16-Murder Can't Wait

by Lockridge, Richard

  She didn’t know anything about that. She didn’t believe—but she did not say what she didn’t believe. Because, Shapiro thought, there wasn’t anything about her husband that she, just now, found impossible of belief. But they had, of course, last parted in anger; parted, with him shouting accusations. Accusations she now denied.

  It was time to go back to that, circle back to that.

  “Yesterday,” Shapiro said. “This meeting with your husband. At your room? The place you’re staying?”

  “Here,” she said. “Stu—the stairs are—were too much for him. I—Bob telephoned me here. Said he had to see me. I—I told him to come here.”

  “But—not why he could come here, be sure of finding you alone? Not that Mr. Fleming was laid up with a broken leg?”

  She didn’t remember telling him that, but was only moderately sure she had not. Steele had—

  “He started in right away,” she said. “Started—started shouting at me. He—” She paused again. “All right,” Catherine Steele said, “he wasn’t very sober. Sometimes he isn’t. He—he’s a very good golfer, lieutenant. And—well, the club isn’t really a very good club. Not as golfers look at it. It’s a nice place, I guess. Nice people, I guess. But—being the club pro at a third-or fourth-rate club….” She let that hang.

  “Griped him?”

  He could call it that.

  “Hurt his pride?”

  He could call it that.

  “You? When you had these rooms at the club?”

  “Did I like-it? Not very much.” She looked at him. There was a kind of depth in her eyes, Shapiro thought. “A woman likes her man to be proud,” she said.

  Out of the mouths of babes, Shapiro thought sadly. Poor Rose. Probably a woman did. All right, Shapiro thought. I’m good with a thirty-eight.

  “They treated you well at the club?”

  “It was all right.”

  “You met Mr. Fleming at the club. Stuart Fleming?”

  She shook her head. “We didn’t,” she said, “meet—actually meet—the members. Oh, we met them—but—when Mr. Fleming decided to open an office here, to be near his brother—his brother’s sick, you know—he asked around about a secretary and somebody told him I might do. That was—oh, early last November, I think. I could look it up.”

  Shapiro shook his head.

  “Bob was about to go south,” she said. “When I got the job I decided to stay here.”

  “Up to then, you’d planned to go with Mr. Steele?”

  “I hadn’t really planned anything. Wasn’t sure of anything. Why do you have to go into all this?”

  “Because Stuart Fleming was shot to death,” Shapiro said. “We have to go into everything. Because your husband went around to Fleming’s house this morning to kick his teeth in. Mrs. Steele—when he was here yesterday, did your husband threaten Mr. Fleming? Say what he was going to do to him?”

  And then there was a long silence. Finally, she said, “Bob said a lot of things. He was worked up. The way he was sometimes. Usually….” She returned to silence.

  “I take it he did,” Shapiro said. “Did you warn Mr. Fleming?”

  It was a long time before she answered. A minute is a long time of silence. Shapiro merely waited.

  “It was ugly,” she said. “So—ugly. Stu and I—there wasn’t anything. Not really anything. Perhaps—perhaps something beginning. I—oh, all right. You’re not leaving me much, are you?”

  Steele—it was simplest to call him Steele—had talked about doing something to Stuart Fleming; something which would teach him to leave other men’s wives alone. She had tried not to take it seriously; tried to tell herself Bob was drunk; would simmer down when he was sober. She had gone home after Steele had left the office; she had driven to an inn for dinner and gone home again, had undressed and gone to bed. But all the time—she did not phrase it so, but Shapiro guessed—words had been going over and over in her mind. “He’ll hurt Stu,” the words must have been. “Stu’s helpless. Can barely move. He’ll hurt Stu. He’ll hurt Stu.” And then finally, “I’ve got to do something.”

  What she had done had been to telephone Stuart Fleming, she thought at a little before midnight. She had meant to do no more than to talk to him on the telephone, but had found that impossible. “It was so ugly,” she said. “You don’t know why I keep on saying that, do you?”

  “Yes,” Nathan Shapiro said. “If between you and Fleming something was just beginning, as you put it. Perhaps not even beginning. Yes, I know why it seemed so ugly, Mrs. Steele. You went to his house?”

  She had gone to Fleming’s house. He had been in the living room, with the lights on, with the door unlocked—had been sitting, with his broken leg resting on a stool, where he could see her at the door. She had told him the ugly thing and—

  “And it was all right,” she said. “It—it wasn’t so ugly any more. He said I was foolish to worry; that men like Bob said a lot of things they didn’t mean and then that—”

  But she stopped, and shook her head, and Nathan Shapiro did not press her to go on. Sometime somebody might have to. This was not the time.

  “How was he dressed?” he asked her and she was surprised at the question, but answered it. He had been wearing a sports shirt—what they call a polo shirt—and walking shorts. It was easier to get shorts than trousers on over the cast.

  She had stayed perhaps an hour. No, he had not said he was expecting anyone else to come that night; had not acted as if he expected anyone else.

  “Why—oh!”

  “Yes,” Shapiro said. “Somebody did come. An hour or so, perhaps longer, after you left. If you—”

  “Wait,” she said. “Wait.”

  He waited.

  “A little while before I left,” she said, “a car started to turn into the drive. From the road, I mean. We could see the lights. But then the car backed out again and went off in the other direction. So-so it was just somebody using the drive to turn around in, wasn’t it? We—we both thought it was.”

  “Probably,” Shapiro said. “Probably that was all it was. The car lights were full on?”

  They had been.

  Not a stealthy approach, then. Probably, as the girl said, not an approach at all. Of course, the driver of the car could have seen, as soon as he turned into the driveway, that Fleming’s house was lighted up; could probably have seen the girl’s car parked in front of the house. The driver of the car could, tastefully, have decided not to intrude on Stuart Fleming while Fleming had a guest. And, of course, could have come back at a more propitious time.

  VI

  It was probably the way it looked, Heimrich thought. Probably it was as simple as it looked—as simple and as old-fashioned. He smiled inwardly at his choice of the term. It would be a good thing all around if there were no more gunmen for hire, and no racket men to hire them, and no gamblers to care whether a point was kicked after touchdown. But these old-fashioned conditions still existed, and this was likely nothing more complex than the erasure of a man who knew too much.

  Find the loose ends, Heimrich thought. Tie them into knots. Say, “Come along, Stahlman. Maybe it will help you if you tell us who hired you,” knowing that it wouldn’t help Stahlman at all, and knowing Stahlman would know it wouldn’t. One of the loose ends might be here, Heimrich thought, and turned his car into a driveway, and steered it past a sign which read: WILLOW POND GOLF AND TENNIS CLUB. MEMBERS ONLY. He nosed the car into a gap between other cars. Twenty or thirty cars in the lot; busy for a weekday afternoon. On the other hand, a Friday afternoon. For a good many in the North Wellwoods of the country, Fridays aren’t weekdays any more. Sergeant Charles Forniss got out of a car several down the line and walked to Heimrich’s car and got in beside him. Forniss said, “No soap, M. L.”

  The “no soap” had several aspects. A county judge had signed an order permitting the state police to open, and look into (but not remove from) a safe deposit box rented by Stuart Fleming in a Brewster bank. It had be
en rented the previous October. The records showed that Fleming had not visited the vault since he rented the box and put into it whatever he had put into it. This fact indicated that looking into it now would be a waste of time, but it had been looked into anyway. It had contained a hundred shares of a mutual fund; an insurance policy for five thousand dollars with Angus Fleming named as beneficiary; an automobile insurance policy, including adequate liability coverage; two photostats of a birth certificate which proved that Stuart Fleming had been born in 1938 in the county of Westchester, state of New York, and a certificate assuring all who might be concerned that Stuart Fleming was licensed to practice law in New York State.

  “No will?” Heimrich said, and Forniss said, “Nope. Who makes a will when he’s in his twenties? Unless he’s loaded. Fleming doesn’t look like having been.”

  Which was that, in Brewster. Here at the club, pickings had been as lean. There was a grounds superintendent, and he lived in a two-room cottage on a lane which marked the northern boundary of the club, and from it he could see the clubhouse and the windows of the two rooms on the top floor in which Steele was quartered during the season. He thought he had seen lights on behind one of the windows about ten o’clock the night before. Only maybe it was the night before that. Sure, Steele had a key to the clubhouse. He lived in the clubhouse, didn’t he? No, he couldn’t, from his place, see the door Steele had a key for; and, sure, Steele could have come and gone any time he chose, and come and gone unnoticed.

  “Nobody else stays at the place overnight this time of year,” Forniss said. “Not actually open yet. Bar is, from noon Friday until after lunch Sunday. Somebody comes in to make sandwiches. First of May a chef moves in and a full-time bartender moves in. They live on the third floor, like Steele. Same time, Miss Alicia Stett—she’s the club manager—moves in. She’s got a couple of rooms on the second floor.”

  “Steele’s rooms?”

  “He’s around,” Forniss said. “Told him we were going to look through his rooms, unless he wanted to make something of it, in which case we’d get a search warrant. There weren’t any women around, so you can guess what he said. But when I said that that wasn’t what we had in mind, he said to do what we damn well liked, so I did.”

  Two rooms, both small; a bath outside but near by; one probably shared by the chef and bartender when in residence. Furnished adequately enough, with things which probably had seen better days on lower floors. A couple of pairs of slacks and a tweed jacket; several pairs of walking shorts; a blue business suit which had been around a while; two dress shirts and a pile of conservative sports shirts; the other things one would expect.

  These in one of the two rooms. In the other, no signs of recent occupancy. Nowhere any sign of female occupancy, recent or otherwise.

  “No incriminating documents?” Heimrich said. “No thirty-eight automatic?”

  “Can’t have everything, can we?” Forniss said. “Come to that, anything. Nope. Anything from New York? Or Florida?”

  Heimrich told his sergeant what there was from Florida and Forniss said, “My, my.” He added that that end, at any rate, hooked up.

  “Leaving this end flapping,” Heimrich said.

  “Stuart Fleming told his brother and his brother’s wife more than they’re saying,” Forniss said. “She, or he, told somebody else, who told our Stahlman-Steele, who told Pagoni, who said to Stahlman-Steele, ‘Since you’re on the spot, you may as well do the cooling.’ Neat, that way.”

  “Now, Charlie,” Heimrich said. “This business about Steele’s wife and Stuart Fleming?”

  “Window dressing. We’re the stupid cops you read about. We say, ‘A man doesn’t come around making loud threats to beat up a man he’s already killed.’”

  “Why go to the trouble, Charlie? Why not just sit tight?”

  “He knows Fleming made this squeal to the D.A. Knows somebody’ll be nosing around. Like our Mr. Shapiro. A very depressed character, our Mr. Shapiro.”

  Heimrich said, “Very.”

  “And that sooner or later he’ll be pegged as Stahlman and that even dumb cops will prick up their ears. So, louse up the picture before there is a picture. Having, probably, filled his wife in. On how Fleming was making passes. And so forth and so forth.”

  “Foresighted,” Heimrich said. “On the other hand, Charlie, he seems to have blundered around a good deal when he was on the cops. Blundered into trouble.”

  “He’s lived and learned,” Forniss said.

  “Perhaps,” Heimrich said. “We need more bits and pieces. This Enid Fleming. Think we can jog her memory?”

  Forniss shrugged heavy shoulders. He said that if you jogged a memory, there was no telling what would fall out of it. Or what the jogged siftings would be worth. He said, “Our friend Shapiro. Gone back to town?”

  “Gone to have a little chat with Steele’s wife,” Heimrich said. “Stuart Fleming may have talked to other people, Charlie. Want to ask around? While I drive over and try jogging his sister-in-law’s memory?”

  “Yep,” Forniss said. “Only, you don’t need to drive over. She’s here. She and her husband. Came about half an hour before you did. He looks like the wrath of God, M. L. Like a man who ought to be home in bed.”

  “She?”

  “Full of beans, at a guess. Trying not to show it. Dressed to play golf. Put her bag in one of those gimmicks.”

  He pointed toward the gimmicks—four caddy carts, conveniently at the edge of the parking lot.

  “Trundled it off that way.” He pointed toward a gap in the hedges which separated the lot from the brown-shingled clubhouse. “More or less trundled the poor guy too.”

  He opened the car door and got out. Heimrich said, “Remember Professor Brinkley?” and Forniss said, “Yep.”

  “He might give you some leads. Lived around here a long time. People interest him.”

  Forniss said, “Yep,” again, and walked toward his own car. If you’ve known a man for many years, even his movements tell you things about his mood. Charlie Forniss didn’t, Heimrich thought, walk like a man who thought he was really going anywhere. Charlie thought they already had their man. The chances were that Charlie was right.

  Heimrich went through the gap in the hedge, and came out on a shaded lawn, with the grass a little in need of cutting, as grass is likely to be in mid-April. Beyond the lawn was an extensive flagstone terrace, dotted with tables. There were four women at one of the tables, drinking long drinks. They were middle-aged and sturdy and looked rather as if they had been kiln-dried. They wore cleated shoes. Two much younger women sat at another table, and they were dressed for tennis and one of them had a carrying voice. “Probably in August,” she said, with bitterness. “Probably in August they’ll be ready. And then we’ll have all the time till Labor Day. Yah.”

  Courts not ready yet, Heimrich thought. He felt sympathy. The courts weren’t ready in Van Brunt, either. At most country clubs, tennis players lead second-rate lives.

  A tall man sat alone at a table, with a drink in front of him. He was looking away at nothing. He wore a dark sports jacket, which hung on him loosely, and gray slacks. He was very pale.

  Heimrich walked over to the table and the man did not look at him. The man looked away, across the terrace. Looking that way, he looked at the golf house and to one side of it, at the first tee. On the first tee, a young woman took practice swings and drove, and a young man watched her.

  Heimrich said, “Mr. Fleming?” and slowly, with no interest, the thin man turned his head and looked up at Heimrich. After looking at him for some seconds, the thin man said, “Yes.” All the strength the man had left seemed to be in his voice. Heimrich told Angus Fleming who he was. After another pause, Fleming said, “So?”

  “About your brother,” Heimrich said. “I’m sorry to bother you.”

  “Everybody’s so damned sorry,” Angus Fleming said. He spoke with no special bitterness; he stated an obvious fact. “We told the others what little we had to tell.�
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  “That he had spoken to you about this information he’d come on,” Heimrich said. “That Mrs. Fleming thought she might have told somebody here at the club a little about it. Which would have been quite natural, of course. That you were fairly sure you had said nothing to anybody.”

  “They got it right,” Fleming said. “This sergeant and this other officer—they got it right. So what more is there?”

  “Now, Mr. Fleming,” Heimrich said. “For one thing, the chance your wife may have remembered the name of the friend she may have told about this information your brother had.”

  Heimrich pulled out a chair and sat down.

  “She may have,” Fleming said. “She hadn’t earlier. If you want to chase her around the course, you can ask her.”

  He lifted a thin, pale hand and pointed. The hand shook a little. He pointed toward the young man and young woman who, now, were walking away from the tee. They both walked well, walked lithely.

  “We haven’t talked about it,” Fleming said. “After your men were at the house, I rested. I rest a good deal nowadays. You said your name is Heimrich?”

  “Yes.”

  “Seems to me there was somebody—thinnish, attractive young woman. Last summer? Wait a minute—about the curtains?”

  “Yes,” Heimrich said. “My wife. Susan Faye Fabrics.”

  But after Heimrich had said “Yes,” he thought the man opposite him had quit listening. There had been, in a mind darkly absorbed, a ripple of interest. The ripple had flattened. The mind had gone back to its dark absorption.

  “About your brother,” Heimrich said, and waited until, again, the man slowly turned his head. “Do you know anything about his relationship with Mrs. Steele? The pro’s wife?”

  “She worked for him,” Fleming said. “He opened an office here. God knows why. She worked for him. You mean something else, captain?”

  “Now, Mr. Fleming. Whether there was anything else.”