The Second Richard Deming Mystery MEGAPACK®

by Deming, Richard

  While we were having coffee at the counter, I excused myself and went to the phone booth in the far corner of the restaurant.

  It was only a minute or two after six a.m. and Nora was still in bed. She sounded half asleep when she answered the phone.

  Calling on my talent for mimicry, I said in Tom Wright’s voice, “Nora?”

  She came fully awake at once. “What is it?” she asked. “Where are you?”

  “At Joe’s Place, at the edge of Werle’s Woods. Listen fast, because I haven’t much time. This is it, honey. The opportunity we’ve been waiting for.”

  “You mean… Tom! Don’t do anything dangerous!”

  “This is the safest plan we’ll ever find, honey. It’s a natural. Can you get hold of a rifle?”

  “A rifle?” She sounded scared. “I guess. George has three, and I don’t suppose he took more than one with him. Why?”

  “Can you shoot?”

  “I have. I’m not an expert.”

  “Could you hit a man at a hundred yards?”

  “Of course. Anyone could. But what…”

  “Then listen close,” I interrupted. “George, Harry and I will follow the standard procedure of one of us taking a stand while the other two drive game ahead of us. You know where Highway Sixty curves in toward the trestle over Fallon Creek?”

  “Yes.”

  “There’s a high knoll covered with evergreen about a hundred yards from the trestle. It’s a perfect spot for a stand because it covers a ravine where there’s a deer trail. I estimate we’ll reach there about ten, and I’ll arrange for George to be on the stand. You can get to within fifty yards of that trestle with your car, slip under the trestle, get off a shot and be back in your car and gone before Harry and I get anywhere near the place.”

  Nora drew a deep and frightened breath. “But won’t Harry…”

  “Suspect me? How can he? I’ll be right with him and he’ll know I didn’t shoot. It’s a cinch to pass as just another hunting accident. A stray shot from some unknown hunter.”

  “But suppose… suppose you can’t get him to take the stand?”

  “Then don’t shoot,” I said impatiently. “You can’t mistake him very well. With that red jacket and red-and-green cap, he’ll show up like a Christmas-tree ornament.”

  “All right,” Nora said in a low voice. “We’ll try it.”

  I hung up and went back to finish my coffee.

  Chapter 7

  On my suggestion Tom Wright took the first stand while Harry Nelson and I drove through the brush. The procedure was simple enough. Tom walked alone along the tracks for a half mile to a pre-designated spot we all knew, as we were all three familiar with the woods. When Harry and I figured enough time had elapsed for Tom to get into position, we started moving toward him through the woods. Tom’s stand was in sight of a deer trail, and our hope was that any game we startled would take that trail.

  The going was rough and, for me, a little ticklish, for I had to take into consideration the possibility that Tom might decide to open fire on me when he spotted me in the underbrush and claim it had been an accident. After all, there was no reason to believe he too hadn’t been considering the unique opportunity a hunting trip offered for an “accident.”

  To minimize the risk I stayed within sight of Harry, and as we neared the stand I made a point of keeping the boles of trees between me and it. When we finally came within sight of Tom, and Harry halloed to warn him of our presence, I fell in behind Harry as we worked forward the last hundred yards.

  Tom told us we had flushed two does, but no bucks.

  Again at my suggestion, Harry took the second stand. In a different way this left the situation just as ticklish, for I was now alone in the woods with Tom. It would be a simple matter for him to stumble over a stick and accidentally discharge his rifle while it was pointed at me.

  The only defense against this possibility was alertness. Carefully refraining from getting ahead of my drive partner, I constantly kept him in the corner of my eye, ready to drop flat the moment his rifle started to swing in my direction.

  But if Tom had any homicidal plans, apparently he was not yet ready to put them in operation. He concentrated strictly on the hunt, paying more attention to the ground ahead than he did to me. We reached Nelson’s stand without incident.

  This one had been a dry run, for Harry hadn’t even spotted a doe.

  The third stand was mine, and under ordinary circumstances I would have bagged my buck. I had barely been settled ten minutes when a big ten-pointer bounded along the trail not fifty yards from me. But I hadn’t been watching the deer trail. I had been scanning the underbrush for Tom Wright, and the buck was past before I even realized I had a target.

  When Harry and Tom rejoined me, I didn’t mention the chance I had missed.

  Now it was Tom’s turn again to take a stand, and we were less than a half mile from the knoll I had described to Nora. Tom knew the knoll too, and I didn’t even have to suggest it to him.

  When Harry asked him where he meant to set up, Tom said, “You know the trestle over Fallon Creek? There’s a hill covered with evergreen about a hundred yards straight out into the woods from it. I’ll be there.”

  I looked at my watch as he started off. It was just nine-thirty.

  We gave him twenty minutes to get into position, then started our drive toward him. As we moved through the underbrush I imagined Tom crouched on top of the knoll, sufficiently screened by evergreen to make his identification impossible from a hundred yards off except by means of his brilliant red jacket and red-and-green cap.

  We had made about half the distance to the knoll when we heard a single rifle shot.

  “Sounds like he got a crack at one anyway.” Harry remarked.

  “Yeah,” I said.

  But I knew different. The shot had a hollow reverberation to it, as though it had been fired from beneath a bridge.

  Chapter 8

  It was nearly three in the afternoon when I drove the car into the garage. Nora must have been watching from the window for someone to come and report my death, for she met me at the kitchen door.

  Unbelievingly she looked me over from head to foot, her eyes widening with the beginnings of shocked understanding as she took in the checkered jacket and red cap I wore.

  “That was Tom Wright in the red jacket,” I said casually.

  Her face was already pale, but now it turned dead white. For an instant she closed her eyes, then opened them again and stared at me.

  “It passed as a hunting accident,” I said. “The coroner’s already issued a verdict. There won’t even be an inquest. Hunting deaths are pretty cut and dried.”

  Nora said nothing.

  “I want to show you something in the basement,” I said, taking her arm again.

  Again she offered no resistance, but it was like piloting a drunk. She was so unsteady on her feet, I had to grip her bicep forcibly to prevent her from falling down the stairs.

  In my hobby room I left her standing in a corner while I got out the recording machine, plugged it in and started the playback. At first she simply stared at the rotating dials without understanding, but as the meaning of the recorded conversation penetrated, she swayed on her feet and gripped her hands together until the knuckles turned white.

  “On the phone,” Nora whispered. “That was you!”

  “Right,” I agreed. “But you’d never prove it in a million years, in case you get the urge to sacrifice yourself just so you can take me along as an accessory. On the other hand, the case can be proved against you. Ballistic tests will establish it was one of my rifles which killed Tom, and I have a witness that I couldn’t have fired it. The new will I made yesterday leaves the keys to my safe-deposit vault to the district attorney. It’ll be t
o your advantage to make sure I don’t drop dead. Because if I do, you’ll fry in the electric chair.”

  Nora shook her head as though to clear it. “How can you… You mean you still want me?”

  “Of course,” I said. “Where else could a man my age find such a beautiful woman?”

  In a dead voice she said, “It’s horrible. You don’t love me. You never have. You’re just being vengeful.”

  Smiling, I shook my head. “I’m merely preserving my happy home.” Approaching her, I tipped up her head with one hand and looked down into her face.

  “Kiss me,” I commanded softly. “You may as well get in the habit of being a loving wife, because you’ve got a lot of years to go.”

  She stood like a lifeless thing when I kissed her, as unresisting as a stick of wood. When I released her, her face grew pinched and she walked stiffly from the workroom.

  I took time to light a cigarette before leisurely following. When I came out into the main part of the basement, I discovered she was over in the far corner of the basement, where I kept my gun rack.

  I stopped still as she swung around with the same deer rifle in her hand with which she’d killed her lover.

  Neither of us said anything as she drew back the bolt to throw a shell into the chamber. I just stood there frozen, my only thought being that I had overlooked one thing.

  I had forgotten to make allowance for an unpredictable factor.

  SAUCE FOR THE GANDER

  Originally published in Manhunt, February 1956.

  CHAPTER 1

  Except that his right earlobe was missing, there was nothing arresting about the tall, sunburned man until you looked closely. He was as quiet-mannered and as sleekly-dressed as any patron of Club Rotunda.

  But Sam Black, the club’s assistant manager, made a habit of looking closely at every new customer. This one, he decided after only momentary study, was carrying a gun under his arm.

  The man told Black that his name was Larry Eaton, that Judge Bernard had said to mention his name and he’d like to go upstairs to the gaming rooms. The assistant manager furrowed his forehead as though searching his mind for a Judge Bernard. He shook his head regretfully.

  “Afraid I don’t know the judge,” he said. “Anyway, there’s nothing upstairs but Mr. Ross’s apartment.” He glanced across the room at Oscar the headwaiter, who wasn’t even looking his way. “Excuse me, Mr. Eaton. The headwaiter’s signaling me about something. Nice to have met you.”

  As Black walked away, the sunburned man shrugged and moved toward the bar.

  Beneath the deliberate stupidity of Sam Black’s expression was a lightning-quick mind. His snap decision to brush off the man who said his name was Larry Eaton was actually the result of careful consideration, even though the thought process took only seconds.

  A dozen times nightly the stocky assistant manager had to decide whether or not to allow first-time visitors to the club upstairs to the casino. And what had brought about his decision in this case was recognition of a type. Though he had never before seen the sunburned man, nor heard the name Larry Eaton, instinct warned him this was a high-caliber hood. Possibly the man was merely out for a good time. But also, possibly he was gunning for someone.

  At the end of a half hour Larry Eaton decided to leave. At the archway giving off the foyer where the cloakrooms were, he paused to glance reflectively at the mirrored elevator doors across the room.

  At that moment they opened and a thin, slightly stoop-shouldered man wearing horn-rimmed glasses and carrying a brief case stepped from the car. Black recognized Benny Stoneman, the club bookkeeper, and shifted his gaze back toward Eaton again.

  During the part of a second the assistant manager’s gaze had been settled on the elevator, the sunburned man had disappeared through the front door.

  The bookkeeper went out the front door also. Black shrugged and turned to wander back among the tables. He had barely taken three steps when a rapid series of shots sounded from immediately in front of the club.

  Black was racing forward before the last shot stopped echoing. One hand thrust the glass door outward while the other drew a short-barreled revolver from beneath his arm. He landed in the center of the sidewalk in a crouch, his gaze sweeping the surrounding area in one quick but thorough glance before settling on the crumpled figure lying on the concrete just outside the door.

  There was not a pedestrian in sight and the only vehicle in motion was a block away. Black caught only a glimpse of twin taillights before it turned the corner and disappeared.

  Sheathing his gun, he knelt next to the crumpled figure.

  “You hurt bad, Benny?” he asked.

  The thin bookkeeper didn’t answer. He was beyond answering.

  CHAPTER 2

  Except for a brief phone conversation with Clancy Ross upstairs, Sam Black didn’t have a chance to talk to the club proprietor before the police arrived. He was too busy quieting the downstairs customers and Ross was too busy closing the casino and herding the gambling customers downstairs to tables in the night-club portion of the building.

  Nor did he have a chance to make a report to Ross after they arrived, since Lieutenant Niles Redfern, who was in charge of the investigation, kept the gambler at his side while he supervised the photographing of the body, finally released it to the morgue wagon, and satisfied himself that the only witness who knew anything at all was Sam Black.

  Detective Lieutenant Niles Redfern was a lanky, middle-aged man with a lean intelligent face and a perpetually morose expression. He was a dedicated law officer and an efficient one, but he had one defect which prevented his rise beyond a lieutenancy in a police department run the way St. Stephen’s was.

  Unfortunately for his career, he was incorruptible.

  His assistant this evening was Sergeant James Morton, a thick-bodied unimaginative man who also would probably never earn further promotion. But not for the same reason, for Morton had no compunction about accepting graft, and was one of the police on the Rotunda’s payroll. He remained a sergeant because even in a corrupt police department there have to be minimum standards of ability.

  Oddly, Clancy Ross liked Niles Redfern who would have closed down the club with pleasure if he ever got the opportunity, and had nothing but contempt tor police who accepted payoff.

  When the last of the club patrons had been allowed to go home after having their names and addresses recorded by Sergeant Morton, the four men took seats at the bar, Ross and Sam Black in the center, and the two detectives flanking them.

  “Drink?” the gambler offered.

  Sergeant Morton looked expectant, but his expression faded when the lieutenant shook his head.

  “Tell me about this Benny Stoneman,” Redfern said. “How long’s he worked here?”

  Clancy Ross’s eyebrows, a startling black in contrast to the uniform silver of his prematurely gray hair, hunched together thoughtfully. He fingered the thin scar which formed the slight cleft in his chin.

  “Around a month,” he said finally. “Maybe five weeks.” He looked at Sam Black for confirmation.

  “Four weeks and three days,” Black said.

  “He was your bookkeeper?” the lieutenant asked Ross.

  The gambler nodded.

  “How’d he happen to be working so late? Don’t night-club bookkeepers work nine to five just like office bookkeepers?”

  “The payroll.” Sam Black answered for Ross. “Tomorrow’s the fifteenth.”

  The lieutenant’s gaze shifted to Black. “You were the first one outside after it happened. Sam? And nobody was in sight?”

  “Not immediately. A car was just wheeling around the next corner, but it was too dark to catch the number and make. About two minutes later the street was full, though. The shots emptied every building in the neighborhood
except ours. I blocked the front door, told the customers to get back to their tables, then put guards on both the front and side doors to make sure nobody left.”

  “Quick thinking,” Redfern commended. “Made it a lot easier for us. Ross, where’d this Stoneman come from before you hired him?”

  “Chicago.”

  “Oh? Know his antecedents?”

  “I checked references before I hired him.”

  “And?”

  “Nothing in his past record suggested he was hot. At the time.”

  The lieutenant asked on a rising note, “At the time?”

  “He kept books for Big John Quinnel before coming here,” the gambler said briefly.

  The lieutenant’s eyes narrowed. “Quinnel. Isn’t he syndicate stuff?”

  “He’s just been indicted for income-tax evasion,” Ross said. “I remember wondering when I read it the other day if Uncle Sam would be dragging my bookkeeper off to Chicago to testify, and leave me in a hole.”

  The lieutenant digested this. “You think Quinnel might have had the guy bumped just because he was a potential witness against him in a tax case? Seems a little raw even for the syndicate.”

  “What’s this Quinnel look like?” Sam Black asked suddenly.

  All three of the others looked at him.

  “Why?” Redfern asked. “Think you might have seen him hanging around here?”

  Black shrugged. “I wouldn’t know unless you told me what he looked like. I see hundreds of people hanging around here.”

  Ross said, “I’ve never met the man.”

  The lieutenant shrugged in indication that he hadn’t either, but Sergeant Morton said unexpectedly. “He’s about six-four and weighs around two-fifty. That’s why they call him Big John.”