“I was wondering when you were going to wake up—or rather go to sleep.” His face began to blur.
“Why, Adam?”
He moved around the bar toward me. “Honey, don’t you realize what you’ve been doing?”
“What?” I stumbled over a stool, got up, fell again. “Adam, I didn’t really think—”
“That’s the trouble with you, Honey. You didn’t really think.” He sounded different now. His voice was deep and resonant “Neither did the rest of them, including Thor Tunny. You’re right. They thought I was a fall guy, but I wasn’t. I never have been.”
“You—you know about Sol Wetzel?”
“And Fred Sims—and Ray Spensor. I know everything. I was the guy everybody counted out. But they didn’t realize.”
My senses reeled and I groped for the couch, pulling myself up to a sitting position. “You—you said you played football with Rip at Notre Dame. I—I believed you.”
“It was a lie, Honey. I’m sorry. I lied to you about several things, including where I was the night Rip was murdered.”
“You—you mean—you—” I slumped over sideways, eyes staring up at his contorted face as he advanced toward me.
“I’m the one who put the tarantulas in your car, Honey.” His voice dropped apologetically. “I had to.”
“Why?”
He knelt beside me. “You were in the way. Don’t you understand? You were in the way! Why did you ever do it?”
“Do what?” I asked weakly, hardly able to keep my eyes focused on his mouth.
“Get mixed up with Rip Spensor. If you hadn’t, this never would have happened, Honey. You would have continued the way you are. Beautiful, vibrant, alive.”
“Adam—Adam, you’re not going to kill me?”
His voice broke. “Yes.”
“I—I still don’t understand,” I forced, stammering, breath high in my throat. “You don’t fit the pattern. You had no motive.”
“I’ve got the biggest motive in the world, Honey.”
“Not—not money?”
“No,” he said, leaning over me. “Don’t talk anymore, please.”
“Hate?”
“Leave me be, Honey,” he mumbled, reaching for my throat.
“You—you couldn’t have hated them, Adam!”
“I hate everybody, do you understand? Everybody! They never leave me alone. Not for a minute.”
My eyes closed, my head filled with a reddish glow. “Adam, don’t do it!”
“I’ve got to, Honey,” his voice drifted. “I have to. I’m sorry.”
The lid closed in on me. I drifted for an instant on a red cloud that bubbled and rolled. Then I dropped through a thousand miles of space filled with nothing but darkness. When I hit bottom I landed so hard it seemed as if all my clothes were torn from me. I screamed. Then a wave of cool light bathed over me and I blinked and died.
When the light came again I wasn’t sure. But it felt warm and good on my face. I opened my eyes, expecting to see a long infinite length of billowing clouds, but a drab green ceiling cut sharply into view.
I tried to straighten. A weight was heavy on my arms and legs and chest. I couldn’t move. Pushing against it seemed futile until I shifted sideways. Then it fell beside me with a dull thump. I sat up and shook my head.
Blinking from bright sunshine that blazed in from a window across the room, I looked around dazedly. I was sitting on the floor of my living room. A pitcher of martinis was still perched on the bar across from me. So was a glass. Slowly I let my eyes drift to my side. A man lay twisted there. His eyes were open and filmed from death. I crawled to my feet, staggered to the bar and poured a martini from the pitcher. Then, remembering what had happened, I pitched the glass across the room.
It seemed nonsensical, but there he was.
I turned slowly and stared down at him.
He’d been lying on my chest when I came awake. He’d been there a long time. Perhaps for hours. I glanced at the clock over my range. It was almost twelve noon.
FIFTEEN
Three hours later, Sheriff’s deputies had chalked, sprayed and dusted my apartment.
Mark Storm finally cornered me alone in the bedroom, a scowl on his big face. “You okay?” he asked bluntly.
“I think so,” I said.
The deputy slumped into a chair in the corner and regarded me tautly. “You asked for this, Honey.”
“I asked for only one thing, Lieutenant. A logical suspect. Looks like I came up with one.”
“He’s too dead to tell,” Mark said, rubbing his forehead grimly. “He looks like he bit into a sour lemon.”
“Poison?”
“Yep.”
I shook my head. “I guess I’m lucky he didn’t give me some of the same stuff.”
“We found a bottle in his wallet pocket,” Mark said. “It’s colorless. Hector says it may be strychnine.”
“You believe he took it himself?”
“How else?”
I groaned. “He admitted putting those spiders in my car.”
“Nice guy,” Mark said. “Of course, you entertain only the best.”
“I wasn’t entertaining.”
“What were you doing?” he demanded. “I don’t see a Scrabble board out there.”
“Okay,” I admitted. “I was trying to prove something, but my plan flopped.”
“Yeah, right in the middle of the living room floor!”
Mark removed a crumpled piece of paper from his coat pocket and handed it to me. “Ever see this before?”
Carefully scrawled on the face of the paper were these words: I confess to the murders of Rip Spensor, Angela Scali and Sol Wetzel. The note was signed Adam Jason.
“Poor Adam,” I said, groaning softly. “He was a pretty mixed-up guy.”
“So you told me,” the deputy said, sitting on the edge of the bed. “What do you think went wrong with his plan to shorten your life span?”
“I have no idea.” I could tell Mark was skeptical of the note. He had that knowing look he always gets when he thinks he knows something nobody else does.
“Well,” he sighed, after a moment. “I guess this wraps it up. We’ll probably never know why he killed them. That secret died with him.”
“That’s right,” I said idly, tracing my fingers along the edge of the blanket. “I guess you won’t need me any more, will you?”
“No.” He got to his feet and tucked the note into his pocket. “You’d better get some rest. I’ll call you tomorrow. I will need your signed statement.”
“Sure, Lieutenant.”’
He crossed to the door, then paused. “You—you do believe he wrote this note, don’t you?”
“Of course,” I said. “Who else could have written it?”
“Nobody,” he said with gruff authority. “We checked against other handwriting in his wallet. I just wanted to be sure you were convinced.”
“I’m convinced,” I answered simply, trying to hide a smile that flicked across my mouth. I started to tell him about Fred and Angela, then decided against it. He’d said the case was closed. Besides he’d asked me not to mention Fred again. My conscience was clear.
Five minutes later Mark and his deputies had cleared out of my living room leaving only chalk marks on the hardwood floor where Adam’s body had landed after I sat up. I showered again, slipped into a sweater and skirt and dialed the Press-Telegram newspaper office. They transferred me to Editorial.
Fred Sims sounded half loaded when he finally came on the line. “Well if it isn’t the maid of Asphalt Lane,” he said sharply. “I understand you came out on the hard end again. Congratulations.”
“I want to talk to you, Fred.”
“Never a time like the present,” he said thickly. “I was just on my way to a tangle of vines and heather down on the Pike where they serve the best waterballs in creation. Want to join me?”
“You mean the Jungle Room?”
“That’s right. I plan to get c
ompletely crocked, so don’t keep me waiting too long. I hate to drink alone unless it’s mandatory.”
“I’ll be there in twenty minutes.”
“Make it fifteen and the first round’s on me.”
“Okay,” I said, meaningfully, “but the last round’s going to be mine.”
The sun was already low on a dark windy sea as I drove out Ocean Avenue to downtown Long Beach. Neon lights began to blink on shops and stores and going home traffic piled up in the streets. I parked in the lot opposite my office building and walked a half block before recalling the tape I’d picked up at Sol Wetzel’s house. I retraced my steps quickly. The reel was gone from the front seat where I’d left it. I fumbled around on the floor, finally finding the spool lodged next to the heater. I contemplated leaving the tape in my office, then decided it was just as safe locked in my car.
Fred was waiting for me in the Jungle Room, his good leg curled under him on the stool, a drink clutched in his slender fingers.
He smiled grimly and said, “You’re two drinks late.”
“I was one drink early last night,” I said, climbing onto a stool. “I suppose you got the word about Adam Jason.”
“Several thousand words,” Fred answered, shaking his head drunkenly. “You would have thought the reporter from UPI was writing a book. It must have been jolly.”
“It was unexpected, to say the least. Jason was not a suspect in my book.”
Fred flicked his steel-grey eyes at me and laughed. “Who’d you have in mind?” He lifted his hand. “Before you answer, how about a drink? Something teeth-rattling.”
“Why not?” I said. “My teeth have been doing nothing else but—for the past two days.”
He ordered a round and said, “Honey, you know what your trouble is? Tension. You’re a bundle of nerves. You need a vacation.”
“Where would you suggest, Fred, Italy?”
His jaw tightened. “Sure. It’s beautiful there this time of the year. Tall willowy trees. The wind blowing morning fresh off the Mediterranean. You’d love it.”
“Of course, it’s changed some since you were there,” I said pointedly. “There aren’t any more shell holes with dark-haired young girls hiding in them.”
Fred removed his hat slowly and brushed at his thinning brown hair. “You have been getting around, haven’t you?”
“A little. Level with me, Fred. Were you married to Angela Scali?”
He studied his glass for a long moment, then nodded. “That wasn’t her name then, but I guess it’ll do. Hollywood has an ugly way of changing most everything, doesn’t it?”
“Did Angela change much?”
He hunched on the bar solemnly, eyes riveted on the mirror behind the bottles. “Fifteen years is a long time, Honey. She was skinny then. And frightened. So was I. The war was the big thing. The end of the road. There was no tomorrow.”
“How old was she then, Fred?”
“Sixteen. She had a face like a madonna. And I was all of twenty-two. Two hands, two arms, two legs—” He stopped, quickly emptied his glass and stood up, grasping his cane. “Let’s take a walk.”
“I haven’t touched my drink yet.”
“Leave it. We’ll come back.”
“Will we, Fred?”
He grasped my arm. “You can bet on it. Come on.”
We walked out into the glare of the Pike, its lights whirling, jiggling in the new darkness. The music from the merry-go-round blared in our ears. He led me to a bench near the roller coaster and pointed his stick at the shiny dark rails.
“See that thing, Honey. Every fifty-six seconds another one of those crazy-looking cars starts up over those tracks. Rain or shine. Kind of silly, isn’t it?”
One of the cars careened around a curve, clanking violently.
“It’s one way of making a living, Fred,” I answered tautly. “How are you doing?”
He scratched his forehead. “As a star reporter I’m doing fine. I drink when I want to, write when I wish, sleep when I feel like it. The pay is good and I have no complaints. I wouldn’t want to trade with you.”
“Neither would I,” I said, regarding his face intently. “How come you never brought Angela over to this country after the war?”
“Honey, you never bother with little questions, do you?”
“I learned that from you, Fred. You always told me to start at the top and work down. Were you worried about your leg?”
“Get off my back, Honey!” he slammed, rapping his cane on the pavement.
“Were you too pathetic, Fred, is that it? A guy with a stubbed-off leg who couldn’t face the future?”
“I faced the future,” he roared. “What do you want from me? Blood? Well, I left a gallon at Bastogne. So climb on your bicycle and go collect it!”
“Look at me, I’m weeping,” I said harshly. “Too bad your Congressional didn’t sprout five toes so you could have worn it on your stump instead of that artificial contraption.”
He recoiled, tried to stand, then slumped on the bench heavily. “I taught you good, didn’t I?” he said in his throat. “Never pull your punches. Always hit when they’re down.”
“You aren’t down, Mr. Sims,” I hurled. “You’re just crawling. That’s worse.”
“Okay, so I didn’t bring her here,” he said lowly, staring up at the spindly-legged framework of rails and beams where a new car roared down. “Do you think I wanted her to see me like this?”
“You’re no basket case, Fred.”
“Neither was she. After a few years she did some acting with an Italian film company, then came a contract with a Hollywood studio. She arrived flashing a mink, a poodle and two very attractive knees. I was at the airport but she didn’t even look at me.”
“What’d you expect, a red-carpeted shell hole?”
“No!”
“You admitted fifteen years was a long time, Fred. Was it ever really a marriage?”
“No,” he breathed lowly. “Even the Army didn’t know about it. We found a priest secretly.”
“So when she arrived here you went to the airport not as Fred Sims, husband and hero, but as Fred Sims reporter. Isn’t that about it?”
“Yes. I didn’t want her to know me. I was glad.”
“Sure you were,” I said. “But the feeling didn’t last, did it?”
“No.”
“You went after her, didn’t you, Fred?”
“Yes,” he managed grimly.
“Now she was big time.”
“That wasn’t the reason, Honey.” His eyes sought mine and bored deeply. “Whatever you think, I was in love with Angela.”
“‘Were you in love with her yesterday?”
“Yes!”
“Were you in love with her when you saw her dangling from that tree?”
He crushed his hands over his eyes. “Honey, don’t do this to me!”
The roller coaster roared above us, booming on the thin rails, gnashing angrily.
“What did you do to yourself, Fred? That’s what I want to know.”
“Months ago I—I went to her,” he whispered lowly. “I confessed who I was. She was living in a big apartment off Sunset Boulevard—with a swimming pool—and maids—and a butler. I’d been going there often, pretending interviews, making excuses that something had to be rewritten. I—I don’t know why she took it the way she did.”
“What’d she say, Fred? Thanks for the memory?”
“She—she called me a sick, crippled old man,” he said faintly, staring off at the blinking, whirling lights of the Pike. “She laughed at me.”
“I’m surprised,” I said sarcastically. “I thought she might applaud. Especially when you showed her your Congressional.”
“Stop it, Honey!”
“Stop what, Fred?” I drummed angrily. “Angela from dying? She was already dead when she came to the United States, wasn’t she?”
“No!”
“You knew she was unhappy. You tried to help her, didn’t you, Fre
d?”
“Yes!”
“You effected her escape from the Pantages Theatre. You took her to Meadow Falls.”
“Yes,” he groaned pitifully.
“Then what happened, Fred?”
“She—she forgot me,” he said through clenched teeth. “She treated me again like she did at the beginning. She said she hated me!”
“Enough to make you want to murder her?”
“No!”
I groped inside his breast coat pocket. Before he jerked back I knew for certain his ribbon was not there. I produced the blood-stained emblem from my purse and held it up before his startled eyes.
“I found this in her shower stall, Fred.”
He twisted awkwardly on the bench, clenching his hands. “Honey, I went to the camp yesterday morning. She wasn’t in her apartment. So I took a walk up by the falls.” His head dropped back, mouth open. “She—she was hanging from that tree. I—”
“Fred, you’re going to need a good lawyer.”
“Believe me, Honey. I didn’t kill her. I must have gone out of my head. I remember reaching up for her, trying to lift her down. Then, everything went blank, until I found myself in her shower trying to wash off the blood.”
“Then you drove to my apartment, didn’t you?”
“Yes.”
“You seemed perfectly sane when I saw you.”
“I was, Honey,” he broke, trying to talk above the rattle of the roller coaster above us. “I was sane the whole time, except—”
“Except when, Fred?”
He stiffened, drawing his cane up between us. “Let’s take a ride on that thing. I’ve always watched, but never had courage enough to try it. Are you game, Honey?”
I peered up at the car sliding perilously along the rails and grimaced. “You haven’t finished, Fred.”
“I’ll finish when we come down, Honey. I promise.” He got up, shuffling his cane under him and produced some change from his pocket. “You’re game, aren’t you, Honey?”
“I guess so.”
We started toward a runway into the ride where a woman sat inside a small booth counting money.
“This should be fun,” Fred said, laying his change on the counter. “Like old times, huh, Honey?”
“Sure, Fred.”
He lifted his cane under him as we walked toward a car poised below the girders and beams that made up the rickety old structure. He helped me inside and then climbed in, laughing drunkenly. “I remember the night your father was killed, Honey. You weren’t much more than a kid then. I remember you kneeling in that gutter, weeping. I really felt sorry for you.”
Honey West: A Kiss for a Killer Page 13