“Not while I’m thinking,” he said, “there’s another possibility—McKay. He’s the commander’s keeper, so to speak. Bodyguard, companion, keeper of the image. I had him checked out weeks ago. He served with the commander during two wars. I know he would kill if he thought killing would protect the old man from grief. And he had close enough contact with the family to know how Roger and Wanda battled and that Wanda jumped ship the day of the murder. He knew, too, what happened when I visited the commander on the yacht after the hearing, and he was present at the dock when Charley Becker’s body was found. He might very well have known about that juke box and the record Nancy Armitage liked to play. He might have been the man who tried to kill Wanda and me on the highway.”
“He might,” Hannah added, “be the man Nancy Armitage wouldn’t expose on the witness stand.”
It had a good sound to it. Nancy Armitage liked the sea. She walked along the shore and read poetry. She denied knowing Roger Warren and sounded convincing. Moreover, she was a strong, romantic type who wouldn’t stop at perjury herself to save a lover.
“We’re only guessing,” Simon said, “and there’s no time for that. I have one fact: there is a Samuel Olson. Nancy Armitage reneged, but perjury was committed at that hearing and I intend to learn why.”
Simon sent six telegrams for delivery in mid-afternoon. The message in each was identical:
“Trouble. Meet me at Marina Beach Post Office at 7 PM. (signed) S. Olson.”
The original list of recipients contained only five names: Lodge, Berman, Mayerling, McKay and Nancy Armitage. As an afterthought he added Wanda, There seemed to be nothing to lose. Once the messages were sent, Simon called a car rental and ordered a small dark sedan. When it was delivered, he drove to Seacliff Drive and parked within sight of Frank Lodge’s front door. He hadn’t waited more than twenty minutes when a boy on a motorbike came with the wires. He stopped at Lodge’s house first.
Frank Lodge, attired in a loose-fitting cardigan and slacks, answered the doorbell and accepted the wire. He stood in the doorway for the few seconds it took to locate a coin in his pocket and tip the boy, and then disappeared behind the closing door. Simon transferred his attention to the house next door. Here the messenger didn’t get such a swift response. He rang and waited. He rang again, leaning heavily and long on the bell, and Simon remembered the disconnected wire in the bedroom with misgivings. Whatever happened before the day was finished would be incomplete if Wanda didn’t receive her message. He wanted to know that Samuel Olson meant nothing to her. She would call the telegraph office and demand an explanation or call Simon or throw the senseless thing in the wastebasket. But not until she received it could he be certain. Finally the door did open, and Wanda accepted the wire. She was puzzled. She forgot to tip the boy until he was gone and called after him as the motorbike pulled out of the drive. Then she closed the door again and Simon relaxed.
He hadn’t long to wait. It wasn’t ten seconds before Lodge, now wearing a dark business suit and tightening his tie as he came emerged from the house and hurried to the carport. Moments later, he was backing the compact out of the driveway. Simon turned his head and feigned an ardent study of a city street map until the car was gone. The first seed sown was bearing fruit.
Simon gave Lodge time to get a few blocks away and then opened the door of the rented car. He would have to risk not being seen by Wanda because he had to get inside that house. He made a circuitous approach and came up on the farthest side from the Warren home. Nobody locked the sliding doors leading to the rear decks; they were too high above the beach. But the structure was supported by steel beams and the beams could be scaled up to the wrought-iron ballustrade. Then it was merely a matter of vaulting the railing.
The glass door slid open at the touch. Frank Lodge was no sun-worshiper. The drapes were drawn tight against the impending sunset, and Simon stepped through them into sudden darkness after the glare of the deck. Slowly, his eyes adjusted to the change. The room was exactly like the bedrooms next door except for a less glamorous decor. As in Wanda’s bedroom, the surf was deafening. He closed the door behind him and the sound softened somewhat, but nothing could change the fact that Frank Lodge, contrary to his sworn statements, couldn’t possibly have been awakened in this room by the sound of the Warrens’ sports car in the driveway, or disturbed by their quarreling. Like Nancy Armitage, he had volunteered testimony. Like Nancy Armitage, he had lied.
It was a masculine room with a king size bed, and on the bed was a partially packed suitcase. Simon moved toward it and then stopped—arrested by the sound of breaking glass. The sound came from the living room. He listened but now there was no sound but the constant background of the surf. The suitcase could wait. Simon opened the bedroom door and stepped into the living room.
The floorplan was identical to that of the Warren menage. The drapes were closed and one panel billowed restlessly in the wind, occasionally touching a small, circular dinner table that had been meticulously set with china, silver and stemware. A crystal candelabra centerpiece had blown across one setting, shattering two of the wine glasses and accounting for the disturbance. Simon righted it and stepped to the window. He parted the drapes and found the open panel and paused, listening. His experiment of the previous night was proving out. It was impossible from the bedroom—where Frank Lodge claimed to be when the noises next door at the Warren house awakened him—to hear anything in the front of the house. His hand groped for the window latch and touched leather—a binocular case. He opened it and focused the glasses on the driveway below, and then he knew exactly what Frank Lodge had been doing the night Roger Warren came home from his father’s yacht carrying a tennis trophy in his fishing box and a bamboo paper package in his hand.
And then, unexpectedly, Simon heard the sound Lodge claimed had lured him from the bedroom: the banging of the front door of the Warren house. The wind was rising. He focused the glasses as it banged again and realized, with a sense of dread, that Wanda had left the house. She had received the Sam Olson telegram….
A few feet away, the small table was elegantly set for two. If it was Lodge’s handiwork, he had unsuspected talent. Moreover, he expected a dinner guest. The drape flared out again and Simon remembered he hadn’t closed the window. As he reached out to pull it in, the sharp sound of a woman’s heels sounded on the driveway. Simon glanced down but was too late to see who reached the front door and inserted a key in the lock. He barely had time to close the window latch and beat a hasty retreat to the bedroom before the woman ascended the short flight of stairs and walked into the living room. Simon held the door ajar a few inches. The drapes were still drawn and the shadows lengthening. He couldn’t see the woman’s face but he could see that she wore an ulster type coat and carried a brown paper bag on one arm. She paused at the top of the stairs.
“Frank?” she called.
It was too dark to suit her. She switched on the lights, and Simon breathed easier. It wasn’t Wanda. It was Nancy Armitage.
“Frank, I know you’re here,” she said. “I saw you at the window. I’m early but I had to talk to you about something—”
She took a bottle of wine from the paper bag and placed it on the top of the bar, and then dug a slip of yellow paper out of her coat pocket.
“I got this wire, Frank. I don’t know what it means—”
She started toward the bedroom door, and Simon tensed for an action that didn’t come. A sound behind caught her attention. She turned as Frank Lodge appeared at the head of the stairs.
“Oh, there you are,” she said.
There was no greeting. “What are you doing here?” Lodge demanded. “I telephoned your landlady and told her you weren’t to come. I’m sorry, the dinner’s off.”
“But I had to come,” Nancy insisted. “I got this wire—”
Lodge grabbed the wire from her hand and read it hurriedly.
“It’s worse than I thought,” he said.
“Worse? What do you m
ean?”
“Somebody knows too much. Nancy, I’ve got to get out of town tonight.”
“I’m going with you.”
“Don’t be silly.”
Lodge moved toward the bedroom, but Nancy blocked the way.
“Where are you going?” she demanded.
“I can’t tell you that.”
“But you must tell me. Frank, I won’t let you brush me off—not after all I’ve done for you!”
“All you’ve done?” he echoed. “You enjoyed yourself, didn’t you? You were a love-starved little spinster when I found you. I gave you a few thrills.”
The room was quiet. Nancy’s stricken face was all Simon could see.
“Thrills—?” she echoed.
“I told you in the beginning that it wouldn’t last.”
“But that was only in the beginning. It was different after Roger Warren was killed.”
She stopped. She seemed to listen to the echo of her own words. She was beginning to know something her mind didn’t want to accept.
“Frank,” she demanded, “who is Olson?”
“He doesn’t concern you!” Lodge said.
“But he does. He concerns you and you concern me! Frank, you lied to me! You didn’t see Wanda Warren kill her husband!”
“Why should I lie?” Lodge challenged.
“There’s a reason—a good reason!”
She was excited. Lodge tried to push past her and she grabbed his lapels.
“You called me early in the morning after I was up half the night with that horrible old man, Merton,” she said. “You told me you had heard your neighbors quarreling and went to investigate—that you were standing in front of the house when Wanda Warren stabbed Roger with a kitchen knife!”
“I know what I told you,” Lodge said. “You don’t have to run through the whole story again.”
“Story! Yes, that’s what it was—a story! What an imagination you have, Frank! You said you ran inside and found Warren dead. You panicked and picked up the knife—and then, to cover yourself, put it on the bed where Mrs. Warren had fallen asleep. But that’s not really what happened, is it?”
“You’re hysterical,” Lodge said. “We’ll talk about it later.”
“When, Frank?”
“When I send for you.”
“When you send for me from where?”
They were steps away from the bedroom. Lodge brushed her aside and pushed back the bedroom door. Fast footwork got Simon safely behind the drapes before Lodge located the light switch. He went directly to the suitcase and pressed down the lid.
“You killed Roger Warren, didn’t you?” Nancy said.
She stood in the doorway a few feet away from Lodge.
“You—not Wanda. It was you I lied for, Frank. You wanted me to convict Wanda—not because you were afraid the police would learn you were in the house after she killed Roger. That was just the story you told me. You made me lie because you killed him!”
Lodge snapped the suitcase locks and faced her bluntly.
“Why would I do that?” he demanded.
“I don’t know,” Nancy said. “It has something to do with this wire, doesn’t it? And Charles Becker is dead—”
“What do you know about Becker?”
“Nothing. I only heard—”
“You hear too much. Forget what you hear. You’re in too deep.”
Nancy gasped. It was like a painful punctuation—the death rattle of an illusion.
“I am in deep?” she echoed. “Frank, I did nothing but tell the police what you asked me to tell them.”
“And reversed yourself later. Go ahead, tell another story and see how fast they lock you up as a psycho. I’m leaving.”
Lodge picked up the suitcase.
“But why?” Nancy persisted. “Why did you come here? Where are you going? What kind of man are you? Frank—”
It was that way with those sensible, hard-driving women who walked on the seashore, read poetry and dreamed of the ideal. The ideal came, shining and bright on the white steed of romance, not because he was so different from the others but because the need had grown so strong. But now the exciting, seductive infidelity to a mediocre pattern of life was finished. The end was bitter—as bitter as the small revolver Nancy Armitage held in her hand.
“Where did you get that gun?” Lodge demanded.
“From that dear old man who makes my life so pleasant,” Nancy answered. “He has a gun collection. For three years I’ve had to hear the history of each weapon over and over and over—Frank, why did you kill Roger Warren?”
It wouldn’t have mattered what Lodge answered. He gambled that she was bluffing, made a lunge for the gun and caught the blast just above his hip. He looked surprised, stepped backward, and then, tightening his grip on the suitcase, ran past her into the next room. Nancy whirled about and raised the gun again, but this time Simon’s strong right arm caught her across the jaw and laid her out cold on the king size bed. He grabbed the gun and raced after Lodge. A trail of blood led across the living room and down the short flight of stairs. The front door was open. Simon stepped out on the driveway and then leaped back against the building as Lodge’s activated compact roared into the street.
Simon pocketed the gun and ran back upstairs. He found Nancy conscious and sobbing hysterically in the bedroom.
“Is he dead?” she asked.
“Not yet,” Simon said. “And unless I’m mistaken he’s got a shipload of heroin in that suitcase.”
“Heroin?”
“The stuff he killed Roger Warren to get.”
“And Becker, too?”
“Probably. Miss Armitage, shut up and wash your face! If you have any luck left, you may not be a murderess—but you’ve made a big mistake. You should have stuck to your poetry books. Illusion—and a man like Frank Lodge—don’t mix.”
SIXTEEN
Simon drove Nancy Armitage to the house on Pacific View and saw her safely inside. She was in a state of shock, but, by the time he had transferred her to Mrs. Rainey’s smothering care, he knew all he needed to know about the romance of a lonely lady who played at elegance on her free days and had, one day on the beach below Seacliff Drive, met a stranger who was quiet and gentle and who seemed lonely, too. Then he understood why she had been so interested when Frank Lodge gave his folding chair to a boy on the beach. He was leaving town and hadn’t told her. She had left Simon and returned to her rooms and telephoned him, in spite of his previous instruction that his wires might be tapped.
“When did he tell you that?” Simon asked.
“The day after the murder. He was afraid he might be suspected. He thought he might have accidentally left prints in the house. And he didn’t want anything to link us together because of his job and his wife.”
“Then you knew he was married?”
“Yes—but I didn’t know we would get so involved. I thought I could cut it off any time I wished. I didn’t know how terrible it would be to have a little happiness and lose it so soon.”
“How many times did you go to The Cove?” Simon asked.
“Three. Three Sundays before—and including—the day Roger Warren was killed. But we never stayed late. We were always back in time for my appointment with Mr. Merton.”
“You just stayed until the white boat came in,” Simon suggested.
“The white boat?”
“Until dusk, then.”
“How did you know?”
“E.S.P.,” Simon said. “Who played the juke box?”
“I did. I saw that title and I liked the song.”
Simon was right. Guilt. Guilt smeared all over Miss Armitage’s Puritan conscience. She was having an affair with a married man and all of her mores condemned her. When Lodge came forward the day after the crime and offered his testimony, he was laying the groundwork for the story he would convince Nancy that she must tell. But she needed no instructions when Simon threatened to expose her Sunday companion in court.
&
nbsp; “I believed him,” she said. “That’s what I can’t get over—I believed him!”
It was the oldest story in the world. When Nancy had learned Lodge was leaving, she telephoned and forced a last dinner date in his house. She arranged with a caterer for the food and the setting, and picked up the wine at a small import store. It was all very romantic—except for one thing.
“When did you get the gun?” Simon asked.
“Two days after the hearing,” she admitted, “when Frank asked me not to contact him again until everything blew over. I knew what he meant. Even then, I knew. But I didn’t know until tonight that he was a murderer!”
“Save it for the district attorney,” Simon said.
It was then that he left Nancy Armitage with Mrs. Rainey and telephoned Lieutenant Franzen. He gave Franzen enough information to send a police car screaming to the house on Pacific View and enliven the police radio with the description of Frank Lodge, who was somewhere in the night driving with a bullet in his stomach and a destination unknown. Simon didn’t wait for the police. He drove to a telephone booth and called Hannah.
“Simon, I need you!” she insisted. “Come home at once and explain those Samuel Olson wires!”
“I can’t,” Simon said. “I’m a fugitive.”
“You’re a what? Who did you kill?”
“My pet theory. But it’s all right because I’ve got a new one. And Hannah, if anybody asks you, it was Frank Lodge who stabbed Roger Warren.”
“Lodge!” Hannah shrieked. “Simon, where are you? What’s happening?”
It was a dirty trick, but Simon hung up.
He knew that Franzen would be looking for him. He had to keep mobile. He had sent out six wires and had three responses. Nancy Armitage was on the verge of hysterics. Frank Lodge was in full flight. Wanda had left the house hurriedly. While he was still in the booth, Simon rang her number. There was no answer. It was too late for the false rendezvous at the Post Office, and that would be the first place Franzen would look as soon as Nancy mentioned the wire. The police would also cover the Alameda home of modest citizen Lodge, and, since that was where Simon had been located twenty-four hours ago, they would also cover Eddie Berman’s Mobile Club in Santa Monica. And yet, at one of the places Simon investigated, Roger Warren had once made a contact that put him in the no-fishing business. Simon decided to check August Mayerling’s response.
After Midnight Page 15