Murder Can't Wait

by RICHARD LOCKRIDGE

  Somewhere along here, if he had the mileage right. He drove more slowly. A truck which had been tailgating made indignant sounds and went around him. Along about—

  The sign was very small. It was also partially hidden in a bush of some sort. Shapiro turned right and uphill on a narrow, winding blacktop. Watch to the right. A large boulder on either side of the driveway entrance. The name on the—

  White mail box. Black lettering: HEIMRICH—FAYE. Shapiro turned between the boulders, which were certainly in one hell of a place, and up a steep graveled drive toward a long house which looked rather like a barn. A very large dog came from the side of the house and barked loudly, and the tall, slim woman he had met at the Old Stone Inn came from the same direction and said, “Colonel!” The big dog barked once more, to show he had a mind of his own, and then went back the way he had come, to prove he really didn’t have.

  Shapiro parked the car beside two other cars and got out of it. Even with a window open, it had been hot in the car. Out of the car there was a breeze, and the breeze was almost cool. Susan Heimrich said, “Hi,” and Shapiro said, “Good afternoon, Mrs. Heimrich,” and followed her across grass—on a shady portion of which the big dog apparently had fallen unconscious—to a terrace. Beyond the terrace a boy of, Shapiro guessed, twelve or so was throwing a baseball at a contraption of aluminum and fabric netting, from which the ball bounced, erratically, to be caught. The boy, however, was dressed for tennis.

  Heimrich and Charles Forniss were sitting, relaxed, glasses in their hands and with their jackets off. This made them, for some reason, look even larger than they had before. As he walked up onto the terrace, Nathan Shapiro could look down, between and over trees, to the Hudson River, which sparkled in the sunlight and on which there was a boat with a blue sail. Bucolic was the word for it, Shapiro thought. Incongruous was perhaps another word for it. They were, Shapiro thought, interrupting a murder investigation to have a picnic. He sat down on a webbed chair, and Susan Heimrich, who was wearing shorts and a dark shirt, said, “Sherry, lieutenant? On the rocks?”

  Co-operate with the local authorities. “A very little,” Nathan Shapiro said, and the slender gray-eyed woman went to a table in the shade and poured from a bottle onto ice. Shapiro hoped his stomach would co-operate with local customs.

  Merton Heimrich took a long drag on his cigarette and stubbed it out and it was somehow as if he had tapped a gavel on a table, or rung a little bell. He said, “About Hangerford, lieutenant?” and Shapiro told them about the Cavalier Motor Lodge in Hangerford. Susan Heimrich sat and listened with the men; the dog did not listen but snored slightly from time to time; the boy, Shapiro thought in response to some signal from his mother, walked away into the house. The dog woke up, heaved himself up, and followed the boy.

  “Mrs. Steele there with Fleming?” Heimrich said, when Shapiro had finished. It was a general question, open to anybody’s answer. “She says not,” Shapiro said. “She would, of course.”

  “Convincingly?”

  That was not easy to answer. Shapiro answered it with a shrug, with a momentary spreading of his hands. But then he said, “Under ordinary circumstances, I’d believe what she said.”

  None of it proved easy as, sitting comfortably in a shaded place, they tried to pull it together. They shared what they had. The pieces they had did not fit together. Listening, Susan Heimrich thought that it was all rather like trying to make a neat parcel out of objects curiously, antagonistically, shaped. The point is, she thought, that some, perhaps most, of these divergent objects do not belong in the parcel.

  “It’s not very tidy, is it?” Heimrich said, after the three of them had made a pile of the odds and ends they had severally collected. He went on, speaking slowly, most of the time with his eyes closed, recapitulating the possibilities they had to select from:

  The simplest, still perhaps the most probable, that the killing of Stuart Fleming was what it had first looked to be—a killing to close a mouth. In that case, the hired killer was almost certainly Robert Steele, who had been Bernard Stahlman.

  “He needed to know more about what Fleming knew than we’ve any proof he did,” Sergeant Forniss said. “Unless Fleming told Steele’s wife and she ran to daddy with it. And daddy to Pagoni. He didn’t call Florida from the club. That’s been checked. But he wouldn’t, of course.”

  “We can be tougher on Mrs. Steele,” Shapiro said gloomily. “Perhaps I didn’t press hard enough.” He sighed. “She cries easily,” Nathan Shapiro said.

  Steele-Stahlman as a hired killer. Or, as a man in jealous rage. As he had seemed to want them to believe, up to a carefully considered point.

  “If he had any reason to be jealous,” Shapiro said, and realized he was up to his old, bad tricks; that he was letting sympathy intrude.

  “Now, lieutenant,” Heimrich said, “or if he thought he had, naturally. That could have been enough.”

  “Fleming and his sister-in-law,” Forniss said. “We’ve got that from a couple of places. And then, there’s this. Angus Fleming can get around, if this man of the professor’s telling the truth.”

  “Now, Charlie,” Heimrich said. “Harry Washington’s a truthful man.”

  This surprised Shapiro a little. He had supposed he was the only one who had this unfortunate inclination to play favorites, to let a tender heart encroach on the precincts set aside for the hard head.

  Then—Augus Fleming could get around alone, by car, on a good day. It takes no special strength to press the trigger of an automatic.

  “Mm-m-m,” Heimrich said, and Susan waited. “Character doesn’t fit the crime too well,” he said. “Of course, we can be wrong about the character. Only—Brinkley seems to have known him fairly well. Or thought he did, naturally. Called him a gentle man.”

  “Man goes gunning for his wife and another man,” Forniss said, “he usually goes gunning for both.”

  “Conceivably,” Nathan Shapiro said, “he may have thought he would get them both. In bed. Of course, his brother’s leg was in a cast.”

  When he said that, he looked at Susan and she thought he looked with apology. She was momentarily tempted to tell him he underestimated human dexterity. She resisted the temptation.

  “There apparently was a light on,” Heimrich said. “If we can rely on this cleaning woman. What’s her name?”

  “Florence Arn,” Forniss said. “Who wouldn’t put anything past Enid Fleming. Could be she turned the light on, herself, and forgot about it afterward. Sort of thing happens. Louses things up. If it was dark, he may have thought he was getting them both. If, say, he’d waked up and found his wife wasn’t in his his house….” He did not finish. Heimrich had closed his eyes.

  “Now, Charlie,” Heimrich said. “Just went in and sprayed a bed with bullets in the dark? Because maybe his wife was in the bed with his brother? Very impetuous type, that would make him. Also, if Stuart Fleming wanted to take a girl to a motel would he register in his own name?” He opened his eyes and looked at Nathan Shapiro, who shook his head sadly. Then Shapiro said, “Of course …” and let it hang. And Heimrich, after waiting a few seconds, said, “Now, lieutenant.”

  “There may,” Shapiro said, “be another Stuart Fleming around. It’s not an especially unusual name. Which would, maybe, account for the question mark on the Christmas card. Or—somebody may have used his name. As—call it a practical joke.”

  “A malicious one,” Heimrich said. “Particularly in view of….” He closed his eyes again, and did not go on.

  “Got this card,” Forniss said. “Wondered what the hell. Was going up that way to ski and stopped by this motel to try to get a description of the joker. The man asking questions up there could have been Stuart Fleming?”

  “Anybody,” Shapiro said. “Could have been anybody. Anybody who skis. They seemed pretty sure he had skis strapped to his car.” He paused again and looked at the Hudson, far away and shining. The boat with a blue sail didn’t seem to be getting much of anywhere.
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  “Wonder,” Shapiro said, “if Bernie Stahlman’s taken up skiing? Of course, he’s supposed to have been in Florida. But it doesn’t take long to come up by plane. Could be he got a lead somehow. Went up to check on whether his wife had been—looking at pretty leaves with Mr. Fleming.” He paused again. “I don’t really like it much,” he said.

  He sighed. He didn’t like any of it very much. He was, he realized, out of his depth as usual. But he had a feeling that these two large state policemen were also. Captain Heimrich, particularly, looked as if he had fallen asleep.

  There was a considerable time of silence. It was, Shapiro thought, as if everything had run down, as a clock runs down. It was, Shapiro thought, time he went back where he belonged. If he left now—

  Merton Heimrich spoke without opening his eyes.

  “If Fleming took a girl to this motel,” he said, “stayed with her there, it would have been what the will called ‘further misbehavior.’ If the executors found out about it, the trust could have been revoked, would have reverted to his brother. Leaving Stuart Fleming with only what he could make as a lawyer. Plus, naturally, anything his brother might have decided to give him.”

  There was nothing in the way Heimrich spoke which suggested he expected an answer. He opened his eyes and picked up his glass and sipped from it and put it down again.

  “Which,” Heimrich told the glass, told the distant Hudson River, “makes it very odd he would have used his own name. Unless—happen to ask whether he used a credit card, lieutenant? When he stayed there with the girl?”

  “Yes,” Shapiro said. “I asked that. He paid cash.” He waited a second and added, “Whoever used the name of Stuart Fleming, registered with Mrs. Stuart Fleming, paid cash.”

  “Yes,” Heimrich said, “it could have been anybody, naturally. If it was somebody else, using his name, it was more than a practical joke. Or could have been. A way to see he lost the trust fund. If there’s somebody somewhere who wanted to get back at him for something. A girl friend with a grudge and a boy friend who would play along. Or …”

  He stopped and closed his eyes again. After a time he said that there was, or once had been, a man with cause to hold a grudge. A professor in a Southern university. Who was not complacent; not a man to let things slide, or to let them be hushed up. Conceivably a vindictive man.

  “If that was that,” Forniss said, “he sure as hell took his time about it. Several years it would be, wouldn’t it? Before his old man died. And there’s a simpler one, M. L. Trust reverts to his brother. Brother stands to gain. If there was a frame-up. Could be Angus Fleming’s not so well fixed as everybody thinks. Knows he won’t live long. Wants to have something to leave his wife when he dies.”

  “Now, Charlie,” Heimrich said. “The same point about time enters in. Aside from other things, naturally. If Angus Fleming played a little trick—if he’s an entirely different man from the one he seems to be—why wait months to spring his trap? Why not tell the other executors that Stuart is misbehaving? Tell them straight off? As you say, he hasn’t got time to waste. As you say, he undoubtedly knows it. Leukemia takes a while, usually. But sometimes people die of it suddenly, unexpectedly. Brain hemorrhages, for one thing. He probably knows that. Probably’s read up on it.”

  “Holding it over him?” Forniss said. “To make him behave?”

  “Why?”

  Forniss raised his heavy shoulders in a shrug.

  “Conceivably,” Shapiro heard himself say, and was a little surprised to hear himself speak at all, “to make Stuart break off a relationship with his sister-in-law, Enid. If there was one, of course. And if Angus hasn’t got too tired, too sick to care one way or the other.” Shapiro paused and sipped from his glass, which now contained, he discovered, only mildly flavored ice water. “It’s not much of an idea,” he said, with resignation.

  “Now, lieutenant,” Heimrich said. “It’s as good as any we’ve—”

  He heard the telephone ringing from the house. It rang briefly and stopped. Then the door of the house was opened, primarily by an enormous Great Dane, with some assistance from an erect young boy.

  “There’s a call for you, sir,” Michael Faye said, in a light, clear voice. “From the barracks.”

  All most irregular, Lieutenant Nathan Shapiro thought; irregular to the point of unreality. A small boy on telephone watch. A conference on a terrace, as if at a picnic. He watched Heimrich walk toward the house. Amazing how lightly some big men walked.

  “Can’t I fix your drink, lieutenant?” Susan Heimrich said.

  “No,” Shapiro said. “I’d better not. Have to be driving back to town and—”

  He stopped speaking and they all looked at Merton Heimrich, who came out of the doorway rather more rapidly than he had gone into it, and who spoke when he was still some strides from the terrace.

  “Mrs. Fleming says she can’t wake up her husband,” he said. “Called in to ask help. Emergency equipment’s on the way.”

  He reached the terrace and took his jacket from a chair and put it on.

  “Want to come along, lieutenant?” Heimrich said.

  “I ought—” Shapiro began, but then he said, “Yes. Not that I’ll be any help.”

  A man gets curious, even if he can’t be of any help.

  They walked toward the cars.

  “Happen to know anybody in Virginia, Charlie?” Heimrich said. He assumed the answer would be what it inevitably was. He was right.

  “Yep,” Charles Forniss said. “Happen to know several, M. L. One’s a newspaper man. Works in a place….” He paused for a moment, running through the card catalogue of his mind. “Town. Where this university is,” Forniss said. “Yep, probably I’d better.” Whereupon he went to his car and got into it and drove off in it.

  “Never found a place yet Charlie doesn’t—” Heimrich said, and stopped because the telephone rang in the house again. And again the large dog and the boy opened the door after a few moments and the boy said, “For Lieutenant Shapiro, sir. From New York.”

  The large dog met Shapiro at the door, most effectually blocking it. The dog looked at Shapiro with what Shapiro took to be doubt. “He’s quite gentle, sir,” Michael Faye said, and then, in a different voice, in much more a boy’s voice, “Get out of the way, Colonel. You lummox.”

  Colonel turned his head and looked at god. He got out of the way. He went over and fell down in front of a fireplace in which, reasonably, there was no fire. He put his chin on the floor and regarded, dolefully, an unfriendly world. The boy said, “Over here, sir,” and Shapiro went over there and picked up the waiting telephone and said, “Shapiro.” Then, for some seconds, he listened. After he had listened, he said, “Of course,” and hung up the telephone and told Michael Faye that he had a very nice dog there.

  “Yes,” Michael said, gravely. “He’s a good dog. Of course, he’s rather large.”

  “There’s room for a large dog in a place like this,” Nathan Shapiro said, with equal gravity, and went out to tell Heimrich what an assistant district attorney had just told him—that a junior at Dyckman, name of Franklin Dell, had telephoned the office of the District Attorney of New York County and said that he wanted to talk to somebody about what had happened to Stuart Fleming. He had been told to come in and was, presumably, on his way in.

  “They want me for some reason,” Shapiro said, and shook his head, a man bemused. “If there’s anything that will help, you’ll hear.”

  To which Heimrich said, “Naturally, lieutenant,” and watched a long thin man in a gray suit walk toward a car. Probably a good man at his job, Merton Heimrich thought, and wondered briefly if he was sad because he didn’t like his job.

  “I suppose,” Susan said, beside him, “that you’ve no idea when you’ll be back?” She spoke with the resignation of a policeman’s wife. He turned and put an arm around her and drew her close for a moment and then said, “Now, Susan.”

  ‘‘Naturally,” Susan said and held her face up a
nd was kissed and then held off and, lightly, shaken. Which was, of course, for the “naturally.” (Which was also one more indication that he no longer thought her breakable, if shaken only lightly.)

  She watched him walk to the car and thought, He really is a big one, this big one of mine.

  He stopped with a hand on the door handle and turned toward her.

  “The man you saw with Enid Fleming last summer,” he said. “He does sell cars. So take good care of your crystal ball.”

  She stood in the sun and watched him drive away. After he had driven between the boulders and turned down toward Van Brunt, Susan Heimrich said, “Damn,” in a quiet voice and walked toward her house. Just when other men were coming home for the evening, hers was most likely to be going away from it.

  X

  At the entrance to the Fleming drive in North Wellwood, Heimrich slowed to let another car—a small black car in an evident hurry—pull in ahead of him. It stopped behind an ambulance and a youngish man in a dark suit got out of it. He carried a black bag and he walked toward the house quickly. The doctor, Heimrich thought, had taken some time in getting there. Which was probably no fault of his.

  Heimrich found a place to park which would let others go when they needed to go. He went to the door of Angus Fleming’s house and found it open and knocked on the screen. A tall man, with sun-bleached hair and a boyish face to match it, came from the relative dimness of the living room and stood in the doorway, facing Heimrich, his blue eyes level with Heimrich’s eyes. He was scowling slightly and Heimrich thought his face wasn’t made for scowling. He wore a blue polo shirt and walking shorts and he said, “What do you want?”

  “To see Mrs. Fleming if she’s up to it,” Merton Heimrich told the man, in a voice without emphasis. “To find out what’s happened, Mr. Patchen. I’m a police captain. Heimrich. State police. You are Henry Patchen?”

  Patchen said he was, then he said, “The poor old guy’s probably dying, Enid’s broken up. First Stu gets killed and now this. What’s this got to do with you?”