“I suppose,” I said, “that I should interrogate the kid again. If his testimony stands up, the uncle’s clean.”
“And if the mother’s stands up, the uncle’s screwed.”
I nodded.
“You know,” he said reflectively, “it’s almost as if Marge Fisher wants to nail the uncle—who just happens to be her kid’s best friend, apparently. Or maybe his only friend.”
I realized that something Ann had said last night was nagging at a remote corner of my consciousness. We’d been in bed. And she’d…
“You look like you’ve lost your last friend, as my father used to say,” Friedman said.
“I guess I’m not very fond of questioning loonies and kids.”
He looked at me thoughtfully before saying, “Why don’t you talk to Grant, Miller and company. I’ll finish with the uncle, then talk to the kid and his parents. I’ll see what I think, and we can compare notes.”
“Assuming the kid confirms his mother’s testimony, do you think we should let the uncle go home?”
Friedman shrugged. “He’s not going anywhere, Frank. He might hide in his potting shed, or in some dark closet. But he’s sure as hell not going anywhere.”
“Potting shed?”
“Didn’t he tell you about the potting shed?”
“No.”
“That’s where he and the kid spend most of their time, when they aren’t playing hide-and-seek in the park. It’s their clubhouse, I gather. Just before you knocked, James was telling me how he responds to plants and how plants respond to him.”
I stepped to the door. “You’re probably right, about him not going anywhere. I’ll see you later. If I’m not available, and you decide to release him, go ahead. The more I think about it, the more I think maybe we should contact the D.A.’s office before we book him.”
“Why would you want to do a silly thing like that?” Friedman’s long-suffering relationship with the D.A.’s office was a departmental saga.
“Because,” I answered, “we’ve got a contradiction—a crucial contradiction—between a minor’s testimony and his parent’s, quoting him. Personally, I think it’s a legal question. Unless we get the D.A.’s opinion, I think we could lose either way we jump.”
“Nonsense, Lieutenant. You’re getting bogged down in legalities. Good investigators need flair—imagination. The light touch. You go about your lower-level interrogations and leave the Fishers to me. The entire Fishers.” He clapped me hard on the shoulder, propelling me toward the door.
Fourteen
I FOUND RANDALL GRANT fidgeting in the waiting room. He was dressed in a conservative double-knit suit, paisley-printed tie, gleaming cuffs, and highly polished black shoes. His dark hair was carefully combed, lotioned to a glossy gigolo sheen.
I apologized for keeping him waiting and took him down the corridor to my office. As he sat facing me, he flicked back his cuff to glance at an elaborate gold wristwatch. All of his movements seemed carefully planned. He was a heavy-moving man, heavily handsome.
“I’ll just take a few minutes of your time, Mr. Grant. I didn’t get a chance to talk to you yesterday. And besides, it wasn’t the right time.”
He shrugged indifferently, kneading the flesh beneath his jaw with thumb and forefinger as he looked at me with dark, opaque eyes.
“According to what your wife said yesterday,” I began, “you’re having, ah, marital difficulties.”
He said, “Everyone I know has marital difficulties.” His low, coarse voice was uninflected.
“That’s not an answer,” I said, making it official.
He snorted. “So okay. We’re having problems. And yeah, we’re going to get divorced. So it’s no big deal. It’s happened to both of us before.”
“What’s your line of work, Mr. Grant?”
“I’m in real estate.”
“A salesman?”
He shook his head insolently, challenging me with his agate eyes. “No, I’m not a salesman. I’m a broker. I’ve been a broker for five years.”
“What did you do before you sold real estate?”
“I sold cars. Lots of cars.”
I nodded. “By the way, what kind of a car do you drive, Mr. Grant?”
“A Cad.”
“Is it white?”
“No, it’s green, as a matter of fact. Dark metallic-green. Why?”
I allowed a deliberate moment to pass before saying softly, “No reason. Just checking.” But my manner was calculated to contradict my words.
His dark, heavy eyebrows almost met as he frowned at me. Drawing himself up straighter in the chair, hunching his shoulders to adjust his jacket as he leaned forward, he said, “Say, what’s with the car—the white car? The other one—Canelli—asked the same thing. What’re you getting at, anyhow?”
Knowing that it would aggravate him further, I ignored the question. “It occurs to me,” I said, “that you’re a good person to give us an unbiased evaluation of the victim.”
Again he snorted. “What’s that supposed to mean, anyhow?”
“It means that I’d like you to tell me what kind of a girl June Towers really was.”
“Well, why ask me?” As he said it, his scowling, self-confidence seemed to falter, revealing a tiny, almost imperceptible tic of doubt. As I watched his eyes shift slightly, I realized that I’d struck a nerve. Unwittingly.
“Tell me about June Towers, Mr. Grant,” I said quietly. “That’s why you’re here—to tell me about her.” I settled back as if I had the whole afternoon.
The tic was more obvious now. The fingers were tighter. The chin was uneasily upthrust, loosening the thick, sallow neck inside the immaculate collar. As he shifted impatiently in the chair and jerkily resettled himself, he glanced at me with a fleeting, oblique appraisal. “What’s she been saying, anyhow?” he demanded.
“Your wife, you mean.” Taking a gambler’s chance, I inflected it as a flat statement, not a question.
Suddenly he was no longer the smooth-moving, barroom-handsome Cad-owner. Leaning farther forward, ready to make a hustler’s deal, his eyes were avid, his mouth slightly upcurved, thinly ingratiating. I caught an almost inaudible whine in his voice as he said, “Whatever she said, she was just repeating what the kid told her. And—hell—what could I say? I just took it and grinned, that’s all. I’d had it. I decided to get out, right then. And that’s exactly what I’m doing—getting out. Christ, between the two of them, what chance did I have?”
“Why don’t you tell me about it,” I said softly. “Give me your version. Let’s see how they compare.”
“Sure. Great. But what the hell is my word worth, now that June’s dead? Ellen can say anything she wants.”
“What other choice do you have, though?”
He licked his full lips, stared at me for a long, calculating moment, then sighed, elaborately resigned. He was prepared to pitch me.
“I guess you’re right, at that.” He paused a last time before saying, “First of all, I admit that I was gassed. Ellen had to fly up to her sister’s that night, like she probably told you. In Seattle. So I went out, ah, bar-hopping. But I was home at one, or maybe a little after. I was gassed, like I said. I was having a nightcap and watching the late movie up in our room. And I heard June come in. She’d been out with the Miller kid, which I knew. And I heard her downstairs, in the refrigerator. So pretty soon she comes upstairs. And then she comes in the room—to watch the movie, she says. Real cool. That’s how she was—real cool. Just the way she moved, you knew that she was—”
He paused, lost in thought, his eyes unfocused, momentarily back in the past. Finally, collecting himself, he went on in a deeper, more impersonal voice. “Anyhow, I was lying on the bed, with a drink, watching the movie. I was dressed, and everything—just lying on the spread. So she—she got on the bed, too, so she could watch the movie, she said. And I knew, right then, that she’d probably had a couple of drinks herself. Or maybe she’d smoked pot, or taken something els
e. I don’t know. The only thing I know is that she dropped her coat on the floor and crawled across the bed—it’s king size—and she was lying propped up against the headboard, right next to me, watching the goddamn TV. And—” He shook his head sharply, as if stung by a sudden pain. “And hell, she was wearing a goddamn sweater, like they all wear, and tight pants. And then, the next thing I know, her shoulder’s touching me, and her leg. And then—well—” He licked at his lips. Remembering the moment, his eyes were moist, his breathing quicker. “And then—Christ—the next thing I know, I—I’m touching her. And I’ll admit it, I—I couldn’t keep my hands off her. And before I know it, she’s got her clothes off, and she’s really—really putting it to me. And Christ, I’m going along with it. I mean, I’m only human, and if you saw her, you know she was—was—” He was muttering now, almost incoherent.
“She was really built. Is that what you were going to say?”
His head fell forward. He’d suddenly gone slack. His eyes were blank, his mouth hung slightly open. He sat round-shouldered, hunched over, staring sightlessly at the floor.
“So you made love to her.”
His head jerked up. “No. Christ, no, I didn’t. I—I don’t deny that I wanted to. I—I had about half my clothes off, and was all ready to go, when all of a sudden—just in a flash—I realized what the hell I was doing. Like, statutory rape. A friend of mine got nailed on that, and he got nailed good. So just at the last second I rolled away. I swear to God, I rolled off that bed and I got dressed.”
“And what did she…” My buzzer sounded. Masking my annoyance, I answered.
“It’s Canelli, Lieutenant. I’m sorry to bother you, because I already know you’re with the Grant guy. But that’s what I wanted to tell you: something’s bothering him, about the girl. I couldn’t get at it, quite, but I felt like I was getting close when I had to take Cross. But I thought you ought to know that…”
“Right. I’ll see you in fifteen minutes or so.”
“Oh. Yeah. Right. Goodbye, Lieutenant. Good luck.”
I hung up, turning to Grant. He was lighting a cigarette. His fingers were steady. I’d probably lost him.
Pushing an ashtray across the desk, I asked softly, “What did she do, Mr. Grant, while you were dressing?”
“She started swearing at me. I mean, she started swearing like a whore who hadn’t got paid. She laid there on the bed, naked, looking up at me and swearing in a kind of a—a low, vicious way, like she’d like to see me dead. It—it shook me up. It really did. Then she said I’d pay. ‘You’ll pay, you son of a bitch,’ she kept saying.”
“And did you?”
“How’d you mean?”
“I mean, did you pay? With money, for instance?”
He nodded, stubbing out his half-smoked cigarette. “Yeah,” he said heavily. “I paid. Not much, but I paid.”
“How much, would you say?”
He shrugged. “I don’t know. I didn’t keep track. She’d be going out shopping, or something, and if she could get me alone, she’d say, ‘Give me ten, you bastard.’ Or, ‘Give me twenty.’”
“Did you give it to her?”
“Sometimes. It depended.”
“How long ago did this incident take place?”
“Five, six months ago.”
“And eventually she told her mother. Is that it?”
“She told her mother that I screwed her, that’s what she told her mother. Christ—” He looked at me with baffled eyes. “Christ, I thought that’s what this was all about. I thought that Ellen must’ve said that…” He broke off, then began to mutter a long string of dull, listless obscenities. Finally he said, “You can’t win with the goddamn broads. You just can’t win.”
“Where were you between the hours of four P.M. and eight P.M. on Sunday evening, Mr. Grant?” I said sharply.
He spat out a last obscenity. “I was at home. All night. What’d that bitch say? That I wasn’t, or something? Is that what she said?”
I rose. “I’d like you to wait for me in the waiting room. Where you were when I found you.” I walked around the desk and opened the door. He left without speaking to me, shoulders hunched, still muttering to himself. Cad-owners, I was thinking, deflated quickly.
I detailed a patrolman to keep an unobtrusive eye on Grant, then instructed Canelli to bring Walter Cross to my office in ten minutes. I next phoned the Grant home, only to be told by a helpful neighbor that Mrs. Grant was at the undertaker’s.
Fifteen
REMEMBERING HIM AS I’D seen him yesterday, and seeing him now, Walter Cross looked like an actor who’d disappeared through his dressing-room door made up for a down-at-the-heels character role and emerged as a leading man. He was neatly dressed and clean-shaven, with his hair cut modishly long and carefully combed in graceful waves. He was completely at home in his expensive suit. Plainly, the feel of good clothes was important to him. He sat in my visitor’s chair, elegantly flicking at his trouser-creases as he crossed, his legs, and I realized that his finely drawn, poetic good looks would probably have great appeal for a certain kind of sensitive, insecure woman. Watching him, I thought of an old Leslie Howard-Bette Davis movie I’d recently seen on TV. But I couldn’t remember the title.
“You look a hundred percent better,” I said. “I hope you feel as well as you look.”
“I had a good breakfast. Ham and eggs. It helps,” he admitted.
“Good.” I nodded at him, smiling slightly. “I won’t take much of your time, Mr. Cross. Mainly I wanted to ask you whether you’d thought of anything that might help us with any background information on June Towers.” As I was speaking, I realized that the question was meaningless—bland, pointless. I was still preoccupied with thoughts of Randall Grant, suddenly a suspect. Grant had a motive, and his relationship with the victim could account for the hidden three hundred dollars. He was probably a hothead, probably capable of violence. He could even have an arrest record—something I should have checked.
But Randall Grant also had an alibi: his wife, soon to be his ex-wife—therefore, all the more compelling as a witness. Their undisguised hatred for each other could actually strengthen Grant’s case.
“…told you everything I could yesterday, Lieutenant,” Cross was saying. “I really don’t see what I can add.”
Collecting myself, focusing on him, I said, “Did she ever talk to you about her home life? Did she ever mention her mother—or her stepfather?”
He sighed, languidly patient. “As I said yesterday, Lieutenant, I actually had practically nothing to do with the girl. Even after my wife was—gone, and June spent more time with Steffie and myself, I actually talked to her very little. She and Steffie were always together, chattering away in Steffie’s room. Which, of course, was wonderful for Steffie. She—” Suddenly, talking of his stepdaughter, pain shadowed his eyes. He winced momentarily, looking away. Then, in a subdued voice, he said, “June was a very quiet girl, Lieutenant. Very quiet. Very—self-contained. I just—” He shrugged. “I just didn’t know much about her.”
“She might’ve been quiet,” I said, “but the information we’re getting indicates that she wasn’t exactly demure. Do you have any comment on that?”
“No,” he said, “I don’t. But then I imagine that ‘demure’ these days is a matter of interpretation.”
“I suppose you’re right.” I hesitated, carefully framing my next question: “For some time,” I said, “June Towers was, in a sense, part of your family. You saw her every day. She spent a lot of time with you. Is that right?”
Frowning slightly, as if I’d puzzled him, he said, “Yes, that’s right. That’s what I told you yesterday.”
“I know you did. And I realize that you were so preoccupied with your wife’s problems that June didn’t really register on you as a person. Still, you must’ve had some idea of her character.”
“I think I’ve already told you—she was quiet. She said very little. She always did her job.”
&nbs
p; “Was she punctual?”
“Usually, yes.”
“Was she honest?”
“Yes.”
“Was she ever insolent?”
“No. Never.”
I paused, then in an offhand voice I said, “Did she ever make—advances to you, Mr. Cross?”
He was obviously perplexed. “Advances?”
I nodded. “Sexual advances.”
He snickered, shaking his head, smiling ruefully. “No, Lieutenant. She never tried to seduce me. It would have been a—a welcome experience, I don’t mind admitting. She was a good-looking girl. But she never tried. And I didn’t try either, if that’s the next question.”
“No, Mr. Cross,” I answered, “that wasn’t the next question. I did want to ask you, though, for the name and residence of your wife’s parents.”
“Why do you want to know that?”
“Just as a matter of information. Your stepdaughter spent a lot of time with the victim. Her testimony could help us.”
“You mean that you want to interview Steffie?” He asked the question incredulously.
“Yes.”
“But”—he swallowed, licking at his lips—“but Steffie’s just a girl—a little girl,”
“Sometimes children know more than they think they do, Mr. Cross.”
“Yes. I—I see what you mean.” Obviously troubled, he eyed me uneasily. Finally he muttered, “The name is Platt. Charles Platt. They live on Pacific Avenue, here in the city.”
“Good. Thanks.” I watched him squirm for a moment, then pushed myself back from the desk. “By the way, what kind of a car do you drive?”
“A Ford.”
Rounding my desk, I paused. I was conscious of a small swelling of visceral excitement. “What year Ford?”
“Last year’s,” he answered uneasily. “Why?”
“What’s the color, Mr. Cross?”
“It’s red. Actually red and black. A hard top.”
The slight swell of excitement slowly subsided. “Were you at home Sunday evening?” I asked casually.
He dropped his eyes, shame-faced. Standing facing me, he seemed less sure of himself—less comfortable in his beautifully fitting clothes. “I haven’t gone out evenings for—for months,” he answered in a low voice.
Hiding Place (The Lt. Hastings Mysteries) Page 9