The Man Who Cried All the Way Home

by Dolores Hitchens

  “This was in—”

  “Kat’s green handbag.”

  It was Uncle Chuck’s turn to feel astonishment and chagrin. He told himself, almost not believing it, Martin had had the thing all the time, ever since the discovery of Kat’s body. Why had he waited to arrest Dorrie?

  “He had a theory,” Knowles went on, still quietly and evenly. “He thought that in the struggle the contents of the two women’s purses might have been tossed around, spilled out, maybe mixed up. And that then, hurrying to pick everything up, the murderer put in the rain cap by mistake.”

  “By murderer he meant Dorrie,” Uncle Chuck snapped back. “You don’t have to beat around the bush with me. He thought that Dorrie got rattled and put the rain hood in by mistake. There was no mistake about it, though—the murderer put it in your daughter’s purse for one purpose, to make Martin think just what he did. I guess Martin had to wait to talk to you, to make sure your daughter wouldn’t have been carrying it because she’d wanted it. Makes sense.”

  “I had nothing to do with Doris’s being arrested,” Knowles said, backing away a step or two. “I just told the cops what I had to. And telling them about Doris waving the poker wasn’t part of it.”

  Uncle Chuck nodded. “You knew your daughter was dead, as well as Sargent. No need to spill the lie, when the planted evidence was going to do the job. But why were you so surprised a moment or so ago when I told you Wally Wiegand wouldn’t back up the yam about the poker? Was he supposed to?”

  Surprisingly a tinge of embarrassment came into Knowles’s manner; he retreated even farther from the car door.

  “He was, then,” Uncle Chuck exclaimed. “My God, the light is dawning, ever so slowly. You were all in it together!”

  Knowles glanced back at his own car, chewing his lip, frowning, as if wishing he could get into it and take off.

  “Tell me, did Sargent take out an insurance policy in your favor? Was that a part of the deal?”

  The surprise in Knowles’s face seemed genuine enough. “Why the devil would he do that? I don’t need his money.”

  “He did it for Arthur Cannon.”

  Knowles seemed on the point of answering this and then suddenly changed his mind and remained silent. The thoughtful, indrawn look appeared to deepen, however.

  Maybe, Uncle Chuck thought, I’m giving him more than he’s giving me.

  “Arthur must have been playing a part in it too.”

  “I don’t know what you’re talking about, Sadler, so lay off.”

  “The scheme. The plot. Whatever Sargent had all laid out. You were all old friends, steady companions, bosom buddies. For how long? Twenty years perhaps? Strong ties had been forged among all of you. You were the ‘bunch.’ The musketeers. All for one and one for all, like in the book. And one of you had got himself into a corner and needed the help of the others. So you all came through.”

  Knowles seemed to gather his composure and his defiance. “I can’t help it if you want to compose fiction. Just let me get by while you think up the rest of the plot. Do me a favor, Chump.”

  “What was the corner? Why did Sargent suddenly have to run?”

  “I don’t know anything about it. If you’re just going to make up a yam and force me to listen—”

  “I must be getting damned close to the truth. You’re getting jittery as hell, Knowles. Your hands are plucking at the buttons on your suit and your feet keep shuffling around as if they wanted to run. What was Sargent’s trouble—trouble so bad he got you all to help him? So bad he seemed about to run off from Doris without the divorce he wanted? And leaving a business it had taken him several years to build?”

  Knowles muttered an angry response that Uncle Chuck didn’t catch.

  “Tell me, Knowles. Did one of the buddy-buddies suddenly want out, and did it end up a fight, with your daughter shot to death and Sargent’s brains beaten out with something like a tire iron? Is that the real story? If it is, maybe you’re all in on that too.”

  Knowles tried to grin scornfully. The lopsided grimace distorted his face. “You’re crazy, old man. You see spooks, and you make up lies. Doris caught Sargent and Kat together. She lost her head and killed them. You know it.” With an air of jerking himself away from a spot where he had stayed too long, Knowles swung around abruptly and walked off in the other direction.

  I couldn’t begin to catch up with him, even if it would do me any good, Uncle Chuck thought. He’s leaving the car, so I might as well leave it too. I’d better go and have another session with our mysterious Wally. The one with the fat smile and the big ideas

  It occurred to Uncle Chuck that Wally’s desire for a growing and expanding tire business might be goaded by his old friend Knowles’s success as a cafe owner.

  Had there been jealousy among the clique, as well as loyalty? And could jealousy have led to hatred? Could one of the others have envied Sargent his successful conquest of a young girl, even as Wally might envy Knowles’s business acumen?

  Envy could cause strange distortions in the human mind and soul. A lifetime of memories assured Uncle Chuck of this. But how often would envy, of itself, lead to murder?

  Perhaps oftener than we think, Uncle Chuck decided.

  Taking color snapshots of Sargent and Kat Knowles from a distance, without their apparent knowledge, secretly—this could well be the work of a brain eaten up with envy.

  Somebody took those snapshots, Uncle Chuck reminded himself, and Sargent somehow got hold of them and considered them important enough to hide in his room. They must mean something damned pertinent in all of this.

  He had started the motor, pulled away from the curb, leaving Knowles’s abandoned car behind.

  Knowles could be headed for a telephone, of course. He could warn Wally Wiegand, their stories had better hang together or else … Well, I’ll know as soon as I see my fat friend, Uncle Chuck thought. He’s as phony as a three-dollar bill, but he won’t be able to cover the alarm any recent warning would leave.

  Chapter 18

  The interior of Wiegand’s tire emporium was relatively quiet. Two of the brisk young salesmen started for Uncle Chuck as soon as he entered. To the first Uncle Chuck explained that he wanted to see Wiegand himself, and the salesman shrugged and said he was sorry, it was out of the question, Mr. Wiegand had left the store. The other salesman had paused an aisle away, just the other side of a pyramidal inner-tube display, and he waited a moment before approaching.

  “You were in here yesterday,” he said quietly.

  “Yes, that’s right.”

  “And you don’t look like a reporter.”

  “Is that what’s bothering your boss?”

  “Running him ragged, now that the word’s out, Mrs. Chenoweth has been arrested for murder. For the murder, I should say.”

  “I’m sure sorry I missed him. I’m Mrs. Chenoweth’s attorney.”

  A malevolent little gleam seemed to flare in the younger man’s eyes. “If you really want to see Wiegand, you might try Flaherty’s Bar in the next block. You know what? The boss acts to me like a man with a lot on his conscience—that is, providing there is one under all that …” The salesman let his voice die enigmatically while he grinned at Uncle Chuck.

  “I see what you mean.” Uncle Chuck smiled back. “And thanks a lot.”

  He returned to the sidewalk. Across the street in the block to the north, Flaherty’s sign hung invitingly over the doorway to the bar. Uncle Chuck left his car where it was and walked slowly up the sidewalk. If Knowles had phoned, had already warned Wiegand to lie low, this would be the kind of place Uncle Chuck would have expected to find him.

  Flaherty’s was not a fancy bar. The plain exterior heralded what was inside, simple furnishings, no chrome or leather or smoky blue lights in dim nooks, no jukebox, no ornate display of glassware or exotic liquors. There was a long bar, darkly polished, the focal point of the room, and along the opposite wall a few tables and chairs. Wiegand was at a table, the one nearest the far c
orner. He had his eyes fixed on the door. When Uncle Chuck spotted him, Wiegand tried to duck, as if to conceal himself, a ridiculous notion in view of his size.

  Scared out of his wits, Uncle Chuck told himself as he walked toward Wiegand’s table. A rabbit with a cross expression could send him running. I’ll have to be careful here. He’ll run from me too.

  Uncle Chuck allowed his game leg to drag a little more noticeably and assumed a dismal, woebegone expression. “Mr. Wiegand. Imagine running into you right now. I’m so discouraged I could die.”

  Wiegand peered at him as if suspecting the gloom were not genuine. “Uh … never give up the ship. And all that.”

  “Do you mind if I sit down here?”

  “No, I don’t, but I’d better warn you, the cops told me I couldn’t discuss the case with anybody. I’ve got to keep my mouth shut. I’m a witness. I mean, I guess I’m a witness. It seems I might have been the last one to see Sarge alive, besides Kat Knowles and the one who killed them.” He leaned his elbows on the table, looking strangely grim for a plump man with a built-in air of cheeriness. “Have a drink, Mr. Sadler. Have one on me, the world’s champion sap. Only a fool would have been involved as I was.”

  “Well, Sargent needed help,” Uncle Chuck put in, nodding his head toward the bartender. The barman came over and Uncle Chuck ordered a beer.

  Wiegand didn’t seem to hear Uncle Chuck’s hint about Sargent. “And Martin got it out of me, got the whole lousy yam, how I was supposed to get Doris to agree to a divorce. And she wouldn’t. He got the whole thing, the … the—” Wiegand’s mouth twisted as if he wanted to cry.

  “All that bit about waving the poker,” Uncle Chuck supplied.

  “Oh no, no! Wiegand said, his expression changing. “Doris didn’t do that. That’s some crazy figment of Bill Knowles’s.”

  A strange idea darted into Uncle Chuck’s mind, fixed itself there as if with talons of steel. “Wait a minute, Wiegand. Didn’t you know that Knowles had that yam to tell, the thing about the poker, Doris making threatening motions with it? Weren’t you supposed to get her to do it? Offer her the poker, for instance, so at least she couldn’t say she hadn’t had it in her hands?”

  “Of course not.” Again Wiegand assumed the air of innocent indignation that always amazed Uncle Chuck. “Why would I be a party to such a dirty scheme? Framing a girl like Doris? Oh, and by the way, I can’t discuss the case with you.”

  The barman brought the beer for Uncle Chuck and refilled Wiegand’s shot glass from the bar bottle of Scotch.

  “Too bad Martin’s put the clamp on you. Doris won’t have a chance now.” Uncle Chuck bent over the beer as if about to shed tears into it.

  “Well, I’m going to stick my neck out—to hell with Martin—and emphasize, No, I never did have any part, anything to do, with a plan that included Doris waving that poker.”

  “Why would Sargent want Knowles to tell the story, after he had done his disappearing act with Kat?”

  Wiegand shot him a surprised stare. “What? You think Sargent cooked it up?”

  “Of course he cooked it up. It was part of the same big scheme—and that included your part, witnessing that totally unnecessary show of burning paper clippings in your fireplace, and going to hold the fort with Doris the night he was due to disappear. He knew Doris wasn’t going to give him a divorce, not unless she’d had a near-miraculous change of heart. You were just playing the sucker, Wiegand. Just a puppet in Sargent’s big, big show.”

  A mottled redness appeared in Wiegand’s plump face. “Ah, old Sarge wouldn’t have treated a friend like that.”

  “He treated you like that.” And Knowles, too, Uncle Chuck told himself. Sargent had left Knowles with the silly lie about peeping in and seeing Doris wave that poker.

  The idea that had popped into Uncle Chuck’s mind had come full flower. If there had been any friendship and loyalty left among this bunch, it was on the side of Knowles and Wiegand and perhaps Cannon. Sargent had hated them thoroughly! And used them remorselessly!

  Wiegand was gazing morosely at his drink, shaking his head over any thought of Sargent’s perfidy.

  “Now, since Martin has arrested Dorrie, it means that he doesn’t believe your story, that you came up there, that Sargent was in good shape when you left him, that you had Doris in sight during the whole evening—”

  Wiegand shook his head more vigorously. “Wait a minute. He believes that part. The drawback is, I can’t give him any times, any specific minute and hour and like that. And the way he asked questions—I guess he’s got an idea Doris just pretended to get loaded. And that when I went back and pounded on the door, trying to locate old Sarge, she was already gone. Already skipped out. Going to kill them.”

  “Exactly how drunk were you?” Uncle Chuck demanded cruelly.

  Wiegand’s bloodshot eyes peered mournfully into his. “That’s a damned ugly question. And how do I know? I was looped. Swozzled. Not knee-walking yet, you get it? I could drive. But time didn’t mean anything. And I remember hanging onto the doorknob and crying—yes, actually crying—because I hadn’t managed to get old Sarge the divorce he wanted so much.”

  “And how was Kat Knowles when you left Sarge with her?”

  “Now look here—”

  Deliberately Uncle Chuck spat on the floor beside Wiegand’s well-polished shoe.

  “Oh hell, everybody knew about Kat,” Wiegand grunted. “Doris would’ve, too, if she hadn’t been stuck up there at Idylynn. Off in the boondocks.”

  “And so? Kat was okay too?”

  “I don’t know. Sarge had me let him off down there near the corner. I guess Kat was waiting around there somewhere in that little red foreign car she drove.”

  Sargent had planned it all so well, Uncle Chuck told himself grimly. He’d known that Wiegand would get too drunk to give Doris an alibi. How carefully and how cleverly the scheme had been formed!

  But still the mystery remained—why had Kat died in the house on San Jacinto Road? And why had Sargent died miles away at the isolated reservoir?

  One question, at least, I might have the answer to, he decided. I wondered why anyone would shoot Pete and then later have to kill Sargent by pounding his head in. The gun had to be left with Kat Knowles, to try to make it seem as if she’d killed herself

  Kat Knowles must have died first. By what scheme had she been separated from Sargent so the job could be done? And another puzzle—if Kat was to be presumed a suicide, why the need to plant anything to incriminate Doris?

  There seemed a patchwork look to the crime now, as if some of it had been improvised on the spot, precautions overlapping, some of them unnecessary.

  For just an instant a doubt flickered. It could have been as Martin thought, a struggle between two women, purses emptied in the fight.

  I’m getting goofy, Uncle Chuck corrected himself. To start with, Doris wouldn’t have carried a purse with her, going out on that mountain road in the dark.

  Oh God, he prayed, while Wiegand gazed at him in gloomy wonder, just let me see into this murderer’s mind for a moment. Just for a flicker of time!

  The murderer—whoever that was—had had to kill Kat without Sargent knowing. Had had to leave the gun with her body. This meant that old Pete had been shot previously, was lying stunned perhaps by the wound that had almost killed him. Sargent … where was he?

  Sargent had to be waiting by that little red car, Uncle Chuck told himself suddenly. Kat wasn’t there. He never saw Kat that night. She was already with the murderer, maybe already dead. There had been no trouble about separating them to kill them one at a time, because they’d never been together!

  It had to be the answer, the simple and easy answer!

  Now I’ll bet I know what happened next, Uncle Chuck thought with a feeling of excitement. Sargent was told that Kat would meet him somewhere else, she’d had to leave the red car as a decoy and slip off to wait for him somewhere else. For instance, beside that isolated reservoir.

&nbs
p; Uncle Chuck found himself gazing into Wiegand’s plump, woebegone face. Maybe Knowles wasn’t the only method actor in this bunch. Maybe he was facing an expert right now.

  Suppose Wally Wiegand were lying …

  Suppose he had committed the murders!

  In a flashing moment Uncle Chuck reconstructed Wiegand’s story. He had delayed picking Sargent up, kept him waiting somewhere, while he rushed ahead to murder the girl. He had run into Pete, out scouting the mountain because of the sound of Kat Knowles’s car earlier, had shot the dog, then had enticed the girl into the vacant house and murdered her. Had arranged her clothing, left the gun with her, rushed back to pick up Sargent. He had let Sargent out, sure that he would wait as long as necessary by the little foreign car, had gone to the house, spent a few hours drinking with Doris. Then when he had felt a sufficient time had gone by, he’d left Doris and returned to the driveway of the vacant house.

  There he must have pretended to Sargent that he had somehow heard from Kat. A note, a phone call intercepted … Anyway, Kat wanted Sargent to pick her up at the reservoir. By now Sargent would be anxious and rattled—too anxious to wonder about tag ends such as how Kat had made the trip to the reservoir—or perhaps Wiegand had even convinced him that he had taken the girl there …

  “Are you getting an idea?” Wiegand asked softly.

  “I’m trying to fit in some of the things you’ve told me with what I know.”

  “I wish I could go back,” Wiegand said, suddenly narrowing his eyes, his whole face tightening, firming, so that he seemed strangely unlike his usual self. “I wish I could go back to that night, somehow, and do things differently.”

  Don’t we all, Uncle Chuck thought.

  “I’d have paid a damned sight more attention to what was going on outside, instead of playing the clown with the booze and the dancing, I’ll tell you.”