The Admiral of Signal Hill

by Michelle Knowlden

He glared at his notepad. “No reason to think the two were related, but something stuck in my craw all this time. Maybe it’s fair common to see someone knifed downtown but not in Bixby Knolls. That’s why I called you. ‘Cause of your connection to the Admiral.”

  Alice happened to glance at the house and saw someone staring down at them from the widow’s walk. A hulking, featureless form backlit by the sun. She shivered.

  Reynolds jabbed a tobacco-stained finger at Joe. “Now you talk to the Admiral?”

  Joe nodded. His gaze dropped to Alice’s shoes. “Hope you brought hiking boots, Kid.”

  CHAPTER THREE

  As they drove across Long Beach, Joe sat in the front with the driver while Alice changed her oxfords for tennis shoes in the back. She felt uncomfortable meeting a high-ranking military man in canvas sneakers but outside the office, Joe called the shots.

  When they reached Signal Hill, Joe directed the driver down an empty street of broken macadam and weeds. Telephone poles listed in the late winter gloom. A steep hill rose to the left and a foul-smelling channel dipped to the right. Except for a closed bodega, they saw no buildings or people.

  Joe paid the driver and told him to return in an hour. As Joe and Alice climbed the hill behind the small market, she glanced back to the road and the taxicab veering around potholes. She hoped the driver would return. It’d be a long walk back to the inn otherwise.

  After they climbed two hundred feet, they heard voices and a series of snapping sounds, like firecrackers. Joe put a finger to his lips, and they crept over an immense flat-topped boulder. A large area was roped off below them filled with trucks, people, and cameras. A man lay motionless in the dirt while another hopped nearby, waving a gun. Alice squeezed Joe’s arm till he shook her off and pointed to a large sign propped against a tent. Balboa Studios. The man lying on the ground sprang to his feet, dusted off his pants with a large hat, and headed for the camera.

  Alice’s eyes widened. “Is that Buster Keaton?”

  Joe grinned and put a finger to his lips again.

  He slid down the boulder and then helped Alice negotiate the slide while keeping her skirt modestly over her knees. Walking away from the cliff edge, he led her to a narrow cleft between the boulder and the packed dirt of the hill. Only four feet wide, the walls were ten feet high on either side and rising as the path went downward. Lit by the sun overhead, she touched the dark granite wall to her left. It felt damp. To the right, the dirt held …

  “Joe!”

  He clamped a hand over her mouth before her hoarse whisper turned into a scream. She pointed a trembling finger at the bones embedded in the dirt wall to her right, from her ankle to far above her head and extending into the dark tunnel.

  He released her. “That? That’s been dead for thousands of years, Doll. Don’t give it a second thought.”

  “Is it … is it dragon bones?”

  “Nah. Some kind of dinosaur. I’ve seen something like it at a museum in New York. Bones go a hundred feet down the wall. So close to the ocean here, I suspect it’s some sort of sea serpent, daddy to present-day moray eels.”

  He started down the path, but Alice peered closer at a bone before hurrying after him. “Shouldn’t we tell someone about it. It belongs in a museum too.”

  He shook his head. “The Admiral wouldn’t allow it.”

  Joe looked down the long path disappearing in front of him. Following his gaze, Alice noticed that the crevasse above them narrowed till it became a true tunnel not many yards ahead. Were they walking through Signal Hill?

  The wall to the left was no longer granite but hard-packed dirt. She squinted. What were those pinpricks of light she could see over Joe’s shoulder?

  “You scared, Doll?”

  Startled, she met Joe’s amused gaze. She squared her shoulders, taking advantage of the one inch she had over him.

  “Nonsense. A little dark and a hundred feet of bones won’t hurt us. Is there anything I should know about the Admiral?”

  She couldn’t help the sarcasm. She knew little about naval bases but felt certain this wasn’t one. She’d heard about bunkers built along the coast during the Great War, but how many still existed three years after the war ended? And this far from shore?

  He turned and headed down the tunnel again. “I’ll do all the talking. You transcribe what the Admiral says. No matter how strange it seems, keep a poker face.”

  She couldn’t see him clearly, but he sounded serious. How much stranger could it get?

  “You got it, boss!” she said, dropping the sarcasm.

  A few moments later, they passed a lantern, one of those pinpricks of light she’d seen earlier. It hung from a spike in the wall. No more bones. She wondered how far back into the dirt the skeleton lay, then focused on the upcoming meeting as Joe slowed ahead of her.

  A shadow crossed the light at the end of the tunnel and she stifled a yelp. Joe’s muscles bunched beneath his jacket and then his shoulders relaxed.

  “Pierce?”

  “Yeah.”

  The lantern briefly lit the side of the man’s face, highlighting a jagged scar. Alice remembered what Reynolds said about knifings being common on waterfronts and wondered how many fights Pierce had been in. She tried to remember if Joe was carrying his revolver.

  “Admiral’s expecting me.”

  “Yeah.” Pierce didn’t seem to be the talkative sort. He leaned against the tunnel wall and stared at Joe with weary eyes.

  Alice thought she could see the faint outline of a metal door behind the hulking presence of Pierce. She shifted her purse to under her arm to free her hands. On the rare occasions she accompanied Joe in the field, it was in low risk situations. Joe might charge into danger himself, but he was oddly protective of her and not because she was a woman. In the course of working for him, she’d met female detectives, police women, and once an undercover Hoover agent.

  Joe told her that he’d seen a lady German spy in Belgium. He might have been joking. Sometimes it was hard to tell when he was serious, even about the war.

  Joe showed her a few defensive moves for when she assisted him in the field. For all him being shorter than her, he exuded a tough, business-like presence that made physical threats rare. But to her satisfaction she’d taken down a ruffian on the lakefront while her boss dealt with his armed partner. On another occasion, she subdued a suspect’s wife in the office after Joe slugged the husband. She still had a small scar on her ring finger from that fracas.

  Pierce didn’t appear to be a threat but behind Joe, she took a cautionary stance.

  “Should we keep the Admiral waiting?” Joe spread his hands mildly, but something crisp and military colored his voice.

  Nothing changed on Pierce’s face but after a count of ten, he opened the door. When Alice followed Joe into the stygian darkness, she felt Pierce’s gaze follow them.

  Inside she sensed eyes watching her and heard the sounds of breathing and feet shuffling on either side. Joe’s hand steadied her when she stumbled against him. His hand remained comfortingly on her arm till they turned a corner and into the glare of full light.

  As she blinked furiously at the glittering scene before her, a man detached himself from a crowd of—well there was no other word for it—hooligans. Arrayed in the full dress uniform of the British admiralty, the Admiral strode towards them.

  Alice relaxed seeing Joe come to attention. He held his salute till the Admiral halted before them and returned it. She felt again the shame of her dust-covered sneakers.

  “At ease, Mr. Finnegan.” When Joe dropped his hand, the Admiral grinned and enveloped him in a hug. Without acknowledging Alice, he pulled Joe into his office decorated in an elaborate Baroque fashion, never mind the miscreants circling the furniture. She trailed after Joe, wrinkling her nose. A setting more suited for the Scarlet Pimpernel than for a bunker or even a military office, she studied the faux marble fireplace, the immense mahogany desk, ship clocks on every mantel, bookcase, and table, not one but
four crystal chandeliers suspended from cathedral high ceilings, and a half dozen red and gold wing chairs and settees sprinkled around a room nearly twice the size of her Chicago apartment.

  She turned her gaze from the dozen of framed paintings (all of the sea) mounted against the rough walls as the hooligans passed her on their way out. All but one ignored her, and he leered at her with his unpatched eye and a mouth full of missing teeth. She tried not to shudder and only relaxed when the iron door clanged shut after them.

  “Will you have port or whisky, Finn? Or will you stand on your usual refusal?”

  “Regulations, sir. I pander to them, reasonable or not.”

  An odd response to a superior officer. She noted a knowing look pass between them.

  Since they ignored her, she took the opportunity to study the Admiral. For all his polish, his air of command, the graying at his temples, his old-fashioned manner of speech and the glint in his eyes, the Admiral looked to be no more than twenty-six, the same age as Joe. Although his uniform was British, he spoke with an American accent.

  “Perhaps the young lady would like something?”

  She started to speak, but the Admiral directed the lift of his eyebrow at Joe, not her.

  “Where are my manners?” From behind the Admiral, Joe shook his head at her. “Miss Glenn, would you care for anything?”

  For a moment she didn’t speak, puzzled about whom to address. Joe had deliberately not introduced them. His gaze slid between the two, caution radiating from his stance.

  She said to Joe. “Nothing, sir.”

  At his minute nod, she moved to a chair at the far end of the room. The lamp next to it was unlit. She sat in the shadows, nearly invisible to the men. Quietly she removed her stenographers’ pad from her purse.

  The Admiral filled a tumbler full of an amber liquid and took a long swig. “You don’t know what you’re missing, Finn. I keep the best for m’self.”

  He clapped a hand to Joe’s shoulder, prodding him to a pair of wing chairs with a lamp table between them. The light was harsh and revealing, but Alice suspected the Admiral chose those chairs for another reason. They were the farthest from her.

  Even so, she had no problem hearing them and could see the smallest change in expression illuminated by the lamp.

  The Admiral took a smaller draft of the liquid and rolled the glass in his hands. “I won’t waste your time, lad, reminiscing over old war stories or asking after your family back home. I know you’ve an urgent mission here. What do you need from me?”

  “Thank you, sir. What can you tell me about the murders in Bixby Knolls?”

  “Which one?”

  “Both of them.”

  The Admiral took another tiny sip and set the glass between them.

  “Which of the three are you leaving out?” The Admiral’s face hardened with cold challenge.

  Joe didn’t react, but Alice suddenly realized he had been at full alert since they arrived in this bizarre room beneath Signal Hill. Joe smiled easily but he watched the Admiral with care.

  “I wasn’t sure you’d heard about the one this morning …”

  The Admiral waved his hand, something still tight and furious in his narrowed eyes. “I hear everything, sirrah. Isn’t that why you are here?”

  “I beg your pardon, Admiral. I did visit the murder site this morning and am collecting information about the third death. The police have only asked me to look into the bootlegger’s murder. They think he might have been knifed for crossing into another bootlegger’s territory. No one’s sure how it figures into the other two murders.” Joe shrugged. “They convicted the wife for the resident’s murder. And she wasn’t around for the other two.”

  The Admiral stood abruptly. The table between them nearly overturned, but Joe caught it and the lamp before they hit the floor. He didn’t save the tumbler of illegal whisky. The crystal landed on the oriental rug without breaking. The stain of the amber liquid spread through a river of red and cream flowered wool.

  Alice huddled in her chair as the Admiral stood over Joe in a towering rage.

  CHAPTER FOUR

  “Of course, the murders are related!” Still vibrating with fury, the Admiral stalked to a large map draped over his desk. “And it wasn’t a turf war. No one would have dared move into my territory.”

  Joe discreetly put the tumbler on a sideboard. His gaze flicked casually to her, and she saw reassurance in his eyes. Then Joe joined the other man at the desk.

  “You know who killed the three, sir?”

  The Admiral shrugged. “Not definitively.”

  Alice relaxed hearing anger diminish in the Admiral. She quietly eased from her chair. Keeping to the shadows, she drew closer to the desk.

  “All death stems from the same source, lad. We saw it in the war.”

  Joe moved slightly and then stilled. Alice wasn’t sure if his sudden tension arose because he didn’t talk about the war, at least not around her. Or was he reacting something else?

  Tentatively he said, “You think the Kaiser was responsible for what happened at Bixby Knolls?”

  The Admiral stared at Joe, and then shouted with laughter. He slapped his shoulder so vigorously that her boss nearly landed atop the desk.

  The Admiral shook his finger at him. “I may be mad, Finn, but I can tell a grenadier from a guillotine.”

  Still grinning, he leaned over the map. “The bootlegger’s body was found here.” It wasn’t a question. “Weeks earlier, sometime in August, I’ll get you the exact date later, Robbie Tauscher made a delivery for me at the Evans’ house. Mr. Evans usually signed for it. That night, the handyman signed for him. Robbie saw blood on the handyman’s shirt and what he called ‘a wild look in his eyes.’ This and other details, he reported to my lieutenant who reported the story to me.”

  The Admiral suddenly swallowed and looked like a child dressed in his daddy’s uniform. Half scared and half dreading the coming punishment.

  “Sir?” Joe tentatively touched the Admiral who shied away from his hand.

  “Leave it be,” he said harshly. “The blood made me think of something else. Not this.” His hand groped for something. Joe swiftly retrieved the tumbler from the sideboard, refilled it with whisky, and gently knocked it into the Admiral’s hand.

  “Thanks, Finn.” He took a long draught that half emptied the glass. When he next spoke, he sounded normal again.

  “I told a couple of my men to snoop around the house. That weekend, they had a party. Must have been a whopper as they called for another case of our best gin on Monday.”

  “Who was at the party?”

  “One of my crew took pictures. I’ll get those to you if you want them. Robbie recognized a few neighbors. The wife was in and out.”

  He took a sip of the whisky, savoring it for a long moment before swallowing. “The handyman had his own party above the garage.” Distaste tightened his voice and he turned his back to Alice. “One thing was certain—Mr. Evans was not at the party.”

  Looking as if he fit his uniform again, the Admiral rounded the table, his gaze never leaving the map. “Besides the extra whisky for the Evans’ house, Robbie made deliveries to others in the neighborhood. My lieutenant reported, with some amusement, that he did his own snooping around the house.”

  “After someone knifed Robbie …” He stabbed the map where Alice assumed the body had been found on the sidewalk in front of the Evans house. “I set a reward for anyone who could finger his killer. The police didn’t like it but dared say nothing.” The lines sharply defined the Admiral’s face. “No one kills one of my people without retribution.”

  “You find the killer?” Joe asked.

  “As I said before, I found nothing definitive. Robbie Tauscher was an enterprising lad. I don’t discourage another’s ambition unless it interferes with my business. He may have discovered something nosing around the house and tried to blackmail the residents. Perhaps he located the body and was killed before he could report it to m
e.”

  He tossed back the rest of the whisky. Alice wondered uneasily if the Admiral would become too drunk to continue. What if he flew into another rage fueled by the alcohol?

  Answering the question Joe posed earlier, he said, “Of course, Robbie’s murder was related to Evans’ death. By someone who enjoyed sticking a knife into a man, twisting it, and feeling the blood warm his hands.”

  Alice hadn’t heard that the knife had been twisted into the victims, but she saw that Joe knew. Had it been in the medical examiner’s report? She would ask him about it later.

  “You have any idea why the insurance agent was killed last night?” Joe asked.

  The Admiral raised his eyebrows. Casually depositing his glass near the decanter, he said, “For the same reason Robbie was killed. To hide the truth.”

  He opened a desk drawer and fished out a folder. “One of my men took this from the insurance office this morning. I underlined a few notes within. I think you’ll find it helpful.”

  A muffled sound of gunshots crackled overhead. Instinctively Joe ducked, and Alice held her stenographer’s pad over her hair. The chandeliers swayed and a cloud of dust descended.

  The Admiral irritably brushed the dirt from his uniform. “Drat those studio people. Playacting at killing. They know nothing of it.”

  He strode past them and disappeared into the darkness. They heard the creak of the iron door, and the Admiral reappeared with Pierce who held a lantern.

  “I’ve business to attend to now, but Pierce will escort you to the tunnel. Finn, I hope you will see me after you close the case. I’d like to hear what you discover.”

  Joe stared at him impassively. “Am I likely to discover anything before you do? Do you already know who the killer is and you’re waiting to see if my solution matches yours?” The last question was a variation of what Joe had already asked. Alice knew this interrogation technique and by the appreciative twinkle in the Admiral’s eyes, she suspected he did also.

  “Neither. Both.” He shrugged. “Perhaps I only wish to talk of the old days and these present murders are an excuse.”