Westlake, Donald E - SSC 02 Read online

  Even praise can reach a surfeit, and I was happy to be rescued by Bray, who interrupted his partner by saying, "What have you got there, Fred?"

  "Oh, yeah." He held them up like a dead rabbit. "Socks."

  Bray seemed to find that significant. "Ah hah," he said. "I thought so."

  I said, "Excuse me, is that a clue?"

  Staples probably would have answered, but Bray asked me a question first: "Was Mrs. Penney involved with any man in particular, that you know of?"

  "A lover?" I shook my head, frowning with thought. "I don't think so. She was usually available for an evening out, and I never heard her talk about any steady boy friend."

  "Well, there was one," Staples said. "And he looks like our man, doesn't he, Al?"

  "Could be."

  I found myself watching these two as though they were characters in a movie I'd be writing up, noticing with approval the complementary types they offered. Bray was the slower and more methodical, while Staples was intuitive and emotional. Bray, in character, now said, "On the other hand, he could have come in afterward, found the body, and figured he ought to keep himself out of it."

  "I still think it's the boy friend," Staples said.

  "Except for the glass," Bray told him. "If he lived here, wouldn't he have known about that?"

  Something trembled in my stomach. Trying to sound no more than ordinarily curious, I said, "Glass?"

  This time Staples got to answer the question. "There was one glass in the living room here," he said, "with a partly-consumed drink in it. But in the kitchen cabinet was another glass that had been washed and put away. So the killer had a drink with her, and then after she was dead he washed his glass."

  "Fantastic," I said. "How did you know all that? If he washed the glass, how did you find out?"

  "He put it in the cabinet right side up. Mrs. Penney stored her glasses upside down, so that one glass was put away by somebody else."

  "By God," I said, "real-life detectives are just like the movies."

  Staples grinned like an Irish setter. "We get lucky sometimes."

  "No, I can see it's a special kind of talent," I insisted, giving him a return overdose of praise while at the same time cursing myself for that stupidity about the glass. Of course she kept her damn glasses upside down, I knew that, but I must have been more rattled than I'd thought. The shelf is high, and the damn glasses look the same right side up or upside down.

  Bray said to his partner, "If the guy was living here, he'd know which way the glasses went."

  "Not if he got rattled," Staples said. "Besides, I don't think he actually lived here, I think he just stayed overnight sometimes."

  I said, "That's the significance of the socks?"

  Staples grinned again; by golly, this was another chance to dazzle me with his sleuthing. "They're more significant than that," he said, and when he went on he addressed himself equally to his partner and to me. "These socks were the only male clothing in the bedroom. Now, the razor and stuff in the bathroom don't mean much, they could even belong to the victim herself. But these socks mean a man, and one that stayed here often enough to keep some extra clothing around. And you see what else they mean?"

  I had to admit I didn't, but Bray already knew. "He cleaned his stuff out," he said.

  Staples pointed an approving finger at him. "Right! He left the socks because there's no way to trace anybody from socks like these. But he took everything else because maybe they could be traced. Laundry marks, initials, whatever." Turning his beaming face toward me, he said, "Now, you see what that means. That means guilty knowledge."

  "Ah," I said.

  Bray, the cautious one, said, "I agree with you, Fred, up to a point. There is a boy friend and he did clear his stuff out after the victim was killed. But I still think there's a good chance he came in after she was dead, realized he could be in a lot of trouble, and tried to cover his tracks."

  "Maybe so," Staples said. "Maybe there's two guys out there in front of us, but I still think there's only one."

  "And there's something else," Bray told him. He then had me repeat my story about the mysterious man across the street, after which he said, "So he could be the killer, too."

  I said, "Excuse me, I'm not trying to play detective with you, but she didn't know who that man was, so she wouldn't sit down and have a drink with him, would she?"

  Staples now did his finger-pointing in my direction, saying, "Very good, Mr. Thorpe, very good. Of course it's possible, the guy could have come up and said he had a message from her husband or whatever, she asks him in for a drink and he kills her. That's possible, but it isn't very likely."

  I said, "Or maybe the killer did the thing with the glass to throw you off, make you think it was somebody Laura knew socially."

  This time Staples' smile was condescending. "Mr. Thorpe," he said, "I hate to say this, but you've been seeing too many movies. In real life killers don't get that cute. Visualize it for yourself; the guy gets in the apartment, kills Mrs. Penney, then he comes into the kitchen and turns over one glass so we'll think he knows her socially. People just don't act that way."

  "I suppose not," I said.

  Bray said, "I guess that's about all we'll need you for at the moment, Mr. Thorpe. If we want to talk to you again, I suppose you'll be around."

  "Of course." Smiling at them both I said, "I wasn't planning on going out of town."

  Staples smiled back, but Bray didn't.

  * * *

  Home again, I swallowed a Valium with bourbon and sat down to listen to the messages on my answering machine. The first was from Shirley, in her harsh ex-wife's voice with its recently-acquired Boston accent: "There are some papers for you to sign, whether you like it or not. I'm sending them today, special delivery, and if we don't get them back by Tuesday your father says I should hire a New York attorney. At your expense."

  Lovely. Next came the voice of Tim Kinywa of Third World Cinema, also sounding petulant: "Sogeza here, Carey. Could you possibly give us a title on the Eisenstein piece? I need it before noon tomorrow if at all possible."

  Damn; I'd forgotten about that. Here before me was the note I'd made, along with the note about the changed time for the screening. I underlined both, while listening to my next message. A secretary-type voice: "Mr. Thorpe, Mr. Brant will be in New York for a week, arriving Friday. If you'd care to arrange an appointment, would you phone the Sherry-Netherland sometime Saturday morning?"

  I would. For six months I'd been trying to set up an interview with Big John Brant, famous old-time director of such classics as Fury At Sundown, Tank Command, Fatal Lady and Smart Alex, and finally it was going to happen. Good.

  The last message was from Kit: "Hello, machine. Just wondered what your master was doing tonight. I'll be in if he feels like calling."

  Did I feel like calling? I considered the question while I dialed Tim's number and listened to his recorded announcement: "Hello, caller, this is the number of Sogeza Kinywa and Third World Cinema. We aren't answering the phone just now, but if you'll leave your name and phone number on this tape well get back to you very soon. Kwaheri, and peace."

  Nobody talks to anybody any more. We just talk to each other's machines. "Hello, Tim," I said to the machine. "This is Carey, and the title is 'The Influence of Eisen-stein: Stairway To The Stars.' I have an early screening tomorrow, but if there's any problem you can reach me at home after one."

  And now Kit. After the day I'd had I wasn't sure I could handle the warm-human-being role tonight, but I ought to call her back anyway and see if anything developed. So I dialed, and damn if I didn't get her machine: "Kit Markowitz here, on tape. I'm really sorry not to answer in person, but if you'll leave a message right after the little beep, I'll call you back just as soon as I can. Wait for it now, wait for it. Here it comes."

  She'd changed her announcement; the previous one had been more standard. After the little beep I said, "Too cute, Kit. This is Carey, and I'm home for the evening."
r />   After that, I settled down for a little work. A new New Yorfc-type magazine called The Loop had started in Chicago, and I'd promised them a piece called "Bog-danovitch: The Kid Brother As Leader Of The Pack." Linking Bogdanovitch and Ryan O'Neal through the seminal figure of Lee Tracy was turning out to be more complicated than I'd anticipated.

  Kit phoned half an hour later to say, "Z don't think it's too cute."

  "It's the wait for it' that gets me."

  "But that's the whole idea."

  "I know."

  "You're too linear," she said; one of her au courant but meaningless insults, the result of reading too many trade paperbacks. "You doing anything tonight?"

  I'd decided by now how to handle my news. "The fact is," I said, "I'm mostly getting over a shock. You remember Laura Penney?"

  "The girl with the mouse-brown hair? The one you've been seeing so much of lately?"

  Ah. Maybe I hadn't been covering my tracks quite so well as I'd thought. "Well, I won't see much of her any more," I said. "She's dead."

  "Good God!"

  "Killed, in fact."

  "Oh, Jesus. One of those rape things?"

  "I don't think so. It happened in her apartment. I was suppose to take her to dinner tonight, I went over th—"

  "You found her! Oh, my God!"

  "Not quite that bad. The police were there."

  "Oh, baby, what an experience. Do they suspect you?"

  I was shocked—truly shocked—at the suggestion. "Why would they do that?"

  "I thought the police were supposed to suspect everybody."

  "Oh. Then maybe they do suspect me, I don't know. They didn't act that way."

  "You sound very jittery. Want me to come over?"

  Did I? The half-finished page in the typewriter grayed before my eyes. "I'd love it," I said.

  * * *

  "I love your pubic hair," I said.

  She came over to the bed, carrying the two drinks. "What kind of compliment is that?"

  "A sincere one." I took my drink and made room for her beside me in the bed. Looking at the feature in question, I said, "It's furry, but not too much. It has a friendly quality."

  "I bet you say that to all your girls."

  I did, as a matter of fact, so I remained silent while she arranged the covers over herself. On the TV facing the bed the fifty all-time greatest hits of some obsolescent teenage castrati were being peddled in an extremely hard sell. "As somebody once said about Marion Davies," I said, nodding at the screen, " ‘Forgotten, but not gone’ "

  It was nearly midnight, and if that Kallikak on the tube would ever stop yowling we would go on watching The Thin Man, a film I was enjoying this evening in a very new and different way. The day was ending far better than it had begun. Kit had come over around nine-thirty, we'd gone at once to bed, and then I'd been subjected to an hour's conversation on the general subject What Happened To Laura Penney And Why? Kit, like Detective Staples, believed that Laura had a secret boy friend and that he was the killer. I couldn't tell her she was absolutely right, of course, but on the other hand I didn't want to be suspiciously negative, so I maintained a thoughtful neutrality on the subject and let Kit do most of the talking.

  A good girl, Kit, all in all, about the best of my recent women. An acquisitions editor for a reprint publisher, she was attractive, divorced, childless, bright, funny and self-supporting; what more could a liberated male want?

  William Powell returned, with Asta. They put Myrna Loy in a cab headed for Grant's Tomb and went off hunting the murderer by themselves. Kit said, "Could it be Jay English?"

  I looked at her. "Could what be Jay English?"

  "The secret lover."

  "He's a fag," I pointed out.

  "Well, maybe he's trying to go straight." She squinted at the TV, but it was Laura's murder she was trying to solve, not Julia Wolfe's. "That's why they kept it secret, because they weren't sure it would work out."

  "In the first place," I said, "Jay English doesn't want to go straight. And in the second place, he's still living with that fellow whatsisname."

  "Dave Something."

  "That's the one."

  "Ah!" Sitting up straighter in the bed, she said, "He's the killer!"

  "Who?"

  "Dave. Because he found out about Jay and Laura!"

  "You're a madwoman," I told her.

  "Then who do you think it is?"

  "I haven't the faintest idea."

  She studied me, as though trying to guess my weight. "You were hanging around her a lot lately," she said. "Maybe you're the one."

  "If I am," I said, "you're in a lot of trouble right now."

  There was no way to tell from her expression whether she was serious or joking. "You took her to that press screening yesterday."

  "Only because you couldn't go."

  "What did you do after?"

  "We went to dinner, I took her home, I came back here."

  "You weren't here at ten o'clock."

  "Of course I was."

  "I called at ten and got your machine."

  I put my drink on the bedside table and half-turned to face her. "Are you serious?"

  "I called at ten," she repeated, "and I got your machine." Yet she didn't look or act as though she thought of herself as being in bed with a murderer.

  I said, "I was running a film, for a piece I'm doing. Top Hat. You know I turn the machine on when I do that."

  "I bet the police suspect you," she said.

  "Do you?"

  "What?" She stared at me, startled, and said, "Hey! You're really upset."

  "Of course I am."

  "I don't really think it's you, silly," she said, thumping me on the belly. "I think it's Jay's boy friend Dave."

  "So do I," I said. "But the big question is, who do you think killed Julia Wolf?"

  "Who?"

  I nodded at the TV screen, where Asta was finding another body. "In the movie we're allegedly watching."

  "Oh." She shrugged, not very interested. "I've seen it before," she said. "It's the lawyer."

  THREE

  The Wicker Case

  In the morning Kit called her office with some he, and then we went to the screening together; some French ancien vague item called L'Abbe de Lancaster, full of

  reaction shots and shrugged shoulders. "They smoke a lot in the provinces, don't they?" Kit said after a while.

  Following a quick lunch together, Kit went on to work and I returned to the apartment to put together my review of L'Abbe de Lancaster for The Kips Bay Voice. But before that I had telephone messages to run.

  Three of them. The first, from Tim Kinywa, thanked me for the title and told me there were no problems, while the third was from a "friend" of mine, a fellow film critic, saying, "Nothing important, I'll call again." I knew what that was; he had a collection of his magazine pieces coming out, and he wanted a plug.

  But it was the second call that disturbed me. "That recording sounds exactly like you, Mr. Thorpe," said the cheery voice of Detective Sergeant Fred Staples. "When you get home, would you give Detective Staples a call? The number is seven seven five, five four nine nine. Thanks a lot."

  Now what? Kit's casual unsuspicious questioning last night had shaken my confidence, and I was no longer sure I could keep ahead of the team of dour-methodical-Bray and cheerful-intuitive-Staples. Why would he be calling me? What had I forgotten?

  So I swallowed a Valium and returned the call. He was in, and he said, "Hi, Mr. Thorpe. You free for a while this afternoon?"

  "I, well, yes, I suppose so. Why?"

  "I'd like to ask your help," he said.

  The recurring police line from British mystery movies came into my head: "Wed like you to help us with our inquiries." That line was never spoken to anybody but the murderer. I said, "I'll be happy to help, if I can. I'll be in all afternoon."

  "I'll come over in about, oh, half an hour. Okay?"

  "Fine," I said.

  I spent the half hour doin
g the film review, and I'm afraid I gave the poor Abbe of Lancaster a heavier drubbing than he deserved. I was still pounding away when the bell rang. Taking it for granted this was Staples, I buzzed to let him in and popped another Valium while he came upstairs.

  It was Staples; cheerful and bouncy as ever, but puffing a bit from the climb. He shook my hand and greeted me merrily enough, but was there a hint of suspicion deep within his eyes? Remembering the movie lore that policemen don't drink with people they intend to arrest —wasn't that from Beat The Devil?—I said, "Care for a drink? A beer? Some wine?"

  "No, thanks," he said, still smiling. "Too early in the day for me."

  Hell and damnation. Hoping only that he would turn out to be another blackmailer, I closed the door and offered him a chair. Taking it, he said, "First off, I might as well tell you you're off the hook. Not that you were ever on it, at least not very much."

  I looked at him, not sure I understood. "Off the hook?"

  "Your innocence has been established," he said.

  I sat down in the director's chair. "Well," I said. "Thank you very much."

  "The funny thing is," he told me, "it was through that fella that Laura Penney told you about. The one she said was following her."

  "It was?"

  "We got in touch with the husband last night. Mr. Penney. And darn if he didn't have private detectives watching his wife. He'd just put them on the case a few days ago."

  "They don't seem to have helped much."

  "They were supposed to collect evidence for a divorce or something." Shaking his head, he said, "I can't understand anybody like that, can you? Sneaking around, putting detectives to watch their wife. Maybe it's because my own marriage is so good, but I just can't comprehend a man who'd do a thing like that."

  Nodding, I said, "I know, it doesn't seem right. But if you look in the Yellow Pages, there's a lot of agencies specializing in that sort of thing. They must get their customers somewhere."

  "I suppose so." This insight into a darker corner of

  human nature had robbed Staples almost entirely of his sunny smile, but now he rallied, saying, "But in this case it did us some good."