My picture made the front page of the Mirror-News. It was captioned: The Playboy Detective and Annabelle Compt.
The death of Jeremiah Adams got the full theatrical splash. There were pictures of the temple and the study and a full length portraiture of Jeremiah, arms extended as though in benediction. The tricky lighting put a faint halo over his bowed head.
Prophet Murdered, was the banner headline.
My phone rang and it was Griffin. “Well,” he said, “our problem is solved, I guess.”
“The hard way,” I agreed. “Sergeant Kafke asked me to mention that he could use an extra hand.”
“Do you want to help?”
“Yes. But I couldn’t tell you why.”
He chuckled. “Why, Joe, you’re a citizen, that’s why. You’re one of those damned bleeders, like I am.” A pause. “Okay, I’ll keep you on the payroll for a while and assign you to help Kafke. Don’t stretch it, though; taxes are high enough.”
That last had been an attempt at humor. One of his problems had been solved and he had a few moments for humor. I told him I wouldn’t stretch it.
I phoned Kafke and learned that the same gun that had killed Jeremiah Adams had also killed Burns Murphy. I learned there had been no word on Clyde Tackett.
“That should make him number one,” I said.
“Except that he was at the hotel working when Murphy was killed. I figure he’s scared because that woman saw him last night and he might be railroaded. Or he knows something he can make a dollar on. We’ll flush him out.”
They had a record of Adams’ last meal and when he ate it. They had an accurate estimate of the time he had died.
I figured back and it cleared Eve. I’d had her under observation during the time. And then I realized it almost cleared Tackett, unless he had done some fast driving in that old Chevy.
I told Kafke this and he said, “We won’t get much of his story until we find him. As a matter of fact, we haven’t positive identification. We didn’t have a picture of him to show that witness.”
I told him I’d keep in touch. I took my nose drops before going out into the damp and cheerless day.
In the Venice saloon, the little bartender was as bald, tanned and taciturn as ever. He hadn’t seen Clyde Tackett for two days.
“He isn’t at his apartment,” I said. “I just checked.”
“I haven’t seen him,” he repeated.
“Well, if you do, tell him he’s making a big mistake in hiding out. He’s clear on both murders, as far as I can see. You can tell him I’m sure I had him under observation when Adams died. I’m his alibi for that one.”
The bartender sniffed.
I said patiently, “It’s very important. Believe me it is.”
“Okay, okay. I’ll tell him.”
And then as I climbed into my car, a thought struck me, an angle about the telephone slips. Dates meant something, of course, but so did the time of day. And I tried to remember if the hour of the day had been noted on those phone slips.
At the hotel, Mr. Gelling went over the slips with me again and there was no hourly notation on them.
But he picked out the one I was most interested in and said, “This call must have been made after nine o’clock. Because it’s initialed by the operator and she doesn’t come on duty until nine o’clock.”
“Do you mean nine in the evening?”
He nodded. “Does that help?”
“It could. Have you heard from Tackett, by any chance?”
He shook his head. “I’m sure I never will. We had words when I discharged him.”
Maybe nobody ever would. Maybe Tackett had joined Burns Murphy and Jeremiah Adams.
The Plymouth seemed to steer itself toward Sunset Boulevard and the old Spanish home of J. D. Deering.
There was a spanking new Mercury in the driveway and the insignia next to the license plate identified it as a doctor’s car. His name and address was behind celluloid on the steering column and I jotted it in my notebook.
At the door, I asked the Negro maid, “Is Miss Deering ill?”
She shook her head. “It’s Mr. Deering. Miss Eve has left us again.”
“An argument again?”
She said nothing, staring at me sadly.
“What’s wrong with Mr. Deering? His heart?”
She shook her head. “There’s nothing wrong with his heart, nothing a doctor can find, I mean. He’s got a cold and is just generally run down.”
“Would it be possible for me to see him?”
“No, sir. The doctor’s just given him a sedative and he gave orders Mr. Deering was not to be disturbed.”
I turned to go, and she said, “Would you let me know if you find Miss Eve? Could you call me? I worry about that girl.”
I nodded. “What’s your name?”
“Ramsay, Sarah Jean Ramsay. Mr. Puma, you don’t think Miss Eve is mixed up in all those horrible things that have happened, do you? That isn’t why she left, is it?”
“I don’t know, Miss Ramsay. Her staff of life was killed last night and it must have been a considerable shock to her. Do you think she could have gone to Malibu?”
“I suppose,” Sarah Jean said. “It’s always been her doll house, her nursery. She’s just a child, Mr. Puma, she’s trouble’s child.”
She still stood there, getting the air, as I drove down the driveway to Sunset.
The smog was out now, blanketing Beverly Hills, making my eyes smart and my head ache. I stepped up the car’s pace, heading for the fresher air of the Bay section.
But even here, along the Coast Highway, it was gray and damp and smelly. The big Diesel trucks were coming in from the north, the stink of their exhausts lingering long after they were past.
This town was turning into the new Pittsburgh, noxious and depressing. The eager, active, powerful Chamber of Commerce had ruined another city.
Past the weathered little shacks on the ocean side, past the overhanging clay cliffs on the hill side, the Plymouth chugged on. I thought of Sarah Jean Ramsay in that sick house behind me and her remark about Eve being trouble’s child.
Up the winding climb to the doll house. The Cad was in the parking area and I pulled up behind it.
There was no answer to my pressure on the bell button, though I clearly heard the chimes inside. I went around on the grass to see if I could look into one of the living-room windows.
I found one low enough to reach at the top of the slope.
Eve was stark naked. She sat in a huge, armless chair, a drink in her hand, her smooth body still as death, her unseeing stare directed through the glass wall that overlooked the Colony.
One breast was badly scratched and there was an ugly, blue-brown bruise on the inside of one thigh.
She didn’t move. I stared closely and finally detected the almost imperceptible rise and fall of her bosom. She was breathing; she was not dead. She was in shock.
The doors were all locked. There was a ladder in the garage and an open window some distance above my head, leading into the kitchen.
It took only a few seconds to pull the tension screen free from its bottom moorings. Then I was laboriously climbing in over the kitchen sink.
I had made enough noise, but Eve still sat in the same position when I came into the living room.
I called sharply, “Eve, look at me!”
Her head swiveled woodenly and the glass dropped from her hand. Her mouth opened, twisted; hate distorted her face. Her voice was hoarse. “You killed him. You murderer!”
I shook my head.
“Don’t come near me,” she said shrilly. “Murderer!” One hand cupped her lacerated breast. “You did this.” The hand went to the bruise on her thigh. “And this. Rapist, murderer!” She began to shudder.
“Eve,” I said quietly, “Don’t get worked up. You’ve been drinking.” I took a step toward her.
She stood up, backing away from me. “Don’t touch me, don’t come near me. I swear I’ll kill you.�
�
We stood there, frozen, staring at each other. Then suddenly she ran for the kitchen, around the opposite side of the sofa from me.
I heard a drawer open and then the clatter of silver-ware. By the time I reached the kitchen, she was standing facing the door, a long, slim carving knife in her hand.
“I’ll kill you,” she shrieked. “If you touch me, I’ll kill you.”
There was a brassy taste in my mouth and sweat ran down my wrists. The house was unbearably hot and I could hear the hum of the heating fan.
I said softly, “I’m not going to touch you, Eve. I’m here to help you.”
“Rapist,” she said. “Voyeur, killer, atheist — ”
Again, we were frozen, staring. And then she screamed, “Monster!” and came at me with the knife.
I turned quickly. Not quickly enough to save the sleeve of my jacket, sliced right across the seam, but quickly enough to save the arm.
She stumbled, turned, and slashed again and I pulled my head back in time, though the tip of the blade grazed my nose. Her reactions were abnormally fast, frighteningly fast. Bile came up into my mouth as I slid along the wall of the hall.
She wasn’t human. Hysteria had made her swift and cunning, far beyond the normal powers. I kept sliding along the wall, my stare meeting hers, her body tense and crouched, unmoving, waiting for me to come to the end of the wall.
Blood oozed slowly from an opened scratch on her breast and I thought she had favored the bruised leg in her run to the kitchen. Perhaps pain would bring her out of this transfixed state. I doubted my ability to subdue her. She wasn’t human at the moment.
“I came to help, Eve,” I called softly. “Sarah Jean asked me to come up here. I swear by the memory of your mother, I came to help.”
“Rapist!” she screamed, and came charging down the hall.
I was in a corner. That’s what she had been waiting for. I couldn’t see behind me as I’d watched her, and now I was in a corner.
The rest was instinct, beyond design, born of desperation. I crouched, head lowered, trying to protect all the vulnerable places, trying to offer as small a target as possible for that blade held rigidly out in front of her.
The blade was held high. It was still above my crouched body as she kept coming at full speed.
My head went into her bare stomach with terrific force and I could hear the breath go out of her as the knife struck the wall behind me and then clattered to the floor.
She bounced off to my right and into the wall at that side and I heard an anguished sob from her. And then she went down, moaning, saliva dribbling from one side of her mouth.
Her eyes were open, but glazed, her body was limp now, the tenseness gone. She began to mumble.
I picked her up and carried her into the bedroom. I put her in the big bed and covered her, and she closed her eyes.
I found the thermostat. It was set all the way to the top. I set it down again before going to the phone and calling the Deering home.
The maid answered and I said, “Sarah, is the doctor still there?”
“No, Mr. Puma. He left a few minutes ago. What’s wrong?”
“I found Miss Deering up at the Malibu place. She’s in shock and she’s been drinking. I thought it would be best to get the family physician to attend her.”
“I’ll phone him,” she said. “I’ll phone him right now.”
“Fine. But Sarah, perhaps it would be best not to say anything to Mr. Deering. It can’t help matters to have him know.”
“I understand, Mr. Puma. I’ll call the doctor right now.”
I went back into the bedroom, but Eve seemed to be sleeping. I went into the bathroom and saw that the scratch on my nose hadn’t been deep enough to bring blood. I looked at my sliced sleeve and shivered.
I washed my sweating face and rinsed out the taste of bile in my mouth and went back to the living room to wait for the doctor.
16
EVE WAS STILL QUIET, forty minutes later, when the new Mercury came up the road from the highway. It was the doctor who had been at the house, a Doctor Delavarum.
He said, “I’ve sent for a nurse, one she knows. I’d appreciate it if you’d stay until the nurse arrives.”
I told him I would. He went into the bedroom. I stayed out in the living room.
When he came out again, he said, “She’s resting now. I gave her a sedative. She’s going to be all right.”
I told him how I had found her. I said, “She has a lacerated breast and a bruised thigh. How do you suppose that could have happened?”
His face was guarded. “There’s a good possibility it was self-inflicted. I’m not a psychiatrist, so I couldn’t tell you any of the various motivations involved. But I think we can be sure it was self-inflicted.”
I said, “I told the maid not to mention this to Mr. Deering. Because of his heart.”
He frowned. “His heart? There is absolutely nothing wrong with Mr. Deering’s heart.”
I said nothing.
He said, “I have an operation scheduled in an hour and a half. But if there’s any reason why you can’t stay until the nurse comes, I think I could arrange to — ”
“I can stay, Doctor,” I said.
He wrote out some instructions for the nurse and gave me two bottles of pills to relay to her. I watched him go down the long hill to the highway and went back into the fishbowl living room.
I wondered why she had lied about her father’s heart. I wondered how many other lies she had told me. Pressure built up in my sinuses. There was a growing ache behind my eyes.
On the black tile bar of the liquor cabinet, I mixed soda with some premium bourbon and went over to sit in the love seat that faced out through the widest expanse of glass.
The cars on the highway seemed to be viewed from the wrong end of a telescope. Smoke from a trash fire lifted lazily in the murky air, spreading as it reached the faint breeze above the crest of the hills.
I had mixed another drink, a weaker one, and it was half gone when I saw the small sedan turn up at the foot of the road. I finished the drink and washed the glass and went to the door.
It was a Plymouth, two years older than mine, and the nurse was an elderly, thin, blue-eyed woman. Her gray hair was cut short and her voice was pure New England nasal.
“Is she resting?” she asked, and I nodded.
“Poor girl,” she said. “Poor beautiful, troubled girl.”
I asked, “Do you know where the freezer is, and the other food?”
She nodded. “It’s not the first time I’ve been here. You’re a friend of hers, are you, Mr. — ?”
“Puma,” I supplied. “Yes, I’m a friend. I’ll phone later. Will you tell her that when she wakens?”
She promised me she would, and I left.
And going down the winding road toward the sea, I remembered that first night I had come to Eve’s doll house, that Santana-warmed night that had been filled with the stars and her perfume.
A sick girl. Was that why she had succumbed to Stud Puma?
Maybe all the round-heeled lovelies were sick one way or another. Men liked to think of that species of the breed as admirable, as girls who thought like men. What was so admirable about thinking like a man?
I give you this world, made by man’s thinking.
Adele didn’t think like a man. Adele thought one hundred per cent like a woman, clearly, calmly, realistically. I stopped at a fancy market in Pacific Palisades and brought a pair of fat fillets for Adele and me.
She was home but she was not alone.
Something obnoxious in imported tweed was sitting with her in her living room, sharing her fine whisky. He was tall and thin and his gray-black hair was stiff in a brush cut.
His name was Donald Major and he acknowledged the introduction with a patronizing smile. He studied my sliced sleeve thoughtfully.
“Cut with a knife,” I explained.
He smiled politely but made no comment.
I looked at Adele. “I — uh — only brought two steaks.”
Donald’s eyebrows lifted and he looked at me with more doubt. “I’ve had lunch, Mr. Puma.” He turned to Adele. “I won’t keep you from yours. Tonight at eight, then?”
“I’ll be waiting, Don.” She kissed her fingertips and touched his cheek with them. “I’m looking forward to it.”
She went to the door with him while I stood there in my wrinkled, sliced and sweaty suit, the steaks in my hand.
I was in the kitchen when she finally came back from the door. I unwrapped the steaks without looking at her.
She said lightly, “Do you think he looks like Tab Hunter? A number of people have remarked at the resemblance.”
“I didn’t get a good look at him,” I said. “Known him long?”
“Since I was thirteen. What a dancer! And a gourmet, too. And he knows so many exciting people.” She came closer. “What happened to your sleeve?”
“It was sliced by one of the exciting people I know,” I said. “How come I haven’t seen this Donald Major before today?”
“Joe, I know dozens of people you’ve never met. You’re making noises like a husband.” She pushed me aside. “Let me handle those steaks.”
I sat at the kitchen table and picked up the Times.
Adele said quietly, “Joe, what about that sleeve?”
I told her the story briefly, omitting the insignificant detail of Eve’s nakedness. When I had finished, Adele said, “I hope she’ll be all right.” And that was her last comment on Eve.
I sat at the kitchen table and read the Times while she worked.
“Anything new?” Adele asked.
“Nothing. I wonder where that Tackett is.”
“Maybe he’s dead.”
I shrugged.
After a moment, she said, “Sam heard that you had made peace with this Big Jim Murphy person. I — it sounded a little cynical to me the way Sam worded it.”
“Shenanigans,” I admitted. “I’m trying to break up Big Jim’s alliance with Deutscher and thereby weaken Deutscher’s position. I know you don’t like angle-shooting, but I operate in the best way I can.”
“You don’t have to work with thieves, Joe Puma.”
Sweet Wild Wench Page 11
