by Susan Dunlap
I sighed. I didn’t have time to argue. “All right. Let it go. Now, if the worker says she’s seen all the verification, then what?”
“She sets up the grant and sends it through.”
“So you have only the worker’s word that a client exists, right?”
“I suppose so. Unless someone’s seen the client…” Effield’s face had become paler yet his head slumped into his hands. He sat motionless, sweat darkening the armpits of his red shirt “Oh, God, maybe Anne did make dummy cases. How can I go on defending her? She could have. And I recommended her!”
I waited for him to continue.
“She used me as a reference. I knew her before. What will they think?”
“What about the dummy cases?”
“It could have been. If Anne set up dummies there’s no way I would have known. She could have passed them off as real. They all could. Every worker in my unit could be making dummies.”
“Do you think that’s why she was killed?”
Effield’s eyes widened. “Why? I mean, the dummies didn’t do it. Anyone in administration, like myself, would be upset, but you don’t kill because of fraud.”
“Who could have known?” I asked.
“How can I say? I didn’t know about the cases. How would I know who did?”
“Who was in a position to, from a logistical standpoint?”
Effield’s fingers rubbed together. “I guess anyone in the office could have come across something.”
“Like Mona?”
“Oh, no. Mona would have told me.”
“Fern?”
“Oh, no. No.”
“Nat Smith.”
“Oh, no. I wasn’t suggesting him.”
“Then who?”
“I don’t know. I don’t know. Can’t you see I’m upset? How would you feel if someone you had trusted had done something like this right under your nose?”
“Who, Effield? You? Someone put those fake new addresses in the case folders.”
He stared directly at me. “What kind of woman are you? Don’t you have any feelings? I told you I’m upset.”
“You’re upset! Think about what happened to Anne Spaulding!”
Effield’s eyes dropped. “I’ve told you what I know; I’ve even made guesses about things I don’t know. What more do you want?”
There might have been something else to squeeze out of him, but I doubted it, and time was what I did not have. Warning Effield not to touch Anne’s cases, I started out of his office. Anyone here could have known. Anyone. Nat included.
Chapter 23
FERN WAS GONE. NAT was gone. But Mona, who had been packing up twenty minutes ago, was leaning back in her chair, swivelled to face Effield’s office door, waiting. She smiled at me.
I smiled back. We had here a meeting of the minds. My only question was where to go to talk privately, but that was answered by the banging of the back door and the sight of Alec Effield making his way to the street.
I sat in Fern’s chair. “What do you know about dummy cases, Mona?”
“Theoretically, or in fact?”
“In fact, Mona. Here in the office.”
Her eyes opened wide. “Really? Anne? Wow!”
“You suspected it?”
“Not specifically. I mean, I didn’t know if Anne was up to something, but I’m not surprised. How’d she do it?”
“You tell me. How would the money go out and get back to Anne?”
Mona glanced around, scanning the empty chairs. Above her desk, a clock ticked against the silence of the room. “I can’t swear to you how Anne did it, but here’s the way it would logically work,” she said. “Setting up a dummy would be no problem. Once the case is ready the money goes out via computer check to the address. Then it’s just a matter of picking it up and getting false I.D.’s to cash the checks. Anyone with half a mind can get phony cards. It’s been written up in magazines, and most of the news shows on television have shown it step by step. You could cash the checks at the supermarket. After all, the checks are good.” Mona paused. “The only thing is, Anne’s left-handed. And her handwriting is distinctly awful. All the phony signatures must look alike.”
I recalled that crabbed writing I had had to get Pereira to decipher. “She could have varied it.”
“No. I saw her try once. She needed to sign Fern’s name to an emergency action—to get a food order for a client—and even with Fern’s signature there to copy she couldn’t do it.”
And Anne had been unable to draw the simple sketch for the Rhinoceros handbill. Still, I said, “Maybe it was for your benefit.”
Mona snorted. “I’d have known.”
“Maybe. Certainly you’re pretty clear on how to create dummies.”
“Jesus! You don’t suspect me!” She looked truly outraged.
“You know how to set up the dummies,” I repeated. “And, Mona, you were at Bank of America, hanging around on the first of two consecutive months.”
“I told you, I was thinking of opening an account.”
“That’s what you told me.”
“Well, I don’t have an account. I…”
“Could we skip to the truth?”
When she didn’t answer, I said, “First you’re at Alec’s flat. Then you make a point of riding down the hill with me and asking questions about Anne. Then you invite me over to confer. You’re awfully interested in this case. Could it be that you were part of the dummy case racket? Did you kill Anne when she tried to cheat you?” I took a breath. “What were you doing at the bank, Mona?”
Mona stared, amazed.
“I found a long brown curly hair in one of the dummy case files—a hair like yours. Nat overheard you arguing with Alec and Anne. What—”
“Okay. Okay. I was at the bank.” With a sigh, she leaned back in the chair. “I had gone in to get some information on accounts, savings accounts. That was the truth.”
“And?”
“Well, the bank was jammed. It was the first of the month. Every welfare client was in there cashing a check. I’d forgotten it was the first, or I’d never have gone in there. Anyway, I was trying to decide if it was worth it to see a bank officer when I noticed Alec standing to one side of the tellers. That’s where you sign to get into a safe-deposit box. Of course, I didn’t know that then. I started over to ask him if he had any idea how long I’d have to wait, since he was obviously familiar with the bank. His side was to me, and as I came toward him he turned away to face the teller. I heard Alec give a name to the teller, and the teller repeat it. Then Alec followed the teller inside.”
I waited.
“The name, you see, it wasn’t Alec Effield.”
“What was it?”
“Johnson.”
“Johnson? Do you know the first name?”
“No.” She looked put out.
“Mona, Johnson is one of the most common names in the country, almost as common as Smith.”
Mona forced a smile. “Maybe that’s why he chose it.”
“Then what happened?”
“What do you mean?”
“At the bank, Mona. What happened?”
“Nothing. Nothing happened. I left.”
“Okay,” I said. It wasn’t okay at all, but I continued. “That was the first time you were there. What about the next month?”
“Someone saw me both times?”
“Uh huh. What did you do the second time?”
“Nothing.” Seeing my growing anger, she added quickly, “I just waited from twelve to one. But Alec didn’t come. Maybe he came later. Or maybe not.”
I stared at Mona, picturing her not in her violet T-shirt and peasant skirt, not with her loose breasts straining the fabric, but with the right make-up and a wig, with a brassiere and a blazer. Mona transformed.
“Listen, I could have found out about Alec. I still could. He’s easy to play; he’ll tell me.”
I stood up. “As soon as I leave here I’m going to call in and have someone
keep an eye on you. Don’t try to leave Berkeley without checking with me.”
I didn’t call in for a tail. For the moment my bluff would keep Mona here.
Instead I drove across the crowded Friday evening streets, pulling from lane to lane, running yellow lights. My foot pressed harder on the gas pedal as I recalled Alec Effield spurting crocodile tears and telling me how worried he was about his reputation.
Leaving my car behind Effield’s, I ran toward his flat, up the stairs and banged on the door.
Inside it was dark. There was no music. I glanced at my watch—six-fifteen. I banged again.
“Open up, Effield.”
A light came on in the main house. A face peered out from behind a shade. No sound came from Effield’s. Effield might be out. He could be dining at some expensive French restaurant, on the money from those dummy cases.
I pounded once more, but the realization was coming clear: Effield might be inside, hiding, and there was nothing I could do. I had no actual proof that he was Anne’s accomplice. There was only Mona’s word that he was in the bank. And as I’d thought while staring at her, “Johnson” could be, not Alec Effield, but Mona. Alec Effield could be merely a dupe.
Chapter 24
“ALEC EFFIELD COULD BE a dupe.” I was standing against the sink, as Howard pulled the leftover lasagna from his fridge. In the living room a guy in a 49ers shirt was watching a Japanese horror movie. Upstairs, lights and music blared from the six bedrooms of the old house. A woman clad in only bikini pants ran across the landing. I hadn’t seen the inside of a place like this since college.
Howard had been to my apartment and never raised an eyebrow. Now I could understand why.
Howard and I had been friends, close friends, for three years. In a sense it was strange I’d never been here before. But it was no accident. When I’d been married to Nat, visiting Howard would have created more discord than there already was. Most of the time, there had been arguments and bad feelings enough. And I had kept my distance for other reasons. Howard was my friend, but there was more to it than that, and I hadn’t wanted to explore that area then. And after the divorce, I hadn’t wanted to explore anything. Mostly I’d wanted to be left alone. And now? I didn’t know exactly.
“You mind eating cold lasagna?” Howard asked.
“What?”
“There’s something wrong with the oven. Do you mind eating the lasagna cold?”
I laughed. “A little touch of home. No, cold’s fine with me. But listen, about Alec Effield, if he is a dupe, then Anne’s accomplice could be Mona.”
“Wait, wait. Start from the beginning. When I last caught this saga we were leaving Priester’s and you had come up with something that you promised to tell me later.” Handing me the lasagna pan, he picked up two bottles of Coke and plates. The forks peeked out of his shirt pocket.
I followed him to the dining room table. Out of the side of my eye I could see terrified Japanese shouting in ill-dubbed English.
“Hey, Wayne,” Howard called, “could you watch that in your room?”
I took a bite of lasagna. Even cold, it was good. “The beginning,” I said, as Wayne trudged up the stairs. “Well, Anne Spaulding had two scams going. First she was taking bribes from clients on the Avenue, probably about twenty dollars a throw.”
Howard took a swallow of Coke. “Pretty small time.”
“My guess is that it was her first taste of crime. The dummy cases followed. Even Effield admitted Anne would have had no trouble working dummies.”
“How would she have done it?”
“Easier than you’d think. She could pretend she had interviewed the clients, set up the cases, and have the checks sent out. Then it would be just a matter of picking them up.”
“I assume she didn’t do that herself, trotting from house to house, like the farmer’s daughter collecting eggs.”
“No. There was the black woman who has been seen picking up checks in the hotel lobby. The woman Daisy Arbutus saw.”
Howard cut a bite of lasagna, forked it and held it in readiness. “So you think the black woman picked up the money and then she or Spaulding forged the signatures and—”
“No.”
“No? Then what?”
“Anne Spaulding couldn’t copy anything. There’s overwhelming agreement on that.”
“Then the other woman signed them?”
Absently, I followed the passage of lasagna from fork into Howard’s mouth. Normally his conclusion would have made sense, but from all I had heard of Anne Spaulding, I couldn’t believe she would allow another woman so much power. “No. What would keep the black woman from walking off with the profits? It’s not like Anne could report her.”
Howard finished his Coke and held the bottle aloft to check for any last drops.
“According to Mona Liebowitz, Alec Effield was at the bank using an alias to get into a safe-deposit box.”
He put down the bottle. “So, somehow the money got from the hotels to him and he put it in the safe-deposit box. Maybe keeping it in a safe-deposit box was insurance against any one of them betraying the others.”
“How do you mean?”
“Well, for one thing it’s much safer than keeping that amount of money at home, particularly when two fellow crooks know it’s there. Obviously, none of them could put their gains in regular bank accounts, and there’s only so much they could spend before they drew attention to themselves.”
“But what do you mean by insurance?”
“Okay. Suppose Anne and Alec sign for the box as Mr. and Mrs. Johnson. That means that only they have access to the box. Things balance out between them and the black woman; they have access to the accumulated loot; she has first access to each month’s take. She could make off with the monthly money, but no more. While they control the ongoing take, they are still dependent on her each month. And…” With his right foot Howard nudged his empty plate over, then he propped both feet where it had been.
“And?”
“And there’s the key.”
“Go on.”
“The key to the safe-deposit box. The bank has one key. The depositor has one or two keys. Obviously Alec Effield has a key.”
“I can see where that gives Alec control and the black woman control. But it doesn’t seem to insure Anne.”
“Maybe Anne didn’t need any more control than she managed through force of personality.”
“Possible. But Anne sounds like someone who would leave no unnecessary escape hatch.” I moved a piece of my lasagna around on my plate. “Another possibility is that Mona could be lying about the whole safe-deposit thing, or any part, and she could be the accomplice.”
“And the black woman?”
“Mona, with make-up, wig, other clothing.”
“Would she pass?”
I realized Howard hadn’t seen Mona. “It’s not like making a Swede into a pigmy. Weston, the guy at the wheelchair theater, was telling me how much make-up can do. And with Mona it would be no problem at all.”
“So then you’re saying that Anne Spaulding set up the dummies and Mona collected the money, signed the checks, and put the cash in the safe-deposit box.”
“I’m saying maybe. Maybe Alec Effield was in the bank. Maybe he signed the checks. He’s good at copying, Howard. Very good.” I told him about the Suzanne Valadon copy in Effield’s office. “He even told me copying wasn’t valuable outside the criminal world.”
Things were falling into place. “The new addresses on the memos in Anne’s cases,” I said. “Effield wrote them after he killed Anne. He had access to the cases. They were in his office.”
“Or Mona Liebowitz could have gotten to them. It doesn’t sound like a tightly run office. But…” Howard took a bite of my barely touched lasagna. “But, sticking with Effield for the moment, if he’s involved, then who is the black woman?”
“I don’t know. I’ll have to find Effield.”
The streets were dark now as I drove the fa
miliar route across town to Alec Effield’s place. Why couldn’t he be home when I needed him, or at least live closer?
It was nearly ten-thirty. Cars struggled along the main thoroughfares, cars filled with people coming home from movies, or going for a drink. No one was in a hurry. No one was making way for anyone else in a hurry. I was tempted to use the pulser, but we’d all been cautioned about resorting to it too freely.
I turned onto Spruce, winding higher up into the hills. Here two-hundred-thousand-dollar houses sat on their narrow lots like fans in the bleachers. Their lights were muted by the fog. I pulled into Effield’s street and stopped the car behind his.
Effield’s flat was still dark. I stomped up the stairs, prepared to bang long and hard on the door.
The door stood ajar. I pushed it and walked in, calling Effield’s name and feeling around on the wall for the light switch.
“Ef—” I stopped, swallowing a scream. It was a moment before I could force myself to look again.
Effield lay sprawled across the beige couch, his head hanging over the back, his eyes locked open in terror. Blood, dark red, nearly brown, stained his red shirt. It had run onto his beige pants. It had splattered on the beige couch and on the beige rug.
There was no need to feel for Effield’s pulse. It didn’t take a doctor to see that his throat had been cut, the carotid artery severed. His blood had pumped out like water from a garden hose.
Steeling myself, refusing to succumb to the nausea rising in my stomach, I turned away from Effield’s body and surveyed the room. There was no sound, and few hiding places. Taking out my automatic, I pulled open the closet door. It held only clothes. I checked the other rooms, but the killer had gone.
Then I called the station. The beat officer would be notified. The lab crew would arrive. The coroner would come. Another officer would take Mona Liebowitz to the station.
The weapon didn’t require much searching. Effield’s brass letter opener lay behind the sofa, the blood still on the blade and, from a cursory glance, I figured the hilt had been wiped clean. Only a thin streak of blood remained.
The beat officer came through the door at the same time as the back-up crew. After he surveyed the scene and shook off the sight of Effield’s body, I told him about the case.