The James Michael Ullman Crime Novel

by James Michael Ullman

  CHAPTER FIFTEEN

  Connie leaned back and closed her eyes. There was a slight chill in the air and she wore a sweater over her blouse. A scarf covered her head and her lips curved in an enigmatic smile as she said, “What a lovely night for a drive. Where are we going?”

  “It’s a long story. I’m still confused by what’s happened today—I want to think it out more.”

  “Of course.”

  Lights from oncoming cars flared at the other side of the median strip. We were on an expressway, headed west. Already we’d passed the city limits. I’d told Connie how Jax stole my manuscript for Nalon, a fact that hadn’t been made public yet; then we listened to a newscast. The police announced that Jax had been shot with a .38, and the district attorney, terming Jax a “heroic crime fighter,” suggested that Cosa Nostra gangsters did it.

  Our fuel supply was low. At the next turnoff I left the expressway, found a gas station and parked at a premium pump.

  “Filler up,” I told the attendant. I got out. “And check the oil, water, battery, transmission fluid and tires.” While he began doing that I walked to the office and pulled a map of Missouri from a rack. The distance to Stark was a little more than three hundred miles. There was a good moon, and Connie’s car was a powerful eight. Driving steadily, with a short coffee break or two, we ought to make it in about six hours.

  Interestingly enough, the route took us through Ox River, where the bound volumes of the old Bugle had disappeared.

  Connie was inspecting her fingernails when I returned.

  “You didn’t have to buy all that gas. Heavens, I don’t use that much in a week.”

  “That’s okay.”

  I wasn’t sure yet how Connie would react when she learned we were going to Missouri. At any rate, I decided it would be best to get a fair distance out of town before I broke the news. We drove another ten miles or so before I finally said, “Connie, you remember the remark Sam made just before I left your apartment tonight? About a theory concerning Irene’s murder? He never did tell it to me, but I think I know what it is.”

  “He’s had something on his mind lately. He and his pals, Deuce and Hargrove. All three of them have been meeting in a corner at the Press Club, talking in whispers and shutting up when anyone comes near.”

  “They were probably comparing notes. They’ve even gone so far as to check the suspect’s alibi. Sam said tonight the suspect doesn’t have one for Irene’s murder—they’re going to see if he’s got one for Jax’s murder. And last weekend Sam went all the way to Missouri looking for evidence.”

  “Why all the secrecy, I wonder?”

  “If I’m right, the secrecy is understandable. It wouldn’t be good form for any of them to discuss that theory openly, not without evidence to support it. But if evidence does exist, Connie, you and I are going to find it. In fact within the next few hours I think we’ll solve the case, one way or another.” Connie was wide awake now. “You’re as infuriating as Sam. Stop talking in circles.”

  “Okay. I’ll tell you who might have killed Irene—a suspect who’s been there all along, only nobody noticed him…”

  * * * *

  The road narrowed into a two-lane highway. I flicked the dimmer switch and the bright lights went on. Effortlessly, we swept over the prairie at seventy miles an hour.

  “Gabriel Nalon,” I said, “reminded me of this suspect earlier tonight. He said he hadn’t known of the beating administered to Joanna—that it was all a misunderstanding. Nalon claimed he told Jax to take care of Joanna, and merely assumed he’d bribe her.”

  “You believe that?”

  “It could have happened. Nalon called it a failure in communications. When he said that, the first person I thought of was Horace DeLand. DeLand was the victim of a misunderstanding too—another failure in communications. He misunderstood a whole conversation. And it further occurred to me that if that could happen to DeLand, it could happen to other people. Maybe even to me, especially if the conversation took place on a hot morning, I’d been prepared with some erroneous assumptions, and I was in a hurry to get it over with, so I could go back to work.”

  “Your conversation with Irene, you mean?”

  “Right. That may have been the biggest misunderstanding of all, so let’s reconstruct it. Gladys, Murray Hale’s secretary, made the original assumptions. Irene had phoned, refusing to say why she wanted to see Murray, and then showed up carrying a manila envelope. Gladys assumed Irene was a squawker, perhaps with a story written out for Murray to read. That, Gladys said, was what squawkers often did. She told me that just before I walked out to see Irene, so I was all set to believe the envelope contained a story for the Express, or at least material on which a story could be based.”

  “What else could have been in it?”

  “As best I recall, Irene never did say herself that it was a story for the paper. All she said was, it was about a scandal and she’d show it only to the editor. She was sure he’d buy it, and she wanted five thousand dollars for it. So it could be she didn’t come to the Express with a story for publication, but that she came to sell Hale something he wouldn’t want anyone to publish. In other words, blackmail. And later in the day, Hale went to her apartment and killed her.”

  “Pete, that’s crazy. To begin with, from what little I’ve heard of the woman, she wasn’t the blackmailing type.”

  “No, but suddenly she had a desperate need for money. The reason might have been so pressing that she’d go to any lengths to get it—and I’ve already formed a hazy notion of what that reason could be. But as for Hale…Irene grew up somewhere in Missouri and lived there until 1951. The Korean War was going on then—it started in June, 1950. Hale was called up immediately and at one time or another was stationed at Fort Leonard Wood, smack in the middle of Missouri. When he fired me, I saw his picture on the wall, with the Leonard Wood pistol team.

  “That doesn’t prove anything.” Connie grew thoughtful. “I remember those days, though. I was only a little girl, but people from the Express used to visit my mother on weekends. Murray came once, when he was on leave. He was a captain, engaged to Dunaway’s daughter. Yes, he was stationed at Leonard Wood for a long time before he went overseas and got wounded…”

  “The day of the murder, I’d told Irene he was due back in town but might not come down to the paper until the next day. She could have slipped out of the card shop, phoned him at his home and arranged to meet him at her apartment. Hale might have faked the suicide scene with the gas oven in an attempt to make the police think a more unsophisticated person killed her. And he might have walked out with a shopping bag to lend more credence to the prowler theory in case anyone saw him.”

  “What about Jax?”

  “We can’t be sure Jax’s murder is related. But if Hale killed Irene, he’d be curious to know what I was writing about her. He may have heard pressroom gossip that I’d latched onto a good source, causing him to become the second buyer of the stuff in my wastebasket. And when I finished my article he might very well have tried to sneak into the Metropolis offices to see it, encountering Jax.”

  “But why would Murray kill him?”

  “I can think of two possibilities. One, Jax didn’t like newspapermen. Particularly I imagine he’d like getting something on Hale, the man who broke the police scandal. Finding Hale in the Metropolis building might have set all sorts of wheels turning in Jax’s head. He might have hauled Murray to his office for a third degree, panicking Hale into committing another murder.”

  “If he was going to question Murray, don’t you think he’d have searched him first? And then why would he let Murray just stand behind him and pull the trigger? They say Jax was shot in the back of the head.”

  “All right,” I conceded, “that doesn’t hold up. The other possibility is something Moberg touched on. Maybe I had something in the story that damned Hale, somethin
g not apparent to me, Sam, or Stash, the three people who saw it, but that might be apparent to someone else. Perhaps Hale had to steal my story and notes in hopes we’d be so discouraged the story wouldn’t be rewritten. Maybe that’s why he killed Jax for it…”

  “Ames, that’s fantastic.”

  “We’ll soon see. I imagine when Sam went to Missouri last weekend he was just checking towns near Leonard Wood at random for a record of Irene. But we know exactly where to go. A town named Stark, which is a considerable distance from Leonard Wood. Years ago I’m sure Irene lived in Stark, Missouri, under the name Bowsermann, at a place called the Lady Bountiful Lodge.”

  “Missouri? Look, boy, you didn’t say anything about driving to Missouri. Why, that’s…”

  “Yes, it’s a long way off. I couldn’t take my car, though, because the police will be looking for me soon to question me about Jax. Sam and I gave them a false alibi for this afternoon so that I wouldn’t have to compromise Joanna Reinholt. At any rate this shouldn’t take long. You ought to be back in the city by Monday morning.”

  “How considerate.” Connie’s voice was edged with sarcasm. I glanced at her—she’d clenched her fists and fixed me with a belligerent stare. I hadn’t expected her to take it quite this hard.

  “What’s wrong? Earlier today you said you’d be glad to help.”

  “Oh, sure. It’s so important that you don’t compromise Joanna Reinholt. Of course the fact that you might compromise me doesn’t mean anything. If the police pick us up, where will I be?”

  “Perhaps,” I admitted, “we should have discussed this before we left. It’s just that I was in a hurry and wanted to get as far from the city as possible before anyone started looking for me. But if you insist on going back…”

  “I can’t go back now. When Sam learned, he’d laugh his head off.”

  “What’s Sam got to do with it?”

  “Everything, you fool. That conceited clown wants to marry me.”

  I began to smile. “Farrar? Why, he’s…”

  “What’s so funny? At least he cares about me. He wouldn’t have taken Joanna to my apartment. We had an argument after you left with her today. He called you immature for risking my reputation, and I stuck up for you. He’s so damn proprietary and self-assured, always deciding what’s best—but if the police were looking for him, he’d never make me accompany him to Missouri, no matter what was at the end of the ride.”

  “I care about you too. I…”

  “You? My only interest in you is as a potential new man for the agency, and don’t you ever forget it. Tonight I was going to make a final job offer because, if you still don’t want the position, a boy on the Beacon does.” Angrily she folded her arms. “I’ve got to go to Missouri with you now, see, and cooperate in this insane venture of yours because if Sam laughed at me I simply couldn’t stand it…”

  Whatever logic Connie was pursuing, she’d lost me. We drove a few more miles until the lights of another gas station winked at us.

  “Stop there,” Connie instructed.

  “Why? We have plenty of gas—we’ve only been on the road half an hour…”

  “Stop.”

  We stopped. Connie got out and walked toward a door marked Ladies, and the attendant strolled to the car.

  “Anything I can do?”

  Glumly, I shook my head. The attendant peered after Connie.

  “You two been married long?”

  “No.”

  “You’ll get used to it. Wherever you’re going, just calculate you won’t get there until a lot later than you originally thought.”

  * * * *

  He was right. At seven-thirty we breakfasted in a diner twenty miles from Stark. We were nearly two hours behind schedule then and I hadn’t wanted to stop again until we reached our destination. In fact I’d planned to eat at the Lady Bountiful, but Connie had complained of hunger ever since we crossed the Mississippi at dawn. Her reportorial instinct—after all, she’d grown up in a newspaper family—some-what mollified her anger at accompanying me, but she wasn’t so curious to learn about Irene that she’d travel another mile on an empty stomach. Most of the pizza I’d ordered the night before, she pointed out, had been devoured by Kells.

  On the way out of the diner I asked the cashier how to find the Lady Bountiful Lodge. The girl gave me an odd look. “The turnoffs four miles this side of town, but I hope you’re not planning to stay there. It burned down a few years ago. There’s nothing left but ruins.”

  In the car Connie patted her hair, looking very smug. “Well, Sherlock? What next? And aren’t you glad I made you stop and eat?”

  “Next we’ll view those ruins. And then seek out the natives.”

  This was resort country at the height of the tourist season. Despite the early morning, the highway was busy. Cafés, drive-ins, and pottery and souvenir stores lined the roadside. Wooded hills loomed on both sides of us, and now and then the waters of a lake glimmered between the trees.

  A garish, weather-beaten sign still marked the turnoff to the Lady Bountiful Lodge. On it, etched in wood, a young woman in flowing Grecian robes pointed a horn of plenty up a dirt road. We veered onto it and the pines closed in. The road twisted and turned through a forest for about a mile. We broke out of the woods and passed a farm—the name on the mailbox was DILG—and then knifed into the forest again. We seemed to be heading down, in great circles. Occasionally, through gaps in the forest, we saw a blackened clearing below us. Finally the road emerged into the clearing and ended.

  The remains of the resort were there. Charred wood jutted from the foundation of the main building, which had been razed completely. Most of a cluster of small cabins beyond the main building had been destroyed too, but a few still stood, dilapidated and sagging. I parked in the shade of a great oak and turned the engine off. Weeds swayed in the breeze; the only sounds came from insects and birds.

  For a few minutes we just sat there.

  “This,” I said slowly, “is probably where Irene grew up. Where she spent most of her life before she came to the city. And whether Murray’s involved or not, something that happened here figured in the contents of her envelope. She toasted this place, right after deciding to come to the Express.”

  “I don’t like it. It’s too quiet.” Connie turned her head. “What’s that?”

  “What’s what?”

  “Behind us, on the hill. I thought I saw something glint.”

  “Probably you did. We’re not at world’s end, you know. Every home we passed on the highway had indoor plumbing and a television antenna. Well, we won’t learn more here.” I started the car. “What makes you so nervous?”

  “I’m not nervous.” She was, though. Her fingers drummed on her purse. “I don’t think Murray murdered Irene. You can poke around here all day—I’m sure you won’t find any connection between him and that woman. He’s too smart to kill anyone. But then, someone killed her…”

  “You think the murderer came here to sit in the woods and brood? Ridiculous.”

  I turned the car around and we headed back up the road. Again the forest closed in. We’d gone about a quarter mile when we came across an empty, late-model green sedan pulled half into the underbrush. As we rolled by Connie craned her neck to peer at it. “Pete, that car had plates from our state.”

  “So what? This morning I’ve seen a hundred cars with plates from our state. People come here on vacations and some of them are nature lovers. They park along the road and hike, pick berries, or watch birds.”

  “From where that car was parked you could watch the old lodge, where we were just now…”

  There’s no point arguing with an emotional woman. I said no more until we reached the Dilg farm. A man was in the yard now, walking around a new-looking car and dabbing at it here and there with a polishing rag. He wore a tan, broad-brimmed hat and a pin-striped
blue suit with wide, flaring lapels.

  We turned into the yard and parked. Dilg looked up and wandered over. He was long and lean, with sun-browned skin and placid gray eyes.

  “Howdy. You got a minute?”

  “Not much time.” He leaned against our car. “I’m takin’ the family to church soon. And if you’re sellin’ something, I ain’t buyin’.”

  “It’s not that. Frankly, I’m here for information. I’m what they call a skiptracer. I look for people who run up big bills with merchants and then slap without paying them.”

  “Who did you want information about?”

  “Where I come from, she called herself Irene Bowser. She’s about thirty-five, a big blonde woman with a husky voice. She stuck a few department stores for merchandise worth thousands of dollars. But I got a tip that years ago her name was Bowsermann, and she lived at the Lady Bountiful.”

  “That’s right. Walt Bowsermann’s niece—we all remember Irene.” Reminiscently Dilg smiled. “She always was a wild one, in one scrape or another, usually with boys, although I never knew her to steal before. But nobody here knows where she is now. We ain’t seen her since—gosh, it would be back in the Korean War.”

  “What about the uncle? Walt Bowsermann?”

  “He and his wife both passed away. A few years ago the resort burned down…

  “I know. I saw what was left of it”

  “Well, at their age they didn’t see no sense rebuilding. Business had fallen off anyhow—folks stay at the new motels now. So Walt and his wife took the insurance money and went to Florida, where they died. The estate’s tied up with Walt’s brothers in California, so the ruins just sit there until title to the property is cleared.”

  “Would his relatives know anything about Irene?”

  “I doubt it. She never even wrote to Walt and his wife. They never got along good with her to begin with, and when she had to leave…”

  “Had to?”

  Hesitantly Dilg looked at Connie. Then he said, “That’s right. She was gonna have a baby, see. It got obvious after a while, and she and Walt had a fight. Walt wanted to go after the man with a shotgun, but Irene said she wouldn’t marry no man with a gun at his head.”