E. Hoffmann Price's Two-Fisted Detectives

by E. Hoffmann Price

  “Oh, it’s not me. My girlfriend is in a terrible mess. Though really it’s her boyfriend that’s jammed up.”

  “Well, as long as it is someone else,” he said. “I’m relaxing and you’d better do the same.” He felt better, yet he knew that things were closing in on him. “You look as if you’d been through the ringer. What’s the pitch?”

  “They’ve picked him up for murder; you’ve got to do something.”

  “No dice, darling. They’ll either find he’s all clean, or else they’ll clean him, and plenty. What’m I supposed to do?”

  “He’s not guilty. That’s why I told her you would help.”

  “He needs a lawyer now. Have you—has she called one? Who’d he kill?”

  “Herb Lowry! Isn’t that ghastly?”

  Carver drew a deep breath, and stretched out his legs. “With a disposition like his, it’s a wonder it wasn’t done years ago. Some nightspot brawl?”

  “No—right in his own house. Not long after he left here.”

  “The hell you say! Well, if he hadn’t fouled things up, you two would have been on your way, and he’d missed his date with death. Or maybe you were lucky. Whoever had it in for him might’ve settled things wherever he found him, whether or not you were there.”

  Carver had not done a neat job of finding out where Alma had been; and then the play came to him. He picked up her income tax papers, and said, “Here’s something to make you scream. You don’t get a refund. You’re hooked for something like $40 more. You weren’t in when I took it over.”

  She did not even glance at the papers. She said, earnestly, “Jeff, I felt terrible about this evening. I never knew Herb had such a temper or such high-handed ways. Can’t you forget that, and help me?”

  “Who is the fellow that’s fouled up?”

  “Dennis Wayland.”

  “I mean, what is he to you? Job prospect?”

  “I hardly know him. It’s on account of my girlfriend. He managed to phone her just before he was picked up, so she called me. She said Denny couldn’t possibly be guilty. I told her I’d talk to you.”

  And this promised an inside track, an offset against the pressure which was closing in on him. “Picked up, when?”

  “Oh, a couple hours ago. She wasn’t able to get in touch with me till just now. I was out at Happy Landings, with a crowd. The lake was lovely tonight. Imagine, coming home to news like that.”

  Carver made mental note of the resort near the Yacht Club. Then, “How come Wayland had time to phone the girl?”

  “He saw the police car pull up at the house, and began to wonder. When they came up the walk, he knew something was wrong; he called before he let them in.”

  “He must’ve been expecting trouble for sure, to be so jumpy.”

  “Oh, good Lord, Jeff! You’re as bad as the police!”

  “You asked for a detective,” he answered, grimly. “I’m not much of one, never was. Just a skip tracer, and a tracker-down of grand and petty larceny from water front warehouses. Except for the time that watchman was killed. But this is what you asked for.

  “And the way you are putting it, it is Wayland’s girl who is important. Look here, honey. Suppose tonight you had been with Lowry, and he had been nabbed for murder?”

  “Please, Jeff! Please do believe me; there was nothing between me and Herb, except what I told you.”

  “That’s not what I mean. My point is this—suppose it had been that way, and Lowry had been nabbed, and you were fond of the guy and all upset. Why would any girlfriend of yours be all of an itch to put a detective on the job? Unless you yourself had been in the mess, in some way or other. What has the girlfriend been up to?”

  “Is that important?”

  “Well, of course it is! Aside from wanting to know what I am poking my beak into, how could I do anything if I didn’t know the facts?”

  “I am all in a flutter!” Alma confessed, needlessly. “Cornelia is Herb’s wife. They’ve not been living together for quite a few months. He won’t sue her for desertion; she wants a divorce, and isn’t in a position to sue him.”

  “I begin to get it now. Account of this Dennis—Denny—”

  “Dennis Wayland. And Herb was holding out for pure spite.”

  Carver chuckled. “saves alimony and upkeep. Begins to add up. Wayland goes to the mat with Lowry, and somebody gets killed. I’ll see it in the morning paper, and then we can talk some more.”

  “But he couldn’t have done it. She knows he couldn’t have!”

  “Oh, to hell with him! The more you tell me, the more I am willing to bet she has red ants crawling all over her on account of something that ties her into the killing. What is it?”

  Alma eyed him for a long moment. “There is something.” She caught his hand. “Jeff, darling, will you go with me to talk to her? Let her tell you.”

  He pulled a long face, frowned with a reluctance he did not by any means feel. “Oh, give her a jingle and see! The night’s pretty well shot, and I’m getting curious, in a way.”

  A moment later, Alma was crossing the bridge, to do a fast job of dressing. She had barely stepped out of her bedroom when he demanded. “If Cornelia is such a special and dear friend of yours, how come you’re running around with her husband?”

  “Oh, he didn’t know that Cornelia and I knew each other. We didn’t meet—she and I didn’t—until after he and she had separated. I might as well come right out with it, Jeff, and I do hope you’ll understand.

  “There wasn’t any job involved. I did meet Herb, and he did seem to like me. Cornelia snapped at the chance that he would get serious and on my account, sue her. Once he was free, I’d develop a change of heart and in a hurry.”

  Carver’s expression made it clear that he did not fancy her having the role of semiprofessional co-respondent. Alma continued, “It does sound calculating and nasty. Any wonder I didn’t feel like explaining? Even though you and I weren’t engaged, or anywhere near it, it would leave a bad taste. But it wasn’t quite the way it sounds; I never let him forget he was still married. If he drew conclusions and thought that that was all I thought wrong with him, it was his conclusion and his lookout. If he got a divorce by mistake, he’d be no worse off than before. And he was a dog in the manger!”

  CHAPTER 3

  Cornelia Lowry lived just beyond Audubon Park, no great distance from the house she and her late husband had occupied. On the way uptown, Carver asked Alma, “Mind telling me a bit about Lowry? He had a hobby of making enemies and heckling people to make them realize how superior he was. When he so barged into my place, it was really the expression of his face that invited a sock in the puss. Was he always that way?”

  “No, he wasn’t. Really, he was awfully agreeable, most of the time. What put him into such a mood tonight was that this afternoon, when he tried to call me from his home, the phone was out of order. He had reported it that morning. The company had promised to tend to it, and they hadn’t. Then, when he came to pick me up, I was over here, instead of being at home to buzz back the minute he rang. He simply could not endure it when anything failed to go like clockwork.”

  “I begin to get it,” Carver said, thoughtfully. “And it dumps a job on my hands, trying to figure who’d pulled a boner and got needled for it until he blew a head-gasket. Can’t count too much on any of the standard motives. He must’ve been an unhappy sort of guy, to make him run around acting like Jehovah on a white horse.”

  “Jeff?”

  “Yes?”

  “Begin to believe now that those were duty dates, and that I wasn’t ever getting my head turned by that Cadillac and things? A man who never makes or tolerates a mistake is a frightful strain!”

  He pulled over into the shadows between street lights, and took his time about assuring that he had not been suspicious—merely worried at times. After all, a fellow
could lose a dependent before he even had her.

  Some minutes after Alma had carefully checked him for lipstick smudges, he was talking to Cornelia Lowry. She was a small, blonde person, with a confiding and wide-eyed expression. Without anything savoring of helplessness, she had an appealing manner that could be depended upon to get people, male or female, to do things for her instead of letting her sweat out her own problems. It may have been the softness of her voice, combined with the soft lines of her attractive face, that evoked that protective urge. Carver, sensing the effect at once, set up his guards; and at the same time, he understood how easy it had been for Alma to have been baited into the role she had played.

  Carver lost little time getting to the point. He cut in, abruptly, “Why did Wayland go to your husband’s place tonight?”

  “But—but he didn’t! He wasn’t there. He couldn’t’ve been, he and I were together all evening.”

  “With who else?”

  “Why, just each other.”

  “About the worst and feeblest alibi imaginable. Either deal it straight, or deal with someone else. If he wasn’t there, how come someone tagged him?”

  “He was framed!” Indignation choked her. “The criminal framed him.”

  “If the killer did that, it was to cover himself. But you two might’ve been with a crowd, and then it’d been no good at all. Whoever phoned either saw Wayland around there, or saw someone that looked like Wayland, or else knew that you two were in a huddle here, without any real alibi—and, knew that Wayland and your husband were all primed to tangle about you. There was something that made Wayland seem useful for covering up.

  “And another thing. Wayland saw a police car pull up at his place. He had so strong a hunch they wanted him for real trouble that he buzzed you. He’d not have phoned if it’d been a traffic rap he’d been expecting, unless maybe it’d been hit and run driving, after he left you.” Carver picked up his hat. “Suppose Wayland dummies up? First thing the police do is corner his friends, asking about his other friends, particularly women. Your name will pop up. Then the fun begins.

  “Whenever a man is knocked off, his widow and her boyfriend are the first ones to be sweated. You can tell them, or you can tell me. I won’t monkey with this as long as you hold out.”

  He grabbed the door knob. That brought Cornelia to her feet with a flurry of robe and a twinkle of legs. “Wait! We were there, Denny and I: we found him.” She fairly poured it out now. “It was the most sickening and horrible thing. We were so shocked we just got out, and quick. Afraid to report it, for fear the call’d be traced. And we’d be in it.”

  “What’d you go there for in the first place?” Cornelia’s glance shifted to Alma, who gave her a nod. She answered, “I’d written a threatening letter, of a sort—not realizing I was playing right into Herb’s hands, if ever I did get cause for suing him. So, Denny and I went to look for the note. We thought he’d be away tonight.”

  Alma cut in, “They counted on my being out to dinner with Herb. And when you and I and he had words, and he walked out, I didn’t stop to think he might go back home. I was so sure he’d make a point of caging another date, just to show me. And when it did occur to me to phone Cornelia, she was out.”

  “Begins to shape up,” Carver admitted. “Get the note?”

  Cornelia shuddered. “After what we saw, we just cleared out in a panic, once we got over the shock.” Then, triumphantly, “But Denny must have had it in mind when the police pulled up. That’s why the sight of them made him call me. That note—they’d found it, and put two and two together. Just as you said, widow and her boyfriend are the first suspects. It wasn’t signed, but they’d start figuring on us.”

  “You still have a key to your husband’s house? All right, and you’re entitled to go in. So am I, if you tell me to.”

  “But why? I never want to see—”

  “You won’t mind, when it’s cleaned up. He had an enemy. Finding who it was is the best way to spring Wayland. Alma tells me your husband kept notes on everything.”

  “Did he! He even kept cash register receipts from every bar,” Cornelia affirmed. “A mania with him. A record of everything. No, not stingy—just a methodical streak.”

  “OK,” Carver said. “No matter what the police find and take along as exhibits, there will be things that won’t mean anything to them. That’s where you and I will get busy, and Alma, too. Looking for what points away from Wayland. All right, get dressed, we’re going places.”

  “Oh, good God—not there and not tonight! Anyway, it is probably still being watched.”

  “I didn’t mean there; you move in with Alma.”

  “Why?”

  “So when the police come looking for you, you won’t be here. Wanting to talk to you, and not finding you, will be a roadblock for them, which’ll give me a chance to work.”

  “But Denny’s innocent!”

  Catching her by the arm, he whisked her to her feet. “Get dressed, before I turn a hand to dressing you myself!”

  “Go ahead,” Alma seconded. “We won’t be too crowded at my place.”

  * * * *

  The chance that a police car would roll up to take Cornelia in for questioning kept Carver on edge until he had her well on the way downtown. And at Alma’s door, he paused to say, “In the morning, I’ll get Denny a lawyer; he’ll need one, and with all the trimmings.”

  “We’re both flat broke,” Cornelia told him. “The first thing they want is a retainer.”

  “How about your husband’s bank account? Even if you can’t draw on it, it’s enough yours now for a lawyer to see his way through.”

  “Bank account!” she echoed. “There was an ex-wife—one before me—he was paying off. And income tax installments due. And now there’ll be an inheritance tax lien on the house. Lord alone knows how much he had borrowed on it. I never could keep track of things. Everything is in such a muddle that I don’t see how any lawyer would gamble on collecting his fee till he looked into the prospects.”

  Her wide-eyed dismay and her quiet resignation to the inevitable had exactly the effect that Carver had anticipated; he knew he was playing true to form, the form of all of Cornelia’s public, when he said, “The chap who handled his tax problems would have the answers. Interest paid is a deduction, and the person to whom it’s paid is listed. Sometimes alimony is deductible, sometimes not, depending on whether it’s dished out by the month, or paid in a lump sum settlement. And so on—to say nothing of getting some leads as to who Herb was having trouble with in a business way. Guys he hated, he’d gripe about. Apparently to anyone who’d listen, Alma, you know the man I mean?”

  “Wait, I’ll get his card; Herb gave it to me. Said it was frightfully inefficient working out one’s own tax. That an expert saved you more than the fee he charged.”

  Carver, as he pocketed the card of Bradford Barstow, Salter Building, Camp Street, was thinking, But you still figure your own tax, so you can chew out the expert, in case his answers and yours don’t jibe. That’s the Herb Lowry Method. Nothing bucks a fellow up better than making a monkey of an expert. And once he had the immediate demands of the situation under control, he would go with Cornelia to Lowry’s house and give it a thorough going over. But for her arrival with Denny Wayland, he might have got a good deal further with his study of Lowry’s paper work.

  The other angle was that Wayland could be guilty; that Cornelia had still held back the essence of the story. That is, she and Wayland might have been in a huddle the result of which had been that Wayland had resolved to go alone for a showdown, instead of fooling away time later hunting that spiteful letter. It was barely possible, yet, it was possible, that he could have killed Lowry without himself having been bespattered with blood.

  Then, back to Cornelia, only a little down and off St. Charles Avenue, to tell her that Lowry had not been in. That would have made h
er insist upon going with him to make the search. And he could not well have refused.

  Since Cornelia believed Wayland innocent, she would solemnly swear he had not left her, to see Lowry alone. And she must surely believe him innocent, otherwise, after having seen that revolting slaughterhouse, the mere shade of suspicion would have shaken her.

  Murder in Carrollton, as Carver expected, hogged the headlines. Cornelia was named only as the widow, who had thus far made no statement. Wayland was not mentioned at all. Apparently they had booked him on suspicion, and had their reasons for not charging him. Where Carver had expected that Wayland would be so strongly spotlighted that working on the case would be easy, the law had gone into reverse.

  He read on. Cash register receipts in Lowry’s pockets had given a list of Vieux Carre bars he had visited before going home and to his death. A bartender with a camera eye had described Carver as the unidentified man who had been looking for Lowry. Another had stated, “He said he’d help him with his income tax when he caught up with him.”

  To speak of catching up with a man who is a couple of bars ahead of you is the most innocent expression in the world; and when you do find him, he may be a few drinks ahead, and, amiably enough, you will again be catching up with him. But Lowry’s death gave another meaning to that same innocent phrase.

  It would have been worse but for two things: first, that Carver had only recently moved to his place in the French Quarter, to be near the waterfront which his watchman’s service patrolled; and second, he had been so busy getting organized that he had not been in the bars of the Vieux Carre to have become as conspicuous as an established resident of that quarter. He did almost all his business talking at the Sazerac, on Gravier Street, in the heart of the financial district, or else, in the market restaurants across from the French Market, from Tujague’s and downward.