Nets to Catch the Wind

by Dolores Hitchens

  He leaned back in the chair, put up a hand, raked his teeth with a thumbnail, his gaze watchful. “Why do you ask that?”

  “I wondered if one of them might have frightened her into taking the corrosive acid. It wouldn’t be hard to terrify a woman who’d spent years in a concentration camp.”

  A reddish color came up into his face. The other man said without heat, “We didn’t contact Mrs. Tzegeti in any way today.”

  “Did you have anyone watching the house?” There was a hope here that the visitor suspected by Elizabeth could have been noticed.

  “No, ma’am,” said Chaffey. He turned a couple of pages in the little book. “Regarding your conversation with Mrs. Tzegeti. Do you recall the exact words she used in connection with her taking the poison?”

  “She said that she had taken it herself, that she’d destroyed the container, that she’d done it while the girl was away, and that it had been something Tzegeti used in his rose garden.”

  The two officers looked at each other. Chaffey made an entry in the book. “Anything else?”

  “She began a rather rambling conversation which I think was leading up to a request that I look out for Elizabeth.”

  “That sounds as though she knew she was dying.” The chief leaned forward out of his chair, elbows on the desk, an air of frankness inviting her confidence. “Are you sure she didn’t drop a hint about the whereabouts of the money?”

  “What money?”

  A hint of frown, a faint chilling of manner, implied that she was being dense. “The kid knows, no doubt. I’m talking about the payoff on the Schneider deal, of course.”

  “I didn’t know there was a pay-off. I thought the official theory was the one trotted out at Tzegeti’s trial—simple robbery. Schneider was counting his money in the office, and Tzegeti walked in and decided he was tired of wearing shoes with holes in them and on the spur of the moment killed Schneider with his own gun.”

  The frost on the chief grew about an inch. “Tzegeti murdered his boss. The D.A. couldn’t have proved the pay-off angle, but there was enough of the truth showing to make a conviction stick. Now we know that Tzegeti was a part of something bigger, that he had friends who were waiting for him to get on that train so they could spring him. They had the dough, your husband’s split—” He must have seen the rage flaring in the look she gave him; he held up a hand. “Now wait a minute, Mrs. Luttrell. We’re not saying Bob Luttrell was in on anything. More likely he was dickering, stalling with the idea of getting a lead on Tzegeti’s playmates——”

  “My, my,” said Amy, “but that theory certainly gets around!”

  Chaffey glanced up in curiosity, but the chief decided to let it lay. Perhaps he honestly had changed his private opinion regarding the events in the Pullman compartment—or perhaps, as Amy suspected, Mrs. Schneider had made her weight felt. What did it matter? Mrs. Schneider’s motives might bear watching. The slur was being removed from the memory of Robert Luttrell, and this could have come about because his widow was making a nuisance of herself. Or for other, more subtle reasons. . . .

  “I don’t like this business of your being with the Tzegeti woman and the Tzegeti kid,” the chief said. “It’s going to look ugly in the newspapers. We don’t have any rackets here in Lomena, the poker parlors operate on licenses, and you can damned well bet the Police Department is clean. When this story is made public, this friendship between you and the Tzegetis, there’ll be talk, and it won’t be about you, it’s going to be about us. You might have been honest with us—you could have told us your ideas about the woman and let us work things out.” He paused on a note of warning.

  Amy said, “I don’t think you’d have taken my errand seriously.” She saw that she and the chief were at an impasse and that further talk was useless.

  He ruffled the pages of the reports, filled out in the doctor’s neat handwriting. “We’ll need you to testify at the inquest on Mrs. Tzegeti. We’ll notify you, probably tomorrow, when that will be.” A sudden look of discomfort, half-embarrassed shame, flickered in his face. “I was wondering, too, about Bob’s funeral——”

  “Day after tomorrow,” she said stonily. “He wouldn’t have cared for a lot of flowers. Use the money and for his sake buy some baseballs for the kids down on Hart Street.” She stood up; the two men rose with perfunctory courtesy. “Might I ask what’s to become of Elizabeth?”

  “The Tzegeti girl?” The chief frowned; his cold glance reproved her. “She’s been taken to Juvenile Headquarters, of course. She’ll be in their care until we locate relatives.”

  “There may not be any relatives. I was asked to look after her.”

  “Well, that arrangement might not look too good, you see.”

  “To hell with how it looks.” She’d shocked him; he and Chaffey exchanged a glance.

  “You’re upset now, of course,” the chief decided. “So soon after Bob’s death, and this other thing, this suicide. Trying to coax the truth out of these foreigners, guilty as sin——”

  “I’m not to have Elizabeth. Is that what you mean?” In Amy’s mind was a sudden picture of her lonely house, its bare rooms, the utter quiet that waited for a footfall, a breath, to prove the place alive. “Why not?”

  “Talk to the people in Juvenile Hall,” he offered, washing his hands of her.

  She left the hospital and walked out into the dark street. She was tired and supperless; and grief was like a stone that she carried in some inward place where it lay cold and still.

  I shouldn’t have riled the chief, she thought. It didn’t do any good. I didn’t prove anything. Mrs. Schneider seemed to have changed his mind about Bob’s motives in the affair, or he may be simply trying to protect the Police Department; but the rest of the stuff remains—the theory about the guilt of the Tzegetis, the secret pay-off, the gang. Putting that money in Bob’s hand as he lay dying was a pretty cute trick. But the picture of Tzegeti as a shrewd gangster, biding his time in the disguise of a caretaker until the right time came to murder Schneider—the screwiness of that should be obvious enough even for the chief.

  Amy got into her car and drove home through the dark, leaving the bright straight pavements of town for the scattered lights, the cricket noises, the weedy wastes of the subdivision. She left the car in the driveway and walked to the rear door. There was no fog tonight, but clear thin starshine. She went up the back steps, opened the door, and entered the kitchen. The lights came on under her touch, and she was struck as usual with the room’s uncommon neatness, its unlived-in look. It was as clean and bare as a surgery. She walked over to the dinette table and dropped her purse.

  It was then that she noticed the bit of rope. It lay on the micalite surface, its raveled shadow and reflection mingling under it.

  She frowned over the thing, remembering how she’d found it hung on the doorknob last night, and how later, when Fogarty had come, he’d run it through his fingers, quizzed her over it. Had he somehow wound it tighter, twisted and firmed it? There seemed a hard core of some inches, undamaged, almost new. It drooped in her hand like a small whip. Last night it had felt like a wad, a coarse wisp all pulled apart.

  She dropped it and went to the icebox; but the thought, the puzzlement, stayed in her mind, a nettle that clung and stung. She looked in with blank eyes at the chrome shelves. There were eggs, but nothing for dinner, and she hadn’t thought to bring anything home.

  She fixed a scrambled-egg sandwich and reheated that morning’s coffee, and sat in the dinette to eat. Tiredness gnawed at her bones, her eyes stung when she blinked them, and the food seemed dry, tasteless, difficult to get down. Once in a while she touched the bit of rope with curious fingers. Wasn’t it longer than she had remembered? If she saw Fogarty again (which she wouldn’t, she told herself) she’d ask him what he’d done to the thing. There was trickery behind his Irish imp’s face, she decided. He’d do anything for a gag. Was he trying to scare her in some ridiculous way?

  She left the dishes unwashed in th
e sink. A touch of disorder was better than the sterile neatness. In the living room she switched on the lamps and stood listening. The dead air of the room seemed to vibrate with an echo from the street, some small sound just dying away. Then she heard the step on the porch, the quiet footfall, and her own instinctive reaction surprised her. Without thought, in blind panic, she blundered for the kitchen, the back door. Then the bell rang, a loud honest peal. Well, that wasn’t a ghost, anyway. She came back and opened the front door and found Fogarty nose-to-nose leering in at her.

  “Did I do something I shouldn’t have?” he suggested. “You’re puffing like a one-cylinder pump. And pale, too. What’s up?”

  “I’m quite all right.” She backed away, in her relief forgetting to keep him outside as she intended. She waited, and he walked over to the couch and took something from under his coat and dropped it on the cushion. It was black, squirming; it lifted a miniature pug nose and barked.

  “If you don’t want him, it’s all right. I just thought I’d bring along a watchdog. And since your rag rug looks washable, it won’t matter too much that he isn’t housebroken.” He touched the little dog’s soft ears. The cocker rolled his eyes at Fogarty, adoring and drooling. A pink tongue swiped at nothing and saliva flew in all directions. “What’d you say?”

  Amy looked at the pup doubtfully. Owning him seemed an unnecessary complication in a life already snarled to the maddening stage. But she heard herself saying, “It was nice of you to think of me.”

  The words must have surprised Fogarty—the tone, too. He gave her a quick glance. It seemed to her that some of the bristling cockiness went out of his manner. “You’re welcome,” he said.

  The pup fell off the couch, whined over the bump he’d had, then ran off to investigate the new surroundings.

  “You’d better keep track of where he goes,” Fogarty suggested uneasily.

  “I have a box for him.” She scooped up the pup and took him into the kitchen. In a cupboard she found the box which had once held paper towels. It was deep and roomy. She lined it with a piece of old sheet and put the pup inside. He stared up at her, his short tail twitching, his eyes gleaming happily and possessively, as though he knew already that he owned her and that she would be easy to manage. He whined again. He was exactly like a kid who wants to be picked up, she thought. She turned as Fogarty came into the room. He was taking a small package wrapped in butcher’s paper from his pocket. He ripped the paper and a steak fell out. It was a thick, luscious-looking piece of sirloin, and Amy found herself remembering the dry sandwich.

  Fogarty put the steak down into the box and waited. The dog nuzzled the meat and licked at it, then tried his teeth awkwardly. “He’s used to baby food, perhaps.” Fogarty surveyed the kitchen expectantly. “I don’t suppose you have any at hand?”

  “No, I don’t. And I could have used the steak.” She was perversely cross now. He was making himself so much at home; she didn’t like it. She wished that he’d remember, just once, that a widow deserved some respect, that brashness was out of place around bereavement.

  But Fogarty went on examining the kitchen. He whistled softly through his teeth, an accompaniment to thought, perhaps, and then said, “You know, I’ve decided one thing. You’re on the level. No woman could resist stuffing a house with furniture with a big wad of dough in the offing. This house is bare. You don’t even have any of those wall designs—those Dutch girl and cornucopia things”—he made a baffled movement—“whatever they’re called.”

  “Decalcomania. I loathe them.”

  “Well, you’d want pictures in the front room.”

  “Yes, I wanted pictures.” She was recalling the desert scene she and Robert Luttrell had coveted, the smoke trees and drifted sand under a tawny sky. “When you live in flat country like this, in a little suburb where the view is always the same, a house or two in the next block, then you need something to look at.” She saw that Fogarty wasn’t listening. He had gone over to the table and picked up the piece of rope.

  “When did this arrive?” he asked without turning around.

  “You saw it last night.”

  He flipped it this way and that, then stole a look at her when he thought she wasn’t watching. Amy felt scorn rise in her. He was being pretty transparent. If the rope wasn’t the same, when had he made the substitution? She wondered if he had dared climb in a window during her absence.

  “It doesn’t seem the same,” he offered cautiously.

  “I noticed that.” She waited for the next remark, the lead. He wanted her to be mystified, frightened, perhaps, too; and what she intended was to tell him off. Bringing the dog had been an excuse to get out here, to cover the silly plot in a guise of naturalness. Some choice words crowded behind her teeth.

  But he didn’t pursue the subject any further. He dropped the rope and turned a chair around and sat on it spread-legged, his arms draped across its back. “You were in on this Tzegeti thing today. Mind talking about it?”

  She stooped and patted the restless pup. His toenails raced on her hand. “Do you want the human interest or the documentary?”

  “I’ll have the human interest this time.” Fogarty began to light a cigarette, his hands moving slowly, his eyes on the cigarette. His freckles were quite noticeable here in the bright light. “Why did you go to the Tzegeti place? Sorry for them?”

  She decided to blame the errand on him and see his reaction. “I wanted to find out for you whether they knew anything about a diary.”

  “And did they?” He blew smoke; his glance was idle. Amy wasn’t fooled. He was on his toes. A perversity dictated her answer.

  “Mrs. Tzegeti was dying when I reached there,” she evaded. “She’d taken the stuff and covered up her face and was just lying there waiting for death, in a horror of a bed you’d swear she’d brought from some Polish attic.”

  “Good,” he said. He was seeing it in print, perhaps.

  “The child didn’t know what was going on, though she suspected that her mother was in trouble. I did what I could, calling the doctor, staying with the kid—it was too late for Mrs. Tzegeti, of course.” All at once the terrifying memory of the time she’d spent in the house with Elizabeth and the dying woman returned—she recalled the frantic girl, the trembling woman on the bed, the endless wait for Dr. Sprague, the helpless, bumbling efforts to undo what had been done. Amy felt her face twist; her eyes swam and she blinked them fiercely. “Nothing I did . . . was any good.”

  “The cop’s widow,” Fogarty said meditatively, “and the criminal’s family. That’s a weird setup.”

  “The police are sore about it.”

  “So I hear.” Fogarty got up and went off into the other room and came back carrying an ash tray. He put it on the micalite table top, tapped ashes into it. “I guess you aren’t going to tell me what Mrs. Tzegeti said before she died.”

  “How do you know she said anything?”

  “It’s a hunch.” He scraped the edge of his jaw with his thumb, looking at her with a studying expression. “She’d have trusted you. I don’t think she’d have left the information with the kid, because if you’re right and there wasn’t any pay-off for Tzegeti but murder, then the book could logically be what he was killed over.”

  The pup was tearing at the sheet, growling with a ridiculous ferocity and rage.

  “And she wouldn’t want the girl killed too,” Fogarty concluded.

  Amy put her hand into the box to soothe the dog, and he turned on it with happy enmity, pretending to bite, to tear. He had teeth like needles and wasn’t too careful what he did with them. Later on would come control. Right now he was a bundle of fat and fur and undecided impulses.

  “Of course it sort of leaves you on a spot,” Fogarty said, and his eyes slid over to the bit of rope and dwelt there for a moment.

  It all became quite clear to Amy at that moment. He’d brought the dog to make friends, to pry information out of her on a chummy basis—but he had the other thing, the touch o
f menace, to back him up. Of course newspapermen were notoriously unscrupulous. But she hadn’t thought of them before as being stupid.

  “That silly rope,” she said offhandedly. “I’m going to throw it out.” She picked it up and went to the door and tossed it off into the dark. It lit beyond the driveway, in the vacant lot next door; she heard the rattle of the weeds as it fell through.

  She came back, gave Fogarty a glance. He seemed indifferent, his face blank, his eyes incurious. If he cared that she had been unimpressed by his little trick, he was hiding it.

  CHAPTER EIGHT

  “DID YOU see anything of Mrs. Schneider today?” Fogarty asked after a minute or so of silence. He made it an idle thought, something he didn’t care much about, a stopgap for conversation.

  His failure to scare her with the scrap of rope must smart a bit where he didn’t allow it to show. Amy’s mind closed over the three words spoken by Mrs. Tzegeti in regard to the diary, tucked them away, a secret. She felt almost charitable toward Fogarty. “I saw Mrs. Schneider for a moment. I was having lunch with a man named Neece, when she came and took him away.” She remembered, without mentioning it, Mrs. Schneider’s air of anxious hurry. And the revealing remark, the mention of an account book, which had sent her to the Tzegeti house.

  Did she have the answer to the puzzle, a clue to the whereabouts of Tzegeti’s journal?

  Fogarty’s gaze was on her. “Neece. That would be Cunninghan’s boy.”

  “I met him in Cunninghan’s office. He seemed to belong there.”

  “He’s an orphan Cunninghan took in and educated. He’s pretty sharp—does Cunninghan’s leg work. What did you think of the old man, by the way?”

  She considered thoughtfully. “He did sincerely want me to believe in Tzegeti’s guilt.”

  “He has a funny hobby for a man in the shape he’s in. Stone-masonry. He landscaped a whole slope below his house in Palos Verdes, built the retaining walls, flagged the patio?”

  Amy remembered the big, work-knotted hands, the heavy tan on Cunninghan’s face.