Night Games (The Lt. Hastings Mysteries)

by Collin Wilcox

  The next day, at school, everyone knew what had happened, knew that they’d fought; knew that Ed was in the hospital, and that Teddy had spent the night in detention.

  Amy had let two days go by before she’d asked him about the fight. She’d known, must have known, why he’d done it. He could see it in her face, that she knew. He could see the fear in her face. No one else could see the fear, only him. And that was their secret, the connection between them. It was all he needed, that she knew but didn’t dare to ask. Her fear was his power.

  His power …

  Until Friday night, it had never been complete. Until Friday night, only two days ago, she’d controlled him.

  But now she knew. So now the control was his. Finally his.

  All day yesterday, he’d expected Amy to call, expected her to contact him, somehow. Four times, he’d driven past her house. He hadn’t used his motorcycle, that would’ve been a mistake. He’d used his mother’s car. He’d even parked for a few minutes on the opposite side of the street from her house. But Amy hadn’t come out, hadn’t gone to the window.

  He’d give her until tomorrow, he’d decided. Just until tomorrow.

  Just one more day.

  Six

  ON THE SCREEN, THE quarterback fell back, feinted a throw to the left, dodged a hard-charging lineman, cocked his arm, feinted to the right, finally threw to the left. The football touched the outstretched fingertips of the wide receiver, tumbled tantalizingly in the air, finally fell to the bright-green Astroturf.

  Fourth down and three. The kicking team was coming on the field.

  Hastings rose from his chair and turned the volume down, explaining: “I’ve got to make a call.”

  Slumped on the sofa with their legs widespread, sitting on their spines, heels dug into the carpet, Dan and Billy nodded. In the hallway that connected all six rooms of the long, narrow Victorian flat, Hastings called back to the kitchen: “I’ve got to call Pete. How long until dinner?”

  Wearing blue jeans and a checked gingham shirt, with her tawny blond hair in a ponytail, Ann appeared in the doorway.

  “When’s the game over?” she asked.

  “An hour, probably. Maybe an hour and a quarter.”

  “We can eat then. Has Billy done his math, do you know?”

  “He’s working on it. I don’t know whether he’s finished.”

  “Will you ask him? He wants to go over to Steven’s after dinner, to work on their model. Tell him I said he can’t go if he doesn’t finish his homework.”

  “Let me call Pete first. It shouldn’t take long. Then I’ll—”

  “I’m finished,” came Billy’s aggrieved voice, plaintively piping down the length of the hallway. “I’ve been finished since half time.”

  “So what d’you want to do about Amy Miller?” Friedman asked. “How d’you want to handle it?”

  Stifling a yawn, Hastings slipped off his loafers, put his feet on the bed, leaned back against the quilted headboard with the telephone propped in the hollow of his shoulder. When he finished talking to Friedman, he could close his eyes, take a nap before dinner. He’d already closed the bedroom door, a signal that he might take a Sunday-afternoon nap.

  “That’s why I’m calling you,” he answered. “You’re the senior co-lieutenant.”

  “The only time my seniority comes up, I’ve noticed, is when the shit seems about to hit the fan. Have you noticed that too?”

  “No comment.”

  “What about this Ted Parker kid?” Friedman asked. “What’s the story on him?”

  “I don’t know. Canelli’s trying to run him down. So far, no luck. According to Canelli, he’s pretty much beyond parental control.”

  “Does he have a record?”

  “I don’t know. I’ll get Canelli to check.”

  “We might be able to get a lot of mileage out of an aging juvenile delinquent who’s just been rejected by his sexpot girl friend, and who might’ve been hanging around in the back alley while his girl friend was inside getting it on with a rich older man. It might answer a lot of questions, fill in a lot of blanks. Has that occurred to you?”

  “Definitely, that’s occurred to me,” Hastings answered.

  “How old’re these so-called kids, anyhow?”

  “I don’t know about Ted Parker. I’m almost sure he’s in high school, though. Amy Miller is sixteen.”

  “Sixteen, eh? And her father’s a bad-tempered, high-powered lawyer,” Friedman said. “Naturally.”

  “Naturally.”

  “Did you talk to the father today?”

  “No. I decided to call you before I talked to him again.”

  “I wonder whether Amy told him that you came by.”

  “I don’t know.”

  “If she did tell him,” Friedman mused, “what would that mean? That she’s got something to hide, and wants to get to him first, take out a little insurance? Or does it mean that her conscience is clear, that she’s not afraid to level with him?”

  “She’s got something to hide, all right. There’s a name for girls who take fifty dollars for sex.”

  “But we aren’t talking about sex. We’re talking about murder.”

  “I know.” He covered the receiver, yawned again.

  “If Haney and his girl were mixing sex and knives,” Friedman said, “anything could’ve happened.” A moment of speculative silence followed. Then: “Based on the condition of the body, and what you eyeballed at the scene, do you think she could’ve killed him?”

  “If we assume that they were playing their sex game in the study, and if we assume that the door was locked, and if we assume that she slashed him when he got out of line, then nothing fits. He would’ve bled a lot, with a cut carotid artery. He did bleed a lot, in the hallway. But there wasn’t any blood in the study, that I could see. Not a drop.”

  “Maybe she chased him out into the hallway, and killed him there.”

  “Maybe,” Hastings answered dubiously.

  “Or maybe she cleaned up the blood. We won’t know until we get the supplementary lab reports. I don’t have to tell you how easy it is to wash up fresh blood.”

  “Except that she’d’ve had to dispose of the towels, or whatever.”

  “She’d’ve had time to do it. Assuming that Mrs. Haney came home at twenty minutes after two, and assuming that the murder happened at, say, twelve-thirty, she’d’ve had lots of time.”

  “Maxine was in the house, though.”

  “Yeah,” Friedman answered laconically, “I’ve been thinking about that. I just reread some of those interrogation reports. And it seems to me that there’s a lot Maxine could tell us—and maybe a lot she isn’t telling us.”

  “Why do you say that?”

  “It’s hard to believe she slept through a murder.”

  “That’s what she says, though.” Hastings paused thoughtfully, then said, “At least, that’s the way I remember it.”

  “Jeffrey Wade told us Mrs. Haney left his place about twelve-thirty. He was lying, as it turns out. Mrs. Haney asked him to lie, and he lied. Maybe Maxine was lying, too. Maybe her mother told her to lie.”

  “But why?”

  “Why indeed?”

  A short, speculative silence followed before Hastings said, “Ever since I talked to Wade today, I’ve been wondering why Mrs. Haney wanted him to say that she left him earlier than she actually did. I mean, statistically, the victim’s mate is the most logical suspect, especially if the victim was playing around. So if Mrs. Haney was on the scene between midnight and two A.M., she’d be a logical suspect, especially if her husband was also on the premises, fooling around with a teen-ager—and a knife.”

  “It would play like a TV script,” Friedman agreed. “Wife comes home, discovers hubby in another woman’s arms. The woman, a juvenile in this case, runs off. Wife takes knife, chases husband into the hallway, slashes him a lucky slash, severs his carotid artery, kills him. She knows she’s in trouble. So she goes to the kitchen, gets
a Petrini sack, stuffs some loot into the sack, plus the knife. She goes out through the French doors, which are still disarmed from when Amy Miller went outside to talk to Ted Parker. She unlocks the garden gate, which Amy Miller has carefully re-locked, replacing the key where it belongs. She takes the loot in the direction of the Miller house, whether by accident or design. She ditches the loot. She goes back the way she came, locks the gate, gets the library ladder, puts it against the garden wall. Then she calls the cops, reports your standard mad-dog black burglar.”

  “Except that none of it could’ve happened, if she didn’t get home until twenty minutes after two. Not unless the assistant coroner read his thermometer wrong. Which I’m sure he didn’t. Also, before I left, rigor mortis was setting in. That usually takes four hours, at least. Sometimes eight hours.”

  A longer silence followed before Friedman said, “What we need to know is why the gorgeous Mrs. Haney told her lover to lie about her whereabouts at the time of the crime. Instead of giving herself an alibi for the time of death, she tries to put herself at the scene of the crime at the exact time the murder was probably committed. Why?”

  “It doesn’t make sense.”

  “It must make sense to Mrs. Haney,” Friedman said. “Why else would she tell Wade to lie?”

  “Except that we don’t know she told him to lie. All we know is that he said she told him to do it. There’s a big difference.”

  “That’s true—” Friedman’s voice trailed off. Finally: “Tomorrow, bright and early, you should ring Mrs. Haney’s doorbell. You should ask her why she lied. And, also, you should talk to Maxine again. If Mrs. Haney got her lover to lie, she could’ve gotten her kid to lie, too.”

  “For reasons unknown.”

  “For reasons unknown,” Friedman repeated drily. “Exactly.”

  Seven

  DAVID FISHER WATCHED THE blond flight attendant come down the aisle. She was automatically smiling from side to side, as if she were performing on the runway of a fashion show. She moved well: provocative hip movement, saucy, free-swinging shoulders, a bright, automatic smile, good legs, good butt, good boobs. Privately, Fisher smiled—then sighed. On the Los Angeles-to-San Francisco shuttle, a significant percentage of the flight attendants were doubtless trying to break into the movies.

  Would this lady ever make it, this one blonde among countless other blondes? Had she any idea of the odds? Did she realize how brutal it could get?

  An American writer, famous during the twenties, had once called fame the “bitch goddess.” Fame—success—one was an extension of the other. But what measured success? In the film industry, success was predicated on the number of lines an actor spoke. When David had been twenty years old, just out of the Pasadena Playhouse, he’d had two lines in Wildfire, when he’d handed Rock Hudson a horsewhip. His agent had been encouraged. Preoccupied, but encouraged.

  Five years later, seven walk-ons and less than twenty lines later, the agent had still been preoccupied. But less encouraging. The problem, he’d explained, was that David’s face couldn’t be conveniently categorized. He’d never been a juvenile type, even as a teen-ager. And he certainly wasn’t a character actor. Instead, the agent had said, he was a leading-man type. But, as a leading man, he’d photographed too blandly. His face needed more definition, deeper lines.

  “Let’s give it some time,” his agent had said, smiling uncomfortably across the table littered with the remnants of their last lunch. “Let’s see whether the lines fall into the right places. The bones’re okay. Let’s see about the lines.”

  Twenty years, it had taken. Almost exactly twenty years. But finally, less than a month ago, the phone call had come at last. For thirteen weeks, he was guaranteed employment. The part was a deputy sheriff in The Scovilles, hopefully a new TV series set in rural Montana during the thirties. Sally Rich, his current agent, had pronounced the part “buildable.”

  Twenty years …

  By some reckoning, he was middle-aged.

  In those twenty years, he’d worked as a waiter, a grocery clerk, a riding instructor and a filling-station attendant while, endlessly, he made the studio rounds, dropping off countless 8-by-10 glossies, ingratiating himself with the receptionists and the secretaries who held his future in their hands.

  As the years passed, his father sold his commodity brokerage business. His parents moved to Palm Springs. His younger brother began practicing high-stakes internal medicine in Beverly Hills. A few old friends dropped him from their guest lists. New friends began looking past him, at parties.

  Then he’d met Katherine.

  And Katherine had made the difference.

  For three years, Katherine had made the difference.

  Yet he’d never understood, really, why she’d married him. He’d understood why she’d married Richard, her first husband. They’d met at Michigan State, when they were both juniors. Richard had been the most promising, best looking, most assured man in his fraternity. Katherine had been the most beautiful, most desirable, most self-confident woman in her sorority. It was a natural pairing, and their life together began as if it were pre-scripted. A fraternity brother of Richard’s father gave the graduate an entry-level job at a big-time Chicago advertising agency. Three years later, already on the fast track, Richard was transferred to Los Angeles, promoted to account exec. Soon it all began falling into place: the upscale office, the secretary with the good body, the Porsche, the place in Coldwater Canyon, even a baby, not planned yet not unwelcome. But the ending was foreshadowed by the fast-track beginning, and when Richard began seeing the secretary after hours, Katherine began talking to a Beverly Hills lawyer.

  He’d met her two years later, at a huge party given to celebrate finishing Death in July, the biggest-budget picture he’d ever worked in. From the first, even during their meaningless exchange of pleasantries, he’d sensed that Katherine was more than he could handle. Perhaps because of that, he hadn’t made the obligatory party-time move on her. They’d simply talked for a few minutes, and both moved on. Later, though, when the party was breaking up, they’d encountered each other again, in the parking lot. Incredibly, she’d been leaving alone. Just as incredibly, the Alfa he’d rented especially for the occasion had refused to start. She’d offered him a ride home in her Porsche. It had been a long drive through the warm Los Angeles night, and their mood had been curiously confidential. She’d told him that her father had died only a month before, and that the cast party was the first invitation she’d accepted since his death. She’d always loved her father, she’d said quietly. She’d always felt sorry for him. Then, briskly, she’d finished the story: She’d been divorced for three years, she had a daughter almost five. She’d been on the party circuit since her divorce, she said, and the cure wasn’t working. Her father’s death had made her realize how lonely she’d become.

  When she finished her story, he began talking. Perhaps because her beauty, her car, her high-style clothes, made her seem so inaccessible, he told her more than he’d intended, thinking they’d never see each other again. When he’d said that, at age thirty-four, he still felt like a child seeking parental approval, her response had been wistful, knowing, caring. He should count his blessings, she’d said. His parents were still together, his family was still intact. She’d only been six when her parents had divorced. She’d learned early how to play on their guilt. All of her life, she’d known how to manipulate her father, make him seek her approval. Only now, only during the last month, she’d said, had she come to realize that, playing the game of guilt, there were no winners.

  For a week, he’d thought about her. Then he’d—

  Beneath him, a rattling, jarring thump brought him upright in his seat. They’d landed at San Francisco International.

  Only minutes more, and he’d be seeing her, speaking to her—touching her. Comforting her.

  “God, that’s wonderful, David. Thirteen weeks …” She took her eyes from the freeway traffic, smiled at him, returned her eyes to th
e road. “This is it. You always said you’d be forty before your career got going. And you’re forty-one. Only forty-one.”

  “Let’s see what happens. Thirteen weeks at fifteen hundred a week isn’t exactly a career.”

  “But it’s—what—?” She frowned, doing the mental arithmetic. “It’s eighty thousand a year.”

  “If the show’s still alive after thirteen weeks, the pay goes up. It’ll be two thousand a week, then. And I’ll get paid for reruns, too.”

  “It’s wonderful—” Marveling, she shook her head. Her tawny hair, loose, swung around her face. It was a mannerism he’d always remembered, would never forget. “Just wonderful.”

  “Tell me about you, Katherine, about what happened. Are you up to it? You’re tired, I can see that. You’re—” About to say dead tired, he caught himself, instead adding, “You’re exhausted. I would’ve taken a cab, you know.”

  “I know you would’ve. But—” Once more she sharply shook her head, this time registering sudden dismay. The mannerism revealed a vulnerability that she seldom allowed to show. As he watched her, his thoughts instantly returned to the first time they’d talked like this, riding together in her Porsche after the cast party.

  “I needed to get out of the house,” she said, explaining. “Mother’s here. She came last night. It—it was a mistake, having her. I thought—” Momentarily, involuntarily, she broke off, silenced by sudden dismay. “I thought about Maxine. I thought Maxine might need someone, if I—” She broke off again, bit her lip, then said, “But it—it’s hard. Mother’s making it harder. Not easier.”

  “Why don’t you let me see what I can do with Maxine? We were—” Suddenly he was swallowing, hard. He was picking up her sorrow, her tension, even the lingering horror she must feel. It was a tool of the actor’s trade, that empathy. But in real life, it hurt.

  “We were always buddies,” he finished, “Maxine and I.”

  “She always liked you, David. Loved you, really. Always.” Her voice was husky. In the flicker of oncoming headlights, he saw her blinking against tears as she stared straight ahead.