Verdict Suspended

by Nielsen, Helen

  It was too early. The doors were locked. He walked around to the rear and peeked through the wire-mesh fence at the clutter of Herb Catcher’s parts yard. The red sports car was still there. It didn’t interest Jaime. What did interest him was a couple of ten-year-old sedans with “For Sale” chalked on the windows. If the motor turned over in either of them, Herb had a sale.

  Jaime circled the yard. There was a double gate in the rear with a rusted lock that fell apart at the touch. It might be hours before Herb Catcher parted with his bed; but the keys for the jalopies were probably in the shop. He could leave a blank check. Catcher was an honest man. He wouldn’t fill it in for more than twice what the heap was worth. Jaime pulled the gates open and went inside the yard. Entering the shop was easy. The rear window was unlocked. He slid open the sash and crawled inside. He lowered himself into a cluttered darkness, scared up a yellow-eyed cat, and finally located the keys hanging on a peg near Catcher’s roll-top desk. One was tagged “‘50 Chevvy.” That was the sedan with the four good tires. He took the key down from the pegs and crawled back through the window. He walked back to the Chevvy and then came to a full stop. It was a mistake to leave the gates open in full view of the highway. They were now blocked by a police car.

  Jaime saw the door on the driver’s side open, and he watched Steve, with the gun in his hand, climb out of the car and come toward him.

  “I had a feeling you might come here,” Steve said. “You never had much imagination.”

  Steve was going to kill him. He didn’t need imagination to know that.

  “If you did,” Steve added, “you wouldn’t be in this mess. I got you off once.”

  “But I didn’t kill Sheilah,” Jaime said.

  “That’s unimportant now. Nobody cares who killed Sheilah. They just like to gossip. Talk doesn’t hurt if you don’t listen.”

  “I care who killed Sheilah,” Jaime said. “Why did you do it, Steve?”

  “She had no gratitude. I did a great deal for Sheilah. We were very close once. She didn’t remember that when I needed her.”

  “You were bleeding the estate.”

  “Not bleeding. I borrowed a little—fifty thousand dollars, to be exact. The market was going up … it went down instead. I wasn’t worried. I could have repaid the loan. But Sheilah decided to cut you out of the business, and that meant a full accounting.”

  “And no forgiveness for past services rendered.”

  Steve tightened his grip on the gun. “You knew Sheilah. You saw what she did to you with that sign on the building site. My humiliation was worse. A full public airing. The end of a career.

  “I asked for time to make up my losses. She laughed at me. She showed me the fresh cut on her face where the glass hit her. ‘Jaime’s farewell kiss,’ she said. ‘That’s what I get for rearing him like my own son! And now you come begging.’ … Begging! I never begged for anything in my life, but she threw the word at me the way you threw the glass at her. It was too much. I picked up the poker and killed her. I knew everybody would think you were guilty.”

  “That was generous of you,” Jaime said.

  “It was—because I saved you, in spite of them. But it’s too late now.”

  There was nothing between Jaime and Steve’s gun but six feet of air. Steve couldn’t have missed. But he was curious.

  “What gave me away?” he asked. “I said something last night in Sheilah’s house and you knew that I’d killed her. What was it, Jaime?”

  He waited for an answer. What he received was the key ring flung into his eyes at the same instant Jaime dived for his feet. There was no time to shoot. Jaime kicked the gun away and rolled free of Steve’s threshing arms. His hand clawed the earth until it found the gun, and then he scrambled to his feet to face Steve with retribution in his hands.

  He never used the gun. The sound of police sirens was in the air again, and it was music sweeter than the calliope of Domingo Alvarez.

  Chapter 15

  Jaime didn’t have time to answer Steve’s question for several hours. He was at the Cypress Point Hospital by that time, seated on the edge of an examining table with his shirt off and a newly applied dressing on his shoulder. He was surrounded by a small, intense audience. Captain Lennard, Dr. Curry, the young doctor who had been practicing basic first aid on his flesh wound, and Greta. Greta was the only one he resented. She heard him groan when the doctor dressed his wound. They hadn’t been married long enough for her to have that kind of advantage.

  Captain Lennard’s eyes were rimmed with the evidence of a sleepless night, but his spirits were soaring. “I should have given Steve the gun instead of letting him jump me for it,” he said. “He set out looking for you, and a police car’s the easiest thing on wheels to follow.”

  “Why didn’t you take out the cartridge clip?” Jaime suggested.

  Lennard grinned. “That’s the funny thing, Jaime. We did. You two were rolling on the ground for the possession of an empty gun…. But it wasn’t empty when Steve took it up to Sheilah’s house last night, was it? He meant to kill you.”

  Jaime located his shirt and started to put it on. Greta was suddenly beside him, helping to fit it over the tender shoulder. The groan, he decided, wasn’t too badly timed.

  “He had to kill me,” he said. “He realized—when we were in the house together—that I knew he killed Sheilah. He didn’t know why I knew, but it was simple. Before Steve came on the scene, Greta reminded me that forty-five minutes elapsed from the time I threw a glass at Sheilah and the time she saw me run out of the house. She said we wouldn’t have quarreled that long—and she was right. Sheilah had a way of cutting people down to the size she wanted them much faster than that.

  “And so I knew that I must have made two trips to Sheilah’s house the night she died. Knowing that was like opening a locked door. Everything came flooding back. I remembered returning from the building site. Sheilah was on the floor … dead. I found her in what I thought was the same spot she’d fallen when I tossed the glass. She’d tried to duck and caught her foot on something. I was too angry to help her up. But when I came back, there she was—with the blood still on her face from where the glass cut her. I couldn’t see the poker wound: her hair covered it. I thought the fall had killed her. I thought I had killed her. That’s why I ran away—that’s the terrible thing the crash blotted out of my memory.”

  “But how did you know Steve killed her?” Lennard asked.

  “He told me. He knew when we found the missing whisky glass … he must have been on the extension when Greta called Trench. He thought it was important enough to get Greta out of Sheilah’s house and wait for me in the kitchen. When I came back he gave me a detailed account of his visit to Sheilah—all of it false.

  “He told me he was with Sheilah from the time Trench left the house until he heard my car coming back. He followed her into the bedroom, pleading for Greta and me. Generous Steve! Then they heard my car, and Sheilah went out to meet her guests. He couldn’t face the party yet. He ducked out via the balcony…. It was a good story, but I knew he was lying.”

  “Why, Jaime?”

  Jaime smiled crookedly. “Because I knew Sheilah. She wouldn’t have been with Steve—or any other man—five minutes, let alone forty-five minutes, without washing that blood off her face. It wasn’t very pretty…. And so I decided that Steve killed Sheilah shortly after I left the house, and left over the balcony to avoid meeting any early arrivals for dinner. I must have reached that conclusion at about the same time he decided to kill me.”

  “Because he knew that you suspected him?”

  “I don’t think he was certain, but he was afraid. He’d gone to too much trouble to alibi about the glass … it had to be important.”

  Dr. Curry’s face resembled a sleepy pug dog, but it was suddenly vitalized by a broad smile of satisfaction.

  “It was important,” he announced. “It was proof of my theory: a criminal always leaves a signature. I explained it to Mr. Quent
in the day after I came to Cypress Point. He didn’t want you to go back to the house. He wanted to sell.”

  “To cover his debt to the estate,” Jaime said.

  “That was part of it. But his real motive, one he wasn’t aware of, was to keep anyone from finding what he left behind the night he killed your sister. It placed him directly on the scene at a time when he’d sworn he was at home. Imagine his reaction when he heard your wife call Trench! Everything I told him must have gone ringing through his head like a fire alarm. All the police had to do was find the glass and ask Trench when he put it out on the bar. He had to get rid of it … and he had to get rid of you because you found it.”

  “What about me?” Greta demanded. “Was I next on the list?”

  Jaime swung toward her protectively. She had been out in the night air without a hat. Her hair was bedraggled and her eyes were deep hollows surrounded by shadow that didn’t come from a mascara box. Her face was pale and she had gnawed off all her lipstick. He had never loved her so much as at that moment.

  “Steve wouldn’t have gone that far,” he said. “He knew my death would be accepted as proof of guilt … but he had to make it look like suicide.”

  “And so you beat him to the punch,” Lennard concluded. “Very clever, Jaime. Did he pull the gun on you in the car?”

  “He started to—just before I pushed him out. I dumped the car as soon as I could. I hoped it would explode and burn, but it nosed into the water and sat there. When Steve came he couldn’t see if I was in it or not … but he was suspicious. He started down the hill with the gun in his hand.”

  “And you jumped him?”

  Jaime grinned wearily. “Not me! I was hiding in the brush, shaking in my shoes. I didn’t move until he fired at me and I had to! I’m no hero.”

  “Well, that’s something to be grateful for,” Greta said. “Now come down from that table and let’s go home.”

  Nobody gave him an argument. Jaime slid off the table and picked up his jacket. At this point he wasn’t sure where home was, but it was as good a time as any to start finding out.

  “I suppose you’ll be wiping the dirt of Cypress Point from your feet,” Lennard said. Lennard was always good at picking minds.

  “If I do,” Jaime said, “won’t I be wiping dirt from my feet all the rest of my life? … No, I’ve got a construction job to finish. If I light a fire under Cy we may break even.” He turned to Dr. Curry. “There’s something I want to ask you,” he said. “You came here the day we returned from our honeymoon. It was no coincidence. Did you come to watch me or Steve?”

  “You,” Curry said.

  “Then you believed the confession?”

  “There was no reason not to. Mr. Quentin had a semiconscious client two psychiatrists couldn’t rouse. He knew about experiments with drugs in obtaining confessions. He knew the susceptibility of patients to suggestion. What did he have to lose? If he planted a seed in your mind and you confessed—good. His troubles were over. If you didn’t confess, the experiment was just the act of a conscientious lawyer trying to protect the interests of his client … which is the way I felt about it when he retained me.”

  “Is that the way you felt about it yesterday morning on the beach?”

  Curry reflected. “I’m not sure how I felt about it yesterday morning. I had talked to Quentin on his home ground. He was too anxious to get rid of the house. There were others involved. They behaved well in the courtroom, but offstage the fangs began to show. I felt guilty. You were walking about with a pressure inside you that had to explode sooner or later. I wanted to help you. I couldn’t do anything but make suggestions. In fact”—Curry smiled impishly in remembrance—”I broke into your sister’s house myself. I didn’t find anything except a spare poker in the kitchen closet. I put it in the living room, where I hoped it would prod your memory when you returned.”

  “Then Steve never intended to save me,” Jaime said.

  “It seems not. I remember how shocked he was when I told him he had a confession that couldn’t be used. I think he expected that you would be indicted. He meant to plead you guilty and throw you on the mercy of the court. His crime would be paid for and the gossiping tongues of Cypress Point would be appeased. But his plan didn’t work. That’s the heartening thing about science, Jaime Dodson. It doesn’t always work. There’s still the human element.”

  The human element was beginning to stir itself awake when Jaime and Greta left the police station together. It was morning. Shops were opening. Trucks were delivering. School buses where making pickups. Greta had commandeered Steve’s car. It was waiting in the parking lot. Jaime drove. They turned down the main street of Cypress Point and headed uptown.

  “I suppose,” Jaime reflected, “I should have consulted my wife before I told Lennard how I felt about leaving town. I haven’t had one very long. I wonder how she feels.”

  “Pull over to the curb,” Greta said.

  Jaime didn’t argue. He pulled to the curb and turned off the motor. He looked at her expectantly. She was leaning back against the seat, completely relaxed, smiling at him with that unrouged mouth and out of those tear- and wind-reddened eyes. He leaned forward and kissed her, long and deep and happily.

  She moved her head. “Jaime,” she said, “did you notice where you parked?”

  Reluctantly he left his work and looked up. They were directly in front of Chad Winter’s store. Chad was raising the blinds … and his eyebrows. Mrs. Moore stood just outside the door waiting for it to be unlocked. A schoolboy on a bicycle stopped at the curb, gawking.

  “People will talk,” Greta murmured.

  Jaime worried about it for all of ten seconds, and then closed her mouth with his. It was still better than science.

  If you liked Verdict Suspended check out:

  The Severed Key

  CHAPTER ONE

  THE MORNING FLIGHT from Las Vegas arrived at Los Angeles International Airport ten minutes behind schedule due to a strong headwind bearing in from the Pacific. Dropping phantomlike from the low ceiling of a steadily darkening sky, the huge silver plane roared down the runway and manoeuvred artfully to its place at the disembarkment satellite. Inside the glass-enclosed waiting room, Jack Keith snuffed out a cigarette with one suède-booted toe and moved in closer to the arrival gate. He was a tall, husky man of thirty with an unruly mop of red hair and quick grey eyes that had already noticed more about the cluster of people who had come to meet the plane than they imagined could be evident to a casual observer. A professional observer. The weathered trench coat Keith wore over his flannel shirt and levis was loosely belted to conceal the snub-nosed detective’s special strapped to his hip. He was a private investigator and his mission was to deliver the confidential report he carried in a flat leather zipper case to Simon Drake who had telephoned instructions from Las Vegas before boarding the incoming plane.

  As the first passengers began to straggle through the gate, a dark-haired young man, theatrically elegant in a fawn-coloured suit, pushed ahead of Keith without apology. Keith glared at his profile: arrogant, deliberately rude, confidently handsome. There was something irritatingly familiar about the face that set him scratching at his memory like a dog trying to locate a buried bone, and the distraction was enough to make him miss Drake’s appearance at the gateway until a lusty shout snared his attention.

  “Keith! You made it! Hey, why so grim?”

  Simon Drake’s wide grin took a decade off his thirty-five years. He had picked up a movie star tan under the Nevada sun. Wearing a white turtle-necked sweater and madras slacks, he looked as if he had stepped directly from the golf course on to the plane and was waiting for the rest of the foursome to show up.

  “I see you’ve got the Meechum report,” he added, taking the zipper case from Keith’s hand. “Good. I’ll have time to go over it before the board meeting in San Diego Monday morning.”

  “How’s Wanda?” Keith asked.

  “Great! Didn’t you see the press not
ices after her opening? Sensational. My girl’s found her voice at last. She’s being held over for two more weeks at the Sahara.”

  “What about your wedding?”

  “After the Sahara engagement. We want some time to ourselves.”

  Keith shook his head. “Too late,” he said. “You should have married her before she was a celebrity. You’ll live in a fishbowl now.”

  “That’s better than living in the woodwork with a mouse. Didn’t I ever tell you how much I hate home cooking? Come on, let’s get downstairs and see if the baggage is coming through. I’ve got work to do.”

  Simon Drake was one of the busiest young lawyers on the west coast. Athlete that he was, his body was still barely able to keep up with his mind. He started towards the down escalator but Keith remained motionless, eyes fixed on the gathering of people at the gate.

  “There’s a storm coming in,” he murmured. “Small craft warnings are out.”