Schemers: A Nameless Detective Novel (Nameless Detective Novels)

by Bill Pronzini

  “Blatantly false accusations. You can’t prove any of them.”

  “Except for felony insurance fraud,” I said. “All the police need to prove that is the missing dust jackets. You wouldn’t risk damage to the valuable ones, so they have to be some place secure. Your safe deposit box—that’s a good bet.”

  A muscle twitched under his right eye. I’d made the right guess.

  Yin saw it, too. She said, “All it’ll take to find out is a search warrant.”

  “Before you can get one,” Pollexfen said, “I’ll withdraw my claim with Great Western Insurance. Then you’ll have nothing criminal against me. A man can do what he wants with his own possessions if he’s not committing a crime.”

  “Nothing against you?” I said. “Not committing a crime? Last time I checked, premeditated homicide was still a Class A felony.”

  “Homicide! Now what are you claiming?”

  “That you killed your brother-in-law.”

  “That’s preposterous. Angelina shot him, on purpose or accidentally—”

  “No, she didn’t. You. Just like all the rest of it—designed and carried out by you.”

  “That’s insane. How could I have shot the man when I was with you and my secretary when it happened? The doors to the library were double-locked, you unlocked them yourself.”

  “We know how you did it,” I said. “We also know why. Revenge, for one thing. You hated Cullrane because he was bleeding you over the illegalities in your Greenfield Aeronautics takeover. Hated your wife because of her infidelity. Kill him, frame her—double payback.”

  “Double nonsense,” he said.

  “But that wasn’t enough for you. You had to do it in a way that satisfied your ego and your passion for crime fiction. Clever mastermind devises ingenious murder plot, then sets out to match wits with real-life detectives. The one thing you forgot is that the too-smart criminal almost always makes mistakes in his calculations, so he hardly ever gets away with his crimes. Life imitating art.”

  “You know what I think?” Pollexfen said. “I think you’re full of shit.”

  I said to Yin, “Never fails. Back one of the moneyed class into a corner, the respectability peels off like dead skin.”

  “You haven’t backed me anywhere.”

  “Pretty close, I’d say.”

  “Words—just a lot of meaningless words. You believe you know how I committed a mythical murder? Go ahead, explain it.”

  “Murder by suicide,” I said.

  The phrase jolted him. Until I said it he’d thought we were guessing, that we didn’t actually know how the murder had been arranged. His arrogance, his sense of invincibility, was based on his conviction that he’d created an unsolvable puzzle. I’d blown up that assumption with three little words.

  His mouth bent into a sneer, but he forced it and it didn’t come off. “That makes no sense whatsoever.”

  “It’s pretty simple, really. Like the rest of your plan. You gathered your wife and her brother into the library and fed them martinis laced with Klonopin—enough of the drug to knock them out for approximately three hours. You knew about the effects of clonazepam and alcohol because of the time your wife ended up in the hospital when she made the mistake of mixing the two. I don’t know how you figured the exact dosage, but I can make a couple of guesses. Casual questions to a trusted doctor or chemist. Or more likely, by trial and error. You’re not above feeding yourself the same cocktail and suffering through the aftereffects until you had the right mix and the right time frame.”

  He said nothing this time. The muscle twitched again under his eye.

  “The way you set it up,” I said, “Cullrane could have died before you got back from the auction, before Brenda Koehler and I were in the house. It was only important that he be found dead with your wife in a sealed room, and that you have an unshakable alibi for the time of death. You almost miscalculated; another two or three minutes and I might have gotten in there in time to save Cullrane’s life. As it was, the fact that he died when he did, while the three of us were together in the hallway, must have seemed like a huge bonus to you.

  “All right. Once Cullrane and Angelina were out cold, you pulled her off the couch and laid her on the floor next to the desk. You took eight not too expensive books off the shelves, probably at random, and stacked them on the couch. You put the second key, the one you had made from your own, into Cullrane’s pocket and then dragged him over to the fireplace and stretched him out on his back with his head propped up against the hearth bricks. How am I doing so far?”

  “Still full of shit.”

  “You took the shotgun down, made sure it was ready to fire, and laid it vertically on top of Cullrane’s body with the butt wedged down between his knees and the barrels shoved inside his mouth. Then you wrapped his hands around the trigger guard, the fingers interlaced to hold them in place, both forefingers hooked together through the guard and tight on the trigger closest to his face. He was a tall man with long arms; the fit would have been just right. Then you walked out, double-locked the door with your own key, and left for the book auction.

  “Death trap for an unconscious man. Clonazepam mixed with alcohol leaves a person groggy and disoriented when he starts to wake up. Cullrane did what anybody in that condition would when he felt his mouth clogged and tasted gunmetal: he struggled automatically to free his hands, pull the barrels out of his mouth. Instead, his laced fingers triggered the weapon and blew off the back of his head, and the recoil jerked it loose and threw it down over his legs. Murder by suicide.”

  “That’s a crazy theory,” Pollexfen said. “It wouldn’t work.”

  “Sure it would, if it was set up properly by a person who knows guns. Ask Inspector Davis. He’s a gun expert himself.”

  “It’d work, all right,” Davis said, “if you lightened the trigger pull to less than four pounds. Which Ballistics says you did. Cold-blooded, man.”

  Pollexfen said, “Ridiculous speculation, that’s all it is. You can’t prove I did any of that.”

  Yin said, “Motive, opportunity, the drug evidence. Plus what we found in the library and the false insurance claim. That’s enough for us.”

  “Go ahead, then, take me into custody. I’ll sue the police department for false arrest.”

  “You couldn’t make it stick,” I said.

  “You think the district attorney can make charges against me stick? The case would never go to trial. Even if did, no jury would convict me.”

  “Maybe not, but then prosecutors and juries are both unpredictable. But let’s say you hire a hotshot criminal attorney and he gets the case thrown out, or you’re acquitted on reasonable doubt if it does go to trial. Either way you still lose, Pollexfen. You got rid of Cullrane, but the frame against Angelina’s already fallen apart. She has her own hotshot attorney—he’ll get the charges against her dropped, guaranteed. You lose the game, too—your perfect crime isn’t perfect, it didn’t even come close. The media will have a field day at your expense.”

  Got him where he lived, inside his massive ego, and it broke him. He growled, “You bastard!” and came at me swinging his cane. Davis caught it and yanked it out of his hand.

  Yin said, “Like the man said, Mr. Pollexfen, life imitates art. People who think they’re smarter than the law hardly ever get away with it.”

  Pollexfen had nothing more to say. He stood there marinating in his hate and his defeat while Davis handcuffed him and Yin read him his rights.

  28

  JAKE RUNYON

  When he arrived to keep his Saturday night date with Bryn, she said she didn’t feel like going out. “Would you mind if we just stayed here tonight? I’ve got salad fixings and a bottle of wine in the fridge.”

  “Whatever you like.”

  They ate in the dining room, surrounded by rosewood sideboards and glass-fronted cabinets she’d inherited from her parents. By candlelight, because it was pale and soft and she could hold her head so that the covered side o
f her face was shadowed. The scarf she wore was dark red with a black pattern of Chinese characters. A different one just for him?

  There wasn’t much conversation. She seemed far away tonight, even more so than usual. Not unhappy, not exactly pensive—just adrift deep within. He respected her need for solitude, as always, so he didn’t try to make small talk. He wasn’t good at it anyway. The Henderson case was still on his mind, but he wouldn’t have discussed it with her if she’d asked. Even with Colleen, he’d never talked about his work. Professional life, private life—he believed in keeping them separate, so that the one wouldn’t taint the other.

  After dinner they took their wine into the lamplit living room. Bryn turned on the gas-log fire and then some music, something quiet by Brahms, and they sat in companionable silence with the hissing flames making flicker patterns on the walls and furniture.

  Cliff Henderson kept wandering in and out of his thoughts. What Henderson had gone through Thursday night and Friday morning would have left most men in a bad way psychologically, but he seemed to have come through it without any visible scars. Strong, tough. Lucky. And still believing his father was innocent of Jenny Noakes’s murder. He’d go to his grave believing it, just as Tucker Devries would go to his believing the opposite. No way of ever knowing which one was right, unless someday somebody confessed to the crime, and the chances of that were slim and none. Cold case. Cold forever.

  “Jake?”

  He blinked and moved out of himself, back into the warmth of the room.

  “I need to ask you something,” she said. “I’ve been thinking about it for a while … Maybe you have, too, I don’t know. But I need to know.”

  “What is it?”

  “Do you want to be with me?”

  “I wouldn’t be here if I didn’t.”

  “That’s not what I mean. I mean … in bed. Do you want to make love to me?”

  The question surprised him. He didn’t answer immediately; he wasn’t sure what she wanted to hear.

  “Be honest. Please.”

  “Yes,” he said.

  “You’ve never said anything, never tried …”

  “It’s not my call.”

  “Yes, it is, as much as mine. Do you want me? Despite my affliction?”

  “I don’t see you that way. Afflicted.”

  “How do you see me? As a woman or just a friend?”

  “Both.”

  “A desirable woman?”

  “In every way.”

  “You’re not just saying that? Being kind?”

  “No. You asked me to be honest. I’m being honest.”

  A little time passed. Then she got to her feet, single fluid motion, no hesitancy, as if she’d made a sudden decision. “I’ll be in the bedroom. Give me five minutes before you come in.”

  “Bryn …”

  “It’s all right. I’m being honest, too.”

  He sat motionless, not thinking. When he sensed that it was time, he stood and went down the hallway to where the bedrooms were. Hers was dark; all he could see was the vague shape of her under the covers, the whitish shape of her face, her entire face. She’d taken off the scarf along with her clothes.

  “Don’t turn on the light.”

  “I won’t.”

  “Come in here with me, but don’t touch me. Not just yet.”

  He undressed, eased himself into the bed beside her. The sheets rustled—freshly laundered silk. The thought came to him that she’d put the sheets on especially for this, that she’d planned it.

  They lay without touching. He could hear the slightly quickened sound of her breathing. And he was aware, then, of the faint, elusive scent of perfume—something else she’d put on just for him.

  “All right,” she said after a long, sighing breath. “But promise me you won’t touch my face. Or try to kiss me.”

  “I promise.”

  She moved over, fitting her body against his in a shy, tentative way. The feel of her bare flesh was electric. Sensations stirred inside him that he hadn’t felt in more than two years.

  Colleen …

  No. Bryn.

  He made love to her as tenderly as if she were a virgin bride. Toward the end she clung to him fiercely, but even then she averted the left side of her face into the pillow.

  Afterward, when they were breathing normally again, she clutched his hand in both of hers. “Jake? Was it awful for you?”

  “My God, no. You know it wasn’t.”

  “I was afraid you’d …”

  “What?”

  “Pull away. Be repulsed.”

  “Nothing about you could ever repulse me.”

  Soft sigh. Almost a relieved sigh. “For me, it was … I’m not sure I can put it into words … .”

  “You don’t need to. We don’t need words.”

  Quiet.

  “Hold me for a while,” she said, “and then … go. Okay? I’d rather you didn’t spend the night. I don’t want you to see me in the morning. I’m not ready for that.”

  “Anything you say.”

  Her fingers tightened in his and she curled against him with her knees drawn up, like a child. He held her, staring into the warm darkness.

  For the first time since before Colleen’s illness, he felt at peace.

  29

  TAMARA

  She kept waiting for Lucas to call, ask to see her again on the weekend. He hadn’t said he would, but after all the the weekend. He hadn’t said he would, but after all the fun they’d had together, she thought he might. Only he didn’t. On Friday night she stayed home and hovered around the phone like a silly teenager, willing it to ring. Well, he’d told her his job required a lot of traveling; maybe he’d had to go out of town. Yeah, and maybe he’d had enough of her. She hoped that wasn’t it, because she sure hadn’t had enough of him. When you’ve been starving for close to a year and finally get a taste of it again, it takes a while to stop being hungry.

  Saturday morning, she decided passive waiting sucked. He hadn’t called her, so all right, then she’d call him. Twenty-first century, right? Women’s lib. Lucas hadn’t given her his home number, but he’d used her phone to call Mama before he left Tuesday night, to see if she got home from her date, so his number was still on her speed dial. Detective Tamara.

  She made the call, and on about the sixth ring a woman’s voice answered. Thin, irritable, a little fuzzy around the edges. Must be sleep fuzz. Alisha wouldn’t be boozing at eleven in the morning, would she?

  “Is Lucas home? This is Tamara calling.”

  “Who?”

  “Tamara Corbin. Friend of your son.”

  “He’s a damn fool.”

  “ … What?”

  Silence.

  “Mrs. Zeller?”

  “My name isn’t Zeller.”

  “ … You’re not Alisha, Lucas’s mother?”

  More silence. Then some hacking, wheezing noises … nicotine cough? “What do you want?”

  “To talk to Lucas. Is he there?”

  “No.”

  “Well, when he comes in, would you ask him to give me a call—”

  “No,” the woman said, and hung up on her.

  Weird conversation. Lucas’s mama or not? Not a wife, that hadn’t checked out, but how about a live-in girlfriend? The scratchy, fuzzy voice hadn’t been young, and those hacks and wheezes sounded like they’d come out of a pretty old throat. Well, she’d just have to wait for Lucas to get in touch to find out. If he got in touch. If he didn’t … c’est la vie, it’d been sweet while it lasted.

  The rest of the day dragged. Lonesome Saturday night ahead. Unless Vonda and Ben were free and wanted to stop by later, share a bottle of wine, maybe go out to dinner at one of the restaurants on Potrero Hill …

  Yep, they were and they did. So it wouldn’t be a lonesome night after all.

  At six o’clock the three of them were sitting out on the little porch that opened off the kitchen, just large enough for a table and four chairs, with a vie
w of the backs of houses and apartment buildings on the next street over. The weather had improved, clear and windy today, but a mimosa tree gave the porch some shelter and it wasn’t bad sitting out there. One of the perks of city living.

  Vonda was showing now, really showing, and she was only five months along. She’d be big as a house before the kid was born. Boy or girl, they didn’t know yet which it was, they wanted to be surprised. Vonda, who’d sworn never to get married and have kids. Pregnancy agreed with her, though; she had this definite earth mother glow. Ben agreed with her, too. Who’d’ve thought she’d hook up with a white Jewish guy after a string of about three hundred black dudes, and get knocked up and married and be so happy she glowed? Ben was a good-looking guy, Tamara had to admit that. And they were good together, they even looked good together. Even Vonda’s racist brother James had seen that and quit giving her grief.

  So they sat sipping Chardonnay and talking and the wine made Tamara mellow enough to want to spring Lucas on them. Casually she said, “Well, I met somebody last weekend. Took care of my little problem.”

  Vonda grinned. “Hey, girl. About time.”

  “Sunday night, Monday morning, Tuesday night.”

  “You ho! Why didn’t you tell me sooner?”

  “Hey, no big deal.”

  “Yeah, right, after almost a year. Who is he? What’s his name?”

  “You know him. Lucas Zeller.”

  It got cold out there all of a sudden. Ben and Vonda sat real still, staring at her like she’d just sprouted a second head.

  “What?” she said.

  “Oh Jesus, Tam. Not Lucas Zeller.”

  “Why not? Man was at your wedding reception, that’s where I met him.”

  “Not by invitation,” Ben said. He sounded grim. “James didn’t know he was coming, didn’t want him there.”

  “What’s the matter with him, except that he’s a mama’s boy? He’s been real sweet to me.”

  “He’s on the down low,” Vonda said.

  “What! Come on now, you don’t mean—”

  “I’d never lie about something like that. James told me. Lucas tried to get him to join this club he’s in.”