Murder in High Places

by Hugh Pentecost

  '^Noone.''

  **Not some chick who resented the Harding girl moving into her place?"

  *'The only other spare key is in the key locker back of the front office." The key locker contains duplicate keys to everything that has a lock on it in the hotel. Not just anyone could walk in there and take a key off a hook. There was someone at the desk, just in front of the key-locker door, round the clock.

  **The reason I'm making such a point of this, Mark—if no one else has a key and the door wasn't forced, then Miss Harding brought someone up here with her, or she let someone in after she got here."

  *Teople followed her everywhere trying to get autographs," I said. *'She was generous to kids wanting her to sign something."

  Jerry's voice was grim. ''You think a kid did that? She must have put up a fight."

  I pointed out to him that there wasn't any sign of a fight. She just lay there on top of the bed, fully clothed, dead. No mess-up anywhere else in the room. **She could have been slugged from behind, strangled when she was unconscious," I said.

  ''Could be. We'll have to wait for the medical examiner to tell us," Jerry said. "Who knew she was coming up here?"

  **I guess quite a few people guessed at it, joked about it," I said. **What you do in this hotel is like living in a fishbowl. And Hilda and I didn't try to hide the fact that we had something going/'

  **I mean tonight—who knew?" Jerry said.

  *'Mike Maggio, for one," I said. "He told me Hilda was up here. They weren't letting people wander around tonight, he told me. Hilda told him she was headed for my place. He's off duty now, I suppose."

  "Not tonight," Jerry said. "I asked him to stay around in case we needed extra help." He took a handkerchief out of his pocket, used it to pick up the bedside phone I'd used to call him, and asked the switchboard to locate Mike and send him up to my place.

  I had an idea while he was talking and I passed it on to him when he put down the phone. "It just occurred to me, Jerry, there could have been someone in here when Hilda let herself in. She saw him, started to go for help—"

  "You say no one else has a key."

  "Some of the hotel thieves we have around are magicians with locks," I said.

  "The lock can tell us that when Hardy gets here to look at it," Jerry said. "No matter how good you are, you can't open a lock with a burglar tool without leaving fresh scratches. We'll see."

  When you don't want a policeman, there's always one right there. When you do, they seem to take for-

  ever. Mike Maggio turned up before Hardy and his people arrived. He hadn't been told on the phone why he was wanted. He had a kind of mischievous smile on his street-smart face when Jerry let him into my living room. I guess he had some kind of wisecrack ready, but a look at Jerry and me must have told him he hadn't been invited to a party.

  **What's wrong?" he asked.

  Jerry pointed to the bedroom door and Mike walked over and took a look. ''Oh, boy!'' I heard him say. He turned back to us. ''Oh, boy, Mark, you found her that way?"

  I nodded.

  "Sonofabitch!" Mike said.

  "Who got up here tonight, Mike?" Jerry asked.

  That may sound to you like an absurd question in a hotel where hundreds of people are circulating in the evening pleasure hours. I have to go back to geography again. The south and north ends of the building are the narrow ends. The lobby goes up three floors in open space, surrounded by the mezzanine gallery, where anyone can sit and look down at the people moving about, with the Trapeze Bar on the west side, beauty parlors and a barber shop on the east side. The second floor is really just the narrow north and south ends. My end, the south, as I have said, is just Chambrun's suite of offices, the accounting department, my apartment, and my office.

  "You know, Jerry, it isn't because anything special happened here today," Mike said. "Every night, after the close of the business day—seven o'clock, when I come in—the south bank of elevators don't stop at two, unless it's Mark—who, of course, can come and go at anytime because he lives here—or the boss or Miss Ruysdale wanting to go to his office. And, of course, anyone we know has legitimate business with those people. Or someone, like Miss Harding, whom I knew had—well, would be welcomed by Mark. There's the one stairway, but that we watch. Particularly tonight we watched. I can tell you that no one who didn't belong went up to the second floor on my shift except Miss Harding, and I figured—well, that she did belong there."

  "You spoke to her?" Jerry asked.

  "Yeah, sure. She asked me if I'd tell the elevator operator to let her off at two. 'I'm going to wait for Mark up there,' she told me. I kind of laughed and said, 'Out in the hall?' She said, 'I have a key.' I said something silly like 'Naughty, naughty!' She kind of grinned at me and said, 'But what fun!' That was it. People can get to the second floor from up above, Jerry, by using the fire stairs."

  "I know. No special reason for us to guard this floor," Jerry said. "Hotel thieves are after rich guests with cash and jewelry."

  And then the troops arrived, headed by Lieutenant Hardy. They all went into the bedroom and I could

  hear «clamations of surprise and anger from them. Hardy reappeared, his broad, pleasant face hard-

  •*You found her that way, Mark?''

  "Yes."

  "This place isn't going to be very livable for the nert few hours," the lieutenant said. "We're going to have to dust it from one end to the other for prints. You touch anything since you came in?"

  I told him the telephone and light by the bed where Hilda lay, the towel Fd brought from the bathroom, the glass and bottle on the sideboard. "But I was here earlier in the evening, Walter, shaved, showered, changed my clothes. Touched a hundred things, I suppose."

  "We'll need your prints so we can eliminate," Hardy said. "Sergeant Cobb will take ihcm. Can we talk in Chambrun's office?"

  "K he says so."

  "He'll say so," Hardy said. "Why isn't he here?"

  "Someone has to steer the ship," Jerry Dodd said quickly. He knew why Chambrun wasn't here. Ruys-dale!

  Cobb TOOK my prints, smearing me with ink I couldn't seon to wash off. The bedroom in my place was no-man's-land, except for fingerprint geniuses, photographers, and men from tte medical exammer's office. I went down the hall to Chambrun's offices, switched on lights, and went into the Man's private

  sanctum. The first thing I noticed was a stack of knocked-out pipe ashes in the brass tray on the desk. Prescott had been using the phone here off and on. I was reminded that Ruysdale wasn't with us. That ashtray would never have been left unemptied on Chambrun's desk.

  I called the Man's penthouse and got him on the first ring.

  "Oh, it's you, Mark," he said in that flat voice I hadn't gotten used to hearing from him.

  *'Anything on your end?" I asked.

  "No." It was flat, cold, and hard. He was wearing awfully thin, I thought. Then he was himself. "I'm so very sorry for you, Mark."

  "It's pretty gruesome," I said. "Hardy's in charge. I'm in your office, waiting to play questions-and-answers with him."

  "You, personally, have no thoughts on it?"

  "I haven't really been up to thinking much," I said. "Finding her—that way..."

  "Anything in her personal life, Mark, that you know about?"

  "Nothing. We—we hadn't gotten to talking about that sort of thing. All that mattered to us was 'right now.'"

  "Keep me posted when you can," Chambnin said. I thought he made a kind of choking sound. "Pretty soon, Mark, I've got to stop playing it their way and play it mine."

  ''Meaning?"

  "Get through with Hardy and we'll talk," he said.

  I've said Lieutenant Hardy looked like a professional football linebacker. He looked now like one who had just stopped up the wrong hole and someone had run for a touchdown.

  ''There's no place to get started back there," he said, when he joined me in Chambrun's office. "Jerry Dodd and Maggio have caught me up on all the things that don't help us. We'v
e got to get to the girl, Mark."

  "I can't help much," I said.

  "Let's get one thing straight between us," Hardy said. "I think of you as a friend—quite a number of years. This time, though, you're an actor in this script. I've got to treat you like a cop. This is an official interrogation." He gestured toward the uniformed policeman who'd come with him. "Moncrief will be taking it down."

  Moncrief, the cop, had put a stenotype machine down on Chambrun's desk and taken his place behind it.

  "So this is for the record," Hardy said. "The girl's name is Hilda Harding?"

  "That's a stage name, professional name," I said. "Her real last name is Wolenski. Polish."

  "You know anything about her family?"

  "Look, Walter, before we go any further there's someone who can tell you a lot more about her than I can. Young fellow who plays the piano for her named

  Billy Chard. Been with her several years, I understand. He's roistered here in the hotel."

  Hardy made a signal to Moncrief, who picked up the phone and started to track down Chard.

  **He knows her better than you do/' Hardy said, ''but she had a key to your apartment, negligee hanging in your closet. How much bett^ could anyone know her?''

  "Walter, you're married, got three grown kids. You wouldn't understand."

  **That a pretty girl is tempting?"

  *'You wouldn't let yourself be tenpted," I said.

  "How long had you known this girl?"

  "Two weeks. She started her engagCTient in the Blue Lagoon two weeks ago."

  "Not before that?"

  "No. Oh, I'd heard some of h^ records, but I'd never seen her or met her till the night she opened here."

  "And she moved right in with you?"

  "That very first night," I said. I knew that would shock him. "I went into the Lagoon to hear her sing. She was marvdous. I bought h^ a drink whra she was done and—and we wound up in my apartment."

  "Just like that?"

  "Just like that. Look, Walter, I'm not married, I don't have any commitments to anyone. As far as I know, neither did Hilda. Our wires touched, and— and we took off."

  **And she's been shacked up with you for two weeks?''

  **That's a vulgar phrase, Walter," I said, grinning at him. '*We've been having marvelous sex together for two weeks."

  •Tlans for the future?"

  **She had another week to go here. Then she was off to Vegas, I think. That's as far as we planned."

  Hardy tugged at an ear. ''Let's start over," he said. *'You're with her every night for two weeks. You must have talked about something. Her family? Boyfriends she'd had? Enemies she'd made?"

  "You'd be surprised how little talking of that kind we did. We'd get together about three in the morning, when she'd done her last show and I could finally stop circulating. I had to be up at eight to meet Chambrun here at nine. We did damn little talking, Walter."

  "Dodd says she asked you if she could come up to your place tonight, that she was scared."

  "She knew it wasn't a normal night," I said. "I would be tied up, wouldn't expect her. But she was nervous about the man you haven't caught. If he was some kind of psycho, he might come back here, looking to get at her for having identified him for you. She didn't feel safe up on the tenth floor. I don't blame her, do you?"

  "Did she say anything more about our Mr. X? Did she remember him from someplace else?"

  "She didn't say anything like that to me. Fve been on the run, as you know. I saw her for two or three minutes before she went on for her last show. She just said she was scared. That didn't seem unnatural to me."

  Hardy made a little gesture to Moncrief, the cop on the stenotype, to let him know that what was coming next was off the record.

  **The interrogations in a murder case are open to many eyes," he said, *• particularly the district attorney and his smart-assed boys. A young man's current girl frirad is found strangled to death in his apartment, he is certainly a primary suspect. I've got to ask you questions that I would ask a stranger in the same situation. I don't think you killed the girl, Mark, but officially I have to handle you just as I would someone I never laid eyes on before."

  *'You could disqualify yourself," I said, trying to make it sound funny.

  He gave me an unexpectedly hard look. "I wouldn't advise you to suggest that," he said. "You'd find yourself under some very bright lights answering some very sticky questions."

  "Sorry, Walter," I said. "I haven't had anything to laugh at for hours and hours. I was just trying to be funny."

  He signaled to Moncrief and I knew we were back on the record again. "You say you'd finished your tour of duty, come up to your apartment, found the

  Harding girl lying on your bed, fully clothed, strangled/'

  **Yes.''

  ''What time was that?"

  "I don't punch a clock, Walter. I do what I have to do and I stay with it till it gets done. Fd say it was a little before three, because Mike Maggio was still on duty. He goes off at three. He spoke to me on my way up, told me Hilda was in my apartment."

  "You been drinking?"

  '''Drinking,' no," I said. "Had I had a few drinks? Yes. Starting at lunchtime and until I turn in about three in the morning I have half a dozen drinks every day of my life."

  "What was your special duty tonight?"

  "My special duty was handling an army of reporters from the papers, the radio, and TV. We've set up a private room for them at the north end of the lobby. I was to keep them out of Chambrun's hair—and yours. That went with my regular dutfes, which are to circulate in the Blue Lagoon, the Trapeze, the Spartan Bar, any special events in the ballroom—nothing there tonight."

  "So you're pretty much on the move all evening?"

  "Yes."

  "I understand the south end of the second floor is shut off after seven o'clock in the evening. But you could come and go without anyone paying any particular attrition."

  "What time do you think the girl went up to your apartment?*'

  '*! don't know, but Mike Maggio might be able to tell you. He talked to her. She asked him to tell the elevator operator to let her off at two. I could guess."

  *'So guess."

  *'Her last turn in the Lagoon is at one o'clock. I saw her start. I was eating something out front. I left before she finished. But her turn lasted for about forty-five minutes."

  "A quarter to two?"

  ''Just about, unless the audience wouldn't let her go on the dot. Then she went back to her dressing room and changed out of her stage clothes."

  "How do you know that?"

  "Because she wasn't wearing a costume dress when I found her, and she'd taken off her stage makeup."

  "How long would it take her to take off her makeup and change clothes?"

  "Tfen, fifteen, twenty minutes, depending on how much of a hurry she was in."

  "So we can assume she got up to your apartment at two or a little after?"

  "I'd say so, but again, Mike Maggio can probably be more exact."

  "So there was something like an hour after she got up to your place and the time you went up there and found her?"

  ''About that, I'd guess/'

  **But you could have gone up there in that hour, unnoticed, killed her, gone back downstairs, and made sure you were noticed when you went back up at three/'

  '*Oh, for Christ's sake, Walter!" I said.

  ''You could have."

  "Why would I want to kill her, for God's sake!"

  "You tell me. Lover's quarrel; you'd both been drinking more than you'll admit; she had something on you."

  "I'd been robbing the hotel? Come off it, friend!"

  "I'm not your friend at the moment, Haskell." That was for the record, I supposed.

  "Look," I said, "I wasn't in hiding for that hour. Nor did I have any reason to provide myself with an alibi. If I were to sit down and think, I might be able to tell you everyone I talked with, spent any time witfi. It should cover me."

>   "You do just that," Hardy said. He signaled to Moncrief that the interrogation was over for the moment. The palms of my hands felt a little damp, even though my conscience was in perfect shape. There's a special kind of toughness about a cop at work, even though he's your friend.

  The door at the far end of the office opened and Jerry Dodd came in, bringing Billy Chard with him. Billy is a handsome young guy: wavy brown hair worn longish, wide brown eyes that were red now from

  weeping. I'd never seen him wearing anything but the beautifully tailored dinner jacket that was his uniform for Hilda's performances. I'd never had any conversation with him except to tell him how great I thought he was on the keyboard. I assumed from a couple of things Hilda had let drop that he was gay. He wasn't his elegant self now. He had on a brown turtleneck sweater, tan slacks, and a pair of brown loafers. He was carrying a crumpled handkerchief in one hand, which he kept raising to his eyes and then lowering to his mouth. I was the only person he knew in the room, so I guess he took aim at me.

  ''You bastard!" he said.

  *'He didn't know, of course, when I woke him," Jerry Dodd said.

  ''Sit down, Mr. Chard," Hardy said, and when Billy had dropped into the chair by Chambrun's desk: "Your name is William Chard?"

  "Billy. Billy is my name, not William."

  "Your address?"

  "I don't have a permanent address. I—I've been on tour with Hilda forever."

  '' How long is forever?''

  "Five, five and a half years," Billy said. "Most of my personal belongings are in storage. I don't have an address."

  "Where does the government send you your tax bills?" Hardy asked.

  MKt,

  '*Do I have to spell it out for you?'* Billy almost snarled. 'Tm gay, Lieutenant. I wasn't *in love' with Hilda, but I loved her." He glared at me. '*I knew this crazy cocksman would get her into some kind of trouble before we left his gilded whorehouse!"

  '^What kind of trouble?"

  '*Hilda was a sexaholic," Billy said. *'She forgot about everything that mattered, her career, her health, when she got tangled up with some jerk like Haskell here. When she got through with her act each night she couldn't wait to take off her clothes for some creep. Any creep that was available!"