17-Murder Roundabout

by Lockridge, Richard

  “Now, Harold,” Heimrich said, “neither do I. Just nosing around. Brennan?”

  “Scotch and water. Maybe a couple. Except that—”

  He stopped and looked down the bar at his other customers. One of them beckoned. “Got to take care of people,” Harold said, and went down the bar to do it. Heimrich lighted a cigarette and sipped gin and tonic, which needed to be supplied with ice, and waited. Harold would be back. Heimrich finished what remained of a drink he had not particularly wanted. Harold came back and Heimrich motioned toward his glass and Harold refilled it.

  “Except that once, you were going to say,” Merton Heimrich told the barman. “What once?”

  “People get the idea a bartender talks about ’em,” Harold said.

  “Mrs. Weaver won’t,” Heimrich said. “Give, my friend.”

  “Nothing much,” Harold said. “Maybe three each. Figured they’d got something settled. Know what I mean? Sort of celebrating. He put the papers they’d had spread out back in his briefcase and they had a couple more drinks. Not enough to show with either of them. Now that I skimp.”

  “I know. Honest ounce and a half.”

  “Except doubles.”

  “Except doubles, sure. They have doubles?”

  “He did, way I remember it. Not enough to show, like I said.”

  “When was this, Harold?”

  “Last month sometime. Before Labor Day, anyhow. Hot day and we had the conditioning on. Pretty sure we did.”

  “What time of day?”

  “Lunch. Listen, Captain. Jim Brennan’s an all-right guy. Used to be a big-time golf pro.”

  “Sure,” Heimrich said. “I know he’s an all-right guy. Way things are, Harold, somebody gets himself killed and we’ve got to find out everything we can about him. Who he saw. All sorts of things. Mostly things that don’t matter a damn in the long run. This day you were telling me about. Brennan and Mrs. Weaver were here longer than usual?”

  “I guess so. Hot as hell outside. Nice and cool in here. Guess it was around three when they left.”

  “Together?”

  “Went out together. All right, went off in her car. Way it usually was. Figured he’d stop by the house and leave his car there. Particularly on a day as hot as that one was. Air conditioned, her Continental is. He goes around in that Porsche you were asking Purvis about.”

  He looked more intently at Heimrich. It is a customer’s duty to confide in a bartender. Heimrich asked another question instead.

  “Mrs. Brennan come in often?”

  “Not in here. Once in a blue moon, maybe, she takes people to lunch in there.” He gestured toward the lobby of the Old Stone Inn, indicating the dining room beyond it. “Prospects,” Harold said. “I figure prospects. Send one of the girls in for drinks, if they have drinks. Don’t stay long, usually. Go out and look at houses.”

  “Mrs. Weaver ever come here with Stephen Drake?”

  “Never saw them. He doesn’t come very often himself. Mama won’t let him, probably.”

  Heimrich smiled at that, as he was supposed to smile. He sipped a drink he didn’t want; thought he was wasting time on gossip; thought Forniss was having trouble reaching the man he knew who might know gossip about Ralph Weaver. He said, “Speaking of Mrs. Drake? She come here much?”

  “Garden club a while back. Not in here. In the special room and usually somebody making a speech. When she was president of the garden club, that was. Before she fell off the horse.”

  Forniss came out of the lobby, and Ray Crowley was with him.

  “Had to wait for Weaver. Got hold of Brothers finally,” Forniss said. “That’s his name. Clem Brothers. Says sure he knows Weaver and that he’s tied up for the afternoon. So I made a date to buy him a drink around six in town. Put the drinks on expense account?”

  “We can always try,” Heimrich said. “Maybe they’ll rub it off, but we can always try, Charlie.”

  “Go in now,” Charles Forniss said, “and I can make the bank before it closes, maybe. Fifty grand is fifty grand.”

  “He wouldn’t take it all,” Heimrich said. “Not if he’s got sense. And the bank won’t give, probably.”

  “Happens,” Forniss said, “I know a guy works at that branch. Sort of an assistant manager.”

  V

  Unmowed field grass straightens slowly after it has been walked through. If it is dry, it is sometimes broken. Of course, it might have been a deer. Or a couple of deer. Ray Crowley didn’t think so.

  He and Heimrich sat at a corner table in the taproom and ate hamburgers and drank coffee. Crowley had his hamburgers well done, but one cannot ask perfection in a man.

  Could be deer had trampled meadow grass between the Weaver house and the lane which led off from the Drake section of the driveway. Crowley didn’t think it had been. Deer leave hoofprints even on dry ground. The lane would, of course, provide a passage for deer to the meadowland beyond and deer jump walls only when they are in a hurry; will walk through gaps when gaps are available. Tracks of a car in the lane; no hoofprints of deer. For what it was worth, then—

  For what it was worth, the meadow grass had been bent down, here and there broken off, by something else. Most probably by a human. Most probably, somebody had come out of the lane in which a car had been parked and left its tracks. Most probably, somebody had climbed the wall between drive and nearer meadow and walked through it to the second wall, but only traces of a wall, which divided the meadow from the land the Weavers kept close mowed. Crowley had found nothing to indicate that somebody had then walked across the mowed lawn to the house. And nothing to indicate that somebody had not. The grass was short there and the ground under it hard.

  But there was no sure way of telling in which direction somebody had walked first. Somebody might as probably, from the traces left, have walked from house to lane and then back to house again. And that there had been a two-way trip was still largely guesswork.

  “All I could make of it, Captain,” Crowley said.

  “Now, Ray,” Heimrich said. “A good deal made of it. Happen to be part Indian?”

  “No,” Crowley said, and as if he spoke seriously. “Part Boy Scout, Captain.”

  They drank coffee and Heimrich told Ray Crowley what he wanted him to do next, which was to go to the Drake house and talk to the Drake servants. About whatever came to mind, providing that among the things which came to mind were sounds—the sound of a shot; the sound of a car which made a racket. Talk, too, to Florence Drake, if Florence was there.

  “Be playing golf, probably,” Ray said. “Does a lot. Or garden clubbing.”

  “Yes,” Heimrich said. “Mrs. Brennan was one of the real-estate agents you talked to about the key?”

  He already knew she had been and took Ray’s nodded head for answer. But he waited.

  “Nice little thing,” Ray Crowley said. “Pretty in …” He paused for a word to come. “An unassertive sort of way,” he said and looked across the taproom for further inspiration. “Sort of woman you have to look at twice to see once,” Crowley said. “Why, Captain?”

  There was, Heimrich told him, no special reason. She was the wife of James Brennan; James Brennan had been seeing something of Annette Weaver. Probably as her attorney. Probably in complete innocence. However—

  “Weaver said a good many things when the sergeant and I talked to him just now,” Heimrich said. “One of them was that we ought to look for a woman, because no man would have killed Annette. What did you think of Mrs. Brennan, Ray?”

  “Just a nice kid,” Ray Crowley said. “Working in her garden. Too hard, I thought. She’s a little thing.”

  “Why’d you think too hard, Ray?”

  Ray spent a few seconds in consideration. He said he didn’t really know. But then he said, “Seemed to me she was a little shaky. The way people who’ve been working too long in the sun get sometimes.”

  Merton Heimrich closed his eyes for a moment. He opened them again.

  “Not upset
because a policeman was asking her questions?” he said. “Because she was making up answers?”

  “Didn’t strike me that way,” Crowley said. “But I suppose it could have been. I could have been dumb about it.”

  Or impressed by the fragile prettiness of a woman who was unassertive about being pretty. At his age, Heimrich thought, and thought of his own, briefly—thought of himself, for a moment, as an aging hippopotamus.

  “Now, Ray,” Heimrich said. “I doubt if you were dumb about it. My wife thinks Leslie Brennan is a nice kid. She is, for all I know. Go along and see what you can dig up at the Drake house. Somebody who was looking at a clock when he heard a shot would be fine. You won’t get that, naturally. Worth looking for, but you won’t find it.”

  Ray Crowley went through the parking-lot door. Heimrich sat at the table for a moment, and finished cooled coffee. Since he was in the Center, he thought he might as well see Oliver Drake, who had an office across the street—and who couldn’t have heard a shot fired in the Weaver house because he had left Van Brunt in the afternoon and gone to New York. But who had bought Annette Weaver lunch on occasion. Nothing wrong about buying a pretty neighbor lunch. Except, Heimrich supposed, Mrs. Drake wouldn’t have liked it. Emily Drake didn’t like a lot of things, Annette Weaver among them.

  Heimrich got up and saw that he would not have to cross the street to see Oliver Drake. Oliver Drake was coming into the taproom from the Inn’s lobby. Heimrich sat down again.

  The younger of Mrs. Drake’s sons was very unlike his brother. Stephen Drake was tall and a little stooped; his posture was, Heimrich sometimes thought, a form of apology. Oliver Drake could hardly have been more different. He was a little under average height, as his brother was a little over it. Oliver made up for that, if it needed making up for, by being a little over average width—width of shoulder, primarily. He had a squarish face, which was deeply tanned, and his thick blond hair bristled with vitality. (His brother’s blond hair lay smooth and meek.)

  Oliver Drake wore slacks and a tweed jacket, in spite of the warmth of the day. (After Labor Day certain of Van Brunt’s male residents went into tweeds regardless of the weather.) Drake would be intolerant of Ralph Weaver’s blue silk suit, Heimrich thought, and noticed that, when Oliver Drake walked into the taproom, he looked as if he had just been told something which amused him. The expression on his face changed abruptly when he saw Heimrich at the corner table. Insofar as Drake’s face would permit, his expression became doleful. He walked over to the table and looked down at Heimrich and shook his head.

  “Terrible thing about Annette,” he said. “Knocks you over.”

  “Yes,” Heimrich said. “A bad thing. Got a few minutes? Or maybe you’re meeting somebody?”

  “Not anybody,” Drake said, and pulled a chair out and sat in it. “Fact is, I knew you were here, M. L. Saw you cross the parking lot a while back. Saw Ralph come in and drive out again. Tough on him. Anyway, I guess it is.”

  A second-floor office fronting on a village main street is as good an observation post as a fabric shop, if one has the time and inclination to look out windows. It appeared that Oliver Drake, architect, had both.

  “Yes,” Heimrich said. “A tough thing, naturally.”

  “Getting anywhere with it?” Drake said, but then turned to face toward the bar and to wave what amounted to a salute to Harold, who nodded and began to mix. Drake turned back to Heimrich and said, “Join me, M. L.?”

  “No,” Heimrich said. “Thanks all the same. Just finished lunch.”

  “Trying to fix the time, the duchess says,” Oliver Drake said. “Been after her about it.” He smiled suddenly. “Don’t envy you,” he said. “Mother and all that, but she’s quite an old girl. Thought you might be around to see me, the duchess did.” Harold brought what appeared to be Scotch and water and Drake said, “Thanks, old man,” and lifted the glass, apparently in a toast to Heimrich.

  “Oh,” he said, “I know what everybody calls mother. Call her that myself. When she’s not around.” He drank again. “Sorry I wasn’t at the house,” Drake said. “Not that I’d have heard anything the others didn’t. I was in town. Talking to an engineer about stresses. Plan a cantilever porch roof. Client thinks it will fall down come a heavy snow.”

  There is no point in hurrying a conversation, particularly one you expect to lead no place. “Will it?” Heimrich asked Oliver Drake, and Drake said, “My bloke says not. Says it would hold up an elephant. Not that anybody’s likely to put one there.”

  He drank again and his expression, which had reverted to something near gayety, changed again to an expression more suitable to one who is talking to a policeman about murder.

  “Got back to Van Brunt around midnight,” Drake said. “In case you were wondering, M. L.”

  “Not especially,” Heimrich said. “No reason yet to wonder where you were.”

  “Yet?”

  “No time, far’s I know,” Heimrich told him. “If we need to know, we’ll find out. What made you think I’d want to know, Mr. Drake?”

  “Mister, already,” Drake said and shook his head. “Official, already. When you and Susan had cocktails couple of weeks ago it was ‘Oliver,’ Captain.”

  There are complications to conducting a murder investigation in a community of which you are a part. There are also, of course, advantages. Heimrich said, “O.K., Oliver.” Then he said, “You and Annette Weaver saw a bit of each other, I gather.”

  “Former sister-in-law,” Drake said. “Liked her those days. Kept on liking her. Fun to be with. For a man who plays the field.” He put his raised glass down with a clink on the table. “Not that she was in the field,” he said. “Don’t get notions about that, Captain.” He lifted the glass again. “Harold talks a hell of a lot,”

  he said. “Ran into her here a couple of times. Bought her a drink. Bought her lunch.”

  “Ran into her?”

  “O.K. O.K. Ralph’s been away a good deal. Sometimes she got lonely up there. Not used to being alone. Not Annette LeBaron. Once or twice I called her and said, ‘How’s about lunch?’ Couple of times she called me. Hell, man, she was family. Had been, anyway.” He drank deeply, finished his drink, turned again and saluted toward the bar. Harold said, “Coming right up, Mr. Drake.”

  “Couldn’t have been more casual,” Drake said. “No assignations, M. L. Not even a molehill to make a mountain out of.”

  “Now, Oliver,” Heimrich said, “I don’t make mountains.”

  “All the same,” Drake said, “you’d have been around to ask. Admit that, M. L.”

  “Follow through on a lot of things,” Heimrich said. “Go through a lot of routines. Any idea who, maybe, wasn’t so casual about her?”

  Drake shook his head, slowly, with finality.

  “She didn’t confide in me,” he said. “Have a drink and a bite and talk. Mostly, she’d talk. Mostly, about people around town. Pretty funny about them, sometimes. Outsiders’ fun, and maybe we are funny, M. L. Wouldn’t know yourself, being married to a local.”

  Scratch a Drake and you got a Drake, Merton Heimrich thought. “About anybody especially?” Merton Heimrich said.

  “All of us,” Drake said. “Steve. The duchess. The Van Houtons. Hell, all of us. Took us off, sometimes. Pretty good on the duchess once or twice. Pretty good on Steve, come to that. And she ought to know.” He shook his head again, said, “Hard to realize she’s dead.”

  “Satirically?”

  “Too hard a word,” Drake said. “Just—oh, just having fun with us. Took off other people, too. People in New York … people she’d known in Hollywood.”

  “Talk about anything else?”

  “Sure. Who I was building houses for. When I was building houses. Mostly they get plans by mail, now. Or buy prefabs.” He sipped his new drink. “Around here,” he said. “Prefabs in Van Brunt, for Christ’s sake. Ought to hear the duchess on that, M. L.”

  Scratch a Drake and you got a Drake, Heimrich thought, and t
hat he would rather like to hear Mrs. Drake on the subject of prefabs.

  “She sounds,” Heimrich said, “like what people call a gay luncheon companion.”

  “Do they?” Drake said. “All right, I suppose she was that. You going to ask everybody she’s had lunch with what she was like?”

  “If I have to,” Heimrich said. “Helps sometimes.”

  “You need help, I gather,” Drake said. “Sure you won’t have a drink?”

  Heimrich was sure. He said policemen always could do with help.

  “Not helpful, am I,” Drake said. “You been after Jim Brennan?”

  “Not yet.”

  “Knew her better than most of us,” Drake said. “Being her lawyer was part of it. And being a former husband. And coming up from New York every week or so to take her to lunch.”

  “That often?”

  “Ask Harold,” Drake said. “Hell, I don’t lunch here every day. Busy and I get them to send over a sandwich. Or get Herman’s to. Anyway, he’s her lawyer. Was, anyway. She still did a lot of what they call spots. Be contracts for them, I’d think. Ask Jim.”

  “I’ll ask him.”

  Then he waited. There had been something about the “ask Jim”—something not tangible, something perhaps only imagined. And perhaps Oliver Drake, in a public-spirited way or in some other way, had crossed the street to tell a policeman something. A policeman gets hunches. Oftener than not, they come to nothing. He’s waiting for me to ask him a question, Heimrich thought. He did not ask a question.

  “Lots of times,” Drake said, “I get stuck. Carry this line on or break it and move the window. Everybody gets stuck sometimes. Takes a break.”

  “Naturally,” Heimrich said.

  “What I do,” Drake told him, “is look out the window. Watch the town.”

  “So does Susan,” Heimrich said.

  “Sure. Well—hell no. I’d better not. Doesn’t mean a damn thing. Also, Jim’s a friend of mine. Play a lot of golf together. Used to give me ten strokes. Got it down to eight, last year or so.”