Take a Murder, Darling (The Shell Scott Mysteries)

by Richard S. Prather

  He looked at me, bloodshot eyes watering a little. “Toby? Not this one. He's been working for Dan Bryce.”

  It was nearly nine-thirty p.m. when I let the Cad coast to a stop alongside the fence surrounding Ralph Gould's half-acre. I had driven the last couple of blocks without lights, and as the car stopped I picked up the leather-covered sap which I'd earlier taken from the luggage compartment, got out of the car and walked toward the fence. A kitten scampered from the shadows and stopped a few yards away, dim in the moonlight. The fence wasn't designed so much for keeping people out as for decoration, and it was going to be little trouble to climb over it. The trouble was going to come inside the house, if I ever got in.

  I thought about that for a while. The kitten was still sitting a few yards away, licking its fur. It was just a small, multi-colored alley cat but it wasn't at all wild. It let me pet it, purred as I scratched it under the neck. I let it get used to me then I picked it up. I didn't have much trouble climbing over the fence, even holding the cat gingerly in one hand, and with a small flashlight, picks and the weighted sap in my coat pockets. Then I headed toward the house, walking slowly and continuing to pet the kitten, keeping it quiet. It dug its paws into my coat and clung there, purring.

  I passed the big white For Sale sign and continued on to the house without any trouble. No lights showed at the windows. I worked carefully and quietly on the front door with my picks, hanging onto the cat at the same time, and it took me ten minutes to get inside. The house was dark and silent. In the glow of moonlight streaming through the open door I could see that blankets had been hung over the windows. Before I closed the front door, I located a wide stairway leading to the second floor. Then I shut the door quietly, walked to the stairs and up them.

  Standing at the head of the stairs, I could hear voices to my left. When I looked in that direction I saw a thin slit of light pushing its way beneath a door. I walked to it and listened. Voices rumbled softly inside the room. I left the door, walked both ways down the hall without finding any indication that other people were present. At one end of the hallway I found a window, pulled down the blanket over it and unlocked it, then raised it until a soft wind outside billowed the curtain inward. Then I walked back to the door from behind which the sounds came. My little kitten was resting quietly, still purring as I gently petted it. I gave it a last pat, then placed it at my feet. It stood there, looking up at me, gave itself a couple licks and looked at me again. I waited, motionless. Then finally, obligingly, the kitten mewed.

  Inside the room a deep masculine voice said, “What in hell ... did you hear that?”

  The kitten mewed again. Feet thumped on the floor inside. And that was enough for me. I walked as softly as I could toward the open window, then around the corner and waited. Back down the hallway the door opened, light streamed out of the room and was reflected to where I stood out of sight around the corner.

  A deep, masculine voice, with a tough rasping inflection boomed out, “Well, ain't that the nuts! Lookit, it's a little kitty.”

  “A what?”

  “A kitty.” The voice went up about an octave. “Here, kitty, kitty. Well, ain't that the nuts? Here, kitty —”

  “Dandy, you damned fool,” a voice cracked inside the room. “How the hell did that thing get in here?”

  The voice was Roy Toby's. I took out my .38, shifted it to my left hand, grabbed the heavy spring-handled sap in my right hand.

  Dandy said, “Yeah, how'd it get in here? I locked up all —”

  “Don't just stand there. Am I gonna have to —”

  “O.K., O.K.,” Dandy said. Then a few seconds later he swore. “There's a open window. How'd it get open?”

  Toby said, “That cat opened it. You damned fool, I oughtta —”

  “O.K., O.K.,” Dandy said again. His feet thumped on the hall carpet as he walked toward me.

  CHAPTER EIGHTEEN

  I felt something brush against my feet. There was the sound of a small mew. The kitten was down there practically on top of my shoes. I moved my foot aside, gently pushing the little thing away. Footsteps thudded on the carpet, vibrated along the floor, close to me now. I set my feet, tensed the muscles in my calves and thighs, raised the sap over my head. The kitten mewed softly again.

  “Here, kitty, kitty,” Dandy said in his high-pitched, rasping voice.

  His voice had come from about a yard away. The next second, he stepped around the bend in the hallway. He was a little stooped over, as if getting ready to reach for the cat he'd heard, and I was swinging the sap down before he even saw me. Maybe he never saw me. Maybe he just figured that mew had come from a mad mountain lion. Anyhow, the sap landed on the top of his head with a sound like a baseball smacking into a stone wall, and he stooped over farther, and farther, and farther, and landed quietly on the carpet. He didn't let out a peep.

  I grabbed him under the shoulders and hauled him a few feet away from the corner, then left him and took up my position where I'd been before. I peered around the edge of the wall and waited.

  After a while Toby yelled from the room, “Well stupid? You go to sleep out there? What the hell you doin'?”

  Then Toby said something I didn't catch, but he must have been telling the other man to go see what had happened to Dandy. I hoped there was only one other man. Then there were footsteps again. But this time the beam of a flashlight preceded the man. He walked down the hall, spotted the open window and quickly snapped off the light.

  He swore softly as he moved to the window and started to lower it. I took two steps toward him and he heard me. In he faint glow of light coming from the room behind him, I saw him spin around. He let out a sudden yell that died suddenly as I swung the sap down. It caught him high on the forehead and his knees gave way. As he crumpled, I swatted him again then ran down the corridor toward Toby's room.

  There wasn't any reason for silence and caution now. Toby would have heard that yell. I hoped he was alone.

  He was. Toby was on his feet looking at the open door as I burst through it, a gun in his hand. I acted automatically, and hurled the leather sap through the air at his face. It missed him, but the sap came so close to his head that he ducked as he pulled the trigger of his gun. The gun roared almost deafeningly in the room. The slug smacked the wall behind me, and then I was next to him. I swung my gun-weighted left hand against his arm and his automatic thudded to the floor—but Toby swung at me, smashed a fist into my middle.

  It was a good blow, hard and solid, and it spun me to the side. But Toby had gotten so fat and sloppy that even if he'd had the strength for one more blow, he just couldn't have moved fast enough to get it in. I had all the time in the world to step aside and launch my balled fist up at his floppy, fat face.

  My fist bounced off his chin, and Toby bounced off his fanny. He went clear back and his head thumped on the carpet, but then he started straightening up again. He wasn't out; he just didn't remember where he was. I still held the .38 in my left hand. I put it back into its holster, retrieved the sap and put it into my coat pocket, then picked up Toby's .45 automatic.

  He was still sitting on the floor. As I glanced at him he shook his head, the floppy skin jiggling on his ugly red face. While he was still groggy I walked to him and gave him a quick shake, to be sure he didn't have another gun on him, then looked around the room until I spotted the empty .45 caliber cartridge case which had automatically been ejected from the firing chamber when Toby had tossed that one slug at me.

  I picked up the case, took the magazine from the grip of the gun, and worked the slide to eject the live cartridge already in the chamber. Then I reloaded that ejected live cartridge into the magazine, and put the empty case at the top of the magazine. I worked the slide again and the empty was thrown into the chamber. Toby was still groggy.

  Holding the gun loosely in my right hand, I pulled a straight-backed chair over near Toby and sat down facing him and the open door behind him. Those two thugs were going to be uninterested in
the proceedings for quite a while to come, I felt sure, but I faced the door anyway, just in case.

  “Toby,” I said softly.

  He shook his head again, looked at me as if his eyes weren't focusing yet, and started to get up. I pointed the gun at his nose and said, “Uh-uh. Sit right there, friend. Just like the last time we chatted.”

  His face flushed even more, but he sat still.

  I said, “Now, Toby, you talk long and hard and fast. Or I'll pull this trigger.” I let him look right down the barrel of the gun. And almost anything is more fun than looking down the barrel of a loaded and cocked .45 automatic.

  He licked his lips. “How'd you find me?”

  “I'll ask the questions. I already know most of the answers, so be sure the answers you give are straight. First, all you know about the murders of Zoe Avilla, John Randolph, and Horatio Adair.”

  “All I know is that they're dead.”

  “You're asking for it.” I squinted down the barrel of the gun.

  “Wait! Wait! Hey!” he yelled at me, jerking his head aside, a thread of panic twisting in his voice.

  “I told you, Toby, I'm not kidding.”

  “But I don't know nothing, Scott. So help me. I didn't kill ’em.”

  “Maybe not. But you had a hand in it, you hired some of the work out—to Ark, for example.”

  “Ark?”

  “He plugged Randolph.”

  “If he did, I didn't have nothing to do with it, Scott. It must've been his own idea.”

  “Sure. Like it was his own idea to try to kill Lita Korrel after she saw him bang Randolph last night.”

  “I don't know about that. I had nothin’ to do with any of it.”

  “Just can't stop lying, can you, Toby? Well, good by, friend.”

  He didn't get it. I shifted the gun a little and started to squeeze down on the trigger, arming at his left eye, and he got it. He started to yell just as the gun's hammer fell on the empty cartridge case with a sharp click.

  I let my face look puzzled, examined the gun. Toby was babbling something.

  “That's funny,” I said. “Maybe it'll go off this time.” I worked the slide, ejecting the spent shell and throwing a live cartridge into the chamber, and cocking the gun once more. I aimed at Toby's eye again.

  He was yanking his head around as if it were on a string, and yelling at me, pleading with me. “Oh, God, Scott. Don't. Please, Scott. Oh, God, don't kill me, please, please —”

  “Shut up. And quit lying to me.”

  “O.K. Yes, I killed them. All of them.”

  I had scared Toby a little too much, it appeared. He was ready to confess to shooting Lincoln.

  I let him calm down, and while waiting for him to get better control of himself, I completely unloaded the gun, placed the empty cartridge case at the top of the clip again and slapped it into the gun's butt. The automatic was ready for a harmless ‘firing’ once more, only this time the gun would have to be cocked first, making the routine even more effective. Toby might die of heart failure if I did it again. I did all of that right in front of him, but I might have been amputating my arm and it wouldn't have made any difference to Toby. He just wasn't noticing the little things at the moment.

  I said, “Toby, get this straight. I hunger to hear the truth from you, but that's all. No invention. Now, go ahead.”

  He looked sick. Slowly he said, “I don't know who killed ’em. I didn't spend no time with Ark after Lemmy hauled him out of your car. I had Lemmy take care of him and Flavin's body, and I came out here on the double. Knew I'd have to lay low for a while. I didn't even talk to Ark after that mess at Adair's place when you shot up the boys.”

  “But you did tell them to kill me when I left Adair's, didn't you, Toby?”

  He nodded. “Flavin phoned me and said you were checking up on Zoe's murder, I figured you had me pegged for that, so I told the boys to go ahead and...” he swallowed, not wanting to say it. Not wanting to, at least, while I held his .45 pointed at his eye.

  “Told them to go ahead and kill me, you mean.”

  “Yeah. I'm ... glad they didn't, Scott. I really —”

  “Sure, you're sick with joy. Toby, during the chat we had in your office at the gym you lied to me about that kill try outside of Adair's. You said you didn't put your boys on me. And you also said you didn't kill Zoe Avilla, that you had in fact never heard of her.”

  He nodded, looking back at the gun, then he shut his big flesh-flapped eyes. He just wasn't going to watch. “Yeah,” he said hoarsely. “I lie a lot. But not now. No, sir, not now. And I didn't kill Zoe. Don't have no idea who killed her.”

  “But you did know her.”

  “Yeah. Yeah. We were shacked up. I paid the rent on her place out there on Elm. Went there that day you tailed me around town. After the Randolph broadcast I knew you must've seen me go there. Maybe you didn't know why I went to the house, but I was plenty worried anyway—I've a wife and three kids. Couldn't afford for them to find out about Zoe. Would of half killed them.”

  “Yeah, just having you around must be misery enough.”

  “Anyways, when the boys phoned yesterday and said you were asking about Zoe's getting herself killed, I naturally figured you must think I done it.”

  “So you told them to kill me because I was checking on Zoe.”

  “That topped it off. I already had plenty of reason.”

  “How did you meet Zoe?”

  “It was in the Clarendon bar, right alongside the gym. I hang out there quite a bit, you know, and one day a couple weeks back she climbed onto a seat alongside me. Well, she wasn't a bad looker, and we got to talking. You know how them things are. So we shacked up.”

  “Just like that.”

  “You know how them things are,” he repeated.

  “Was this before or after you started trying to muscle in on Mamzel's?”

  “A little after, maybe a week I think it was.”

  “Zoe ask you anything about Mamzel's?”

  “Yeah. Talked about it a helluva lot. Too much, I thought. We discussed my trying to—uh—invest in the place. She seemed to think it was a good idea.”

  “Toby, I almost hate to add this to your other woes, but I think Zoe played you for a sucker. I think she arranged that meeting in the Clarendon because you were interested in Mamzel's. And that's what she was interested in, too—not you, Toby.”

  He shook his head. “I don't know. I swear I don't know what she was doing.”

  “How is Dan Bryce mixed up in this thing, Toby? He pops up all over the place—how does he fit?”

  “I don't know. I know I hate his guts. He and a couple of his men knocked over one of my joints last month, so I got a score to settle with him myself—if I knew anything, I'd be anxious to spill it. But I don't know a thing that'd tie him to those kills.”

  We talked a little longer, but Toby had nothing more of importance to add. I told him to get on his feet, then said, “Well, I hope you've been telling me the truth. Now we take a trip —”

  “No! I told you everything —”

  He thought he was taking a trip all by himself and wasn't coming back. I said, “Relax. I'm not going to shoot you.”

  He relaxed so much he almost fell flat on the floor. I kept near him walking to the bend in the corridor. The two hoods lay there but the little kitten wasn't in sight. Well, if I were still alive tomorrow, I would come out here with sacks of the choicest cat food I could find.

  Ten minutes later, with Toby and the two other hoodlums securely trussed with tape from the Cad, I called the police, told them my tale, and got out of there.

  Lita was still sleeping when I let myself into the apartment. She woke up suddenly when I put my hand on her shoulder, and stared at me blankly, as if she'd never seen me before.

  Then she relaxed and said sleepily, smiling at me, “You scared me, Shell. What time is it?”

  I told her and she rolled off the bed, went into the bathroom and splashed water in her fa
ce. After running a comb through her thick hair, she looked completely wonderful again, a little tousled, but, as I well remembered, she looked very good tousled.

  I told her the story of my trip to the Gould place and what had happened there. We were in the front room, sitting on my chocolate-brown divan, and she had made numerous comments on the items of furniture, including the fish tanks—and the inevitable derogatory remarks about Amelia, my garish nude over the fake fireplace. Amelia is, I must admit, a little brazen. I reached for my pack of cigarettes, and pulled Toby's .45 automatic out of my coat pocket. I dropped the gun on the divan, found the cigarettes and lit one.

  Lita said, “Where did you get that ugly gun?”

  “It was Toby's, honey. He tried to shoot me with it, so I took it away from him. I've got him and his two boys tied up in the house now, ready for delivery to the police.”

  “And then what? How much longer do you think it will take to settle everything, Shell? Get back to ... to normal.”

  “It's practically over, honey.”

  She looked surprised. “It is? How wonderful.” She sighed, “You must have learned something important from Toby.”

  “Only in a negative way, a matter of elimination.” I got up and began slowly pacing the floor, lining up my thoughts as I talked. “The main thing about Toby is that I'm finally convinced he didn't have anything to do with the deaths of Randolph or Horatio Adair. Or Zoe Avilla's, for that matter. One of the most important things is that I'm now sure I know exactly what the list of Zoe's was all about.”

  “You mean all those names and numbers? The names of people connected with Mamzel's?”

  “Yeah.” I stopped pacing and looked at Lita. “You see, honey, Zoe was an ex-con, a gal who'd done time in Tehachapi for extortion.”