Double in Trouble (The Shell Scott Mysteries)

by Richard S. Prather

  Immediately I sat up. “Hello, Alexis,” I said, not agreeably. “Hello, Mrs. Sand.”

  Her blue eyes widened and she gasped, then said, “What ... are you doing here?”

  “Waiting for you. Before you duck out on me again, we’re going to have a talk. Including the truth this time.”

  She glanced beneath the bed, at the suitcase, and for a long moment her eyes remained on it. Then she stared at me again and said, “How long have you been here?”

  I looked at my watch. “Four minutes. Maybe five by now. Frankly, I thought I’d have a longer wait. I tried to locate you yesterday. And much of last night.”

  “I ... was out.” She took a deep breath, walked farther into the room, sat in a spindly chair. For a moment she was quiet, then she asked me, “Mr. Scott, what in the world are you doing here? In Washington, I mean. And why did you speak to me so—so inexcusably on the phone?”

  “Inexcusably? Well, that’s a switch.” I explained it to her. I told her about following her from my apartment Monday morning, all the rest of it. I ended the tale, “And then, of course, the guy who answered the phone here—with you, clearly was Drum. So perhaps I spoke to you excusably, what?”

  “I can explain, Shell.” It was the first time Alexis had called me Shell. She smiled, and it was a lovely smile. When she wanted to use it. “Truly, I can.”

  “Uh-huh. It had better be good. I’ve been all over this frozen town looking for you, and for Drum, hit the Truckers Headquarters and chatted with people, including your not exactly lovable husband—”

  “Mike?” Her eyes were concerned. “You didn’t tell him I hired you, did you?”

  She looked ready to spring from wall to wall. I said, “No. I told you I’d keep your name out of it, and I have until now. But I assumed he must know. And all bets are going to be off unless—”

  “But that’s why I didn’t tell you I was Mrs. Sand, why I used my maiden name with you.”

  “Come again?”

  “He doesn’t know I hired you. If Mike knew, he’d—oh, there’s no telling what he’d do to me.” She paused, then went on more slowly. “Please remember that only minutes before I hired you, Mr. Scott, I had discovered that my father wasn’t in his home and it had been searched. It seemed obvious that he had been ... forcibly taken from the house. I still don’t know who did it, but then I thought it must have been Mike. That’s the main reason I hired you, mentioned Mike’s name.”

  “But you don’t think it was your husband now.”

  “No. I’ve seen Mike. He’s as mystified by Dad’s disappearance as I am.”

  “What made you think he would have kidnaped your father, his wife’s father, in the first place?”

  “He’s capable of it. I don’t mean he would actually have harmed Dad, but he might have had somebody ... keep him from going before the Committee. At least I thought then he might have. I was horribly upset at the time anyway, but now I know Mike had nothing to do with it.”

  “If he even thought about it, he must have known Dr. Frost was going to be Hartsell’s surprise witness, right?”

  “I ... no. He didn’t have anything—”

  “Lady, you’re going to have to do a hell of a lot better than this if you expect me to believe you. Either level with me all the way down the line, or—”

  “All right. He knows now, of course. Perhaps he found out some time ago.”

  “Did he or didn’t he?”

  She sighed heavily. “We both knew it. Mike found out somehow and told me. That’s one of the things I wanted to talk with Dad about Sunday night in Los Angeles. I hoped he wouldn’t crucify Mike.”

  “That is hardly the word to use in connection with Mike Sand, Alexis, even if I am speaking of your husband. But now you make a little more sense. How did Mike learn Dr. Frost was going to testify?”

  “I don’t know. But you can understand, can’t you, why I told you I was Alexis Frost? If I’d hinted I thought Mike was responsible for Dad’s disappearance and at the same time told you Mike was my husband, you might not even have helped me. You might have thought I was trying to trick you some way.”

  “I’ll go along with that.”

  “But the main thing was that I couldn’t take a chance word of what I’d done would get back to Mike himself. Our marriage was still secret—until that reporter found out and broke the news. After that, and especially after Senator Hartsell made it public that my father was to have been his surprise witness, the cat was out of the bag. But even then you might not have learned I was Mrs. Sand if you kept your promise not to mention my name.” She sighed again. “At least I handled it so Mike still doesn’t know I hired you, and actually told you I suspected him.”

  “If he should find out, what would he do? Carve you up in little pieces?”

  She shuddered. “Probably not.”

  And there she left it. Probably not. Probably he would only break her arms and legs, and take a few teeth out with pliers. Alexis seemed to have had a change of heart about Sand since arriving back in D.C. I thought about it.

  “That’s why I couldn’t locate you here last night, huh? I presume you were with your husband somewhere.”

  “Yes, his country place. We—you know we were having a little trouble. But that’s all patched up now.”

  “Uh-huh.” I looked at her. “You’re doing pretty well, Alexis. You do make a weird kind of sense. But an item which still needs explaining is the Drum item. When I phoned here Wednesday night, quite late indeed, the guy who answered was Chet Drum, a chap buried in this mess up to his nostrils. And not on our side. At least not on my side.”

  She looked puzzled. I was starting to get sick of people looking puzzled when I mentioned Drum. She said, “Of course he’s on our side, to use your words.”

  “Yeah. Like appendicitis.”

  “But he is. He’s helped me. He even saved me from being ... killed maybe.”

  “He did what?”

  She told me a story about two gunmen who’d forced her from a taxicab, being rescued by Chet Drum. She made him sound like a combination of Prince Valiant and Flash Gordon.

  I said, “Ha!” and snorted a few times, but before she was through she’d convinced me it had really happened. Moreover, her description of the two men who’d roughed her up fitted the goons I’d met in the Truckers’ Building down to the last moronic detail. Glasses and Rover.

  She was serious, all right. So again I was between the horns of that Drum Dilemma. Either he’d really been a giant-sized boy scout doing an extremely good deed, or ... I thought about it. Or—a lot of things.

  I wasn’t ready to accept Drum as Prince Valiant-Flash Gordon, not by a long shot, and the answer seemed perfectly plain after small consideration. Especially after I thought back to that phone conversation I’d overheard between Ragen and Townsend Holt Monday night. I asked Alexis, “This happened right after you got off the plane from L.A. Monday night?”

  “Yes.”

  “And the two muggs were waiting for you. Then out of space in his rocketship came Chet Drum, and he saved you from these two dragons—”

  “Oh, Shell!” She sounded angry. “You can twist it around any way you want. I’ve told you exactly what happened. And even if you don’t want to believe it, it took real courage to do what he did. I was ... well, I was simply petrified. But he stood there—”

  “Oh, please, Alexis, spare me the rest of it.” I got up and stomped back and forth over the bedroom carpet. “Anyhow, you’re very grateful to him, right?”

  “Of course. Wouldn’t you be?”

  “Let’s not go into that. Look, these two muggs grabbed you and Drum ungrabbed you, thereby winning your undying gratitude. Have you considered the possibility that maybe they weren’t such deadly enemies as it seemed?”

  “That’s preposterous.”

  “Is it? Anybody get killed? Arms and legs torn off? Was there blood all over?”

  She pressed her lips together, narrowed the blue eyes. “No,
there wasn’t blood all over.”

  I dropped it. That was enough for me, anyway. The silence was a bit strained for a while. I asked her about the other things that had puzzled me, and she said she hadn’t been aware Monday morning of anybody following her taxi, and stated vigorously that if so they certainly weren’t with her. She had gone to the Western-National Bank—she said—merely to get some cash and securities which belonged to her, and which she’d felt she might need.

  I thought about it a while. Then I said, “So what now, Alexis? Do you still want me working for you?”

  “Of course. Unless you already know where my father is.”

  I shook my head. “I don’t. The only thing I know for sure is that he left his house alone Sunday night.”

  “Alone?” There was an odd, taut expression on her lovely face. “Alone? Are you sure?”

  “Yeah, took off in that black Volkswagen of his. And in a hurry.” I left out the rest of it, because while Alexis had settled some of my doubts about her, I still didn’t feel like telling her everything I knew. Especially now that she was again—or still—so chummy with Mike Sand.

  She looked almost angry. “Why didn’t you tell me? Why?”

  “For one thing, the last time I talked to you on the phone, the happy detective-client relationship was dissolving in acid, if you’ll recall. Since then I haven’t been able to catch up with you. Until now.”

  “But that means he left of his own free will. That nobody ... kidnaped him or anything.”

  “Looks that way.”

  “Shell, until this moment I never even considered the possibility that he’d left the house voluntarily. The way the house had been searched and all, it just seemed certain he’d been forced to leave.”

  “I figure the house was searched after he left.”

  She was silent, thinking. Abruptly she said, “I have to go back to Los Angeles. Are you planning to stay here?”

  “I’ve done most of what I came here to do. Except for catching up with Drum. I’ll stick around till I find him, then go back.” I thought a moment. “Assuming I’m still ambulatory. If he’s such a Prince Flash—”

  “But he’s in Los Angeles, Shell.”

  I stared at her, then said slowly, “He’s ... in Los Angeles?”

  “Just before you called Wednesday night, he was talking on the phone, here, in this suite. I heard him say something about flying to Los Angeles.”

  “Do you know who he was talking to?”

  “No, I don’t believe he mentioned the name.”

  “What was the conversation?”

  “I don’t quite remember. Except he said he’d fly to L.A. and check up on something.”

  “What was he doing up here when I phoned from L.A.?”

  “It was ... in connection with the men who forced my cab off the road.” She didn’t elaborate, and soon changed the subject. I thought about me here, and Chet Drum in Los Angeles. The more I thought about it, the less I liked it.

  “Alexis,” I said, “how would you like company on your flight to L.A.?”

  She said she’d enjoy it. I used a phone in the bedroom, called the airport to see if I could use the other half of my round-trip ticket on today’s flight. There had been a late cancellation, and I put my name in for the seat.

  While I was using the phone, Alexis went into the bathroom. Oddly, she took the suitcase in with her. I thought of all those frilly things, and the near certainty that she was, even while I grew pained thinking about it, slipping into some of the frilliest. And gauziest. Then she came out, carrying the small suitcase, put some other travel items into it, snapped the bag shut.

  I paid a quick visit to the bathroom myself and looked around. Except for her trip in here she hadn’t been out of my sight. The checkbook was too big to hide, and it wasn’t in view, so she still had it in the suitcase. That suited me.

  It also suited me to be heading back toward L.A. Especially if Chet Drum was there. Drum.

  I wondered what the hell he was doing in Los Angeles.

  DRUM STICKS HIS NECK OUT

  Los Angeles, 10:45 P.M., Thursday, December 17

  Cora Moody sat huddled on a bench in the corridor outside the emergency room at the Loma Drive Receiving Hospital. I went over to her and she looked up. Her face was pathetically vulnerable, the eyes swollen with crying, the lips trembling, the plump cheeks gleaming with tears.

  “Why him?” she said. “Why did it have to happen to him?”

  A uniformed cop who was pacing the floor outside the emergency room asked me, “Who are you, mister?” I showed him my identification.

  “Oh Dan, Dan,” Cora Moody cried. “God in Heaven, why did it have to happen to him?”

  “You take it easy now, Miz Moody,” the cop said, gruffly sympathetic. He was a short, beefy man with sergeant’s stripes on the sleeve of his tunic. “They’re doing everything they can.”

  I took the cop aside. “How bad is he?”

  “A traffic cop picked him up on the Santa Monica Freeway. He’d been left for dead, the way we figure it.”

  “Will he make it?”

  The sergeant showed me the hairy back of his hand, then its palm. “Nobody would make book on his chances. He’s conscious, but there’s a concussion, a possible skull fracture. He’s got a gash eight inches long in his scalp. Some ribs busted, and his right arm. Shock, of course. And they kicked the bejeezus out of him.”

  “He talk to you?”

  “Uh-uh. He ran into a crooked cop once, I figure it.” The sergeant’s bitter voice showed what he thought of crooked cops. “He won’t let us come near him. But he asked for you.”

  “Can I talk to him now?”

  “The doc said nobody could after we tried. Not even the wife.”

  I put a cigarette between my lips. A young doctor wearing a white tunic came out of the emergency room. When the door swung shut behind him, Cora Moody leaped to her feet. Her voice was as flat as a blown-out tire. “I’m all right now, doctor. You can tell me. Is my husband going to die?”

  “Now, Mrs. Moody. You know we’re doing everything we can.”

  “Those are words. Just words!”

  The doctor was young, a resident or an intern probably. He sighed. “If he lives through the night, he’ll have a chance.”

  The sergeant asked me, “You have any idea what he wanted to see you about?”

  “Just an idea. What does the name Rex Marker mean to you?”

  “Marker? The trucking union big-shot?”

  “Right. The Hartsell Committee is investigating the National Brotherhood of Truckers all over the country. As you know, I’m working for the Committee. So’s Dan Moody.”

  “We’ll bring Marker in,” the sergeant said, then asked the nurse, “Where’s a phone?”

  She told him, and he went away. He was back in ten minutes, and we waited. After a while an orderly brought us sandwiches and coffee. The sergeant and I ate, but Cora Moody wouldn’t touch her food. She sipped slowly from her steaming mug of coffee.

  A patrolman came along the corridor. “No Marker,” he told the sergeant. “He’s not home. We checked out a couple of places he might have been. He found a box somewhere and pulled the lid over himself, sarge.”

  The night crawled by. The sergeant was called to the phone twice. They didn’t find Rex Marker.

  The break came at two o’clock Friday afternoon. After breakfast with Cora Moody at a cafeteria across the street from the hospital, I’d called home for her. She was too upset to talk on the phone. Judy Jaffe’s mother said she’d take the Moody children home with her until Cora returned. When we went back to the hospital, the sergeant was going off duty. He looked haggard, and so did the intern who told us Dan Moody’s condition hadn’t changed.

  “He gonna make it?” the sergeant asked before he left.

  The intern’s mouth was a tight line. “I just don’t know.”

  They found a bed for Cora Moody in the nurse’s quarters, and one for me where the int
erns slept. That was at ten o’clock. In the small bare room they had found for me I took off my shoes and shoulder-holster and stretched out on the bed, draping the gun-rig across the back of a chair.

  The intern was standing in the middle of the room looking at it when I awoke. “Do you ever use that thing?” he asked when he saw my eyes had blinked open.

  “Do you ever use your scalpel, doc?”

  I looked at my watch. It was two o’clock. My mouth was dry and had a taste in it as if someone had gagged me with a dirty sock.

  “He’s conscious. His wife is with him now. He wants to talk to you.”

  It was a semi-private room with only one bed occupied. The light was dim because they had pulled the dark shade on the room’s single window. Dan Moody’s bandaged head gleamed. As I went in, his wife was just coming out.

  “I knew it, Chet,” she said tremulously. “He’s going to be all right.” As she passed me I saw the tears on her cheeks. “I’ll be right outside, honey.”

  “You go home now,” a weak voice from the bed said, “and take care of the kids.”

  I drew a chair up to the edge of the bed and sat down. “I like your hat,” I said.

  “The latest thing.” Dan Moody tried to smile. His lips were puffy and raw. His left eye, swollen shut, looked like a large ripe purple plum. His arms lay outside the covers, the right one in a cast from shoulder to wrist. “So you’re Chet Drum. See that Cora gets home?”

  “I’ll try.”

  He sighed, then said, “Rex Marker. I had him in a corner. Ragen figures ... to move East and take over if the Senate gets too rough on Mike Sand. Marker figured he was slated for Ragen’s post out here as top man in the Southern Cal setup. But Ragen soured on him, I don’t know why, and Marker got mad. He was playing footsie with Gideon Frost, going to give Frost the kind of dope that could crucify the union. That way—see?—Marker figured to get off easy when the Senate lowered the boom. Otherwise he stood to fall with the others, and since he’d already been written off by Ragen he had nothing to lose. Hell, if he didn’t co-operate with Frost he was really in hot water. Once Ragen soured on him, he figured to use Marker as a fall guy. Because there’s been more in the papers ... out here about the union than ... elsewhere. So Marker decided to play ball with the Committee, to make a deal. I saw him in a rooming house in downtown L.A., just off Main Street. Mex section.” Dan Moody’s lips twisted in a bitter grimace.