“Ever been here before?” Uncle Chuck asked.
“No. Sarge had, I guess. He handled our insurance. What does the sign mean?”
“It means that Mr. Owens specializes in insuring people who are on the verge of being uninsurable; 502 is verbal shorthand for a drunk-driving rap. Suspended and Revoked mean that you’ve had trouble hanging onto your driver’s license, usually for various reasons having to do with your driving habits. Like drunk and reckless. The others are self-explanatory. Dorrie, there are a lot of these places now in California, since that public-liability law was put in. Plus a lot of new insurance outfits willing to take on a high risk for a high premium. This is nothing out of the ordinary—for people who need it. But why should Sarge need it? Wasn’t he a perfectly ordinary risk?”
“He liked Owens,” she said. “I guess he just wanted to give him the business.”
“Let’s go in. He’s waiting for us.”
The waiting room and the inner conference room, into which Owens ushered them, were smartly furnished in Danish teak and turquoise-blue leather, with a sand-colored rug and mahogany walls. Owens himself was a slender, alert-eyed man, exuding an air of determined and businesslike imperturbability, as if at any moment disaster might rush in at the door or flood at him over the phone, and he’d be calm about it, come what may. After the introduction between him and Uncle Chuck, he offered them chairs and then made a brief formal speech, expressing his sympathy for Doris in her loss.
“Thank you,” Doris said.
Uncle Chuck didn’t waste a minute. “Did Sargent have a life-insurance policy payable to a man named Arthur Cannon?”
Owens was caught off guard for an instant, in spite of the carefully nurtured composure. His eyes flickered and showed surprise before he remembered to make them blank. “Why … I … uh … don’t know if I can discuss this with you, Mr. Sadler.”
“Well, discuss it with Doris then. She’s the widow. Premiums for any such policy—which I have a hunch was kind of recent and maybe fairly big—would have come out of community property. You know all about the community-property laws of California, being an insurance man. You’d have to.”
“This is a—” Owens paused as if searching for a word.
“A murder. A police matter. But you should still tell Doris.”
Owens said hopefully to Doris, “Didn’t Sargent discuss his business insurance layout with you?”
“He didn’t discuss his business, period. He ran the office, and he dabbled in stocks—I had thought in a very small way—and I kept the home. We had always run our marriage this way.”
Owens sat leaning on his desk, his expression one of thoughtfulness, tapping his nails on the polished surface.
“Your business is mostly in auto insurance, isn’t it?” Uncle Chuck asked curiously.
“Mostly. Not entirely.”
“You get some pretty rough characters, specializing in 502’s and all that?”
This must have touched a tender spot. A defensive belligerence brought Owens’s jaw forward, narrowed his eyes. “If you’re implying that there is anything shady or second-rate about my business, you’re way off the beam. I have a perfectly legitimate, licensed insurance agency here.”
“With clients no one else will touch?”
The anger flashed in Owens’s face. “It just so happens that I choose to specialize in helping people who’ve been in trouble. Even you, Mr. Sadler, might sometime find yourself driving home from a friend’s house with a few drinks under your belt—not really drunk—and find your self pulled in, trapped, your record ruined. The law depends a lot on what the cops say, and the big insurance companies cancel at the least excuse. They want only the cream of the crop.” His lip curled. “They want, actually, just retired ministers and high-school principals, and little old ladies who use the car once a week to get to their china-painting class.”
“Sober,” Uncle Chuck supplied.
Owens was mad. He was either going to throw them out or start talking. He wasn’t going to take much more. Under the rim of the desk, out of Owens’s sight, Uncle Chuck crossed his fingers for luck.
Chapter 15
What Owens did next amounted to a sort of legerde main. He held himself quite still for a moment, as if searching for a source of control. Then the anger faded from his face and manner. He relaxed. There must be times in this business, Uncle Chuck thought, when Owens’ composure was tested to its limits. But the man had learned to cope.
Owens turned to Doris. “Well then, for your information, Sargent did take out a life-insurance policy in favor of Arthur Cannon. It was a part of a business deal, as he explained it to me. Short-term, and pretty expensive. He and Cannon were partners, or something, in a speculative investment. This was just to guarantee that if anything should happen to Sargent, Cannon’s possible losses would be reimbursed.”
“Any suicide clauses in this policy?” Uncle Chuck said.
“No. The policy is quite comprehensive; it covers just about everything. As I said, it was to be a short-term thing.”
“How much does Arthur get?” Doris asked.
“Thirty-five thousand.”
“No wonder he felt better after you phoned him last night.” Uncle Chuck smiled grimly, thinking of the relief Arthur Cannon must have felt.
“I don’t understand how you know of my phone call,” Owens said stiffly. “Cannon agreed with me that only the police should know of it, besides ourselves—know of the insurance, I mean.”
“I was putting two and two together,” Uncle Chuck answered. “Did Cannon seem surprised when you called him?”
“He was flabbergasted,” Owens said cautiously.
“Could it have been an act? Could he have been pretending?”
“Mr. Sadler, I am not a sleuth, or a psychologist, or even a lawyer. He could have been pretending that he hadn’t known about Sargent’s policy. Or he could have been astounded, the way he sounded to me. I would say he seemed kind of stunned, as if he was having to revise all his opinions of Sargent somehow.”
Uncle Chuck thought to himself, stunned was the word Mrs. Criff had used. But the astonishment could have had its source in the amount of the policy or in some factor unknown.
Uncle Chuck nodded to Owens, stretched his legs, appeared to think things over for a moment. Then he asked, “Did Sargent talk to you at all about the business deal he had with Cannon?”
“Only that the venture was speculative, which I took to mean risky. Of course, I know Cannon by reputation and know what he does.” Owens’s tone implied that he wouldn’t touch Cannon’s kind of gambling with a hundred-foot pole. Briskly to Doris, Owens added, “Now, can we go over Sargent’s policy for you? This is not the same company at all, you understand. The policies I wrote for the two of you are with a regular, old-line life-insurance firm. Completely reliable—you’ll have no trouble getting your money. Not that Cannon will either, of course.” For an instant Owens’s cheerful control was shadowed, as if he regretted writing the other policy.
After all, Uncle Chuck thought, a part of Owens’s job must be to screen the clients, to protect his companies by refusing to insure the walking disasters. Or then, perhaps not.
“You have two options in regard to payment,” Owens told Doris. “You may take the principal in a lump sum, or it can be paid to you in monthly installments. Sargent didn’t specify—he left it up to you.”
“Suppose Doris had died instead?” Uncle Chuck asked.
“The amount would have been paid to Sargent in a lump sum.”
“This was Sargent’s choice?”
“Yes.”
Owens searched in his desk drawer for some forms which Doris was to sign. Uncle Chuck got up and, leaning on the cane, went over to the front of the office where he had a view of the street. In the inner room Doris and Owens went on discussing the money she was to get.
Could Arthur Cannon have been the intruder who had frightened Doris yesterday morning? Quite possibly, Uncle Chuck tho
ught. He might have thought the house was empty of occupants for the moment or that he could be quiet enough to escape being heard. He must have wanted desperately to know what provision, if any, Sargent had made to cover the losses in Diamond Tunnel. A search of Sargent’s private papers would have been first on his agenda.
Would thirty-five thousand dollars be enough to tempt a man like Cannon to commit murder? Well, there were types who would do it for a few dollars and think nothing of it, Uncle Chuck reminded himself. Whether Cannon would have murdered for the insurance money would depend upon how bad a fix he was in financially. Facing disaster—maybe, Uncle Chuck decided. But the whole thing in regard to Cannon was murky at present; there was no proof so far that Sargent had actually ordered the additional Diamond Tunnel stock, unless you could consider that taking out the additional insurance was proof.
Maybe it was at that.
Doris had risen from her chair in the inner office, and Owens was coming around the desk, promising to call her in a few days, after he had heard from the insurance people. Uncle Chuck opened the door to the street.
Owens made another polite speech of sympathy for Doris and then looked at Uncle Chuck and said, “Goodbye, Mr. Sadler.”
Uncle Chuck nodded in his direction. “Nice meeting you, too, Mr. Owens.”
On the sidewalk, headed for the car, Doris said, “You certainly got on the wrong side of him, Uncle Chuck.”
“He wasn’t going to tell us anything, Dorrie. I had to rile him. Actually, as far as his business goes, he’s right—the law here makes people carry automobile insurance, and it’s damned easy to be canceled out by one of the big outfits. And then people need agents like Owens and the small insurance companies willing to cover the unfortunates. There’s a perfectly legitimate need, and he fills it. What’s worrying me now is, I have a feeling I should have tried a few more questions on him. Like, for instance, did Sargent ever do this before, take out a short-term policy to cover some special situation? I should have asked that.”
“Don’t you think that the policy backs up Arthur’s story? That Sargent must have ordered the stock, and the insurance was to cover any loss if something happened to him before he could pay for it?”
“It looks that way. I’ll bet Cannon doesn’t come whining around with that brief case again—and if he does, I’ll give him a taste of this cane.”
“Well, Arthur always was sort of … tactless, Uncle Chuck.
“So, time he learned better.”
As Uncle Chuck got in behind the wheel, Doris said, “Do you think we’ll ever find out exactly what Sarge was planning? Everything he had going, I mean?”
“Oh, a few tag ends are beginning to show, Dorrie. We might find the right end to unravel. Tell me, was Knowles and his restaurant operation a customer of Sargent’s? Did Sargent handle their accounting?”
“When Bill first started, Sarge did. But then Bill built more and more places, and the job was too much for Sarge to carry it along with his other clients, and he gave it up. Bill tried for a while to get Sarge to come with him, to work for a salary. But Sarge said he would never do that again—he would have his own business or nothing.”
Uncle Chuck put the car into gear and they pulled away from the curb.
“Why on earth would Knowles, wealthy as he is—and according to his own account, suspicious of Sargent as his daughter’s lover—why would he be playing a part in Sargent’s scheme?”
“You’re sure that he was?”
“I have a hunch that he was. That tale he told about you, waving the poker while he very handily was looking in at you—it sounds prepared. Obviously the motive was to throw suspicion on you. The yarn is a bald lie. He couldn’t even see you from the hill below the house. But he might have been hanging around out there in the dark, true enough. In which case, is he the one who shot poor old Pete? Is he even the murderer?”
“He couldn’t have killed Kat!”
“Maybe he drove her to kill herself.”
“Oh no. Never!” Doris was looking at him, her eyes scared. “Bill couldn’t have done that!”
“Dorrie, if it was left up to you, nobody could do anything. And yet we have two people dead, and I’m damned if I can see Sargent as the only villain in all of it. Do you think he beat himself to death?”
She shook her head miserably. “No, I’m not such a fool as that.”
“Well, start thinking on the darker side, the worst side of everyone. And by the way, I hope you didn’t swallow Mrs. Criff’s philanthropic interest in you.”
“No, I can see she hates Arthur and wants to put him in the worst possible light.”
“With a mother-in-law like her, he has no need of enemies. What’s the wife like?”
“Caroline is completely wrapped up in making a big show for the neighbors.”
“Hmmmm. I figured as much.”
For some time Uncle Chuck drove in silence.
At last Doris spoke. “If Sarge had a scheme of some kind, it didn’t include his own murder.”
“I believe that,” Uncle Chuck replied. “He regarded his own hide as a pretty precious thing.”
“So, then—what went wrong?”
“Maybe someone wouldn’t play the part Sargent had assigned. Or perhaps woke up to just what the part was going to be.”
“Sarge used people,” Doris said bitterly. “Look at the way he used me. I kept his home. I provided a respectable background. I was the cover for the dirty things he was doing with Kat Knowles … and with others before her, for all I know.”
“When we get to your place, Dorrie, we’d better make a thorough search of all of Sargent’s stuff. We’ll go through it all with what’s known as a fine-tooth comb. You know, I just remembered, Tippie used a real fine-toothed comb when we were first married, said it kept the hair healthy. You don’t even see the things any more. I haven’t seen one in years.”
“I remember seeing one years ago somewhere.” Doris was looking out at the green slopes of the mountains. They’d started to climb. The fresh scent of juniper and mountain sage blew in at the window. The pines stood tall against the sky at the crest of the ridge. “Oh, Uncle Chuck, perhaps Sarge really was doing me a favor, putting me up here all alone. It’s dean. It’s away from the dirt, the scheming. There’s peace here.”
Uncle Chuck started to say something and then changed his mind. He glanced aside at Doris’s troubled profile. No use to remind her that there were people up here, too, and that wherever there were human beings there was conflict and intrigue. Perhaps for a while it would be best to let her appreciate the life in Idylynn, its quiet, its remoteness. In time, when she was ready to come out of her shell, she could move back to the city and take up her contacts with others….
If that time ever came.
“At least, Dorrie, Sarge left you the house free and clear. You’ve got that. Plus his insurance. You don’t have to worry about making a living for a while.”
She nodded.
The road climbed the flank of the hill, twisting and turning. They passed the turnoff to the village, headed on into the newer area around San Jacinto Road. To himself Uncle Chuck was thinking that the thorough search of Sargent’s things was overdue; he should have thought of it before. Anything to do with Sargent’s real intentions would be well hidden. What had been put out to be found was window dressing. A sudden conviction seized Uncle Chuck—the passport, the travel folders, perhaps even the big envelope of stuff about Canada in Kat’s car trunk, perhaps even Kat’s birth-certificate photostat—all were deliberate, all had been put out, arranged, to lead anyone who got curious astray.
The real secret was still just that—a secret.
Surely there had to be a clue somewhere.
The car rounded the corner into San Jacinto Road. To the left were the new places, tucked in among the trees. They passed the house where Kat Knowles had died. Down the road in the distance, parked at the curb in front of Doris’s house, was an Idylynn police cruiser. A uniformed off
icer was standing just beyond, at the rim of Doris’s driveway. Past the man Uncle Chuck caught a glimpse of the roof of another car.
His foot started to slam the brake pedal.
“What is it, Uncle Chuck?”
“Too late,” he said bitterly. The car parked on the slope of the drive was a sheriff’s car. The uniformed man in the street had seen them coming; he was gesturing to someone in the patio below. “I’ve got a hunch, Dorrie. They’ve Come to get you. Listen to me now.”
All color left her face. She looked at Uncle Chuck as if she had never seen him before. He couldn’t tell whether she was taking in what he was saying or not.
Chapter 16
Uncle Chuck picked up his cane, forced himself up out of the chair. Must do something, he thought. Keep busy. It wouldn’t help Doris, his sitting here in a fog of shock and disbelief.
As a starter he emptied all of the ash trays, stacking them in one hand, taking them to the kitchen, where he dumped the contents and then rinsed and dried them. Lieutenant Martin was quite a smoker. Not much of a talker, though. He had something on Dorrie, something that seemed to put her at the scene of Kat’s death. Something planted, Uncle Chuck decided, and he wondered if the intruder of yesterday morning had gotten what he had come after, after all. Something of Dorrie’s to be taken to that house of death, left in it.
In his mind’s eye he could see Kat Knowles, stretched out in death, her breast bared for the bullet that had ended her life. A nasty touch, Uncle Chuck thought, his mouth twisting. And now they thought Dorrie had done that, had opened the blouse and lifted the sheer brassiére off the soft young flesh…. Makes me want to be sick, Uncle Chuck told himself. And it wouldn’t be my Dorrie’s work. There had been a green suéde jacket, a green purse, hanging on the half-opened door of one of the cabinets … and suppose that something in the purse hadn’t turned out to be Kat’s after all? Suppose Bill Knowles had pointed to it and said—
Guessing, Uncle Chuck reprimanded himself. Just guessing. Martin wouldn’t give us a hint.
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