Trace grabbed a handful of housing leaflets from the desk next to Laurie’s and handed them to the man.
“Here, take these home and look through them. We’ve just had a death in the family and we’re closing for the day. Come back next week.”
“Oh,” the man said, “I’m sorry.”
“Quite all right,” Trace said. “Nobody cared much for the deceased anyway.”
After the family left, Trace locked the door, pulled the shade, and turned back to Laurie. “Now, you were saying.”
“I didn’t know what to do. For a couple of days, I just let it be. Then I talked to Collins on the phone and told him I was going to tell Mr. Rose. He told me not to. He had a plan to straighten everything out, to return the money and to get me off the hook so no one would ever think I was involved. He said just being involved might mean I’d never get my law license. He convinced me to meet him that night.”
“And he took you to the farm?”
“Right,” she said.
“When was that?”
“Tuesday a week ago,” Laurie said. “We drove up there in his car. He said he’d explain everything to me when we got to the farm. But when we got up there, all he wanted to do was go to bed with me. He dragged me into the bedroom. I screamed my head off, but there wasn’t anybody to hear me—Collins just laughed and said I was the dumbest cunt in three counties.”
“What happened then?” Chico asked.
“I pushed him onto the bed to get away from him. Then I grabbed the only thing I could find in my purse, the perfume bottle, and I threw it at him. It missed, but it gave me a chance and I ran outside. It was raining hard. His keys were still in the car, so I drove away and left him there.”
“What did you do with the car?”
“I didn’t know what to do, so I put it in a parking garage near here. It’s still there, I guess.”
“You’ve got a parking stub?” Trace asked.
“Yes,” Laurie said. She took it from her purse. “Right here.”
Trace took it. “So that was the last time you saw Collins?”
Laurie nodded. “I swear. And he was alive when I left him. You’ve got to believe me.”
“There are still a lot of questions to be answered,” Trace said.
Laurie looked at him with a blank expression.
“The necklace,” Trace said. “What’d you do with it?”
“I brought it to the office and put it in my desk. I was going to give it back to him, but I forgot about it. Then the other day when you were in here, I looked for it, but it was gone.”
“You just left a diamond necklace in a desk drawer?” Trace said.
“The drawer is always locked. Our checkbook’s in there.”
“So somebody unlocked your desk and stole it,” Trace said.
“I didn’t take it out, but it’s not there anymore,” Laurie said. “Somebody must have stolen it.”
“Who has the key to your desk?” Chico asked.
“There’s only one key.” She pointed behind her toward a bulletin board on the wall. “That’s where I keep it, hanging on that hook.”
Her face was downcast and miserable.
“There’s something else, isn’t there?” Chico asked.
“There’s this. I just was getting out my checkbook to write some checks and I opened the desk and found this.”
She handed Trace a small black leather address book.
“The little black book,” Trace said. He opened it to the Ms. The page was empty. Under R, he found written Mandy Reese’s name. In capital letters. With a star next to it and the number “300.” Mandy’s price.
“Am I in trouble, Mr. Tracy?”
“Well, your diamond necklace was found on Collins’ dead body. You had the car he was driving when he vanished. Your name is on a lot of illegal cash withdrawals from the company, your perfume is all over the dead man’s bedroom drapes, and you hated the man. I think the cops’ll say that’s a start. Hell, they threw me in jail on less.”
“That’s ’cause you have a guilty look,” Chico snapped. She patted Laurie Anders’ shoulder. “Don’t worry,” Chico said. “You’ll be all right. I have a good feeling.”
26
“Good feeling about what?”
They hadn’t heard the door open, and Rafe Rose stood there, staring at Laurie Anders’ tear-soaked face. “What’s going on here?”
“I didn’t kill Mr. Collins,” Laurie sobbed. “I swear I didn’t.”
Rose turned to Trace. “He’s dead?”
“As Donny Osmond on Broadway.”
“And you’re acusing Laurie?”
“I’m not accusing anybody. I’m just looking for information.”
“Well, you can stop badgering her,” Rose snapped. “Laurie wouldn’t hurt a fly.”
“Somebody swatted Collins. How about you?”
Rose sputtered.
“When did you find out that Collins was stealing money from the company?” Trace asked.
There was a long silence.
Trace said, “You’re going to have to tell it to the cops anyway, but telling me first might make the whole thing easier. Like a rehearsal.”
“I had my suspicions,” Rose said at last. “Then I found a lot of checks made out to phantom companies with postal boxes. The postal boxes were Thomas’. I have a friend in the post office who found out for me.”
“My name was on the checks,” Laurie sniffed.
“I knew you didn’t have anything to do with it,” Rose said. “I figured Thomas was signing your name. That’s right, isn’t it?”
Laurie numbly nodded.
“Did you confront Collins with this?” Trace asked.
“I was going to as soon as he came into the office. But he wasn’t around to talk to. Then he turned up missing, and I didn’t know what the hell was going on.”
“You didn’t just go up to his farm and beat his head in with a bat?” Trace asked.
“What farm?” Rose asked. “No, of course I didn’t beat in his head with a bat.”
“I’m going to report everything that happened today to the police,” Trace said. “I’m sure they’ll be in touch with you, so don’t anybody leave town.”
“Idiotic,” Rose snapped. “Of course we’re not leaving town.”
“Where would I go?” Laurie said, and sounded miserable all over again.
Back at the Chinatown hotel, Trace sat Chico in the chair in his room and placed his tape recorder and all the tapes in front of her.
“What’s this all for?” she said.
“I want you to sit down and play all these tapes again. Send out for room service. Don’t leave. Listen and think.”
“Oh. All of a sudden, I’m allowed to listen to your tapes. Every time I go near one of them you bitch, but now I can listen.”
“This is serious business, Chico. I’m the one in the trouble. I’m out on bail, and if we don’t find a killer pretty soon, I may go up the river.”
“Uh-huh. And without a paddle.” Chico scanned the room-service menu. She looked up and smirked. “So you want me to solve the case for you. After you’ve mucked it up for a week.”
“Yes,” Trace said.
Chico smiled. “Okay,” she said.
27
Trace came back to the room at eleven P.M.
Chico was sleeping on the bed.
He sat alongside her and touched her shoulder. Her eyes opened languidly and she smiled.
“Hi, Trace. I’ve got it,” she said.
“So do I,” he said. “Can we make it stick?”
“We’d better,” Chico said. “I don’t have any recipes for cakes with files in them.”
28
A heavy rain was drenching the ground when Trace and Chico arrived at the farm the next morning. Deputy Sheriff Carey was waiting and he looked at Trace with even less enthusiasm than normal.
“If this hocus-pocus of yours doesn’t work, you’re going right back into jail.”
Chico said, “He might be guilty of hocus, but his pocus is clear.”
“I ought to lock him up right now anyway, just on general principles.”
Laurie Anders’ car came up the driveway, and even before she could step out, Mike Mabley’s gray Lincoln pulled in behind her.
Looking confused and a little frightened, Laurie walked toward Trace. Meanwhile, Mabley got out of his car and offered his arm to Mrs. Collins, who was wearing a black dress and veil. She took a look at the house and visibly shuddered.
“Glad you could make it,” Trace called out to Mabley and Mrs. Collins.
“It was rather unexpected. My car wouldn’t start and I had to ask Mr. Mabley to bring me here. It was very kind of him.”
“That was real nice of you, Mike,” said Trace. “I’d like you both to meet Laurie Anders and Deputy Sheriff Carey.”
“Yeah, yeah,” Mabley said. “Good to meet you. Couldn’t we all head indoors? It’s raining cats and dogs out here.”
“We won’t take long,” Trace said.
“You haven’t been much help in this whole matter so far,” Mabley said. “Getting us all wet now isn’t much of an improvement.”
“I’ll get better,” Trace promised. “Laurie here was Thomas’ secretary. She’s the person he gave the diamond necklace to. The necklace I found in Collins’ hand after he was killed.”
“You found?” Mrs. Collins said. “But the police said…”
“I found the body first,” Trace said. “I just hadn’t gotten around to notifying them yet. As I said, Collins bought the diamond necklace in Vegas for Laurie.”
“I didn’t know anything about any diamond necklace,” Mrs. Collins said.
“And Laurie’s signature is on a number of fraudulent checks written from the real-estate firm,” Trace said.
Sheriff Carey stared at him with narrowed eyes. “Are you telling us that this woman’s a criminal?”
“I didn’t do it,” Laurie said. “I didn’t do anything.”
A third car pulled into the driveway and Rafe Rose got out and walked toward them.
“Who’s he?” Carey asked.
“Rafe Rose. He was Collins’ partner,” Trace said.
“Hello, Judith,” Rose said. “I was sorry to hear about Thomas. Terrible. Just terrible.”
“Thank you, Rafe.”
Rose turned to face Trace and the police officer. “So what are we all doing here?”
“I was just about to ask the same question,” Carey said.
“Last one,” Trace said. He pointed to the driveway, where another battered car turned in. Tammy Collins and her boyfriend, Julio, stepped out and walked toward them.
“This is Collins’ daughter,” Trace said. “The neckless wonder is her boyfriend, Julio. I suggest you don’t stand downwind of him.”
“You’ve got a lot of nerve, Dick Tracy, dragging us here,” Tammy snapped at Trace.
“Be patient. You might enjoy it.”
Julio looked skyward, as if wondering when the rain would stop. It rained harder.
“Can we get on with it?” Carey asked.
“Okay,” Trace said. “I found Collins’ body back there in the little storage shed. Along the way I found out a lot about him. He was a womanizer, a gambler, and an embezzler.”
“That’s not all he was,” Tammy snapped.
“You’re right,” Trace said. “He was a wife-beater too. And he even tried to snuggle up to sweet little Tammy here. To make a long eulogy short, everybody wanted him dead. Finally somebody did everyone a big favor by bopping him with a baseball bat. Anyway, I found the body and locked it up. Then a day later when I came back, someone else had been here. The barn door was open and there was a diamond necklace in Collins’ hand. I couldn’t have missed seeing that the first day.”
“How’d it get there?” Carey said.
“Somebody planted it there. To incriminate Laurie.”
Mike Mabley looked disgusted. “This is like something out of a movie,” he said. “We’re standing around in the rain listening to all this hooey and who knows if it makes any sense. Tracy, you were working on this case and didn’t find out anything. If you had found Collins sooner, maybe he wouldn’t be dead.”
“That was one of the things,” Trace said, “that was interesting. When I started to look for Collins, I didn’t come up with anything. So suddenly Mrs. Collins gets a note that sends me on a search for some hooker. When that doesn’t turn up anything, Mike happens onto a story in the paper that suggests that Collins and Rose had some money trouble. It was like the heat was always being turned up, trying to get something cooking.”
“Are we leading somewhere?” Rose asked.
“We are. Stay with me,” Trace said. “First thing was when I found out about this farm from Laurie…”
Mrs. Collins spun toward the young woman angrily. “Easy, Judith,” Trace said. “Thomas is dead now. Anyway, when I was tipped off about the farm I found the body. I also found this sex newspaper with Mandy Reese’s name and phone number circled. But Mandy told me that Collins had been her customer for a couple of years and that he had her phone number in a little black book. And she was listed in the telephone directory. So why would that ad be circled in the paper?”
“So that somebody would go looking for Mandy as a possible suspect,” Chico said.
“Remember, Mrs. Collins had already gotten that note supposedly from Mandy, returning Collins’ cuff link,” Trace said.
“A printed note,” Chico said. “But why would Mandy print a note? Why not just write it?”
“Because Mandy didn’t send it,” Trace said. “Someone else did, and they printed the message so that their handwriting wouldn’t be recognized.”
“The little black book was a mystery in itself,” Trace said. “Mandy told me that Collins kept it in his wallet. But when I found his body, his wallet was still in his pocket. No little black book, though. It turned up yesterday in Laurie Anders’ desk.”
“Why?” Carey asked. “Who?”
“Because somebody was trying to throw suspicion all around. First on Mandy. And then, by putting the necklace in Collins’ hands and planting the black book in her desk, on Laurie. Somebody who knew where the key was to Laurie’s desk was kept. Somebody who killed Collins and took the little black book out of his wallet,” Trace said.
“Don’t forget the perfume bottle,” Chico said.
“Right. When Laurie was up here just before Collins was killed, she threw a perfume bottle at him. I smelled the perfume in the bedroom and found a few little glass chips on the floor.”
“The rest of the broken bottle was in the garbage pail,” Chico said. “But if Laurie had killed him, she would have cleaned up the glass and disposed of it elsewhere. And the real killer would have just left it to throw suspicion on whoever the perfume belonged to.”
“I’m totally confused now,” Carey said.
“You’re not the only one,” Mabley said. “This is all just a big waste of time.”
“I don’t think so,” Trace said. Rain was pouring down inside the collar of his jacket. He moved his foot through the soil of the yard, changing it into a red muddy paste.
“I picked up Collins car last night. It’s coated with this red mud. It was raining here the last night Laurie saw Collins, the night he was killed.”
“So?” Mabley said. “Mud’s mud.”
“I don’t know,” Trace said. “Red mud’s pretty distinctive. Like the kind I saw on your galoshes the first day I met you. Remember? You told me you had to change a tire in the rain. But your car’s brand-new and new tires just don’t go flat that way.”
“Are you hinting at something?” Mabley said.
“More than that,” Trace said. “Mrs. Collins, how’d you and your husband come to get an insurance policy from Mabley? I mean, he’s in San Francisco and you live out over the bridge. Were you two just wandering around the Mission District slums one day and decided to stop into Mabley’s
office?”
“I don’t know,” Mrs. Collins said. “Thomas decided to go to Mr. Mabley. I don’t know why he chose him.”
“And then the two of you went there and signed the policy application, right in Mabley’s office?”
“That’s right,” Mrs. Collins answered. “What’s wrong with that?”
“Nothing, if your miraculous husband had a talent for being in two places at one time.”
“Tracy, you’re talking through your ass,” Mabley said, “and we’re not putting up with any more of it.”
“We? Already it’s we? Come on,” Trace said. “Why don’t you lighten up and tell the sheriff how you both killed Collins? Confession’s good for the soul.”
“Bullshit,” Tammy Collins hissed. “My mother wouldn’t have the guts to kill that bastard.”
“Look at her again and tell me that,” Trace said. “A husband who beat her. A husband who sexually assaulted her daughter. A husband so cheap he wouldn’t buy furniture for the house or pay for the daughter’s tuition, but was going through the middle-aged crazies, I guess, and stealing from his company and spending it all on other women.”
Trace turned to face Judith Collins. “Last night I went to the restaurant near Mabley’s office, the same restaurant where you saw me, Mabley.” Trace nodded toward the sodden agent. “It might interest Mrs. Collins to know that Mabley takes all his women there. Isn’t that right, Mike?” No response. “But the waitresses there remember him being there most recently with you, Mrs. Collins. They describe you to a T. You’re a frequent customer there with your insurance man, aren’t you?”
“Don’t answer any more questions, Judith,” Mabley said. “Mr. and Mrs. Collins came to my office to sign that policy in my presence. I’ll swear to that in court.”
“Of course you would,” Trace said. “You’d swear that you and Mrs. Collins weren’t having an affair too, wouldn’t you?”
“Ahhh, to hell with this,” Mabley said.
“Don’t worry, Mike,” Trace said. “It’ll be real easy for the police to find out whether any of your car tires has ever had a flat. And that person who called the sheriff’s office reporting the body in the barn—that’s on tape. I don’t think it’ll be too difficult for a voice analyzer to match it to your voice.”
Pigs Get Fat (Trace 4) Page 16