Murder Most Strange

by Dell Shannon

  "Yes," he said, and stabbed out his cigarette. “Did you use her place?"

  "My God, no. I was getting fed up, it was a damn nuisance, see. She was always so goddamned nervous about her ex, on account of the alimony and the support for the kid. She was scared he'd get a private eye on her, get the kid away so he wouldn't have to pay her. I told her it was silly, he couldn't afford nothing like that—but she wouldn't let me come to her place except to pick her up—and she wouldn't go in my place either—"

  "Back of the car," said Mendoza.

  "I was fed up. Look, Marion was a nice enough girl but she wasn't the only one around, see? And for God's sake, I don't know what happened to her. Last time I saw her was at the coffee shop Wednesday, she looked just like usual, I said I'd pick her up Friday night."

  "And where were you Thursday night?" Mendoza didn't think it mattered.

  "For God's sake. It was a kind of rough day, I was beat. I shot a little pool down the block, and I had dinner at a joint and went home and went to bed."

  Mendoza had lost interest in him three minutes ago. He stood up.

  * * *

  He got to the church in good time; it was St. Joseph's up on Vermont. There wasn't much of a crowd, maybe twenty-five people; Nick would have relations, but the bride didn't have any family in this country. Palliser and his Roberta were there, in a pew opposite; they hadn't noticed Mendoza yet, and he sat back thinking about that old case when he'd half suspected Roberta of a rather complicated murder. They were a distinguished—looking pair, both tall, dark and handsome.

  Hackett slid into the pew beside him just as the organ music changed and the bride appeared. Landers and Grace had gone down the side aisle at the same time.

  It was a simple low mass, without more music or much ritual. He hadn't seen the bride since he'd seriously suspected her of murdering her first husband. He hadn't remembered that she was such a good-looking girl: loose-waved tawny-blond hair, the warm dark eyes, a milky complexion. She was wearing a simple beige dress. And stocky dark Galeano, that staid bachelor, even managed to look the romantic bridegroom, in a formal dark suit. The blinding smile they exchanged at the end of the ceremony maybe meant more than the ritual. And when the reception line formed outside, there was a cluster of pretty plump dark women around bride and groom—Galeano's mother and sisters.

  The Pallisers had gotten there first, and the bride was talking animatedly to Roberta when Mendoza offered congratulations to Galeano. "Marta," he said, and she turned quickly. "All the best wishes, Mrs. Ga1eano."

  Her dark eyes held a smile. "Lieutenant Mendoza, who was so convinced I had murdered my poor husband. Thank you."

  "You'd better not murder this one," said Mendoza. "We're shorthanded as it is."

  She laughed. "I promise you will have him back in two little weeks—and with the five pounds lost he has gained! I will take care of him for you."

  Mendoza moved on, and a minute later on the way to the parking lot Glasser caught up to him and said, "Another confirmed bachelor caught in the trap."

  "You're just a cynic, Henry."

  FOUR

  When Higgins and Landers had gotten to the Independent Pharmacy on Alvarado that morning, they had found a woman peering in the front window, looking at the Closed sign on the door. Getting out the keys he had from Hackett, Higgins said, "I'm sorry, ma'am, the store won't be open today."

  "Oh," she said. "I wondered why Mr. Parmenter wasn't here, it's after nine. Is he sick? Who are you?"

  "I'm sorry to tell you he's died. Did you know him, ma'am?" Higgins unlocked the door.

  "Died! Well, for goodness' sake," she said mildly. She was a dumpy, dowdy woman in the forties, with lank brown hair, a homely plain face. "So I guess I'm out of a job."

  "You worked here?"

  "Just since last week. It must have been awful sudden, he seemed all right on Saturday."

  Higgins produced the badge and brought her in, to save time letting her think it had been an accident of some kind. Her name was Amelia Bowler and she said she'd answered an ad in the Times last Tuesday, there'd been a number to call, and Mr. Parmenter had hired her right away when he told her the address and she came. "He said the other clerk he'd had had left all of a sudden and he needed somebody. I was glad to get the job even if it didn't pay much, we can use the extra money since my husband's been sick and off work." She looked around the shabby old store regretfully. "And an easy job, just waiting on people. I'm sure sorry to hear about Mr. Parmenter—he was kind of quiet and a little crabby, but you got to take people as you find them."

  She didn't know anything about the other clerk.

  Higgins let her out and looked around the store, which was old and run-down and cluttered; this was a block of tired old businesses, a cleaners', a cut-rate dress shop, a hole-in-the-wall doughnut shop, a music store offering LP records below cost. Landers was poking around in the back room. Higgins went behind the counter at the rear of the store and found the phone in a little dispensing office there. He called the office.

  "Art? Is that Coffman woman still there? Well, would you ask her . . ."

  After an interval Hackett reported, "She was surprised to hear the other clerk had quit her job. Says she'd been there about four years, since Parmenter's wife died. Coffman hadn't been in the store for about two weeks, so she didn't know she'd left. She's not sure about the woman's name but it was Mac something, she thinks."

  They looked around, in all the drawers and files in the stockroom, but there didn't seem to be any correspondence, either business or private; nothing but a shabby store, a clutter of stock this sort and that, cosmetics, a little stationery, a tobacco counter, men's shaving lotion and razor blades, all the miscellany expectable in such a place. "It's a funny one," said Landers, "by what Art said. Nothing much to get hold of."

  "This other woman probably knew something about him, working here that long." They looked further and found some boxes of canceled checks on a shelf in the storeroom; among them were checks made out to Alice McLennan, all in the amount of four hundred and fifty dollars. "Piddling salary," commented Higgins. "This is probably her." The checks were drawn on a Bank of America five blocks down Alvarado, and marked for deposit only. "So she's got an account there too. Let's see if we can locate her."

  At the bank, the badges produced cooperation. Miss Alice McLennan was one of their depositors, and her address was on Baxter Street.

  It was an ancient eight-unit apartment, and she lived at the front upstairs. There was no response to the bell, and Higgins said, "Working-class neighborhood. She won't be rich—she'll have gotten herself another job. Maybe somebody here will know where."

  Downstairs, the left front door bore a sign, Manageress. The woman who answered that bell was pleasant-faced, politely helpful. "Miss McLennan, well, she's gone off for a little vacation. Somewhere up in the mountains, she said. She said she'd be back next week sometime. Well, I couldn't say exactly where. Now Mrs. Bickerstaff might know, she lives across the hall from Miss McLennan and they're great friends, but of course she's gone to stay with her daughter, help with the sick baby, and I don't know when she might be home—it's someplace in West Covina, I don't know the address."

  "I see," said Higgins. "Well, we're anxious to talk to Miss McLennan. It's about her former employer. I wonder, when you do see her, if you'd ask her to call this number. Or if Mrs. Bickerstaff comes back—"

  "Oh, surely," she said amiably, taking the card. "Business of some kind. I know she'd just quit her job. She said she really needed a vacation, and she just took Mickey and drove off to the mountains. Somewhere."

  "Mickey."

  "Her little fox terrier. She's just crazy about that dog—a nice little dog."

  * * *

  "And so," said Higgins, "unless she can tell us something, I wouldn't know where to go on it. There aren't any personal effects at the store, no correspondence. It looks as if the place hadn't been cleaned much or straightened out in years." It was after four-
thirty; he and Grace had stayed on at the wedding reception.

  "It didn't look as if the house had been entered at all," said Hackett, taking his glasses off to polish them. "Scarne called just before I left last night. They came across a thousand bucks in cash in one of the kitchen canisters—"

  "¡Como!" said Mendoza. "First place a burglar would look. He was supposed to be a shrewd miser?"

  "It shapes up," said Hackett, breathing on his glasses and polishing absently, "that somebody just drove up there, spotted him in the back yard, walked down and beat him to a pulp. And they can't have made much noise, none of the neighbors heard a thing. That's a damned queer little backwater of a place, tucked away like that. They were all home too, but it was natural enough, all of them had reasons why they weren't noticing anything, everybody—so to speak—doing their own thing, on a nice quiet Sunday. But there's just nowhere to go on it if we can't get a line on the people he knew. Damn it, there wasn't even an address book at the house."

  "Or the store," said Higgins.

  "This former employee may give us something."

  "Mmh, yes," said Mendoza, "a shapeless little thing. And it'll be a day or two before we get an autopsy report." He picked up the manila folder from his desk blotter. "What we have got, just now, is the autopsy report on Marion Cooper."

  He sat back and lit a new cigarette, and blew smoke at the ceiling. At this end of a day, he needed a shave, but looked as sharply tailored and neat as when he'd left home, the tie tidily centered, correct quarter inch of cuff showing. "And what it tells us is, the fatal old combination of pills and booze. She'd had about six drinks—scotch and soda—and something like fifteen phenobarbital capsules, and terminar. I suppose we'll get a lab report on that apartment sometime, they do take their time. And she'd had sexual intercourse fairly recently before death."

  "Oh," said Hackett alertly, and sat up. "Wall?"

  "I really don't think so, Art. He's the simple male animal, there is no guile in him. I think he was telling me the truth."

  Mendoza brooded over the manila folder. "She wasn't promiscuous, I don't think, but—the good-time girl. It didn't mean that much to her." He thought that over, and added, "Maybe she'd have gotten down to being promiscuous in another couple of years. As it was, Wall said she had other boy friends. Maybe she ran into an old flame that night, at one of those bars."

  "Yes," said Hackett, "we haven't looked at those yet, have we? Well, a job for the night watch." He stood up and stretched. "At least we've got Nick safely married off. Nice wedding—pretty girl. I just hope we don't get a spate of business while we're shorthanded."

  "Don't invite trouble," said Higgins. "We're overdue for a heat wave, and that always sends the homicide rate up."

  * * *

  Whether they got called out or not, the night watch would be busy, the day men leaving jobs for them—on Dapper Dan's latest victim, the new homicide. Piggott said, "I'll go to the hospital. You can go barhopping." Piggott was, of course, a teetotaler.

  At the hospital, of course, he heard exactly what he'd expected to hear from Marcia Currier. She was sitting up in bed looking a little pale, but otherwise all right, and Evelyn Frost was there. "Honestly," said Marcia, "honestly! I didn't hesitate a minute—he was so polite and apologetic for bothering me, he seemed so worried about his sister, it was all so plausible and, well, I mean, broad daylight, about four o'clock on Sunday afternoon! I didn't even have time to scream—"

  She offered the expectable description. Tall, dark, clean shaven, early thirties, the nicely tailored suit, white shirt and tie. She said she'd be glad to come in and look at mug shots.

  Piggott, either because or in spite of his religious convictions, tended to be a pessimist; this time he had solid reason. Almost certainly Marcia Currier wasn't going to pick out any mug shots.

  Conway and Schenke hit Barney's Bar and Grill first, and ran into some pay dirt, but meager. It was a typical third-class bar, the dim lighting disguising the shabbiness of the cheaply upholstered booths, the scratched and stained tables, even the ill-adjusted TV suspended in one corner. It was noisy and friendly. They talked to the bartender and he pointed out some regulars he remembered Marion fraternizing with: a young couple who said sure, they dropped in here a few nights a week, and sure, they knew Marion. They were shocked to hear she was dead. They pointed out a pair of men they'd seen her sitting with: Conway and Schenke talked to them. Bill Voorhees, Joe Otero: they were frank, shocked, puzzled, unhelpful. She'd seemed like a nice girl; they'd just talked with her in here, neither had ever dated her. They shared an apartment a couple of blocks away; they were both orderlies at the Beverly Glen Hospital. And everybody said that Marion hadn't been in here on Thursday night.

  "Around and around we go," said Schenke philosophically. "I hope that hair-trigger heister isn't out again."

  Conway just growled. His best girl worked nine to five, and he hadn't even seen her in two months. They went a block up to the Ace-High Bar, which was a replica of Barney's except that it was bigger and had color TV. There, they found the barmaid who had known Marion. Her name was Amy Hall. She was astonished to hear about Marion, not apparently especially grieved; she said readily that, yeah, Marion had been in last Thursday night. She'd left earlier than usual. Before that she'd been talking with a couple of the regulars, and they were here now; she pointed out two women sitting at a small table alone. Conway and Schenke went over and showed the badges.

  That pair stuck out as homosexuals: one hard-faced female in a pantsuit, with an offhand manner and cold eyes, one vacant-eyed giggler. They said indifferently they knew Marion, and she'd been here last Thursday. The giggler said, "She left with that Italiano guy, I think they said something about going somewhere to dance. Oh, his name's Galloopsi or something. I only heard it once."

  They went back to the barmaid. "Oh," she said, "well, I didn't notice if she left with anybody—I just saw her waving at me from the door, and it was early, about nine o'clock. What? Well, I guess she'd had about three scotches, the time she was here, call it from seven on. An Italian guy? That could be Tony Galluci, she knew him, sure."

  "Do you know where he works, lives?"

  She laughed. "He's one of the custodians up at the Police Academy in Elysian Park. I got no idea where he lives."

  "Well, for God's sake," said Conway outside. He took a grateful breath of night air, out of the steamy atmosphere at the Ace-High. "That's a little switch. Shall we leave the rest of it to the day men?"

  Bob Schenke yawned. "Night's still fairly young. Let's work it a little more, Rich."

  The academy, of course, was shut down for the night, but most people had phones. They found him in the Central book, over on Burnside Avenue above Olympic. It was an old apartment building, and he was at home. He was around thirty, superficially handsome with a dark narrow face and patent-leather hair. At least he was very much at ease with police, rubbing shoulders with them every day.

  He was surprised to hear about Marion; he said several times he'd be good and damned; he was sorry, she'd been a fun girl. Not that he'd known her very well, he'd only dated her a couple of times.

  "Including," said Conway, "last Thursday night."

  "Yeah, that's right. I ran into her at the Ace-High, we had a few drinks, and then she had a yen to go dancing somewhere. We went to a place out on Olympic that has a combo, but of course we both had to go to work next day, I guess it was about a quarter of twelve I dropped her off at her place. No, I didn't go in with her."

  "But you'd already had a heavy necking session in the car, hadn't you? And I do mean heavy," said Conway.

  Galluci wasn't annoyed or embarrassed at all. "Yeah, that's right. So what, it's a free country. Matter of fact it was the first time, like I say it was only the third time I'd been out with her. It's a shame, her dying like that—she was a real fun girl."

  * * *

  Mendoza uttered a sharp laugh and pushed Conway's report across the desk to Hackett and Higgins. "¿Pues
y qué? I really don't see any reason for Galluci to want to murder Marion—just the easy lay. The more you look at it, it's a very queer setup."

  "I don't suppose Cooper could be right?" said Hackett. "An accident of some sort—it'd be the simple explanation. If she took a last drink to settle her down, reached for the aspirin without turning on the light—if she had that stuff around—" He stopped.

  "Don't gibber, chico," said Mendoza. He brushed his mustache back and forth irritably. "About fifteen capsules? And it was in the scotch.”

  "Yes, I just remembered that."

  "Well, I want to look around that pharmacy some more. I had one thought, Luis. When Parmenter was said to be so greedy for money, it could be he'd been dealing in the pills—he could acquire the stuff all legal. And any unusual amounts might show on his books."

  "Possible," said Mendoza. "It would also probably be known in the neighborhood. To, I needn't tell you, the kids. You can go and ask."

  Everybody else was out hunting heisters. On impulse, after Hackett and Higgins left, he went downstairs and drove over to take a look at the funny little backwater. Hope Lane. It was quiet as death, all right. Just the twelve little houses, looking prim and somnolent in the early sun. At the very end, at the house next to Parmenter's, a dark young woman was out working in a front flower bed. She looked curiously at the Ferrari as he turned around in the dead end.

  He came back to the office and reread Conway's report. It conveyed nothing new to him. He went down the hall for coffee, and was rereading the autopsy report on Marion when Sergeant Lake buzzed him.

  "They want somebody down in Echo Park," he said. "I don't know on what. There are a couple of squads there now."

  "¿Qué es esto?" Resignedly Mendoza got up, automatically yanking down his cuffs, and picked up the Homburg. "Don't tell me there's a body in the lake."

  "They didn't say." Lake had temporarily given up his diet, and was bulging slightly in his uniform. He looked bored, picking up his paperback.