Nason did not wait for the instructions. “When?” he demanded in a voice that made people turn and stare at him.
“About an hour ago.” The clerk drew back, offended it seemed, and glanced again at the card. “At ten-forty.”
Nason thanked him and stumbled away from the desk, knowing that he should be grateful Treynor did not get the package, but finding instead a growing alarm that spread insidiously and distorted his thoughts. Duble fell in step with him, his eyes curious but saying nothing.
Chapter Nineteen
THE NEXT FEW HOURS seemed interminable to Jerry Nason, and dishearteningly unproductive. Accompanied by Sam Duble, he went first to Raoul Julian’s apartment hotel and when they could not reach him on the house telephone they went upstairs; at Nason’s insistence, Duble brought forth his magic keys and they opened the door to make sure that Julian was not in his suite. Then Nason called Linda’s apartment, and when he got no answer they went to the Carson agency and were told that Linda Courtney had not been in that day, nor had she telephoned.
Out on the street once more, Nason called Linda’s apartment again, listening nervously to the distant ringing of her telephone and counting to twelve before giving up. Refusing to be satisfied and unable to do much about the formless fear that had begun to fester in his mind, he insisted they go to her place and bullied Duble into unlocking the door, so they could make sure nothing had happened to her.
The apartment was empty. By then it was after one, and now it was Duble who did the insisting. Duble was hungry, and they went into a near-by tavern and had sandwiches and beer while Nason’s mind battled things out and came up finally with an idea he should have thought of before. From a telephone booth in the tavern he called the Jewelers’ Guild, and when Kate Harper’s voice came to him, he asked about Linda and then made Kate promise to stay put until he could get there.
He left Duble in the detective’s ancient sedan reading his precious Racing Form and making hieroglyphics on a scratch sheet, the little detective taking everything in stride but complaining some because he had so little time to figure out his choices. He strode past the receptionist as if she weren’t there and opened Kate’s door without knocking.
“I can’t find Linda,” he said.
Kate Harper made sense in many ways. She was, fundamentally, a realist. Her newspaper training and experience enabled her to view most things wisely, and she was accustomed to using certain processes of reasoning for what they were worth, as well as the intuitive equipment with which she and her sex were endowed. Now, glancing up as Nason stormed into the room, she saw the tightness in his rugged face and the lines of strain at the mouth and angles of the eyes, and talked back to him like a man.
“Sit down,” she said. “Relax.”
“I can’t find Linda,” he said.
“So what? Maybe he took her to lunch or on a picnic or to the zoo.”
Her unruffled matter-of-factness and the steady cadence of her words had the desired effect. For a moment he glared at her, and she stared right back at him, and something about her manner gave him pause and made him think. He sat down and stretched his legs, his alarm no less real but contained now as he realized that it was time to tell Kate Harper the truth about things and get what help he could.
He started at the beginning. When he came to parts of the story with which she was familiar, she would stop him and he would skip to the next incident. He told her the details of Norman Franks’s death and how they had found the six emeralds, which they believed came from the bracelet. He explained the things he had learned about Raoul Julian and stated his suspicions.
“That’s why I’m worried,” he said finally. “Linda’s got those emeralds now and yet you told me the one thing she wanted to do was forget the whole thing. Why should she have claimed that package unless she was forced to or threatened or something?”
Kate heard him out. She leaned back in her chair, gaze remote and brow furrowed as she tapped the end of a pencil against her teeth. “I didn’t happen to read about the Keith woman,” she said, “but I saw the piece about Ned Gault.”
“Did you know him?”
“Knew of him. Everybody in the business does. If he’s mixed up in this, there can’t be any doubt about Linda’s pieces being the Elcazar emeralds.”
“There can’t be any doubt that her father brought them into this country, either. Or that her mother knew the truth. She knew, all right, and that explains why she never wore them out or let Linda wear them.”
He paused, still thinking, his gaze morose. “What I can’t figure out is why the mother didn’t leave some explanation for Linda. What kind of a mother was she, anyway? She must have known that Linda would wear them around and eventually be caught and exposed. For ten years she’s awfully damn careful to protect her daughter and her husband’s name, and yet when she knows she’s going to die, she doesn’t even bother to warn the girl. She did know she was going to die, didn’t she?” he said.
“Yes.” Kate stopped tapping her teeth. “The doctor told her she probably had only weeks to live.” She hesitated, not seeing Nason now, but looking past him at something that had no part in the room. “But she did leave a letter, along with her will.”
“What kind of a letter?” Nason pulled his legs in and sat up, his voice quick and impatient. “Did you see it, or know what it said?”
“Litida showed it to me.”
“What did it say?”
“I’m trying to think,” Kate said. “Why don’t you give me a chance?”
Nason said he was sorry, and Kate Harper continued to look beyond him. Presently she began to talk, her voice quiet, pausing from time to time as she explored her memory and searched for words and phrases.
It was, she said, the sort of letter one would expect from a mother who loved her daughter and knew she had not long to live. Linda was in the Philippines at the time, and her mother did not let her know of the first attack, because she did not think Linda could get back in time, and in any case there was no point in worrying her prematurely. She was sorry she had so little to leave, sorry she had not been more successful with her story writing.
“Things like that,” Kate said. Then, brow still puckered, she said, “There was something in it about rhinestones.”
“Rhinestones?” The word rang a bell in some far corner of Nason’s mind, but dimly, so that he could not find the proper association. “What about them?”
“I’m not sure,” Kate said, “but it was something like, ‘The rhinestones are in your jewel box and my story is in the trunk.’ ”
Nason sat still, mind probing, his scowl crooked and intent. He repeated the word silently. Rhinestones. The bell rang again, clearer now, and he probed on, remembering something about a jewel box Linda had when she was a little girl. The three costume pieces had been left in that jewel box, and in that trunk.
He stood up, distance in his narrow gaze as he fitted the word into its proper niche and remembered that Linda had called those pieces her rhinestones. He brought his thoughts back to the moment and found Kate watching him. He said, “Do you know where Linda lived before her mother moved to the present apartment?”
Kate shook her head.
“Maybe I can find out,” he said. “Has Paul Sanford been in today? Will you call his other office, wherever it is?”
Kate would and did. She telephoned his office and then his apartment. When she hung up a minute later she said, “He hasn’t been in.”
“He’s got a place in the country.”
“In Westchester.”
“Linda thinks quite a lot of him. If she was in a jam she’d probably turn to him, wouldn’t she?”
“I think she would.” Kate saw the next question coming and forestalled it. “He hasn’t got a phone,” she said. “It’s an old house he fixed up and he’s only been living there week-ends for the past few months. He hasn’t been able to get a phone put in.”
She gave him the address, and he grinned at her. He f
elt a lot better, and Kate was responsible. He thanked her. He said, “You’re my pal.”
“I know it,” Kate said dryly. “I’m getting a little sick of being people’s pal. Just when I get to thinking this Julian number is considering me favorably, you tell me he’s a crook.”
“Or a killer.”
“Let me know about Linda,” Kate said. “You would have figured out this Sanford thing before if you’d stayed on the beam.” She sighed and moved to the door with him. “But I guess you don’t think so good when you’re in love. I wouldn’t know.”
Nason gave her shoulder a squeeze and said he would let her know. He went back to the car, a new man with new ideas and a plan of action. He told Sam Duble to put the Racing Form away and get going.
“I want to make a bet,” Sam said.
“Will it wait ten minutes?”
“I guess so. Where we going?”
“Back to Miss Courtney’s place. You can phone from there.”
Sam Duble put his keys away as Jerry Nason dosed the door of Linda’s apartment, and went directly to the telephone. He made a bet on the sixth race at Tropical Park and when he hung up he stood watching Nason going through Linda’s secretary.
“I never saw such a guy!” he said. “Always snooping.” He eased himself into a chair, grunting softly before he continued. “You operate like the private dicks you see in movies—with my keys. Hell, I’ve crashed more places in the three days I’ve been working for you than I have in the last three years! And you know what will happen? We’ll wind up guests of the city.”
Nason offered nothing in rebuttal, but concentrated on his job, going through the pigeonholes, which were crammed with letters and papers, paying attention only to those enclosed in envelopes and scanning the addresses before he put them aside. Within three minutes he had what he wanted, a letter that had been addressed to a former address and forwarded here.
When he had jotted down the old address, he spoke to Duble and they went out to the sedan and drove uptown, stopping at an unpretentious, five-story red brick apartment in the Nineties. He told Sam to park down the street in the middle of the block, and when he stepped out, he asked for Sam’s keys.
Sam groaned. “Oh, my God!” he said. “What now?”
Nason inspected the smaller keys and asked if Sam thought they would open a trunk. Sam said he promised nothing, though it had been done before, and Nason went away, walking to the corner and then down the side street to an alley, which looked as if it led to the back entrance of the house he was interested in. It did, and the steel door was unlocked, so he went in and across the entryway and down the stairs to the semidarkness of the basement.
He came to a large, criblike enclosure, fashioned of two-by-fours and chicken wire. A padlocked door yielded to one of Sam’s keys, and then Nason was inside, surrounded by forty or fifty trunks of all shapes and sizes and with no idea of what to look for.
He had no flashlight, and, although he had to strike matches from time to time to inspect the tags, his luck as moderately good, and the twelfth trunk he picked roved to be the right one and stood not far from the door. He had to try several keys this time but he finally found one that worked, opened the top, and separated he two halves.
Because of the darkness, he worked now by sense of touch, opening drawers and feeling carefully through the odds and ends of clothing that had been left here, but finding nothing that remotely resembled what he sought until he came to the bottom drawer. Here, among some books and sweaters, he felt a length of smooth paper, pulled out a flat, legal-sized envelope, and was instantly disappointed when he saw how thin it was.
What he had been looking for was a manuscript. Linda’s mother had been a writer of sorts, and, in the letter Kate Harper had tried to quote, she had spoken of the “rhinestones” and “my story.” “Story” meant “manuscript,” and, considering Mrs. Courtney’s background and the things she had known, Nason had hoped to find something in the nature of memoirs, which Linda had somehow forgotten or overlooked. Now, going through the drawers once again, he saw there was nothing but this envelope, which was sealed and bore across the face some writing he could not decipher because he was out of matches.
He straightened up, dusting his knees and his hands. He thrust the envelope into an inside pocket, closed and locked the trunk, and started to push it back where it belonged. What stopped him was the distant but distinct sound of a door opening and closing—a metal door.
For a second or two he waited, listening; then he heard the sound of steps on the concrete stairs—steps coming down, no longer on the stairs now but clicking evenly on the basement floor and moving directly toward him.
Crouching, peering into the half-light of his surroundings, Nason decided upon discretion and hunkered down behind the nearest trunk so that he would be hidden to anyone passing outside the crib. That anyone would come into this particular area did not occur to him, for he assumed the man to be the janitor intent upon some inspection which would, he hoped, be of short duration.
But in that he was wrong.
He knew it when he heard the faint creak of hinges as the crib door was opened. After that, he did what he could, making himself small behind the trunk but none too confident that he could remain concealed.
The steps were close now, uncertain steps that came slowly along the aisle of trunks. A beam of a flashlight sliced over his head to tell him that this visitor had come well prepared, and then, not moving his head but seeing only with the corner of his eye, he watched two shadows that had the shape of trouser legs move past.
He waited, crouched and still. The flashlight beam slid past him, sweeping the floor, then stopping. When that beam knifed back to tell him his presence had been discovered, he waited no more but came up like a jack-in-the-box, swinging as he moved.
He got the flashlight first. It clattered to the floor and went out, and after that the session did not last very long. Nason hooked a hard one to the vague outline of a face and knew he was high. He tried to follow up with his right, and a fist hit him on the side of the head, spinning him aside. He swung again and was short, lurching off balance and leaving himself wide open.
He did not see the blow, but sensed its coming and ducked just enough to protect his chin; then the punch slammed high on his jaw, and he went back, catching his heel on the edge of the trunk, bouncing off it, and sitting down hard, angry at his ineptitude but unhurt.
Pushing hard and getting his feet under him, still unable to see much, he was almost ready to mix it again when the trunk beside him heaved and twisted. He heard it scrape across the floor and reached for it to steady himself and that was a mistake; for he saw too late what was happening, and went backward, the trunk tipping over with him and pinning him down.
That was the end of it. Somehow he shouldered the trunk to one side and got from under it as it fell with a crash beside him. He was on his feet and peering through the gloomy darkness, and now there was no one in the crib but him. When he listened he could hear above the pounding of his heart the slap of running footsteps at the far end of the room and on the stairs. Then they were gone, and a door closed and the basement was silent once more.
Chapter Twenty
NASON GOT OUT as fast as he could. He did not expect to find his man, but he remembered all the noise and thought about the janitor with some misgivings. So he hurried out of the crib, not bothering to lock it, and down the basement and out into the alley before he stopped to dust himself off.
He reached the street without meeting anyone, glanced up and down as he turned toward the corner. He straightened his coat and his tie, remembering to punch shape into his hat and put it on properly. Aware now of the ache in his jaw, he explored it tentatively with finger tips and found some tenderness near the hinge but very little swelling, and by now he was able to consider the incident calmly and speculate on its significance.
Sam Duble folded his Racing Form and put away his pencil when Nason opened the sedan door and clim
bed in. “I see you found something,” Duble said, inspecting his companion with his shrewd little eyes. “Had a little trouble this time, hunh?”
“What makes you think so?”
“You’re still breathing hard. And you got a thing on the side of your jaw—or maybe you ran into a door in the dark.”
“It was dark, all right,” Nason said, and explained what had happened. “I think the guy was looking for the same thing I was.”
“Get a look at him?”
Nason shook his head, and his voice was brooding. “Never had a chance. All I know is he was tall and, from the way he wrestled trunks around, plenty husky. And the only one I can think of who is that big and who might be interested in that trunk is Raoul Julian.”
Duble started the car. “He just drove by in a convertible,” he said calmly. “Going kinda fast. I thought he looked a little sore about something,” he said. “Where we going now?”
Nason said he wanted to have one more try at Julian’s hotel. Duble shifted and angled the car away from the curb. “I’ll say one thing for you,” he said as he settled down to his driving, “you sure stay in there and keep pitching.”
Nason did not answer. He took the envelope from his pocket and examined the writing on the face of it, which said: For Linda. He held it up to the light and tested its thickness between thumb and finger. Maybe two pages, he thought, and wondered if he should open it. In the end, he put it back in his pocket, knowing that the important thing now was to find the girl.
Duble parked a block away from the hotel, and when they walked through the lobby, Nason ignored the house telephones and went directly to the elevators, Duble going along unquestioningly. They stepped out at the proper floor, turned right and then left down a transverse corridor.
A man and a woman were just coming out of a room at the far end. Nason slowed down to give them a chance to pass but they met opposite Julian’s door, and, to make it look right, Nason knocked. The man and woman kept going, turning toward the elevators without glancing back. Then Duble had his keys out, and Nason was staring at the sign that had been hung over the doorknob, a slow bewilderment at the words ripening swiftly to a feeling of nervous alarm which shocked him strangely.
Fashioned for Murder Page 17