“I wish you’d told me all this before,” I said. “I didn’t even know you were well acquainted with Carla.”
“You can see what would happen if all this went to the police,” Helena pointed out. “Carla’s suffered enough at Monty’s hands as it is.”
I could see that. I could almost sympathize with her if she’d been driven to killing Monty. He’d been completely rotten. It nauseated me to think I’d ever imagined myself in love with him. And there might be others. Though if Carla had murdered Sondo, why hadn’t she done it the night before when she’d slept in her apartment? She’d had the perfect opportunity then. Or would the evidence have pointed too surely to her in that case? The more I tried to analyze, the more confused I became.
We left the restaurant and returned to the store. Helena went on toward her department, and as I crossed the middle aisle on the main floor, I noticed two women walking ahead of me. One of them was Carla, the other Susan Gardner.
Now there was something to ponder!
21
When I got back to the office Hering was waiting for me. I threw a hurried look at the stack of magazines on my window ledge as I went in, but they were evenly piled and hadn’t been disturbed. Even though I wasn’t going to do anything about the picture and Sondo’s letter right away, I didn’t want to lose them.
Keith went out to lunch and Hering sat down on the corner of the desk.
“What goes on?” I asked.
“Looks bad for Gardner,” Hering told me. “But McPhail hasn’t arrested anybody yet. He’s moved down to Gardner’s office on fourth so the style show can go ahead. Gardner needs to be on the spot and Cunningham’s pulled strings to get him a break. But I think there’ll be an arrest before night.”
I believe Hering was feeling a bit lonely. My office was about the only spot in the store where he was listened to with respect. I gathered that the city detectives considered him on a lowly plane and felt his job was catching shoplifters, not dabbling in murders. In the end it was Hering who knew more about the case than any of the others.
Considering the gloomy mood which had held me so strongly in its grip the day Monty was murdered, I’m sure I don’t know why I didn’t feel something of the same thing that afternoon. My nerves were in a much more jittery state. I felt tense and jumpy and suspicious of everyone, and I did sense a mounting tempo. But I had no premonition that the climax was to come with such startling suddenness. In fact, I felt hopeless of a solution ever being reached.
“Where’s Bill?” I asked Hering.
He was regarding my walls with his usual interest. “Oh, around. Universal’s getting along without him these days. He said to tell you he’d be up to see you before he went home.”
“Kind of him,” I murmured and tried to turn my attention to the avalanche of work on my desk.
But Hering didn’t take the hint. “Say, what’d you pull a picture off your wall for?” he inquired.
I looked up in surprise. “Don’t tell me you didn’t hear about that? I was a good little girl and told McPhail all about it. Whoever knocked me out with that book end must have pulled a picture off. Something else was pasted up in its place, but I took it down.”
And then inspiration struck me so suddenly I almost choked.
“Mr. Hering,” I said shakily, “you’ve looked at those pictures dozens of times. I suppose it would be too much to hope that you—might have taken one of your mental photographs of that wall?”
“Well now, I don’t know,” he said. “Maybe I did.”
“Then tell me what the picture was that’s missing,” I demanded.
He closed his eyes obligingly and remained that way for a few minutes, while I held my breath. Then he opened them and regarded me in triumph.
“Sure,” he said. “I got a picture of it. Just as clear as anything.”
I bounced up and down in excitement. “Tell me! Tell me what it was!”
He was really enjoying himself. No one had ever taken his mental photography seriously before and he had to lengthen his big moment. He nearly drove me crazy with suspense.
He turned around with his back to the wall. “You check now and see if I’m right.”
I could have shaken him. He proceeded to describe every picture in that row on the wall, from the door to the vacant space. When he came to that he paused maddeningly.
“Did I have ’em in order?”
“Every one,” I told him. “But if you don’t go on there’ll be a murder right in this office.”
He grinned at me and closed his eyes again. Closed his eyes and said one word.
“Seashells.”
And I had the picture at once. But he went on in detail. “A woman’s hands playing with seashells against something dark. Hands with bright red nails.”
“You’re wonderful!” I cried. “It was an ad for nail polish.”
I remembered perfectly now. I hadn’t found it when I’d looked at the library because I wasn’t looking at ads. I’d forgotten we’d used any.
Hering positively beamed with pride. Now that I knew what the picture had been, I was hopelessly disappointed.
“It still doesn’t mean anything,” I pointed out. “It’s just senseless. Why would anybody come in and pull a nail polish ad off my wall?”
He was holding back his trump and he leaned toward me with dramatic intensity.
“Because the woman whose hands posed for that picture was wearing a ring. A ring with a big, dark red stone in it.”
“You mean?”
“Right,” he said. “I knew I’d seen that ring before!”
I could remember it myself now.
“Then—then all we have to do—” I began, but he broke in on me.
“Miss Wynn, do you remember the name of the company that put out the ad?”
“It was the Nail Luster people, I think,” I said. “Are you going to tell McPhail?”
He was halfway out the door, but he turned back and grinned at me. “And get laughed out of town? No thanks, Miss Wynn. I’m going to get busy and find out who posed for that ad. I’ll be back when I know.”
I settled down in my chair, limp with the aftermath of excitement. Hands. Graceful hands wearing a carnelian ring. I tried to remember the hands of all the women I knew, but I hadn’t Hering’s kind of memory.
The afternoon was endless. Keith came back and we both buckled down to a pretense of work. I could send him on errands around the store and run down to talk to various buyers myself. But I couldn’t write copy to save my life.
Storm clouds were rolling in from the lake and it began to get dark in mid-afternoon. I felt restless with waiting. Would this evidence of the hands mean anything when we had it? I wanted to talk to Bill, but he didn’t come around.
At three o’clock I went down to have a look at the style show. Owen had attracted a good crowd of our more exclusive customers for the first day and I got there in time to see Carla Drake (I couldn’t think of her as Lotta Montez) go drifting effortlessly across the long platform. She was tremendously effective, but if the burst of applause she received meant anything to her, she gave no sign.
The door to Owen’s office was closed and I had no wish to investigate. When I glimpsed Miss Babcock weaving toward me through the crowd, I left hastily, pretending not to see her.
The rest of that afternoon was all deadly routine until, around a quarter to five, Tony Salvador put his head in my office.
“Well, I’ve done it!” he announced.
I hadn’t the faintest idea what he was talking about.
“Say, don’t you work here any more?” he demanded. The windows! Everybody’s nuts about ’em. Mr. Cunningham’s secretary came down to congratulate me in person. Looks like I get the job.”
“I’m glad, Tony,” I told him. “You deserve it. But, Tony—no more phonographs. Pleas
e.”
He looked a little sheepish. “Maybe you’re right at that.” Then the broad smile left his face. “You know something, Linell?”
“What?” I asked.
“I miss her like the dickens,” he said. “Sondo, I mean. Place doesn’t seem right without having her around to scrap with. And those are her windows as much as they are mine. I don’t think I’ll do so well without her.”
“Of course you will,” I assured him. “But I’m glad you said that. She’d have liked to get credit.”
Tony grinned half-heartedly. “She liked credit all right, and she deserved it. Say—Carla’s over in display now, packing up some of Sondo’s records. We thought they might as well go to her. And she said she wished you’d come over for a minute. She wants to talk to you about something and you won’t be interrupted over there. She wants you to bring a picture along. Says you’ll know what she means. Well, the department’s knocking off early tonight and I’ve got some shopping to do. So long.”
What on earth did Carla want with that picture, I wondered. Keith shook his head at me.
“Don’t you go, Miss Wynn. You stay away from display. Everything happens there.”
Keith was forever playing Cassandra and it irritated me. “Don’t be silly! It’s daytime and I scarcely think Carla will murder me.”
“You don’t know,” Keith warned. “You don’t know for sure about anybody. And maybe it’s daytime, but it’s already dark.”
It had been murky outside all day. Another storm was blowing up and the last traces of feeble daylight were dying out. But I wasn’t afraid of Carla and I was curious as to what she might know of that snapshot of Chris.
I slipped the picture from its hiding place among the magazines and put it in my purse. Then I said, “Cheer up,” and went off to window display, leaving Keith’s mutterings behind me.
Tony had evidently closed the department for the night, because the lights were off, except for a single bulb in Sondo’s workroom. What with the gloom outside, the place was dim and full of shadows. In spite of my brave words to Keith, I shrugged aside a twinge of uneasiness as I walked into the workroom.
Carla knelt on the floor, sorting a pile of records. She looked up at me soberly as I came in.
“Did you bring the picture?” she asked.
I tapped my purse. “Yes. What about it?”
“I want it,” Carla said. “Give it to me please . . . it will be better for everyone if you give it to me.”
There was something so strained in her manner that I was startled. It would be just as well, I thought, to keep Sondo’s work table between Carla and me. If she made a single move, I could be out the door and away before she could reach me.
“Why do you want the picture?” I asked. “Why should a picture of Chris mean anything to you?”
For some strange reason the faintest flicker of relief came into her eyes. Then she turned back to the records, reading the titles, placing one on one pile, one on another.
“The picture doesn’t mean anything to me,” she said. “It’s just that—that it might get Chris into a lot of trouble. And why should you want to do that?”
“I don’t want to get anyone into trouble she doesn’t deserve,” I told her. “But I’m not giving up that picture till I know what it’s all about.”
Carla laid the records aside and stood up. She pushed back a plume of hair from her eyes with a careless gesture—that silvery hair she had dyed black when she’d been part of the dance team of Luis and Lotta.
“It’s for your own good,” she said. “Sondo died because of that picture. If you keep it, something may happen to you.”
I didn’t like her tone, or the way she was looking at me and I inched backward toward the door.
“I’m not going to keep it,” I told her. “I’m going to give it to McPhail.”
“Don’t be a fool,” she said. “You mustn’t do that.”
I was almost at the door now. Another step and I’d make a bolt for it. My bravado was completely gone. This was a Carla I’d never seen before and I had no intention of letting her get near me.
And then to my relief, I heard footsteps coming down the corridor and into the department. But it was a relief shortlived.
Carla looked around, listening. “There she comes now. I had an idea you wouldn’t want to give up the picture, so I asked her to come up and try to persuade you. You’d really better listen to us, Linell.”
I felt trapped. Carla was there before me, and someone else was cutting off my retreat from the rear. I swung about quickly and my panic died. It was only Susan Gardner.
“You talk to her, Mrs. Gardner,” Carla said and dropped to her knees to tie up a stack of records.
Susan came over to me, her hands aflutter with distress. “Miss Drake says you have a picture of Chris that may get her into difficulty. Won’t you please let me have it?”
Carla gathered up her records and went past me to the door. “I’ve done what I could, Mrs. Gardner,” she said. “It’s up to you now. It’s no use fighting destiny anyway.”
“Listen,” I said to Susan, when Carla had gone out, “I don’t know what this is all about, or why a snapshot of Chris should mean much one way or another, but I’m not giving that picture to anyone but McPhail. I’ve held off because I didn’t want to get anyone into unnecessary complications. But if this snapshot is as important as you and Carla seem to think, then I want to get it out of my possession right away and put it where it will help to clear everything up.”
Susan stood there for a moment longer and she must have realized that my mind was made up. She looked distressed and unhappy, even a little puzzled, but she offered no further argument. Without another word, she turned and followed Carla.
So that was that, and there had been nothing to fear after all. I opened my bag to have another look at the picture that was causing all this controversy, but I could make no more of it than before. Who was the man? What part did he play in this? Was it, perhaps, his identity that held the answer to the riddle?
Another moment and I’d have returned the picture to my purse and left the department. I had no premonition whatsoever of what was about to happen. I heard no footfall, no sound of a hand creeping toward the light switch at the door behind me.
The light simply went out with a click and I stood there in darkness, filled with the knowledge that someone was in the doorway, cutting off escape. I fumbled at the catch of my purse and put the picture away.
“Susan?” I said. “Carla? Who is it?”
But there was no answer. The darkness was horrible and blank. I backed away, fumbling for a path of escape. If I could reach the wall, perhaps I could work my way around to the door. Escape I must. For I knew that Death stood in the doorway. The same death Monty had met, and Sondo. This time I might not be so lucky as I had been that day in my office.
Against the grayer darkness of the doorway I could just make out the blurred shadow that stood there. No outline, nothing to give height or form. Just a darker patch against more darkness.
Then a hoarse whisper came to me and I knew there was desperation here.
“The picture! Give me the picture!”
The voice was coarsened, unidentifiable. It might have been the voice of a man or a woman. Whatever it was, it sent terror streaming through the marrow of my bones. I wanted to scream, but I knew no scream could help me. One sound and I’d be done for, before anyone could hear and come to my help.
I moved again. Holding my breath, trying to control the trembling of my body. Back a step. Another step, and then a creak sounded that was like the crash of doom about my ears. I knew I was trapped.
I’d backed straight into Sondo’s long work table and the sound had given my position away.
Hands reached for me in the darkness, brushed my face. I ducked beneath them, but I was cornered
, caught. The hands were hunting for me. Cold hands with a deadly strength in the fingers.
I groped across the table behind me, searching for anything—anything at all that might serve as a weapon. My hand closed over a smooth tube of metal. I picked it up, not knowing what it was.
There was a hot breath on my face and hands touched my shoulders, moved upwards. I raised the thing in my hands, meaning to strike out with it. And then I recognized what it was. The pine spray Tony had used last Christmas to fill the store with the odor of Christmas trees.
I pulled back the plunger, thrust it forward, shooting the spray at short range straight into the face, the eyes of the shadowy figure before me.
There was a gasp of pain. I didn’t wait for any more. I stumbled for the door, ran blindly out of the department, down the corridor. No purpose or direction. Wanting only to put distance between me and the horror that had reached for me in the dark.
The elevators were too far away and there’d be no safety in my office. I plunged down the stairway three steps at a time, falling twice, clinging to the rail, picking myself up to plunge downward again.
It was my abrupt collision with an indignant customer coming up the stairs that brought me to my senses. No pursuit sounded from above, and by running away I was giving the murderer every chance to cover her own escape.
The doors downstairs, I thought frantically. The exits must be stopped, the store searched. I left the protesting woman I’d nearly knocked over and rushed for an elevator, made the startled operator take me straight down to main. Then I tore down the middle aisle and ran straight into Keith, Bill and McPhail.
Keith gave a little scream as he saw me. “There she is! I told her not to go over to display!”
Bill put out his hands to stop my flight, caught my shoulders and swung me around. I clung to him for a moment, half hysterical with relief. Then I pushed him away and faced McPhail.
I couldn’t have made very much sense, but he got enough of the idea to call one of his men from his post near a door and give sharp orders that every exit be watched.
The Red Carnelian Page 22
