Vado shook his head. “Not until he comes up with the money. His losses on Lingering Melody effectively put him out of the picture business. That’s particularly galling to him, because he wants to find a vehicle for Kimberly Dana and do a film starring her.”
“Is she an actress?”
Vado nodded. “Some kind of an actress. No Diana Cushing. But good enough. We tested her. Ever see her on television?”
“No, sir, I never did. What’s she on?”
“Beach volleyball,” said Vado with a grin. “Look at it on Sports Channel sometime. She plays volleyball in the sand with a team of other girls, all wearing bikinis. It really is sort of a sport. Not like TV wrestling. She sweats, Lieutenant. They all do. Caps with visors to keep the sun out of their eyes. And bikinis. They play hard. Kim is something of an athlete.”
Columbo frowned thoughtfully. “Athlete…” he muttered. “Okay. Well, sir, I’ve taken too much of your time. I thank ya. Very interesting, all you said.”
“Any time, Lieutenant. I didn’t like Arlene at all and Steve not much, but I’d like to see the people who killed them brought to justice. There is one thing I’d like to say, though.”
“Okay. What is it?”
“Your line of questions seems to me to suggest you might suspect Joe Khoury. Let me tell you for sure, Lieutenant; Joe Khoury is no murderer. Even if the bitch deserved it—which I don’t say—Joe couldn’t have done it. It’s just not in the guy. He’s not the kind.”
“Well, I appreciate what you just said, Mr. Vado,” said Columbo. “I’ve got an awful good impression of Mr. Khoury myself. It’s hard to think he could have had anything to do with—Anyway… Thanks again.” Columbo moved toward the door and reached for the knob.
“Oh. Let me give you a couple of tapes, Lieutenant Columbo. Here’s Galactic Revolt and Lingering Melody. ”
“Oh, sir, I—”
“No problem,” said Vado. “I copy them, make as many copies as I want.”
“Well, thank you again, then,” said Columbo. He stopped, took his hand off the doorknob. “Oh. There was one other little thing I meant to ask. Something was stolen from the Khoury home. Just one item, it seems like. An expensive necklace. Worth over forty-eight thousand dollars. A choker actually. Are you familiar with that item, sir? Can you give me a description of it?”
Vado shook his head. “I’m not aware of it, Lieutenant.”
“You never noticed it on her,” said Columbo. “Never saw her wearing it?”
“Never,” said Vado.
“Not something you’d forget, is it?” Columbo asked.
“I think if I saw a choker worth forty-eight thousand around Arlene Khoury’s neck, I’d remember it,” said Vado.
2
Kimberly Dana parked her green MG in the small parking lot near the pier at San Luis Rio. She was wearing a pair of frayed denim shorts, purple-and- white striped, with a rib-knit white cotton top. Her hair was tied back, and she wore wraparound sunglasses. She got out of the car, then reached back in and pulled out a big straw handbag.
She walked a little distance out on the beach and sat down on a wooden bench. It was in fact the same bench where Columbo had sat yesterday afternoon when he was waiting for Yussef Khoury to come up from scuba diving.
From her bag she took a mayonnaise jar. Running the lip of the jar across the sand, she scooped up enough sand to about half fill it. She glanced around to see if anyone was watching. Seeing no one, she reached into the bag again and pulled out the Harry Winston choker. She dropped it into the jar. She scooped in more sand, covering the choker and filling the jar. Finally she screwed the lid on tight and returned the jar to her bag.
This was what Joe had told her to do. Filled with sand, the jar would sink to the bottom. Because it was a smooth object, a fisherman would not snag it on a hook. Tomorrow he would come out and dive for it, as he had done for the Bali-Songs. If he could find it, he would carry it out to deeper water and drop it in the kelp forest.
It seemed to her like an uncertain and overelaborate way to give up the beautiful gold choker. But Joe had said he wanted it disposed of today. However remote the chance might be, he did not want to risk it being found in a search of her apartment. Why, then, didn’t he bring it out here himself and take it to the deep water this afternoon? He said he couldn’t come out scuba diving this afternoon; he was meeting with his lawyers about Arlene’s will.
She walked slowly out on the pier, conscious of the stares of the fishermen—of some of the fishermen, actually; nothing could distract most of them from their concentration on their lines.
At the end of the pier she sat down and let her legs dangle over the end. Two fishermen, feeling apparently that she had intruded on their territory, edged away and put a little distance between her and them. That was fine with her. Maybe she could drop the jar without any of them noticing.
She looked down into the straw bag. The beautiful choker lay in the sand in one side of the jar, and .the gold glinted through the glass. It was a lovely thing. She hadn’t guessed how much he had paid for it. To throw it—
Suddenly she formed a resolution. She closed the bag and stood up. She walked back along the pier. To give up an exquisite thing like this was foolishness. With all that was at stake, it should be invested, not squandered. And she knew how she would invest it.
Fourteen
1
Yussef Khoury had entered the water a hundred yards north of the pier. There was no point in letting the fishermen see him again. They thought him an annoyance at best, and it would be just as well if they did not remember him. He swam out, then turned south and approached the pier.
That was when an unhappy accident happened. Suddenly he felt a jerk against the rubber of his suit, in his left armpit, and in a moment he realized a hook had pierced the rubber. A fisherman had snagged him.
Annoyed and at the same time struck by the preposterous nature of the situation, Khoury turned and grabbed the line in his gloved hands, to prevent the hook from tearing the rubber even more, maybe even tearing his skin. A hundred-seventy-five-pound man and a strong swimmer, he should have been able to overcome any effort by the fisherman to land him. He could have, too, but the man on the pier made it very quickly apparent that he was not going to surrender this big catch without a fight. He let his big fish run out line, then stopped him and began to try to haul him back.
Khoury understood the fisherman’s strategy, which was to tire his fish, ultimately to exhaust him. And it was tiring, or would be very quickly. Khoury could not use his arms to swim because his hands gripped the line. He could only use his flippers. He did not gain much distance while the fisherman was giving him line, and shortly he felt the relentless tugs that were meant to land him.
Impatient and a little frightened, he wrapped the line around his left hand and drew the knife from his belt with his right. With a slash he cut the line.
2
Columbo checked in for the day at Parker Center, Los Angeles police headquarters. On his way out, he came on Ted Jackson in a corridor.
“Hey, Columbo! You’re not the easiest man in the world to find. I need to talk to you. Got somethin’ to tell you.”
They stood under glaring fluorescent tubes: Jackson turned out as usual in a handsome checked jacket and knife-creased slacks; Columbo with necktie loose, raincoat covering his wrinkled light- gray suit. He carried a fresh cigar in his right hand.
“Listen, Columbo, I made a collar this morning. It’s maybe gonna change your mind about something.”
“I’m all ears,” said Columbo.
“All right. Remember I told you that Kid named two other girls who came to the house on Pitillo Road. House? Shack is more what it is. Anyway, two other girls called Boobs and Squatty. Dispatcher had a call last night, said the Manson crowd was gettin’ together in the house and raising a lot of hell. I heard the call go to the black-and-white, so I went out, too. Guess who was there? Boobs and Squatty. And you won’t believe th
is, but they claimed they didn’t know where Puss, Kid, and Bum were. They didn’t know they’re in jail! They’d heard of the Khoury murders but didn’t make any connection between that and Puss Dogood.”
Columbo shook his head. “How could anybody not know, livin’ in this town, looking at the newspapers, looking at TV? How could anybody not know?”
“They knew about the murders,” Jackson said again. “But they made no connection between that and Puss Dogood. Believe it or not. That’s what they said.”
“Yeah,” said Columbo. “Believe it or not. How you figure? You believe it?”
Without waiting for an answer to a question he had not expected to be answered, Columbo started walking again, and Jackson walked beside him. “Anyway,” Jackson went on, “they’d come out there in an old car, so both of them had driver’s licenses. I got an ID on them. Came in the office this morning and, guess what?”
Columbo stopped to light his cigar. Jackson, without being asked, offered a lighter.
Jackson went on. “Boobs is Melissa Mead. Squatty is Patricia Finch, a.k.a. Trish Smith. Couple of girls from Greenwich, Connecticut. We’ve got rap sheets on both of them. Possession. Vagrancy. Prostitution. A little time locked up. Not much. All of which doesn’t have much to do with anything, except that—”
“I was wonderin’ if you’d come to it,” said Columbo, who had resumed walking toward the exit.
“Okay. Okay, man,” said Jackson. “Let a guy have a little fun. So okay, one big weakness in the Manson and Helter Skelter connection to the Khoury murders is—was—that Puss and her friends had never been inside the Khoury mansion. Not to worry any more. Boobs worked in the house for about two weeks, as a maid, until she was fired for stealing. It’s on her rap sheet. Mrs. Takeshi, the housekeeper, reported the thefts, and in June of this year Boobs was arrested and booked for grand theft. But Khoury didn’t want to press it, didn’t want the publicity, and we dropped it. But Boobs knows the house inside and out. Huh?”
“‘Huh’ means I’ve gotta go talk to the girl. Where you got her? On what?”
“Possession. She had a stash. It was in her purse. Squatty didn’t have any. I couldn’t hold her.”
3
Columbo drove out to visit to Puss Dogood at Sybil Brand Institute. An officer asked him to check his sidearm before entering the big jail. He raised his eyebrows, smiled, and shrugged. She led him to an interview room. As a police officer he did not interview suspects in the visitors’ room but in a private interview cubicle, a spare little room furnished with two aluminum and vinyl chairs and a small table.
While he waited for the prisoner to be brought in, he sniffed an unlighted cigar. A sign on the wall was inelegantly lettered with a stencil—
No Smoking
An officer brought her to the cubicle. Puss Dogood. She wore the shapeless gray cotton dress that was the uniform at Sybil Brand. Her dark- brown hair, which usually she let fall to her shoulders, was tied back.
“We’ve got Boobs locked up,” he said. “You know—Melissa Mead.”
She shrugged. “So?”
“It doesn’t do you any good… Uh, listen, what would you rather I’d call you, Cathy Murphy or Puss Dogood?”
She sneered. “On my rap sheet and fingerprint record I’m Catherine A. Murphy. But of course I like best the name that Charlie gave me. I’d like that best, no matter what it was.”
“Charlie didn’t give Boobs her name, did he?”
“Boobs never met Charlie. Charlie doesn’t even know she exists.”
“She’s totally devoted to the guy, just the same,” said Columbo, shaking his head.
Puss sneered. “What could she know? She’s a dumb rich kid that came to L.A. looking for kicks.”
“I thought you didn’t know her.”
“I don’t. She was around. I never paid any attention to her. She was a friend of Kid, I guess. She and Squatty wanted to be called by the kind of names Charlie gave people. But if Charlie didn’t give them, what good are they?”
“Charlie’s one hell of a man, huh? He’s put a lot of your friends in jail for life.”
Puss pressed her hands flat together and put them before her face, as if praying. She sighed. “I don’t know…” she said quietly. “Maybe I’d be better off if you sent me to Fontera for life. Looking back on the time I did there, it… it wasn’t so bad. What do I get on the street that I didn’t have there? Grass. Beer. Maybe a man now and then… And he, likely as not, gives me a fat lip. What’s so good about the street? Tell you what, Columbo. You get the powers that be to promise me I can write Charlie and get letters from him, and I’ll plead guilty. Well… Maybe. I’ll think about it. What’s the difference? When Charlie is ready and says the time has come, we all get out anyway.”
Columbo frowned and shook his head. “You’d plead guilty to three murders?”
Puss shrugged. “Why not? Being back in here has reminded me of something. Inside, you got nothing to worry about. Oh, hell, most of them worry themselves sick about getting out. But if you don’t worry about that, you got nothing else to worry about. I could just relax and wait for Charlie to call down the day.”
“Lieutenant… Sorry to interrupt.” An officer of the jail was at the door and beckoned Columbo to step outside.
“What’s up?” he asked.
“Call from headquarters,” she said. “Detective Jackson said to tell you a man identifying himself as Yussef Khoury is under arrest for assault and battery. The officers who have him are waiting to hear from you.”
“Where? Do you know?”
“At the pier at San Luis Rio.”
Columbo stuck his head back in the interview room. “Sorry. Gotta go. I’ll be back.”
Puss Dogood shrugged.
4
Columbo called the dispatcher and asked her to radio the officers at San Luis Rio to do nothing until he got there. It took him forty minutes to make the drive.
“Hi-ya,” he said to the uniformed corporal standing beside the black-and-white as he walked across the parking lot, puffing on a cigar. “Columbo. Homicide. Where’s Mr. Khoury?”
“I’m Corporal Schneider, Lieutenant,” said the beefy, blond, red-faced officer. “Mr. Khoury went in the bait shack to use the phone. This is the damnedest thing I’ve ever seen.”
“Yeah?”
“Yeah. What happened is that Mr. Khoury was scuba diving close to the pier where guys fish. Mr. Delmonico snagged him on his hook and tried to land him like a fish. Mr. Khoury cut his fishing line. When Mr. Khoury came out on the beach, Mr. Delmonico ran down the beach after him, madder’n hell. There were words, and Mr. Khoury decked him. There’s some antagonism all the time between the scuba divers and the guys who fish off the pier. Most of the scuba divers keep a distance from the pier, but Mr. Khoury didn’t today and—”
“Where’s Delmonico?” Columbo asked.
“In the back of the car,” said the corporal. “My partner put a bandage on his nose. He wants us to haul Khoury in. I recognized the name and called headquarters. They said hold everything till you get here.”
“I’ll talk to Delmonico,” said Columbo.
John Delmonico was a lean, wiry man in his late sixties, as Columbo judged. He looked like a retired plumber or electrician. Drops of blood stained his ribbed vest undershirt, and he held his right hand on the thick bandage the second officer had taped over his nose. He had a cigar going, even so.
“His nose is not broken, just bloody,” the second officer said to Columbo.
Columbo put his hands on the car door and stuck his head in the window. “Mr. Delmonico,” he said, “I’m Lieutenant Columbo, LAPD homicide. How ya doin’?”
“Homicide! What’s homicide got to do with that smart-aleck bastard bloodyin’ my nose?”
“Mr. Delmonico, the man that bloodied your nose is Mr. Yussef Khoury. Know the name?”
“Never heard of him. And what’s the difference, anyway? Is this Curry or whatever his name is so important
he can go around bustin’ people’s chops?”
“Sir… Mr. Khoury’s wife was murdered Tuesday night. I thought you might have seen some word of it in the papers or on television.”
“Murdered? That guy’s wife?”
“Plus a friend of his. Plus a young man that worked at his house. Three brutal murders. You can see how he might be upset and short-tempered.”
“Got ya,” said Delmonico. “You’re sayin’ don’t press charges, ’cause the guy’s got enough troubles.”
“Well, that’s up to you, sir. But I thought you might give it a thought.”
“What the hell. Live and let live. If I say I’ll drop it, can I get back to my fishin’?”
“Why not?” said Columbo, glancing at Corporal Schneider, who nodded agreement.
“What the hell,” said Delmonico again. “Give the guy my sympathy about his wife. He is some kinda nut, y’ know. That’s what he is: some kinda nut.”
“Yes, sir. And, uh—There is a question I’d like to ask you. Do you get bothered much by scuba divers here?”
“Only once in a while. It’s no great place to dive. There’s nothin’ out there, no shipwreck or nothin’. One of them comes along just once in a while. Y’ know, they don’t have to dive here. There’s plenty of places for them, only just a few for us guys that like to wet a hook. These scuba divers are guys with money, y’ know. And their broads. I’m afraid the place is gettin’ popular with those kind.”
“Like how, sir?”
“Like, yesterday afternoon the most beautiful girl you ever saw in this world came out here. Dressed like a princess. Walked out to the end of the pier and sat down and stared at the water like there was somethin’ out there she was interested in. Then she got up and left, sorta spanking her own backside as she walked. She’d got the bottom of her pretty purple-and-white shorts dirty.”
“It takes all kinds of people to make a world,” said Columbo.
Columbo: The Helter Skelter Murders Page 12