The Second Richard Deming Mystery MEGAPACK®

by Deming, Richard

  I riffled through the bills enough to make sure they were all fifties, then stuffed them in a pocket without counting them. “I’ll pay my personal expenses and the car repairs out of this, and you can pay me back when it’s all over.”

  Without comment she returned to her deck chair.

  “I’ll try to have all three agreements drawn up by tomorrow,” I said. “Is it all right if I take them directly to Cushman for approval instead of bringing them here?”

  “Why?” she asked.

  “Because I’d like to get that part of it settled before I take off with the car. So I won’t be in quite so much of a jam in case I get picked up driving it. By the time I deliver the agreements to you, you relay them on to Cushman and I call to get them back again, it will already be Monday.”

  After reflecting she said, “I suppose that will be all right. I’ll phone Harry to expect you sometime tomorrow.”

  “I’ll pick up the car about eight thirty Monday night. Leave the garage unlocked and the keys in the car.”

  “Hadn’t I better phone you first?” she asked. “Suppose Lawrence changed his mind at the last minute and didn’t go?”

  “Yeah,” I said after a moment’s thought. “Maybe you better.” I gave her my home number.

  CHAPTER 5

  My plan was to contact the injured John Lischer before I got in touch with either of the other two men as there would be no point in trying to settle with the others at all if Lischer refused to co-operate. But before even doing that, I decided it would be smart to find out just how much of an interest the police were taking in the case.

  In St. Louis the Homicide Squad investigates all hit-and-runs in which there’s personal injury, even if the injury isn’t serious. This procedure is based on the sound theory that if unexpected complications happen to develop and the accident victim dies, Homicide has been on the case from the beginning and doesn’t have to pick up a cold trail.

  So I dropped in on Lieutenant Ben Simmons, head of the St. Louis Homicide Squad.

  I found him alone in Room 405, morosely going over a stack of case records. Ben Simmons is a big man, nearly as big as I am, with an air of restrained energy about him. He hates desk work, which makes up a good part of his job, and usually’s glad of any excuse to postpone it. While we’re friendly enough, we’ve never been intimate pals, but because my arrival gave him an excuse to push his case records aside, he looked up at me almost with relief.

  “Hi, Barney,” he said. “Pull up a cigarette and sit down. I was just getting ready to take a break.” Sliding a chair over to one side of his desk, I produced a pack, offered him a cigarette and flipped another in my own mouth. He furnished the fire.

  Simmons leaned back in his chair and blew an appreciative shaft of smoke across the desk. “If you came in to report a corpse, walk right out again. I’m up to my neck now.”

  “Just killing time,” I said. “Thought maybe I could dig up a client from among your unsolved cases. I haven’t had a job in five weeks.”

  The lieutenant laughed. Regular cops always seem to get a kick out of hearing a private cop isn’t doing so well.

  “You should have stayed on the force,” he said. “Probably you’d have been a sergeant by now.”

  “Probably I’d still be pounding a beat. Anything interesting stirring?”

  “In unsolveds? A stickup killing and a hit-and-run is all. Unless you want to look up some of the old ones from years back.”

  “What’s the hit-and-run?” I asked. “Any insurance companies involved?”

  “Not for the dead guy. He didn’t have any insurance. There was a little property damage covered by insurance, but not enough to pay the insurance company to hire a private eye to track down the hit-and-runner.”

  Apparently he was talking about a different case, I thought, since John Lischer hadn’t either been dead or in any immediate danger of dying when I’d last checked City Hospital at noon that day.

  I said, “You’ve only got one unsolved hit-and-run?”

  “At the moment. And this one I was hoping I could turn over. The thing happened about one a.m. Tuesday morning, and the guy’s condition was listed as fair up until one p.m. today. Then he suddenly conked out. I just got the call an hour ago.”

  I felt my insides turn cold. Forcing my tone to remain only politely interested, I asked, “Who was he?”

  “Old fellow named John Lischer. All he had was a fractured hip, but he was pushing eighty and I guess he couldn’t stand the shock. His heart gave out.”

  I went on calmly puffing my cigarette, but my mind was racing. Up to this moment my actions in the case hadn’t been exactly ethical, but the most I’d been risking was my license. Once I had succeeded in arriving at settlements with the three injured parties, there wasn’t much likelihood I’d get into serious trouble for not reporting what I knew to the police, even if the whole story eventually came out.

  But the unexpected death of John Lischer changed the whole picture. Suddenly, instead of merely being guilty of somewhat unethical practice, I was an accessory to homicide. For in Missouri hit-and-run driving resulting in death is manslaughter, and carries a penalty of from three months to ten years.

  I asked casually, “Got any leads on the case?”

  “A little green paint and a bumper guard. Enough to identify the car as a green Buick.”

  That did it, I thought. So much for Mrs. Powers’s assurance that she’d left no clues at the scene of the crime. With the case now a homicide instead of merely a hit-and-run, there’d be a statewide alert for a damaged green Buick. Even Kansas City wouldn’t be safe.

  Somehow I managed to get through another five minutes of idle conversation with Ben Simmons. Then I pushed myself erect with simulated laziness.

  “I guess I won’t pick up any nickels here,” I said. “See you around.”

  “Sure,” the lieutenant said. “Drop in any time.”

  It was four o’clock when I left Headquarters. I debated returning to the Powers home at once, then decided it was too close to the time Mr. Powers would be getting home from the bank. Instead I phoned from a pay station.

  The colored maid Alice answered the phone, but Mrs. Powers came on almost immediately.

  “Barney Calhoun,” I said. “There’s been a development. I have to see both you and Cushman at once.”

  “Now?” she asked. “I expect my husband home within an hour.”

  “Arrange some excuse with Alice. I wouldn’t ask if it wasn’t urgent. Can you get in touch with Cushman?”

  “I suppose.”

  “Then both of you be at my place by a quarter of five. It’s on Twentieth between Locust and Olive. West side of the street, just right of the alley. Lower right flat. Got it?”

  “That isn’t a very nice neighborhood,” she said with a slight sniff.

  “I’m not a very nice person,” I told her, and hung up.

  CHAPTER 6

  Harry Cushman arrived first, coming in a taxi.

  When I opened the door, he asked, “You’re Calhoun?”

  “Yeah,” I said. “Come on in.”

  He didn’t offer his hand. Following me into my small and not particularly well-furnished front room, he looked around superciliously, finally chose a straight-backed chair as the least likely piece of furniture to be contaminated.

  “Helena said it was urgent,” he said. “I hope you can make it fast. I have a five-thirty cocktail date.”

  It was the first time I had heard Mrs. Powers’s first name. Helena Powers. Somehow it seemed to suit her calm and expressionless beauty.

  I said, “Depends on how fast Helena gets here. What I have to say won’t take long.”

  The buzzer sounded at that moment and I went to let Helena Powers in. Glancing past her at the c
urb, I saw she had come in the station wagon.

  Harry Cushman rose when she came into the room, crossed and bent to kiss her. She turned her cheek, then moved away from him and took my easy chair with the broken spring. She was wearing a bright sun dress which left her shoulders bare, open-toed pumps and no stockings. Her jet-black hair was tied back with a red ribbon and she looked about sixteen years old.

  Cushman returned to his chair.

  Without preliminary I said, “John Lischer’s dead.”

  Cushman stared at me with his mouth open. As usual Helena’s face showed no expression.

  “But you told Helena you’d been checking the hospital and his condition was listed as fair,” Cushman said stupidly.

  “His heart gave out. All he had was a fractured hip, but he was nearly eighty.”

  Helena asked in a calm voice, “How does this affect our arrangements?”

  “It changes the whole picture,” I told her. “You can’t settle with a corpse. If you get caught now, you’ll be charged with manslaughter. You’ll be charged even if you turn yourself in.”

  Harry Cushman’s face was gray. “Listen, I can’t afford to be accessory to a manslaughter.”

  “You already are,” I informed him. “You were in the car that killed Lischer. If you didn’t want to be an accessory, you should have reported to the cops at once.” I let a little contempt creep into my voice. “Of course if you go to them right now, they’ll probably let you off the hook because they’ll be more interested in the driver. Mrs. Powers will take the rap…probably five years…and all you’ll get is a little bad publicity.”

  He licked his lips and flicked his eyes at Helena, who stared back at him expressionlessly.

  “Naturally we have to protect Helena,” Cushman said with an effort to sound protective. “What’s your suggestion?”

  “They know it was a green Buick.” I looked at Helena. “Your belief that you hadn’t knocked anything loose was a little wrong. You left a bumper guard at the accident scene.” I turned my attention back to Cushman. “Now that it’s classified as a homicide instead of just a hit-and-run, every repair garage in the state and halfway across Illinois will be alerted. The risk of getting the car fixed has at least tripled. And so has my fee. I want another ten thousand dollars.”

  “Ten thousand!” Cushman squeaked. “You agreed to five!”

  “Not to help cover a homicide, I didn’t. Make up your mind fast. Either it’s fifteen grand or nothing. If you don’t want to play, I’ll hand back your five right now and call the police.”

  Both of them stared at me, Cushman with petulant belligerence and Helena with mild curiosity, as she might have examined an interesting bug on a flower.

  Finally Helena’s husky voice said, “I don’t see what there is to argue about, Harry. Mr. Calhoun seems to be in a perfect bargaining position. He always seems to be in a perfect bargaining position.”

  Cushman sputtered and fumed for a few minutes more, but finally he agreed to deliver me ten thousand more in cash at noon the next day. The money didn’t mean anything to him, of course, because he’d been left more millions than he could possibly spend in a lifetime, but I think he was beginning to wish he’d never heard of the beautiful Helena Powers. I could tell by the way he looked at her she held a terrific fascination for him, but I suspect he was beginning to wonder if she was worth the complications she was bringing into his life.

  I didn’t care what he thought so long as he came up with an additional ten thousand dollars.

  CHAPTER 7

  Hit-and-run deaths don’t create much newspaper stir in a city the size of St. Louis, particularly where the victim isn’t important from a news point of view. The Friday papers carried a brief account of John Lischer’s death and the statement that the police were searching for a green Buick damaged on the right side. The original report of the accident had been only a paragraph back in the stock market sections, but this appeared on the second page of both the Post and the Globe. Apparently there was a dearth of other news.

  At noon Cushman brought me two more sheafs of fifty-dollar bills. I took them and the original packet down to my safe deposit vault, first transferring a thousand dollars to my wallet.

  Then I relaxed for the weekend, resting up in the expectation of not getting any sleep at all Monday night.

  At seven o’clock Monday evening Helena Powers phoned me to say her husband had caught his plane and the way was clear for me to pick up the Buick.

  “The keys in the car?” I asked.

  “No. Stop at the house for them. Alice isn’t here and I’m all alone. No one will see you.”

  At eight-thirty, just as it was beginning to get dark, she opened the front door to my ring. She was wearing a plain street dress and a pert little straw hat, and she carried a light jacket over her arm. Silently she locked the door behind me, then led me back to the kitchen, switching off lights as we passed through each room. On the kitchen table stood a small suitcase.

  “You going somewhere?” I asked.

  “With you,” she said, giving me a deadpan look.

  Setting down my own bag, I looked at her in astonishment. “Why?”

  “Because I want to.”

  “I’ll be gone nearly a week.”

  “I’ve made arrangements with Alice,” she said. “She thinks I’m driving up to my sister’s in Columbia. I gave her a week off.”

  “Suppose your husband tries to phone long distance and doesn’t get any answer?”

  “He never phones. He just writes a card every day when he’s gone. And I never write back.”

  I shrugged. “It’s your car. I guess you can ride in it if you want.” I picked up her bag and my own, waited while she flicked out the lights and opened the back door for me. Then I waited again while she locked the door behind us.

  In the garage I set down the bags and asked her for the car keys. Silently she handed me a leather key case.

  “Which is the trunk key?” I asked.

  She pointed to one.

  I slid it into the lock, but it wouldn’t turn. I tried it upside down, but it wouldn’t go in.

  “The lock’s jammed,” I said.

  Helena tried it with no more success than I had. Finally she said, “I’m sure it’s the right key,” and looked puzzled.

  “The devil with it,” I said. “We haven’t got that much luggage anyway.”

  I tossed our bags on the floor of the small back seat. The top of the convertible was still down, as it had been on the night of the accident, but I put it up before we started.

  Apparently the only damage the car had suffered was body damage, because it drove perfectly. I noted with satisfaction the gas tank registered nearly three-fourths full, which should take us better than two hundred miles before we’d have to worry about refueling.

  I didn’t figure there was much risk of us being stopped even in St. Louis by some cruising patrol car, because it was now six days since the accident and four days since John Lischer had died. I knew a routine order would have been issued to all cars to look for a damaged green Buick, but I had also ridden patrol enough back in my police days to know that by now this order would be filed ’way at the back of most cruising cops’ minds. They wouldn’t actually be searching for the hit-and-run car to the extent of carefully looking over every green automobile they saw. Even if we ran into a cop and he noticed the damage, there was a good chance it wouldn’t register on him immediately that our car was green or that it was a Buick.

  It also helped that it was now dark and that the damage was all on the right side. Simply by keeping in the right-hand lane I could prevent any cars passing us in the same direction we were going from noticing it. The only real danger was in meeting a squad car coming from the opposite direction, for the front bumper was badly ben
t and the front right fender was crushed all out of shape.

  To increase our odds, I skirted the congested part of town. My destination was Illinois, but instead of turning east, I took Lindell west to Skinker Boulevard, circled Washington University campus to Big Bend Road, turned right and drove north to the edge of town. Then I cut across to North Eighth, turned right again and headed toward McKinley Bridge.

  Puzzled by this maneuvering, Helena said, “I thought we were going to Kansas City.”

  “That was before I was accessory to a homicide,” I said. “We’re going to Chicago.”

  “Chicago! That’s three hundred miles!”

  “K. C is two fifty,” I told her. “K. C garages will be looking for a bent Buick. Chicago garages won’t. We’ll be there by morning.”

  At that moment we had a bad break. Up to now we hadn’t seen a single radio car, but now, only five blocks from McKinley Bridge and relative safety, one suddenly appeared coming toward us. As it cruised by, it blinked on its highway lights, then lowered them again.

  With my heart in my mouth I wondered if the two patrolmen in the car had noticed our damaged right front. In the rear-view mirror I saw them swing in a U-turn and start back toward us. I had been traveling at twenty-five, but I risked increasing the speed to thirty.

  A siren ground out a summons to halt.

  For a wild moment I contemplated pushing the accelerator to the floor and running it out. Then I realized there wasn’t any safe place to run. If I tried to dash over McKinley Bridge to Illinois, the cops would simply use the phone at this end of the bridge and we’d run into a block at the far toll gate. They’d have all the time in the world to set one up, because the Mississippi is nearly a mile wide at that point. And if I kept straight ahead instead of crossing the bridge, Eighth Street would shoot us into the most congested part of town.

  I pulled over to the curb and stopped.

  When the police car pulled next to us, neither cop got out. The one on the right said, “Haven’t you got any dimmers on that thing, mister?