“You’re saying he murdered her and young Ajoukian to keep them from spoiling his purchase of Mrs. Cole’s oil shares? It’s farfetched, Sader.”
“They were killed because of something,” Sader pointed out.
“Who else did you check?”
Sader unbuttoned his coat, shoved it behind him on the chair. “All of them except Tina Griffin. She isn’t listed.”
“Including Miss Wanderley?” Pettis asked, a tomcat note in his voice.
“She was the only one I could prove to be at home.”
Pettis shuffled the papers around. “Now, this visit you paid to the Ajoukians yesterday—was this the first time you’d met the old man?”
“Yes. When we were offered the job of finding young Ajoukian, I put my partner on it.”
“Why?”
“People instinctively trust Dan. He’s big, assured, young, energetic. Cheerful. When the father phoned us, he sounded prostrated. As a matter of fact, young Mrs. Ajoukian told Dan later the old man had had a fainting fit, had let her pick out an agency to handle the job for him.”
“The girl picked you out, hmmm?” Pettis made it sound significant.
“Neither Dan nor I had ever heard of the Ajoukians before. Oh, no—I’d read something in the papers now and then, Ajoukian being accused of selling something he’d swiped off a rig when nobody was looking. That was years ago, though. I didn’t know anything about the family since, about the house in Garden Grove. The money.”
Pettis’s nose seemed to sharpen. “The old man’s got lots of the green stuff.”
“And nobody now to leave it to.”
“His son’s wife,” Pettis reminded.
“I have the feeling they aren’t fond of each other.”
“You got that impression on your visit yesterday?” Pettis looked down at the typewritten sheets as if searching for information. “Where does that leave the girl? Does he mean to put her out?”
“I don’t think so. I think he depends on her for a lot of things. He’s a heller with his nurses, so they don’t last long and the girl has to fill in while she rustles somebody new from the nurses’ registry. He’d have a damned good chance of dying there all alone if she wasn’t with him to smooth things.”
“Okay. What brought Miss Wanderley to your office?”
“I haven’t asked her yet.”
“Got any ideas?”
“None.”
“Sader, I expected more co-operation since your partner got it. He found something in these papers”—Pettis tapped the sheets on the desk—“that gave him a clue. He decided to talk to the person he suspected, first. He let that person, the murderer of the Wanderley woman and young Ajoukian and the office man, Mullens, get near enough to shoot him. It speaks of close acquaintance. Perhaps even liking. Doubt of the murderer’s guilt.”
“I figured that out,” Sader said sharply.
“Now, Scarborough hadn’t met a lot of these people you’ve been seeing. I don’t think he’d met Mr. Ott. Had he talked to Mrs. Cole? To Milton Wanderley? Or to Tina Griffin?”
“He knew who they were and what I thought of each of them,” Sader answered, “because we’d talked it all over. He must have hit a fresh trail. I can’t think how.” The desire for sleep burned behind Sader’s eyes. The hours spent in the hospital waiting room had left an unendurable tiredness. “I’ve got to get some rest before I can think.”
Pettis slapped a hand on the papers. “Ill take these along. Okay?”
“Sure.” Sader looked around the room. Nothing seemed out of place. Dan’s desk blotter was gone, the top of the desk wiped clean of Dan’s blood. It seemed the only change here. “I guess there weren’t any fingerprints.”
“Plenty,” Pettis grunted. “But my guess is, they’ll turn out to belong to innocent people.”
“What about the gun?”
Pettis was rising. “It could be the same as the one used to shoot Mrs. Wanderley, young Ajoukian, and Mullens. We’ll know when we’ve tested the bullet they took out of your partner’s head.”
This was the first Sader had known of it. “They got the bullet?”
Pettis nodded. “Out of Mullens, too.”
The phone rang. Sader turned over in bed and felt for the table without opening his eyes. He wanted to hang on to sleep, to inert oblivion. He took the phone off its cradle and laid it down. It made crackling sounds.
After a while he pulled it over next his ear and still without looking listened to what it had to say. “. . . this ought to be good for some publicity. You guys like that, don’t you? Where’s the old commercial instinct?”
“Talk sense,” Sader muttered.
“Mr. Sader?”
“Speaking.”
“You want to make a statement for the press, Mr. Sader?”
“What about?”
“Haven’t you heard? They’ve arrested your client on fraud charges.”
Sader lay still, feeling the cool air of morning that filled the room. Behind the closed venetian blinds the sun was shining, all the clouds had drifted on, and a mockingbird who had neglected so far to fly south was trying a few trills and obbligatos from a perch on a telephone pole. The sense of rightness about all this clashed with the voice on the phone.
“Play that back again, will you?”
“We’d like to know what you think about your client, Mrs. Ajoukian, being charged with fraud. She’s getting out on bail. But the smear remains.”
“Who had her arrested?”
“Her father-in-law.”
“Please quote me as saying——” Sader tried to think of what he ought to say. Something meaningless, optimistic, polite. All at once he slammed the phone back into its cradle and sat up. There was a time for work and a time for sleep. Right now the people involved in this affair were busy doing things to each other. He hurried with a shower, dressed in clean clothes, went out to his car. He made better time to Garden Grove than he ever had before.
Nobody answered the doorbell. He walked around to the rear of the house, into a yard studded with lemon trees, shut in by walls of ivy, and found the rear entry unlocked. The kitchen did justice to the rest of the place. It was divided into two parts. Half was brick and redwood, with picnic-style furnishings. Probably the architect had called it a barbecue. The other section was glass, tile, and steel, as antiseptic as a hospital. On the big white range, a frying pan full of bacon was frizzling into ash. Sader stopped to turn off the burner.
A maple breakfast table was set for one. An electric coffee maker gave forth an odor which reminded Sader how many hours had passed since he’d eaten breakfast in the café on Pine Avenue.
He went through the breakfast room to an inner hall. About ten feet ahead of him, old Mr. Ajoukian lay spread out on his back, the white blanket under him. He wore a pair of cerise flannel pajamas, a brown toweling bathrobe. Sader hurried to kneel beside him. The fierce old eyes came open in a bitter stare.
“Mr. Ajoukian——”
Mr. Ajoukian bared his teeth. They were yellow and uneven. The lips had no color in them. The skin around the mouth was as tough, as wrinkled, as elephant hide. “Go away, faker.” The breath came out on a wheeze, almost obliterating the sound of the words.
“Let me guess,” Sader said, looking down at him. “You ripped into your nurse, and she quit. You had your son’s wife arrested. Then you decided to cook breakfast for yourself to show everybody how independent you could be.”
“Get out!”
“Do you want me to help you back to bed?”
“Go to hell!” The old man turned over on his belly and hunched up his knees and tried to crawl. Sader squatted, neither helping nor hindering. When the old man fell on his face and cursed slobbering curses, Sader still waited, moving only to light a cigarette. “Well—give me a hand!”
Sader rose and stepped back. “I think I’d better call your doctor.”
“I don’t want a doctor!” Old Mr. Ajoukian yowled like a cat. “I want some peace a
nd quiet around here, no women clattering, no talk, questions!”
Sader bent down, jerked him to his feet. The rough handling surprised the old man and he bent on Sader a look of speculative hatred. Sader stooped, got the blanket, tossed it around the elder Ajoukian’s shoulders. “Can’t you walk?”
“Sure I can walk.” Ajoukian tried to assume a baron’s strut, probably his usual mode of locomotion, but on the third step he went to his knees.
Sader waited. Still on his knees, Ajoukian got over against the wall and inched upward. He patted the tinted plaster. “I built all this. Nice house. Good stuff in it.”
“No handles on the walls. It’s what you need.” Sader turned as if to go.
“Wait!” Erect now, old Ajoukian seemed suddenly stronger, as if some infusion of bitterness had stiffened his back. “I got a few things to say. That girl, that thief—I want you to see she stays in jail. Take me out to the table. I got breakfast cooking. I’ll give you something to eat . . . drink. We’ll plan it.” An almost jovial brightness illumined the monkey-like face. Old Ajoukian’s hands shook with excitement.
“I’ll help you to the table.” Sader offered an arm; the weight that came on it was surprisingly light, unsteady. He felt as if a rooster had perched there, digging in claws. “You’ll have to set a few things straight, though. Like your being in Mullens’s office the night before he died.”
Old Ajoukian waved a hand. “It was nothing. No matter, now. He’d found Perry’s car. That’s all there was.”
Sader kept his eyes on the maple table the other side of the open door. “Where did he find the car?”
“In a garage. A vacant place, for sale. Couple of blocks from the office. He had me come late at night. He showed me the car.” Suddenly the old man threw his head back with a cackle of laughter. “I was scared for a while, thinking maybe Perry was in bad trouble, hiding, needing help. Now I don’t think so. Perry can take care of himself. He’s my boy, the rascal!”
The shock of it ran through Sader like ice water. The old man didn’t know his son was dead. Then another idea crossed Sader’s mind; he glanced uneasily at the cackling old man. Was his mind broken by grief? Was he crazy?
The bright, brimming eyes met Sader’s knowingly, confidently. There was no indication that a full quota of intelligence wasn’t operating behind the wrinkled mask. Sader said, “How much did Mullens want—and for what?”
“He wanted a few thousands of dollars,” Ajoukian tittered. “He kept telling me his mother needed an operation.”
“Who was his silence supposed to protect? Your son?”
Ajoukian nodded. “He said Perry might be in trouble.”
Through Sader’s memory straggled something from his interview with Mullens. Mullens had speculated, rather significantly, whether Mrs. Wanderley might be hiding out from a drunk-driving charge. Sader, inching the tottering old man through the door to the breakfast room, tried to pry a meaning from Mullens’s remark in the light of what Ajoukian had just said.
Mullens must have seen young Ajoukian’s car, followed it to the vacant garage where it had been hidden. Had there been an accident on the way, some hint that the driver wasn’t adequate? It was the only thing Sader could think of.
Sader pulled out a chair beside the maple table. “Sit down, Mr. Ajoukian. I’ll fix you some more bacon in a minute. You wouldn’t want that burned stuff. But first tell me—whom have you seen this morning? You must have talked to somebody. You managed to have your daughter-in-law arrested.”
Old Ajoukian’s bright mood seemed to falter. He plucked uneasily at the collar of his robe. “I called an attorney out from Santa Ana, showed him the evidence.”
“And what was the evidence?”
“A forged power of attorney she claims was signed by Perry before he disappeared.”
“You questioned her about it?”
“No. The lawyer did. The doctor was here. He wouldn’t let us talk for long. I told the lawyer the paper was a fake, she was stripping my bank accounts, buying foolishness. Soon there wouldn’t be anything left.”
“This attorney was somebody you’d had dealings with before?”
A crafty look flickered in the old man’s face. “No. He’s a young fellow. Smart. On his toes.”
Sader smelled trickery. The old man had called in a young, perhaps inexperienced attorney who had had no background in his affairs. “I’m surprised he didn’t advise you to go slow in such an affair involving a member of your family. How much had she stolen?”
Ajoukian waved a hand vaguely. “He knows.”
“Are the withdrawals recent? Since your son’s disappearance?”
“Does it matter?”
“Someone should have told you, Mr. Ajoukian. Your son is dead. He’s been dead all these days since you last saw him.”
The clawlike hands convulsed on the table. The rapacious mouth turned slack. “What . . . what do you say?” He waited while Sader told him again. “I don’t believe it.” But there were indications of belief, nevertheless; a kind of inward searching, of totting up old clues, old fears.
“You shouldn’t have had his widow put in jail,” Sader went on. He hated this old man who stank of greed, of corrupting avarice; he hated him so much there was only obliquely any trace of pity. “It’s going to get you a horrible name in the newspapers. Are you going to claim, now, that she was stealing from your dead son’s estate?”
Old man Ajoukian wagged his head. “I don’t know.”
“Didn’t your son own anything? If he did, it’s hers now.”
The old man struggled with words, then spat them fiercely. “A half of all I have. His. I gave it when they married.”
“Well, you’d better call the attorney and explain the set-up. She can’t be robbing you if it’s already hers.”
The old man put his hands on the table, on either side of the plate. His jaw shook, and he drooled. “Never! I’ll never take back the charges.”
“How much did you give Mullens?”
“Not a cent!”
“Where is your son’s car?”
Old Ajoukian wagged his head from side to side.
Sader bent close to him. “Mrs. Wanderley called the house Tuesday night. You answered. She accused you of cheating Mrs. Cole on her oil shares, of being partners in the deal with Charlie Ott.”
Ajoukian’s clawlike hands moved restlessly on the table.
“Mrs. Wanderley was raising so much hell, you decided your son had better see her. You told her she could reach him at the bar in the Chuck-A-Luck. That was a mistake, Mr. Ajoukian.”
There was a wheezing noise from between the old man’s teeth.
“That phone call took him to his death.” Sader waited, letting the words sink in. The old man sat very still, hunched over, the wrinkled face bent toward the table. “Mrs. Wanderley was very drunk. She was violent. Didn’t you have any hint of danger to your son?”
Ajoukian’s tongue stole out to wet his lips. “I thought you were going to fix my breakfast!”
“If I stay, I’ll break your neck. Anyway, your daughter-in-law will be home pretty soon, Mr. Ajoukian, and I think you’d better get what service you can from her while she’s still with you. Let her cook breakfast. She’s not going to be with you very long. Not if she has good sense.”
CHAPTER SIXTEEN
SADER JERKED the wheel, sent the car spinning into the graveled space beside the Chuck-A-Luck Barbecue. A side entry led to the bar; it was locked. Sader went into the main dining room. It was big, ranchy in style and there were about a half dozen people eating breakfast there. Most of them looked as if they’d been up all night. A waitress minced over to Sader and said, “Yes, sir?”
“I’d like to use the phone.”
She jerked her head toward the inner entry to the bar. “In there. Rear corner.”
The bar was dark. Sader found the phone fixed to the wall, no booth here as Dan had said. He dialed the hospital, got Dan’s floor supervisor. The nurse informe
d him Dan was doing as well as could be expected. “Aren’t they all?” Sader ground out. “I want to know if he’s conscious.”
“No, sir, he has not regained consciousness,” said the supervisor stiffly.
“Will he live?”
There was a flinty silence, and then the nurse said, “I could not make a prognosis, sir. Perhaps you could call Dr. Heffelmaier.”
“Good God,” Sader said, slammed down the receiver. Silly to make the woman mad; he’d have to talk to her again. There was a lot he wanted to know. He’d have to keep the rage down, though it was hard to do when he thought of Dan. He walked out to the dining room, met the waitress again. “Is the bartender around anywhere?”
“No, sir. He’s not here yet.”
Sader gave her his card and a dollar. “Ask him to call me at the office around noon.”
“Yes, sir. Thank you, sir. Will you be having breakfast?”
“Could you put some coffee in a carton? I’ll take it with me.”
“Yes, sir. Will a two-cup carton be okay?”
“Fine.”
He talked with the waitress mechanically, his real thoughts busy with the Ajoukians, with Charlie Ott, the Cole woman. When he reached Long Beach he turned north on Cherry, crested the Hill, stopped finally at 3132 Redwood. It looked the same as it had. Someone had watered the begonias and the ferns along the porch, so that water stood in puddles on the cement. Mama duck led her family eternally into the shelter of the willow tree. Sader rang the bell and after a couple of minutes Margot Cole looked out at him.
Sader plunged into it. “I know you’re sore. You can call me anything you like. I just——”
She surprised him. “Come in, Mr. Sader. I’m not mad any more.”
He followed her into the neat warm house. The black hair coiled on her neck was freshly combed, her make-up showed no disarray, her green cotton housecoat seemed just out of the laundry. But all this spruceness, Sader felt, was a front for tiredness and grief. She seemed bowed by some inner weight. Despair, perhaps. He waited uncomfortably while she examined him with her strange blue eyes.
“I’ve done a lot of thinking.” She motioned him into a chair, sat down facing him. “It was silly to blame you because my husband left me again. He just wanted an excuse, anything to flare up over. If it hadn’t been your visit, and the business with Ajoukian coming out, he’d have found something else.” She twisted her hands in her lap. “I’ve had the radio on, heard the news. I learned about your partner being shot. And about Felicia’s coat.”
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