I said, “You’re going to let Carl and me follow up on the source, aren’t you?”
“What do you mean?”
“Mrs. Whittier must have obtained the M somewhere. One of our functions is to put suppliers behind bars. You just going to bypass the chance to nail one?”
“Mrs. Whittier is dead.”
“Fifteen of her guests are still living. Maybe one or more of them know who the dealer was.”
The captain rubbed his grizzled head. After thinking things over, he asked, “What did you have in mind?”
“Nothing sensational. Just questioning the guests as to whether they know where Mrs. Whittier got the stuff. We can make it clear we’re only interested in the source, and aren’t going to charge anyone at the party as a user. Nobody should get sore.”
The captain thought some more. Finally he said, “You’d have to handle it delicately. I don’t want any more complaints to the police commissioner from Joe Greco.”
“I’ll go see Greco and explain what we have in mind, so he won’t misunderstand what we’re doing. Maybe he knows the source. He seemed pretty thick with Mrs. Whittier.”
“All right,” Captain Spangler consented. “Just make it clear to Greco that you’re not following up on last night’s raid and that you’re solely interested in the source.”
“Yes, sir,” I said.
Carl Lincoln had checked in while I was in the captain’s office. He gave me an inquiring look.
“We’re to have the lab dump the evidence,” I told him. “We’re to forget everything we saw at the party except the body. I wrangled permission to question the party guests about Isobel’s sourse of M, providing we handle it delicately.”
“Oh, joy,” Carl said.
“You got the names and addresses the boys took down?”
“Smith has. He should be along any minute.”
“Get it from him when he comes in and make a copy for me,” I instructed. “Meantime you can phone the lab and tell them to forget those analyses.”
“Yes, your excellency,” Carl said. “What the hell are you going to be doing? Having a coffee break?”
“Questioning one of the party guests about the source,” I said. “I’ll be in the women’s section of the jail.”
CHAPTER XV
ON MY way out of the squadroom, I met Martin Manners coming in. He looked pale and drawn, as though he hadn’t slept very well. We stopped to talk in the hall just outside the squadroom door.
I said, “I was just heading for the women’s section. I thought I might catch you there. How’s Sharon taking it?”
“I haven’t seen her,” Manners said dolefully. “She issued instructions not to let me in. She would only talk to Max.”
“Max?”
“Max Fuller, my lawyer. He wouldn’t tell me much either, except that she’s depressed. He’s going to see the D.A. about getting the charge reduced to second-degree, so that we can get Sharon out on bail.”
Knowing the D.A., I thought that was a forlorn hope. With a chance to prove first-degree, he wasn’t likely to settle for anything less. And with four witnesses to testify that Sharon had carried the weapon from one floor to another, he had a pretty good case to charge premeditation.
Drawing a folded sheet of paper from my inside breast pocket, I handed it to Manners. “Here’s my itemized expenses.”
He looked it over. I had listed the items in ink and they read:
EXPENDITURES
Hotel room, 5 days $60.00
Tips 7.50
Car rental, 5 days 50.00
Meals & entertainment of Sharon 72.80
Net betting loss, 2nd night at track 300.00
Total $496.05
INCOME
Advance $500.00
Net betting win, 1st night at track 3,900.20
Total $4,400.20
Balance $3,904.15
I handed him a dime, a nickel and a stack of currency.
“What’s this?” he inquired confusedly.
“Three thousand, nine hundred and four dollars and fifteen cents. It’s all down there.”
“But why are you giving me all this money?”
“The expense fund won it on the horses.”
He looked even more confused. “Why should you give me money you won on the horses?”
“I didn’t win it. I decided in advance that any two-dollar bets I made, I’d stand the loss or pocket the winnings. Any big bets, the expense fund would stand the loss or get the winnings. The expense fund was lucky.”
Manners looked at me with his mouth open.
I said with patience. “I had to throw around some big money at the track in order to convince Sharon I was what I pretended to be. If I’d lost, you’d have paid for it. As a matter of fact, you did take a three-hundred dollar rap the second night. It’s only fair that you get what was won on your own money. I would never have made bets that size out of my own pocket.”
“Why didn’t you just keep it?” Manners asked in a wondering voice. “I would never have known I’d won.”
“I would know it,” I told him. “Put your money away.”
He looked at the stack of bills, then up at me again. He stared at me quite a while before it finally penetrated that I wasn’t going to have it any other way. Tentatively he asked, “Wouldn’t it be fairer to split the winnings?”
“No,” I said in a definite tone. “I don’t accept handouts.”
A little embarrassedly he stuffed the wad into a coat pocket, dropped the fifteen cents into another. “You’re an odd man, Sergeant.”
“Everybody’s peculiar in some way, Mr. Manners. What do you want me to do with those suits?”
“For goodness sakes don’t try to give me those back,” he said. “They were cut for you. They wouldn’t fit anyone else.”
“Maybe Swartz could alter them.”
“He’d drop me as a client if I suggested such a thing,” Manners said in a horrified voice. “Please don’t be difficult about that, Sergeant.”
“Okay,” I decided. “I’ll keep the suits.”
I walked on and left him staring after me as though trying to figure me out.
At the booking desk of the felony section in the basement I checked my gun and signed in to see female prisoner Sharon Manners. There are two barred doors with electric locks off the booking room. The one on the right leads to the men’s section, the one on the left to the women’s section.
The desk sergeant said, “Cell seven,” and pressed the buzzer beneath his desk which unlocked the lefthand door.
I pushed it open, let it swing shut behind me and walked down the hall to cell seven.
The felony section of the headquarters jail is maximum security. Even police officers aren’t allowed in a cell with a prisoner. You have to talk through the bars. The only bars are on the doors, the back wall being smooth concrete painted gray, the front wall and the divisions between the cells being shatterproof herculite glass thick enough to withstand the blows of a sledge hammer. This is to allow the matrons to have unobstructed vision into all cells from anywhere in the hall.
The cells are clean but plainly furnished. In the women’s section there is a single drop-down bunk with a thin mattress, a small table and chair, a latrine and washbowl. As a concession to female vanity there is also a two-foot-square polished-steel mirror bolted to the rear wall. In the men’s section there is only an eight-inch square shaving mirror.
Sharon was sitting on the bunk staring at nothing when I stopped before her cell door. Apparently her father had sent her in some clothing, for she wore a plain knit dress in place of the emerald-green formal gown she had worn when arrested, and she had on brown pumps in place of the transparent evening slippers. Her face was colorless and she had dark circles about her eyes. She looked as though she had a hangover.
Glancing up at me reproachfully, she said, “So you’re a cop. You played me for a patsy.”
“I have to do a lot of things I don’t like in my
job, Sharon.”
She stuck out her chin. “Thanks for the compliment. The way you used me wasn’t enough. Now you tell me you didn’t even like it.”
“You know what I meant,” I said. “I enjoyed every minute of being with you. I didn’t like having to play a part.”
“Sure,” she said with disbelief. “I suppose you tell all your victims that.” She looked me up and down. “Today you look like a cop. Where’d you get that horrible suit?”
“I bought it a couple of years ago. What did your lawyer say?”
She shrugged. “What difference does it make? He won’t get me out of this.”
I said, “If you hadn’t been so goofed up last night that you didn’t know what was going on, you’d know I was on your side. I argued with the lieutenant that you didn’t do it.”
Sharon raised her eyebrows. “Indeed? That was chivalrous of you. What was your motive? Did you want to save me from the gas chamber so you could enjoy my white body some more?”
“Cut it out,” I said. “I want to help you.”
Her flipness evaporated and suddenly her lower lip trembled. “How can anyone help me?” she asked forlornly.
“By finding out who really killed Isobel.”
She gave me a surprised look. “Didn’t I?”
I frowned at her. “Don’t you know?”
“They said I did. That Lieutenant Wynn even told me how I did it. He sounded like he knew.”
“You didn’t confess, did you?” I asked sharply.
“Confess to what? I don’t remember what happened. I kept telling them that. But Lieutenant Wynn seemed to know all about it, so I believed him. Don’t you really think I did it?”
“I didn’t, but if you believe you did, I don’t know what to think. Were you planning to kill Isobel before you passed out on your feet?”
“Oh, no,” she said, wide-eyed. “I wouldn’t deliberately kill anybody when I knew what I was doing. Anyway, I was mad at Howard, not Isobel.”
“Then you didn’t kill her,” I said irritably. “Why the devil did you let them talk you into thinking you did?”
Her lower lip started to tremble again and she looked on the verge of tears. “I don’t know, Matt. They seemed so sure. Particularly the lieutenant. I thought maybe the M made me do it. A stick makes you do strange things sometimes, and I smoked a whole one. I never had more than a half before. Besides, I had two cups of love juice and a couple of drinks before that.”
“Do you remember anything at all?” I asked.
“I remember undressing in the study. I deliberately got myself goofed up more than I ever had before because I was mad at Howard. I thought I’d behave like a pig in front of him to show him what he’d made of me. I sort of floated through the house to the study. I was looking for you, to get you to help me perform before Howard. That’s why I took my clothes off. I thought I’d find you and we’d make love right in front of him. We couldn’t have found him, of course, because he was off somewhere with Isobel, and he couldn’t have seen us in the dark even if we had found him, but you don’t think of logical things like that when you’re on the stick.”
“Do you remember the letter opener?”
“I remember seeng something shiny on the writing desk glitter in the moonlight, and I remember picking it up.”
“Why’d you pick it up, Sharon? What did you have in mind?”
“Not murder, I’m sure. It’s all fuzzy, because I must have blanked out right after I picked it up. I don’t think I even knew what it was, Matt. It was just something shiny which attracted me as a toy would a child. I wasn’t even thinking about Isobel. I have a vague recollection of starting to wander off in search of you to show you the pretty thing I had found, then I don’t remember a thing more.”
Suddenly she bounced off the bunk and came over to grip the bars of the door. “If I wasn’t even thinking about Isobel, I couldn’t have killed her, could I, Matt? Why did they lie to me?”
“They didn’t think they were lying, Sharon. They sincerely believe you did kill her. I wish you could remember what happened upstairs.”
Her expression turned forlorn again. “If I carried the letter opener upstairs, and the letter opener killed Isobel, I must have done it, Matt. How would it get stuck in her if I didn’t stick it?”
I said, “I think someone saw you with it and took it out of your hand. You were in no condition to resist. I think it was an impromptu frame. It couldn’t have been a planned frame, because the killer couldn’t possibly have known you were going to be wandering around with a weapon in your hand. He saw you and took advantage of the situation on the spur of the moment.”
“Who, Matt?”
“I don’t know,” I admitted. “But I’m going to do my damnedest to find out.”
Her eyes dimmed with tears. “Why do you have such faith in me, when I didn’t even have it in myself?”
“It isn’t all faith,” I confessed. “There were a couple of circumstances connected with the murder which I think were beyond the capabilities of anyone in the shape you were.”
She wiped away the tears with a tiny handkerchief and smiled. “That isn’t very romantic, but it sounds more reassuring than mere faith. It’s your policeman’s instinct that makes you think I’m innocent then, is it?”
“Mostly,” I admitted.
“This morning I was outraged when I thought about you being a policeman. I was never completely aware of what was going on last night, but I did grasp that fact somewhere toward the end of the evening. It was the first thing I thought of when I woke up, and I hated you. Now I’m glad you’re a policeman. It’s nice to know at least one policeman is on your side when you’re accused of murder.”
“I’m on your side,” I assured her. “Now you’ll have to have faith in me.”
“I do,” she said fervently. “Oh, Matt, please get me out of here.” She started to cry.
“Cut that out,” I said roughly.
I spoke louder than I intended, because it startled her. Choking off a sob, she dabbed at her eyes. “All right, Matt,” she said in a meek voice “I’ll try to control myself.”
“One more thing,” I said. “I’m not supposed to be working on this murder. It’s Lieutenant Wynn’s baby. Whatever I do will be unofficial. My excuse for being here is to trace down Isobel’s source of marijuana. Do you have any idea who her supplier was?”
Sharon shook her head. “Not the faintest. She never mentioned to me where she got it.”
“Okay,” I said. “Keep a stiff chin. I’ll check in to see you again if anything develops.”
I walked back up the hall and called for the desk sergeant to buzz the electric lock so that I could get out.
CHAPTER XVI
BACK IN the squadroom I found that Carl had gotten the list of party guests from Smith and had made a copy for me. We sat down together to divide up the names.
“I’ve already talked to Sharon,” I said. “She hasn’t any idea who Isobel’s pusher was. That leaves fourteen party guests plus Ross Whittier to be contacted.”
Carl said, “Whittier wouldn’t know who the pusher was. He didn’t even know Isobel was throwing marijuana parties.”
“We’ll include him anyway. I’ll take him. I’ll also take Greco, Howard Farrell, Mr. and Mrs. Franklin, Mr. and Mrs. Apple and Nancy Ford. That’s eight for me. You can take the other seven.”
Carl regarded me broodingly. “Let’s see now. Whittier, Greco and Farrell are your prime suspects. Eric Franklin and Nancy Ford are the witnesses in the study who saw Sharon undress and pick up the letter opener. George Apple is the verifying witness who saw her walk past the front-room windows with it. Is it just coincidence that you picked the most important people concerned with the murder and left me the slush?”
“You want to make the choice?” I inquired.
He shook his head. “I was just thinking that we’re supposed to limit our inquiry to Isobel’s source of M. If you stick your head into the murder investiga
tion, the captain may step on your neck.”
I stood up. “You know how discreet I am, Carl. I wouldn’t do anything to upset the captain. Let’s get started.”
Carl got up, too. “I’d hate to have to break in a new sergeant,” he muttered. “It took me years to train you.”
I had told the captain I would explain to Joe Greco just what we were after, but I hadn’t specified when I’d see him. Just in case the politician decided to nip the whole thing in the bud by suggesting to the police commissioner that police effort should be diverted to more important matters, I decided to see him last.
The closest address to headquarters on my list was Nancy Ford’s. She lived in an apartment at Main and Picard, only about six blocks away. The list included both home and business addresses, but only a home address was entered after the young woman’s name. Presumably she didn’t work.
The building at Main and Picard was a sleek, modern apartment house of three stories. Hers was 8-A, on the first floor. I could tell it was an expensive place to live even before I saw the inside of her apartment. The carpeting in the hall was so deep, you could have slept on it and not have missed your mattress.
Musical chimes sounded when I pushed the door button. Apparently Nancy was a late sleeper, for it was some time before she answered the door, and when it finally opened, she was barefoot and wore a wrap-around quilted robe. Her dark hair was mussed and her eyes sleepy.
She came awake when she saw me. “Oh, you,” she said without enthusiasm. “Do you know it’s not even ten o’clock?”
“Yeah,” I said. “Practically the middle of the night. May I come in?”
She stepped aside to let me into a broad front room tastefully furnished with modern furniture. Doors leading in various directions indicated there were at least six rooms.
“You got me out of bed,” she unnecessarily explained. “Have a seat while I wash my face.”
I chose a square-armed red sofa and she disappeared into a bedroom. She left the door open, and after a moment I heard water running in a bath beyond the bedroom. She was gone about ten minutes. When she returned, her hair was neatly brushed and she wore lipstick. Dark and slim and petite, she was an attractive little bit when she was made up.
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