A man was moaning. The woman made no sound. When he reached the wreck, he saw why. Annette, head and face all battered, lay among pieces of splinter-proof glass. She must have been hurled through the windshield. Her white satin evening gown was torn and blood clotted as her hair. Her lovely legs showed not a twitch of life as she lay in the headlight glow.
The man was sprawled nearby. It was Cyril Bardwell, who was mumbling, “Where’s Annette?”
Honest John stood there for a second, too shocked to approach and see how serious Bardwell’s injuries were. The light reflected from the concrete abutment showed, more than the man’s torn face and hands; it exposed the cause of the crack-up. The front tire had been cut, as with a knife, a clean, sharp slash. This was murder, and he wondered if Ion Katras had planned such a vengeance.
“Where’s Annette?” Bardwell repeated.
Honest John already knew the answer, but he knelt beside the battered girl, felt her wrist, laid his ear against the swell of her bodice. “She’s gone. Let me give you a hand.”
Bardwell’s leg doubled up, and he collapsed. Game leg, and perhaps internal injuries. Honest John said, “I’d hurt you some more if I tried to move you. Need an ambulance. Wait, I’ll be back with help.”
He had barely reached his car when a highway patrol came up with red lights blazing. They had seen the crazy headlights in the arroyo, and had looped back to investigate. Honest John hailed the cops, and told them that he had heard the crack-up, and had been on the point of going for help. While one cop raced to the nearest phone, the other asked John, “You know them?”
“The girl, yes. The guy, just by sight. They breezed past my old clunk, and then—whop! I was on my way to her old man’s lodge in Carmel. Jeez, he’ll go loco, his only daughter.”
The cop said, “Damn fool was rolling too fast,” and turned to Bardwell; but the dead girl’s fiancé just sat there, mumbling. Shock still kept him from knowing the score.
Honest John waited until the ambulance arrived, and the wrecker’s spotlights played on the cream colored car. He had not said a word about that struggle, just before the crash.
Maybe Annette had taken a couple too many Martinis and had gotten light headed. Maybe the lovers had quarreled until, becoming hysterical, he had tried to calm her. With both hands on the wheel, Bardwell might have avoided a crack-up. It was all so screwy that Honest John dummied up.
The cops exchanged glances when they saw the slashed front tire. They weren’t missing much. And then they found the lug wrench and the jack, which had apparently spilled out under the front seat. The wrench was bloody. One said, “No damn wonder, with them bleeding all over the place.”
The ambulance was gone, and now the tow car unlimbered its crane. Honest John said, “Better pick up those pieces of busted windshield.”
The cop asked, “You running this show? What for?”
“Just in case. There’s no blood on the glass, which is funny. And you saw that slashed tire.” He took out his wallet and flashed his credentials. “This isn’t my business, but we’re all on the same payroll.”
The sergeant pushed back his cap and frowned. “Carmody? Oh, you’re Honest John, who gets by looking dumb. Why should there be blood on the glass, hell, I’ve seen ’em dive through lots of windshields, sometimes they don’t start bleeding till they’re on the other side. Or didn’t you ever hear of that?”
“Okay, okay. Only you did make a note of a slashed front tire, so why not go whole hog, old man Gaynor’ll like to know who murdered his daughter and tried to finish his number one engineer. Be seeing you.” He did not tell the cops that he was going to have a word with Ion Katras, let them get that lead when Bardwell recovered enough to tell what had happened when he met Annette at the Sequoia.
* * * *
As he drove back toward San Carlos, he pondered on the fact that the convertible had not smashed into any rocks on its way down the steep embankment. But for plain tough luck, Annette would have lived through the crash. It was almost a freak, the way she had plunged through the glass. Judging from tire tracks, Bardwell had slowed down a lot before he swerved.
The whole thing was crazy, but a murder usually is.
Though the Sequoia Club was closed when he pulled up just below the hilltop, there were lights in the second floor. Honest John scrambled up to the flat top of the one-story wing, and from there he got a look into the second floor lounge. This had been fixed up for living quarters, and it seemed that Katras was living well.
Since the club was on the highest hill for miles around, the shades were not drawn. Katras and his redheaded dame thought that only the moon could see…
She was neatly draped over the lounge. Her acacia yellow dress was folded over the back of a chair, and didn’t hide enough to count. Katras was coming up for air; that was plain from the way her arms slid away from his as he straightened.
“Sure I’d do you a favor,” he was saying. “But look, Beatrice, this isn’t the place for that kind of a game. Suppose Annette does catch them together up here, where do you come in?”
“I’ll take care of that!” Beatrice wriggled herself upright, and hitched a shoulder strap into place. “Please, Ion, you won’t lose out.”
Katras was eager enough to please the girl, but scared of her plan for a badger game to put Cyril Bardwell behind the eight ball.
Katras tried to pry loose from Beatrice’s fresh grip. He said, “I’d get my license revoked. The State Board—”
“Silly!” The redhead made the hold good, and squirmed closer, pulling Katras into a clinch. “She’d not squawk, neither would he, they’d not want to discuss it, would they? Please, Ion—”
With a girl like that, Katras could not argue. He began kissing her, and Honest John knew that until the huddle broke, he’d learn nothing about the plot. So he crept away from the window, and slid to the ground. He went to the side entrance, which opened on the stairs that led to the second floor, and pushed the bell button. That buzz would gripe Katras, bring him downstairs on the run.
At the third long ring, a window rattled up, and Katras growled, “What do you want? The place is closed.”
“Ain’t two o’clock, what you closing for?”
“That’s my business!”
“Are you Ion Katras?”
“Certainly I am. Now get out. Go home!”
Honest John chuckled. “Easy, easy, pal. Come on down, I want to talk to you about that sixty-year-old Amontillado. State Board, in case you’re interested.”
“State Board? You’d better be on the level, or I’ll knock your head off! Go around to the bar entrance, I’ll be down.”
The redhead was not saying anything. Katras had sounded relieved at the mention of Amontillado. He must have had something serious on his mind to be so unconcerned about getting hooked for refilling bottles.
Lights snapped on. Katras opened the big oaken door, and said, “So it’s you? Come in. What do you mean, Amontillado?”
His face was bruised from the two blows that had knocked him out and put an end to pawing Annette. Honest John answered, “Sit down and let’s talk about that sheep dip you sell to suckers for four bits a shot. I’m an inspector.”
“That’s not sheep dip, that’s imported!”
“The bottle was.” Honest John seated himself at a table. “But the wine wasn’t. And don’t tell me your bartenders do the refilling. You’d not run the risk of them squawking when the Board raised hell.”
Katras demanded, sarcastically, “You had witnesses, didn’t you?”
Honest John leaned back and grinned. “Maybe you think I’m the only one that’s cased this joint of yours. But the final play is up to me, when I seal the bottle and take it along, right now.”
“Why didn’t you take it then and there?”
“Because there was a girl in the booth. She might have been a bu
m witness.” He winked. “You got to be careful of witnesses.”
“Oh.” The Greek brightened. “How much do you want?”
“You’re not worrying about pawing that dame? That’s funny.”
Katras rubbed his jaw. “That was none of your business. She’s a friend of mine, and she wouldn’t appear against me, even if I was fool enough to get out of line. Let’s talk about amontillado. How much?”
“Just this. You were sore because she broke up with you and fell for Cyril Bardwell. And while he was picking her up from here, you slashed the front tire of his bus, so he’d crack up, being a fast driver. Well, he did crack up, on the Monterey Road. Annette Gaynor’s dead, he’ll pull through. You killed that dame, as sure as if you’d conked her with your own hands. And it’s all up to me, buddy, I’m the only one that saw you muss her up.”
The Greek turned pea green, and looked sick. “My God—I didn’t—I wouldn’t hurt Annette—I know I got out of line, but I wouldn’t hurt her, nor Bardwell either. He didn’t see she was mussed up, she put her coat on. She wouldn’t want him to know, he was so damn jealous.”
“So you sliced the tire, not knowing she’d be with him tonight. You didn’t figure you’d get her into a crackup with him, huh?”
Katras was stuttering; things looked bad for him. Honest John got up and stalked out, saying, “Think it over, buddy, you’ll be hearing more of me.”
Since he had no proof, his only way was to leave the man sweating.
He was halfway across the parking space when an engine roared. A coupe darted for the downhill road. There was a girl at the wheel; moonlight made that clear enough, and Honest John was certain that she wore only a slip.
By the time he reached his own car, parked well down the grade, there was no chance of chasing her. She could hide out in any one of twenty cockeyed roads and drives that penetrated the wooded hills. The fugitive must be Beatrice, the redhead, scared out by that first quip about the State Board. Apparently she thought the place was being raided, and her conscience had done the rest.
When he reached San Carlos, he swung over to the curbing and tried to make sense of the tangle. He had intended to pull Katras out of a hot clinch, throw a scare into him, fake a departure, and then return to find out what the Greek and the redhead would do and say. He had not anticipated her panic at the mention of the State Board.
However, he did have Katras sweating. And the next move would be in Monterey, where Cyril Bardwell was recovering from shock and bruises; where Annette awaited the coroner, where a wrecked car awaited inspection by the cops. His best move seemed to tell the law just a little more; but for the time, he decided to say nothing about that glimpse of Annette, standing up in the speeding car. Meanwhile, he’d see what he could work out by himself.
Had Katras put some drug into her drink, a drug that put her into a frenzy, not long after she left the Sequoia Club? In ignorance of her plans for the evening, he might have done just that.
* * * *
The following morning, he was in Monterey looking over the wrecked car. The highway cop who had taken over at the crash was in charge. Honest John said, “Let’s fit the pieces of windshield together.”
The cop didn’t object, and he wasn’t interested until the job was done. Then he saw that the fragments fitted perfectly. In the center of the rayed joints was a hole the size of a half dollar. “Say—that’s funny!” He squatted on the greasy floor. “Something small and hard busted that glass.”
Honest John nodded. “Smaller and harder than a girl’s head, that’s what I thought last night, when I cracked off about no blood on the glass. That dame didn’t go through the windshield at all. That was faked.”
“Huh?”
“Sure. You saw that slashed tire, and began thinking of murder, like I did, except you figured it was just spite work with a nasty ending. My angle is that that glass was busted, to make it look like she’d killed herself diving through the windshield, when it was really something else that finished her.”
The cop jerked to his feet. “What do you know about this, mister?”
“I know the gal, the guy, and her dad. I know another guy that liked her, and was jealous. He could have slashed the rubber, then after the crackup, killed the dame. Me coming along scared him out of conking Bardwell. If you and me saw the crackup so soon after it happened, why couldn’t he have been prowling the highway, waiting for it.”
“That’s got more holes in it than that poor dame’s head,” the cop scoffed. “You might have been the guy yourself.”
“Sure I could, only I wasn’t jealous of Bardwell, and I can tell you who was. Ion Katras, at the Sequoia Club, in San Carlos. I saw her scratching him up, right after I inspected his place as a matter of State Board routine.”
“If Katras has an alibi, your yarn is crazy!”
“Enough bartenders and customers will fix him up with an alibi, but are you chump enough to swallow that whole? What’s a roadhouse alibi good for, anyway?”
Without waiting for further argument, Honest John went to the office, where he learned that his quip about no blood being on the windshield glass had gotten a rise. There was not a fragment of glass in any of the wounds and slashes in Annette’s scalp; but there were microscopic bits of it on the lug wrench, and more than that, a wisp of blonde hair. When he learned all this, Honest John realized that the highway cop at the garage had been playing dumb, leading him on.
“Katras,” he told himself, “is going to smell hell, right now.”
And his next thought was that the Greek would not necessarily be the only one; he, Honest John, might get a whiff himself. Annette had invited him to Carmel, but she was beyond verifying that phase of his story. There was, however, just a chance that she had told Cyril Bardwell of the last minute guest, and without explaining what had motivated her. The only thing to do was to see the young engineer and find out whether he had recovered from the shock.
* * * *
At the hospital, Honest John found Bardwell with his head bandaged, only one eye being visible. Collodion and gauze pulled his mouth out of shape. No one would suspect him of being either dark or handsome, not with all that patch-work.
“They said you’d not mind seeing me, Mr. Bardwell.”
“I don’t feel any too chipper, Carmody. But if you know who had a hand in that terrible job, I want to know about it.”
“So they told you it was a job, not an accident?”
The injured man grimaced behind his bandages. “Slashed tire. God, I can’t imagine who would do that, we’ve not had any labor disputes, and neither I nor Annette’s father have any personal enemies.”
He went on that way for a few minutes, and without mentioning Katras. That seemed odd, and Honest John asked, “How about the fellow that runs the Sequoia Club? You edged him out of the picture.”
Bardwell started. “I never thought of that. Too groggy, I guess.”
“I know how it is,” Honest John answered, sympathetically. “You were lucky, not seeing her.”
Bardwell shuddered. “They wouldn’t come right out and say she was dead, but I felt she must have been. I remembered what you’d said, I’d hoped you were wrong. They all hedged when I asked them.” He bowed, covered his face with a bandaged hand. “Oh, Lord, it was awful, that second in the air.”
“How about Katras?” Honest John prompted after the moment it took him to shake the horrible picture from his own mind. “I may as well tell you, I busted into the lounge suddenly, that evening. Katras was pawing her, and I slugged him silly.”
“The devil he was! The dirty—!” Wrath shook his voice. “She didn’t tell me. When I came to pick her up, she was pacing up and down, rather agitated, pulling her coat about her. She didn’t say much, and when I asked where Katras was, she said he’d gone upstairs.” Bardwell became eager. “Can I depend on you as a witness? Katras has pull
, you know.”
“I won’t scare out worth a damn,” Honest John grimly answered. “He could have slashed that tire, he needn’t have been upstairs, he knew you’d be dropping in to get her.”
“Do the police know about that?”
“I just finished telling them. I hated to bring in that angle, people might not understand about her being there, alone, at that quiet hour when there’s rarely a customer. Yeah, I know, you were making a business call in Hidden Valley, and left her there, the handiest place—well, I ended up by spilling that angle. But here’s another thing I’ve not spilled.”
“What?”
“You two passed me a-helling down the road. Annette was standing up, like she was trying to jump. My headlights made that plain, and there wasn’t another cream-colored Packard convertible within miles. I been wondering if he’d doped her, before she told him you’d be back so soon.”
“By God, he might have!” Bard-well rose, winced, but kept his feet. “That dirty—! That’s right, Annette was acting funny, she began to scream and double up, she had awful cramps. I was scared silly, I was trying to hurry her to Monterey, to a doctor. I thought it was something she’d eaten. She’d only had that one drink, I never dreamed—”
He seated himself.
Honest John stroked his chin a moment, then said, “Katras, all right. And here’s the payoff. Annette didn’t dive through the windshield. The glass was knocked out, after the crash, with the lug wrench. And the lug wrench was what battered her over the head and killed her. I guess you’d gotten the same if I hadn’t happened along. He must have been prowling, waiting for it to happen, hoping it’d happen in some place where there wasn’t much traffic. Dashing on ahead, maybe figuring out you’d blow up on that bad curve, just before you got to the bridge. Then he heard the crash, and ran down to make sure, and seeing the lug wrench, he tried to improve on the job while you two were out cold.”
E. Hoffmann Price's Two-Fisted Detectives Page 20
