I took out my notebook and ballpoint pen, saying, “I realize this is a bad time for you, Mrs. Grant. But there’re some questions I’ve got to ask you, some information that we need. The sooner we get it, the sooner we can find out who killed your daughter. Do you understand?”
“Y—yes.” She blew her nose again, daubed at her smeared eyes, and drew a long, shaky sigh. “Wh—what d’you want to know?”
“First, when was the last time you saw her? What time was it, and where did she say she was going?”
“It—it was about three o’clock yesterday. Sunday. She said she was going for a drive. She said she’d probably be back in a few hours.”
“What kind of a car was she driving?”
“It—it’s a Volkswagen. Green.”
“A bug?”
She nodded, again drawing a deep, unsteady breath. She was shakily gaining control of herself. It was my chance to get the information I needed, then get out—before a second rush of grief overcame her. For the moment she was partially anesthetized by shock. I could clearly recognize the signs: the slightly unfocused eyes, the short, shallow breathing, the slack, almost listless droop of arms and shoulders.
“Was the car registered to you, Mrs. Grant?”
“Yes. But it was really my daughter’s. We—I—gave it to her last summer.”
“She didn’t mention any specific destination—anything she wanted to do, anyone she wanted to see? She was just going out for a drive?”
“Y—yes.”
“Was she upset when she left?”
At the question, her eyes strayed aside, involuntarily seeking the rear of the house where her husband had gone. Finally, licking at her lips, Ellen Grant said, “She wasn’t upset. Not really. I mean—” She hesitated, again glancing aside. Now her expression was bitter, baleful. “My husband and I, we—” She paused. Suddenly her lips were curling, as if she’d just pronounced an obscenity. “We were fighting. We—we’re just about to get a divorce. We’ve been talking about it for weeks now—months. So yesterday we were fighting, and I told him to—to leave. Just leave. So then June, she—” The woman’s voice suddenly caught. But, doggedly, she continued: “She walked into the living room, from the back of the house. She—she said that she was sick of hearing us fight and that she was going for a drive. Anything, just to get out. And that—” She gulped, suddenly pressing the handkerchief to her nose. “And that’s the—the last I saw of her.”
“Mr. Grant isn’t—wasn’t—June’s father.”
“No.”
“Is her father in the city?”
Her voice was sharp as she said, “I don’t know where he is. I married him when I was nineteen, because I had to. Six months later he disappeared. I never saw him again—never heard from him or got a penny from him.”
“You haven’t seen the girl’s father, or been in contact with him, for approximately sixteen years, then. Is that right?”
“Th—that’s right. I heard about him a couple of years ago. But that’s all.”
“What’d you hear about him?”
“That he was a bum,” she said bitterly. “Which is what he always was, I guess. In his whole life he never did anything but common labor. But—” Her voice was softer as she said, “But I was too young, then, to know the difference. All I knew was that”—she drew a deep, unsteady breath—“that every time he touched me, I liked it. And now he—he won’t even know she’s dead.”
“Can you give me any idea why she might’ve been killed, Mrs. Grant? Did she have any enemies?”
She looked as if I’d suddenly slapped her. “Everyone liked June,” she whispered fiercely. “June was a good girl. A good girl.”
I shook my head gravely. “Did she have any special friends?”
“She had lots of friends. Lots of them.”
“Any boyfriends?”
“Yes. Kent Miller. They go to the same school. He lives just a few blocks from here. On Balboa.”
“She just has the one boyfriend, you mean. They go steady.”
“Yes. June didn’t—play around, play off one boy against the other. She wasn’t like that. She was—” Her voice caught. She was daubing at her eyes, sniffling. My time was running out. The shock was wearing off; all her grief and pain and guilty memories were rushing back, suffocating her.
“For now,” I said, rising to my feet, “I’ve just got one last question. I’d like to know whether your daughter was carrying any money in her purse.”
“I—I suppose she had some. She always did. But she never got a lot of money. Not like some kids. I—I gave her five dollars a week. Period. For a—a long time June worked. Even though she always had enough money, she worked. Th—that’s the way she was.”
“So you would say,” I persisted, “that she probably had, say, five dollars in her purse.”
She nodded mutely.
I laid my card on the cocktail table. “I’ll be in touch with you, Mrs. Grant. In the meantime, if you need anything from us—or if you have any information for us—call me at this number.”
She was staring at the black onyx fireplace, oblivious of me. Slowly moving her head from side to side with an uncertain, almost querulous movement, eyes utterly empty and voice pitched to a low, disembodied note, she began to speak. “I waited on tables and hustled drinks to raise her. I even hustled men, when there wasn’t anything else I could do. I finally married a man with money. He was thirty years older than me, and I couldn’t stand to have him touch me. He died, and I did it again—the same thing. It—it gets easier, marrying for money. This is my fourth marriage, and except for that first time—with Towers—there’s never been a minute when I even thought I was in love. I—I forgot how to laugh. And all the time I used to tell myself that it was all for her—for June. But I never really believed it, and neither did she. I—”
Suddenly she was doubled over, arms across her stomach, sobbing. I stood looking down at her for a moment, then decided to leave. Canelli was waiting for me in the open entryway. Randall Grant stood beside him, looking at his wife indifferently.
I made arrangements for Grant to identify the girl, then stepped outside, gesturing for Canelli to follow.
“Did you find out anything?” I asked.
“Not much. He’s a big fat pain in the neck, if you ask me.”
“They’re getting divorced. That’s why they seem so strange.”
He snorted.
I said, “I want you to go back inside. See if you can get the license number of the car the girl was driving—a green VW. Get it on the air. Make sure they don’t handle it as a routine stolen car, and make sure the lab’ll run a fingerprint check on it if they find it. Then I want you to search through the girl’s effects, thoroughly. The motive was probably robbery, but it’s too early to tell. Find out everything you can about her. Try the neighbors. Everything. When you’ve finished, call for a radio car and take the stepfather to the morgue for identification. Unless there’s something urgent, plan on being at the office at four-thirty or five. By that time the afternoon papers will be out and Markham’ll probably have something from the scene. We might even have her car, if we’re lucky.”
“Right. What’re you going to do, Lieutenant?”
“I’m going to interview the girl’s boyfriend, and spend a couple of hours following my nose.”
I realized that I didn’t have Kent Miller’s address. I debated for a moment returning to the house, but decided against it. Suddenly I was hungry. I’d stop for a drive-in hamburger and get the address from a phone book.
Four
THE MILLER HOUSE WAS comfortably middle-class, but smaller than the Grants’. Confirming Canelli’s theory, the Millers’ neighborhood was a block farther from the park than the Grants’. The lots were narrower, the lawns scruffier, the windows less elaborately draped.
As I rang the bell I glanced at my watch. The time was just two-thirty. Perhaps Kent Miller wouldn’t be home from…
The door was opened
by a slim, blond boy wearing boots, Levis, a sweatshirt, and a Mexican serape. I’d already seen his likeness in the snapshot June Towers had carried in her purse. He wore his hair earlobe-long, carefully combed. His features were regular, his brown eyes steady. He looked clean and alert as he smiled at me, then began to frown. Like the girl’s mother, Kent Miller had already half guessed my identity.
As I broke the news I watched him intently. His first reaction was a deepening frown and a slow, numbed shaking of the head.
“Jesus,” he mumbled. “June, too. Jesus.”
“What’d you mean, ‘too’?”
“Wh—what?” His expression was blank, baffled.
“You said ‘June, too.’ Did you mean that there was someone else—someone besides June?”
“I—I don’t know what you mean.”
I hesitated, carefully framing the question. “Do you mean to imply,” I said slowly, “that others have died besides June Towers—that her death might be part of a pattern?”
“N—no. I just meant that—” He broke off, blinking, spreading his hands in a gesture that somehow reflected both the helplessness of childhood and the baffled frustration of the adult. “I j—just meant that everyone’s getting ripped off. That’s all I meant.”
“Do you know anyone else who’s been murdered?”
“Well, not—” He licked at his lips. “Not myself. Not personally. But Jesus, who’d want to kill June? She’s—” Suddenly his eyes widened, his hands clenched involuntarily. Mouth open, he was staring past me as if he’d just glimpsed something strange and shocking.
He knew something—suspected something.
But I mustn’t press him too hard, frighten him off. It was a delicate moment—possibly a decisive moment.
“Can we go inside?” I asked quietly. “I’d like to ask you some questions. You might be able to help us more than you realize.”
Without waiting for his reply, I walked past him into the living room. It was an ostentatiously furnished room, crowded with adult toys.
“Are your parents home?” I sat down, gesturing him to a seat across from me.
For a moment, sinking into an imitation black leather chair, he didn’t reply. He was still preoccupied—still stunned.
Finally he mumbled, “No, neither one of them are home. They won’t be home till six. They—” He drew a deep, unsteady sigh. “They both work.”
“That must be tough on you. With nobody here when you come home from school.” It was a neutral, bland remark, meant to put him at ease—and to give myself a moment to think. In the absence of his parents, I must be careful not to question him too closely. If he became a suspect, his lawyer could claim that I’d violated his civil rights by entering the premises without parental permission.
He didn’t reply. But now, slowly, he was focusing on me. For a long moment I simply looked at him, searching for some small hint of guilt. Immediately he dropped his eyes, shifting uncertainly in his chair.
“I suppose,” I said, “that you knew June was missing.”
“Y—yes. Her folks called me last night. They wanted to know if I’d seen her.”
“What time last night?”
“About—” He gulped. “About nine, I guess. Maybe nine-thirty.”
“That’s the first you knew of her disappearance?”
“Yes.”
“Did you see her yesterday?”
“No. I—I talked to her on the phone, but I didn’t see her.”
“What time was it that you talked to her?”
“About—” He hesitated, glancing at me with a round-eyed expression of almost guileless apprehension. “About three o’clock, I guess it was. She said that her folks were fighting, and she was sick of it. She was splitting. She wanted to know if I’d come with her.”
“You say ‘splitting.’ What’d you mean, exactly?”
He shrugged. “I mean that she was just—just going for a drive. Out. I don’t know.”
“How did she seem? Disturbed? Depressed?”
“Not depressed. Just bugged. She just wanted to”—he threw out one impatient hand in the typical gesture of the teenager searching for a word—“to split,” he said finally.
“Why didn’t you want to go with her?”
“Because I—” He paused. “I was working on my bike.”
“A motorcycle?”
He nodded.
I returned his nod, absently fingering the crease in my trousers. I’d been trying to form some opinion of Kent Miller—get some feeling of his strength and his weakness, his doubts and his fears. So far, I hadn’t succeeded. Like many teen-agers in trouble, he seemed simply to freeze—registering nothing, expressing nothing. His voice was uninflected, his gaze wary but unrevealing. He wasn’t hostile, but neither was he friendly. He wasn’t a delinquent type, and he certainly wasn’t the standard version of the street-corner cop hater.
Yet something had caused the eye-widened, fist-clenched spasm of momentary apprehension. Was it guilt?
I didn’t know. It could have been a sudden, overwhelming sensation of loss.
Was it guilt?
Could he have killed her?
Even at the wayward thought, I felt a fleeting sense of uneasiness. According to the law, it is at the time an officer first entertains a suspicion of guilt that he must advise the subject of his constitutional rights.
He was unsteadily lighting a cigarette, exhaling the smoke in a ragged plume.
“What kind of a motorcycle do you have?” I tried to make it a neutral question, reflecting no more than a casual interest.
“It’s a Honda. A 350.”
“Have you had it long?”
“About—about six months, I guess. Since summer.”
Still casual, I smiled at him. “Did you get your motorcycle fixed yesterday?”
“Yes.”
“Were you riding it yesterday?”
Cigarette half raised, he hesitated, watching me warily. “Yes,” he answered slowly, still with the cigarette poised. “Yes, I rode it.”
The moment had come. Either I pressed him, or I backed off. Suddenly my position seemed precarious. I was interrogating a teen-aged subject, possibly a suspect, without having given him his rights. I didn’t have his parents’ permission to enter the premises.
I’d disciplined subordinates for less.
I smiled, settling back in my chair, glancing at my watch. “I don’t have much time, Kent. I realize that you’re upset—that talking about June doesn’t help. But it’s important, you know, that we get all the information we can as soon as we can get it.”
“Sure. I understand.” He waved the cigarette in a wobbly arc that was meant to convey a sense of unconcern. The gesture reminded me of a kid in high-school dramatics, unconvincingly playing drawing-room comedy.
“Can you think of anyone who would want to harm her?”
“No—no one.” His voice had slipped into momentary falsetto.
“Had she ever had any trouble with boys? I mean, had she thrown anyone over recently—kissed anyone off?”
He shook his head, blinking now. “No. We—we’ve been tight for almost a year, June and me. We—” Suddenly tears were shining in his eyes. He was coming apart; my time was running out.
“You can’t think of any reason why she might’ve been killed, then?” I said quietly. “None at all?”
He first shook his head, then shrugged. As he looked down into the ashtray, stubbing out his cigarette, a single tear streaked his cheek.
“Answer me, Kent,” I said.
“No, I—” He gulped. “I—I can’t think of anything. Nothing. June, she was cool. She didn’t hassle. She just—” He didn’t finish it. He sat with head lowered, grinding the dead cigarette into the ashtray.
“She wasn’t involved with drugs, was she?”
Startled, he raised his head. “Wh—why do you—” He licked at his lips, staring at me.
“I’m asking,” I said softly, “because I want
to determine whether she might’ve had a drug habit that would’ve brought her into contact with underworld types—and that might’ve involved her carrying large sums of money. I’m not going to go through her room looking for a few marijuana flakes. That’s not the purpose of the question. Do you understand?”
Plainly relieved, he nodded. Then he shook his head. “No,” he answered, “June wasn’t involved in anything heavy like that. Never.” As he said it, he shook his head decisively.
“Good.” I picked up my hat and got to my feet. “Well, I’ve got to be going.” I pitched my voice to a brisk, friendly note. “I imagine,” I said, walking into the hallway, “that it’ll turn out to be a mugger—maybe a junkie, too strung out to know what he was doing. As soon as we find out anything, we’ll be in contact with you. Meanwhile”—I handed him my card—“if you think of anything that might help us, please give me a call.”
He looked down at the card, hesitated, then gingerly took it, holding it awkwardly between thumb and forefinger.
“And of course,” I said casually, “we’ll want you to come downtown to give us a formal statement.”
“D—downtown? T—to police headquarters?” He seemed unable to comprehend it.
“In a day or so. There’s no hurry. Meanwhile, thanks again. And if there’s anything I can do—anything at all—please let me know.” I turned the doorknob, and left him staring at my business card.
Five
I FOUND A DRUGSTORE and called the office, asking for Pete Friedman.
“Canelli,” he said dryly, “has just arrived. By luck, probably, he discovered something that will doubtless break the June Towers case wide open.”
“What the hell’s he doing down there? I told him to get some background information on the girl. Out here, in her neighborhood.”
“I’ll let him tell you. He’ll naturally want to build the suspense. He’s been loitering around outside my office like a pubescent girl waiting for the phone to ring. Right now—right this very minute—he’s staring at me with those large, moist brown eyes. Which is one of the reasons that I’ve never liked these goddamn glass partitions.”
Hiding Place (The Lt. Hastings Mysteries) Page 3
