The Second Richard Deming Mystery MEGAPACK®

by Deming, Richard

  She stiffened again. “Kidnapped! They put you in jail forever for that!”

  “Only if it’s a real kidnapping, honey. If we faked a kidnapping and it backfired, the most we could be tagged for is attempted fraud; and it seems unlikely to me a man would push that against his own wife. You know your husband better than I do—would he push charges against either of us if we got caught trying to shake him down by pretending you’d been kidnapped?”

  After thinking his words over, she shook her head. “I’m not sure exactly what he would do. He might kick me out, but then again he might even forgive me. He’s pretty crazy about me. One thing I’m sure he wouldn’t do is press charges, because he would want to hush it up. Stanton is quite vain, and he couldn’t stand the thought of appearing ridiculous to the whole world.”

  “Then there’s no risk,” he said. “Let’s do it.”

  She had some reservations, but eventually he convinced her there was absolutely no danger, only a little embarrassment if they got caught. Once she finally agreed to go along, the discussion turned to how much ransom to ask. He suggested they try for a quarter of a million.

  “Oh, Stanton would never go for that much,” Irma said in a positive tone. “I don’t think we should ask for more than a hundred thousand.”

  “I thought you said he’s crazy about you. The way this is going to be presented to him, he either pays off or gets you back dead. You think he’ll set a limit on what your life is worth?”

  “No, of course not, but you have to understand how Stanton’s mind works. He isn’t in the least cheap, but he is quite calculating about major expenditures. He makes sure he always gets full value for his money. When he buys a new car, for instance, he shops and shops until he gets absolutely the best possible deal.”

  “What’s that got to do with anything like this?”

  “I’m just trying to explain how I think he will react to a ransom demand. You would class that as a major expenditure, wouldn’t you?”

  “I guess,” he admitted. “So how would he react?”

  “That would probably depend on the amount asked. Up to a certain sum—my guess is a hundred thousand—I suspect he would go along with all instructions without trying to set any traps, and maybe without even informing the police. He would figure it was worth that much to get me back without risking antagonizing the kidnapper. If you asked much more than what he considered a reasonable amount, he would start balancing the risk to my safety against the money. It isn’t that he doesn’t love me; it’s just that he also loves money.”

  “You mean he would refuse to pay a larger amount?”

  “Oh, he probably would pay anything you asked, but if you ask too much, he’s going to do his best to arrange things so there is at least a chance to recover his money. Probably he would call in the FBI, have our phone tapped and set all sorts of traps for the kidnapper. I just think it would be safer to set our sights low. Can’t you start your machine shop on a hundred thousand?”

  “I could probably set up a pretty fair operation with that for a down payment,” he admitted. “Okay, you ought to know how your husband ticks. We’ll ask for only a hundred grand.”

  * * * *

  Gary took a week to work out the details of a plan. Then he spent a whole evening thoroughly briefing Irma. The following day they put it into effect.

  Just before noon Irma stopped by her husband’s office. Stanton Carr was dictating to his private secretary when she arrived.

  Marie Sloan, a pert brunette of about twenty-five, was a relatively new secretary, the previous one having quit to join the Peace Corps. Stanton Carr always hired pretty secretaries, which partly accounted for his having married two of them, and Marie was no exception.

  Marie, who as yet didn’t know her boss’ wife well enough to be fully at ease with her, immediately rose to leave when Irma came in.

  “Don’t let me interrupt,” Irma said quickly, preferring to have the girl hear what she had to say too. “I’ll be only a minute. Keep your seat, Miss Sloan.”

  The girl glanced at her employer, then reseated herself when he nodded. “What is it, dear?” he asked Irma.

  “I’m supposed to meet Hazel Ellison for lunch, and I’ve discovered my wallet isn’t in my purse. Can you spare a twenty-dollar bill?”

  Stanton Carr drew a twenty from his wallet and handed it to her. “That all, dear?”

  “Yes, thanks. You can get back to work now.” She started for the door, then paused and turned. “The oddest thing happened, Stanton. A masher followed my car all the way down Wilshire from Beverly Hills. I noticed him in the rear-view mirror shortly after I left home.”

  Her husband frowned. “You sure it wasn’t just somebody going in the same direction and traveling at the same speed?”

  “Positive. En route I stopped at DeWitt’s Department Store. That’s when I discovered I didn’t have my wallet. When I drove on, the same car was behind me again. It followed me right to the entrance to the plant parking lot, then drove on by when I turned in.”

  Stanton Carr’s frown deepened. “How do you know it was a masher? Did he make any overt move, such as honking his horn at you?”

  “No, but what else could it have been?”

  “I haven’t the faintest idea, but I don’t like it. Did you get a good look at him?”

  Irma shook her head. “All I could tell was that he was a heavyset man. I couldn’t see him well enough in the rear-view mirror to make out his face. But he was driving a black Ford and I managed to catch his license number as he drove by the parking lot entrance.”

  “Good. Give it to me and I’ll have the police check the man out.”

  “It was FHB-548.”

  Carr glanced at his secretary, who jotted the number in her notebook. “I’ll find out who your masher is,” he said to Irma. “I have a friend in the Department of Motor Vehicles.”

  Irma was quite satisfied with the way things had gone. When the black Ford was discovered abandoned on the plant parking lot, it would be assumed the mythical heavyset man had waited for Irma on the lot, then had abducted her in her own car. It shouldn’t take long to find the car, because Irma was fairly certain of how Hazel Ellison would react when she failed to meet her for lunch. First Hazel would phone her home, and Mrs. Felton would tell her Irma had left some time ago to meet her. Then she would phone Stanton at his office to find out if Irma had stopped by there. That call would most certainly cause Stanton to investigate the parking lot.

  Finding the car there would lead nowhere even after its registration was traced, because it was a stolen car.

  Gary’s plan for getting the Ford on the lot had been both clever and simple. In the middle of the previous night he had stolen it from an all-night parking lot and had left it for Irma in a previously designated spot on a side street a short distance from the plant. Irma had simply parked her own car behind the stolen one and had driven the Ford onto the lot. When she left the plant, she walked back to her own car.

  Gary’s plan not only lent credence to the story Irma would eventually have to tell about her abduction, but also gave him an ironclad alibi in the remote event that he was ever suspected of being the kidnapper. All the time the heavyset man was supposed to be following Irma’s car, Gary was working in the Plate Shop in the middle of fifty other workers.

  Irma drove to Griffith Park, parked the car in the zoo area, took a brunette wig and some dark sunglasses from the glove compartment and put them on. She walked to the nearest bus stop and caught a bus going to South Los Angeles.

  Gary had reasoned that when Irma’s car was eventually found in Griffith Park, it would be assumed the kidnapper had left his own vehicle parked there, had forced Irma to drive him to it, then had switched cars.

  Irma got off the bus at 24th Street and walked the three blocks to the motel wh
ere Gary had rented a light-housekeeping unit. No one was in sight when she let herself in with the key Gary had given her.

  The unit consisted of a living room, bedroom and bath, with a kitchen alcove off the living room. Gary had stocked the refrigerator and a cabinet with both food and liquor.

  Irma took off her wig and sunglasses, fixed herself lunch, then sat down to watch television.

  Gary showed up at six. He reported developments as he mixed a pair of salty dogs at a counter.

  “There’s both good and bad news,” he said. “I’ll give you the good first. My phone call to your husband went beautifully. I called his office from the public phone booth in the plant foyer during the three p.m. coffee break. I made my voice so husky, even you wouldn’t have recognized it. Your friend Hazel must have phoned him that you never showed for lunch, because he didn’t sound surprised to hear from me. He sounded as though he had been expecting such a call. He agreed to pay the hundred grand, but first wanted proof that you were all right. I told him to be at home at ten tonight and he would get a phone call from you.”

  “What’s the bad news?”

  “Your guess that he’d pay up to a hundred grand without even calling the cops was wrong. I stretched my coffee break so I could check his reaction to my call by keeping an eye on his office door. Approximately fifteen minutes after I made the call, about half the LAPD walked into his office.”

  Irma frowned. “The news hasn’t gotten hold of it. I’ve been watching every TV newscast.”

  “Well, the cops must have declared a news blackout, but they’re sure as the devil in on it. It doesn’t really matter, though. There’s no way they can set a trap with the delivery method I’ve worked out for the ransom money.”

  At nine-thirty p.m. they left the motel together, Irma wearing her black wig and sunglasses. Gary drove up to the Boyle Heights district to make the phone call, so that in the event it was traced, it would give no clue to the section of town where they were actually hiding out.

  They called from an outdoor public phone booth, squeezing into it together. Irma dialed the number. Stanton Carr answered instantly.

  Making her voice tearful, Irma said, “Honey, I’m allowed to speak to you for only a minute, and I can’t tell you where I am or answer any questions. I haven’t been harmed, but there’s a gun in my back and the man says he’ll kill me if you don’t pay. Please do as they say.”

  “I will, dear,” he assured her. “Don’t worry.”

  Gary Sommers took the phone from her hand and growled into it in a husky, disguised voice, “Okay, there’s your proof that she’s still alive, Carr. Now, here’s what you do. When the banks open tomorrow morning, you get a hundred grand in used twenty-dollar bills and put the money in a suitcase. Take the suitcase to your office and wait for the mail delivery. Further instructions will arrive in the mail.”

  He hung up.

  As they got back in the car, Irma said, “I thought you planned to give all instructions by phone.”

  “I do. That mail bit was just to keep the cops from tapping his office phone. I’ll be phoning his office again from the foyer phone at the plant, and I can’t chance a trace. That’s what got stupid Captain McCloud in trouble, phoning his girlfriend an hour after his wife’s funeral. The post provost marshal had put a tap on her phone.”

  “Who’s Captain McCloud?” she asked, totally at sea.

  Pulling away from the curb, he said casually, “My Army C.O. It was his stupidity that ended my Army career. The provost marshal got the idiot idea that he’d paid me to murder his wife, mainly because he withdrew five grand from the bank the day before I deposited four thousand. I have no idea what he did with the money, but I wouldn’t be surprised if he did hire somebody to kill his wife, because he was certainly glad to get rid of her. But it wasn’t me. I won my money in a crap game.”

  “They accused you of murder?” she asked in a shocked voice.

  “They investigated me for murder,” he said. “They never accused me of anything. There wasn’t enough evidence to make a case against either of us, but the idiot provost marshal wouldn’t let it go. So the Army did what it usually does when it decides soldiers are guilty of something, but can’t prove it. It brought pressure on him to resign his commission and for me to request discharge. They gave him the choice of resigning or being shipped to Greenland. They busted me and put me on permanent garbage detail.”

  “But you didn’t have anything to do with it, did you?” she asked.

  He smiled sideways at her. “Do I look like a killer?”

  Smiling back, she said, “You look like a lover.”

  Gary didn’t stay when they got back to the motel. In case he needed an alibi later, he wanted to be seen as much as possible, while Irma was missing, by people who knew him. He planned to drive to a bar in his own neighborhood where he was well known and stay until the closing hour of two a.m.

  Gary didn’t reappear at the motel until the following midnight. Meantime there still had been nothing at all on the news about the kidnapping; very hush-hush.

  “Get your wig and glasses on and let’s go,” he said as soon as he was inside.

  “Is it over?” she asked.

  “Uh-huh. There’s a hundred grand in a suitcase in the trunk of my car.”

  As she donned her disguise, she asked. “What about all the food left here?”

  “I’ll clear it out tomorrow,” he said. “Rent’s paid until the end of the week. Hurry it up.”

  When they were in the car, he headed south.

  “Where are we going?” she asked.

  “I’m going to take you to Long Beach.”

  “Oh? Why so far? I thought you were just going to turn me loose somewhere in L.A. I’m not supposed to know where I was held anyway, being blindfolded all the time.”

  “Slight change in plans,” he said.

  They drove in silence for a time. Presently she asked, “Any trouble about the pickup?”

  “Not a bit. Matter of fact, I was able to simplify the original pickup plan considerably.”

  “Oh? How?”

  “I’ll tell you when we get where we’re going,” he said. “Right now I want to think about all the lovely money in the trunk.”

  It was nearly one a.m. when he parked the car at a deserted stretch of shore in Long Beach.

  “Why such an isolated spot?” she asked.

  “Why not?” he asked. “Come on, let’s walk down to look at the water.”

  He sounded as though he had romance in mind. The timing surprised her, but she was enough in love to be always willing. Agreeably she climbed from the car. It was a warm, pleasant night with a moonless but clear sky studded brightly with stars.

  She took his hand as they strolled toward the water. “You were going to tell me how you simplified the pickup plan,” she said.

  “Oh, yeah. When I phoned your husband this morning, he threw me a curve. He said, ‘I was hoping you would phone instead of write. I am in my private office alone, and no one is listening in. How would you like to make two hundred thousand instead of just one?’ When I asked how, he reeled off a telephone number and asked me to call it at seven this evening. ‘The phone won’t be tapped and we can talk safely,’ he said. ‘I don’t like this one because this call is going through a switch-board.’ I said okay, I’d call him at the number he gave me. When I hung up, I called information, said I was a cop and asked the name of the subscriber for that number. Turned out to be Marie Sloan.”

  “My husband’s secretary?” Irma said in surprise.

  “Uh-huh. That, plus the offer of an extra hundred grand, gave me a couple of clues to the puzzle. So I really wasn’t very surprised when I phoned him at seven and heard his proposition. I guess he’s decided to marry another of his secretaries. The extra hundred g
rand was to kill you.”

  They had reached the water’s edge. They stopped and she turned to stare at him in the darkness.

  “It’s foolproof from his point of view,” Cary said. “The cops listened in on our call from that phone booth, so there’s no question in their minds about it being an actual kidnapping. Kidnappers quite often kill their victims after collecting the ransom.”

  “Why, that beast!” Irma said indignantly. “And to think I refused even to talk about killing that—”

  “Yeah. Tactical error on your part. After his proposition, there wasn’t much point in going through all the rigmarole I’d planned for the payoff. I just had him leave it in an alley while I watched from across the street. I wasn’t afraid he’d try to set a trap, but I still didn’t want him to see me. The second pickup will be made just as simply.”

  “The second one?” she said, her eyes widening. She withdrew her hand from his.

  “Sure. He’ll pay it. He wouldn’t want to risk an anonymous note to the cops from the kidnapper explaining who suggested the killing, and I’ve already told him that’s what will happen if he tries to get out of paying the second hundred grand.”

  Her eyes grew wider and wider. Even in the darkness she could see his expression. This time she would have had to give a different answer to the question he had asked her twice. She had never before seen anyone who looked more like a killer.

  GUARDIAN OF THE HEARTH

  Originally published in Mike Shayne Mystery Magazine, December 1979.

  It was exactly three p.m. when the door chimes sounded, because the oven timer bell went off at the same moment. Coco Joe, as usual, made a beeline for the front door, barking his head off. Josephine was considerably longer getting there. She first shut off the oven, lifted the cookies from the oven with a pot holder, set them on top of the stove and hung up the pot holder. At sixty-five she was still slim and trim, but she no longer hurried.