“Spare us the lecture on criminal psychology, Howie,” said the attorney wearily. “You got anything to report?”
Agnews hit the ceiling with delight over the news of the cigar butt that had supposedly been in the Dibble car. “Now we got something to throw in Mays’ lap—because there goes his pet theory. Nobody in his right mind could conceive of Deirdre smoking a cigar!”
“But, Hal, wait—”
“Too bad the Dibble woman had to go and throw it away, but at least you’ve fixed it in her mind so she can testify if need be. I told you, Howie—this wasn’t a woman’s crime!”
“It was I who told you. And what makes you so sure Mays won’t be smart enough to figure that anybody who’d take the pains to wipe away fingerprints would hardly leave a cigar butt by accident. It was a red herring, a plant.”
“Well, it still isn’t the sort of thing a woman would think of. Howie, did you happen to notice which ones among the suspects you called on—Ruggles or Holtz or Linsky—smokes cigars? Because the one who doesn’t would probably be the one who’d leave an old dried-up butt there, to point suspicion in the wrong direction—”
“You stick to the law, Counselor, and let me do the sleuthing. I’m more interested in the Dibble seat belt. If Deirdre had driven that car, she’d have had to take the belt in. It was let out.”
Agnews was dubious. “Mays will claim that the belt was tampered with.”
They sat in silence for a long moment. “I feel as if I were wandering around in a Fun House maze,” Rook finally said. “Looking in distorted mirrors. There’s one thing wrong with our whole theory. Anyone who would kill Deirdre’s husband as a favor to her wouldn’t just sit back and let her take the rap for the killing!”
“Maybe he was counting on its being written off as an accident,” Finn put in hopefully. “And now it’s tagged as murder, he’s thinking of his own skin first.”
“Or maybe he doesn’t think she’ll actually be arrested,” pointed out Agnews. “Anything else?”
“You might take a look at this,” put in Rook, and with a certain hesitance produced his typed “Analysis.” Agnews glanced at it, raised his eyebrows, and then settled back to read, with Mike Finn peering over his shoulder. The ex-cop snorted in disgust at such tomfoolery, but Agnews seemed impressed.
“Howie, this might be useful. Can I have a copy?”
“Keep that. Years ago I learned to make a copy of everything, even my marketing list.”
The attorney beckoned to the waiter and asked for the bill. “Mike, what you waiting for? Get out to Santa Monica—”
“Using what for money?” demanded Finn.
Agnews sighed and parted with $50, getting a receipt. “And try to stick to beer,” he pleaded. The ex-cop nodded and hurried off. He was already in his battered Ford and pulling out of the restaurant parking lot when the other two came out into the night air—or what passes for air in Los Angeles nowadays. There was still some of the day’s smog remaining, and Rook felt that it eddied around in his brain. There was one flaw in his extrapolation of the Charteris murder, but he couldn’t put his finger on it.
“Well, it’s me for bed,” Agnews said. “We both got shortchanged on sleep last night, so you’d better turn in too.”
“We Never Sleep’ was the motto that put the Pinkertons where they are today,” Rook said doggedly. “I’m not hitting the sack until I’ve talked with our client again.”
“All the way out to Brentwood? Well, tell Deirdre to keep her chin up.”
“I’d like to tell her to keep her lovely mouth shut—at least when talking over the phone, which she seems unable to leave alone. Oh—I’ll need money too.”
Agnews peeled off a hundred in twenties, not happily. “Okay, but go easy, Howie. I may have to take legal action on Deirdre’s behalf before I can get any money out of the estate, which isn’t even in probate yet.” The usually effervescent little attorney sounded out of sorts, and Rook decided this was no time to broach the subject of the repairs on the Dibbles’ car.
“Tomorrow is another day,” he said with inarguable logic.
“Tomorrow will be nothing but grief, Howie. A trial lawyer’s lot is not always a happy one. Sometimes I wish I’d stayed in the Public Defender’s office.”
“Sometimes I wish I’d stayed in bed, dreaming of Tigran Petrosian. But such is life. ’Night, Hal.” Rook pocketed his expense money, sought his Plymouth, and drove off.
As he headed westward his thoughts were occupied with the questions he planned to ask Deirdre. He felt the cool night air whistling about his ears and neck as he got onto the freeway and picked up speed. Well, anyway, he thought, she was going to see him for once with a haircut. Not that she had probably ever looked at him anyway, not really.
Why was he engaged in this particular wild-goose chase anyway, when he could have been safe at home among his clippings and his books? He certainly wasn’t doing it for his fifty dollars a day and expenses. Part of it, of course, was Deirdre, a woman born to receive homage. Part of it was the enigma itself, the puzzle to be resolved.
Perhaps it was the attraction of the unanswered question that drew him to the Saturday Review every week, where he would tackle the double-crostic with a fountain pen—no erasures, no reference books—just for the solitary satisfaction of seeing the buried quotation come to life, appearing syllable by syllable, word by word, phrase by phrase, until suddenly the whole thing made sense. But the greater puzzle which occupied him now had seemingly meaningless references which resisted study, hunches, any possible extrasensory perception, or even pure guesswork.
He would have to spend another hour tonight delving into his files, for it was his firm belief that there was nothing really new under the sun and that sooner or later everything got into the newspapers. Somewhere, sometime, a man had died as John Charteris had died, or for the same reasons, or with some attendant circumstance that fitted—
For the hundredth or the thousandth time Howie Rook said to himself that someday he must work out a useful filing system for his clippings. His files weren’t really much better organized than those of the late Mr. Sherlock Holmes, who was reported to have filed his notes on Victor Lynch the Forger, and the Voyage of the Gloria Scott, under “V”!
Such were his random thoughts as he turned north off Sunset on Kenter, then headed up the aptly named Tigertail. It wasn’t too late in the evening for lights to be burning in most of the big houses along the way. It was from a window—no, from the garage—of one of them that somebody claimed to have seen Deirdre, in her little red MG, driving hastily home just before one on the night of the murder. But unless the top of the sports car was down, the witness could hardly swear that it was Deirdre. Perhaps Agnews could shake him up in cross-examination. And if—as both McDowd and the D.A.’s office claimed—Deirdre had committed a calculated and brutal murder almost an hour before, why had it taken her so long to get home? If she’d really been guilty she could have made it in plenty of time to have the car put away and be back right beside the phone when the police called. Wilt Mays, to make his case stick, would have to account for that gap.
Maybe they could make a good case of putting her into her own car—but still, if it came to trial they’d have to put her into the station wagon. That would be an essential line in their case. There were policemen—and District Attorney’s men too—who would not stop short of seeing that one or two of Deirdre’s long black hairs were “discovered” in the old hat Dibble had left in the station wagon. Once in a while investigating officers who were sure they had the right person would help the facts out a little. But probably not Wilt Mays, and certainly not McDowd.
They really at the moment had nothing but a “who else?” case against Deirdre. And it was up to him to answer that, somehow. It was cooler up the canyon, with little wisps of fog beginning to form. Traffic was fairly heavy; he was again and again half blinded by headlights coming down the hill, all going faster than the posted speed limit.
H
e drove at his usual sedate pace up to the Charteris house—and then went right on past. Because there was a sleek gray Bentley in the driveway! And there had been no chauffeur sitting at the wheel, either—so Mr. Harry Holtz could drive a car, at least for a social call. Rook was now of two minds. He could go back and hammer on the Cupid door knocker, barging in upon the tête-à-tête—or he could wait.
Perhaps waiting would be better. There was no sign of any surveillance car tonight, which surprised him a little. Of course, Tigertail Road was a dead-end street, never having been continued all the way through to Mulholland Drive at the top of the mountains. Mays could simply have a man watching the lower end, if all he was worried about was the possibility of Deirdre trying to make a break for it. Rook turned around in a convenient driveway and then came back and parked perhaps a hundred yards above the Charteris place, almost where the stakeout car had been only last night. He had a good view of the Charteris front door and lawn, where the porch light was lit, and he had his briar pipe and a pouch of tobacco (a blend of Mixture 79 and pure Burley) and he was tired enough to appreciate just sitting for a while.
The trouble with that was he found himself dropping off to sleep. Maybe the fabled Pinkertons never slept, but they also worked in sensible eight-hour shifts. He had been on this job for nearly twenty-four hours, with only a short snooze in the bathtub. As a last resort he turned on his car radio to the all-news station XTRA, and for a while listened to the reports of costly and Pyrrhic victories in Vietnam, more floods in Las Vegas, more trips by Mayor Yorty, and so forth. Then finally came: “News flash! Surprising developments in the investigation into the death of John Charteris, Brentwood socialite and sportsman, were promised by Assistant District Attorney Wilton Mays in an interview given out to press and radio late this afternoon. ‘It was premeditated murder,’ said Mays. ‘Every resource of this office and of the police is being used to bring home this murder to the right person or persons …’ ”
“Persons?” echoed Howie Rook, coming wide awake. And then he saw the front door of the Charteris house open wide, and he hastily switched off the radio. Harry Holtz and Deirdre came out upon the step. If they spoke, Rook was much too far away to hear anything, or even to try lip reading. But they stood closely together for a moment, the tall, dark girl embraced the man briefly or he embraced her, and then she went back inside and closed the door.
Holtz stood there for a moment, looking at the night and the fog, which was thickening now. Then he took a cigar case from his jacket pocket, withdrew a panatella, and lighted it. He climbed into his Bentley, lights flashed on and motor purred, and the car started moving. In the normal course of events he would have swung out of the driveway and headed back toward the city—but he didn’t, he wasn’t! He was driving up this way!
Rook had no intentions of being caught flat-footed, and instantly dropped to the floor of the Plymouth, perhaps a second or so before the lights of the other car would have limned him. He heard the Bentley pass without slowing down.
“Now why would he do that?” Rook asked himself, getting into the driver’s seat. There were several answers, none very good. “Anyway, it’s my turn now.” And it very nearly was his turn, in the most macabre sense of the word. He let the Plymouth out of gear, released the brake, and let the car coast down opposite the Charteris house, where now the porch light was dark. Why he didn’t turn into the driveway he never quite knew. Perhaps it was because he wanted neither Deirdre nor her precious sister to have advance warning of his arrival. He got out and started across the road toward the house.
He had been much too intent on watching the place, and in listening to the radio, and in just keeping awake, to think of looking up the road behind him at any time. The fog was thick, the visibility poor. And he was almost halfway across the street when a blinding glare of headlights exploded out of nowhere, from somewhere up the slope. There was the sound of a roaring motor—
Perhaps sometimes the mental processes of Howie Rook were apt to be on the deliberate side, but his physical reflexes were considerably above the average. He wasted no time in looking, he did not cry out with astonishment or rage; he turned and dove out of the path of those lights. He caromed heavily off the front fender of his own Plymouth and came to rest in the gutter. There he lay, breathless and half stunned, for a moment. He had felt the wind of the car’s passing, he had heard the dark invisible wings overhead …
The taillight of the car had disappeared around the lower bend before he could collect himself. He rose to his feet, surprised to discover that he was seemingly all in one piece. He brushed off dirt and rubble and thorns—his jacket was torn, one knee of his slacks was ripped. “There went one of my nine lives,” he said wryly.
How he wished he had got a glimpse of the car! It could have been the Bentley. But for that matter it could have been anything on wheels—even the Dibbles’ station wagon, he had to admit. If he had turned to look, that look would no doubt have been his last.
And he had been wearing a dark jacket and darker slacks, in spite of what he had said to Hal about the proper attire for pedestrians at night. In the fog, the driver might not have seen him at all, except as a shadow that blended into the night. After looking carefully in both directions, Howie Rook started across the street again. On the way he trod on something—the fragments of his briar pipe. Then and not until then did Rook speak his mind, in a few appropriate words.
IX
“WHO IS IT?” CALLED Deirdre Charteris through the closed front door, with a caution of which Rook approved. Only after she had recognized his voice did she open up, looking somewhat surprised. She was wearing a black bed jacket over cerise pajamas, and over her hair a white scarf in a sort of turban effect. “I was just going to bed—” she started to say. Then, as he limped forward into the light, “What on earth! Howie, you’re bleeding!”
“I just made a flying tackle off a cement curb,” he explained. “No harm done, except maybe to my dignity.” But womanlike she insisted on wiping off his face and ministering to him with iodine and Band-Aids.
“Mary is better at first aid than I am,” she apologized. “But she’s gone to bed.” Well, that was something to be grateful for. Though he did have one question that he wanted to ask Mary Patch, when he had a chance. “But what ever happened?” Deirdre was saying. “Your clothes! … did you trip over something in the dark?”
“You could say that, yes. I very nearly tripped over a car that was coming down the hill at seventy or better.” He gingerly tested his muscles, deciding that he’d be a bit stiff tomorrow.
“That’s the way a lot of idiots drive on Tigertail, as if it were a speedway or something! It’s supposed to be a thirty-five-mile zone, but—” She broke off as she saw the expression on his face.
“That might have been all it was. Poor visibility tonight, and perhaps the driver didn’t even see me jaywalking. My first thought was that it might have been an unfriendly gesture by a certain friend of yours who just left here, and who for some unknown reason drove away up the canyon, where he’d only have to turn around and come back anyway—”
Her face changed. “Howie, you mean you were spying on us?”
“If that’s the word for it. I saw Holtz’s Bentley parked here, and decided not to interrupt anything.”
“Well, is there anything wrong with an old friend dropping by with sympathy and flowers?” She waved at a vase filled with fresh tea roses which stood on the coffee table nearby. “Nothing at all romantic, I assure you. Harry is a dedicated celibate. Better women than I have tried and failed to crack the ice.”
“But none as lovely.”
She wasn’t having any compliments tonight. “I suppose you’d like a drink?” When he refused with thanks she made herself a highball, evidently not her first of the evening. Then she curled up in a chair, at some distance, with an air of patient resignation.
“I won’t keep you long,” he said. “Tried to phone you earlier, but your line was always busy. Just a
couple of more questions—”
“If it’s about that damned photo, I told you!”
“Skip it. You may even have been telling the truth. Anyway, it doesn’t matter as much as I thought, because everyone who knew you seems to have seen Exhibit A. There’s Holtz, and Max Linsky, and Danny Ruggles …” He watched her closely as he spoke the last name, but her expression did not change.
“Yes,” said Deirdre coldly. “You had to go and find out, didn’t you? About Danny and me.”
“With some unexpected help from Tony the Pinch, yes. It wasn’t the sort of a secret that can be kept, not in Hollywood.”
“It wasn’t my secret! I just didn’t want Danny’s name dragged into it, since he couldn’t give me an alibi anyway and because it wasn’t fair to have his wife know about it. I know how I’d feel in her shoes!” Deirdre sipped her drink. “You even went out to Danny’s place and gave him a bad time!”
“I was only trying to see if I couldn’t establish some sort of alibi for you! So—he phoned you about my visit, did he?”
“Yes—”
“And Harry Holtz phoned you this afternoon.”
“How did you know that?” There were storm clouds in her face.
“We have our methods.” Rook was not anxious to admit he had been listening at keyholes. “Deirdre, I thought you had specific instructions from Hal Agnews not to answer the phone unless it rang in a special way—”
“Well, he may be my attorney but he’s not my duenna! And I’m not going to be shut up in a convent.”
“Perhaps Hal didn’t explain clearly enough. He didn’t want you to talk to reporters—”
“I just pretend to be Maria unless it’s someone I know. I can imitate her accent perfectly!”
Rook Takes Knight (The Howie Rook Mysteries) Page 11