The Complete Bragg Thriller Box Set

by Jack Lynch

  “What I like doesn’t matter. Finding a killer and saving your life do.”

  “That’s what I’ve decided.”

  “Were you and…”

  She turned her head and gave me a quick kiss on the mouth to shut me up. “No, let me think a moment more. I’ll tell you in my own way.”

  She sipped her drink and rested her head alongside my own, gazing off into the distance again. She wasn’t really trying to tease me, the way she had been earlier. She was just trying to establish a little intimacy to make it easier for her to tell me her role in a sustained effort to screw money out of the local citizens. But that didn’t make it any easier for me to try to maintain the aloofness such a moment should require of a serious investigator. Not when he was sitting down without his clothes on in a tub of hot water and a very pretty and naked young woman was sitting on his lap. I tried to keep things under control as best I could, without total success. It didn’t matter, really. Anything my own body was doing didn’t seem to bother her any. Maybe it was a little test she subjected her gentlemen friends to in the hot tub. She could separate the dead from the living that way. I was among the living.

  “It wasn’t really my idea,” she began finally. She took another sip of the gin and tonic, then laid her head back next to mine again, talking across the tub into the night air. “It started as a lark, at first. At least that’s the way I was approached about it. A friend suggested it one day when we were talking. I had been complaining about what a tightwad Woody was. I’d asked Woody not long before if he couldn’t spare a little more money for the household budget. I picked a bad moment, apparently. He refused, in a—rude and vulgar way. I told my friend about it. My friend said, well, why don’t you get the money from Woody in another way? And we talked about the tapes. And how they could be used in such a way to cause apoplexy among some of these old fogies Woody knew from his past. My friend was very clever and inventive. We had drinks and talked about it some more, and finally I figured, oh, what the hell, why not?”

  “Extortion? And you said, oh, what the hell, why not?”

  She put one hand across my lips. “It was pillow talk, darling. Woody was halfway across the country just then giving one of his lectures. My friend and I were giving each other a great deal of pleasure that afternoon. Anything at all seemed all right, under the circumstances. So I brought out some of the tapes and we listened to them together. You’d be appalled at some of the ghastly things these people have done.”

  “Or had happen to them.”

  “Yes, that too.” She drank some more. “Anyway, that’s how it all started. Almost offhandedly. During an afternoon of pillow talk.”

  I shifted my position. “Go sit back down across the way.”

  “Why, darling? Don’t you like a girl to sit on your lap?”

  “I love a girl to sit on my lap. Too much so, as you’re well aware unless you’ve given yourself a shot of Novocain in the butt. You’ve got to let me concentrate on things for a few minutes, or you’re apt to end up like Nikki and your husband.”

  She gave me a pout, but got to her feet and waded back to the other side of the tub. She had a marvelous-looking bottom, that girl.

  She settled herself across from me, tucked her feet up on the bench and rested the glass on her knees.

  “How did you know which tapes to listen to?”

  “Woody had a list, keying the codes he used on the cassettes with the names of his patients. He showed it to me once. In case anything happened to him, he wanted certain of the tapes sent to a school back East. He thought they could be important to others in the field.”

  “So you could pull out the tapes keyed to names you recognized.”

  “That’s right.”

  “Are you going to tell me the name of your friend?”

  “I’m not sure yet. I’ve never been one to kiss and tell, darling. It might not be necessary for you to know. It’s the killer’s name you want.”

  I let that one go for the minute. Like a lot of us, she had a stupid side to her. “What did you do after you listened to the tapes?”

  “We made copies of the ones he would be using. I don’t really know a great deal more of how he went about it than that. I wasn’t an active part of the actual contact with people, or getting the money or anything like that. Nikki was, in a way, as you’ve already guessed. I know that during the past weekend she was given some money by somebody. It was to be set up so she appeared to be an innocent party to what really was going on. She told me that the night we met.”

  “Friday.”

  “That’s right. She said somebody was going to leave her an envelope with the money in it at her stall at the fairgrounds. Maybe she was involved even more than that, though, if she had copies of the tapes themselves.”

  “And she still had the money as well. Level with me, Jo. You know she was more involved than just being a money drop. Why would she have had copies of the tapes?”

  She squirmed around a little and put her glass back on the shelf. “She made some phone calls, to the people they were asking money from. She wouldn’t speak to them herself. When she got the right party on the line she would play a portion of the tape over the phone, then hang up. A day or so later, my friend would either telephone the person on the tape or write to him and suggest that a certain sum of money be left at a given place at a particular time.”

  “Wonderful,” I told her. “The mail thing makes it a federal offense as well.”

  “It doesn’t matter. You’re not going to turn me in, are you? I really had so little to do with it, after all, except for that one day when we talked about it and my friend copied the tapes that he did. He and Nikki were the real operators. I’ve hardly even seen any of the money they’ve got. Even though it all started when I complained about how tight Woody was, I didn’t really do it for that so much as I did it as a joke. For the consternation it would cause these old curmudgeons.”

  “Your husband and Nikki dead? That kind of consternation?”

  “No, of course not,” she said, looking away. “I didn’t know it would really go anywhere. I mean, I didn’t know people would actually pay money to keep some of these problems from the past a secret. I wouldn’t, I know. And I have had a few problems of my own, believe me. I didn’t hear anything on any of the tapes I listened to that seemed that devastating.”

  “How much money have you gotten from it?”

  “A few hundred dollars, is all. I was supposed to get some of that money Nikki was given Friday night. Then, I was to get quite a bit more sometime soon. At least that’s what my friend said.”

  I shook my head and stared at the stars. “Have you talked to this clever, inventive friend of yours since your husband was killed?”

  “Yes, we spoke earlier today.”

  “Did it ever come up in the conversation that it might be a good idea to just break off the extortion efforts?”

  “No. Neither one of us thought it had anything to do with Woody’s death. And we didn’t know about Nikki. We talked about other things, mostly.” She reached back and finished the drink on the shelf. “Are you going to have that other gin and tonic?”

  “No, I’m not.”

  “May I have it then, please?”

  I put my own glass on the tray and carried the fresh drink across to Jo. She took the glass, then put one hand behind my knee to keep me there a moment, and looked up at me with the first signs of doubt on her face.

  “Do you think I’m a bad woman?”

  “Who knows what that is? No, I don’t think you’re necessarily a bad woman. I think in this one instance you’ve been awfully stupid. And frankly, I don’t think your boyfriend is all that clever, either.”

  “Too bad,” she said quietly. “I wanted you to tell me I was a bad woman. Then I wanted you to take me inside and make love. It’s about time, don’t you think?”

  “Oh, Jo…” I turned away and climbed up out of the tub. She’d put a couple of towels on a lower step of th
e platform stairs. I took one of them and dried myself, then climbed back into my clothes.

  “I think you’d better tell me who your friend is,” I told her.

  “Is it really absolutely necessary?”

  “Yes, it is. You don’t know enough about what’s been going on, if you’ve been telling me the truth.”

  “I have been.”

  “Okay. So here’s where things stand. Somebody’s after you, and they might be after him as well. He probably doesn’t know about Nikki yet, and he doesn’t know about the grenade attack here, unless he’s a cop.”

  She laughed. “He’s not a cop.”

  “So you’d better tell me and let me go talk to him. The killer might have gotten his name from Nikki before he shot her. Or something else down there might have pointed in his direction. And if I can get your boyfriend to level with me, maybe he can tell me something that’ll give me an idea who the killer is.”

  “I suppose you’re right.” She had a drink of fresh gin and tonic. I didn’t know how she did it. Maybe she had a metabolic system that squeezed the liquor out of her pores into the hot water as fast as she drank it.

  “Alex Kilduff,” she said finally.

  “The bartender?”

  “That’s right. He’s a lovely young man, in many ways.”

  “Sure. A real sweetheart, probably. I should have thought of him myself.”

  “You’ve been busy, darling.”

  “Right. Do you know where I could find him now?”

  “No. At that bar where he works, perhaps.”

  “Okay, I’ll go looking for him.” I picked up the other towel and held it up to her. “Now, how about getting out of there and putting some things in a suitcase.”

  “Whatever for?”

  “I want you to go check into a motel somewhere. Not around here, either. Maybe over near Salinas.”

  “You think the man who bombed us will be back?”

  “It’s a possibility. I’ll follow you out of town a ways to make sure nobody’s tailing you, then I’ll go find Alex. And I’d like you to give me another key to the place. The cops took the one from under the tub.”

  “Why do you want a key?”

  “After I’ve talked to Alex, I’m coming back here to spend the night.”

  “Then you do think the killer will be back.”

  “The only question is when.”

  FOURTEEN

  While Jo was getting her stuff together, I phoned Allison at the motel. I told her I’d be by later to pick up my shaving gear and a couple of other things, but that I wouldn’t be spending the night there.

  “Aha,” she said in that quiet way of hers.

  “It’s not exactly what you think. There was an attempt on Jo’s life earlier.”

  “What happened?”

  “Somebody lobbed a grenade into the patio. Luckily, nobody was out there at the time. But whoever did it might come back. I’m sending Jo out of town for the night.”

  “And what will you be doing?”

  “I have to find somebody and ask them a few questions. Then I’m coming back to Jo’s place and sit up with the mice to see if the grenade man comes back.”

  “And what if he does come back?”

  “I’ll capture the devil, what do you suppose?”

  She told me to watch my moves around Jo Sommers. I told her I’d be doing my best.

  I went back outside and looked around for the cat. She didn’t seem to be in the neighborhood. I didn’t blame her. Jo changed the cat’s water and left out some dry food for it. She said there was a flapped hatch in the side of the garage Sam used, and she’d probably come on back home when her ears quit ringing.

  Jo backed out the family Mercedes, and I carried down the suitcase she’d packed. I went back through the house and left a couple of lights on low in the front room and the late doctor’s study. Jo told me she’d phone me later to let me know the name and phone number of the motel where she’d be staying. I drove behind her back out to the highway and up over the Carmel hill. She took the Salinas turnoff. I stayed with her for about three miles, gradually dropping back. When I was satisfied nobody else was following her, I turned back and drove on over to downtown Carmel. It was after ten o’clock, but I still wasn’t hungry. Hand grenades can do that to a person. I went looking for Alex.

  At the Duck’s Quack they told me he’d gone off duty about an hour earlier. He’d had a drink and then left. The bartender now on duty gave me the names of a couple of other bars where I might look for him. I went to the places and looked, but Alex hadn’t been to either one of them that night, so I went back to the Duck’s Quack and tried to wheedle out an address or telephone number for young Alex Kilduff. I’d ordered a drink this time, a weak bourbon and water, and paid with a ten-dollar bill. The bartender, a tall brisk man approaching thirty with a thick, dark mustache, put my change on the bar and told me it was against house policy to give out information to do with the help. I didn’t know if the timing was a coincidence or not. I slid the five-dollar bill into the bar gutter and asked if he’d try calling Alex at home himself and tell Alex I needed to talk to him.

  “It’s important,” I told him. “Tell him we met at Gus Wakefield’s party Saturday night. Tell him I was the spy with the stunning blonde. My name’s Pete. He might not remember me, but he’ll remember the blonde. Her name was Allison.”

  The bartender nodded. When he’d finished making a drink order for a cocktail waitress, he went to a phone behind the bar and dialed a number. Somebody answered on the other end and they talked for a moment, then the bartender turned my way with a little nod and pointed toward an extension phone on the wall by the cocktail waitress station. I lifted the receiver and we exchanged greetings.

  “What’s up?” he asked.

  “We need to talk. It’s important. Only I’d like it to be someplace a little more private than the bar here. Maybe we could meet somewhere.”

  “What do we need to talk about?”

  “Jo Sommers and Nikki Scarborough. I think the murder of Jo’s husband has something to do with it too.” I tried to keep my voice low, but the waitress was hovering nearby and gave me a quick glance. She was trying to listen in.

  “What do those people mean to you?” Alex asked.

  “Look, it really is impossible to tell you more about it right here. You know what your own bar is like. Can’t we meet somewhere? It’s to your own advantage.”

  He thought it over some. “I think I’d rather keep this to just a phone conversation,” he told me. “I’ll tell you what. Do you know where the Barnyard shopping center is?”

  I stiffened. “Yes, I know where it is.”

  “There’s a pay telephone there next to the supermarket. I happen to know the number of the phone. You can go on down there. I’ll phone the number in twenty minutes. If it’s busy, I’ll keep trying until I get you. But I doubt if there’ll be anybody around at this time of night.”

  “Okay. I’ll drive on down and wait for your call.”

  I went back out to my car. The night was having its ups and downs. I would rather have seen Alex in person, for a number of reasons. But at least the pay phone he was sending me to sounded like the one Larry Pitt told me he’d been sent to before he was told to take his envelope full of money to the Hog’s Breath.

  I got there a few minutes early and the phone was free. I checked the phone book there to make sure Alex didn’t have a listing, for his phone number, if not his address. He didn’t. That seemed a bit odd for a bartender with an obviously active social life. The telephone rang exactly when Alex had told me he’d be phoning, and it was him.

  “Now, I don’t have a great deal of time—Pete, was it?”

  “That’s right, Peter Bragg. But you’ll want to take the time to hear me out. Some things happened today you might not know about, and your name came up in the course of things in such a way as to make me think you might be in a bit of physical danger.”

  “Who exactly are
you, Mr. Bragg?”

  “I’m a private investigator from San Francisco who’s known Jo Sommers for a number of years. When I learned her husband had been murdered, and that she was a suspect, I got in touch with her and offered to do some digging into things for her.”

  “That was generous of you, I’m sure. But I hardly know those people. Dr. and Mrs. Sommers, and who else did you say?”

  “Nikki Scarborough.”

  “That name doesn’t ring any bells at all.”

  “That’s odd. Jo Sommers told me you knew her. And I saw you in what looked like a pretty serious conversation with her Sunday night at the Duck’s Quack. She has a pottery studio down at Big Sur.”

  “Oh, yes. I remember now.”

  “Thought you might. At least she used to have a pottery studio at Big Sur.”

  “She moved?”

  “She died.”

  He might be clever and inventive, as Jo had said, but he wasn’t able to mask the quick intake of breath. “I hope that you’re joking, Mr. Bragg.”

  “It’s no joke. She was shot through the head while trying to run away from somebody who was after her. It happened while I was driving out to see her. Something had frightened her earlier and she wanted to talk to me. She also left me a couple of audiotapes that turned out to be copies of tapes that belonged to Dr. Sommers. Then this evening, I was over at the Sommers home when—”

  But he didn’t want to hear any more. The bloody young fool hung up on me. I mouthed an off-color word or two and hung up the phone. I stood there for another five minutes, hoping he’d think better of it and call me back. He didn’t. I dialed the Duck’s Quack again, but then hung up before the call went through. I’d do better getting back to the Sommers home, in case he tried calling Jo.

  I drove back to my motel first. It only took about eight minutes.

  “What’s wrong?” Allison asked when I breezed in and headed for the bathroom to pack a toiletry kit.

  “Things are starting to happen,” I told her. “It turns out some people got their hands on tape recordings made by the late Dr. Sommers, in sessions with his patients. Some of the former patients live around here now, and the people with the tapes were using them to extort money from the ex-patients. I think that’s why the doctor was killed, and also that girl today. And according to Jo Sommers, the brains behind it all was Mr. Personality behind the bar at Gus Wakefield’s party, Alex Kilduff.”