Murder on Their Minds

by George Harmon Coxe

  The reply he got came from the phone-answering service and informed him that Kirby was out but expected back within a half hour. Murdock left his name and number and then went into the bedroom to get the prints from between the mattress and springs. He was still considering them when Kirby called back.

  “I’ve got a lead, Frank,” Murdock said. “How busy are you going to be this afternoon?”

  “Not very,” Kirby said. “I’ve got a payroll delivery but I should be free by four.… Say, how about that guy Denham? I read in the paper that he got his.”

  “I’ll tell you what I know when I see you. Do you want to stop by my office or shall I pick you up at yours?”

  “Why don’t you come by here,” Kirby said. “I’ll be waiting out front at four.…”

  It was a quarter after three when Murdock reached the Courier and by then he knew what he wanted to do. He had brought the prints with him—rolled up and held in place with an elastic—and he felt it was time to show Lieutenant Bacon what he had. What happened then would depend on Bacon’s reaction, his mood, and Murdock’s ability to sell an idea that would certainly be resisted.

  In preparation for the encounter, he telephoned police headquarters to make sure Bacon would be in his office, and then he went upstairs to the city room and asked to borrow a piece of equipment that was occasionally used on special assignments—a midget tape-recorder that weighed about three pounds and was no larger than the extended palm of his hand. This came equipped with a small but highly sensitive microphone and a cartridge with sufficient tape to record for an hour, and when he had it set the way he wanted it he put it in his equipment case, strapping the top of this loosely so he could slide his hand inside and set the machine in motion without opening the case.

  Lieutenant Bacon was shuffling papers on his desk when Murdock entered his office at three thirty. His greeting was no more than a grunt, his attitude suggesting that he was a very busy man who would tolerate no nonsense. He asked what Murdock wanted and Murdock countered with a question of his own.

  “Are you still holding Sally Fisher as a guest of the city?”

  “Yep,” Bacon said. “She’s livin’ in luxury. At least for today. With her, we’re playing it safe.”

  “Did she remember anything she typed?”

  “Quite a few things.”

  Bacon began to reshuffle his papers, his manner suggesting that there was nothing more to be said on the subject.

  “Did any of it help?” Murdock said, persisting.

  “Sure it helped.”

  Murdock waited for five seconds. When there was no amplification he changed the subject.

  “What did you find out about Denham—or Danton?”

  “Plenty,” Bacon said. “We got a quick make from Washington. He’s been in trouble before,” he said. “Got a record in Los Angeles and a bad discharge from the Army. Nothing to show he ever was an actor. That Alderson dame—the blonde one—”

  “Rita.”

  “—must’ve known all that.”

  “She knows a lot more,” Murdock said. “That’s why I came here. I’d like to make a little deal with you.”

  “No deal,” Bacon said. “Not even a little one.”

  “Okay.”

  Murdock stood up. He had no intention of leaving but he had known Bacon a long time and he had a working knowledge of how the lieutenant’s mind functioned. He had expected this reaction and so, pretending that he had no intention of arguing the point, he tapped his rolled-up prints against his calf. Certain now of Bacon’s attention, he tucked the roll under one arm and strolled toward the door.

  “Just thought I’d ask,” he said indifferently.

  Bacon stopped him in the doorway.

  “Wait a minute!” he said, his gray gaze suspicious. “What’ve you got there?”

  “What do you care?”

  “If it’s got anything to do with murder I care plenty.”

  “Who said it had.”

  “Don’t get smart with me,” Bacon said. “You don’t come in here wanting a deal without having something to make a deal with.”

  Murdock shrugged and moved back with an outward display of reluctance. He sat down and slipped the elastic from the prints. He took his time rolling them the other way to straighten them out, seeing Bacon’s impatience mount and hearing him say: “Come on, come on.” When he offered the prints he got ready for Bacon’s blast and presently it came.

  Bacon glanced at the top print, stared, then fanned the rest of them out. Still busy with his inspection he said, more exasperated than angry:

  “Why, God damn you, Murdock! You had these all the time.”

  “No.”

  “Then how’d you get ’em? Somebody slip them under your door?”

  “Do you want to know or would you rather hear yourself talk?” Murdock said, and then he was explaining what had happened to the negatives after he had made them. He spoke of Walt Carey and his failure to put the negatives in Murdock’s desk that first afternoon. He said that Brady had never seen them because they had not been in the desk when he called for them.

  “I didn’t get them until last night,” he said. “It was so late when I finished making prints I went to bed—you’d already gone home then—and this morning I hardly had a chance to look at them when you called me and told me about Denham.”

  “Okay, okay,” Bacon said, still more interested in the new-found evidence than in Murdock’s explanation. “These check out on Denham-Danton. They give us possible motives for Arthur Enders and Gloria Alderson and the son, Jerry. But it’s that dame, Rita, that we’ll talk to first.”

  “When you find her.”

  “Don’t worry, we will.”

  “Give me a half hour with her first and I’ll tell you where she is now.”

  “You’ll tell me anyway,” Bacon said bristling.

  Murdock looked back at him, his dark gaze steady. “Will I?” he said quietly.

  Bacon swung his chair round, a flush working on his thin face. “What the hell’s the matter with you?” he shouted. “We’ve got men out now. It’s just a question of time—maybe fifteen minutes, maybe an hour. But you want to horn in first, is that it? So the Courier can get a beat?”

  He had other things to say, some of them unpleasant, and Murdock sat there, his temper in hand because he understood how it was with Bacon. Bacon was a cop and he had to play according to the rule book; he had to argue against any abrogation of such rules and he did so now until he ran out of words.

  “I didn’t have to come here,” Murdock said, still quiet. “I didn’t have to give you those prints—at least not now. I didn’t have to tell you I knew where Rita Alderson was, did I? If I had what it takes to wrap this up I’d put it in your lap and you know it. You know why, too. Because Tom Brady was a friend of mine; a damn sight better friend of mine than he was of yours. Right now I’m not even working for the Courier, at least not officially, and the only reason I’ve been sticking my neck out is because I wanted to help.”

  The quiet sincerity of Murdock’s words took the edge off Bacon’s asperity and counteracted his complaints. For a brief moment he had a sheepish air but he was not ready to admit that he was wrong.

  “You never tried to play cop with me before,” he said.

  “I’m not trying to now.”

  “But you want to get to Rita Alderson before we do.”

  “I could be there now, couldn’t I?”

  “Yeah, I guess you could at that,” Bacon said, and sighed loudly. “So why did you come here? I still don’t get it.”

  “I think I can get more out of her than you can. You bring her down here and maybe she’ll talk and maybe she won’t. She’ll talk to me because I know her.” He hesitated, remembering the reports but knowing that nothing could be gained by mentioning them. “Give me a chance and then you can walk in and take over.”

  “Talking to you alone won’t do much good. She can deny anything she tells you unless you’ve got a w
itness.”

  “I’ll have one.”

  “Who?”

  “Frank Kirby. I’m picking him up at four.”

  “You’ve got it all figured out, hunh?” Bacon said sardonically.

  “No,” Murdock said. “I’m playing this one by ear and hoping.”

  “Okay,” Bacon said resignedly. “But there’s no deal. Officially I get a tip on where the dame is and I go there at four thirty to pick her up for questioning, right?”

  “Right.”

  “Where is she?”

  “At the Harvey House,” Murdock said, and mentioned the room number.

  Bacon still looked doubtful, but having committed himself he glanced at his watch and said Murdock had better get going.

  “Just play it cozy, huh?” he said. “You can do your talking but let me be the cop.”

  Murdock said he intended to do just that but as he rode down in the elevator he knew there was one more thing to be done. Because he did not want to walk in on Rita Alderson without giving her some warning and a chance to prepare herself, he stopped on the main floor to telephone her. When he had his connection, he said what he had to say, though this took longer than he had expected because he had to explain that he was not coming to see her just to be sociable.

  Frank Kirby was standing in the doorway of his office building when Murdock drove up five minutes later. He looked very natty in his pin-striped suit and gray hat, but when he slid in beside Murdock his gray-green eyes were attentive under the upward slanting brows.

  “What’s up?” he said. “Where’re we going?”

  “To have a talk with Rita Alderson.”

  “Ahh,” said Kirby. “That’s your lead, hunh? You think she ties in with the Denham job?”

  Murdock spoke of the prints he had given Bacon. He did not mention the reports but the things he said were based in part on what Tom Brady had written. He repeated the things Bacon had said about Denham. He said Denham’s real name was Benjamin Danton and a copy of a marriage license proved that he had married a girl named Ruth Colby.

  “Rita Carr was a stage name Ruth Colby took,” he said.

  “Do you know that or are you guessing?”

  “I know it.”

  “Then this half-brother business was a phony,” Kirby said. “The guy was actually Rita Alderson’s first husband.”

  “There may be more to it than that,” Murdock said. “Brady went to Mexico to follow up on Danton. Before that he checked in California and Nevada to see if a divorce had ever been granted to Danton or Ruth Colby. He couldn’t find any such record. He brought back a letter from an attorney in Mexico City. The attorney had made a search there and in Juarez, and the letter I photographed said that to the best of his knowledge no Mexican divorce had been granted either.”

  Kirby swore softly as the meaning of this statement became clear. “Then that could mean she was maybe never legally married to George Alderson.” He hesitated, watching Murdock now and his voice thoughtful.

  “How come you know so much about those photographs all of a sudden. I thought you couldn’t remember what was on those documents.”

  Murdock repeated his story of the negatives and how he had found them. He said he wanted to talk to Rita before the police did because he thought, with what he now knew, he could get the truth out of her.

  21

  THE Harvey House was a residential hotel that specialized in long-term tenants and did very little in the way of transient business. Eminently respectable, it was not the sort of establishment that would occur to anyone as a place to hide out, which may have explained why Bacon’s men had not yet located Rita Alderson.

  Her room was a corner one, spacious and high ceilinged, with a connecting door in one wall so that it could be used as part of a suite when necessary. The walls were thick, the construction sturdy, and the locks old fashioned so that a key had to be used on the inside in order to unlock the door. The click of that key answered Murdock’s knock, and when the knob turned he pushed forward, Kirby at his heels.

  He saw the look of surprise on the girl’s face when she saw Kirby, but Murdock moved quickly past her, eyes busy as they sized up the room, his camera in one hand and the other working on the case he had slung over his shoulder. He noticed the heavy double bed, the chest, the bureau, the one easy chair, the love seat which had been placed between the two windows. Holding the case slightly in front of him so that his back shielded his movements, he started the recording mechanism and withdrew the small microphone so that it extended two or three inches over the outside of the case. Then he put the case on the floor at the end of the love seat, turning it so the end with the microphone was toward the wall where it could not be seen by anyone in the room. He placed the camera beside it. When he straightened he was ready for Rita.

  She still wore the gabardine skirt, well wrinkled now and no longer neat, and the cashmere sweater. Her face looked drawn and paler than usual so that her cheekbones were accented and the dark-blue eyes seemed more shadowed and withdrawn. Now she could not keep them still and they darted from Murdock to Kirby and back again as Murdock picked up a newspaper that had been tossed down beside the easy chair. When he saw that it was an afternoon edition he knew she had read about Denham.

  “How’s your head?” he said.

  “My what?”

  “Your head. Last night when you came to my place you had a bruise on it.… Right about here,” he added, as he put his finger to a spot high on one side of his forehead.

  She was eyeing him warily now and Kirby’s gaze was narrowed and speculative.

  “She came to see you last night?” he said. “What time was that?”

  “Between one thirty and two,” Murdock said and explained how the girl had passed out on his divan. “All right to use the telephone?” he said to her, moving toward it and not waiting for a reply. “You’d better sit down, Rita,” he said. “This may take quite a while.”

  He watched her move over to the love seat and by then he had located the slip of paper on which he had written the number of the night barman at Freddie’s Bar. This time a man’s voice answered and Murdock identified himself. He said he was trying to check on a girl who had been there the night before.

  “A good-looking blonde,” he said, “in a camel’s-hair coat. She was drinking alone and was there right up to closing.”

  “What about her?” the man said.

  “I wondered if you remembered her.”

  “Sure.”

  “What time did she come in?”

  “Around eleven thirty.… No, it was before that. Maybe around eleven fifteen.”

  “Did she stay until closing?”

  “She sure did. We had to argue with her to get her out then.”

  Murdock thanked him and hung up. He went over and sat down beside the girl and Kirby took the easy chair.

  “I found the reports, Rita,” he said, and heard the small sucking sound as she drew in a quick breath. “I talked Harriett into letting me take a look at your room.… How come you kept them?”

  She did not make an immediate reply and he saw that her head was down, that her hands seemed braced on the cushion on either side of her hips. When she lifted her chin she had to toss her head to get the blonde hair out of her eyes.

  “I don’t know,” she said finally. “I didn’t know what to do. I was afraid to destroy them and afraid not to.”

  Murdock could understand this much, but because he had to feel his way along he was not quite sure what he should say next. Somehow the confidence that had been a vital part of his idea had suddenly dissipated and he began to wonder whether he had done the right thing by coming here.

  “I gave them to Harriett,” he said, “because she’s going to have to pay for them. But I read them first. I also have copies of the pictures I took of Brady’s documents. I can understand why you were so worried that first afternoon when you were waiting for me outside the paper.… That was quite a story you told me yesterday afternoon,�
�� he said. “About your childhood and career and marriage.”

  “It was true,” she said with sudden spirit.

  “Not all of it. You forgot to admit that your real name is Ruth Colby. Brady worked backwards on that one. Harriett was suspicious of Denham and Brady went out to California and started checking on a girl named Rita Carr who was a part-time actress. From friends of hers he found out what her right name was and he got a copy of your birth certificate. He found out you married a Benjamin Danton. There was no record of a divorce but you told George Alderson—”

  “I thought I was divorced,” she protested.

  “That’s easy enough to say now.”

  “It’s true. What I told you about my husband beating me and going to jail and all that.”

  “This was Benjamin Danton—Barry Denham?”

  “Yes. I told him I was going to get a divorce and he said I needn’t bother. He said he’d had enough too. He was going to Mexico and he’d get the divorce there and I could save my money. About a month after that I got a wire from him. I remember every word of it. ‘Divorce in the works,’ it said. ‘From now on you’re on your own.’ Why shouldn’t I believe that?” she demanded. “Wouldn’t you?”

  Murdock waited and she said: “I never saw him again until he came here. He’d been working in Mexico all that time and he got in some trouble and had to leave. He went to Los Angeles to look for me and he found out I’d gone to Ogunquit. When he got that far he discovered I was married. He came here and telephoned me. He said there never had been a divorce, that I was not George’s legal wife at all.”

  “George didn’t leave a will,” Murdock said. “Without one you stood to inherit everything. At least the hundred and fifty thousand his father left him; probably more.”

  Kirby, who had been listening to every word, cleared his throat, his voice blunt.

  “All Denham had to do was open his mouth and you wouldn’t get a dime,” he said to her. “Who thought up that phony business of the new name and the unemployed actor routine?”