Pollard’s voice sharpened. “Oh, God. Just as my campaign’s getting under way, too. Think it’s drunk driving again?”
“I don’t think so. She’s kept out of trouble for nearly six months this time. I’d hoped maybe—Well, I’ll call the Donnellys. Or will you?”
Pollard said, “I’ll do better than that I know the night editor of the Chronicle. I’ll see what I can find out.”
Herrick said quickly, “Play it safe, for God’s sake. We don’t want to get the papers interested.”
“Don’t worry. I’ll call you back.” Pollard hung up.
Herrick, scowling, clipped a cigar and lit it. It was half smoked when the telephone rang. This time Pollard’s voice on the wire was tense.
“Philip? I’m coming out I’ll be there in half an hour. Don’t talk to any reporters. When Eileen shows up—Well, better call your lawyer.”
“What’s happened?”
“Somebody was killed,” Pollard said, his voice strained, “murdered.”
Herrick swallowed hard. When he tried to speak, his voice failed him on the first try. He cleared his throat “Not—not Eileen?”
“No. All I can find out is the police want her for questioning. She was recognized at the scene of the crime.”
“A witness?” Herrick was relieved. “If that’s all—”
“It isn’t. I don’t know much yet, but—Listen, Philip, just sit tight and wait for me. I’m on my way.”
“Wait a minute. Who was murdered?”
There was silence on the line for a moment. Then Pollard’s voice said without any expression in it, “A girl named Beverly Bond.”
Herrick lowered the receiver into its cradle with a careful hand. He stood there motionless, hardly seeming to breathe. His face was like wet clay.
3
When Michael Gray drove up to the front of the Herrick house, he saw that most of the lower floor was lighted. A big Lincoln stood blocking the drive that led to the front door, as if somebody had parked fast and hurried inside without caring. Gray drew up at the curb. He had noticed a squad car with two men in it sitting quietly, without lights, under the trees at the corner. But nobody tried to stop him. The door opened reluctantly at his ring.
A middle-aged woman in a maid’s uniform gave him a hard stare.
“No reporters,” she said and started to close the door.
Gray said, “Wait a minute. My name’s Michael Gray. I just had a call from Miss Herrick. Ask her father if he’ll see me.”
The maid looked at him with deep suspicion. “Wait,” she said. When she came back Herrick himself was just behind her.
“Gray?” he said in a shaken voice. “Come in, come in. You say Eileen called you? How is she? What’s been happening? Why—”
“You are Philip Herrick?” Gray said, trying to keep surprise out of his voice.
“Of course I am. Come in. Keep your voice down—I’m trying to keep this from Eileen’s mother until we know more. In here.”
Gray followed him into the library, marveling silently at the vagaries of the human mind. Eileen Herrick had been Gray’s patient for six months now, and her descriptions of her father had given Gray a vivid picture of the man. To Eileen, Herrick was a tall, hulking, handsome man with a deep voice and a magnetic manner. This wiry little man with the querulous tones and the pinched, austere face—could he possibly be the same person? Smiling inwardly, Gray wondered if the girl’s father had any idea how he looked to Eileen.
Herrick swung around sharply toward Gray as the door closed behind them, ignoring the man who rose eagerly as they entered.
“Where is she? What’s happened? Is Eileen all right?”
“All I know,” Gray told him, “is that she phoned me about eleven-thirty tonight. She was almost hysterical. All I could get out of her was that somebody was dead and Eileen needed help. When I went to the address she gave me, the police were there. A woman had been murdered and her apartment set on fire. Nobody mentioned Eileen to me and I didn’t see her anywhere.”
“Well?” Herrick looked up at Gray expectantly when he stopped.
“That’s all I know. I was hoping you could tell me more. I feel too responsible for Eileen just to drop the thing. I was hoping—”
Herrick interrupted him brusquely. He gestured at the waiting man by the fireplace.
“Neil Pollard,” he said to Gray. “Eileen’s engaged to him. Neil, Michael Gray. Eileen’s psychoanalyst.”
The two men shook hands gravely. Pollard, like Herrick, was a smallish, neat man, well-dressed even under these conditions of crisis. He had crisply curling chestnut hair and an air of confidence and authority. Gray was struck at once by the likeness between the two men. Like so many women, Eileen had evidently chosen for her future husband a man very like her father.
Gray started to speak. Herrick interrupted him again, looking up with hard, hostile eyes. “I want to get something straight at the beginning,” he said. “Fair warning. If this is the result of Eileen’s psychoanalysis, I’m going to see that the responsibility falls on the right person. I’ve been paying you to keep her out of trouble, not—”
Pollard, in a pleasant voice tense with emotion, said, “That’s not the point now, Philip. Eileen’s been in trouble before. What we ought to do is—”
Herrick cut in on him, too. ‘Tell Gray about what happened at the night club,” he said crisply.
Pollard flushed just a little. He hadn’t liked the peremptory tone. But after a moment he nodded.
“I met Eileen at the Silver Slipper tonight,” he said. “I got a business call and had to leave, but she wanted to stay on with some friends. I checked with them ten minutes ago. They put her in a taxi about eleven and sent her home—they thought. She seemed fine then.”
Herrick said heavily, not looking at either of them, “I can’t understand it. A daughter of mine, with the best upbringing money can buy, a good family background, everything. And now—one mess after another. At least, she never got mixed up in murder before.” He scowled at Gray. “You might as well know I never wanted Eileen to get involved with psychoanalysis. I let my wife override my better judgment on that If Zoe weren’t an invalid, I think I’d have held out against her, but—” He let the words die. He was shaking his head with a look on his face of bewilderment and shock.
“The first thing is to find Eileen,” Gray said. “Have you tried the places where she might be? Relatives, friends—Has she done this kind of disappearing before?”
It was Pollard who said, “No, she never has since I’ve known her. She must have an address book somewhere. We can start calling her friends.”
Gray said, “I think we should talk to the police. They can do a better job than we can. Besides, until we know what’s happened, we can’t tell if we’re making the right moves or not.”
Herrick said sharply, “Keep the police out of this. You’ve done enough damage already. I’ll handle Eileen my own way.”
Pollard stepped forward fast, laying a soothing hand on Herrick’s shoulder. “Easy now, Philip. We’ve all made mistakes with Eileen. Mr. Gray may be right about this.”
Gray thought he sensed a note of warning in the younger man’s voice. Herrick might have caught it too, for he broke off and turned his back to them both. His hands were trembling. He began to mutter angrily, not speaking to either of them, that all the girl needed was a little discipline, that she had no consideration for others, and how a child of his could fail him so badly he would never really understand.
But Gray thought the man scarcely heard what he himself was saying. It sounded like a familiar complaint so often spoken it had lost all meaning. Some violent emotion was at work in him that seemed out of proportion even to the problem before them.
“The important thing now is to find Eileen,” Gray said firmly. “She called on me for help. She’s my patient. I’m going to do what I can.” He turned toward the door. “I’ll let you know what I find out”
Herrick said, “You’
re going to the police?”
“Yes,” Gray said. “I’ve worked with them before. You can’t keep them out of this, Herrick. And Eileen needs all the help she can get”
“I don’t know what Eileen’s told you,” Herrick said in an unsteady voice. “She’s got a morbid streak and I know you encourage it But if you go spilling family scandals to the police—”
“Anything a patient tells me is held in professional confidence.” Gray swung toward the door.
Pollard moved quickly to open it for him. “Whatever’s best for Eileen is what we all want,” he said. “I’ll call you in the morning.”
Gray nodded.
“I’ll let myself out,” he said.
Pollard shut the library door softly behind him.
Crossing the hall outside, Gray repressed a violent curiosity as to what the two men would be saying to each other now he had gone. There was certainly more on Herrick’s mind than he had cared for Gray to know about. Something had happened tonight that had shaken the man very deeply. Did Herrick know more about Eileen’s dilemma than he dared say, even for Eileen’s own safety?
A quick, creaking sound from above made Gray glance up sharply. At the back of the big hall a flight of stairs curved majestically upward to a broad railed balcony at second-floor height. Over the railing a woman’s dimly seen face looked down at Gray. As their eyes met, she made a swift motion and then, to Gray’s astonishment, seemed to glide backwards out of sight with impossible smoothness and speed, and a strange fluttering motion all around her that was even more puzzling.
The creaking retreated. The woman was gone. After a moment, Gray understood what it was he had really seen. A woman in a wheel chair, moving herself quickly out of sight. A gray-haired woman with a halo of fluttering curls and a lacy shawl.
Zoe Herrick? Philip Herrick’s wife, Eileen’s mother? Gray went toward the door thoughtfully. He knew Mrs. Herrick had spent the past fifteen years in a wheel chair. He hadn’t realized how active she could be in it until now.
If Philip Herrick thought his wife was asleep and in ignorance of what had happened tonight, he was very much mistaken.
4
Bright Sunday morning sunlight fell in dazzling stripes through the blinds of Police Captain Harry Zucker’s office. Zucker’s seamed face was tired, his deep voice hostile.
“Eileen Herrick’s a screwball heiress who’s got everything,” he said to Michael Gray. “There isn’t an excuse in the world for the messes she’s got herself into. Look at this!”
He slapped a big hand on the folder lying before him. Gray leaned forward to see, but Zucker picked it up and leafed through it quickly, holding it so Gray couldn’t read the pages.
“Drunk driving,” Zucker said. “Traffic violations. Three accidents. Night club brawls. Nice friends your patient’s got, too. It isn’t just that she goes around with a bad crowd. She chooses her pals pretty carefully. Most of ’em are lice.”
“Lately?” Gray asked.
“Well, she’s slackened off lately. Up to last night, that is. But it’s a long list. For a kid of twenty-three, it’s too damn long. Why bother, Mike? A girl like that isn’t neurotic, she’s spoiled. She gets in trouble because she’s bored. You can’t keep somebody like that on the straight and narrow no matter how you try.”
“She’s neurotic,” Gray said. “That’s why she gets in trouble. Something makes her look for it She’s trying to punish herself for faults she may not even have.”
“What kind of faults?”
“Can’t tell you, Harry. I don’t know the answers myself, yet”
“Well, she’s got plenty of trouble now,” Zucker grunted. “Somebody sure as hell killed the Beverly Bond woman and set her place on fire.” He slapped the folder down on the desk and looked at Gray. “Come on,” he said. “What do you know about the Bond woman?”
“Not a damned thing,” Gray protested. “I’ve already given you the whole story. You know as much as I do. I never even heard of Beverly Bond before last night.”
Zucker grunted. “That means the Herrick girl never told you about her?”
“So far as I know there was nothing to tell. Who was the woman, Harry?”
Zucker pursed his lips and looked thoughtful. “A high-priced call girl. Living with some man who paid the rent, they tell me. Don’t ask me who. I don’t know yet.”
“How was she killed?”
“Stabbed. Almost instantaneous death. Happened around eleven last night. The weapon was a bone-handled slicing knife from her own kitchen—we think. The kitchen and bedroom were so burnt out it’s hard to tell, but there seem to be matching knives in one of the drawers.”
“How do you think it happened?”
Zucker made an irritated sound. “Who the hell knows, now? After the neighbors and the firemen got through tramping in and out—” He shrugged. “No signs of forcible entry as far as we can tell, but the kitchen’s too burned out to be sure. There was a glass lying on the carpet beside the sofa, and a bottle of scotch on the kitchen sink had exploded with the fire.”
“One glass?” Gray asked.
“That’s right. My guess is she probably came home with the killer, went to the kitchen for a drink, made a highball for herself. Say the killer went into the kitchen with her and got the knife out while she wasn’t looking.”
“What about a prowler?” Gray asked. “Someone might have broken in the back door and picked up the knife when she surprised him. You say the kitchen was too burned to tell whether forcible entry was—”
Zucker made an impatient gesture. “No need to break in the back door. There’s a fire escape across the side of the building. It passes all the windows on that side. And there were some traces on the fire escape. Nothing definite, but somebody’s been there lately. Maybe kids, maybe not.” He paused, considering.
“Let’s get back,” he said. “I think the killer followed her back to the living room, maybe got into an argument with her, and then let her have it She dropped her glass. Either she or the killer dropped a—” He stopped himself. A rather sly grin crossed his big, creased face. “Never mind what the killer dropped. That’s the D.A.’s little secret for now.”
“You keep saying he,” Gray pointed out “The killer was a man?”
“Force of habit,” Zucker said. “The killer was Eileen Herrick.” He sounded very positive.
“You’ve got proof?”
“Enough to want to question her. Let’s put it that way.”
“All right,” Gray said. “Now we’ve got to find her.” He thought briefly. “I just got a glimpse of the room, Harry, but the way it looked torn up—was it searched?”
“Looked like it. Drawers hanging open, stuff thrown around. But there again, we don’t know for sure yet if the neighbors did it trying to save things. Or maybe helping themselves.”
“What about the rest of the apartment?”
“Burned. Maybe it’d been searched. Maybe Beverly was a sloppy housekeeper and left her bureau drawers open. Hell, you can’t tell now.”
“And the fire?” Gray asked. “Could that have been an accident?”
“Not a chance. It was set in half a dozen different places.”
“Why?”
“You tell me. There could have been half a dozen different reasons. Say it was pyromania. The Bond woman could have caught a firebug at work and he could have stabbed her to shut her up. Only that’s probably not what happened. Doesn’t fit enough of the facts.”
“Was it a sex killing?”
Zucker shook his big head. “I don’t think so. We’ll know later on. Looks more like robbery now. Maybe your girl Eileen was looting the place and Beverly Bond caught her at it”
Gray frowned at the moted sunlight that striped the carpet.
“The fire’s what makes it especially confusing. I don’t understand that at all. What about fingerprints, Harry?”
“Plenty. Beverly’s, naturally, all over the place. Two other sets, besides all the casuals in
the living room where the neighbors and firemen were. One set belongs to the ex-husband. The other is probably the boy friend’s. Nothing on the knife. Only Beverly’s on the dropped highball glass.”
“None of Eileen’s?”
“Naturally not. The killer’s going to watch out for prints. But we know she was there.”
“Everybody in the neighborhood knew that,” Gray said. “Have you figured out why she’d be pounding on the door and rousing the whole building when she knew there was a dead woman inside?”
“With a screwball like the Herrick dame, who knows? You just said she’s been trying to punish herself. Maybe she wanted to be caught.”
“I should have kept my mouth shut,” Gray said. He thought in silence for a moment.
“That husband,” he said presently. “Ex-husband, did you say? Krantz told you he was trying to get in?”
Zucker nodded. “Chris Bond. Divorced about eight months ago. A small-time gambler and con man.”
“What was he after?” Gray asked. “Once the shock was over, he seemed a lot more worried about what might have been lost in the fire than he was about his ex-wife. Did she keep her money in the mattress?”
Zucker laughed shortly. “If she had anything valuable in the place, it isn’t there now. No, Krantz got out of Bond what he was worried about—his wardrobe. Seems he’s a sharp dresser and he’d left most of his suits at Beverly’s while he was out of town somewhere. He was worried, all right. Kept moaning about a cashmere sport coat that cost a hundred bucks. Beverly he could spare. Not the cashmere coat.”
Gray smiled wryly.
“If Bond was on close enough terms to leave his clothes with Beverly, how did he feel about the man who paid the rent? How did the boy friend feel about Bond? You can’t overlook the jealousy angle. Had Beverly got into any quarrels lately with anybody?”
Zucker gave him a broad grin.
“She sure as hell did. Last night, about an hour before she turned up dead. She got into a hair-pulling match at a night club called the Silver Slipper.”
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