Sleep with Strangers

by Dolores Hitchens

  “Wait a minute——”

  “She wasn’t involved in any affair with that young man. They were murdered. I—I can’t quite see how the murder might have happened because the Ajoukians were buying my oil shares. But I’ll tell you all about it, anyway.”

  “The coat——”

  Her blue eyes sharpened. “Hadn’t you heard? They’ve drained that sump. Felicia’s coat, the beaver coat, was in the bottom of it, tied up around a big stone.”

  Sader felt something cold slide across the skin. “Weighted,” he said.

  “Yes. It must have been done after she was dead, mustn’t it?”

  “I guess so.” Sader wondered if Kay knew by now, if they’d had her up to look at the coat, if she’d seen the slime and smelled the stench and so knew at last the kind of place her mother had lain all those days and nights. “I’ve been out of touch with what’s going on at the sump. Since my partner was shot.”

  She leaned toward him dry-eyed, though there was somehow about her an aura of tears. “He was the fourth, wasn’t he? First there was Mullens, the man in the office——”

  “No. First there was your friend, Mrs. Wanderley,” Sader said heavily. “She got mad, perhaps drunkenly and unreasonably—but mad, anyhow—because Ajoukian was buying those oil shares. She seemed to think Charlie Ott had a finger in the deal.”

  Margot Cole’s expression changed gradually to one of astounded anger. “What?”

  “The maid, Annie, overheard Mrs. Wanderley in a conversation with young Ajoukian. Tuesday night, just before she left her house on Scotland Place. Mrs. Wanderley was saying, among other things, that Charlie Ott was at the bottom of the deal somewhere.”

  “How could he be?” Mrs. Cole said, the anger growing uncertain. “He hasn’t any cash. All he owns is that duplex. He hadn’t sold it yet.”

  “I think he had,” Sader told her. “And I see now his reason for being secretive. He had Ajoukian front for him because he’d closed the deal on the duplex behind Mrs. Wanderley’s back, cheating her out of her commission.” The rage began to flow through Sader again, a tide he couldn’t control. He trembled, thinking of the cheap lies, the slimy double dealing, that had confused the case.

  Sader got up, strode back and forth, smoking furiously. Mrs. Cole watched him as if in surprise. “If Felicia was cheated that way, she wouldn’t have liked it. It wouldn’t have been the money. The letter of the law was very important to her.”

  Sader agreed with her. Mrs. Wanderley had come from a family whose wealth had been built up through the manipulation of mortgages, of property. A trick like Ott’s was an outrage to her code. He said, “I’m going down to talk to Ott, to get the truth from him.”

  “Do you want me to go along?”

  “Yes, if you want to.”

  She hurried into a coat, put on the hat with the brim he remembered from last night. It didn’t take long to go over to Cherry Avenue, to top the Hill and turn on Ott’s street at its base. All the time he drove, scraps burned their way through Sader’s mind. Mostly he thought about Dan, about Dan’s head fallen on the desk in a puddle of bright red blood. As they stopped in front of Ott’s two-story establishment, she said, “He’s fixed it up.”

  “A paint job.” Sader opened the car door for her. They went up the steps to the front door together. All at once Sader put a hand on her arm. “Wait here, will you? I’ll take a look around back.” He stepped off the porch, followed a cement walk to the rear yard. The lawn needed mowing, the borders were straggly, and some poinsettias against the rear fence had sagged under the rain and hadn’t been retied. He saw the traces of neglect, remembered the dust inside the house. It all fitted the pattern. Ott had sold secretly, and somehow just before her death Mrs. Wanderley had caught on. Sader went up three steps to the back porch and rang a bell. Then he put his hand on the door handle, turned it, went in.

  Charlie Ott was at the sink, under a wide window, opening a bottle of whiskey. He turned as Sader came in. “What——” The blankness fled from his eyes as they pin-pointed with anger. “What the devil do you think you’re doing?”

  Sader walked over to the sink and grabbed the front of Ott’s shirt. The fabric felt greasy, worn, and the man himself gave off an unwashed odor. He’d been drinking heavily, Sader thought. But not too heavily to forget what he had in a drawer under the drain-board. Out of the corner of his eye Sader saw Ott’s fingers closing around a cleaver.

  He hit Ott a chopping blow with the side of his hand against the windpipe. At the same moment, as he tried to duck, the blunt edge of the cleaver came down on Sader’s shoulder. He moved back. Ott strangled, sucking breath, clawing at his throat with his free hand. Sader’s shoulder burned for an instant, then grew numb.

  He tried to flex his left hand but the fingers moved slowly, nervelessly. With his right, he knocked the cleaver from Ott’s fingers, dragged the man by the front of his shirt into the front room, pushed him into a chair. Ott staggered, clutching his windpipe. He made bubbling noises from the chair. Sader went to the front door, opened it, led Mrs. Cole back into the living room. She looked at Ott, at Ott’s convulsed features, as if she’d never noticed them before. “What’s the matter with him?”

  “He’s getting his breath,” Sader told her. He went to a sofa, sat down on its arm, tried to get his cigarettes out with the numb fingers of his left hand. It didn’t work. The whole arm tingled now with an electric warmth. “When he can talk, I’ll ask him about Mrs. Wanderley.”

  The strange blue eyes circled the room; her heavy face grew disapproving. “It’s awfully dusty in here.”

  “He’d sold the place. It must be in escrow. He didn’t have to keep it neat any more.”

  She regarded Sader with curiosity. “Is that what gave you the idea he’d cheated Felicia?”

  “Partly.” Sader had been keeping track of Ott. He noted that the other man was getting control of himself, that a cunning light had begun to burn behind the prolonged distress. Sader stood up, walked over to Ott, put a foot on the rung of the maple arm chair. “Mr. Ott, I want information. I want to know when and why you contacted Ajoukian. I want to know when you sold your place and to whom. Mostly, I want to know when Mrs. Wanderley found out you’d gypped her on her commission.”

  Ott lay flaccid, staring; but Sader was suspicious of the continuing reaction. Ott’s neck was fat, the blow hadn’t been as heavy as Sader might have made it. All at once he seemed to make whistling attempts to speak. Temporarily off guard, Sader bent closer to listen.

  Ott’s big fat hands came up and clamped on Sader’s throat, the thumbs digging in, cutting off breath. Sader’s army training had left him some automatic reactions; and this was one. His hands clenched together, rose in a sharp jerk that spread Ott’s arms, broke his hold. Then Ott, quickly for a man in his shape, lifted a knee, trying for Sader’s groin. Sader stepped briefly aside, stayed there until Ott had sprung to his feet. Then he buried his right hand to the wrist in Ott’s belly.

  Ott folded over, clutched his midriff, grunted, went to his knees. Mrs. Cole had retreated nervously to the door to the hall.

  Sader went back to the arm of the couch, forced himself to sit down there and to wait until Ott was through retching and wheezing and had regained the chair. Then he said reasonably, “All right. Start talking.”

  “I’ll have your license for this,” Ott got out. “Yes, sir. You won’t be no private dick no more. Not if I can help it.”

  “I’m not a damned bit interested,” Sader told him. “What I care about now is the attempt to kill Dan Scarborough, my partner. I resent having my business associates picked off like owls on a fence.” He got up and started for Ott again, but now the big man put up a placating hand.

  “Hold your horses. I didn’t shoot anybody. Your partner, nor Felicia, nor young Ajoukian. Nor Mullens, the guy in the office. You’ve got a screw loose, coming here to pick on me.”

  Sader stopped a few feet from Ott and they regarded each other for a couple of m
inutes in silence. Ott must not have liked what he saw, for he began in a whining tone, “It wasn’t my fault, selling the place behind Felicia’s back. She brought an old coot up here, a regular skinflint, one of those retired corn merchants, seventy if he was a day, and a little bit later in the week he was back saying he liked the place but couldn’t meet the price. And couldn’t I shave it a little. Like, for instance, by the amount of the agent’s commission.”

  Sader asked, “What was Mrs. Wanderley asking for the place?”

  “Thirty-five.”

  “Thirty-five thousand?” Sader looked at Mrs. Cole to see if she believed this. She was staring at Ott in indignation.

  Ott hurried on. “It’s not just the house and lot. All these places along here are being whipstocked by those rigs to the north of us. We got oil rights. Hell, they’re worth at least forty a month.”

  “Okay, you made the sale. It’s in escrow now?”

  “Yeah,” Ott said sullenly.

  “You haven’t got the money yet, then.”

  Under the fuzzy gray hair, Ott’s face took on some color. “That’s how I went to Ajoukian. I heard Margot say she was going to raise money on her oil shares. What I’ve owned here, in connection with my place, gave me the idea to invest in some more. I couldn’t come right out and offer to buy.”

  “I wouldn’t have sold them to you,” Margot Cole said.

  “Yeah, I know. Afraid your old man would find out.” Ott regarded the woman with open dislike. “I’ll bet when he left he didn’t even say, kiss my foot. He sure made a sap out of you.”

  She quivered a little as if a chill had swept through her. “Keep your mouth shut about my affairs, Charlie.”

  Ott seemed to gain confidence from having scored as he had with Mrs. Cole. “I called old Ajoukian, went out to his place later, and we cooked it all up. He was going to advance the cash for a share in the oil deal. Margot wasn’t to know. He figured he’d get a better price than I could. Knowing the old buzzard, I guess he could at that.” Ott was sitting straighter in the chair. “You get one thing through your thick head right now, Sader. I wouldn’t kill no dame over a thirty-five thousand dollar deal. That’s chicken feed these days.”

  Sader turned his back, walked over to the windows. The sun showed the Hill against the sky to the north, the pincushion forest of oil derricks, a silver tank or two. He thought abstractly of all the millions of dollars in wealth that had come out of the brown heights, pipes that reached down to finger the depths, the people who lived in cities at other ends of the earth on this money and had never so much as smelled the dry pungent odor of oil. He thought too about Mrs. Wanderley. “It’s possible Mrs. Wanderley’s murder wasn’t premeditated, that it was the desperate impulse of a moment. She went out raging drunk. Someone may have protected himself.”

  “You can’t prove she was raging at me,” Ott said cunningly. “I didn’t meet her that Tuesday night.” The smugness jarred.

  Sader said slowly, “She was picked up by a cab about five o’clock on Wednesday morning. Just a few blocks from here.”

  “I’m telling you, I didn’t see her.” But Ott’s pale eyes were nervous. He supported his paunch in his laced hands, leaned forward as if to impress Sader with his sincerity. “She didn’t come here.”

  Sader turned back to the window. He sensed that a glance passed between Mrs. Cole and the fat man. She cleared her throat and said unevenly, “I’d like to explain, Mr. Sader, that Felicia didn’t learn of the oil deal from me. Nor, I doubt, from Mr. Ajoukian.”

  “I think she put together scraps of conversation she heard at your party,” Sader said. The point had little importance, he thought. Mrs. Wanderley, already suspicious of Ott’s trickery, had been quick to spot the evidence Ott wanted kept concealed. His mind returned to the detail of the trip on Wednesday morning. It didn’t fit in with any other part of the evidence. Strike out what the cab driver had said, and he’d figure it this way: Felicia Wanderley had left home at eleven o’clock Tuesday night, had walked several blocks looking for a cab or a bus, had finally gotten a ride on one of the other lines that crossed town just above Ocean Avenue. Broadway and Third both had busses on them. Probably the maneuver had been born of raging impatience rather than a desire to throw off anyone trying to trace her. She’d transferred downtown to the Cherry Avenue line, left the bus near the military academy on the Hill, walked east to Mullens’s office.

  There she had met young Ajoukian and the two of them had been murdered, their bodies thrown into the oil sump.

  This had no sense in it, he admitted to himself; but the line of action was at least clean, straight, without a postscript like the cab trip, which had the meaninglessness of nightmare.

  Throw out the cab trip, and what have you? he thought. Well, you had an impostor there in Mrs. Wanderley’s coat and scarf, for one thing. He remembered in that moment the cab driver’s saying that the woman he’d taken to the Veterans’ Hospital had carried no handbag.

  He turned to look at Mrs. Cole, and her strange blue eyes met his own so intently—could it possibly be no more than imagination?—that he had the feeling her thoughts had followed his, that she had read his mind.

  Ott was behind Sader, had moved silently from the chair on the balls of his feet; and in the instant of looking at Mrs. Cole, Sader caught other movement, Ott’s suddenly reaching arms.

  Ott pinned him from behind, then ran like a bull to crash into the wall. Sader turned his head, arched back, but the jarring collision tore breath from his lungs, sent pain flashing through his already injured shoulder. Still he managed to twist far enough to get his right elbow under Ott’s double chin He prized back Ott’s head as the fat man weaved and faltered. Mrs. Cole made whimpering noises and ran out through the front door.

  In spite of Sader’s agonizing pressure on his throat, Ott got him into the hall. They fought, scuffling up the runner and knocking down a little table that held a vase with some dead sweet peas and ivy. At last they were at the door, which Mrs. Cole had left open. Ott fell through to the porch, gripped Sader’s knees, threw him forward so that he slid down the steps to the lawn.

  With surprising agility Ott ran back into the house and slammed the door.

  Sader stood up, brushed mechanically at his clothes. His shoulder had pins in it, dancing along his nerves; and his arm felt dead. Worse than the pain was the sense of self-disgust, of failure, stupidity. Ott had bested him, giving him nothing he hadn’t already surmised.

  CHAPTER SEVENTEEN

  SADER ESCORTED Mrs. Cole to her door. Her attitude was nervous now, as if he were in danger of exploding with unpredictable violence. “I hope your partner pulls through.” She offered him her hand.

  Peacemaking, Sader thought. But why? “Are you going through with the deal to sell your oil shares to Ajoukian?”

  “I gave him an option,” she admitted. “Five hundred dollars. If he wants them, I’ll have to sell.” She unlocked her door, paused there. “I’ll admit to you why I needed cash in a hurry. It really wasn’t for a divorce. My daughter’s eighteen and she wants a car. The other girls have them.”

  She was a woman, Sader decided, who would break her neck to keep her kids up there with the Joneses.

  “Her father wouldn’t have approved,” Mrs. Cole added. “That doesn’t matter now.”

  “I’ve been curious about your place here, in among the derricks,” he said. “There are so few like it, and those not kept up like this.”

  “We’ve owned it for a long time. My children have wanted me to move during these last few years, to get a better location. But I like it here. You wouldn’t think so, but it’s private. There’s no one watching you over the back fence. Nosy neighbors, I mean.”

  Well, she had a right to her preference. Sader nodded, started away. Then he looked back at her. “I guess there’s nothing you can add about Mrs. Wanderley’s last visit——”

  “At the party? No, I’ve told you all I know.”

  Her eyes were like
a couple of blue lights. She stood there watching while he got into his car and drove away.

  When he pulled to a stop again, it was in front of the drilling office where Mullens had died. The door was open. A couple of men were behind the counter, along with a tall woman who wore glasses. The three of them seemed to be working over Mullens’s books. Sader introduced himself. “I’d like to have Mullens’s home address. I want to talk to his mother.”

  The elder of the two men frowned. “She’s upset about her son’s death.”

  “I won’t be long. I’ll be as tactful as possible,” Sader promised.

  After a few more minutes of argument, they divulged the address, less than a dozen blocks southeast, where homes encroached on the flank of the Hill. Sader found the place without difficulty. Right away he noted the evidence of Mullens’s passion for gardening. The yard was meticulously kept, with borders of calendulas just coming into bloom, and dusty miller in twin rows beside the walk to the front porch. Sader rang the bell and waited.

  It wasn’t a big house; it was what you’d expect of a bookkeeper with an ailing mother to support. What was noticeable was the old-maid tidiness of the place. The woman who came to the door and looked out at Sader had the same air; she was as scrubbed, tidy, and plain as the house. She wore her thin white hair pulled back behind her ears, rolled there in a neat bun. Inside the blue gingham apron, the plain gray dress, her figure was spare and erect. “Yes, sir?”

  Her voice was pleasant, but there were tears under it; and Sader, having heard the tone before, knew how little it would take to break up the interview. “My name is Sader, Mrs. Mullens. I’m a private detective. I’d like to talk to you for a little while. About your son’s death.”