Trace (Trace 1)

by Warren Murphy

I’m tired.

  I don’t want to talk to Chico anymore.

  Good night.

  24

  “Who’s there, for weeping out loud?”

  “It’s me, Trace. Open up.”

  Chico opened the motel-room door partially, hid behind it, then pulled him into the room and closed the door. She was naked.

  “I expected you,” she said, “but then I got tired of waiting and I thought you really weren’t coming, so I went to bed.”

  “I hate being predictable,” he said.

  Here he was with her, she naked, and he didn’t know what to do. Should he kiss her hello? Maybe he should wait and see first what she did?

  “Why didn’t you wear a bathrobe?”

  “What?”

  “You didn’t know who was at the door, why didn’t you wear a bathrobe? I don’t know what to do. I’m mad at you. How can you be mad at a woman who doesn’t have any clothes on?”

  “If that’s getting to you, wait until I try this,” she said. She reached her arms up and clasped her hands behind his head and pulled it down to hers. She kissed him, wetly and warmly, and slid her hands down his back, clasped his buttocks, and pulled him tightly against her.

  Trace dropped the plastic laundry bag holding his tapes, then caressed her smooth flanks. She smelled as fresh as a breeze.

  “Why didn’t you invite me to stay with you?” she said.

  “’Cause my life is orderly now. I’ve got one toothbrush in the bathroom. I have you come over and the next day there’s four toothbrushes in the bathroom. After two days, six. Toothbrushes multiply like rabbits and paper clips. Then I don’t know which one’s mine and I fall behind in brushing my tongue.”

  He was pulling her close to him.

  “You going to rape me?” she said. The corners of her large black eyes crinkled with a smile.

  “After driving all this way, I ought to do something.”

  “Wanna tie me down? The towels here are as thin as paper. You can rip them up and tie me down. Then when you savage my body, I won’t be able to get away.”

  “You won’t try to get away,” he said. “Where would you go anyway?” And he thought, To Memphis, Tennessee.

  And he pushed her back from him and looked at her flawless young body, and he thought, So what, and he pushed her onto the bed.

  Later they lay in bed and Trace told her what had been happening in Harmon Hills. She grunted assent a lot but was mostly content to listen.

  “Any ideas?” he finally asked her.

  “Not right now. I like to let them sneak up on me.”

  “Okay,” Trace said. “Turn out the light. This is my last cigarette of the night.”

  “I know, no talking to you on your last cigarette.”

  “Right.”

  “One thing, Trace.”

  “What?”

  “You didn’t say you were glad to see me.”

  “I don’t know if I am.”

  Trace woke in the morning with a bright spear of sunlight in his face. Chico was not in the bed and his tapes were stacked neatly on the small table in the room. There was a note on the table.

  Trace:

  Where was Wilber Winfield when he was supposed to meet the lawyer?

  Where has Nicholas Yule been while everything’s been going on?

  What was in the file drawer that got looted?

  Did the guy that hit you grunt?

  When did the Plesser family announce its lawsuit?

  She must be some kind of lady. Did you have to fall in love with her?

  The note was unsigned.

  Trace thought about showering, then changed his mind, packed his tapes, and drove back to the country club, where he showered, then called Meadow Vista Sanatorium and asked for Jeannie Callahan’s room.

  “I’m sorry,” the operator said after a wait. “Miss Callahan’s been released.”

  “Thank you,” Trace said. He called the lawyer’s office and got her home phone number from her secretary. She answered on the first ring.

  “This is Trace. How do you feel?”

  “All the pain of a hangover but none of the fond memories. And my eye’s turning black.”

  “You must be a fine figure of a woman.”

  “It’s no joke,” she said.

  “Wear sunglasses.”

  “I’ll need glasses as big as saucers, as dense as manhole covers, to hide my stomping. It’ll give my goddamn clients ideas, think they can arm-wrestle me for my fee or something. I hate this. Do you know I was voted Miss Equitable Settlement in my law class? Now I look like a battered wife.”

  “Did you hear from the cops?” Trace asked.

  “No. Not a word.”

  “I’ll call them. Are you staying home today?”

  “Unless somebody invents a makeup for mugging victims. Today’s Friday. Maybe with that and the weekend off, I’ll look human on Monday.”

  “I’ll be over later if you want.”

  “I want. And if you laugh at me, I’ll kill you.”

  “Want me to bring anything?”

  “Just your own beautiful self,” she said.

  “There’s a slight charge for delivery.”

  “I’ll have your payment ready when you get here.”

  Trace called the police department, but Lt. Wilcox said they had found out nothing yet. “I checked the neighborhood. Nobody noticed a suspicious car parked or saw anybody leaving the place.”

  “What happened with the fingerprints?” Trace asked.

  “A lot of smears and a lot of sets of the lawyer’s. You got anything for us?” Wilcox asked.

  “No.” Trace decided not to mention the apple. And how could he mention it even if he wanted to? Could he say, “Lieutenant, I’ve got an apple with a bite taken out of it.”

  And Wilcox could say, “My God, Tracy, that’s just the kind of break we’ve been looking for. This will nail the perpetrator to the wall. Where did you get that apple?”

  And Trace could say, “I stole it from an ashtray. It’s got sand on it.”

  And Wilcox could say, “Don’t disturb the sand. In the hands of a forensic genius, even sand has something to say.”

  No, Trace thought. Best, all in all, not to mention the apple.

  Wilcox was saying, “I’ll want a statement from you.”

  “I’ll stop by and give one.”

  “If I’m not here, give it to my wife.”

  And fifteen answers jumped into Trace’s mind, but he decided that all of them would get him shot, so he said simply, “I will, Lieutenant,” and hung up.

  The phone rang a moment later and Dexter told him that a Mr. Marks had called and said it was very important that Tracy call him right back.

  “Groucho or Karl?” Trace asked.

  “He didn’t say, sir. He seemed to think you’d know the name.”

  “Must be Groucho,” Trace said. “Karl hardly calls anymore.”

  “What’s up, Groucho?” Trace said after finally getting through the secretarial wall at Garrison Fidelity.

  “Nicholas Yule. Did you tell him we wouldn’t deal?”

  “I don’t remember,” Trace said honestly.

  “Well, he called yesterday. He said he told you his clients might be interested in settling and he said that you told him our company wouldn’t be. Did you tell him that?”

  “If he says so, I probably did. Would a lawyer lie?”

  “You didn’t have any right to tell him that. Maybe we will settle. Maybe it’s the best thing to do.”

  “Is this what you called me about?”

  “Of course it is.”

  “I’m not interested in this insurance bullshit,” Trace said.

  “Hold on. You’re working for us. What do you mean, insurance bullshit?”

  “I prefer dealing with the big questions of life and death,” Trace said. “Office details bore me.”

  “Then stay the hell out of them,” Marks yelled. “Don’t commit the company to things it shou
ldn’t be committed to.”

  “Are you going to meet with Yule?” Trace asked.

  “Probably. Or have the lawyers do it.”

  “All right. I’ll give you two good tips for the company.”

  “Go ahead.”

  Trace said “One. Before you do anything, have our legal beagles talk to Jeannie Callahan. She’s the doctor’s lawyer and she’s smarter than Yule and smarter than you, for that matter. She’ll know how to deal with Yule best.”

  “All right. That’s one,” Marks said.

  “Two. If anybody meets with Yule, tell them not to hire his band. He’s a lousy trombone player.”

  Trace dressed and went down to the cocktail lounge to wait for Chico. It was pushing toward noon and the lunchroom was filling up.

  Trace asked Hughie, “Don’t you ever get any time off?”

  “I don’t need any, except weekends,” Hughie said. “Bar opens near noon and I open it and generally I close it by eight or nine o’clock, except when I get a live one like you staying here. Whatever hours I work, I get paid for.”

  “Still terrible hours.”

  “Look at the bright side. It keeps me away from the racetrack. Finlandia?”

  “Yeah.”

  “Nice assistant you got,” Hughie said as he poured the vodka.

  “Oh? Which one?”

  “The little girl with the slanty eyes. Mako or something.”

  “Chico. What’d she want?”

  “She came in early and collected your apple. Hey, was it all right to give it to her? Should I have asked her for a password or something? You didn’t tell me not to give it to anybody.”

  “It was all right. She’s got enough sense to do something with it.”

  “Eat it,” Hughie said as he put the drink on the bar.

  “Huh?”

  “Eat it. That’s what most people do with apples.”

  “Can’t eat that one. It’s evidence. Chico might eat it, though. That girl would eat a dog-food billboard if she missed a meal. She ought to weight five hundred pounds.”

  “Some things are better left alone,” Hughie said, and strolled off to the other end of the bar where two golfers, wearing outfits whose colors would shame a baboon’s backside, plopped themselves down.

  Trace wondered where Chico had gone with his apple. It would be like her to eat his apple. The woman would eat anything.

  She must have been up all night listening to his tapes, and he realized, with a pang, that it must have been painful because he had been abusive to her on the tapes. He tried to remember what he had said on the tapes, but each time memory prodded him, he told himself, No, I didn’t say that, I wouldn’t have said anything that harsh. But he had, and he knew it.

  He asked for the bar telephone and called Dr. Matteson at Meadow Vista.

  “How’s your star patient?” Trace asked.

  “Which one. They’re all stars.”

  “Lady Lawyer Callahan. You sent her home?”

  “Yeah. She was fine. Slept through the night like a baby.”

  “No chance of complications?” Trace asked.

  “No. Maybe she’ll get a pimple.”

  “How about Mr. Carey?”

  “Stable today. He had a good night.” Matteson hesitated and said, “Mrs. Carey called this morning. She said she wanted to talk to me about his treatment. It sounded important. Do you know what that’s about?”

  “I think so,” Trace said. “I think she’s going to tell you that she wants to bring her husband home.”

  “She can’t do that,” Matteson snapped. “The man just had a heart attack. He could go any minute.”

  “It’s not my idea, Doc.”

  “Who the hell’s idea is it?”

  “A voice from beyond,” Trace said.

  “What are you talking about?”

  “Never mind. I think that Muffy is putting Mrs. Carey up to it.”

  “I’ll talk her out of it.”

  “Good luck,” Trace said. “I’m going to look in on Jeannie today.”

  “Good. Save me a call. Thanks, Tracy, for the tip.”

  When Chico came in, she was carrying a shopping bag.

  “Want a drink, bag lady?” Trace said.

  “Don’t knock the bag. There’s all kinds of goodies in there. How do you deal with that desk clerk?”

  “Dexter? What’d he do?”

  “His name would be Dexter. He grilled me when I came in.”

  “What’d you tell him?”

  “I told him I was looking for you. He wanted to know who I was, so he annoyed me and I told him it was your birthday and I was from Strip-O-Gram and I had my beaded costume in the bag. Come on, I don’t want a drink. Let’s go to your room. We’ll really give Dexter something to talk about.”

  Hughie said, “That’s her. That’s the woman who stole your apple. Should I call the police?”

  “Hughie, this is Chico. Don’t call the cops on her just yet. Not until you see her stealing food from other people’s plates.”

  In his room, Trace sprawled on his bed while Chico pulled the drapes, darkening the room.

  “Is this business or pleasure?” he said.

  “Sit up, you slug. I don’t like talking to a prone figure.”

  “You could have fooled me,” he said, but hunkered himself up into a sitting position.

  “Presto, flasho,” Chico said. She stood at the foot of the bed, reached into the bag, and pulled out a black plastic flashlight.

  “If you use Eveready batteries,” Trace said, “you can scare away grizzly bears.”

  “What are you talking about?”

  “Sorry. It’s a dated reference, too old for you. So you’ve got a flashlight. What about it?”

  “Not just any flashlight,” Chico said. She flicked the switch and Trace saw projected on the room’s white wall a message:

  BOFFA’S MAGIC SHOPPE

  WHERE EVERY TRICK’S A TREAT

  The legend was slightly out of focus, but Chico twisted the top lens cap and the letters grew sharp.

  She reopened the room’s drapes.

  “It’s a magician’s projection light,” she said. “I found this magic shop over in the next town. Magicians use this one for phony spirit appearances. That’s how little Buffy showed up on the drapes last night.”

  “How does it work?”

  “You just use any kind of slide or positive transparency. For a message, you can write or print anything on a piece of clear plastic and you stick it in this slot at the top and then just turn the light on.”

  “Chico, you’re a wonder,” Trace said. “When I was snooping in Muffy’s room, I found a bill from a photo shop for a transparency. That’s what she used. She copied one of the dead kid’s pictures.”

  “Elementary, my dear imbecile. And if you liked that, you’ll love this.” She reached into the bag, pulled out a greenish lump, and tossed it to Trace. He turned it over in his hand before realizing it was a mold of teeth.

  “From the apple?”

  “Right. I dropped it off at a dentist in town and he made this mold for me.”

  “How close is it?”

  “It’s not perfect, but he said it’s pretty close. He said you can see the spaces between the teeth and one incisor is kind of splayed outward.” She paused for a moment and hitched her thumbs in her belt. “Got to be one ugly Chiclet-toothed critter made them marks, pard.”

  “They weren’t the marks of a human being; they were made by a giant wolf,” Trace said.

  Chico grabbed a towel and wrapped it around her head like a kerchief. In a thick Russian accent, she said, “Even a man who is pure of heart and says his prayers by night can become a wolf when the wolfbane blooms and the autumn moon is bright.”

  “Higher and higher with Maria Ouspenskaya,” Trace said. “Or was it Bela Lugosi?”

  “Would you do the polka with Oscar Homolka?” Chico said.

  “Don’t get started on your old-movie routines. You’re wanderin
g.”

  “All right. Give me those teeth back. You get your sweaty hands all over it and you’ll melt it or something and it won’t match anybody.”

  “How’d you get a dentist to make a mold for you like that? Usually, you couldn’t get a dentist to hurry if your jaw fell off.”

  “You really want to know?” Chico asked.

  “Probably not. Not if it involves your having a cavity filled.”

  For a split second, Chico looked pained, but she smiled. “I talked him into it,” she said.

  Trace tossed the mold back to her and she caught it and replaced it in the bag.

  She brought out a box. “The pièce de résistance,” she said.

  She opened the box and took out a rubber suction cup with a long wire hanging from it.

  “What’s that?”

  “It’s a loudspeaker,” Chico said. “You can find it in some specialty sound shops. You plug that wire into your radio or your tape recorder and attach the cup to a wall and it gives a vibrating sound that seems to come from all over.”

  “Or to a window,” Trace said.

  “Exactly. That’s where the sound came from last night. It explains that circle on the window. It’s where the speaker was attached.”

  “With this five-dollar kit, you too can be a spiritualist medium. Run your own séances. Mystify your friends. Scare the crap out of old people,” Trace said.

  “Yeah, but it’s not five dollars either. All this cost me a small fortune.”

  “Write it down for me and boost the prices. Then we’ll tell Groucho we lost the receipts,” Trace said.

  “I’ll settle for breaking even.”

  “You do what I say. Marks has been cutting my expenses again. I start giving him honest bills and I lose money, ’cause he cuts everything in half. We’ve got to triple everything just to stay even with that man. I swear he’s the most mistrustful man I ever met.”

  “Maybe if your name wasn’t on it, he’d just pay me back the money I laid out,” she said hopefully.

  “Don’t count on it. I know Groucho,” Trace said. “Anything else in that bag?”

  “No. But I’ve got more coming. I lucked up and got hold of this newspaper reporter in Muffy’s hometown.”

  “Wait a minute. How’d you find out her hometown?”