by Jack Lynch
Gus Wakefield and his wife approached us again. Mrs. Wakefield began a conversation with Allison while the general turned me slightly to one side and tried to pump me about what Jo Sommers had to tell me at the county jail when I visited her. I gave him a bare-bones account of what both Jo and detective Wally Hamlin had told me. I didn’t mention anything about the tape-recorded domestic quarrel.
“I hear the local district attorney, Thackery, is a bit of a hardhead,” I told him.
He took a breath but didn’t reply right away. He looked off in the distance. “I don’t know the man, personally,” he told me. “I have heard he’s ambitious. Why?”
“I have it on good authority he’d like to hang the doctor’s murder on Jo. Tidy it up and get it over with in a hurry. Why do you suppose he’d want to do that?”
Wakefield looked back at me sharply. “Assuming that Mrs. Sommers is innocent, you mean.”
I nodded. “Until last night, it had been years since I’d seen Mrs. Sommers, but I still consider her a friend. She told me today she didn’t do it. I have to believe her until I find something a lot more convincing than Thackery has found so far.”
“Well, I suppose…” began Wakefield, his voice trailing off as he stared into his glass. “I was only going to say…”
But he hesitated again, and before he could resume, we were joined by another one of the men I’d met the night before. Tonight he was wearing navy whites. He was the short, compact man named Whitey.
“I believe you two met last evening,” said Wakefield with a hearty boom, as if he’d just been saved from having to tell me something nasty. “Commander Whiteman, Peter Bragg.”
We shook hands again.
“Mr. Bragg here has been doing some preliminary investigation of the Sommers murder,” Wakefield told him.
The commander’s gray eyebrows arched quickly. “Indeed? And what seems to have gone on out there last night? Awful thing to have happen.”
I nodded. “The doctor apparently suffocated. Somebody held a pillow over his face while he was slowed down by drink.”
“I heard they were holding Mrs. Sommers,” said the commander. “Absolutely incredible, if I’m any judge of character. Couldn’t the man just have gotten so swizzled he choked all by himself? He drank enough, I’ve heard.”
“The police seem to think somebody else was involved. But I’m glad you feel the way you do about Mrs. Sommers. I think she’s innocent, myself.”
“Of course she is,” he said, staring off. “Ah! Excuse me. Have to see Pitt about a golf game.” He moved off with a brisk stride, over to the two men I’d noticed staring at me earlier.
“Excuse me, General…”
Wakefield waved a hand in dismissal. “Forget the uniform. Call me Gus.”
“Okay, Gus. Do you know the two men Whitey’s talking to now? I believe the man in navy whites was at the Hunt Club last night with you and Billy Carpenter.”
“That’s right, Lawrence Pitt. He and Whitey were both D.D. skippers, in the war.”
“Destroyers?”
“Yep. You know, it’s a funny thing. I never thought of it before, until seeing the two of them together in their uniforms like that. They’re both of short stature. Maybe it took that sort of man, with the little-man pugnacity, a bit of the bulldog, to handle those ships properly. Did a job for the army, I’ll tell you. One of them saved Omaha Beach for us.”
“I didn’t know that.”
“Oh, yes. Steamed right in toward shore to knock out some gun positions nobody else could get at. It was a very touch-and-go situation there until the navy saved the day.”
“I see. How about the other man, in the marine uniform.”
“That’s George Whittle. Korea was his war. Then he was in advertising, up in San Francisco, before he retired and moved down here. Larry Pitt stayed in the navy for thirty years. Dabbled in real estate down here some after that. Whitey did more than dabble. Began acquiring property all over the place. Wheeled and dealed. He made a good deal of money. Mostly retired now, like the rest of us. Has a house in Pacific Grove, a cabin down the coast and a place in Palm Springs, that I know of.”
“How nice for him.”
“I know what you mean,” Wakefield chuckled. “I’m comfortable enough, myself, but Commander Smith is really well at ease.”
“Gus, if you wouldn’t mind, I’d like to get back for a moment to what you were going to tell me about the district attorney. I had asked you why you felt he might want to try to convict Mrs. Sommers for her husband’s murder.”
“Well, actually no, that really wasn’t what I was about to say. Maybe Mrs. Sommers is the only sort of suspect he has. But I had been thinking of something further along, that had been triggered by your question. I had asked myself why anybody at all would want to kill Dr. Sommers.”
“And what was your conclusion?”
He leveled a forceful gaze at me. “I don’t know that I should even verbalize such random thoughts.”
“I wish you would. I promised my lady friend here I wouldn’t start looking into this thing seriously until after the weekend. But now is a timely opportunity. You know this community. I’m an interloper. I’ll need help.”
He lowered his gaze again to the glass in his hand. “Well, it’s something you’re apt to think of yourself sometime anyway, I suppose. But understand, this is little more than speculation. Dr. Sommers was a psychiatrist who specialized in the problems encountered by the military. As you might appreciate, there can be terrible anguish generated in men who go to war.”
“I know, sir.”
“All right. It’s just, then, some of the men Dr. Sommers helped, or tried to help over the years, quite probably live in the Monterey area now. Dr. Sommers could perhaps know about the bleaker sides to any number of us. He could cause a great deal of mischief in the community if he were of a mind to.” Wakefield shrugged. “Or, maybe he just triggered memories in somebody who could not tolerate having those memories stirred up. That’s all I was thinking. Probably not worth the breath to mention it, even.”
SIX
Thanks to Gus Wakefield’s party, Allison and I were running even later on Sunday than we had been on Saturday night. We had to put off some of the sightseeing I had wanted to do in order to get to the Sunday afternoon concert at the fairgrounds. We were nearly an hour late as it was.
The Sunday afternoon concerts are especially important, both to me and the Monterey Jazz Festival. They are the future of this kind of music. The performers are teenaged kids from high schools throughout Northern California. For the past dozen years or so, the festival has sponsored a high school competition in the spring. The school bands and combos are judged by professional jazz musicians, and the winning groups are invited to take part at the jazz festival in the fall. In addition, all of the youngsters are invited to audition for a chair in the year’s California High School All-Star Jazz Band. Those who make the cut, about nineteen kids in all, spend an intensive six days prior to the festival in rehearsals, working with jazz professionals like Bill Berry, Bob Brookmeyer and Freddie Hubbard.
These, then, are the youngsters who provide the music Sunday afternoons. And they are very good. And as at the concert the afternoon before, people get up and dance in the broad, earthen aisles, while the rest of us stretch out in the sun drinking beer and listening to the music and the occasional full-throated roar of a twin-engine jet airliner taking off from Monterey Peninsula Airport, just down the road.
When we stepped into the Hunt Club after the performance, we had a surprise waiting for us. Jo Sommers was sitting by herself at a corner table, wearing the blue pants suit she’d had on Friday night when they’d taken her into custody. When she saw us, she got up and made her way through the smoke and din of the crowded room.
“Welcome back to the world,” I told her.
She managed a weak smile and gave Allison the once-over. I did the introductions.
“Did Thackery decide he didn’t have a cas
e?” I asked her.
“Not at all. That man is a monster. But I have a sharp little feminist lawyer who makes him feel uncomfortable. No charges have been filed yet, but he said I could expect that to happen by the end of next week. They released me just a bit ago. I came by here hoping to find you.”
Jo turned to Allison. “Peter gave me your message yesterday, and I appreciated it. Really. And I know the weekend isn’t over yet, but there’s a few hours until the next concert, and I wondered if you could come by my home for just a little while. Both of you.”
She turned her attention back to me now. “I want to tell you about a thing or two, but not here. And after talking to my lawyer, I think I need your help more than ever.”
I glanced at Allison. She made a slight movement with one shoulder that I took as acquiescence. We left the Hunt Club. Jo had come to the fairgrounds in a cab, so she rode the rest of the way home with Allison and me. We tried to make small talk on the drive over the hill and south to Carmel Highlands, but it was a strain, and we realized it eventually and contented ourselves with staring out the windows.
Once home, Jo said hello to the noisy cat, then excused herself and went into the bathroom to freshen up. Allison and I went into the front room and looked out the large front windows at the Pacific Ocean and talked in whispers as if we were in church.
“She is, as you said,” murmured Allison, “an, ahem, attractive woman.”
“Noticed that, did you?”
“And she has, as they say where I come from, eyes for you.”
“I suspect she has eyes for any man who can still get around without dragging one leg.”
“No, Bragg. Nice try, but you’re special to her.”
“Sure, I’m special, because of my line of work. She’s in a jam and wants me to help her out of it.”
“What do you think she wants to tell you?”
“Tell us. I’m not working yet. Anything she has to say she can say in the presence of both of us.”
She was standing alongside me staring out the window, but she raised a hand and gave my arm a little squeeze. “What do you think she wants to tell us?”
“Probably something her feminist lawyer put into her head. But it’ll have to be brief, whatever it is. This joint makes me jumpy.”
“Me too.”
Jo Sommers came back into the room then, and she didn’t act as if she intended to be brief. She took one of those foot-long wooden fireplace matches out of a cardboard canister on the mantel and lit the pile of paper and logs in the big fireplace. Then she crossed to a cabinet in the corner that opened into a wet bar and brought out a bucket of ice from a refrigerated compartment.
“Let me fix you a drink,” she said. “I intend to have a walloping big Scotch, myself, but we have most everything.”
Allison and I exchanged glances. “Maybe just one, Jo, but we’ve got other things to do. We really can’t stay for very long.”
“I know. I’ll be as brief as I can.”
Allison and I each had a gin and tonic. We settled a little ways apart on a sofa at one end of the room. Jo Sommers poured out about a cup of Scotch over some ice in a big balloon glass and settled in a nearby easy chair, tucking her long, slender legs beneath her and lighting a cigarette. Then she got right into it.
“Background, first,” she told us. “I don’t remember how much I told you the other night, Peter. We didn’t seem to have talked for very long.” A brief glance at Allison with that. “But Woody, my husband, spent nearly twenty years in the army, treating men who’d been in battle, and others who encountered problems of one sort or another in peacetime. Not that he was seeing patients eight hours a day or anything like that. He did a great deal of teaching, as well, and originated various programs. And he was good enough at what he did so his duties weren’t just restricted to army personnel. He worked with the navy and air force as well. He put in a stint at the Pentagon in Washington. When he left the military, he spent another dozen or so years in private practice, but his work wasn’t all that different. Much of it was on contract with the Veterans Administration and other government bodies. Other patients sought him out because of his reputation. He had a good practice and made money at it.”
She quieted a moment, drawing on the Newport, swirling the Scotch in the glass and staring at the carpet between us. “The problem is,” she continued quietly, “I’m not going to see very much of that.”
She raised her eyes with a little smile. “I met Woody late on. He was married and divorced once before. His former wife died last year, but he has a son and a daughter. They get the bulk of the estate. Also what government insurance he had. He took out another insurance policy, a term policy naming me as beneficiary. It’s for one hundred thousand dollars. He said it should be enough to put any girl back on her feet. But my lady lawyer told me it’s going to be a battle royal to collect from the insurance company so long as I’m suspected of murdering my husband.”
She moved one leg out from beneath her and let it swing idly along the front of her chair. She put out the Newport, lowered her eyes and swirled her Scotch some more. Then she had a long drink of it.
“I have no resources of my own,” she said. “Aside from my wardrobe and a few houshold possessions and some bits of jewelry that Woody bought me.”
“What about the house?” I asked.
“It’s in both our names, but it has a whopping mortgage on it. I’ll have to put it on the market, even if I get the insurance money. Just not so quickly, is all.”
“Didn’t he have any sort of mortgage insurance that would pay it off if he died?”
Jo looked up at me with a bitter little smile. It had enough venom in it to bring a squirmy movement from Allison.
“No. No mortgage insurance, dirt cheap as it is. Woody did that deliberately.”
And with that, she got serious about drinking the Scotch. She’d had one or two good tugs at it, but now she drained the glass.
“Excuse me,” she said quietly, getting to her feet.
She crossed the room to the bar again, and while she had her back to us I glanced at Allison, and Allison shot me a child’s face of horror, mouth agape and eyes bugging. She did it in about a tenth of a second, then once again assumed that placid look of vague dreaminess and mild interest she showed the world at large on most occasions.
I smiled and waited while Jo Sommers tossed in another couple of cubes of ice and transferred the rest of the Scotch from the bottle into the large glass. She came back to her chair, but this time put down the glass onto a small table beside her and crossed over to poke at a couple of blazing logs in the fireplace. Then she sat back down and leaned forward.
“You see,” she continued, “Woody had his own view of the world and the people in it. I don’t suppose a man, or anybody else for that matter, can spend thirty years of his life dealing with people who have deep neuroses and other illnesses I haven’t even heard of, without taking on what one might call a few peculiar traits of their own. Woody felt my place was in the home, so long as he was here to share it. But if something were to happen to him, he felt my place should be out of the home, at least this home. And since he was, as kindly as I can put it, a few years older than myself, it could be expected that he might pass into the great beyond some time before I did. Not that either of us expected it quite this soon, nor, lord knows, in such dramatic fashion. But whenever it happened, he didn’t feel I should retain such an imposing home to call my own.”
“Why on earth not?” asked Allison.
Another little smile from Jo. “He felt it would overenhance my status.”
Allison looked at her with astonishment.
“His very words,” Jo continued. “He felt it was all right for me to be a part of the place, like one of the back rooms or the ice plant out front, so long as he was lord and master and obviously provider of the walls. He felt it was too much grandness to be in the possession of a single woman who hadn’t made much of a mark in life before meetin
g and hooking up with the renowned Dr. Sommers. The pig.”
Allison and I exchanged uneasy glances while Jo tilted the glass to her mouth.
“Where is all this taking us?” I asked.
She nodded her head, acknowledging it was a fair question. “I would like anything you can do for me to be on a little more businesslike basis than either of us might have originally meant it to be. Instead of an acquaintance from the past spending a few hours of his time doing the poor girl a favor, I would like for you to go into this the same as you would for any of your clients.”
“I would have done that anyway.”
“I mean, I want to hire you, Peter. Specifically to find out who killed Woody. It won’t be enough for the district attorney to decide he doesn’t have a good enough case against me to get a conviction. I have to prove to the insurance company that somebody else did it. Otherwise I might have to sue the insurance company. And you know how much that sort of thing could eat into the one hundred thousand dollars.”
“Considerably,” I agreed.
“Jo, don’t you have any family who can help you?” Allison asked.
Jo took out another Newport, tamped one end on the table beside her, then lit it and blew away a small cloud of smoke. “I have a brother, and my mother, up in the state of Washington. He’s a dairy farmer. Yes, I’ve been in touch with them, and they’re willing to loan me whatever it takes to hire myself a competent private detective to get me out of the mess I’m in. You are competent, aren’t you, Peter?”
“He’s a very competent private detective,” Allison said quietly. “He’s so competent it almost destroyed our relationship before it had a chance to get off the ground.”
“You’ll have to tell me about that sometime,” Jo said, looking away so you couldn’t tell whom she was talking to.
“One thing you should keep in mind, though, Jo,” I told her. “Regular law enforcement agencies usually have more expertise and manpower, and are in a far better position to find a killer than just a single, freelance detective.”