TWENTY-THREE
This is experience, Casey kept telling himself, dialing Adrian Crewes’s number. This is learning the ropes. But it didn’t help. He listened to the ringing at the other end, realizing that they had been asking the wrong people all the wrong questions. The facts as they knew them now were a map of enemy country where all the road signs had been changed overnight.
“When you get through with your social calls”—Krug was broadly sarcastic—“I got a job for you.”
“Wait a minute, Al.” Seven rings, but she’d be slow to answer. Eight. Nine. He hung up and started to dial again.
“Listen, genius, you’re on thin enough ice…”
Casey banged down the receiver. Krug informed him that the detective who’d been assigned to Palisades Avenue had been shifted to a smelly-sounding shooting which had just come in. Did the genius think he could come down to earth long enough to handle some routine work?
Five minutes later, Casey shot out onto Main Street, supposedly headed for Palisades Avenue where he was to canvass every house again on the off chance of finding someone they had missed who had seen something. I’ll get a transfer, he promised himself. To Bunco maybe. Or Juvenile. But like a separate heartbeat, panic pulsed in him. What good is a policeman if he can’t protect anybody?
Her car was in its stall in the subterranean garage, but there was no answer when he pounded on her door. Summoning the elevator, Casey watched the indicator which seemed stuck on two. After thirty seconds’ waiting, he started down the stairs, taking the four flights three steps at a time, arriving in the lobby breathless.
“Man, you fixing to have yourself a seizure flying around like that,” the janitor, vacuuming the carpet, commented. “You looking for somebody or just getting your exercise?”
“The manager.”
“Round the corner yonder.” He pointed the way, adding, “But he ain’t in,” as Casey started off.
“Is there someone with keys in the building?”
“You looking at him, mister.”
“I’m a police officer.” Casey showed his identification. “This is an emergency. Have to get into Miss Crewes’s apartment immediately.”
“You fixing to bust her?”
Masking his fury and panic behind the official deadpan he had learned from Krug, Casey informed him of the laws about obstructing a police officer in the furtherance of his duties.
But, unfazed, the janitor said he didn’t know about that. “All’s I know is what I’m told here. She already gone complaining to Mr. Argyle ’bout somebody letting that cat out.”
“When was this?”
“Last night, I reckon. Anyhow, this morning he told me never to go in there no more.”
“You’ve seen her this morning?”
“Sure, a hour back. She been ’round and about this whole building, looking for that cat.”
Deflated by relief, Casey headed for the stairs. He found her on the third floor emerging from the elevator.
“Excuse me, have you seen—Oh, it’s you,” she said coldly. “Is this what they mean by police harassment?” Then exhausted, she leaned against the closed doors of the elevator, near tears, bereft now that she realized how much she had liked and trusted this young man. “Marmalade’s gone.”
“The janitor told me. Are you certain someone let him out?”
“What else could have happened? I asked the manager last night, but he swore no one from the building was in my apartment.”
“You should have called us, Miss Crewes.”
“I thought of it. Thank heaven I didn’t,” she added bitterly, “because God only knows what sort of sinister claptrap you’d have made of it.”
Suppressing a sigh, Casey held the door of the elevator open while she got in slowly.
“Really, I was dazzled when I heard the popular interpretation of our incident last evening.”
“It’s not mine, Miss Crewes.”
“Oh, don’t,” she said wearily. “Don’t play games with me. I didn’t destroy those tapes, but if you think I did, at least have the decency to be honest about it.” And furious at the tears which had begun to trickle now, she cried, “Where the hell is my cat? Where the hell is my life? Ever since I arrived in this godforsaken tinhorn paradise, I’ve been living some kind of lunatic’s dream!”
William Myrick had called earlier, she told Casey when she had calmed down, demanding her keys to the Palisades house. He would send a messenger for them. Myrick had also informed her that the matter of the destroyed tapes had been cleared up; although not officially involved in the matter yet, the police suspected that it was she who was responsible. Furthermore, he was considering legal action to recover from her the material she had made off with.
“What material is that?” Casey asked.
“I can only suppose he means the manuscript and my notes.” Then an idea struck Adrian. “That man, the one who called yesterday. That obnoxious reporter. Maybe it was someone Myrick hired to do his dirty work?” The man had said his name was Burns—a curiously nasal, hectoring voice. He was a writer, too, he had claimed, specializing in crime features. He had offered to pay her well for a look at her work. “Just for research, he said. As if I’d do such a thing,” she added indignantly. “He was so insistent I finally hung up on him.”
“Well, maybe it was a reporter,” Casey soothed her. “But just to make sure, I’ll check with Mr. Myrick. You have the manuscript and your notes here with you?”
“Yes, in my briefcase. I usually carry it. Habit, I guess. I often work here in the evening.” She hesitated, looking suddenly helpless. “How can he talk about recovering what’s mine? Doesn’t he realize—” She stopped herself. “Sorry, I’m wasting your time, aren’t I? You can hardly be concerned about a half-finished manuscript that’ll probably end up as biodegradable trash.”
Casey was of two minds on the subject, but recalling Krug’s rule—one thing at a time—he decided to pursue the cat’s disappearance first. He asked her permission to use her phone.
“My God, Kellog”—Timms’s voice sounded hoarse and distant—“you’re driving me nuts with that Crewes woman. What the hell do we care if her cat’s missing?”
“Lieutenant, it could indicate someone was in her apartment yesterday.”
“Well, for Chrissake, you were there last night. If the cat was gone—”
“He sometimes hides, Lieutenant. Anyway, it was an hour or more, Miss Crewes says, before she realized he wasn’t in the apartment. She went downstairs to the manager, but he told her no one from the building had been in 404.”
“Any sign of a break-in?”
“No, but if her keys were duplicated—”
“That again.” Casey heard him sigh. “All right, is anything missing?”
“Doesn’t seem to be.”
“Just the cat.”
“That’s right, sir.”
“So if she’s conning us, she’s got herself another piece of jigsaw puzzle in place.”
“Or someone does. Myrick, for instance.”
“Aren’t you forgetting he has an alibi? Now, listen,” Timms added harshly, “I’ve had about enough of your haring around—You get me? This is a team we’ve got here, and you either work with us as a part of it or you don’t work at all—Do I make myself clear? We’ve got a mountain of stuff to get through today.”
“Yes, sir, I’m headed for Palisades Avenue right now.”
“You’d better be, Kellog, or where you’re headed for next is the suspension list.”
TWENTY-FOUR
The fog had burned off, and it was hot work, slow work; like almost everything detectives do to earn their pay, dull and repetitious. Casey seethed and plodded and blotted sweat, spending the balance of the morning, well past noon, canvassing ten houses. Then, taking a break to get something to eat, he drove back to O
cean Avenue, making a sharp right turn onto what used to be called the California Incline, a steep street slanting down the palisades to the Coast Highway at sea level. He stopped at the first public parking lot sandwiched between two lines of stately beach houses—many the property of film stars and other public figures. Waiting his turn at the take-out food stand which occupied a corner of the beach-front lot, he ordered a hamburger, fries and a Coke, time-honored fare of more carefree beach days.
Keys—his mind wandered as he chewed and swallowed hungrily—tapes, Marmalade. A man named Burns. Myrick. Suspension. An unconscious equation? Casey hoped not. And he realized he had crossed some dividing line: he was a cop first whether he wanted to be or not, a professional.
Okay, he thought angrily, so be it. Professionalism doesn’t mean becoming a mindless automaton that rings doorbells and types reports. Means I use my own head. Means I find a line and stick to it till it pays off or doesn’t.
Gulping the last of his Coke, chewing crushed ice, he slid out of the Mustang again. First a phone booth, hopefully one with the directory intact. Inquiring if there was a pay station at the food stand, and finding that there was, he changed a dollar bill into a handful of dimes. The booth was on the shady side of the stand, and it was occupied by what appeared to be a two-headed creature of indeterminate sex. Casey waited, and the occupant separated at last into two sopping-wet, sand-covered teeny-boppers, one male, one female, both high on something.
A Western Section directory hung from a chain inside the hot stuffy booth. Across the dirty glass side facing the sea, someone had scrawled PIG with orange lipstick. Casey sighed. By thy name shall ye be known. Oink-oink.
In the yellow pages of the directory he found eight large ads featured under the heading “Locksmiths.” Three advertised twenty-four-hour service; another merely said “day and night”; and the other two clearly stated relatively civilized hours—one from 6 a.m. to midnight, the other 10 a.m. to 9 p.m.
Choosing the nearest of the twenty-four-hour numbers, Casey inquired if anyone had ordered several keys duplicated on the evening of July 27. There had been three calls, he found, all local addresses. The next locksmith, located in Mar Vista, had a record of five calls. From the third twenty-four-hour service, a Marina del Rey firm, Casey received the discouraging sum of ten. At least half the worksheets were illegible, he was told; he would have to check with the night locksmith who kept duplicate records.
Casey asked for the telephone number, but the night-shift locksmith was either asleep and not answering his phone, or not at home. Without much hope of benefit from it, Casey underlined the number scribbled in his notebook for later follow-up. Then, remembering his promise to Miss Crewes, he called the Palisades Avenue house.
William Myrick was not there, the housekeeper reported. He had called her after the poor Doktor’s inquest, saying he would be at the hotel and would see her later.
“Mrs. Haas,” Casey said carefully, “a man named Burns phoned there yesterday, and it might help us a great deal if you could remember anything about the call.”
“Burns?” He could hear her puffing. “Ach, ja, she says he is a reporter?”
“There’s a possibility he wasn’t, Mrs. Haas. So if you could think of anything…”
She was muttering in German. “Is about some material,” she admitted finally. “He wants to see this material. Why she thinks this is a reporter, I cannot imagine. A tailor, maybe?” But with a little prodding, she did quite well quoting the conversation, which, of course, she had overheard quite by accident.
Casey tried the Miramar Hotel next, and after a long wait while William Myrick was paged, asked the lawyer if he had engaged anyone to assist him in his efforts to recover Adrian Crewes’s manuscript and notes.
“My God,” Myrick groaned, “don’t they teach you fellows anything? Legally I’ve no right to that material. Unless she publishes, of course. That’s another thing.”
“Then your mention to Miss Crewes that you might start action—”
“Was hot air, naturally. A chance she might be stampeded into letting go of something incriminating enough to give you a shot at those kids.”
If he were Krug, Casey knew, he would have informed Mr. Myrick in no uncertain terms to leave the police work to policemen. Instead, he thanked him and hung up.
“Got a kind of a nibble on the Flesher kid,” Haynes reported when Casey rang the bureau. “Begins to look like she was pushing something. Wait, I’ll let you talk to Al.”
“No, switch me to the lab first, will you?”
“Keys,” McGregor repeated when the call had been put through to the laboratory. “A set of keys, you say. Let me see what we’ve got here.” He kept breathing heavily. “If she had ’em on her—”
“I know, Mac, Property will have them.”
“Right you are. No,” McGregor declared, “we got nothing like that on our list here. You want me to transfer you to Property?”
The only key Property possessed had been found on the body. The key for the girl’s apartment. So much for Judy as the vandal, Casey thought, and asked to be transferred upstairs to the bureau.
There was a mumbling, the ringing of phones in the background and behind all that, the thin howl of a siren. Then, shockingly loud, Krug’s voice boomed in his ear: “You sick of pounding the pavements?”
“That I am.”
“Well, don’t stop. Nothing’s happening here but the usual. Got a murder by person or persons out of the Myrick inquest. Then I ran down a couple of those kids at the hot dog stand. They claim the Flesher kid was talking money lately. Don’t mean anything as far as I can see. Maybe her mother hit it lucky on the tables and sent her some. I got Mama stashed at the Pelican Motel, by the way. She was pretty rocky last night. When it calms down here, I’ll slide on over there, see what else she has to say.”
Broiling in the sun, Casey returned to Palisades Avenue and continued canvassing, checking off the addresses one by one. The fifteenth house on his list was the rambling, old, two-story, brown shingle situated directly across the street from Myrick’s. An old, old man had once lived there, Casey remembered, one of those legendary-appearing figures who seem to a child to embody history. Summers and winters the old man had sat on the front porch, a spittoon by his side, a cane across his knees, his milky, blind-looking nonagenarian’s eyes fixed on the street as if he could see through time. Remembering foggy summer mornings, the sticky-gritty feel of bicycle pedals under his bare feet, Casey turned into the walk. The house was haunted, the kids had always said, the old man was a mummy. But whoever saw a mummy spit?
“Hi there, young fella!”
Startled out of his reverie, Casey glimpsed a postman standing on the shadowy porch—a gray-haired man he thought he also recalled from his bicycling days.
“You trying to sell anything here but the Fountain of Youth,” he was saying humorously, “you’re out of luck, son. Nobody home but the old lady during the day, and her nurse don’t let her talk to anybody.”
The old man’s wife?
When Casey asked, the postman laughed delightedly. “Be thankful you asked me, not her,” he crowed, “because sure as shooting you’d get yourself thrown out! She’s his daughter, young fella. Name’s Mrs. Sophie Foster. You must tell her you remember her old dad, you’ll do all right.”
The advice was sound, for it carried Casey past the white-starched nurse-companion into an old-fashioned sunroom at the back of the house where the frail old lady sat in a wicker chair swathed in two faded afghans. “So you remember seeing Daddy,” she marveled. “Just imagine. Why, you can’t be much more than twenty yourself, and he’s been gone since ’62! Sit down, do. I think it’s as sweet as can be, you dropping by like this.”
“Well, I’m afraid it’s not really a social call, Mrs. Foster.”
“What’d I tell you,” the nurse muttered. “He got all that about you
r dad from that fool mailman.”
“No, I really do remember seeing him. But what I’m here for”—Casey displayed his identification—“is police business.”
“Now, you look here, we been bothered enough with all that! Mrs. Foster’s not to answer any—”
“Oh, Nettie, hush,” the old lady cried thinly. “You know perfectly well I’m able to talk today.” She peered up at Casey, smiling. “Don’t they allow you to sit down? Oh, they do, that’s better. Now I don’t have to get a crick in my neck from looking up at you.”
Casey asked if Mrs. Foster was aware of Myrick’s murder, and received a highly indignant answer that of course she was. Did he imagine that she was deaf and blind? She read the papers like anyone else, and furthermore, she had been watching that house for weeks now, ever since those young ones had started coming there in the evening. “My room’s on the second floor,” she explained. “At the front of the house, facing on the street, you see. I go to bed early, but I don’t sleep very well. And the hours are long, so I watch the street. Not that anyone could sleep with the noise those young ones make with their horrible motorcycles.”
“Yes, I imagine it’s annoying.”
“Indeed it is. On the other hand,” the old lady admitted, smiling, “it’s entertaining, too. There’s a chubby one who seems to wait for the others now and then. Like one of those circus bears on bicycles. Did you ever see them? So droll, I remember, those great awkward creatures riding around in circles…”
Judy Flesher, Casey thought. Or could it be Hector Ramirez? Both fat, both with motorbikes. “What I’m particularly interested in, Mrs. Foster, is anyone you might have noticed Monday night. Anyone loitering on the street, anything like that.”
Rouse the Demon: A Krug & Kellog Thriller (The Krug & Kellog Thriller Series Book 3) Page 12