Loren D. Estleman_Amos Walker 02

by Angel Eyes

  Clague nodded gravely. “A demented young lady. A pathetic case.”

  “Do you think there was anything to her claim?”

  “Claptrap!” the lawyer exclaimed.

  “Excuse me?”

  “Claptrap.”

  “Thank you. That’s what I thought you said.”

  “No such will exists,” he continued. “I was Arthur’s attorney for seventeen years. If there were such a document I would have known about it, because I would have drawn it up. Not that I wouldn’t have tried to dissuade him from a course so preposterous.”

  “Do attorneys usually have attorneys?”

  He screwed his face into an expression someone had told him was wry. “Of course. A surgeon doesn’t remove his own appendix.”

  “Not unless he’s on Blue Cross,” I said, wondering what that had to do with anything.

  “If you doubt my qualifications, I refer you to the firm of Burlingame and Briggs of Toledo, Ohio. I was a corporation lawyer there for eight years before coming to work for Judge DeLancey.”

  “I was just curious.” I turned to the woman. “Exactly what did Miss Whiting say as she was being carried out of the judge’s chambers?”

  “Leola,” said Clague, “I advise you not to answer that.”

  “It’s all right.” Her face was a varnished mask. “She accused me of arranging for Arthur’s death.”

  I had been patting my pockets in search of my notebook. I stopped. I didn’t think I’d have any trouble remembering this conversation.

  She smiled that strained smile that I was beginning to realize wasn’t connected in any way with her true emotions. “Your next question will be was there any basis for the allegation. No. In your line of work, Mr. Walker, I imagine you encounter more than your share of bored housewives who have fallen out of love with their husbands, monied shrews who never loved them in the first place, jealous hags who would kill rather than suffer the humiliation of desertion. I belonged to none of those categories. I loved my husband very much. And strangely enough, I think he continued to love me. He found something in the Whiting woman that I wasn’t able to supply, but he never stopped caring for me. I know the torment he went through when his affair became public and our marriage was held up as a travesty before the world. It was me he was concerned about, and what it might do to my peace of mind. I had every right to leave him. You’ll remember that I didn’t.”

  “I remember.” The question of why she hadn’t divorced him even when he had asked her to had ranked right up there with who killed Jimmy Hoffa and whatever happened to Fabian.

  “It had nothing to do with his money, as the newspapers hinted. Under the circumstances my settlement would have been queenly. Come to think of it, if I had murdered him, I doubt that I would have been convicted, such was the extent of public sympathy for the ‘most notoriously wronged wife since Desdemona.’ The papers’ words, not mine. Certainly I would have gotten off lightly. I never entertained the thought. I couldn’t bear to think of life without him.”

  “I won’t say I bore the situation with equanimity. I knew of the affair early in its development. You have no idea, Mr. Walker, of the positive glee with which some friends are wont to impart news of a husband’s escapades to the man’s wife. I made the usual threats of divorce and separation, which at that point he wasn’t prepared to accept. But I could see that they hurt him deeply. He was a man trapped between his lust and his duty to wife and home. So I felt sorry for him. Maybe that’s the real reason I stayed, and I’m just confusing it with love. After all this time I’m no longer in a position to say which it was, love or devotion. But I never hated him and I never felt the urge to kill him.”

  “How did you feel about Janet Whiting?”

  Daniel Clague straightened with a long, hissing intake of breath, as if he were inflating himself. “I must warn you, Mr. Walker, of the folly of defaming a person of Mrs. DeLancey’s reputation in her own home, before witnesses.”

  “And I must warn you, Daniel, that your shirt will burst if you stuff it any tighter.” A hard glint of amusement showed in his client’s eyes. “Stop talking like a lawyer and let the man do his job.”

  “Really, Leola, I can’t see why you wanted me here if you won’t listen to my advice.” His cheeks looked a little less sallow when he was angry.

  “As you said, you insisted.” She returned her attention to me. “How did I feel about Janet Whiting? I didn’t. Oh, I was curious about her at first—that’s natural, I suppose—but once I had found out all there was to know I became completely indifferent. She was a gray person, living a sordid little life without goals or aspirations beyond getting her hooks into a foolish old man with money. And that, young sir, is as boring an objective as you’re ever likely to find.”

  “How did you find out all there was to know about her?”

  “You of all people should be able to figure that out.” She still looked amused. “I hired a detective agency.”

  An alarm went off at the back of my head. “Which one?”

  “I don’t remember the name. It was so long ago. A big firm, headquartered in Lansing. It was recommended to me.”

  “Reliance?”

  “That’s it. How did you guess?”

  “Blind stab. I met one of their operatives last night. He said the agency had been engaged to watch Phil Montana.”

  “That’s interesting. But it really isn’t such a coincidence, is it? It’s a large company. They must have hundreds of clients.”

  “You’re probably right.” I got off that. “Can you tell me what caused the breakup between Montana and your husband?”

  Out of the corner of her eye she glimpsed the maid fluttering around, straightening this and that, and dismissed her. When she had vanished down the passage:

  “I don’t know what broke them up. Didn’t Phil tell you?”

  “He said it was over some bad advice Judge DeLancey had given him. I didn’t press him on it. I didn’t think it was important.”

  “Do you think it’s important now?”

  “I don’t know. At this point I’m sweeping up everything in sight and hoping to sort it out later. Perhaps Mr. Clague knows.” I looked at him, raising my eyebrows. He shook his head gravely. Everything he did he did gravely.

  “Arthur never confided anything not of a legal nature to me. And I would never have asked him about it. That was the kind of relationship we had.”

  I nodded gravely. Now he had me doing it. “Did he leave a large estate?”

  She laughed before Clague had a chance to inflate himself again. This time there wasn’t a nickel’s worth of amusement in it. “Except for a trust fund and this house,” she said, “you could put the whole thing in an egg cup. The Internal Revenue seized everything else. It seems Arthur was not in the habit of declaring his actual earnings. It would have been worse if he hadn’t suffered a major investment loss shortly before his death. As it is we’re still paying off the interest and penalties, and will be long after I’m gone.”

  I remembered reading about it. The crash had knocked it out of the headlines in a hurry.

  “We?”

  “My son Jack and I. Jack Billings. The only good thing to come out of a brief first marriage when I was still in high school. He’s the reason I haven’t had the place redecorated. He’s as devoted to western Americana as Arthur was. Personally I prefer Danish modern, but we’re all slaves to our children.”

  “There’s a rough spot,” I said. “If the estate was in danger of being attached, why was Janet Whiting so hot to prove there was another will leaving most of it to her?”

  “I explained that to her at the time of the Probate Court incident, in an attempt to calm her down. She said it wasn’t the money, it was the fact that Arthur had meant her to have it, and that a man’s last wish counted for something even if there was nothing to back it up.”

  “Did you believe her?”

  “Would you? Don’t forget the trust fund and this house. To a hoof
er who had spent most of her life in cheap motel rooms it might be worth the effort.”

  I nodded again, emptily. It seemed a year since my last cigarette. “She hasn’t tried to reach you since Probate Court?”

  “She said that, Walker.” Acid had begun to burn through the lawyer’s officiousness.

  “Not exactly, counselor.” My fingers itched for a gavel. “She said that she had last seen Miss Whiting a year ago. That’s not the same thing.”

  “Objection overruled.” She was smiling again, with all the warmth of an Eskimo’s elbow. “As far as I know, Mr. Walker, she ceased to exist after that confrontation.”

  “One more question,” I said.

  “I should hope so,” snapped Clague.

  I ignored him. “Lee Collins, the pilot who was killed with your husband and his aide. Can you tell me anything about him?”

  A puzzled crease marred her smooth forehead. “Lee Collins. I’m sorry, the name means nothing to me. I’m afraid I was one of those typical society matrons who never interfere in their husbands’ business. It caused me some real problems once he was no longer here to conduct them. I have Daniel to thank for bringing order out of chaos.”

  “I’ll bet.”

  “What’s that?” the lawyer flared.

  “Nothing.” I got up. “Well, I can’t think of anything else. Unless you can shed some light on Bingo Jefferson’s murder. Or on Krim’s. I imagine you’ve heard about that one by now.”

  “I understand the police are denying that there’s any connection,” said Clague.

  “There’s no law compelling a policeman to tell the truth, Mr. Clague. Or am I trespassing on your territory?”

  His rheumy eyes narrowed behind the heavy spectacles. “You’re a very easy young man not to like, Mr. Walker.”

  “I lie awake nights worrying about it.” I looked down at Mrs. DeLancey. “If you still have the information Reliance gathered on Janet Whiting, I’d like to borrow it.”

  “I burned it after Arthur was killed. I didn’t think there’d be any more use for it. I’m sorry.”

  “No need. You’ve been a great help. And thanks for the hospitality. I don’t see much of it in my business.”

  “Nor I in mine.” She raised a hand. “Good-bye. I hope you find what you’re looking for.”

  “I wish you the same.”

  14

  CARMEN, THE MAID, met me in the entranceway. I looked for my hat and coat. She didn’t have them.

  “Mr. Billings would like to speak with you.”

  “Mr. Billings?”

  “Mrs. DeLancey’s son.” She hurried out through the arch on her left without having met my gaze once. I was beginning to think her blush was real.

  The room beyond the arch was a smaller version of the one on the opposite end of the house, only there was a suspended ceiling and the western artifacts were crowded closer together. A bronze casting made from Remington’s “The Scalp” stood atop a pedestal table that had been fashioned entirely of elk antlers by the hand of some rude frontier artisan long since gone to bones and dust. I knew the casting was a copy because the original was in the Smithsonian. At the moment it was being fondled by a burly party in his mid-thirties wearing a canary yellow jacket over a lavender shirt open at the neck, and white bellbottoms. As I entered he looked up, took his hands away from the statue, and smiled, displaying a natural gap between his front teeth under a reddish handlebar moustache.

  “Very pleased to meet you, Mr. Walker,” he said cheerfully, bounding forward to seize my hand in both of his. They were broad hands and strong despite their lack of calluses. “I’m Jack Billings. You were just talking to my mother.”

  His face was wide without being fat, topped by waves of brown hair as thick and soft as butter. His eyes were gray, like his mother’s but not as hard. He had an unremarkable nose, and his smile was as genuine as a congressman’s expense voucher. Outfit and all, he looked like something you’d expect to find on a used car lot.

  “What did you want to see me about, Mr. Billings?” I had to unscrew my hand from between his palms. He was one of those who like to hold on.

  “Let’s go up to my study.”

  The damn place was lousy with arches. We passed through another one and mounted another set of three steps. Since the house was constructed on different levels, this put us a floor above the room in which I had met Mrs. DeLancey and her lawyer. This section was paneled entirely in redwood. We stopped before a heavy, worm-eaten door that looked as if it might have been borrowed from a fashionable hotel built before the turn of the century. Billings got out a leather key case, but before unlocking the door he pushed aside a hinged section of molding, inserted a key in a hidden slot, and turned it until something clicked.

  “Burglar alarm,” he explained, replacing the molding. Then he manipulated the lock and opened the door, ushering me inside with a flamboyant gesture.

  When I entered I saw why. Glass cases like the ones above Mike Pilaster’s junk shop lined the walls from floor to ceiling, inside of which stood rows of rifles and shotguns linked together with chains like a Georgia road gang and pistols and revolvers of every make and caliber were mounted on pegs. A squat wooden desk crouched on legs carved in the shape of lion’s paws between horizontal display cases sheltering more small arms on red plush with a yellowed paper tab bearing typewritten identification beside each. None of the pieces was less than ninety years old, and some sported sinister-looking notches on their grips. A portrait of Judge DeLancey, wearing riding clothes and holding buckskin gloves and a quirt, hung on the only clear section of wall behind the desk. An electric humidifier hummed in one corner.

  “This was my stepfather’s study.” Billings waved me into a quilted black leather chair. “I’ve left everything just as it was. Not out of any devotion to the old man’s memory, but because I always admired his collection. Let me show you the prize.” He unlocked one of the glass cases beside the desk, lifted out one of the revolvers, and brought it to me, cradling it in both hands like a bottle of rare old wine. It was a Navy Colt with an ivory grip and a seven-and-a-half-inch barrel.

  I said it was nice.

  “Wait,” he said, and turned the butt toward me. The name “Wild Bill” was neatly engraved on the end of the brass frame.

  “Not Wild Bill Elliott, the great cowboy star?”

  “Hardly. It was among the items auctioned off in Deadwood to pay for Wild Bill Hickok’s funeral after Jack McCall killed him in 1876. Later it came into the possession of Sheriff Pat Garrett of New Mexico, who used it to kill Billy the Kid. There’s a guy out there now who thinks he’s got the genuine article in his collection, but it’s a fake. This is the McCoy. I’ve got the pedigree, a letter signed by Garrett himself.”

  “Impressive. Is that why you asked me up here?”

  The eager light faded from his eyes. “No.” Reverently he replaced the gun in the case and locked it. Then he sat on the edge of the desk. “I wanted to set you straight on some things my mother told you.”

  “What’d you do, bug the room?”

  He flushed. “No, and I resent the implication. Carmen told me.”

  “I see. May I smoke?”

  “Please do. I don’t myself, but I’ve missed the smell of tobacco around the place since Arthur died. He was partial to pipes.”

  “I’m not,” I fired up a weed. “You’d better watch that stuff with the maid. Her husband has a bad temper.”

  He glared. “Do you want to hear this or not?”

  “I’m all ears, Mr. Billings.”

  He nodded once, stiffly. He’d put me in my place. “First of all, Mother lied when she said she didn’t know why Phil Montana broke up with Arthur.” He smiled sheepishly. “Carmen didn’t stop overhearing things when she left the room.”

  I watched him through the smoke. He continued.

  “In a way, Montana lied too. While it’s true that the rift opened over some poor advice he got from my stepfather, that advice had nothing t
o do with his duties as Montana’s legal counsel.

  “I was passing the study one day when I overheard Arthur on the telephone. The door was open. He was speaking in that tone people use when they’re trying to calm someone down—slow, soothing, as if they’re speaking to a child. He addressed the caller as Phil. He knew only one person by that name.

  “I gathered that Montana was angry about a stock tip he had gotten from Arthur. It seemed that on my stepfather’s advice, Montana had directed United Steelhaulers’ accountant to invest union funds in a company called Griffin Carbide. I did some reading about it later. Griffin was a small firm, barely making ends meet, but the rumor was that it was going to merge with an eastern conglomerate. When that happened the stock would go through the ceiling. Anyway, the rumor turned out to be false, Griffin went under, and Montana had to face the union rank and file with the news that their retirement fund no longer existed. It says something for his popularity that he was reelected by a landslide after he finished his sentence for assault and was finally allowed to participate in union politics again. But it hurt the union, and because of that he dismissed Arthur as his attorney and never spoke to him again.”

  “Would that be the major investment loss your mother mentioned?” He nodded. “Are you sure she knew?”

  “She knew. Don’t be taken in by her uninterested wife pose; that’s just something she developed as a shield against the IRS. Which is probably why she played dumb, in the interests of consistency.”

  I smoked and thought. “You said there were ‘some things’ you wanted to set me straight on. Plural. What else?”

  “Second.” He got up, walked around the desk, and unlocked a drawer. He had a key fetish. After rummaging around a little he drew out a sheaf of dog-eared pages bound in manila covers and came over and dropped it into my lap. I opened it to the first page. The title was typewritten, centered in caps.

  CONFIDENTIAL: JANET WHITING

  RELIANCE INVESTIGATIONS

  I looked up. He had perched himself on the edge of the desk again. “Mrs. DeLancey said she burned the report.”

  “She asked me to do it. I didn’t. I thought it might come in handy.”