Exploit of Death - Dell Shannon

by Dell Shannon

  "Alla va, " he said to himself. He turned the car and went back down the hill to the other house. It had been maintained fairly well. There was a wire fence around about half an acre of land. The realtors' name on the sign was Hawley and Calkins in San Fernando.

  "Oh, sure," said the salesman in that office. "It's an old lady owns it. Got too old to live alone. I don't suppose we'll sell it very easy, all the commercial growth is west and it's not out far enough for a weekend cabin. Sure I can tell you. Her name is Deeming. Harriet Deeming. It's an address in Van Nuys."

  It was an attractive beige stucco house on a good residential street, and the woman who opened the door looked in surprise at the badge. "Well, I can't imagine what the police want with Mother Deeming, but she's always pleased to talk to anyone. Come in." She took him into a pleasant living room and introduced him to a little old woman in a clean cotton housedress sitting in a rocking chair knitting, a cane propped at her side. She had white hair and bright brown eyes, sharp and intelligent on him. Mendoza sat down and asked, "When you lived in that house up on Indian Canyon Road, did you ever know Elias Dobbs?"

  "Now you do bring back some old times to me," she said interestedly. "Indeed we did."

  "What can you tell me about him and do you know where he lives now?"

  "Not exactly, no. My, how I did hate that man one time. But I've got past that now. I could tell you this and that about him." She didn't ask why he wanted to know. "He was a hard man, a regular miser. Frank and I bought that old place, well, paying on it, you know, in nineteen-thirty, we were both raised in the country and thought we could grow a lot of our own food there. Times were awful bad then and we had it pretty tough, Frank out of work and the baby coming. Dobbs lived up the road, and I always felt sorry for his family. There were three kids by the end of the war—a girl and two boys. We didn't know him so well then when we moved there, and when he offered to lend us that money, well, we didn't like to borrow but we had to—and goodness, he was around to collect the interest right on the dot till we managed to pay it back. How that man loved money—well, he got it. All he could use in the end, and I wonder what good it ever did him. One thing life's taught me, Mr. Mendoza, is that all you need is enough. You can't eat more than one meal at a time—and life goes so quick. Seems yesterday I was hoeing that garden and Tommy just a toddler, and here I am coming to the end and Tommy with grown-up kids of his own and their kids coming along, and he's got that good hardware business. We had it rough back there, but we made out. And when the war came along, Frank got that good job at the assembly plant and everything was better. But we went on living there because it was home then, and we got it paid off. I guess I was stubborn about it, I stayed there too long after Frank went, ten years back. Tommy and Faye at me to move in with them, but I like to be independent. It wasn't until I had that bad fall a few months back I saw it was only sensible. When we were first there, there wasn't a house around for quite a ways, real country. But then you know how the valley started to build up after the war—the freeway coming through and houses and businesses getting built all over. It's all just like one big city now—and that's where Dobbs got all his money, it seems he owned thousands of acres out there. He got left some and I guess he bought up a lot more when it was just wasteland at ten cents an acre or something. Right where the freeway came through and all around."

  A great flood of enlightenment hit Mendoza. "What did he do with the money, do you know?"

  "That was back in the early fifties," she said. "Thirty years ago. He started his own big real-estate company. He called it the Golden D. He went on living there awhile, that tumble-down old house. His wife was dead and the girl off somewhere, but about twenty years back he moved out. The boys, they were helping to run the business then. Goodness, they'll both be in the forties now, doesn't seem possible."

  "There was a letter for him about six months ago—"

  She looked at him over the top of her spectacles. "Oh, you know about that. Yes, it was funny. The mail carrier asked about the name, he'd never heard it—and I told him to send it to the business." So Juliette's letter, fatally, had got sent on.

  "That's all very interesting," he said.

  "People, they're mostly interesting," said Mrs. Deeming.

  He found the nearest public phone and looked up the address, and swore. It wasn't a realty company, which would be open on Sunday. It was the Golden D Management Corporation, with an address out on Sunset in Beverly Hills.

  * * *

  ON MONDAY MORNING he landed there with Hackett at nine o'clock. The office occupied three floors in a new high-rise building. The top floor contained the managers' offices. It was all expensively and lavishly furnished. They talked to a svelte receptionist with lacquered blond hair and Mendoza asked for Mr. Elias Dobbs. "Oh, the old gentleman isn't in the office regularly, sir. Mr. David Dobbs won't be in until this afternoon, but Mr. Robert Dobbs should be in this morning."

  "It's rather important that I see Mr. Elias Dobbs," said Mendoza. "Could you give me his address?"

  She shrugged, incurious. "He's in one of our condos in Santa Monica—Carlyle Terrace."

  In the car, Hackett said, "You took a shortcut, all right."

  "Just following my nose. And here," said Mendoza in satisfaction, "is the money. In spades. And I have a small hunch we've been maligning Grandfather. I think I see a glimmer at the end of the tunnel, Art.".

  The condominium was high up in another tall building on a quiet street, and the man who opened the door was about thirty-five, with a Scandinavian look to him, light hair and a round genial face. He said, "Oh, I'm sorry, sir. Mr. Dobbs is in the hospital, just since yesterday." He looked at the badge and gave them a curious stare.

  "We'd like to ask you some questions," said Mendoza. "What's your name? Do you live here‘?"

  "Brant. Bernard Brant." He lost a little of the punctilious manner. "Yes, I've been looking after the old gentleman for a couple of years, since he broke his hip. I've been a male nurse ten years, and I like the work fine, but this was the easiest job I ever had. He didn't really need nursing, just a little help. All there was to do was get his meals, drive him wherever he wanted, like that. He got back on his feet again after they put a pin in his hip, and he was sharp as a tack, mentally, you know. What's this all about?" He had stepped back to let them in. The living room was elegantly furnished with a big T.V. console in one corner.

  "About his granddaughter," said Mendoza. "The girl from France. Did you know about her?"

  "Oh, sure. Everybody did," said Brant. "Mr. Dobbs was excited about her coming. He liked getting letters from her. I really think it was the reason he just went downhill the last month, after he got the letter to say she couldn't come after all. It was a big disappointment to him. I think it sort of contributed to his having the stroke yesterday."

  "Oh," said Hackett. "She wrote to say she wasn't coming?"

  "Yes, and he took right against her when he got that letter. He'd been so interested in her, he had her picture beside his bed, he was always telling me how much she looked like her mother and she was just as smart, too. He was proud of her. He wanted to see her and show her off to people. And you know, I think that girl made a big. mistake not coming," said Brant reflectively. "Because he said to me more than a few times that Juliette would get a surprise when he died, he was going to make a new will and leave her a lot of money—make it up to her for how he'd treated her mother. One time when he was mad at his two sons he said, by God, he'd leave her the whole kit and caboodle."

  "That's interesting," said Hackett.

  "But when he got that letter, he turned right against her. She said that fellow she's engaged to wouldn't let her come, didn't want her leaving France—and she didn't send back the money Mr. Dobbs had sent her to get the plane ticket. He was mad about that." Mendoza laughed. "He said, like mother, like daughter, and he tore up her letters—he used to read them over—and her picture."

  "I see," said Mendoza. "Did his sons c
ome to visit him often?"

  Brant grinned. "From what I heard they had to. He was sharp as a tack like I say and he was still active in the business. He'd kept all the reins in his own hands like they say. Those two, they had to bring all the papers for him to sign. He knew everything that was going on at the office. Why in hell are the police interested in all this?"

  "You may be reading about it in the Times," said Mendoza.

  At the curb beside the Ferrari he said reverently, "But it's beautiful, Arturo. So simple and so beautiful. The old man getting sentimental in his old age, besotted about the pretty granddaughter—and his mind still sharp. The business still in his own hands. So there'd be no hope of getting him declared incompetent. There are a hell of a lot of bribable people in the world, but not many of them will be reputable psychiatrists. David and Robert Dobbs stand to inherit everything, and that business must be grossing millions. God knows what they own all over the country. And I haven't any doubt that if the old man said it to Brant he'd said it to them, leave her everything, maybe. They wouldn't remember much about the older sister who went to France. And here's this upstart of a girl going to rob them of everything they had—everything they'd sweated for. He can't have been an easy man to deal with. They'll have had to kowtow to him—yes, Father, no, Father. And the strange girl stepping in to take the whole kitty because she reminded him of her mother and wrote the friendly letters."

  He laughed sharply. "Just from the family feeling. Oh, by God, or course they had to do something about it. So there were two trips to Paris."

  "How do you make that out?"

  "The letter. The letter saying she couldn't come. Somebody had to fly over to mail the letter, for the Paris postmark. They'd have heard all about her letters. They knew about Goulart. They had that plan all ready a month before, by God. I wonder if they're both married. Some woman took out that library card. But that Social Security card—well, we'll have a look at them—see what shows."

  "And just the unlucky chance tripping them up," said Hackett.

  "Maybe not chance, Arturo," said Mendoza.

  * * *

  HE WENT TO THE HOSPITAL just to look at Grandfather, who was in a coma and by what the doctors said unlikely to come out of it. It was an old wrinkled lantern-jawed face on the pillow, with a mean narrow mouth. Not a pleasant character, Grandfather, but not such a villain as they had imagined.

  ** *

  HE SURVEYED the Dobbses in his office enjoyably. David Dobbs was unmarried, but Robert's wife was a flashy blonde named Gaylene, in expensive clothes and wearing too much jewelry. Both the men resembled their father strongly, the same aquiline features and long jaw. ‘They were both impassive. The blonde looked sulky.

  "It was a very pretty plan," Mendoza told them. “Of course your company had that derelict building on its books and a rudimentary look at it would have suggested Daggett as open to bribery. That was very competently accomplished. Which of you went to France?—first to mail the letter and a week or so later to murder Goulart and clear out Juliette's apartment? We'll have to look for a passport, of course. Somehow I think it was Mr. David Dobbs. I appreciate the touch about the money not being returned. That would have been the last straw, to set the old man against her. And Robert and his wife met Juliette at the airport—her pleasant new relatives—all smiles and welcome. You didn't take her home for the neighbors to see, of course. But you could have rented the nice little beach house for a week, or possibly the company owns a suitable place. And you gave her some plausible excuse why she couldn't see Grandfather right away—it only needed to satisfy her long enough for you to get her inside somewhere and get a drink down her—well-laced with a sedative. You kept her half-doped from Saturday to Tuesday, when David got back from France and told you it was all clear, Goulart was out of the way. So you called Daggett and that night you three took the girl to that apartment, left the artistic evidence scattered around, the rest of the money for the Daggetts and Garvey, and went home rejoicing. It all should have been quite safe, but Nemesis outguessed you." Mendoza laughed.

  "I'm afraid I don't know what you're talking about," said Robert Dobbs woodenly.

  * * *

  THEY ASKED THE AIRLINES and got confirmation of David Dobbs two flights to Paris. They heard from a garrulous friend of Gaylene Dobbs' that her name had been Hoffman before she married Robert, and she'd always hated her real first name, Ruth, used her middle name. So that was where the Social Security card had originated; but Mendoza had overlooked one small point about that. The original card, unlike the replica, would have have borne the date of issue; and that card had probably been issued to Ruth Hoffman when Juliette was hardly more than a baby. But when they got the search warrant for the Robert Dobbs' million-dollar house in Bel Air, they hit a jackpot. At the bottom of a carved wooden jewel case in the bedroom, among all the other expensive jewelry, they found Juliette Martin's engagement ring. The unique ring designed and made by M. Duprés in the Rue Lafayette twenty-six years ago.

  And with the only display of emotion Mendoza was ever to see Robert Dobbs display, before that or during the trial, he rounded on his wife with a string of vicious obscenities.

  "I told you to throw that damn thing down the john—"

  "But, Bob," she said stupidly, "it's a valuable ring, it's worth a lot of money."

  * * *

  MENDOZA GOT HOME late that night. It had suddenly turned much cooler and up on the hill above Burbank a strong breeze was blowing. It was nearly dark, but he could see the vague white forms of the Five Graces huddled in the pasture. At the house, the garage light was left on for him and he went in the back door, past Cedric slurping water from his bowl in the service porch.

  "Well, you are late and all," said Mairi. "I kept your dinner warm in the oven—"

  "Never mind, I had something downtown." He went down the hall to the living room. The twins and the baby would be in bed. Alison was reading in her armchair, surrounded by cats. "Well, querido, you finally remembered you have a home?"

  Mendoza bent to kiss her. "Things should quiet down a little now that the heat wave's ending." Now they just had the latest homicide and two heists to work, and could hope that not too many new calls would go down. "You get on with your book, cariña. I want to write a letter to Rambeau."

  He went back to the kitchen for a drink first, and El Señor was waiting for him on the counter below the relevant cupboard.