson had the power he claimed. Tzegeti had seen the ruthlessness of the unofficial police in his own country. He knew that Pop Bronson occupied a position of great influence.”
The head of the police . . . The odd phrasing that had made her think, at last, of Pop——
Fogarty continued: “As soon as Schneider’s death came out, Bronson expected Tzegeti to come out with the truth. He was astonished, then pleased, at the man’s silence. He began to see that Tzegeti did believe his threats to harm the wife and kid. He didn’t know, of course—Tzegeti’s diary reveals this—that Vernon Wyse had already pulled a bluff of deportation if Tzegeti didn’t sign certain documents whose contents he was not allowed to read.” Fogarty looked at Elizabeth. “Your father was a brave man. He was willing to die that you and your mother might live here in peace. Though he must have despaired, too, thinking he’d found some situations much like those in the world he’d brought you from.”
Elizabeth’s eyes were big. “Yes, I can remember . . . at the end, Father seemed sad and quiet.”
“Well, the trial went off better than Bronson’s wildest hopes, and then he began to worry all over again. The governor’s committee wanted a word with Tzegeti, and a man who thinks a local politician holds power of life and death is apt to feel impelled to tell the truth before such a tribunal. Bronson decided on the murders on the train. Luttrell had to go too, of course. Mask or no mask, he’d recognize Pop—even if he were willing to stand aside while Tzegeti was murdered.”
“Pop knew better than that. He knew he’d have to kill Bob first.”
“I judge so. Well, Bronson got off the train without any trouble. He says you came to see him, and he tried to scare you off the business first, then throw guilt on Mrs. Schneider. He took to checking up on you too—wearing the silk mask for a disguise. This was foolish, since Cunninghan’s secretary was also on the prowl—looking for Tzegeti’s book, no doubt—and she ran into him and got a pretty good idea of who he was.”
Elizabeth said in a small, tight voice, “Why did he kill Mama?”
“Again he claims it was a threat that misfired. He was going to scare her into giving him Tzegeti’s book, figuring the previous arguments with Schneider might be mentioned in it somewhere. He had the bottle of poison, they struggled, and all at once the deed was done. I doubt that, somehow. He’s a kind of progressive murderer: he’ll go on killing as long as a single person remains alive who might know any part of the truth.”
“Did Cunninghan’s secretary know he’d killed Mrs. Tzegeti?”
“Apparently the secretary overheard some part of the conference between Mrs. Schneider and Neece. Neece says the woman didn’t mention any names—he’s keeping his skirts clean, or trying to—but it’s about the only way the secretary could have gotten wind of Bronson’s part in Mrs. Tzegeti’s death. She left the torn stocking there, a hint to the cops that Mrs. Tzegeti’s death was tied in with the murders on the train. All she did was get herself killed.”
He smoked for a while, stretched back upon the cushions, his face turned up, his eyes half shut. “I guess that about cleans it up. I’ve got a lot of work yet to do. I’d better be going.” He stirred reluctantly and sighed.
“Won’t you let me fix you something hot? A cup of coffee, perhaps?” Amy asked in a hurry.
He rubbed his head, then looked at her. “Oh yes. About my atrocious manners. I was rude. I popped off, and I guess I’d better apologize while I’m here.” He gave her the quizzical stare. “I thought you’d grown that shell permanently, but I don’t see any sign of it this morning. And coffee would go swell, thanks.”
She remembered the things he’d said to her, the angry words, but the sting was gone. She went into the kitchen to make coffee, and all at once her head was full of plans. Elizabeth would be starting school again in a month. The girl would need clothes. Amy thought, I’d better g
et a job.—We’ll need some things to make this place look more like a home. Pictures, for instance.
Fogarty was standing in the doorway.
She turned. “Do you use cream? Sugar?”
“Both.” He looked embarrassed, hesitant, as if unsure how she might take his next remark. “You could remember that. I’ll be stopping in, once in a while, to check up. Providing . . . well, if you’re—” He stammered to a halt.
“We’ll be glad to see you.” She saw that he listened to her words, decided that she meant them, relaxed.
“It’s the pup,” he said, brashly nonchalant again. “I’ve got to make sure he’s okay, you know.”
The coffee began to bubble in the percolator.
BIOGRAPHICAL NOTE
DOLORES HITCHENS
Born Julia Clara Catherine Dolores Birk on December 25, 1907, in San Antonio, Texas. Published poems while completing graduate studies at the University of California; enrolled in a nursing school. She worked as a nurse at Hollywood Hospital, and later became a teacher before pursuing a professional writing career. Married T. K. Olsen, whom she later divorced. Married Hubert Allen “Bert” Hitchens, a railroad investigating officer, who had a son, Gordon (later founder of Film Comment and contributor to Variety). Together they had a son, Michael. As D. B. Olsen, published two novels featuring Lt. Stephen Mayhew, The Clue in the Clay (1938) and Death Cuts a Silhouette (1939); twelve novels featuring elderly amateur sleuth Rachel Murdock: The Cat Saw Murder (1939), The Alarm of the Black Cat (1942), Catspaw for Murder (1943), The Cat Wears a Noose (1944), Cats Don’t Smile (1945), Cats Don’t Need Coffins (1946), Cats Have Tall Shadows (1948), The Cat Wears a Mask (1949), Death Wears Cat’s Eyes (1950), Cat and Capricorn (1951), The Cat Walk (1953), and Death Walks on Cat Feet (1956); and six novels featuring Professor A. Pennyfeather: Shroud for the Bride (1945), Gallows for the Groom (1947), Devious Design (1948), Something About Midnight (1950), Love Me in Death (1951), and Enrollment Cancelled (1952). Published play A Cookie for Henry (1941) as Dolores Birk Hitchens; novel Shivering Bough (1942) as Noel Burke; and novels Blue Geranium (1944) and The Unloved (1965) as Dolan Birkley. Cowrote five railroad detective novels with Bert Hitchens: F.O.B. Murder (1955), One-Way Ticket (1956), End of Line (1957), The Man Who Followed Women (1959), and The Grudge (1963). As Dolores Hitchens, published two private detective novels featuring California private eye Jim Sader: Sleep With Strangers (1955) and Sleep With Slander (1960); as well as stand-alone suspense novels Stairway to an Empty Room (1951), Nets to Catch the Wind (1952), Terror Lurks in Darkness (1953), Beat Back the Tide (1954), Fools’ Gold (1958), The Watcher (1959, adapted for the television series Thriller in 1960), Footsteps in the Night (1961), The Abductor (1962), The Bank with the Bamboo Door (1965), The Man Who Cried All the Way Home (1966), Postscript to Nightmare (1967), A Collection of Strangers (1969), The Baxter Letters (1971), and In a House Unknown (1973). Jean-Luc Godard adapted Fools’ Gold into the 1964 film Band of Outsiders. Died in August 1973 in San Antonio, Texas.