“Those are the things I’ve been worrying about,” said Columbo. He stood up and rapped on the window in the door. ‘‘It’d be a good idea if you didn’t take off for Connecticut or anywhere. I may need to ask you some more questions, and I don’t want to have to hold you as a material witness.” An officer opened the door, but the young woman ignored her. She shook her head. “I’ll admit something, Lieutenant,” she said. “Being in jail gets awful tiresome awful quick.”
5
Jenny Schmidt, a.k.a. Kid, was forty-two years old. She was a wan, conspicuously unhappy woman, a natural blonde, the kind of woman no one would take a second look at on the street, because she was neither particularly pretty nor particularly homely. If Puss Dogood didn’t insist that Kid had never been in jail before, Columbo might have taken her for a woman who had spent much of her life in jails and prisons.
“I didn’t have anything to do with it,” she said before he could ask her a question.
“Sergeant Jackson says you don’t much like it here,” said Columbo.
She shook her head. “I’ve never been in a place like this before. There’s awful women here!”
“Well, help yourself out,” he said. “Did you make a telephone call to Squatty on Thursday?”
Her eyes widened. “Phone call… I haven’t been near a phone since I was busted!”
“I can check the log.”
“Check it! I haven’t called anybody!”
* * *
He checked. She was telling the truth.
6
When Columbo arrived at headquarters on Monday morning, he was painfully sunburned. His Sunday-aftemoon hours on the beach with his wife had cost him a penalty. He hardly got inside the door before three people told him Captain Sczciegel wanted to see him immediately. Three more told him before he reached the captain’s office.
“What the hell happened to you?” the captain asked as soon as Columbo walked in.
“I sunburn easy,” said Columbo.
“Well… Must’ve spent all day on the firing range. I didn’t even get in here this morning before your qualifying certificate, signed by the range officer, was on my desk. Congratulations, Columbo. Now that you know you won’t shoot yourself in the foot, I imagine you’re carrying your service revolver, as per regulations. Right?”
“I’ll, uh, have to check out some bullets,” said Columbo. “I couldn’t find—”
"Ammunition,Columbo! Cartridges. Not bullets!” The captain turned to Sergeant Jackson, who was also in the office. “Ted, lend the man some… bullets, so he’ll be equipped like a cop when he leaves here.”
“Whadda ya carry, Columbo?” Jackson asked. “One of those, uh… uh—”
“A goddamn revolver!” said Captain Sczciegel. “He needs some thirty-eight ammo.”
“Sorry. Can’t help him,” said Jackson. “I carry a nine-millimeter Beretta.”
“Anyway,” said the captain. “Where were you on your way to this morning, Columbo?”
“Culver Pictures,” said Columbo. “Need to talk to a man named Willsberger.”
“Got something that takes priority,” said Sczciegel. “I want both of you to go look at this one. We had a call from a Mrs. Russell. You know, Yussef Khoury’s secretary. Seems like a package arrived in the mail Saturday. It’s addressed to Miss Cathy Murphy, better known to us as Puss Dogood. They don’t think it’s a bomb, but they’ve taken it out to the parking lot. Two black-and-whites are on the scene. A bomb squad is on its way. I want you guys there. Find out what somebody mailed to Puss Dogood—something that arrived while she’s in jail.”
* * *
“How did ya get sunburned, Columbo?” Jackson asked as they drove to Rodeo Drive.
“Once or twice a year, I take Mrs. Columbo to the beach. She loves it. I’m not much for it. So I sit there under an umbrella, smokin’ a cigar, and by the by I go to sleep. And the sun moves around, which means I’m not in the shade anymore. Somethin’ always happens. One time I gut stung by a jellyfish.”
“You can’t even swim, as I remember.”
“Well, I’m gonna learn. I’m gonna learn to scuba dive. You got those tanks of air on ya, so you can’t drown; and you got a rubber suit on, so jellyfish can’t eat ya. Also, a guy in a rubber suit doesn’t look tasty, so the sharks don’t bother him. It’s the way to do it.”
* * *
Two more cars had arrived, and the parking lot behind Khoury’s was roped off. A crowd stood back at a respectful distance. The word bomb had circulated.
Columbo parked the Peugeot in front of the store, and he and Jackson walked through. They found Yussef Khoury, standing beside his gull-wing Mercedes parked just beside the rear entry. He looked as if maybe his chief concern was protecting the car.
“The package was delivered Saturday morning,” he said to Columbo. “Because the store was closed out of respect for Arlene, no one took any notice of what had come in the mail. Eleanor saw it this i morning and immediately called the police.”
Two men parted the yellow tape that cordoned I off the parking lot, and the heavily armored bomb-squad van pulled in.
Columbo walked across the lot. “Hi-ya, Hogan,”
he said to the big detective, so fat he would have been dismissed from the force as overweight except for the known facts of his expertise and courage in a job nobody really wanted.
“Hi, Columbo. Really a bomb?”
“Doubtful,” said Columbo. “But ya can’t be too careful these days.”
The package lay on the pavement, between two LAPD black-and-whites parked to either side, to take as much as possible of the force of the explosion if the package were in fact a bomb. The squad’s van pulled up close. A pneumatically controlled arm ran out from the rear of the van, carrying a heavy steel-mesh box, which it lowered over the package. Hogan shoved a wheeled steel shield forward and approached the box and the package.
After Hogan had peered at the box and package for a moment, he signaled for a dog. A uniformed officer led the German shepherd forward, and the animal circled the box, sniffing and wagging its tail. Hogan nodded and began to pull on a heavily padded suit reinforced with teflon panels. He put on a shielded helmet and huge gloves. He ordered the box lifted, and he knelt and photographed the package from several angles. The dog came up closer and sniffed curiously, then wagged its tail. If a dog could shrug, the dog shrugged.
Hogan took a knife from his pocket and cut the paper and tape. He opened the package, a small paperboard box.
"Columbo! My god, look!”
Columbo strode forward and knelt beside Hogan.- Lying inside the package, in a wad of crumpled newspaper, was a jeweled gold choker, resplendent with glittering diamonds and emeralds.
“Forty-eight thousand three-hundred fifty dollars,” Columbo muttered.
“Guess that settles that,” said Jackson, who by now knelt beside Columbo.
Yussef Khoury came near. He stared into the cut-open package. “My god!” he croaked.
* * *
“Like I said, that settles that,” Ted Jackson laughed as they pulled away from the store, carrying the superb piece of jewelry to the police property room, to be impounded as evidence.
“Figure so?” Columbo asked.
“Puss Dogood and her partners murdered Arlene Khoury, Steve Heck, and the houseboy. Figuring the cops would come looking for them, they had to get rid of the choker temporarily. So they mailed it to Puss at the Khoury office.”
“Why’d they figure the cops would come?”
“A Manson-style murder. They were the only known Manson types still hanging around together in L.A.”
“If they figured the cops were coming for them, why didn’t they take off?” Columbo asked. “Look at it another way. If they were the only known Manson group in L.A. and they wanted to do a robbery, why’d they write ‘Helter Skelter’ and all that? Why’d they make it so obviously a Manson-style killing?”
“They didn’t figure we’d have enough evidence an
d would have to let them go—as the guys almost had to let Charlie go, twenty-five years ago, as you’ll remember. And if we hadn’t come up with Boobs, which gives us the link to the house, and now the choker—”
Columbo shook his head. “Funny…” he said thoughtfully.
“What’s funny? What’s wrong?”
“Odd, the way that package was mailed,” said Columbo. “That’s a postage-meter imprint.”
“Sure. When you mail a package at a post office, they weigh it and imprint the postage on a piece of white paper tape, which they stick on the package.”
“Yeah…” said Columbo. “I guess that’s what they do. I don’t know. It, uh… But that is exactly what they do.”
Eighteen
1
The finding of the choker had so delayed Columbo that he did not arrive at the Culver soundstage for his appointment with Ben Willsberger until nearly eleven o’clock. He identified himself to the guard at the gate, then to another guard at the entrance to the soundstage. Both of them telephoned word of his arrival to someone inside, and a young man hurried out to meet him.
“Good morning, Lieutenant Columbo. I’m Bill Fodor. Mr. Willsberger is expecting you. You’ve come at a good time. Mr. Willsberger’s about to shoot, and after that there will be an interval before the next shot.”
Fodor led Columbo into the soundstage, a building as big as an aircraft hangar and in many ways similar. They had built a set in the middle of the vast open space. It represented a shabby kitchen in some urban flat, furnished with a kitchen sink that stood on legs, a glass-front cabinet containing a modest collection of dishes, an ice box, a table covered with red-and-white checkered oilcloth, a bare wooden floor, and buff-colored plaster walls hung with just one decoration: a 1939 calendar.
Huge hot lights stood on stands facing the set from all sides. They were arranged to make it appear that the chief light in the kitchen was from daylight entering through the window above the sink. Booms stretched out over the set, putting microphones in position.
Benjamin Willsberger saw Columbo and saluted. “Here,” said Fodor, handing Columbo a fat bound script open to page 96. “This is what he’s shooting now: Shots one hundred eight and one hundred nine. You can follow it on the script.” Columbo sat down on the chair offered him— not a wood-and-canvas folding chair but an aluminum-and-vinyl chair—and frowned over the script.
* * *
108 INT. SCHMIDT KITCHEN—DAY
Kurt sits at kitchen table, smoking a cigarette, a tumbler and whisky bottle at hand, reading a newspaper. He wears a ribbed vest undershirt and dark pants.
* * *
KURT
So, what the hell? Is it gonna happen or is it not gonna happen?
Nancy appears in doorway. She too is smoking a cigarette. She wears a very ordinary bra and pair of panties, obviously cheap and worn.
* * *
NANCY
What he says. It’s what he says. How’m I s’posed to know? It’s gonna is what the man says.
* * *
KURT
(dismayed)
Not the time for it.
* * *
Nancy walks over to him and puts her hand on his shoulder.
* * *
NANCY
It’s God’s will, I guess.
* * *
KURT
God’s will? Well. Yeah, I suppose it is. If it’s the decision of the Man Upstairs, I suppose we gotta live with it. Maybe we shoulda—
* * *
NANCY
Too late to think about what we shoulda. Now we have to think about what we gotta. We have to think about makin’ some stuff different.
* * *
109 KURT and NANCY fill the FRAME as KURT pushes back his chair, rises, embraces, and kisses NANCY.
* * *
KURT
Anyway, I love you, and that’s what counts.
* * *
NANCY
More than anything else. Which means we’ve gotta change some things.
* * *
KURT
I promise.
* * *
KURT reaches behind NANCY and unhooks her bra. He pushes her back, admires her breasts, then bends forward and kisses each in turn.
* * *
CUT TO:
110 INT. HOSPITAL—NIGHT.
* * *
Columbo watched fascinated as these two shots were filmed. It was unlike the Hollywood cliche. Willsberger did not cry “Lights, camera, action!” He did not yell “Cut!” to stop the shot. He simply made a few gestures, and the highly professional people of his cast and crew did what they had rehearsed doing. To make the transition between Shots 108 and 109, the two actors just paused briefly, holding their places and expressions, while the camera rolled forward a few feet. When the shots were finished, the whole process stopped, without any command.
“Kids,” Willsberger said to the actor and actress when the camera stopped, “I want to do those two shots one more time. What I want you to do is drab it down a mite. You follow me? Drab it down a measure. You’re a little too bright yet. You’re still yourselves: a couple of bright, handsome people. Bring it down to what Kurt and Nancy are. Take fifteen minutes, and let’s try it again.”
No one yelled “Fifteen minutes!” Fodor walked around, quietly telling the crews that they would shoot the two scenes again in fifteen minutes.
Benjamin Willsberger beckoned to Columbo to come over beyond the main camera and sit down with him. “Coffee, Lieutenant Columbo?” he asked.
Columbo nodded, and Willsberger nodded at Fodor.
The director did not dress like Cecil B. DeMille. He wore a pair of khaki slacks and a light-blue golf shirt. “Brad Volney and Katherine Boyd,” he said, nodding toward the back of the stage, where the dressing rooms were located.
“I recognized them,” said Columbo.
“Well, Lieutenant, who killed Arlene and Ted— not to mention the poor houseboy?”
“I wish I knew,” said Columbo.
“In other words, it’s not as simple as it seems?”
“In my line of work,” said Columbo, “you’ve got to be careful about the easy and simple answers. Not many things are easy and simple. On the other hand, it’s foolish to overcomplicate. Y’ know? Sometimes the simple and obvious is the answer.”
Benjamin Willsberger smiled, whether knowingly or condescendingly, or both, would have been difficult to tell. “I said I wanted to talk to you. You said you wanted to talk to me. Suppose you tell me first what you wanted to ask me,” he said.
“Well, sir, I mostly wanted to talk to you about scuba diving.”
“Scuba diving?”
“Right. Mr. Khoury suggested I ought to take it up. I thought maybe you could tell me something about it.”
Willsberger’s smile turned skeptical. “All right,” he said. “Scuba diving. I took it up because golf bores me. That’s about it. A man my age and position ought to do something by way of exercise, something in the outdoors.”
“Who took it up first, you or Mr. Khoury?”
“He did. Oh, he’s been a scuba diver for a long time. He got me interested.”
“I understand he follows the rules for safety,” said Columbo. “And that’s what interests me. Mr. McGinnis over at the Topanga Diving Club told me Mr. Khoury never goes diving without a buddy. In fact, he said you were Mr. Khoury’s buddy and that he never goes diving without you. Is that true?”
“That’s true,” said Willsberger. “Personally, I never go down alone. I doubt if Joe ever does.”
“Well, he did twice last week,” said Columbo. “Wednesday and Friday, off the beach at San Luis Rio.”
Willsberger remained silent while Bill Fodor put down a TV tray between the two men’s chairs. On the tray were a coffee pot, cups and saucers, cream and sugar, and spoons. The director poured.
“I think you have to understand something, Lieutenant,” said Willsberger. “Joe Khoury has to be in a state of immense
emotional distress.”
“I’d suppose so,” said Columbo. “After all, his wife murdered and—”
“There may be more to it than that,” said Willsberger. He drew a deep breath. “I suppose, uh… I suppose I can speak to you in confidence. I mean, if what I am about to suggest turns out wildly wrong, can I count on you not to mention it to anyone?”
“Yes, sir. I can keep a confidence. Keepin’ confidences is part of my line of work.”
“Well…” Willsberger began. He glanced around to be sure Fodor could not hear. “The fact is, it’s possible, just wildly possible, that Arlene and Steve may have been murdered by Kimberly Dana.”
2
This idea was not something Columbo wanted to discuss in what remained of a fifteen-minute break. He stayed in the soundstage and watched the two actors “drab down” their scene. An hour later he and Willsberger sat down in Willsberger’s office in Santa Monica. The room was unimaginatively furnished in spun aluminum, stainless steel, black leather, and glass. Over drinks poured from the office bar, they talked about the picture Willsberger had been shooting that morning. It was not until they had box lunches before them—deli sandwiches and salads—that Willsberger returned to the subject of Kim Dana and Joe Khoury.
Columbo: The Helter Skelter Murders Page 16