The Second Richard Deming Mystery MEGAPACK®

by Deming, Richard

  My hope almost flickered out, but not quite. There was still the possibility that Mrs. Phelps had phoned twice—or that Turnbell had called her back after the first conversation—and that there had been sufficient time between the two calls for Turnbell to make the round trip to the house on Dewey and back. However, that would have to wait until I talked to Mrs. Phelps.

  Taking out my notebook, I said to Addison Turnbell, “I’ll need the name of your girlfriend. The real one, I mean.”

  He stared at me in frowning silence.

  “The girl you plan to marry,” I prompted.

  “I know who you mean. What’s she got to do with this?”

  I shrugged. “Quite possibly nothing. On the other hand, maybe she got tired of waiting for you to talk your wife into a divorce, and decided to make you an eligible widower. I’ll get to her eventually, whether you give me her name or not. It will be simpler if you cooperate.”

  After glumly thinking this over, his face suddenly brightened and he said with an air of triumph, “She couldn’t have killed Joan. She works from four until midnight. She’s working right now.”

  “Oh? Where?”

  “At Martin’s Steakhouse on Kings Highway. She’s the hostess.”

  “I know the place,” I said. “Her name?”

  “Sylvia Baumgartner.”

  After writing down the name, I put away my notebook and said, “I guess that’s all for now. You’ll stay available, Mr. Turnbell?”

  “I wasn’t planning any out-of-town trips,” he said sourly.

  “If I want to contact you tomorrow, will you be at work?”

  He shook his head. “Tomorrow’s Saturday. I’ll be here.”

  “Fine.” I pulled open the door, then paused and turned. “One last thing. You don’t seem overly grieved at becoming a widower.”

  “I was trying to divorce the woman, Sergeant,” he said sardonically. “I wasn’t wishing her dead, but frankly I was fed up to the eyebrows with her. If you want me to pretend, I suppose I could squeeze out a few crocodile tears.”

  “Don’t bother on my account,” I said. I went out and pulled the door closed behind me.

  Sylvia Baumgartner turned out to be a sleek, brittle redhead in her mid-twenties. She also turned out to have been in full view of the restaurant manager, a dozen waitresses, and a varying number of customers from four p.m., when she started work, until I got there at eight.

  Mrs. Stella Phelps lived in an apartment in the 4300 block of Maryland. I got there about eight-thirty.

  The victim’s mother was a plump blonde in her mid-fifties with a pleasant but rather moonlike face. She came to the door red-eyed from crying, dabbing at her eyes with a handkerchief. It developed that Addison Turnbell had phoned her to break the news of her daughter’s death while I was en route.

  She invited me in, had me sit in an easy chair, and sank onto the sofa across from me. After giving her eyes another dab with her handkerchief, she squared her plump shoulders and smiled bravely.

  “I’m not cried out yet, Sergeant,” she said. “But I know you have a job to do, so I’ll postpone my grief until a more appropriate time. Joan was my only child, you know, and since my husband died ten years ago, she’s all I had left. Ad has always been as close to me as a son, but of course he’s no blood relation, and he and Joan were separated, so he may not think of me as his mother-in-law anymore. I’m sure they were going to get back together eventually, but now it’s too late.”

  She touched the handkerchief to her eyes again. I took advantage of the momentary pause in the flow of words to insert, “Your son-in-law says he was talking to you on the phone at the time your daughter was killed.”

  “Yes. When he phoned me he said you would probably ask about that.” She cocked a quizzical eyebrow at me. “Surely you don’t suspect him of killing Joan, do you?”

  “The spouse is always a routine suspect in a homicide, Mrs. Phelps. I haven’t accused Mr. Turnbell of anything. I’ll be quite happy to clear him as a suspect if you can confirm his alibi. Do you recall just what time you phoned him and how long you talked?”

  “I can tell you to the minute, Sergeant, because I had a casserole in the oven that had to come out at ten of six. I turned on the oven at five-ten, then immediately dialed Ad. That fellow he’s staying with answered—Lionel something. I never liked the man. I think he’s been a bad influence on Ad. There is always potential for trouble in a marriage when the husband continues his friendship with a chronic bachelor. The fellow has never been married, you know, which seems to me unnatural for a man past thirty. While Ad and Joan were still together, he was always coming around and luring Ad to go off and do bachelor things with him, such as bowling, shooting pool and playing poker. I think he’s the one who introduced Ad to that little tramp who caused the final breakup between Ad and my daughter.”

  I began to understand how the telephone conversation had lasted so long. When she paused for breath, I quickly slipped in, “When did your phone conversation end?”

  She looked surprised. “I thought I already told you. At ten of six. I kept checking my wristwatch because of the casserole, and when it was ten to six, I told Ad I had to hang up. It was just when I was beginning to make some progress, too. He had admitted he was still fond of Joan, and if things were different—if she stopped nagging him about going out with his friend Lionel, for instance—maybe the marriage could still work. I was really beginning to feel quite encouraged that they would patch things up. But maybe at that very moment the poor girl was being killed by the fiend who murdered her.”

  That was interesting. Addison Turnbell had said to me, “I was trying to divorce the woman, Sergeant. I wasn’t wishing her dead, but frankly I was fed up to the eyebrows with her.” Yet a couple of hours earlier he had hinted to his mother-in-law that reconciliation was still possible. Of course, that possibly could have been simply to shut her up.

  After a brief pause Mrs. Phelps opened her mouth to say something else, but I beat her to it by asking quickly, “What time does your wristwatch show right now?”

  Looking at it, she said, “Eight-forty-two. It keeps very good time. I haven’t set it for weeks, yet it’s always right with the time they announce on television.”

  She reminded me of the guy who, when you asked him the time, told you how to build a watch.

  My watch, which also keeps very good time, showed eight-forty-two as well. I got to my feet. “I guess that pretty well clears your son-in-law, Mrs. Phelps. Can you think of any enemies your daughter may have had who would resort to this?”

  “Joan?” she said, obviously shocked by the idea. “Why, everyone absolutely loved her. I’m sure it was just a prowler.”

  “Perhaps,” I conceded, and made my escape before she could get started on another monologue.

  I drove back to headquarters, set up a file folder on the case and typed the chronological record of events so far, beginning with the phone call from the Carondelet Precinct. When I read it over, the suspicion I’d had all along crystallized into certainty: Joan Turnbell had not been murdered by a prowler surprised in the midst of burglarizing the house, but had been deliberately murdered. That much was perfectly clear. Nothing else about the case was, though.

  When I got home shortly after midnight, Maggie was asleep. When I awakened in the morning, her side of the bed was empty. The bedside clock told me it was eight a.m.

  Ordinarily I sleep until at least nine when pulling the night trick, but today I felt the need for Maggie’s counsel. Getting up, I yelled for her to put the coffee on, and went into the bathroom to shower and shave.

  When I entered the kitchen, dressed, twenty minutes later, she was pouring my coffee. She gave me my usual good-morning kiss, still with considerable gusto even after twenty-five years of marriage, and asked what I wanted for breakfast.
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br />   “Just toast and conversation,” I said.

  She dropped bread into the toaster, put butter and jam in front of me, then sat across the table from me and cocked an inquiring eyebrow. “Problems?” she asked.

  “Just one. I’ve got a murder that was supposed to look like a prowler job, but wasn’t. The guy with the only motive I can unearth has an ironclad alibi.”

  “Tell me about it, and maybe we can break it,” she suggested.

  She wasn’t being egotistical. Over the years her hard common sense has unraveled a number of snarls that had me baffled.

  The toast popped up and I waited until she brought it to me before beginning. Then I described in detail everything that had happened the night before.

  “It couldn’t have been a prowler surprised in the act,” I concluded. “And not just because those two dumped drawers were so obviously staged. There was no way he could have avoided hearing her arrive home in plenty of time to scoot out the front door before she came in the back. If that noisy garage door hadn’t alerted him, he still couldn’t have missed hearing her steel heel cleats clicking along that fifty-foot stretch of concrete walk from the garage to the back porch. If the next-door neighbor heard both sounds, why couldn’t the killer?”

  “He could have been deaf,” Maggie suggested.

  I made an impatient gesture. “Who ever heard of a deaf burglar? It would be too much of an occupational hazard.”

  She grinned at me. “Okay, so he had to hear her coming. Which means he deliberately waited there in the kitchen, intending to kill her.”

  “Uh-huh.”

  “So what’s your problem?”

  I paused in the act of spreading jam on toast to stare at her. “My problem is that the only guy with a motive to kill her was four blocks away when she died, talking to her mother on the phone.”

  “While his apartment-mate was out shopping. Or says he was shopping.”

  I continued to stare at her.

  “His friend did it for him,” Maggie said. “While he deliberately kept his mother-in-law on the phone in order to give himself an alibi.”

  Setting down my toast, I folded my hands in my lap and peered at her until she blushed.

  “You don’t like it?” she asked.

  “Oh, I think it’s a remarkable theory,” I said with irony. “I’m curious about one small point, though. How did Turnbell induce his friend to commit murder for him?”

  “I can’t do all your work for you,” she informed me. “Maybe he paid him.”

  “Out of his salary putting together carburetors on an assembly line?”

  “Maybe Lionel Short wants somebody killed too,” she said with sudden inspiration. “And next time, Addison Turnbell is going to do it while Short makes himself an alibi.”

  I gave my head a pitying shake. “You’re losing your grip, light of my life. If there were collusion between Turnbell and Short to murder the woman, why would Short admit being gone from the apartment at the time of the murder? They could have alibied each other simply by swearing neither was out of the other’s sight.”

  She blushed again, then made a face at me. “Well, nobody’s perfect.”

  “He could have hired a killer, though,” I said thoughtfully. “A pro, I mean.”

  “Out of his salary putting together carburetors on an assembly line?” she mimicked me.

  I picked up my toast again. The phone rang and Maggie got up to answer it. She caught it on the kitchen extension, which was a wall phone above the counter next to the stove. I was facing that way.

  After saying hello, she cupped a palm over the mouthpiece, assumed a martyred expression and said in a low voice. “Grace Fenwick.”

  Grace was one of Maggie’s more long-winded friends. I finished my toast to the accompaniment of only occasional monosyllabic comments by Maggie and the steady drone of Grace’s high-pitched voice coming from the phone.

  I drained my coffee cup and was just getting ready to get up for more when Maggie gestured me to remain seated, picked up the pot from the stove and carried it over to the table to fill my cup.

  “How’d you get away from old gabby so fast?” I inquired.

  Maggie placed a finger to her lips and tossed her head in the direction of the phone. Looking that way, I saw that she had not hung it up, but had merely laid it down on the counter.

  In a low voice Maggie said, “She’ll never know I’m gone. She never stops talking long enough for an answer. But she might hear you when you talk so loud.”

  She went back to the phone. I gazed at her for a time, then left my second cup of coffee untouched, went into the bedroom and put on my necktie and suit coat.

  Maggie was still listening to the telephone when I gave her a kiss on the free ear and whispered into it, “You haven’t lost your grip after all, doll. You solved it.” I continued on out.

  On my way down to Carondelet I did a considerable amount of thinking. I knew I had a solved case, but proving it was going to be a problem.

  I had the advantage that Addison Turnbell hadn’t seemed very bright. Actually he had been more lucky than clever, because his murder scheme had been pretty harebrained. It had contained so many possible pitfalls that its working could be ascribed to nothing less than improbable luck. His mother-in-law could have asked a question that required an answer; his apartment-mate could have returned before he got back; Emma Crowder could have arrived thirty seconds earlier and have seen him leaving by the back gate.

  Anyone stupid enough to devise such a murder plan might be stupid enough to fall for a bluff, I decided.

  It wasn’t quite nine a.m. when I rang the apartment bell. Addison Turnbell himself answered the door. He was in pajamas and a robe, but apparently had been up for a time, because his hair was combed and he looked freshly shaved. He greeted me without enthusiasm, but without surprise either, and invited me in.

  “Where’s your friend?” I inquired as he closed the door behind me.

  “Still sleeping. He went out on the town last night after you left us. Have a seat?”

  “No, thanks. Mr. Turnbell, you are under arrest for investigation, suspicion of homicide.” I took out the little card and read him his constitutional rights.

  When I finished, he gazed at me with his mouth open for some time before finally saying in a high voice. “You’re arresting me for what?”

  “For murdering your wife,” I explained. “I think it must have been a spur-of-the-moment thing instead of something you elaborately planned, because the situation that developed was too accidental. All of a sudden you found yourself on the phone with a woman who talked so interminably that she probably wouldn’t miss you if you left her talking to herself even for as long as fifteen minutes. Your apartment-mate was off to the store, so he wouldn’t know you had left the apartment. And your wife was due home in a very few minutes. I imagine you still have a key to the house. You got there just before your wife did, hurriedly upended a couple of drawers in an attempt to make it look like a burglary, stabbed her as she walked in, wiped off your prints and took off for here again. By walking fast you probably made the round trip in no more than ten minutes.”

  “You’re crazy,” he said huskily, licking his lips. “You’ll never prove it.”

  “Oh, but I have proved it. Not by your mother-in-law, because she still thinks she was talking to you all the time, instead of to herself. Your wife’s neighbor across the alley happened to be trying out a brand-new Polaroid camera from his back porch just as you came out the back door, and he noted the time was exactly five thirty-two p.m. I have the print right here.”

  As I reached for my breast pocket, he broke for the kitchen, presumably meaning to flee by the back door. I don’t know where he thought he was going in pajamas, a robe and slippers, but it became an academic question whe
n he tripped over a kitchen chair and sprawled flat on his stomach.

  I put a knee on his back and cuffed his wrists behind him before I helped him to his feet.

  PREMARITAL AGREEMENT

  Originally published in Alfred Hitchcock’s Mystery Magazine, July 1973.

  When Irma married Stanton Carr, the premarital agreement hadn’t seemed important. While she wasn’t exactly in love with her former boss, she liked him well enough and she expected the marriage to last. At thirty she had long since given up her dream of a romantic Prince Charming and was willing to settle for luxury without romance. She had every intention of being a good wife.

  The agreement provided that in the event Irma ever instituted legal proceedings to dissolve the marriage, she would claim no community property, no alimony, and would accept a lump-sum financial settlement of $2,000 for each year the marriage had lasted as a full and complete discharge of all Stanton Carr’s obligations to her. His lawyer had explained to Irma that the agreement would not apply if Stanton brought such an action, but only if she herself decided to end the marriage. Also, if she and Stanton had any children, the agreement would not affect any child-support claims she made, even if she instituted a divorce action herself.

  It was understandable why Stanton insisted on such an agreement. His first wife, also a former secretary, had nicked him for a settlement of nearly a million dollars after only two years of marriage. Even though that had been ten years before Irma became his secretary, he was still a little marriage-shy. It had struck Irma as rather silly for Stanton to insist on her signing such an agreement, but he was too skittish about marriage for her to risk refusing.

  Signing really didn’t bother her much. She had no intention of ever ending the marriage, and her rights were fully protected in the event he decided to divorce her. The latter seemed inconceivable to her anyway. Although he was quite a handsome man in a distinguished, gray-haired way, she was fifteen years his junior, extremely attractive, and he was evidently quite crazy about her.