Mankiller (The Lt. Hastings Mysteries)

by Collin Wilcox

  “How’d they get in?”

  “I stole Sally’s key from her purse.”

  “How about fingerprints on the rest of them—the other suspects? Did the lab crews have any trouble getting them?”

  Friedman shook his head. “No sweat. Everyone cooperated, to a man. And, in fact, to a woman. I decided, what the hell, I’d get Pam Cornelison’s prints, too.”

  “What about David Behr? Did he object?”

  “Apparently not. Or, if he did, I didn’t hear about it. The only one that was a little pushed out of shape, I understand, was Justin. He seems to think he’s one of us—not them.”

  Remembering my freewheeling conversations with Justin, I nodded ruefully. “I know what you mean.”

  “Come on.” Friedman opened his door. “Let’s see what she says.”

  Cass Dangerfield had shown us into a spacious living room, elegantly furnished with an eclectic collection of antiques, modern paintings, Oriental rugs and a museum-size floor-to-ceiling glass case displaying primitive Mayan sculpture and artifacts.

  Wearing blue jeans and a white silk blouse, she sat in the center of a long tufted velvet sofa. Her arms were folded across her torso, accenting excitingly shaped breasts beneath the blouse. Her dark eyes were inscrutable as she stared at Friedman. Her low-pitched voice was tightly controlled as she said, “Do I understand that someone deliberately tampered with my husband’s airplane?”

  Friedman nodded. “That’s right, Ms. Dangerfield.” He spoke easily; his manner was almost casual. But I knew that, covertly, his poker-player eyes were assessing everything she said, every movement she made.

  “But why? Why would they do it?”

  “So he’d crash, probably,” Friedman answered quietly. “So he’d die.”

  For a long, impassive moment she stared at him. Then, in the same low, tight voice, she said, “Do you know who did it?”

  As I looked at Friedman I realized that I was holding my breath. Would he come at her head on? Or would he try to circle around behind her?

  After a carefully calculated beat had passed, he said, “We have some leads. But, so far, there’s nothing conclusive. We’re still trying to piece it all together. When we know why the airplane was sabotaged, though, we’ll probably have a pretty good idea who did it. Which is why we’re here. We’re—”

  “Wait,” she said, raising a peremptory hand. “I want to get this straight.” As if she were interrogating Friedman, she looked at him narrowly for a moment before she said, “Are you saying that my husband was murdered? Deliberately murdered?”

  “I’m saying that the accident that killed him was the result of deliberate sabotage,” Friedman answered, still speaking in a slow, measured voice. “There’s no question about that. Absolutely none. The only question is, what was the saboteur’s intent?”

  “But the accident was investigated by the FAA. They said the cause was probably engine failure.”

  “That’s right. It was. But what they didn’t know at the time—what they couldn’t possibly have known until they examined the wreckage part by part—was that the engine failed because someone put sugar in the gas.”

  “But was it deliberate murder? Or was it vandalism?” This time, her question wasn’t asked forcefully, demanding an answer. Instead, she spoke reflectively, musingly. Her eyes had strayed to the huge glass case, and the Mayan artifacts inside it.

  “That,” I said, “is the question. It could be either one—either murder, or a malicious prank. As Lieutenant Friedman said, it depends on the intent—on the perpetrator’s motive for doing what he did.”

  She nodded slowly. She was obviously making an effort at self-control—and succeeding. But she couldn’t conceal the effects of the effort. The muscles of her neck and jaw were drawn painfully taut. Her hands were knuckle-white as she clasped her folded arms at the elbows. Her dark eyes, still fixed on the glass display case, smoldered with suppressed emotion.

  What was the emotion? Anger? Fear? Something else?

  “The answer to the question,” Friedman said, “probably depends on how much the perpetrator knows about the procedures pilots go through before they take an airplane up. And secondly, it also depends on how much the suspect knows about your husband’s flying habits.”

  While he’d been speaking, her eyes had returned from the glass case and were now fixed fiercely on Friedman. Her moments of reflection had passed. Typically, she returned to the attack. Gesturing impatiently, she said sharply, “Never mind the preliminaries, Lieutenant. Get to the point, please.”

  The response amused Friedman—and obviously pleased him. Friedman liked nothing better than a battle of wits.

  Mockingly deferential, Friedman inclined his head to her. Then, speaking in a flat, businesslike voice, he said, “How much do you know about flying, Ms. Dangerfield?”

  “Next to nothing,” she answered brusquely. “I dislike flying in small planes. And, especially, I disliked flying with Bernard.”

  Friedman smiled ruefully. “That I can understand.” Then, in the same flat, impersonal voice, he said, “Before a pilot takes off, he preflights his airplane. The purpose of the pre-flight inspection is to guard against exactly the kind of accident that killed your husband. Because, in addition to making sure everything is attached, and checking the oil, and the antennas, et cetera, the pilot also uses a small plastic cylinder to drain a little gas from the airplane’s tanks. Primarily, he’s checking for water that could’ve leaked into the tanks past the filler cap, or else formed by condensation. But, also, he’s checking for contaminants—sugar, for instance.” He paused while he watched her. Then: “To be honest, I don’t know whether sugar could actually be detected in the gas. Maybe it couldn’t, especially at night. The point is, though, that perhaps the murderer didn’t know either. But if he—or she—knew that your husband’s preflight inspections were pretty sketchy, then he—or she—probably figured the odds were all the better that the sugar wouldn’t be spotted.”

  For a moment Friedman and I sat in silence, watching Cass Dangerfield’s eyes narrow, and her mouth tighten as she considered the possibilities. Then, speaking quietly, I said, “If the suspect knew of your husband’s habits, and if he knew that, specifically, he was tampering with Mr. Carlton’s plane, then he probably had murder in mind. Not vandalism.”

  “Murder.” She said it softly, almost pensively. Was she shocked at the thought? Or was she intrigued? I watched her abstracted gaze wander again toward the Mayan statuary. Now the tip of her tongue touched her upper lip. It was a curiously sensual reaction, subtly suggesting that she found the thought of murder titillating. As I watched her, I remembered how she’d fingered the jeweled dagger yesterday, talking to me. Somehow that mannerism, too, had seemed subtly sensual.

  Finally she blinked, collecting herself as she sat up straighter. In a crisp voice that matched Friedman’s, she said, “Whoever did it must’ve known something about aviation.”

  Friedman shook his head. “Not really. Every high-school kid knows that sugar ruins an engine—in minutes, sometimes. Of course, the murderer couldn’t’ve known that the engine failure would happen on takeoff, which is the worst time for it to happen. But he could be sure that the engine would fail, probably in flight.”

  “First Bernard,” she said. “Then Rebecca.”

  “Exactly.” Friedman let the single word settle silently for a moment before he said, “Lieutenant Hastings and I were saying the same thing, as a matter of fact.”

  I let the silence lengthen before I said, “Does the name Sally Grant mean anything to you, Ms. Dangerfield?”

  She’d been staring hard at Friedman, as if she were trying to divine what he was thinking. But, when she heard my question, I saw her wince. During the entire interrogation, it was the first flash of spontaneous emotion she’d revealed.

  “What’s Sally Grant got to do with it?”

  Friedman and I exchanged a quick, meaningful look. Murder investigations are mostly a matter of est
ablishing connections between the victim and those he left behind—the guilty and the innocent.

  And Cass Dangerfield’s reaction clearly revealed that, yes, she knew the woman who had probably planned Rebecca Carlton’s murder.

  “You know Sally Grant,” I said. It was a statement, not a question.

  “Yes,” she answered grimly. “Yes, I know Sally Grant—by reputation, anyhow.” Her mouth was fixed in a harsh, uncompromising line. Her eyes were hard and bright, shining venomously.

  I tried not to let her see my disappointment. Did she mean that all she knew about Sally Grant was what she read in the newspapers?

  Taking a gambler’s risk, Friedman said, “Your husband knew her.” The statement was perfectly pitched, deftly understated—implying that, yes, we knew all about Bernard Carlton’s connection with Sally Grant.

  She waited until she was sure her emotions were under control, and then, speaking with malicious precision, said, “Sally Grant and Bernard went way back. They even predated Bernard’s first marriage.”

  “They were lovers,” I said.

  Silently, she nodded.

  “And he kept up their relationship, even while he was married. Is that it?” As I asked the question, my mind was leaping ahead, constructing a plausible scenario: For years, during both his marriages, Bernard Carlton and Sally Grant had continued their love affair—accounting for the anger that I saw burning so fiercely in Cass Dangerfield’s eyes.

  But she was shaking her head, denying it.

  “No,” she answered. “Or, rather, yes and no. He and Sally continued to see each other during most of Bernard’s first marriage. He had—” She hesitated, searching for the right word. “He had a gargantuan sexual appetite. One woman was never enough for Bernard. Never. And his first wife understood that, just as I did. I gather that they had the usual quid pro quo. He could do anything he wanted on the side, just as long as he didn’t talk about it. But then, later in his first marriage, I gather that Bernard developed—” She hesitated, searching for the word. “He developed bizarre tastes.”

  “Involving Sally Grant, you mean?”

  “Involving Sally Grant and her girls,” she answered.

  “Do you mean he had a customer-proprietor relationship with her?” Friedman asked.

  “No,” she answered calmly, “it wasn’t quite that simple, Lieutenant. At first—when they first knew each other—that might have been it. But Sally was always more than a prostitute to Bernard—and he was always more than a customer to her. So, when he had his first best seller—which, as it happens, coincided with a two-million-dollar inheritance—he set Sally up on a grand scale. It was one of his numerous indulgences—all of which he enjoyed in larger-than-life fashion.” As she said it, she allowed contempt to register in her face and her voice. But, quickly, she made her face a mask again as she went on:

  “Bernard saw himself as an epicurean of sex. He never admitted it, but I’m positive that he got some kind of very kinky satisfaction from setting up his own private whorehouse. I suppose, really, it’s every man’s fantasy. Most men, of course, would never gratify it—even if they could afford to. But Bernard was different. He had his art as an excuse, you see. He felt that he had to experience everything—and anything.”

  “Were Bernard and Sally partners when he died?” I asked.

  She smiled: a cruel, mirthless twisting of her lips. “Hardly. Just about the time his first marriage was ending, he and Sally quarreled. I never knew why—and I never asked. But it probably involved another man—another business partner, so-called. About that time, you see, Bernard was becoming famous. Very rich, and very famous. And the more famous he became, the more demands he made, on everyone. Including Sally, I’m sure. So if he discovered that she had anyone else beside himself, he’d’ve been furious.”

  Friedman smiled. “Your husband wasn’t kinky, Ms. Dangerfield. He was just spoiled—a middle-aged spoiled child.”

  Cass Dangerfield didn’t return the smile. Plainly, she wasn’t amused.

  “What happened between Sally and Bernard?” I asked.

  “I gather that Sally’s business partner took her for everything she had—and then some,” she answered, plainly pleased at the thought. By some accounts, the man disappeared with a half million dollars—cash.”

  “So what did Sally do?” Friedman asked. “Try to patch things up with Bernard?”

  “No. She tried to blackmail him.”

  “How could she blackmail him?” Friedman asked. “I mean, it doesn’t sound like your husband was very meticulous about his image.”

  Now her smile was grim. “You’re right, Lieutenant. He liked the role he’d created for himself. The more excesses the public thought he indulged, the better he liked it. However, Sally was always farsighted, apparently. And she was prudent enough to take some signed checks from Bernard and endorse them over to some of the city fathers, for bribe money. She was also smart enough to photostat the checks—both sides, including the endorsement, and the official’s signature. So, in the vernacular, she had Bernard by the balls. She could probably have sent him to jail. She would’ve been jailed herself, of course, but she didn’t care—or, at least, so she said.”

  “Did he actually pay her blackmail?” I asked.

  “I don’t know,” she answered. “He never told me. And I never asked.”

  As she’d been speaking, calmly chronicling her husband’s depravity, I’d mentally constructed another scenario. Sally had so hated Bernard that she’d killed him—and then had his daughter killed.

  But who had killed Sally? And why?

  “I take it,” Friedman was saying, “that you never actually met Sally Grant face to face. Is that right?”

  The question amused her. “That’s right, Lieutenant. “That’s absolutely right.”

  “Do you think it’s possible that Sally Grant could have killed Bernard and Rebecca?” I asked.

  She shrugged. Her gaze was cool and remote as she looked at me. Whatever had fired the secret fury that leaped in her eyes a few minutes before, it was apparently now forgotten—or else suppressed.

  “That’s your department, Lieutenant,” she answered. “I wouldn’t have the faintest idea what she’d do.” As she spoke, she looked pointedly at her watch. Her desire to end the interview coincided with ours, and the three of us began the ritual shifting in our seats, preparing to rise.

  But one question remained—and Friedman asked it: “You don’t have any idea who could have killed your husband, then.”

  She shook her head. “Sorry.”

  “Who would have profited by his death?” I asked quietly. “Besides you and your son, that is.”

  Instead of flaring up, as I’d expected, she looked at me with a superciliously amused smile. “Is that why you’re here, Lieutenant?” she asked. “Did you come to arrest me for Bernard’s murder? Is that it?” Plainly, the idea amused her—even titillated her, perhaps.

  Friedman answered for me. “We have to cover all the bases, Ms. Dangerfield,” he said. “Which reminds me—” He waited until he had her attention before he said, “Would you mind telling us where you were on the night before your husband died? That would be a Tuesday. Between ten o’clock, say, and midnight.”

  The supercilious smile widened playfully as she studied him. “You’re serious, aren’t you?” she said finally. “You’re actually serious.”

  “I’m serious about asking the question,” Friedman answered steadily. “But that’s not to say that I’m serious about accusing you of your husband’s murder.”

  Rising to her feet, she stood silently for a moment, looking down at Friedman with all the poise of an accomplished actress gathering herself before delivering her curtain line.

  “I was with my lover, Lieutenant. We were in his apartment, on Telegraph Hill. His name is Donald Fay, and he’s in the book. I’m sure he’ll be happy to vouch for me.”

  Typically, Friedman’s aplomb was equal to the challenge. Hoisting his two h
undred forty pounds to his feet, he smiled at her, thanked her, and moved toward the door. It wasn’t until he had his hand on the knob that he turned again to face her, casually asking, “Were you driving your car that night? Or Mr. Fay’s car?”

  “Neither,” she answered. “Parking is terrible on Telegraph Hill. I took a cab.” Her smile widened. “It was a Yellow cab, Lieutenant,” she said silkily. “And, yes, I phoned for it—probably about five o’clock, I’d think.”

  Always able to appreciate a good performance, even if he was its victim, Friedman inclined his head politely, and opened the door.

  Nineteen

  “WHY’D WE COME HERE?” I complained, pointing to the menu. “There isn’t even a sandwich for less than four dollars.”

  Airily, Friedman waved away my objections. “The owner’s a friend of mine. I sign the checks like a big shot. And, about half the time, I never get a bill. So figure two bucks, not four.”

  “Wait a minute. Are you going to charge me, whether or not you get a bill?”

  “Don’t worry about it. Trust me.” He swept the table with a broad, mock-Jewish gesture. “Eat. Enjoy. Don’t forget, it’s Sunday, and we’re working. We owe ourselves a treat. Even if he mails the bill.”

  Playing the percentages, I decided to order a six-dollar lunch, and hope for the best. After the smiling waitress had gone, I said, “One of us should phone in. It’s been two hours, at least.”

  “Don’t worry.” He patted his bulging waistline. “I brought my pager. Even if you didn’t.”

  “Mine’s being repaired. I told you.”

  He shrugged. “I forgot.”

  “What now?” I asked.

  He raised his thick eyebrows in an expression of pensive reflection, at the same time chewing thoughtfully at his lower lip. Finally he said, “Do you remember, years ago, when some senator suggested that the solution to the Vietnam war was to simply declare the war won, and then get the hell out?”

  “How do you propose to do that?”

  “Easy. We announce that Sally Grant murdered both of them, out of revenge. Presto, we’re heroes. Walter Cronkite, here we come.”