The Second Richard Deming Mystery MEGAPACK®

by Deming, Richard

  I went down the porch steps and along a concrete walk to the garage. The door leading from the yard into the garage was unlocked. A red, two-seat sports car was parked inside. A car radiator will stay warm for a couple of hours after the car has been driven long enough to heat the engine thoroughly, and this one was still warm enough to indicate it had been standing for not much more than an hour. It seemed reasonable to assume that Joan Turnbell had arrived home in that car.

  The garage door giving onto the alley was the overhead type. I swung it up, then back down again. It made considerable noise going both ways, the springs creaking loudly and the door settling into place with a subdued slam.

  Returning to the kitchen, I told Carl Budd to go across the alley and inquire at each house if any neighbors had seen anyone enter or leave here by the back door an hour or so earlier.

  When the young patrolman had left, I stooped to examine the victim’s shoes. They had those thick, ungraceful Italian heels that have become so popular, with metal cleats on them to retard wear.

  Rising from my stooped position, I went into the front room. Dr. Lischer had taken a seat there, but when I came in he rose and picked up the medical bag alongside his chair. Apparently he was in more of a hurry than he had indicated.

  “Sorry to have kept you waiting, Doctor,” I said. “May I have your report now?”

  “I’m afraid I can’t tell you much except that she’s dead, Sergeant. I understand from Mrs. Crowder here that death occurred about five-thirty. That conforms to the physical condition of the body. Mrs. Crowder phoned me at twenty of six. I called the police, then came over as soon as I could. I had an emergency patient, so I wasn’t able to get here until about six-fifteen. By then the police were already here.”

  “I see. I assume you didn’t move the body.”

  “Oh, of course not. I also instructed Mrs. Crowder over the phone not to touch anything.”

  I gave him an approving nod. “Was Mrs. Turnbell a regular patient of yours?”

  “Yes. Mrs. Crowder also, which I assume is why she called me.”

  “Any particular condition you were treating Mrs. Turnbell for?”

  He shook his head. “When I say she was a regular patient, I merely mean I was her family physician. Aside from an occasional viral infection, she was in generally good health, you see.”

  “Okay, Doctor. Thanks for your trouble.”

  “You’re welcome, Sergeant. I’m happy to be of service.”

  When he had left, I turned to the Crowders. “Just how close of neighbors are you people? Right next door?”

  Both nodded. The leathery Henry Crowder pointed toward the dining room. “On that side.”

  I looked at his wife. “It was you who discovered the body, Mrs. Crowder?”

  “Yes,” she said. “Henry wasn’t even home from work yet. He just came over to keep me company after the police got here.”

  “I see. Then actually you have no direct knowledge of events, Mr. Crowder?”

  “Just what Emma told me.”

  Turning back to Mrs. Crowder, I said, “Just how did you happen to discover the body so quickly after it happened?”

  “I was waiting for Joan to come home so I could show her a pattern I had bought. She always got home from work exactly at five-thirty. You could set your clock by it. She worked in a law office at Grand and Gravois as a legal secretary, you know. The lawyers all left at four-thirty, then she could close up when she wanted. She always left there exactly at five-fifteen, and it took fifteen minutes for her to drive home. So I was listening for her.”

  “Listening?” I said. “Don’t you mean watching?”

  She shook her head. “The fence is too high to watch. But I could always hear her come home because her garage door squeaks and bangs when it’s opened and closed, then I could also hear her heels click on the walk. Today when I heard her, I looked at my kitchen clock, and sure enough it was right at five-thirty. I gave her five minutes to get her coat off and get herself settled, then I came over.” She gave a little shiver. “He must have just barely left when I got here. If I hadn’t waited that five minutes, more than likely I’d be dead too.”

  “Possibly,” I agreed. “How did you come over? I mean out your alley gate and in by this one, or out your front door to this front door?”

  “Neither. Out the front way, down the walk between our houses, and in by the gate at the bottom of the back porch steps. Don’t ask me why I do that instead of going to Joan’s front door, which would be closer. I just always have. Maybe because we always ended up in the kitchen anyway for coffee.”

  “I take it you were on quite friendly terms with Mrs. Turnbell, then.”

  “Oh yes, we were close friends.”

  I said, “When you came in by that gate, the killer must have just left by the gate into the alley. Did you hear that gate click shut, or anyone running down the alley, or anything at all?”

  She shook her head. “Nothing. I went up the porch steps, and was just raising my fist to knock on the back door when I saw through the glass pane in the top of the door that Joan was lying on her back on the kitchen floor. I didn’t notice the knife in her until after I opened the door and went in. Then I almost fainted.” After a moment, she added with a touch of pride, “I didn’t scream, though, like they always do in the movies.”

  I didn’t deflate her ego by telling her that women in the movies scream at the sight of bodies because it’s written in the script, and in real life they’re more apt to go into silent shock. I just said, “What did you do?”

  “As soon as I could bring myself to move, I ran into the hall to phone Dr. Lischer.” Her tone became apologetic. “I think I knew she was dead the minute I saw that knife in her, so in the back of my mind I knew a doctor wasn’t going to do her any good. But I was so upset, all I could think of was getting Dr. Lischer over here.”

  “You did fine,” I assured her. “A doctor had to declare her dead anyway, so it saved bringing some intern all the way from City Hospital. You have any idea who killed her?”

  She looked surprised. “How would I know who the burglar was?”

  “You figure it was a burglar?”

  “What else? I heard one of those policemen say some drawers were dumped out.”

  “Yeah, he told me. I haven’t had a chance to check that out yet. I understand Mrs. Turnbell was separated from her husband.”

  Mrs. Crowder nodded, then her eyes suddenly widened. “You don’t think…”

  When she let it trail off, I said, “I haven’t the slightest idea. Who is he?”

  “Addison Turnbell. He works for the Marks Carburetor Company.”

  “As what?”

  “He’s just a worker on the assembly line.” She sniffed. “He’s always been way below Joan intellectually. She was a trained legal secretary, while he just worked with his hands. I never could understand why she was so crazy about him that she didn’t want to let him go.” After a pause she added, “I never said that to her, of course.”

  “Was it an amicable separation?” I asked.

  Henry Crowder said laconically. “Hardly.”

  Both of looked at him. When he said nothing more, I looked back at his wife.

  Emma Crowder said argumentatively, “Joan wasn’t giving him a hard time, Henry. If there was any bad feeling, it was on his side.”

  Henry said, “Maybe she wasn’t giving him a hard time, but she wasn’t turning him loose either.” To me he explained, “Ad has another girl he wants to marry, but Joan wouldn’t agree to a divorce. She wanted him back.”

  Mrs. Crowder rendered her opinion of this desire by emitting another sniff.

  After a short pause, her husband said, “Joan’s mother wanted to see it patched up, too. Last time I saw Ad, he told me she was bugging him w
ith phone calls nearly every night.”

  “He has Mrs. Phelps as snowed as he had Joan,” Emma Crowder said with disgust. “Even after the way he’s treated her daughter, she mothers him like he was her own son.”

  “Well, Ad has always liked Stella too,” Henry said. “He told me he wished she would stop bugging him to go back to Joan, but otherwise he’s as fond of her as before the breakup.

  “How did Mrs. Turnbell’s father feel about the separation?” I asked.

  Mrs. Crowder said. “He’s been dead for years. Mrs. Phelps lives alone somewhere out in the west end.”

  Taking out my notebook, I wrote the name Stella Phelps in it, then said, “I take it you don’t know her address?”

  “No, but Joan kept an address-and-phone-number book on the telephone table in the hall. It should be in there.”

  I wrote down the name Addison Turnbell and asked if either knew his address.

  “That should be in her book too,” Emma Crowder said. “He’s only a few blocks from here, over on Bates. He moved in with a bachelor friend named Lionel Short, who works at Marks with him.”

  I went to the phone table in the central hallway and found both addresses. After writing them in my notebook, I returned to the front room just as Harry Dodge came back in from outside.

  “Nothing,” he reported. “No one saw or heard anything at all.”

  A moment later Carl Budd came through the central hallway from the kitchen and made a similar report about the neighbors across the alley.

  I thanked the Crowders for their help and told them they could go home. As they were leaving, Art Ward from the lab showed up. I took him to the kitchen, told him what I wanted, left him there, and made a tour of the rest of the house while he was doing it.

  There were four rooms on the first floor, clustered around the central hall. At the back were a kitchen and a TV room, at the front the parlor and dining room. On one side of the hallway was a bathroom, on the other side were stairways to the basement and second floor.

  In the dining room the bottom drawer of the sideboard, containing nothing but linens, had been pulled out and was upended on the floor. In the TV room there was a combination bookcase-desk with a small drawer underneath the desk for stationery and writing implements. This drawer had also been pulled out and upended on the floor.

  Those two dumped drawers were the only evidence of disturbance on the first floor.

  I climbed to the second floor. There were two bedrooms and a second bath up there. There was no sign of disturbance.

  I went down to the basement and gave it a thorough looking-over. Nothing seemed to be out of place there.

  Going back upstairs, I checked the other drawers of the dining-room sideboard. One contained a set of sterling silver. Another contained a piggy bank full of dimes.

  Art was finished in the kitchen by the time I completed my tour. He reported that he had taken pictures of the body from three different angles and had dusted the butcher knife for prints. There had been none. He wanted to know if it was okay to remove the knife from the body.

  When I told him yes, he pulled it out, sealed it in a large manila envelope, marked it as evidence, and we both initialed it.

  I said. “There’s no sign of forced entry anywhere. Want to look at the locks on the front and back doors to see if either has been scratched by a picklock?”

  He went over to examine the back-door lock, then gave me a wry grin. “I thought that by now everybody had replaced these old-fashioned open-keyhole locks with modern ones. If this was a prowler job, you don’t have to look any further. You can buy a skeleton key in any dime store that will open this.”

  Nevertheless I had him examine the front-door lock also, then, in afterthought and just to be thorough, the lock to the basement’s outside door. Neither showed any sign of tampering.

  When I had him take photographs of the two dumped drawers, Art began to get it. “Hey,” he said, “this was a setup, wasn’t it? Not a very good one either.”

  “The killer didn’t take much time,” I agreed. “But then, maybe he didn’t have much.”

  When Art Ward left, I phoned for a morgue wagon and told Harry Dodge and Carl Budd to stand by until it came for the body. Then I drove over to the apartment where Addison Turnbell lived with his friend, Lionel Short.

  The apartment building was on Bates, about four short blocks from Joan Turnbell’s house on Dewey.

  Turnbell’s apartment was on the ground floor. When I rang the bell, a thin, rather handsome but jaded-looking man of around thirty answered the door. He was in shirt sleeves and had a folded newspaper in his hand.

  “Mr. Turnbell?” I asked.

  He shook his head. “His apartment-mate.” Over his shoulder he called, “It’s for you, Ad!” Returning to the easy chair from which my ring had roused him, he disappeared behind his newspaper.

  A muscular, blond, good-looking man of about the same age came from another room and over to the door. He also was in shirt sleeves, had an apron around his waist, and carried a dish towel.

  “My night to do the dishes,” he said in wry apology. “What can I do for you?”

  I showed him the badge clipped inside my wallet. “Sergeant Sod Harris of Homicide,” I said. “Mind if I come in?”

  His eyes widened and he stepped aside. I put away my wallet, moved past him and waited for him to close the door. The thin, jaded-looking man folded his newspaper, set it aside and stared at me from eyes as widespread as Turnbell’s.

  When I was first assigned to Homicide. I used to try to dream up ways to break the news of murder gently to the next of kin. Quite often, I soon learned, it wasn’t news, and even when it was, gentleness didn’t seem to soften the blow. Now, whenever I have the least suspicion that I’m not bringing any news, I just make the bald announcement and watch for reaction.

  I said, “Mr. Turnbell, your wife was murdered at five-thirty this afternoon.”

  Both men’s eyes became even wider. Turnbell asked on a high note, “Where?”

  “In her home.”

  “How?”

  “With a butcher knife. We think from that set hanging over the stove.”

  He licked his lips. “It happened in the kitchen, then, huh?”

  I nodded.

  “Have you caught the prowler?”

  I examined him curiously. “Now, why do you assume it was a prowler?”

  His eyes shifted away from me and he licked his lips again. In an oddly defensive tone he said, “Didn’t you say it happened at five-thirty?”

  “Uh-huh.”

  “Well, she always arrives home exactly at five-thirty. I used to set my watch by her. You also said it happened in the kitchen. I guess I just assumed she surprised a prowler when she walked in the back door.”

  He looked so guilty, I very nearly gave him the customary warning and arrested him on the spot. I held off only because I could hardly believe it was going to be that easy.

  It wasn’t, I discovered, when I asked him to account for his time. He could account for every second of it from the time he left work at four-thirty until right now. There was a space during the actual time of the murder when I momentarily thought I might break his alibi, but eventually that checked out too.

  It developed that he and his apartment-mate had left work together at four-thirty, had ridden home together on the South Grand bus, and had gotten there at ten after five. Neither had actually checked the time when they walked into the apartment, but both insisted it had to be within a minute or so of five-ten because they made the same bus trip every day and always arrived home at the same time.

  Lionel Short said, “I usually look at my watch when we get home, just out of curiosity to see how close to five-ten it is. And we’ve never been more than two minutes off. I didn’t loo
k today because the phone was ringing when we walked in, and I ran to answer it.” He emitted a cackling little laugh. “It was Ad’s girlfriend again.”

  I looked at Turnbell. “The girl you planned to marry if you could get your wife to agree to a divorce?”

  He looked startled. His apartment-mate emitted another cackling laugh, then explained it by saying, “I was being satiric, Sergeant. It was his mother-in-law. Ad spends half his life talking to her on the phone.”

  “Oh,” I said.

  Addison Turnbell said wryly, “Tonight we talked for forty minutes.” Then a thought occurred to him. “Hey, I must have been talking to her at the very moment Joan was killed.”

  “You were,” Short affirmed. “I did note the time when I returned from the supermarket, and you were still on the phone. It was exactly a quarter to six”

  I perked up my ears. That was when I got the momentary hope that I might be able to break Turnbell’s alibi. I said, “You weren’t here at five-thirty, Mr. Short?”

  “No. I went out to buy something for dinner. There’s a supermarket just a block away at Grand and Bates. I was gone from about a quarter after five until a quarter of six.”

  I contemplated him in silence for some moments before asking, “You sure Mr. Turnbell was still actually talking to his mother-in-law?”

  “Of course.” Then he caught the significance of the question and let out another of his cackling little laughs. “You mean maybe Ad tried to con me by talking into a dead phone? You don’t know Mrs. Phelps. Her voice on the telephone carries clear across the room. I could hear her still talking plainly enough even to tell you what she said. She was telling Ad that Joan realized she had been wrong to downgrade him for not having a better job, and had promised to look up to him and make him feel like the man of the house if he would come back. Then, a little later, I heard her say something about having a casserole in the oven, so she had to hang up.”