Headed for a Hearse

by Jonathan Latimer

  Woodbury’s swinging leg halted abruptly.

  “Nobody but Woodbury here,” Westland replied.

  Crane rotated his body at the hips, faced Woodbury. “You didn’t take that pistol, did you?”

  Woodbury’s dark face was calm, but his leg was still held unnaturally in front of him. “Why would I take his pistol when I have one of my own just like it?”

  “I don’t know,” Crane said. “I’m just asking you if you took his?”

  “I didn’t.”

  Crane continued to face Woodbury. “Were there any other visitors that evening, Mr. Westland?”

  “No, but——”

  “How about Miss Martin? Did she drop in any time?”

  “Not while I was there.”

  Miss Martin’s blue eyes were not quite so friendly. “I didn’t go there at all that day.”

  “No offense,” Crane said. “I’m just a young detective trying to get along.” He glanced warningly at Williams, who had been admiring Miss Martin’s shapely legs, and moved to the door. “Anyway, I’ve run out of questions for a while.”

  Finklestein followed him across the warden’s burn-spotted rug and out into the corridor. He said, “Christ, I’ve got a hangover.”

  Williams, coming up behind him, asked, “How much that babe take you for?”

  “Now,” Finklestein said, “she’s a nice girl.”

  “Nice and dangerous,” said Crane.

  Miss Brentino and Woodbury emerged from the warden’s office and joined them. Miss Brentino put her gloved hand on Crane’s arm. Her voice was liquid and full of tone shadows. “Did you ever think,” she said, “that the voice most like somebody’s voice would be that person’s voice?”

  Miss Martin was within five feet of them. Her eyes were narrowed, her brows no longer arched. “I heard you.” Her voice echoed in the corridor. “You sneaking cat!” She advanced toward them, and William Crane retreated two steps. “You tried to make Mr. Westland when you were his secretary, but he preferred me.” She trembled with rage. “Now you’re trying to pay me back, but you won’t get away with this either.”

  Miss Brentino’s white face was composed. Her scarlet lips curved in scorn; her voice was expressionless again. “Don’t be a little fool.” She turned her back on Miss Martin’s furious face and walked away, slim hips moving with tigerish grace under her tight gray silk dress. Woodbury followed her along the corridor.

  In the street the air was crisp and the snow underfoot was springy like a rubber mat. A Yellow cab went by them unsteadily along the streetcar tracks, a broken link on a tire chain banging the left rear fender.

  Finklestein shuddered, pulled his overcoat collar up against his ears. “I don’t feel so good.”

  “You better pull yourself together,” William Crane said, “because you’ve lots of work to do.”

  “We better do something pretty quick.” The attorney pulled on a pair of ostentatiously hand-stitched pigskin gloves. “Did you notice Westland’s face?” “Yes, he’s plenty scared.” Doc Williams said, “I don’t blame him.” “Look,” said Crane. “We’ve got only three days and I can’t waste time checking on all these people’s alibis. But I think somebody ought to do it.”

  “Sure,” Finklestein agreed without enthusiasm. “What do you want me to do?”

  “Check with the Black Hawk and see if Woodbury and Miss Brentino were there—somebody might have spotted them—and then find out if Bolston’s story that he drank at his club with a lawyer named Peter Brady at——”

  “I know the guy: he’s a corporation lawyer.”

  “Bolston hasn’t got a complete alibi, but I’d like to see if he’s telling the truth about Brady taking him home on the night of the murder.” Crane signaled to another cab. This one didn’t have any chains. “I’ll take Wharton and Miss Martin.”

  Finklestein poked his head through the cab door. “How about Sprague?”

  “That’s right. You better take him, too. I’ll call you around lunch time at your office.”

  Finklestein slammed the door. Rear wheels spun in the snow as the cab eased out into the street. The driver slid open the panel. “Where to, Mister?”

  “Do you know where Deerpath Road is in Lake Forest?”

  “Lake Forest?” The driver’s hair was cut round in the back, and his neck was chapped from the cold. “Whooee! That’s thirty miles—clear out in the country—clear up north.”

  “Well, drive as far as you can,” said Crane, “and we’ll take a dogsled the rest of the way.”

  “This is the joint,” said the driver. The cab heeled over as the wheels cut through the snow in the gutter, and skidded to a standstill. The meter read $6.55 and there was a charge of .05 for one extra passenger. “D’ya want me t’ wait?”

  The country snow was as clean as Ivory soap flakes. Blue-green fir trees dotted the sloping yard in front of a stone two-story house.

  “Sure,” William Crane said. “We won’t be very long.”

  “Take as long as y’like.” The driver spat, and tobacco juice made a burn in the snow. “I ain’t had a day in the country since my sweetie up an’ married a policeman.”

  Just inside the house a dog barked angrily. Crane was about to lift the brass knocker a second time when a pompous serving man opened the oak door. The dog, a rusty black Scottie, growled and pretended to come out after them through the man’s legs.

  The servant raised his eyebrows.

  “Mr. Wharton there?”

  “Who shall I say is calling?”

  Wharton appeared behind the man. He was wearing wool plus fours, baggy in the English manner, a dark-brown tweed coat, and a camel’s-hair pullover sweater. “Hello, there.” His red face was unfriendly. “What’s up?”

  The serving man withdrew into the house. A wood fire was bright in the many-windowed living room, but Wharton did not invite them in.

  Crane said, “I wanted to ask you some questions.”

  “Couldn’t you have phoned?”

  “You can always hang up on the phone.”

  The Scottie became interested in a smell on the stone doorstep.

  “What do you mean by that?” Wharton glared at Crane. “Look here, I won’t have any of your bloody nonsense.”

  “I don’t give a damn,” Crane said. “I’m trying to help your cousin. If you don’t care enough about him to answer a few questions, it’s your affair.”

  Wharton’s hand on the doorknob was undecided; then he said, “What d’you want to know?”

  “First I’d like to know how well you knew Mrs. Westland.”

  “I knew her hardly at all—to speak to, of course, but that’s all.”

  “You wouldn’t know if she had any enemies?”

  Wharton shook his head.

  “When did you hear about her death?”

  “Bolston told me at Westland’s office. I had an appointment with Bob on the day he was arrested. I was waitin’ for him when Bolston came in and told me about the murder.”

  “What time was your appointment with Westland?”

  “Eleven-thirty.” Wharton kept pulling the door to him and then pushing it away. “I got there a few minutes ahead of time and waited about forty minutes, until noon. I was gettin’ ready to leave when Bolston came in.”

  “What time was that?”

  “About two minutes after twelve. I’d just told Miss Brentino that it was noon and that I wouldn’t wait any longer.”

  “Wasn’t Woodbury at the office?”

  “Yes, but my business was with Westland.”

  The Scottie liked the smell of Crane’s tweed trousers, but he shied when Crane tried to scratch his ears. Williams was peering longingly at the crackling fire in the living room.

  “Now, about the night of the murder,” Crane said. “Can you tell us where you were between eleven and two?”

  Wharton swelled visibly. “By gad, I don’t see why I should tell you.” His face purpled. “Are you intimatin’ I’m one of the suspects?”<
br />
  “Not at all,” Crane lied. “I’m just going through a routine check.”

  “I’m damned if I’ll tell you, anyway. It’s a personal affair.”

  “Listen!” Williams pushed Crane aside. “If you ain’t got an alibi, just say so. It’ll save us a lot of time.”

  Crane said, “We’re trying to help your cousin, and the only way we can is to find out the actual murderer. If you’ve got an alibi, we won’t have to worry about you at all.”

  A gray squirrel came toward them across the snow like a ballet dancer, saw the Scottie, and darted up a tree. It began a scolding chatter. The cab driver appeared to be asleep.

  “Dammit!” Wharton regarded them with anger and perplexity. “Can’t you take my word for it?”

  “Why the hell should we?” asked Crane.

  “By gad! I——” Wharton paused, rubbed his mustache violently. “Bob’s a clean-cut fella, and I’d hate to see him electrocuted. I’m a bloody fool, but I’ll do it. I’ll take you to somebody who knows where I was that night.” He thrust open the door violently. “Carter! My coat.”

  The serving man appeared with a rough coat and brown hat. Wharton put them on, called to the Scottie, “Come on, Bogey.” He paused on the steps. “Don’t think I’m doing this for you, because I’m not. I don’t like you.”

  Crane said, “Kraft-Ebbing will never have to write a case history of my passion for you, either.”

  Awakened from a refreshing nap, the driver sent the cab along the blanketed streets at a smart clip. Wharton guided them to a large Tudor residence on Green Bay Road, rang the bell for them. A neat maid in uniform opened the door and exclaimed, “Oh! It’s Mr. Wharton,” and led them into a beamed living room. Williams and the Scottie halted gratefully in front of a fireplace with two railroad ties smoldering on copper alloy andirons. Wharton and Crane stood and regarded each other with mutual distaste.

  Presently a lady came down a curved stairway and unsteadily made her way toward them across brilliant Cossack scatter rugs. “Hello, Larry-Warry,” she called in an incredibly harsh voice. She was a big woman, well on her way toward the fifties, and her large face was flushed and veined from hell-for-leather living, and she was cock-eyed drunk. She made the big table by the fireplace as an exhausted swimmer would a reef, and clung there, blinking at Williams.

  “Hi there, handsome,” she said.

  Wharton offered shocked reproof. “Amy! So early in the morning?”

  “You ol’ rep’bate,” said the lady, swaying dangerously. “I bet there’s whiskey on your breath too.” She leered at Williams again. “Whoos your little playmate?”

  “These men are detectives,” said Wharton severely. “They’re investigating Joan Westland’s murder.”

  “Murder? Murder?” The lady took a deep breath, swelling out her breasts, and shouted, “An-nah!”

  Bogey, the Scottie, cocked his ears in polite surprise.

  The trim maid appeared from a hall beside the stairway. “Whiskey,” said her mistress huskily. The maid pivoted neatly and disappeared.

  Wharton said, “These men are trying to save Westland, Amy. They’re trying to check off the possible suspects.” He enunciated clearly, as though speaking to a foreigner. “They want me to tell them where I was on the night Mrs. Westland was killed.”

  “Tell them, m’dear.” The lady edged around the table toward Williams. “Wha’s your name, handsome?”

  “But it won’t do any good for me to tell them.” Wharton was beginning to shout. “They won’t believe me.”

  The lady paused in her pursuit of Williams. “Dearie, how I know where you were?”

  Glasses tinkled as the maid set a tray on the table. The statuesque lady poured stiff jolts from a bottle of Dewar’s Ne Plus Ultra into four tumblers. “That’s all, Anna.” She squirted soda water from a siphon into three of the tumblers and picked up the other. “Here’s how.” She drained the glass.

  While Crane and Williams sipped their drinks, Wharton continued, “You remember well enough where I was. That was the morning I had to go down to meet Westland in the Loop. You drove me down.” He was shouting at her.

  The lady laughed loudly, delightedly poured herself another drink. “I do believe you’re tryin’ to compr’mise me, dearie.”

  “You remember driving me down, don’t you?”

  “I’m too much of a lady to remember anything.” She moved closer to Williams; he retreated toward the fire. “Still, if it’ll do you any good, I did drive you down that morning.” She blinked at Crane, screwed up her heavily rouged face. “I remember because I thought at the time it’s amusin’ Larry should have an appoin’ment”—she had a hard time with that one—“appoin’ment with Westland when he’d just killed his wife.”

  “Who’d killed his wife?” Crane demanded. “Larry?”

  This released more laughter. “Larry married! Dearie, the woman who’d marry him would have to live in a kennel.”

  Crane turned to Wharton. “What does it prove if she did drive you down to the Loop that day?”

  “Wait. Amy, don’t you remember where I spent the night of the murder?”

  “No,” Amy said.

  She was frowning, and her eyes were looking down toward her feet, and she didn’t seem quite so drunk.

  “Listen, Amy,” Wharton said. “I want you to tell the truth, because it will help my cousin. I wouldn’t ask you if it was just myself.”

  Her head was thrust down so that her chin touched her breast.

  “Just tell them where I spent the night.” She did not move, and Wharton continued, “Or call in Anna. She knows.”

  The woman suddenly swung into action, as though she had touched a shock machine in a penny arcade. “I won’t call an’body,” she shouted. “As far as I’m concerned, you slept in the stable that night.” She picked up the silver and glass siphon. “You’ve got a lot of nerve tryin’ to ruin a respec’able woman’s reputation, Lawrence Wharton. But you’re not getting me to alibi you. And you can get right the hell out of here.” Surprisingly, she pressed the lever of the siphon bottle and sent streams of cold hissing water over all three of them. “Get out, do you hear? Get out! You dirty dogs! Get out! Get out!”

  They fled, water running off their faces onto their clothes and beneath their collars, and the Scottie under their feet. They raced through the door and across the snow to the cab. The lady pursued them as far as the porch and from this elevation hurled the siphon at them. It splintered on the cement walk. The driver said, “Jesus!” and started the cab with a jerk.

  Crane, the Scottie under his arm, sank back in the seat, out of breath from running and laughter. Wharton was really disturbed. “The demned fool,” he kept saying; “the demned old fool.”

  Doc Williams thought of the Dewar’s whiskey. “The hospitality was good,” he observed, “while it lasted.”

  CHAPTER XI

  Wednesday Noon

  “The case is getting daffy,” Crane said. He finished his second bacardi cocktail. “I keep worrying about that poor guy in jail and thinking he has only five days, four days, three days to live and I haven’t room in my mind for any really constructive thoughts about the case. Can’t you get a reprieve from the Governor anyway, Finklestein?”

  The attorney shook his head dolefully. “I talked to the Governor when he was here Monday night. He said he couldn’t do a thing unless we got hold of some real evidence.”

  While the waitress was serving them with cherrystone clams on the half shell, Crane told him about the morning spent with Wharton and his lady friend.

  “He was trying to give himself an alibi like Jack McGurn, the Capone machine gunner, did with his gal,” explained Doc Williams. “You remember the blonde alibi? But McGurn married the gal later.”

  “That was the gentlemanly thing to do,” Crane said.

  Finklestein asked, “Then it looks as though Wharton’s story doesn’t stand up?”

  “It wouldn’t in court.” Crane squirted lemon o
ver a firm clam, thrust it and part of a Vienna roll in his mouth. “But I’m inclined to believe it. If the lady had said sweetly: ‘Why, yes, Larry-Warry and I spent the night with a hammer breaking the Ten Commandments,’ I wouldn’t have believed her, but in my opinion Amy backed up his tale like a lady by tossing us out.”

  “Amy?” Finklestein looked curiously at Crane. “Not Amy Dunmar, the grain king’s widow?”

  “I don’t know who she is. She lives in a big house on Green Bay Road and has good whiskey.”

  “That’s Amy Dunmar. She’s a dipsomaniac, and she’s got more money than the U.S. Mint.”

  Williams was startled. “What’s a dipsomaniac?”

  “That’s just a fifty-cent way,” said Crane, “of saying she takes a little nip now and then.”

  “He’s telling us!”

  Finklestein said, “That gives a little class to our investigation, but it doesn’t seem to help us much. What’s next?”

  “How’d you come out on your checks?” Crane asked.

  Finklestein gingerly tasted his eggs Benedict from a brown pottery saucer. “Woodbury’s story that he danced at the Black Hawk with Miss Brentino is out.” He muffled his last word with a large mouthful of the eggs.

  “Out! Why?”

  “The Black Hawk was taken over by a Northwestern University sorority party on that night. The manager looked up the reservations for me.”

  “That doesn’t look so good for Woodbury.” Crane hated fruit salad, but he was eating it because he was afraid of getting fat. “How about Bolston?”

  “Brady says he drank with him until about twelve-thirty, and then drove him home.” Finklestein shook a roll at Crane. “But that doesn’t clear him. He still had plenty of time to go over and kill Mrs. Westland.”

  “I know it. I just wanted to see if his story would stand up.”

  During the rest of the meal, which consisted of a number of Scotch-and-sodas for Crane and Williams, they discussed Miss Hogan, the lady with the orange hair. The detectives plied Finklestein with questions, but the lawyer was reticent. “Can’t a man have any private life at all?” he asked.

  Crane said, “There’s nothing private about Miss Hogan.”

  “She got any friends like her?” Williams asked.