“That matches something else,” she said. “The knob on the front door has only one clear set of prints: the prints of Officer Cambridge, the man who responded to the nine-one-one call. The rest are smudged.”
“Wiped off?” Columbo asked.
“I wouldn’t say that. Just smudged. The same thing is true of the door to the master-bedroom suite and of the kitchen door, inside and out.”
“Figures,” said Columbo.
“Think so?”
“Yeah. Figures.”
Columbo used his borrowed pencil to make a note. Mulhaney beside him, watched him write, Sr crm. Another note, just above it, said, Hd caulif. Damn! Sour cream and a head of cauliflower. The lieutenant was writing his grocery list!
“Mulhaney,” said Columbo. “Come on. I want to look at somethin’.”
He led Mulhaney back to the bedroom suite. There, just inside the door and short of the big bloodstain, Columbo dropped to his knees and put his head close to the floor to stare at marks on the white carpet. The marks were not dark footprints but three almost parallel lines.
“Mud,” said Columbo.
Mulhaney squatted and looked at the marks. He put his finger on the darkest of the three marks and with finger and thumb pinched a tuft of the carpet. He nodded. “Mud,” he said. “From the backyard, I’d guess.”
Columbo crawled a pace across the floor and stared at the bloody footprint. He looked at the carpet around the footprint. “Look here,” he said. He pointed to a small trace of blood about four feet away. “He stepped in the blood. His next step made a footprint. His second step left a little less blood, not enough to make a footprint.”
Mulhaney moved over to the second, faint footprint and laid a pencil on it, so no one would step on it.
“The mud, that’s somethin’ else,” said Columbo. “Just a guess, but the way it looks—Okay, the guy got mud on his shoe. He wiped it off on the grass. But some was left on the edge of his sole. He turned his foot over on edge and wiped three times before he cleaned it all off.”
“Three lines. Makes sense,” said Mulhaney.
Columbo got up from the floor and dusted his hands on his raincoat. “Somethin’ about it doesn’t make sense,” he said.
“What’s that, Lieutenant?”
Columbo stuck out his arms and turned up his palms. “Why would a guy who’d made a mess like this be obsessed with gettin’ little mud off his shoe?”
“Maybe he wiped it off before he made the mess.”
Columbo shrugged. “Think so? A guy on his way through this sitting room, on his way to kill people with a knife, stops to clean mud off his shoe?”
“I don’t know.”
“Tell ya what. Have your guys look for other traces of that mud. All over.”
“From the utility room to this bedroom,” said Mulhaney.
“No. Not just from the utility room to this bedroom,” said Columbo. “All over. Kitchen especially.”
“You don’t think they came in through the utility-room window?”
“Do you, Mulhaney? Do you?”
“I supposed I did,” the young man said.
“Well, there’s a point, Mulhaney,” said Columbo. “Sometimes things look like somebody wants you to think they look like. See? Does that make sense?”
Mulhaney nodded.
Columbo held his hands in front of him—one with his cigar in it—and shook them as he gestured. “I mean… somebody didn’t climb in that utility-room window. If they had, the splinters wouldn’t be standin’ up. And I bet you don’t find any mud on the utility-room floor. Huh-uh. Whoever came into this house last night, came in through the front door, wearin’ gloves that smudged the fingerprints on the front door and the prints on the door to the bedroom suite. They killed Mrs. Khoury and this fellow Heck, then the house-boy. And then one of them went out and used a burglar tool to pry open the utility-room window— to make it look like that’s how they got in.”
“Which lets off the Manson girl?” Mulhaney asked.
“No, no. I wouldn’t say nothin’ like that,” said Columbo. “She worked for the Khourys. She coulda had a key to this house. Maybe she used it to get in but didn’t want to leave the place looking like somebody’d used a key to get in.”
“I’d worry about her motive,” said Mulhaney. “Why would she want to kill Arlene Khoury? Or Steven Heck?”
“Right. Why would she? What good would that do her?”
Columbo tried to puff on his cigar but found it had gone out while he was crawling around on the floor and talking. He looked at it for a moment, felt it to see if any heat remained, then dropped it into the pocket of his raincoat.
Jackson came into the bedroom suite. “A Mrs. Takeshi just came up the driveway. She’s the cook and housekeeper.”
2
Mrs. Nagako Takeshi sat in the rear of an emergency-squad wagon, holding a clear plastic mask to her mouth and nose, taking oxygen. A woman paramedic was listening to her heart.
“We don’t have to talk with her right now,” said Columbo.
“It’s all right. It’s all right,” said Mrs. Takeshi. She took a final drag on the oxygen and laid the mask aside. “Are you a detective? I want to do anything I can to help.”
Mrs. Nagako Takeshi looked to be about fifty years old. She was a plump woman, with the glossy, yellow-toned complexion of her Japanese ancestry. She wore her black hair in long bangs over her forehead, and bright red lipstick. Her dress was gray with a white starched collar and white cuffs: the uniform of a domestic in a wealthy home. Her English was without accent—unless Southern Californian was an accent.
“This has gotta be a shock for you, ma’am,” said Columbo. “I’m sorry to have to ask you any questions right now.”
Mrs. Takeshi shook her head. “I just can’t believe it,” she murmured. “Sergio, too…”
“That raises a point. Sergio is all the name we have for the young man. Can you—?”
“Flores,” she said. “Sergio Flores. And I may as well tell you, since you’re going to find out anyway, that Sergio was not legal. That is, he didn’t have a green card. Mrs. Khoury didn’t care.”
Columbo retrieved the half-smoked cigar from his pocket and brought it back to life, taking care to stand outside the ambulance so his cigar smoke wouldn’t accumulate inside. “Question,” he said. “This place has a sophisticated alarm system. It didn’t go off. It looks like the murderers came in over the fence, then got into the house by forcing a back window. Why wouldn’t the alarm have gone off?”
“The system wasn’t turned on till they went to bed,” said Mrs. Takeshi. “And it was turned off again at sunrise. Whoever got up to go to the bathroom… if the sun was up, they turned it off. The last one to bed turned it on. The first one up in the morning turned it off. Mrs. Khoury didn’t want to give anybody a key to the alarm system. I didn’t have one. Sergio didn’t have one. If Sergio went out to a movie or something and came home late, he could get in without setting off the alarm, provided the Khourys hadn’t gone to bed. He could open the door with his door key, but if the alarm was armed he would set it off. Once or twice when he came home and saw the house was dark, he slept in the garage. When I came in the morning, the alarm would already be turned off. I set it off one morning when I came to work. I opened the door with a key, but the alarm was still on. Mrs. Khoury was furious —not at me, at Mr. Khoury for getting up to use the bathroom after sunup and forgetting to turn it off.”
“Do you know who the third victim was?” Columbo asked.
“Mr. Heck. They said Mr. Heck.”
“What would he have been doin’ here at midnight or after?”
“I really wouldn’t know, Lieutenant,” she said crisply.
“Was he here when you left?”
“Yes. I left a little before seven. Dinner was ready. Sergio would serve it. Mrs. Khoury and Mr. Heck were sitting beside the pool.”
“Was seven your usual time for leaving? Did Sergio usually serve dinner?�
��
“Yes, sir. I worked ten or eleven hours a day. I was paid for that many hours.”
“Was Mr. Khoury usually home when you left?”
“Sometimes he was, sometimes he wasn’t.”
“What was the relationship between Mr. Heck and Mr. and Mrs. Khoury?”
“I really wouldn’t know, Lieutenant. Mr. Heck was in the motion-picture business. So were Mr. and Mrs. Khoury. I believe Mr. Heck worked on one or two of the Khoury pictures.”
Columbo nodded. “Are you feeling alright, Mrs. Takeshi?”
“No, I’m not, Lieutenant. Not at all. This is a terrible shock to me.”
“I understand, ma’am. So I won’t bother you any more for now. You can go home as soon as you want to. The doctor’s got Mr. Khoury sleeping under sedation, so he probably won’t need anything for quite a while.”
“I’ll have some breakfast or lunch ready for him,” said Mrs. Takeshi.
“Thank ya, then, ma’am. Thank ya.”
Columbo walked back toward the entrance to the house. Then suddenly he turned, “Oh. One thing, ma’am.”
He walked back to the ambulance, where Mrs. Takeshi was taking another breath of oxygen.
“I’m sorry, but y’ know, in this business you gotta catch every little thing. And there’s one thing that does bother me.”
“Yes, Lieutenant?”
“Well—They didn’t turn the alarm system on until they went to bed, and they turned it off early in the morning. And you and Sergio didn’t have keys to that system. If he came home too late or you came too early, you’d set off the alarm even if you opened the door with a key. Is that right?”
“Yes,” said Mrs. Takeshi. “Sergio had a key to the front door. Actually, it’s a key to all the doors. And I had a key. When I came in, about eight in the morning, I could enter the house with my key. The alarm system would be off. Except the one time when it wasn’t.”
“How did you get through the gate?” Columbo asked.
“A radio controller,” she said. “When I pressed the button on it—just like a garage-door controller —the gate would swing back. Inside the house, a bell chimed, saying the gate was open, and a closed-circuit television system showed who was on the driveway. There was a chime and monitor in the kitchen and the same in the master bedroom.”
“Let me get this straight, ma’am,” said Columbo, pointing from the direction of the gate back to the house. “When you opened the gate, people in the bedroom or kitchen would know it. At any time of day or night. But if the alarm system was off, they wouldn’t know you’d opened a door to the house. Right?”
“That’s right, Lieutenant. The Khourys had very specific ideas about how they wanted things to work.”
“Interesting… Sort of unusual. I guess only a few people knew how it worked. Right?”
“Apparently somebody else did too, Lieutenant,” said Mrs. Takeshi.
“Right,” said Columbo. “It looks like somebody knew how it all worked.”
Seven
1
Columbo walked along the narrow corridor, with its line of six holding cells, where female prisoners waited pending a court appearance or transfer to the main jail. No matter what was done to keep this corridor and these cells clean, the place always stank of stale cigarette smoke and of urine and sweat. Maybe what they needed was better ventilation in here. Each holding cell was tiny, only about seven feet long by four wide. It had a stainless-steel toilet without wooden seat and a little basin. The bunk was only a steel shelf, on which the prisoner could sit or lie down, without pillow or blanket. The steel walls and heavy bars were painted with shiny gray enamel, some of it chipped off.
A prisoner did not ordinarily sit in a holding cell for more than an hour or so, but Cathy Murphy had been in this one for about six hours. She wore an orange jump suit with a white T-shirt: the uniform of the temporary jail. She rose from the shelf, leaned against the thick, narrow-set bars, and regarded Columbo with conspicuous hostility. She was smoking a cigarette, and she blew smoke in his face.
“I’m Lieutenant Columbo, LAPD homicide, Miss Murphy,” he said. “I understand you’ve been advised of your rights. Like, you don’t have to answer any questions.”
She shrugged. “What’s the difference whether I answer questions or not?”
“Well, if you told us where you were last night, we might be able to let you outa here.”
“Sure,” she sneered. “I bet. I never got anything out of a cop, especially not the truth or a fair break.” She tossed her head to one side to flip her long dark hair off her face.
Columbo fished a half-smoked cigar out of his pocket. “Y’ wouldn’t happen to have a match handy, would ya, ma’am?” he asked.
“Anything I’ve got, it’s handy,” she said, glancing from side to side at the dimensions of the cell. She pulled a book of paper matches from the pocket of her orange jump suit and handed it to him. “Where’m I going? Sybil Brand?”
She had named the Los Angeles County women’s jail, Sybil Brand Institute, and Columbo nodded. “Well… I’ve been there before.”
“You’ve got quite a record. Miss Murphy. Never anything serious up to now.”
“I figured three years in Fontera was serious,” she said. “I did two years in Arizona. Also, a year in Sybil Brand one time, six months another time. Six months in the Orange County jail. That’s serious time, Lieutenant. Try doing a year, then you’ll know.”
“Plus assorted short stretches,” said Columbo. “You don’t seem to be able to keep your hands off other people’s things, their cars especially. You know why you’re in here now?”
“I had a stash in my car. Which is my car, incidentally. I have good title to it.”
“Four lids,” he said. “That’s the formal charge they’re holding you and your friends on— possession of four lids.”
“Yeah, right,” she said. “A thousand dollars bail, which of course we can’t raise. That’s big bail for possession of four lids. You got something else in mind.”
“Yes, miss, we got something else in mind,” said Columbo. “Three murders.”
“That’s what they told me. I make the perfect suspect, don’t I? I suppose somebody’s already told you Arlene Khoury didn’t like me and gave me a hard time. You’ve got me where you want me, don’t you? Me, the girl with the criminal record, back on the inside lookin’ out. But let me tell you something, Lieutenant Columbo,” she said. She gripped the bars so tightly her knuckles turned white. Holding her cigarette between her lips, she muttered, “You can’t make it stick. We didn’t do it.”
“Why don’t you help us make your alibi, then?”
“By doing what? What could I say that you’d believe?”
“To start with, you could tell me where you got the Acapulco gold,” said Columbo. “Maybe people saw you. Maybe somebody can testify that you were someplace else but Mulholland Drive at the hour when the crimes were committed.”
“Yeah, and maybe the tooth fairy will come and put a quarter under my pillow. I bought the stash on Pershing Square.”
“From who?”
She shook her head. “Are you serious? How’m I supposed to know? There are always guys there. You can always get a lid. You can get other stuff, too. I can see it now. The guy that sold it to me comes to police headquarters and says, ‘Hey, I hear Puss Dogood’s in trouble. Well, I sold her four lids Tuesday night, so she had to be on Pershing Square when those murders came down.’ C’mon, Lieutenant…”
“‘Puss Dogood.’ That’s the name Charlie gave you, I bet,” said Columbo.
“That’s right. That’s the name Charlie gave me. That’s what he still calls me, when he writes. It means I did good whatever he wanted me to do. It doesn’t mean I’m a do-gooder. It means I did good for Charlie. Whatever he wanted, I did good.”
“What time were you at Pershing Square?”
She shrugged. “Maybe ten, ten-thirty.”
“Then where’d you go?”
&
nbsp; “Santa Monica Beach. We went swimming.”
“You say Mrs. Khoury didn’t like you? Why not?”
“She didn’t like it when Mr. Khoury hired me. She knew about my record, about who I am. He’s a nice man, a kind man. She’s somethin’ else again. She drank—I mean drank a hell of a lot. And she whored around. She was sleeping with that guy Heck. Everybody knew it.”
“Something about that bothers me,” said Columbo. “How could they have been confident Mr. Khoury wouldn’t come home, walk in on them?”
“Well… He was probably busy. He had a little something goin’ on the side himself. One of the store’s models, Kim Dana. Model… executive assistant. Whatever. She started out as a model, anyway. A real looker. As a matter of fact, she was waiting for him in his office last night when he came back from his workout at the health club. I bet he was going to do something else for his health before the night was over.”
She took a final drag on her cigarette and tossed it toward the toilet. It missed the toilet and landed on the concrete floor. She pulled another one from a pack that was almost empty and lit it with a paper match. She leaned against the bars. “You gonna charge me with murder?” she asked.
“Not yet,” he said. “We’re gonna hold you on the marijuana charge. They’ll move you out to Sybil Brand in an hour or so.”
“What about Kid? Jenny Schmidt? She’s so damned innocent she doesn’t know left from right. She’s never been in jail before. And you know they’ll separate us, put us in different dorms—like she’s right now in the cell all the way down at the other end. I kinda feel responsible for her.”
“Well, maybe you won’t be there long,” said Columbo.
“Yeah. Are you serious about—? You mean you’re really gonna keep us locked up over four lids?”
“That way I’ll know where you are when I want to ask you more questions.”
She stepped away from the bars and sat down on the shelf. “You think I care? Kid’s gonna care. She’s probably scared to death right now, and she’s gonna stay scared. Bum won’t be scared. I mean Warren Douglas. He’s been in before. But me? When I’m in a place like this, I’m closer to Charlie. I mean, we’re spiritually closer. I mean, Charlie’s locked in a cage, and I’m locked in a cage, and that makes us closer. Which is all I want to be, Lieutenant. Closer to Charlie. That’s all I want to be.”
Columbo: The Helter Skelter Murders Page 5