“When did you see him last?”
She only had to think a few seconds about that. “When he came into the kitchen and hauled you off, I believe.”
“Ummm,” I said. “He wanted to show me the latest issue of his fanzine. In fact, he was a mite upset about my not reading it on the spot, gave me a copy to take along.” I broke off, then asked, “Can you think of any reason why anyone would want to murder him?”
She put her hand to her mouth thoughtfully, the nail of her little finger touching her teeth, finally shook her head. “It’s fantastic.” Her eyes were candid and convincing.
I got a sudden inspiration. “Listen, could it have been a mistake? Is it possible that someone might have been after, oh, say, Ross, or Jim Maddigan, or Roget, or one of the others, and killed Harry accidentally?”
She stared at me, her violet-tinged eyes slightly wider than ordinarily. “Well — I don’t know. The only ones there I knew at all were Ross, his uncle, and …” she wrinkled her nose distastefully “… Sandra. Oh, I know several of them to speak to, but not well enough to be familiar with their private affairs.”
I followed the thread of idea I’d got. “Well, how about Ross? It was his house; possibly someone was after him.”
She shook her head emphatically. “Not Ross. I’ve never met anyone more personally popular than Ross Maddigan; it’s his greatest fault as far as I’m concerned. Everybody loves Ross. Heavens, I get tired of it.” She smiled again, as though to take some of the barb off that.
“But how about his finances — something along that line?”
She laughed lightly. “Ross doesn’t know or care anything about finances. His uncle runs the business and turns over to him more than he could possibly use. You see, James Maddigan and Ross’s father were business partners. After Ross’s father died, it was agreed that Ross wasn’t suited to enter Maddigan and Maddigan. An arrangement was made so that he continued to receive dividends, but he has practically no interest in the business otherwise. Ross is trying to break into writing, you know.”
“How about Sandra? You said you knew her.”
The expression of distaste again; evidently there was little love lost between the girls. “Do you mean, would it be possible that she was trying to kill Ross, or her husband, and made the mistake of killing Harry Shulman instead?”
That was too bald. “Not necessarily,” I said. “Perhaps it could have been the other way around. Possibly someone was trying to kill Sandra and got Harry by mistake.”
Julie shot another quick glance at her watch, but evidently we still had a few minutes. “This is rather digging into family affairs,” she said, “but I don’t imagine it will harm anything to tell you that James Maddigan is rather jealous of Sandra.” She took her lower lip in her small teeth momentarily, as thought wondering whether to go on. “With some reason. However, I can’t picture any of the three of them wishing to kill one of the others.” She shook her head deprecatingly. “Heavens, that’s really inconceivable.”
I was drawing another blank. I said, “And you don’t know any of the others well enough to comment at all?”
Julie moved her head slowly. “Afraid not.” She looked at her watch again. “I really should be getting back to work.”
I came to my feet. “About seeing you later — in case I have some other things to ask?”
“Are you certain it’s strictly business?”
“Not too certain — but some business.”
Her smile flashed again. “If you’d said yes, I would have said no. But not tonight, Jeb; I have a date tonight.”
“With Ross?”
Her eyebrows went up.
I said hurriedly, “I was figuring on seeing him later. If he’s going to be out …”
She nodded. “With Ross.” She added, “We’re engaged, you know.” Then, again irrelevantly, “Are you going to attend the Convention? It starts day after tomorrow.”
“Convention? Oh, you mean the AnnCon — isn’t that what they call it?” I scowled. “I don’t know.”
“Do you think there’ll be any extra-terrestrials?”
She played it straight. “Perhaps.”
I let my right shoulder rise and drop sadly. “I guess I’ll have to go and find out for myself.”
• • •
I’d eaten too late in the afternoon to be interested in supper at my usual time. Instead, I walked down to City Center, dropped into the Walgreen Drug Store on the corner of Stark and Montgomery and got myself two bottles of ginger ale and three lemons. Then I walked the remaining three blocks to the Kroll Building.
The elevator grumbled me up to my floor and I shifted my package to my left arm, got out my keys and opened up. There wasn’t any mail, not even bills or ads, this time. I put my stuff on the desk, took off my coat and hat and hung them up, then reached into the closet for the old battered portable I kept in there.
I sat in on the desk top and took off the cover. My glass and bottles were still in the big lower drawer; I reached down and brought them forth. The paper towel I’d stuck in the bottle mouth in lieu of the cork I’d pushed down into the bottle was moist; one end of it had evidently got into the whiskey and capillary action had soaked up some of the liquid. I swore mildly and threw my improvised stopper into the waste basket.
I poured a slug of the whiskey into the glass and got my pocket knife out to cut a lemon in half. I didn’t have a squeezer, so I had to do the best I could with my hands. I squeezed half a lemon into the glass, then filled the tumbler with ginger ale. I should have got some ice at the drug store while I was at it. The first couple of drinks would be cool, but from there on …
I got some of our nicely printed letterheads and some carbons out of another drawer and sighed as I cranked them into the portable. This was where my real work began. I started pounding away with two fingers.
REPORT ON INVESTIGATION INTO POSSIBILITIES OF ALIEN LIFE FORMS FROM SPACE BEING PRESENT ON EARTH
From: Lee and Knight, Private Investigations
To: James L. Maddigan and Arthur Roget
Gentlemen: I began the day’s efforts by getting in touch with sources on the police force in an attempt to ascertain whether or not there was human motive for the death of Harry Shulman. Thus far, the police have evidently found no such motivation, according to my well informed contact.
In an attempt to check further upon this aspect of the case, I then proceeded to the Shulman home. “Questioning of Mrs. Shulman only bore out the findings of the police …”
I kept at it for almost an hour because that sort of thing comes hard to me. I’d rather make an oral report any day in the week.
As I worked, I filled my glass from time to time. I’d been right; I should have got ice. The first two or three drinks weren’t bad, but when the ginger ale got warm in the bottle they started to pall on me.
When I was finished, I folded the report in an envelope, fished in my wallet for a book of three cent stamps, then sealed and stamped it.
I yawned and looked out the window. It was beginning to get dark outside, and the evening was beginning to cool off. I improvised another stopper for my whiskey and got up to get my coat and hat. The hangover I’d started the day with was gone, but I still felt like a character out of Erich Maria Remarque — you know, The Road Back, the lost generation. I didn’t know where the hell I was, where I was going, or why I wanted to get there.
You don’t know what I’m talking about? Okay, let’s hope you never learn.
I slapped the battered felt on the back of my head, stuck my hands in my pockets and headed for Sam’s Bar down the street.
CHAPTER EIGHT
Yesterday, the morning after the night before had been bad enough. This was worse. I should have known better than to hang one on right on top of another. I got to the office at about ten o’clock, one hour later than standard, feeling that I was lucky to have made it at all.
Sergeant Mike Quinn, Lieutenant Davis’ companion the night of the Shul
man killing, was leaning at the side of my door, chewing complacently on an unlit cigar. When he saw me, he grinned, took the cigar from his mouth and said with mock pleasantness, “The lieutenant wants to see you, Buster.”
“Davis?”
“That’s right, Buster. Come along.”
My mind was chugging along on two cylinders. I scowled at him and said, “What for?”
His grin broadened. “That’s a secret, Buster; but I’ll bet you can guess.” He’d evidently been seeing too many crime movies; he sounded more like a movie cop than Dick Powell.
“All right,” I said wearily; “let me check to see if I’ve got any mail.”
“Okay,” he agreed, “but you better hurry it up. You always keep these hours? I don’t know why I don’t turn private.”
“Sure,” I grunted, getting my key out and inserting it in the Yale lock. He evidently expected me to get off some snappy rejoinder, but I wasn’t up to being very snappy. “I get to work at about ten. At noon I take three hours off for lunch. Then I knock off for the day at four.”
He yawned disinterestedly and mumbled something appropriate. The door swung open and we entered. I stooped to pick up the two unimpressive-looking envelopes that had been thrust under the door, and at the same time the phone rang.
I went over and picked up the receiver from its cradle and said, “Jeb Knight speaking.”
It was James Maddigan. He said peevishly, “I haven’t as yet received your daily report for yesterday, Knight.”
I was peevish myself. I said, “I put it in the mail last night. If you haven’t got it this morning it’ll probably be in the afternoon delivery; if it isn’t, blame it on Uncle Sam.”
He muttered something I didn’t make out, then said, “Knight, Roget and I are thinking of discontinuing this investigation. We’ve been discussing it with some of the other Scylla Club members, and the more we think about it the more ridiculous it sounds.”
“That’s what I told you in the first place,” I said impatiently. “You want me to knock off, then?”
He hummed and hawed a bit. “Well, let us say this, Knight. Continue on the investigation until the money we advanced you is expended. You didn’t discover anything of moment yesterday, did you?”
“I told him I hadn’t.”
“Very well, then; I’ll expect to receive your reports for, let me see, two more days, wouldn’t it be?”
“That’s right,” I said.
He said goodbye absently, and hung up.
“Who was that?” Mike Quinn asked.
I shot an irritated glance at him and tried to make like Nick Charles. “My Grandmother. She wants to know if I can pick her up a date for tonight.”
“Okay, Buster. Let’s get going. The longer you keep Davis waiting, the less happy he’s going to be about you, and he’s none too happy now, Buster.”
I followed him out into the hall again and began to relock the door. Both of the letters had been bills.
Just as the tumbler clicked, the phone began to ring.
Quinn muttered, “What is this; the telephone exchange?”
“Hold it a minute,” I told him. I reopened the door and crossed to the desk and took up the receiver again.
“Jeb Knight,” I said.
A voice squeaked, “This is Lester Zimmer. Listen, Mr. Knight, I have to see you right away.”
“Ummmm,” I said. “So does Lieutenant Davis of the homicide detail.”
“You mean you can’t come?” Zimmer shrilled.
“Not for a while. What’s it all about?”
“Well, you know that information you wanted yesterday?” He didn’t wait for an affirmation, but blurted on, “I’ve got some soul-shaking information for you. Can’t you postpone your other appointment?”
Soul-shaking, yet; the boy was absolutely lyrical. I looked over at Mike Quinn. “I doubt it,” I told the phone. “I’ll have to see you later.”
There were indications of near-hysteria in his voice. “I’ll lock all the doors until you come,” he shrilled. “You don’t think this phone has been tapped, do you?”
“I doubt it,” I said. “I’ll be over as soon as I can make it.” I dropped the phone back onto its cradle and stared down at it for a minute.
Quinn said, “I suppose that was your other grandmother.”
I shook my head absently, still wondering what Zimmer could be so worked up about. “My grandfather. He wants a blonde. It’s disgusting the way those two cheat on each other.”
“Let’s go,” he grunted. “I got a sneaking suspicion you’re going to lose some of that wit of yours this morning, Buster.”
Mike Quinn had a police car parked in front of the Kroll Building. Somehow or other, I’d missed noticing it on the way up. A uniformed patrolman, his face expressionless, but somehow radiating boredom, was sitting in the driver’s seat.
“Now you probably think this is real style, Buster,” Mike Quinn told me, opening the rear door for me with undue ceremony. “I’ll bet you usually get drug in in the paddy wagon.”
I didn’t answer him. We got in the back and the driver clashed into gear and took off without turning around. He zipped east on Marion Avenue to East First, where he turned left up to Lafayette. The decrepit Justice Building is on the corner of Lafayette and East First; he zoomed up the wide driveway, lined on both sides with official cars, and to the rear where he ground to a halt before the back entrance.
Quinn and I piled out, and the driver, still without looking around, clashed back into gear again and was off.
I said bitterly, “Another few lessons and he should be able to get a license.” My hangover wasn’t up to that kind of driving.
Quinn growled something that ended in “Buster” and led the way up the stone steps to the aged halls of the Justice Building. We turned left at the first stairway and climbed the wooden steps to the second floor. Halfway down the musty corridor and opposite a water-cooler, once painted white, was a door lettered, Lieutenant Philip Davis, and, under that, Homicide Detail.
Quinn gave a flip of a knock and opened the door before getting a response. We went in. It was a small room with splotched brown walls; drab, friendless, and the one window translucent with gray dirt.
Lieutenant Davis was sitting behind a battered desk strewn with a multitude of papers; the surface remaining indicated long years of cigarette burns and endless scratching from the heels of oversized shoes. His face was even more pale in the light of day; he reminded you of a white grub worm under the log you kick over during a hike in the woods. His colorless eyes were unblinking. He said sarcastically, “Our busy little beaver is here at last.”
“Good morning,” I told him. “To what do I owe the pleasure of this pinch?”
“Sit down,” he said. “It isn’t a pinch — yet. And don’t crack wise. That’s all I need; a wise guy.”
I found myself a chair and lowered myself into it, reaching in my coat for my pipe. I brought it out and a tin of Raleigh from the opposite pocket.
Davis said almost apologetically, “I can’t stand smoke — asthma.”
I put the pipe back into my pocket, and looked at him.
He took up a sheet of paper from his desk. “Yesterday morning at nine thirty-two Ross Maddigan went into your office. Ten minutes after he left, Sandra Maddigan went in, barely missing him in the elevator. Quarter of an hour after she left, James Maddigan and Arthur Roget went in and stayed for another thirty minutes or so. After they left you went to the Shulman house and questioned Mrs. Shulman, giving her the impression you were a police officer.” His scanty brows went up and he shot me a quick glance from expressionless eyes. “That, by the way — impersonating an officer — is actionable, Knight.” His eyes went back to his paper and he went on. “Leaving the Shulman home, you went to that of Lester Zimmer, remaining inside for approximately ten minutes. Afterward, you went to the apartment house in which Miss Julie Sharp lives and again attempted to impersonate an officer in order to extract informat
ion from the desk clerk. After that, you went to Miss Sharp’s place of employment and spent fifteen or twenty minutes talking to her.”
He tossed the paper to his desk and directed his gray eyes to me.
I looked back, trying to indicate that I was bewildered by all this.
He didn’t add anything, so I tried to work some indignation into my tone, saying, “Listen, I deny impersonating an officer, Davis. If either Mrs. Shulman or that desk clerk thought I was a cop, it wasn’t my fault.”
Davis growled, without taking his eyes from me, “What did Ross Maddigan want, eh?”
“He wanted to hire me to investigate the murder of Harry Shulman.”
“Oh, brother,” Mike Quinn muttered under his breath. Davis shot him an irritated glance.
“What did Sandra Maddigan want, Knight?”
“Same thing.” I paused a moment, then added, “I turned them both down, of course, Lieutenant.”
His eyes widened infinitesimally. “You did, eh? I was beginning to suspect you didn’t have that much sense.” He took a small bottle from a vest pocket and absently shook a pill into the palm of his hand. There was a cheap water carafe on the desk and a semi-clean glass. He poured himself some water and washed his pill down before he said, “James Maddigan and his sidekick wanted the same thing, eh?”
I shook my head. “No, the older Maddigan and Art Roget wanted me to take a different case.”
Davis bent forward toward me, leaning a scrawny elbow on the desk and resting his chin in a cupped hand. “What? What did they want you to do, eh?”
“Theoretically, I don’t have to tell you.”
Mike Quinn chuckled.
“That’s right,” Davis said softly, “theoretically you don’t.” His eyes were empty — emotionless and expressionless.
“It doesn’t make any difference,” I said hurriedly. “They wanted me to investigate the possible existence of alien life forms on earth.”
Mike Quinn started laughing. “Here we go again,” he said.
“Shut up, Mike,” Davis growled. Then back at me, “I suppose you took that one, eh?”
I nodded. “That’s right. I tried to talk them out of it, but if that’s what they want, I’m in the business.”
The Case of the Little Green Men Page 7
