The Second Richard Deming Mystery MEGAPACK®

by Deming, Richard

  Therefore, after finding what seemed to be an ideal location for her needs she did a considerable amount of checking before signing the lease. She made the same thorough kind of investigation she was used to making in her welfare cases. From the police she learned that the section of the Boyle Heights district where the duplex was located was a low-crime area. From nearby residents she found out it was a quiet neighborhood, and of course she called on and became acquainted with the tenants in the other half of the duplex. John and Angela Garrett were in their early thirties and had no children. They did have a cat, however—a Siamese tom named Edward—which Loretta considered a plus. John Garrett was a stolid, chunky man with a rather dull personality, but he was cordial enough. He drove a bread truck for a living. Angel, a plump, placid woman with dyed blonde hair, was a clerk in a department store.

  During her brief visit Loretta was unable to unearth any intellectual interests the couple shared with her. John’s main interest seemed to be watching sports on television, and Angela’s seemed to be situation comedies. But they qualified in her judgment as acceptable neighbors. They seemed clean, their house was neat, and they were unlikely to have loud parties; they told her they seldom entertained.

  It wasn’t until after she had signed the two-year lease and moved in that Loretta found out about Friday nights.

  * * * *

  That was the night the Garretts drank. Every Friday. It always started peacefully enough, but after a time they became quarrelsome, and it always ended in a shouting match. The wall between the two units was so thin Loretta could hear every word if she wanted to. As it happened, she preferred not to, and deliberately tried not to listen. But it was impossible not to hear the louder shouts, and some of them were so vulgar they caused Loretta to blush. And Mrs. Garrett had the greater capacity for obscenity.

  Loretta believed in being a good neighbor. The first two Friday nights she simply endured in silence. But the third week the couple became so loud she felt some protest was justified. She took her broom from the closet and pounded on the connecting wall with the handle.

  Her thumping brought momentary silence from the other side. Then Angela Garrett yelled through the wall, “How would you like that broom shoved up your nose, you old bat?”

  Shocked, Loretta put her broom away and made no further protest when the fighting resumed in a somewhat lower tone. But she was even more shocked the next morning when she answered a tap on her back door to find Angela with a cup in her hand and a friendly smile on her face.

  “Hi,” the woman said cheerily. “Can I borrow a cup of sugar?”

  Flabbergasted, Loretta murmured, “Of course,” let the woman in, and filled her cup with sugar.

  “Thanks,” Angela said, still cheery. “I’ll return it this afternoon as soon as I come back from the store.”

  “No hurry,” Loretta assured her, still not recovered.

  Shortly after lunch John Garrett returned the sugar. Shamefaced, he asked if Loretta would excuse their noise of the previous night.

  “Of course,” she said, equally embarrassed.

  “Don’t pay any attention when my wife yells like that,” he advised her. “She does that when she’s had one too many. She doesn’t even remember it, which is why she sent me back with the sugar. I didn’t tell her how she yelled through the wall until after she’d been over here this morning, and now she’s ashamed to come back.”

  “Please tell her not to be,” Loretta said, now understanding that morning’s astonishing visit. “I like to get along with my neighbors and I hope there won’t be a strain between us.”

  “There won’t be as far as we’re concerned,” he assured her, relieved. “I’ll tell my wife there are no hard feelings.”

  “Please do.”

  That was the beginning of what developed into the oddest relationship Loretta had ever had. Eventually, during a particularly violent Friday-night argument, Loretta again risked pounding on the connecting wall with her broom handle. Again Angela Garrett screamed through the wall. Again the next day Angela acted as friendly as ever, as though nothing had happened.

  This time Mr. Garrett made no apology, though he looked a bit uncomfortable when Loretta happened to encounter him in the back yard the next morning. As weekly apologies would only have embarrassed Loretta, she was just as happy that nothing was said and a tacit understanding developed between her and Garrett that Friday nights would simply not be mentioned.

  There also developed a kind of routine on those Friday nights when the noise became unbearable to Loretta. She would rap on the wall and Angela would shout some insult through it. Often the fighting would stop, however, and even if it didn’t it usually resumed at a lower decibel level. Loretta ignored the insults and on Saturday mornings she and Angela would be on neighborly terms again.

  One Friday night Loretta was seated at her kitchen table having a cup of tea when the weekly fight started in the kitchen next door.

  She heard Angela scream, “Who are you calling a mess?”

  “You!” her husband yelled back. “Go look in a mirror. You’re at least twenty pounds overweight.”

  “So you’re Burt Reynolds?”

  “Compared to you I’m a Greek god!” he shouted.

  Loretta was contemplating getting out her broom but unaccountably, there was a long period of dead silence. Eventually, from the tenor of the argument when it again resumed, she realized the respite was because Mrs. Garrett had been out of the room, presumably in the bedroom dressing to go out.

  John Garrett said loudly, “Where do you think you’re going?”

  “To one of those singles bars,” Angela spat back. “I want to see if other men think I’m such a mess!”

  “You aren’t going to any singles bar at this time of night!” her husband said even more loudly.

  “I’ll go anywhere I please any time I want!” Angela shouted. “You just try to stop me!”

  “You think I can’t?” he shouted back, and there was the sound of a chair overturning.

  Angela screamed, “You dare touch me and I’ll have you in jail!”

  Loretta was not alarmed that physical violence was about to erupt. Mrs. Garrett often screamed such warnings at her husband, but so far as Loretta knew he had never struck her. Their fighting was strictly verbal. There was always a first time, however, and just in case Mr. Garrett was on the verge of losing control of himself Loretta thought it would be wise to let him know she heard the argument. Opening the broom closet, she took out the broom and banged the handle against the wall three times.

  There was momentary silence, then Angela Garrett yelled, “Mind your own business, you old witch, or I’ll be over there to mind it for you!”

  The threat left Loretta unruffled. Having attracted their attention, she was content to put the broom away and return to her tea.

  John Garrett’s voice thundered, “You step out that door and you won’t get back in!”

  “Who wants to come back to this stinking place?” Angela yelled at the top of her voice.

  The back door slammed so hard it made Loretta wince. Getting up, she peered out her kitchen window. It was quite dark, about 9:30, but Angela had turned on the light in their open carport. As she climbed into the car, Loretta could see that she was dressed up.

  The engine started and the car backed into the driveway. Leaving the carport light on, Angela roared away. Loretta felt alarmed concern, wondering if the woman was sober enough to drive.

  * * * *

  A half hour later Loretta was watching the 10:00 news on television when her doorbell rang. When she peered through the peephole and saw it was John Garrett, she opened the door.

  He was in shirtsleeves, and he was half drunk.

  He spoke with the careful enunciation of an intoxicated man striving to conceal his condi
tion. “Sorry to bother you, Miss Beam, but I wondered if my wife was over here.”

  In thirty years of welfare work Loretta had developed an instinct for detecting lies that was little short of miraculous. She knew instantly that her next-door neighbor was fully aware that his wife wasn’t with her.

  “No,” she said politely. “Why would she be here?”

  “Well, we had a little argument and she walked out. I thought maybe—” He let it trail off.

  The man certainly must have heard his wife say she was going to a singles bar, Loretta thought. He must also have heard her drive off. What was his purpose in this pretense?

  She said, “I thought I heard her shout something about going to a singles bar, Mr. Garrett.”

  “Oh, sure—I heard that. But I thought she was just trying to make me jealous. I thought maybe she ducked in here, figuring on letting me stew for a while. I never thought she’d do anything as dangerous as actually going to one of those places.”

  “Dangerous, Mr. Garrett?”

  “Well, both of those stocking-killer victims were picked up in bars.”

  Loretta recalled the two unsolved murders some months back. The victims, both women, had been found in their own cars, parked near MacArthur Park, strangled with nylon stockings that were still knotted around their throats. The investigation in each case had disclosed that the victim was last seen leaving a tavern with a man who had just picked her up. Unfortunately, in neither case had anyone been able to give a clear description of the man.

  Loretta said, “The odds against your wife running into the stocking killer must be rather long, Mr. Garrett.”

  “Maybe, but it could happen. I’m really worried.”

  Loretta’s built-in lie detector told her he wasn’t actually in the least worried. The chilling thought occurred to her that perhaps he was making such a point of his worry because he planned to hunt down his wife, strangle her with a stocking, and let the stocking killer take the blame.

  Instantly and a trifle guiltily she dismissed the thought as both melodramatic and impractical. Angela hadn’t mentioned to which bar she was going. Her husband would never be able to look for her in every bar in Los Angeles—even it he did have homicidal intentions.

  She said. “I really don’t think you have much to worry about, Mr. Garrett. She’ll get home safely, I’m sure.”

  “I hope so,” he said with patent insincerity. “I’m sorry we got so loud that you had to knock on the wall again, Miss Beam.

  “I’m sorry I had to,” she replied with the old embarrassment.

  “Did you hear the whole fight?” he inquired. “What it was about, I mean?”

  Her embarrassment evaporated, to be replaced by polite chilliness. “I try not to eavesdrop, Mr. Garrett. I make a conscious effort not to listen to what is said when you and Mrs. Garrett have your—disagreements. It isn’t the words but the volume that sometimes causes me to knock on the wall.”

  “I see. Then you don’t know what it was about. But you did hear Angela say where she was going?”

  For some reason she could not divine, the man wanted to know exactly how well she could hear through the wall, and also how much attention she paid to what was said.

  She said, “Mr. Garrett, I probably could have heard every word of your—discussion—if I had listened. But I’m not interested in your personal affairs. I simply don’t listen.”

  “I see,” he said again. “Well, I’m sorry I disturbed you, Miss Beam. Good night.”

  As she closed and relocked her door, Loretta wondered what in the world that had been all about. She also wondered why it had taken him half an hour after his wife left to come over and inquire about her.

  A possible answer occurred to her. Perhaps he had been sitting home plotting what to say to Loretta and working out the details of some devious plan. Despite her conclusion that he would never be able to find his wife, even if he did have homicide in mind, she couldn’t dispel the irrational worry that he had exactly that in mind.

  That worry prevented her from sleeping well. The more she thought about it the more certain she became that he was planning something. She could sense it as surely as she used to sense that a welfare client was about to take a job and not report it.

  The next morning she was relieved to discover she had worried needlessly. Angela Garrett had returned home safely. She came over, suffering nothing worse than a hangover, to tell Loretta that she and her husband would be out of town for the rest of the weekend and to ask her to feed the cat. When Loretta said she would be glad to, the woman gave her an extra key to her back door and told her the cat’s dish and the cat food would be next to the electric can opener on the kitchen counter.

  * * * *

  The Garretts must have returned very late Sunday night because Loretta didn’t hear them come in, but she heard them depart for work on Monday morning. They were gone before she remembered the key to their back door. She reminded herself to return it that evening, but it slipped her mind.

  The following Friday the Garretts had their worst, longest fight since Loretta had moved in. It started about 8:00 and by 8:30 it had developed into a shouting match. At 9:00, having put up with a hideous half hour of abusive screaming without pause, Loretta pounded on the wall with her broom. There was the usual momentary silence, then Angela shouted, “Some night I’ll make you eat that broom, you old hag!”

  Undisturbed, Loretta put away her broom and started to make herself a pot of tea. The fight next door continued, but at a subdued decibel level. At about 9:30, however, it got loud again.

  Loretta was still in the kitchen, washing her teacup and teapot, when she heard John Garrett call from the kitchen next door, “You think that same guy you claim bought you all the drinks last Friday will be at the Coed Club again tonight?”

  “What do you mean, claim?” Angela called back petulantly from the front room.

  “Aw, nobody bought a mess like you any drinks!”

  There was an outraged yell that started in the front room and ended in the kitchen. “You think I made that fellow up?” Angela shouted. “Well, maybe tonight I’ll just accept his invitation to go to breakfast after the place closes!”

  “You can forget about that!” he said loudly. “You’re not stepping out of this house tonight!”

  “That’s what you think, buster!”

  During the ensuing silence, which Loretta assumed was because Angela was in the bedroom dressing to go out, she wondered why Mr. Garrett had deliberately goaded his wife into going back to the singles bar. There was no question in her mind that it had been deliberate. She had heard the calculation in his voice.

  She started to become uneasy. Perhaps Mrs. Garrett had survived last Friday night only because her husband didn’t know where to find her. But apparently she had since then not only told him where she had gone but what had happened there.

  In a few minutes the silence was broken by John Garrett insisting, “You’re not going to that club—and that’s final!”

  His wife’s only answer was the slam of the back door. Again Loretta peered out her kitchen window and saw Angela climb into the car and drive off, leaving the carport light on.

  Five minutes later Loretta’s doorbell rang. Again it was John Garrett. This time he was dressed in a suit and necktie. Although he had obviously been drinking, he didn’t seem as drunk as he had been the previous Friday.

  “I’m sorry to bother you, Miss Beam,” he said. “I suppose you heard Angela storm out again.”

  “Yes,” Loretta admitted.

  “She’s off to that singles bar again.”

  Loretta waited.

  He fingered his necktie.

  “I figure what’s good for the goose is good for the gander—I’m going out too.”

  “Your philosophy is no
ne of my business,” Loretta said distantly.

  “No, I guess not,” he conceded. “What I came over for—I wonder if you’d do me a favor?”

  “Such as?”

  “In case Angela decides to come back and wonders where I am, will you tell her I’m at the Friendly Tavern? That’s the one a couple of blocks from here, over on Pennsylvania Avenue.”

  “You expect her to come back?” Loretta asked.

  “I don’t know. But if she does I’d like to make up. You can tell her I’ll wait for her at the tavern right up to closing time—2:00 a.m.”

  “All right, Mr. Garrett. If she stops here I’ll deliver the message.”

  When he had gone and she had relocked the door, she began to worry seriously. Her built-in lie detector told her John Garrett had no expectation of his wife returning and asking Loretta where he was. She was convinced that the real purpose of his visit was simply to let Loretta know where he was going. And the only reason she could think of for that was that he was constructing an alibi.

  She was worried enough to consider calling the police. But after some thought she decided that if she told the police her reason for suspecting that John Garrett planned to murder his wife was merely intuition they would think she was dotty. In the end she merely had another sleepless night.

  In the morning when she looked out her kitchen window and she saw the Garretts companionably weeding the back lawn together she was glad she hadn’t phoned the police.

  Maybe she was getting dotty, she thought. She decided to suppress any future suspicions she had about John Garrett before she got herself classified at the police department as a crank.

  * * * *

  The next Friday night battle was mild enough so that Loretta didn’t even have to use the broom. But the week after that they had one as loud and long as the one that ended with John Garrett goading his wife into making a return visit to the Coed Club.