Death Claims: A Dave Bran[d]stetter Mystery

by Joseph Hansen

  A stocky man who looked anxious came fast along the sidewalk. A milkweed stalk clung to the cuff of his pants. He'd picked it up crossing the vacant lot. Dave saw his car around the corner, white, marked with radio-station call letters. ALL THE NEWS ALL THE TIME. A tape recorder in a scuffed leather case bounced at the man's hip. He waved a shiny microphone.

  "Excuse me. Our man at the Glass House got the flash Wade Cochran's been shot to death. The TV star. Do you know anything about it? Whose house is that?"

  "Grandmother's." Dave kept walking. "Only there was a wolf in the bed."

  He slammed inside his car, started it, yanked the lever to reverse. He floored the gas pedal and the tires screamed, caught, jerked the car backward along the curb to the empty cross street, where he cramped the wheel, cornered, braked so the tires shouted again. And a third time when he set the lever to drive and took off along Yucca. A glance over his shoulder told him no one in the red-light nightmare had noticed. Not even the reporter. He was arguing with the towheaded kid in uniform.

  23

  IT WAS BACK in the dark, fourth on the left in a jogged row of one-story apartments. Sharp-edged pale stucco, neat and ungenerous. Clean, short cement steps up to aluminum screen doors. White-painted wood doors with beveled panels. White Venetian blinds at the windows. But no light inside. Not at number four. Only the imbecile insistence of a telephone, ringing, ringing. Dave walked out to the street again. A narrow cement strip led back of the apartments. He used it. The shiny screen on the back door of number four was unlatched, but the half-glass door inside it was locked. While his hand was on the knob the telephone stopped. He went on out to an alley. The only light was the pale reflection in the sky of lights from a business street two blocks away, but it let him see to his right a row of car stalls, open crates of blackness.

  He laid a hand on the hood of a Galaxy, of a Chevelle, on the rear slope of a Volkswagen. Cold. Then he heard small sounds. Two cars farther on. A little old Sunbeam with a worn fold-down roof. Tick. Ping. The engine bonnet was warm. He pulled open the rusty little door, lit a match, leaned inside to check the registration slip in its yellowed celluloid folder on the steering post. Yes. He blew out the match.

  He shut the door, took a step, crouched, reached up under a fender, scraped with his nail, stood and moved out into the alley. He held his open hand close to his eyes. The white sand grains glittered. He brushed them away, bent and tried the corrosionrough handle of the Sunbeam's luggage compartment. It didn't turn easy, it turned with a squeak, but it turned. He lifted the lid. Nothing inside but a spare tire and tools.

  At the back of the car stalls, built high so that the grilles of the cars could nose under, was a row of storage lockers, unpainted tongue-and-groove boards. Padlocked. He picked up the Sunbeam's tire iron, edged between the little car and the Mustang next to it, raised the jimmy and pried at the cheap hasp. The pine was soft. The hasp gave, the padlock rattled, the screws pattered on the cement at his feet. He opened the door.

  Matchlight flickered yellow on old books bundled with twine. Cardboard cartons jaundiced with age and damp. A dusty Tyrolean hat of checkered green, in its band a clip of red feather that had once been jaunty. A dry pair of leather motoring gloves with holes at the fingertips, bent to grasp, as if there were hands still in them. Dribbled cans of enamel, varnish, thinner. A clutch of used paintbrushes. A dented red ten-gallon gasoline tin.

  And a guitar.

  The telephone was ringing when he reached the back door again. The lock was the kind that twists inside a brass knob. He used the jimmy gently to pry loose the flat wood strip on the right side of the doorframe. Just a crack. The telephone stopped. From his wallet he took a plastic-coated card, calendar on one side, ad for whiskey on the other. He slid this in where he'd loosened the strip, eased it between the catch and the tongue of the lock, nudged the door open. A loose metal weather strip along its bottom ticked like a dollar alarm clock.

  "Who's there?" Dim to his right, light came on.

  He went toward it fast between the shadowy outlines of stove, refrigerator, counters. A room divider, wood veneer cut with fleur-de-lis and sprayed gold, separated a dining space with ferns and twinkling cut glass from a living room upholstered in yellow plush. Next to the divider was width for passage. Charles Norwood stood there. Coatless, no shoes, no glasses, hair a fuzzy nimbus around his head. And in his hand a snipe-nosed .22 target pistol. His voice sounded choked.

  "What the hell does this mean?"

  "It means you thought Wade Cochran saw you the night you drowned John Oats. He didn't. He didn't see anyone. You killed him for nothing."

  "But he turned on his headlights just as I came around the corner of the house. Naked. Dripping wet. I walked right into them. And he drove away before I—''

  "Could see who he was, right? And you've been wondering ever since who owned that yellow Lotus. Sick with worry that he'd hear what happened down there that night and come forward and say he'd seen you. But there was nothing you could do about it. Till I walked into the bookstore tonight and told you the man's name and where to find him and that he knew about John Oats's murder.

  "Then you didn't waste any time. You got that gun out of the desk. Within four feet of me and I didn't understand. As fast as you could move and not attract notice, you were out of that shop, into your car and on your way to Wade Cochran's ranch. Scared to death that once the police began trying to pin the murder on him, he'd tell about seeing you there, fresh out of the surf, right at the time it happened. Why didn't you kill him at the ranch?"

  "How do you know where I killed him?"

  "Oh, it's on the news," Dave said. "But I didn't need the news. It happened at my house. He wanted to see me. But not to tell me about you. Just to tell me Peter didn't do it, that Peter was at his place when it happened. I arrived home twenty minutes too late. Twenty minutes after you and your little gun departed."

  "It's big enough," Norwood said. "As you're going to see. But not till we've talked. You've been so stupid about this whole thing. I want you to know just how stupid you have been. Before I shoot you for breaking and entering."

  "Not with that gun," Dave said. "You want to throw that gun away. You don't want the police comparing the slugs in me with the slugs in Wade Cochran and tying them all to your toy there. And they would. The El Molino police and the Los Angeles police both know I'm in the middle of this case. You ought to have tossed that gun off the freeway coming back here. Just as you ought to have got rid of that guitar of Peter's."

  "Yes. Yes, you're right." The light was back of him. His face was shadowed. But Dave saw a tight glint of teeth. The voice went oily. "Thank you. That's excellent advice. You're thoughtful. No"—sharply—"don't move. Just stand the way you are."

  "I'd like a cigarette," Dave said.

  "Perhaps later," Norwood said. "At the beach, before you take your swim. Like John Oats. But with guitar accompaniment."

  "Very funny," Dave said. "How are we going to get to the beach?"

  "You're going to drive me. I'll be in the back. Of your car, of course. With this"—light slid orange along the black gun barrel as he jerked it—"close to your ear. And while, as you suggest, it might be unwise of me to shoot you, the outcome for me can't be your primary concern. Your primary concern, being human, will be to go on breathing as long as possible. Am I right?"

  "You didn't get to the ranch," Dave said.

  "No. I saw that car on the freeway, ten, fifteen miles this side of Las Cruces. Heading south. I found an off ramp and an on ramp. I broke all kinds of speed limits to catch him, but after that it wasn't any strain to keep him in sight, even though my car is old and asthmatic and his could go a hundred-twenty. He was obeying the laws. I don't watch television. I prefer fine music. Perhaps that's why I didn't destroy the guitar—I couldn't bear to think of silencing anything capable of beauty. In any case, he plays a character without blemish, as I understand it. And he tries to live up to it. Tried."

  "He wouldn'
t have wanted a ticket. Not this trip."

  "It was a long, long way," Norwood complained. "Clear to the middle of Los Angeles. Over a hundred miles, did you know that? I thought he never would stop. But he did. At last he did."

  "Completely," Dave said. "Like John Oats. Let's see if I'm as stupid as you think. You killed him for the insurance. In order to buy a collection of Sinclair Lewis first editions for a new Oats and Norwood catalogue. The shop was going broke. You needed a good item to get back your former customers, the ones who lost interest when John Oats left.

  "The letter from London quoting those books lay on the table in the back room of the shop. It took me time to remember where I'd seen the logo before. On an envelope lying with the plates from John Oats's last supper on the coffee table at April Stannard's. I saw it the first time I went there. And this afternoon in John Oats's desk I ran across a list of prices in British money. He'd added up the cost of those books while you sat there eating his food, getting ready to kill him. You thought Eve would collect his life-insurance money. And you knew she'd invest it in the shop."

  "Eve told you that," Norwood said. "But she was wrong." He sounded smug. "I'd known since the morning of the day I—of the day he died that he'd made Peter his beneficiary when Eve started divorce proceedings. He told me himself. I'd telephoned him about that letter from Gaylord and Steen. It was a big investment. I'd have to borrow from the bank. I wanted his advice as to whether it was worthwhile.He asked for the prices, totaled them while we were on the phone. That's the memo you found. He advised me to go ahead.

  "He was pleased to hear from me. We hadn't spoken for nearly a year. He needed to talk and he talked. It was about Peter. He was depressed and angry and hurt. Peter had left him. That was surprising in itself. I'd have bet he never would. They'd always adored each other. Then he told me why. That Peter was homosexual—that wasn't John's word, I won't repeat his word—and had gone to live with some man. Of course, it had to be something like that. Otherwise he'd have unburdened his heart to darling April. But a man like John doesn't discuss such matters with his woman. Still, he was going to leave her his money. Rub Peter's name out. He'd already phoned your company for the necessary forms. He wasn't thinking of dying, but when he did, April was going to get all he had left in the world to give. She was the only one who deserved it now."

  "But you didn't agree. You don't like April."

  "Who told you that? Why wouldn't I like her?"

  "She told me. She said you were jealous of her. I wasn't quite sure what she meant. Till Peter made it clear. You're homosexual yourself and you've always been in love with John Oats. You'd hoped that when Eve left him it would be your turn. Oh, you knew his bias, but you couldn't let yourself believe there was no chance for you. Even if he did tell limp-wristed jokes to upset you."

  "He only did that in front of others," Norwood said angrily. "He was my friend, my dear friend. When Peter was born he gave him my name. He'd never have done anything deliberately to hurt me. I understood. Telling those jokes was a way of asserting his masculinity, that's all. Trying to show anyone who might suspect me that there was nothing between us."

  "And there wasn't, was there?" Dave said. "He was straight as a desert highway. You never stood a chance. It was all fantasy with you—twenty-five years of hoping against hope. Basing it mainly on the fact that Eve was a bitch and he'd get tired of her finally and turn to someone who really loved him. And you were right. Except that the someone turned out to be April, not you. And you didn't give a damn anymore what happened to him. If he'd been able to work, if he was still your partner, at least you'd have as much of him as you'd ever had. But even that was finished now. He was no use to you anymore."

  "Not alive." Norwood's voice was cold. "But dead he was worth twenty thousand dollars. I thought of that when the bank turned down my application for a loan. Not that I needed that much for the Lewis books. But it was take that or nothing. And I had to take it quickly, while Peter was still the beneficiary. I sold insurance as a young man. I know what happens when a beneficiary kills to gain from a policy. The company can go to law and win sanction not to pay. On the other hand, payment has to be made to someone. The logical someone in Peter Oats's case would be his mother."

  "If Peter killed his father."

  "Right. And the coincidence was inviting. I didn't know you then. But I knew that if John drowned under suspicious circumstances after applying for a form to change beneficiaries, there'd be an investigator of some description on the scene. And I knew whom he'd blame for the murder. It would be so obvious. Peter—who else? Peter, in danger of losing the only inheritance his father had left to give him. And you"—Norwood's voice was heavy with contempt—"you fell for it."

  "The missing guitar helped," Dave said.

  "Yes, that was a nice touch—I have to admit it. But even nicer, I thought, was the single highball glass. Peter didn't drink, whereas I have never been known to turn down anything alcoholic. I simply washed my own glass and put it away where it belonged. That was very bad food, canned something or other. With ketchup, of all things. They were living on nothing. John can't have liked that. He was better off out of it. In so many—"

  Keys rattled. The front door swung open. Eve Oats stepped in. "Charles, you are here. Why didn't you answer the phone? Do you know what's happened?"

  Norwood had turned. Dave took a step and chopped at his wrist. The gun fell. Dave put his foot on it. Norwood swung at him with a wild backhand left. Dave tilted away from it, then drove a fist into the bookman's soft belly. He doubled over and dropped, clutching himself. Dave picked up the .22.

  Eve Oats said, "What in the world?"

  "Phone the police," Dave said.