Trace (Trace 1)

by Warren Murphy

  “Interesting story.”

  “It gets better. But you had to know if Mr. Carey had done anything about his will and Jeannie Callahan wouldn’t tell you. That’s when you had little brother here break into her office and rifle her files to find out. He hadn’t counted on her coming back, and when she did, he knocked her out.”

  “What a lot of crap,” Muffy’s brother said.

  “Not so much, dirtbag,” Trace said. “Jeannie remembered that the guy who hit her grunted when he punched. I should have tied that together with you being a karate freak. That’s the way you guys punch.”

  “A lot of guys do that,” Ketch said.

  “But not a lot of them are dumb enough to steal an apple from the lawyer’s refrigerator, take one bite, and leave it where it can be found.”

  Muffy snapped her head to look at her brother, the young man looked shocked.

  “Remember? You dropped it in the ashtray out in the hall. We had a dentist make a mold of it. It’ll match your teeth exactly. Muffy, you both had beaver teeth when you were kids. Why’d you get yours fixed and not him?”

  “We could afford only one. Petey’s next.”

  “Maybe the state prison’ll do it for him for free.”

  “Not on the basis of that cock-and-bull story,” she said.

  “Now this is just a guess,” Trace said, “but the cops figure a pinch bar or a tire iron was used to bust into Jeannie’s file cabinet. I wouldn’t be surprised that they find that pinch bar in the trunk of Petey’s VW outside. Probably with some little paint smears from the file cabinet still on it. But that’s just a maybe.

  “So there’s no new will in the Carey file. That’s last night, when you did your séance bit with Mrs. Carey. Very cute and very easy for two stage magicians like you two.”

  “You’ve done your homework, haven’t you?” Muffy said.

  “I try. That’s why Buffy’s picture was missing the first day I was here. You were having a transparency copy made at the photo shop in town. I saw the receipt the first day I broke into the house here.”

  “You what?”

  “You heard me. That’s when I saw the big green tank in your bedroom. I figured it was to fill your scuba tanks from. But scuba tanks take compressed air. Green tanks are a universal symbol. They mean oxygen. You had that here just for show, for when you got Mr. Carey home, maybe you could convince Dr. Matteson that you were continuing the oxygen treatments.”

  Trace put down his vodka glass.

  “There was something Matteson said last night at the sanatorium. I went there to see Jeannie, but I bumped into him and asked him how Mr. Carey was. He said that he was fine and that the nurse said he was resting comfortably. But he called the nurse ‘she.’ And Petey was supposed to be on duty last night. I saw him there. But he had to sneak out to come play ghost here with you and then break into Jeannie’s office.”

  “And eat an apple,” Muffy said.

  “Right. And eat an apple. I still couldn’t figure it all out, though. This was a crime without a crime. Why didn’t you just kill Mr. Carey? Okay, you had to wait until you were sure he didn’t change his will. So now you know that. You could just have put a pillow over his face and that’d be that. Why not?”

  “Tell me why,” Muffy said.

  “Yeah,” Petey said.

  “I kept thinking you were worried just about Mr. Carey’s will. But you weren’t. It wasn’t just that. That book upstairs in your room about making wills. That didn’t have anything to do with Mr. Carey. It was Mrs. Carey. You know, I’d like to take credit for figuring it out, but I missed it entirely. You went to talk to Jeannie Callahan right after you got into town, and you were talking about wills then. That’s before the Plesser case, before you had any reason to worry about Mr. Carey changing his will to benefit the sanatorium. It was Mrs. Carey all along. You were planning to get her to leave everything to you, weren’t you?”

  “What do you think?” the girl said. Trace noticed that she had stopped sipping from her drink.

  “I think you wanted to keep Mr. Carey a vegetable until you got Mrs. Carey to really start thinking of you as her own daughter and leave you everything. Then I think you planned to get rid of Mr. Carey. And then Mrs. Carey. So many ways to do it. An accident down at the pond. Heartbroken, she takes an overdose of sleeping pills. Maybe she falls in the pond and drowns. Or she just gets old and dies. That’s what I think. It’s no fun if you don’t tell me if I’m right or wrong.”

  “You’re absolutely right,” Muffy said.

  “Muffy,” said her brother, “stop.”

  “It’s all right, Petey. Nobody’s here to hear anything. You’ve got it just about right, Mr. Tracy. One thing you didn’t know is Mrs. Carey signed a new will today, leaving everything to me. You forget that Buffy herself told the old lady to trust me. I brought Buffy back here once and I can bring her back here again.”

  “That dog won’t hunt,” Trace said. “I showed Mrs. Carey how that dodge works.”

  Muffy shook her head. “You really don’t know a great deal about it, do you? People who believe in spooks, they want to believe. Petey and I are good. We’ve got a whole bag of tricks, spirit photos, messages inside sealed envelopes, a whole list of things that’ll keep Mrs. Carey believing until she dies.”

  “Which won’t be long,” Trace said.

  Muffy shrugged. “You never know. She’s very old and she’s going to be crushed when her husband dies.”

  “Nice little swindle,” Trace said.

  “Swindle? You ought to know something. Buffy was my friend, but she couldn’t come in out of the rain without help. Anything she did in school, I did for her. I got her her degree. It was my work. We lived together and that room was clean because I made it clean. I nursemaided her for four years. All that girl knew how to do was spend money. She had plenty of that and I didn’t have a penny. You know, there’s some poetic justice, Mr. Tracy. She got hit by a car while she was out shopping. That’s all that girl was good at. Do you know I wrote her letters home for her? She was too lazy to even do that?”

  “Did you kill her?” Trace asked.

  “No. I thought about it a lot. Every time I thought how rich she was. But I didn’t.”

  “You decided to kill her parents instead,” Trace said.

  “That’s your story. Nobody’s going to believe it. Least of all Mrs. Carey.”

  “No, Muffy, it’s your story. Yours and Petey’s. And I’ve got it all here on tape.”

  He patted his right hip. For a moment, the girl looked confused, then she smiled and said, “Tapes aren’t any use in court.”

  “Some are.”

  “But not this one. You’ve been holding a gun on us for the last fifteen minutes. The tape doesn’t show that. If we didn’t cooperate with your silly nonsense, you’d shoot us. The tape doesn’t show that. The tape doesn’t show anything that’s really important, does it?”

  “You’re very clever,” Trace said, looking down at his empty, gunless hands.

  “Thank you. That’s a step up. Fifteen minutes ago you were saying we were stupid. Now why don’t you put the gun away and leave us alone? We’ve had enough of your fantasies.”

  Before Trace could answer, there was a flicker of light on the wall. A ghostly white image began to take shape. And then it came clear. It was Porky Pig, and as Muffy looked first at the image, then toward the window, a voice resounded through the room.

  “Th-th-th-th-that’s all, folks.”

  “Chico,” Trace yelled.

  “And friends,” she yelled back.

  A moment later, Chico came bounding into the room. Right behind her were Lt. Wilcox and his wife. Mrs. Carey followed them.

  “What are you doing here?” Trace asked.

  “When you told me to leave with Mrs. Carey, I thought it might be time to call the cops. The lieutenant and his wife came back with us.”

  “Did you have to do Porky Pig? Come on.”

  “Best I could do. I wan
ted to let you know we were here before you started to tangle with that big dude,” she said.

  Trace turned to Wilcox. “Did you hear enough, Lieutenant?”

  “Enough to hold them. Let the county prosecutor figure out what to charge them with.”

  “Think about attempted murder. I saw Petey with the oxygen turned off at Mr. Carey’s bedside.”

  “By the way, I’m getting tired of telling you to come into the office and make a statement,” Wilcox said. “Do I have to book you too?”

  “No. This statement I’ll give gladly.”

  “Don’t be too sure. I just may book you anyway.”

  “Why?”

  “Why the hell didn’t you give me that apple you found for evidence?”

  “Wait until tomorrow and I’ll think of an excuse,” Trace said.

  Wilcox turned away toward Muffy and her brother. “Okay, you two, let’s get moving.”

  As he led them toward the door, Trace suddenly called out, “Hey, Muffy, wait.”

  She turned and Trace tossed her the crystal ball from the mantel.

  “Here, look in that. And if it doesn’t tell you the future, I will.”

  Chico had taken Mrs. Carey to stay with neighbors, and Trace sat alone, inside the study, thinking. Something was wrong; the whole package just didn’t tie together the way it should have.

  He heard a sound at the front door and he called out, “Chico?”

  “Yeah.” She came into the study, plopped herself down in the sofa facing Trace, and put her feet up on the coffee table. “It doesn’t hang, does it?” she said.

  He shook his head. “Something’s wrong. How do two kids put together a double-murder plot? And what for? Muffy could have lived here with Mrs. Carey forever. You don’t need money if you’ve got the use of money, and she’d have the use of plenty of it.”

  “I know,” Chico said. “There’s another screw that needs a quarter-turn to tighten this whole thing up.”

  They sat in silence for a few moments until Chico got up and walked quickly from the room.

  “Be right back.”

  She left Trace thinking about money and who needed it, and he went to the telephone and called police headquarters. He was talking to Lt. Wilcox when Chico came back into the room, smiling, holding the copy of Muffy’s book on drawing wills over her head.

  “Thanks, Lieutenant,” Trace said. “See you tomorrow.” He hung up the phone, and Chico said, “Did you look at this book?”

  “No, I didn’t have time.”

  “Well, look at this. She had this page dog-eared.” Chico began to read: ‘A simple will, bequeathing a wife’s estate to her husband or a husband’s to his wife, can be drafted by anyone who will follow the forms in this book. However, complicated estates, involving large holdings or bequests to persons who are not immediate relatives, should always be drawn in consultation with a qualified attorney.’”

  Trace nodded and Chico smiled. “That’s not all. She’s got a note in the book.”

  “You’re going to tease me and not tell me what it is, aren’t you?”

  “When did the Plesser thing first get in the papers?”

  “I don’t know. Two or three weeks ago, I guess,” Trace said. “What’s on that note?”

  “Her appointment. Two months ago to see your favorite trombonist.”

  “I knew it,” Trace said. “Yule. Yule’s involved.”

  “Yeah, you knew it,” she scoffed. “How’d you know it?”

  “I just called police headquarters and Muffy tried to call Yule to represent her. She told Wilcox that he was her lawyer. And she told me she never met him.”

  Trace went back to the telephone, dialed Las Vegas direct, and asked to be put through to the shift boss on the Araby Casino floor.

  When the man came on the phone, he said, “Listen, this is Trace. Something you’ve got to do for me right away. Okay. Check with the central bureau while I hang on. Find out what kind of rating a Nicholas Yule has. He’s a lawyer in New Jersey. I’ll wait. It’s important.”

  He drummed his fingers on the tabletop while he waited. Chico was reading through the book on wills. Then the shift boss at the casino was back on the line.

  “Yeah,” Trace said, then listened. “Thanks, Carlo. That’s a big one I owe you. Yeah, Chico and I’ll be back soon.”

  He hung up the phone and said, “Yule’s credit is cut off all over Vegas. The word is that he’s in hock to the loan sharks.”

  “Bingo. Motive,” Chico said.

  Trace nodded and grabbed her arm. “Come on,” he said.

  “Where we going?”

  “To a dance.”

  The band was playing “The Alleycat,” and Chico asked Trace to dance.

  “The Widow’s Waltz?” he said. “No, thanks, I’ll pass.”

  They stood at the rear of the American Legion hall watching Nick Yule lead his band through its final number. He was dressed in a red-white-and-blue-plaid suit. As Yule marched along the bandstand, pumping away on his trombone, his long thin hair flew around his head.

  “You hadn’t told me what a great beauty he was,” Chico said. “With those eyeglasses and that electric suit, he looks like something you’d see in an outpatient clinic.”

  “Give a kid a trombone and you lead him to ruin,” Trace said.

  Yule’s band finished and the hundred people clustered on the dance floor and at tables around it broke into applause.

  “Remember, folks,” Yule shouted into the microphone. “I’m Nick Yule, your musical barrister, and we play at parties, dances, and weddings. The number’s in the book. Have a nice night and God bless each and every one of you.”

  “Go slide down a barrister,” Chico mumbled.

  When she and Trace reached the bandstand, Yule was putting his trombone into its case. He looked at Trace, recognized him, and nodded. When he saw Chico, he asked, “She a singer?”

  “No,” Trace said. “We’ve got two singers already.”

  “Huh?”

  “Muffy and her brother,” Trace said. “They’re down at police headquarters right now, singing away. Don’t you think you ought to be there to lead the band?”

  “Are you trying to connect me with something?” Yule snapped. “Impugn my integrity? Is that what you’re trying to do?”

  “Something like that,” Trace said.

  “I’m warning you. You’d better be careful. This state has tough laws against slander.”

  “Against murder too, as I recollect,” Trace said. “Suppose we move it right along.”

  “I didn’t do anything, you know. Nothing except draw a will,” Yule said.

  “Well, we’ll let you and Muffy and Petey sort all that out for the cops. Anyway, look at the bright side,” Trace said.

  “What’s the bright side?” Yule asked.

  “You’re not going to have to worry about a booking for the next twenty years or so.”

  30

  Trace left Chico in the car when he parked a half-block away from the Plessers’ house.

  After doing what he had come to do, he rang the front-door bell. Mrs. Plesser materialized on the porch, inside the screen door.

  “Mr. Marks, right?”

  “Right. I want to talk to Calvin.”

  “Err, he’s not home.”

  “His truck’s here, he’s home. Send him out. Or do I call the cops?”

  She thought about it for a moment, then went back inside the house, and Calvin appeared. He held a handkerchief in front of his face and was coughing.

  “Sorry. I got a cold.”

  “No, you don’t,” Trace said. “What you’ve got is a broken nose where I popped you the other night when you and your friend jumped me.”

  “What are you talking about?”

  “What I’m talking about is that I think you don’t really want to sue anybody, ’cause if you do, all of you might go to jail for assault. That’s what I’m talking about.”

  He turned and started away.
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br />   “By the way,” he called back, “I let the air out of your tires just now. We’re even.”

  Trace drove to police headquarters. He asked Chico, “How’d you figure it out?”

  “Well, the guy who hit the lawyer, he grunted, that made karate a pretty easy bet, especially when you had on your tapes that the nurse was reading a karate magazine. But the big guy that hit you didn’t grunt. So it sounded like another guy. And leaving that sanatorium billhead by the car, well, that was just stupid. And when you’re talking about stupid, who else but the Plessers?”

  “I thought Yule might have put them up to it,” Trace said.

  “I did too, at first. But not when we figured out he was involved in some murder scheme. He wouldn’t want you hanging around town. That’s why he called you. First, he wouldn’t deal with Jeannie Callahan, and then he found out you were nosing around and that Mr. Carey had talked to you, then he wanted you out of town fast. That’s why he offered to make you the same deal he turned down from that Callahan woman the day before. He wanted you gone. No, it was the Plessers’ brainstorm, all by themselves, to pop you. And they left the billhead by the car so you’d take a run at Meadow Vista, thinking the hospital was behind getting you slugged.”

  Trace nodded and parked outside police headquarters. “Wait here. I won’t be long.”

  When Trace came back out, Chico was eating three hot dogs from a cardboard box she held on her lap, and he stared at her.

  “Hey, cut me a break,” she said. “You were gone a half-hour. A girl’s gotta eat, doesn’t she? What’d you do? Bop that lady cop again?”

  “Shhhh. You’ll get us shot,” Trace said. “I just gave them a statement and most of my tapes. Let them sort them out. But everybody’s singing, Muffy and Petey and Yule, so we’re pretty well finished with it. Wilcox told me I might have to come back if the grand jury wants to hear from me.”

  He started the car’s engine. “Christ, I’ll be glad to get out of this town. Do you realize I’ve been here a week and I haven’t met one person that I’d call really sane?”