Murder Most Strange

by Dell Shannon

  "Accident!" she said. "This is my husband, I guess he can stay. Only don't try to tell the man I'm crazy, Joe."

  "You've got an imagination, Rita." He grinned at her faintly.

  "I know what I know," she said obstinately, and turned to Conway. The tears welled up in her dark eyes; she said, "I suppose you know that I was with my niece—Mrs. Ina Rush—and her daughter Pam. Oh, Pam! She was only eight—"

  "Yes, we know that, Mrs. Patillo. Did you get a look at the car at all?"

  "That isn't going to do you any good," she told him. "You listen to me. Ina found out about that bum a year after she married him—he was always chasing other women and gambling—but she tried to make the marriage work on account of Pam. But it just got too bad, and she divorced him six months ago. And the judge gave her four hundred a month alimony and child support, and Jim Rush was mad as—as fire about it. He makes pretty good money, he drives a refuse truck for the city. But he's got another woman on the string and there's nothing he'd like better than to be rid of Ina and Pam."

  "You know," said Conway, "unless you've got some evidence, that's slander."

  "Just what I been telling her," said Patillo.

  "Men," she said. "You listen. I know it was late for Pam, but I don't get off work till three, and there was this movie we all wanted to see. Joe said he'd get his own dinner. We went to the show, and we got out about six forty-five and we went up to that restaurant on Hill for dinner. And it was when we came out—Ina was parked in the lot across the street—not much traffic, it was about eight-thirty—it happened. The street was empty—nothing any direction—and we started across, and all of a sudden I heard an engine start up with a big zoom, and that car pulled out from the curb down the block—from the curb, mind you—and headed straight for us!"

  "You're telling me it was deliberate. How sure are you?"

  "I'm sure," she said grimly.

  "You're not going to tell me you recognized the driver," said Conway.

  "No, I'm not such a fool," she said candidly. "It was too dark. I heard Ina scream, and I tried to reach for Pam, but it was all too quick—" She gave a shuddering sigh.

  "I take it Mrs. Rush wasn't in contact with her ex-husband. How would he have known where she'd be, to try to run her down?"

  "Now that's the big question," she said. "I don't know, but he did. He knows girl friends of hers, he's a smooth talker, he could even have hired a private detective if he figured he could get rid of her—"

  "Oh, Rita," said her husband. "It's just a damned awful thing about Ina and Pam, but you've got an imagination—"

  "I know!"

  "The car?" asked Conway.

  "Oh, it wasn't his car," she said scornfully, "he wouldn't use that, in case he didn't kill her and she could say it was him. It was a big station wagon, I don't know what kind, it was either gray or tan . . ."

  Conway sighed and continued to make notes. He'd just had it on the grapevine tonight that his best girl, who was a policewoman stationed at Hollenbeck precinct, had started dating a detective in the Vice office. He was feeling annoyed about it, but there wasn't a damned thing he could do about it.

  * * *

  At ten-forty that night, Mr. and Mrs. Paul Warren and their eight-year-old daughter Mary Ann came out of the Baker Marionette Theater on First Street. Mary Ann wasn't usually up that late, but it wasn't a school night and she was crazy about marionettes. It was a prebirthday treat, because she was only having a small party next Tuesday, when she'd be nine.

  Paul Warren had an excellent legal practice in Glendale, but he was also an ex-fullback for UCLA and kept himself in shape without being a fanatic about it; he was six two and a solid hundred and ninety.

  They were late coming out, because Molly Warren had dropped the case for her glasses under the seat in the theater, and a couple of ushers took a while to find it. There hadn't been a very big audience; not everybody went for marionettes, and Paul Warren had been rather bored, but he liked to please his womenfolk.

  They went across a largely empty parking lot to his car, a year-old Monte Carlo, and Mary Ann climbed into the back seat as Warren unlocked the doors.

  And then a voice said behind him, "Excuse me."

  A man had come up from the side alley, a tallish shadowy figure, hat pulled down to shade his face. He had a large Doberman pinscher with him on a leash. "Yes?" said Warren, surprised. `

  "Excuse me, but this is a trained attack dog and I'1l set him on you if you don't give me your money. Come on, hurry up!"

  Warren froze. He heard Molly utter a little gasp. He looked at the dog; he knew Dobes. He started to reach for his wallet. And then Mary Ann, hearing the voices, opened the door and jumped out of the car. And the dog gave a great whine of rapture and yanked the leash loose and ran up to her, licking her face and waggling his tailless rear end like mad, and Mary Ann threw her arms around him and cried, "Oh, Daddy, he's just like Rusty!"

  Warren hesitated no longer. He brought one up from the ground, and landed square on the jaw, and the man fell over backward onto the blacktop and lay very still.

  * * *

  "What?" said Mendoza. "I didn't get that." There were phones all over Alison's big house, and he'd just been undressing, was standing in the master suite with just shorts on. Alison was splashing noisily in the bathroom.

  "I said we didn't know what the hell to do about the dog," said Conway. "Animal Control is shut down for the night. It's at the jail, one of the jailers said he'd take it out for a walk now and then. It's a nice friendly big dog. The guy's name is Charles Gage, he came to but he acted kind of dazed, and the doctor at the jail said he might have concussion. I suppose you can turn the dog over to Animal Control tomorrow, but damn it, they don't keep them long, do they? It's a nice dog.

  If this Gage has any family to claim it . . . But it was the funniest damned thing, Lieutenant, after all we'd heard about this savage beast—such a nice little girl, nice family, and the dog was all over her, wagging its rear end and licking her face. The woman said they'd just lost an old Doberman sixteen years old, and the little girl had been heartbroken?

  "Yes, I see," said Mendoza.

  Conway was laughing again. "The savage beast. Well, it was funny."

  "Very," said Mendoza. "We'll sort it out tomorrow."

  TEN

  Charles Gage looked at Mendoza and said, "So we come to the end of the road. God, it's like a Greek play." They had transferred him to the jail infirmary for observation, and the doctor had said there was a mild concussion but he would be all right. He was in a tiny narrow slot of a room, only big enough for the hospital bed and a chair. He was a nearly handsome man in his early forties, tall, with dark hair, regular features, but a very ordinary man, a man you wouldn't look at twice. He was wearing the tan cotton jail uniform, and he looked white and ill, whatever the jail doctor said.

  He gave Mendoza a very faint smile and said, "I knew it was all up when the little girl got out of the car. I think Bruno misses Caroline as much as I do."

  "Caroline."

  "My daughter. She died of leukemia last year. She was nine."

  "Well, Mr. Gage," said Mendoza, "you had a novel idea for pulling heist jobs. We didn't have any way to trace you at al1."

  "It was a crazy idea," said Gage sadly. "But I've been about crazy. What with everything?

  "Suppose you tell me about it."

  "I don't know why the police would want to listen to the story of my life," said Gage listlessly. He was lying on the made bed fully dressed; they would be transferring him back to a jail cell after Mendoza had talked to him. "I don't want to sound sorry for myself, but— God, everything seemed to happen at once—as if God Himself had turned His back on me. And up to then, everything had been pretty good, a good life. Well, I won't say that Helen and I didn't have differences, but we got along. She was always a little jealous of Caroline, but she was a good mother, and we had a nice house—West Hollywood—and the business was doing fine—and the nice big back
yard for Bruno—I had it made, at forty-one.”

  "What business‘?" asked Mendoza.

  "I've got an import and giftware shop at the Farmer's Market in Hollywood. Not cheap stuff, all good quality—you have to know how to buy, but experience tells you what's going to sell. I had a girl working for me, and I thought she was a nice girl—very efficient girl, named Doris King. Everything—going—fine." He sat up a little straighter. Mendoza had lit a cigarette and he said apologetically, "Could I bum one of those from you? Thanks. I haven't been buying any lately—too damned expensive." He smoked in silence for a while, and said, "Of course, the very worst was Caroline. I suppose I had spoiled her—the one ewe lamb. She lived seven months, and the medical bills piled up— God, God, way over a hundred thousand bucks—if they could have done etching, that wouldn't have mattered, but of course they couldn't. She died just a little over a year ago. And then Helen changed, got restless, she began to pick fights with me over nothing—she always did say I was a stodgy slowpoke, never wanted to go out anywhere—well, I never have been one for that, I guess it was pretty slow and dull for her, when Caroline— Well, she just changed. And she decided she wanted a divorce. She said she wanted some kind of better life while she was still young enough to enjoy it." He was sitting on the edge of the bed now, head down, cigarette dangling loose between his lingers; he took a last drag and put it out carefully in the dime-store ashtray, and Mendoza offered him another. "Thanks. Well, she had a smart lawyer, and I guess he had an exaggerated idea about the business, a judge gave her five hundred a month alimony. And the next thing was that that King girl cleaned out the store bank account. You'll think I was a fool, but she'd been with me for five years, I trusted her. I'd given her the power to sign checks on it because sometimes wholesale orders would get delivered when I wasn't there, or I'd be away on a buying trip when the utility bills came due. You see? I never dreamed she could do such a thing—but she got in with some crook, fell hard for him—the police found out all about it—and they took me for over twelve thousand dollars, all the backlog, the net profits to go back into the business. The police never got them, they traced them to Hawaii and then they just disappeared.

  "Helen didn't want the house, maybe she had some conscience and saw how I'd be left—there was still thirty-seven thousand owing on it and she knew I couldn't swing that, I was still paying off the medical bills, and what with the alimony I knew I couldn't keep the house—the payments— Not that I suppose she knew, the lease was up at the store, I had to sign a new one and they raised the ante, nine hundred a month for a twenty-by-forty space facing on Fairfax. I knew I had to sell the house. It was then I did it the first time," said Gage suddenly.

  "How did it happen to occur to you?" asked Mendoza curiously.

  "Helen had moved out. She'd gotten an apartment in Santa Monica and a job—she was a legal secretary before we were married, and she got a good job down there. I'd just had an offer for the house—we had to drop the price—and I was so damned worried about money," said Gage. "So—damn—worried. The five hundred a month had to come right off the top. Well, I'd taken Bruno out for a walk that night as usual, and I saw these people going up to a car just ahead of me, and the woman looked at Bruno and sort of shied a little. My good God, I don't know where the damn fool idea came from, but so many people are afraid of Dobermans—and for God's sake, the man handed over the money like a lamb. I felt like a damned fool when he did—good God, I was in a bad enough fix as it was, I didn't have to turn into a crook! Well"—he took a long drag on the cigarette—"I sold the house, and I applied all the money to the medical bills, which cut it down to only about thirty-five thousand I still owed. Only!" He looked at Mendoza. "I don't know why you're listening to all this."

  "Go on, Mr. Gage."

  "I had a hell of a time to find a place to rent where I could keep Bruno. I finally found a duplex, it's on Kensington up toward Elysian Park, an old run-down neighborhood, but the owner lives on the other side and he said he'd be glad of a dog there to scare burglars. But it's just a little yard. I took him for a walk every night. I was so damned strapped for money," said Gage, bitterly. "The rent at the store, and the utility bills had doubled since last year, and business was way off with inflation so high and wholesale prices up—even the tourist season didn't help—and that goddamned girl left me with no backlog, I couldn't order new stock—and the alimony every month—the rent at the duplex is three hundred—"

  "Many a man," said Mendoza, blowing smoke at the ceiling, "has been driven to crime through desperation."

  "You could damn well say I was," said Gage. "But of course I must have been crazy. Just crazy. You see, I thought afterward—about that first time, I thought it could be that those people needed that money just as badly as I did. But when it got—really a little desperate—the business way off, the stock getting low, and I cou1dn't hire another employee, and I was doing without lunch—oh, there were a lot of times when eating money was hard to come by—I thought, people who could afford to go to expensive theaters anywhere, the money I'd take wouldn't be food and rent money, at 1east."

  "So that was why. I see."

  "That was why." Gage lay back on the bed, and turned his face away. "One haul I got—it was about forty dollars went to pay for Bruno's rabies and booster shots. That may sound crazy to you, but—you have a dog—you have responsibilities. Bruno was all I had left. I didn't have enough money for a decent meal that week. Soup and cereal—and even milk—the utilities are extra at the duplex—" And he said draggingly, drearily, "But the very worst—I know you'll send me to prison for it, and I deserve that—but the very worst is what I've done to Bruno. The dog didn't know—doing anything wrong. And now—there's no one to take care of him. People we knew—mostly Helen's friends—like her, don't care for dogs, know anything about—" Gage was silent.

  "I've killed him, you know. My Bruno. He's only five. There's no one to look after him. Just because I was such a god-damned fool, I've killed him, and I deserve to be hanged for that."

  "You know," said Mendoza consideringly, "I think there may be a solution, Mr. Gage. It is queer how things happen. You just happening to walk up to the Warrens last night. It just goes to show"—he grinned at Gage—"which the atheists so stubbornly deny, that there is something arranging life in patterns after all."

  * * *

  And of course it was well known to everyone who knew him that Mendoza was a cat man; and they were busy enough at Robbery-Homicide, with two new heists last night. But he drove up to Glendale and found the Warrens' house, which was a pleasant big house on a quiet street with a large fenced back yard, and he told the Warrens about Charles Gage.

  "The poor devil down on his luck all right," said Warren.

  “I can see where he got to feeling desperate. I wonder if he'd like me to represent him in court."

  "He'll be given an attorney."

  "Yes, I know, but those boys are either just out of law school and still wet behind the ears, or drones just marking time," said Warren. "There'll be his business to close out, that lease to deal with—and my God, there'll be some way to get that alimony reduced, that's outrageous when the woman's got a good job, and there aren't any children. What do you think he might get?"

  Mendoza was smoking lazily. "It's a first charge, but a felony. He might draw a one-to-three, and be out on parole in nine months or so. He's not worried about that, Mr. Warren. He's worried sick about the dog, because there's no one to take care of the dog. The dog's in the Ann Street shelter. He told me he deserved to be hanged for that." Warren looked at his wife, and they exchanged a little smile. "We'll look after the dog," said Warren. "I'd better call the shelter right away, they don't keep them long there. He looked like a nice Dobe, and"—he laughed—"he certainly did take to Mary Ann, didn't he?"

  "Thank you very much, Mr. Warren," said Mendoza. "That's just what I hoped you'd say."

  * * *

  "Well, I don't see that there could be much in this Rush
thing," said Hackett doubtfully. "It'd be a chancy way to try to kill somebody, fake a hit-run. We can take a look at Rush, see what he looks like, but probably the Patillo woman is just using her imagination."

  "Conforme. But we'd better look, just in case."

  Business continued to hum along. Atlanta was going to extradite Rogers, and somebody would be out, probably next week, to pick him up. On the two new heists, at a drugstore and a small independent market, they had fair descriptions. The inquest on the mysterious Fuller was set for Monday. Higgins had sent the equally mysterious Mr. Gillespie's prints to NCIC; they hadn't had a kickback on that yet. Powell was being arraigned on Monday; the D.A. was calling it murder two, but Mendoza said cynically that that was just for show, there'd be a plea bargain and it would get reduced to voluntary manslaughter. He wondered if Rosalie would get a film contract out of it.

  The paperwork on the Patterson case was about cleared up. That crew would probably come up for arraignment on Tuesday or Wednesday. What legal disposition would be made of Holland was up to the D.A. and the doctors, but the psychiatric evaluation would undoubtedly put him in Atascadero after a court hearing.

  About four o'clock that Saturday afternoon Higgins had just brought in a heist suspect to question, when the kickback from NCIC came in. NCIC didn't know anything about Robert Gillespie; his prints weren't on file with them. "That's funny," said Higgins. "I tell you, Luis, I never had such a shock in my life. Why the hell did he kill himself?"

  "You'd better have a close look at his personal effects again. We don't know what he was up to when he took off now and then," said Mendoza. "He could have been mixed up with dope running—or prostitution—"

  "And living in that fleabag hotel?"

  "Maybe he was an international spy. But they usually have cyanide capsules ready, don't they?"

  "Very funny," said Higgins.

  When Mendoza got home that night, the electric eye was adjusted and working smoothly just as it should. But Alison informed him that Ken had discovered that the nearest professional sheep shearer lived somewhere above Santa Barbara and would charge a hundred dollars and expenses to come all the way down here to shear five sheep. "He said he'll get a book from the library and learn how to do it so next year——-"