“Mom!”
“Hush up, Helen. All the little Woertz person wanted to do was dramatize. One of the ladies in my garden club, a very reliable lady, and she’s never had to wear glasses a day in her life, saw that nurse and Mr. Holton, a married man, embracing and kissing each other in a parked car in the lot at the hospital just over three weeks ago, practically under one of the streetlights in the parking lot. Do you call that rational and stable, Mr. McGee? I call it sinful and wicked and cheap.”
“Mom, please!”
“Did she ever try to take any of that work off your shoulders? Did she? Not once did she ever—”
“But that wasn’t her job! I did my job and she did hers.”
“I bet she did. I bet she did more than her job. I bet there was more going on between her and your marvelous doctor than you could ever see, the way you think she was so sweet and wonderful.”
The girl stood up quickly and wavered for a moment, dizzy. “I don’t feel so good. I’m sorry. I don’t want to talk about it any more.”
“Then, you go to bed, dear. Mr. McGee didn’t mean to tire you. I’ll be up in a little while to see if there’s anything you need.”
She stopped in the doorway and looked toward me, not quite at me. “Nobody can ever make me say anything else about the doctor. I think he killed himself because he was moody and depressed.”
She disappeared. “I’m sorry,” Mrs. Boughmer said. “Helen just isn’t herself these days. She’s been a changed girl ever since that doctor died. She worshipped the man, God knows why. I thought he was a little on the foolish side. He could have had a marvelous practice if he’d had any energy or ambition. He was all right until his wife died three years ago. Then he sort of slacked off. She wouldn’t have put up with all those stupid projects of his. Research, he called it. Why, he wasn’t even a specialist. And I think the drug companies are doing all the research anybody needs.”
“Your daughter hasn’t looked for work since?”
“Not after she got through straightening out all the files for Dr. Wayne to pick up and trying to collect the final bills. But there doesn’t seem to be much point in people paying doctor bills to a dead doctor, does there? No, she just seems to feel weak. She doesn’t seem to have the will or the energy to go out and find another job. She’s a good hard worker too. And she was a very good student in school. But she’s always been a quiet girl. She always liked being by herself. Thank the Lord we have enough to live on. I have to scrimp and cut corners with her not working, but we get by.”
“She seemed certain that the doctor hadn’t killed himself?”
“Positive. She was like a maniac. I hardly knew my own daughter. Her eyes were wild. But I think it was the second day she was at the office, cleaning things up, she just came home late and went to bed and didn’t want anything to eat. She hardly said a word for days. She lost a lot of weight. Well, maybe she’ll start to perk up soon.”
“I hope so.”
Fourteen
Nine thirty Monday evening. Stanger was suddenly standing at my elbow at the bar at the motel and suggested it might be better if we talked in my room. I gulped the final third of my drink and walked around with him. The air was very close and muggy. He said a storm would help, and we might get one in the night.
Once we were in the room, I remembered something I kept forgetting to ask him. “Holton has some buddy on the force who opens motel doors for him and such like. Who is that?”
“Not on the city force. That’s Dave Broon. Special investigator for the Sheriff’s Department. Slippery little son of a bitch for sure. The sheriff, Amos Turk, didn’t want to take him on in the first place. That was about seven years back. But there was political pressure on Amos. Dave Broon has a lot of things going for him all the time. You want a nice little favor done, like maybe some chick starts putting the pressure on you threatening to go to your wife, Dave is your boy. He’ll check her out, scare her to death, and put the roust on her, but then when Dave wants something out of you, he’s got the names, dates, and photostats of the motel register, so you do him a favor. He’s built up a lot of political clout around this part of the state. Lot of the lawyers use him on special little jobs because he’s careful and he keeps his mouth shut.”
“Next question. Is D. Wintin Hardahee his own man?”
“God, you do get around some, McGee. Far as I know, he is. Soft voice, but don’t mess with him. Hard-nosed and honest. Nobody tells him what to do.”
“And what about Holton and the note?”
“Don’t I get to ask any questions?”
“And you’ll get answers. What about Holton?”
“That boy was so bad hung this morning he couldn’t move his eyeballs. Had to turn his whole head. Kept sweating a lot. Cut his face all up shaving it. What happened was they got in from Vero Beach Saturday night after ten. Car radio was busted. He had a beer and went right to bed and he said he hadn’t had much sleep Friday night. Drove around for a long time after he left here. Parked by the Woertz apartment for a while, but she didn’t come home. Got in at three, he thinks. So he slept heavy Saturday night. Got up about ten thirty Sunday morning. His wife was already up. He was sitting on the edge of the bed when the phone rang. Picked it up and said hello. No answer for a moment and he thought it was the same kind of trouble they’ve been having with the line. Ring once and no more. Then he said somebody whispered to him. He didn’t get it at first. They repeated it and hung up. Couldn’t tell if it was a man or a woman. It made no sense to him. The whisper said, ‘The police found a note she left for her new lover.’ Some damfool prank, he thought. Then he saw the front page of the paper, and without breakfast or a word to anybody he came downtown and conned Foster into letting him see the note. Hunted around for you. Got ugly drunk. Might have shot you. Told me he’d given it some serious thought.”
He stared over at me. “What the hell is wrong with you?”
“It goes clunk, Stanger. Things float around loose in your head and then there is a clunk, and they’ve lined up and make sense.”
“Let me in on this clunk.”
“Did you mention to Janice Holton anything about a certain McGee from Fort Lauderdale?”
“Not word one.”
“Phone rings once and that’s all. In the Holton house and in the Pike house too.”
“Slow and steady, man. Try speaking American.”
“Janice has a nice warm wonderful tender man she sees on the sly. Nothing physical about the relationship, she says. She found out about Holton and Penny from somebody who whispered the news to her over the phone.”
“Do tell!”
“Lover’s code, Stanger. The sneak play. You have a place you meet. A nice safe place. So you call up and let the phone ring once and you hang up. The other party looks at his or her watch. Five minutes later it rings again. Meet me at five o’clock at the usual place if you can, honey. Or eight minutes later, or two minutes later, or twelve minutes later for noon or midnight. So Tom Pike told her about me, some casual thing about a man named McGee who’d known his wife, sister-in-law, and mother-in-law in Lauderdale nearly six years ago, and who came to lunch. Maybe my coming to lunch busted up a tryst. She let it slip casually without thinking.”
“So who whispers? Tom Pike for chrissake?”
“It doesn’t make much sense.”
“When Holton got his call from the whisperer, Tom Pike was flying to Jacksonville. Okay, so Nudenbarger told him about the note, but what would be the point? I mean even if he could make the call. Get Holton all jammed up? What for? Tom Pike isn’t the kind to walk out on his marriage, fouled up as it is. And if he’s got Janice Holton on the string, what is he proving or accomplishing?”
“Janice was supposed to have a big date with him Saturday, out of town, I guess. But Rick fouled it up by going along, and she couldn’t get word to Tom that she was stuck with her husband and would actually have to go see her sister over in Vero Beach.”
Stanger said
thoughtfully, “I’m not going to fault those two, not for one minute, McGee. Janice is a hell of a lot of woman. Two sorry marriages, and they weren’t the ones who made the marriages sorry. Jesus! It’s a lot better than if he got involved with the kid sister.”
“Who happens to be in love with him.”
“Think so?”
“Sure of it.”
“Then, Janice could be a kind of escape valve. Well, Tom Pike would step slow and careful, and if we hadn’t … you hadn’t added it up, I’ll bet a dime nobody would have ever found out about it. I’d say one thing, if it isn’t like you say physical, it must be a pretty good strain on them. That Janice is more than something ready. It’s going to get physical, friend. What have we got? Some damned whisperer trying to make trouble for people.”
“Al, out of the whole town, who would you pick as the whisperer? Not by any process of logic. Just by hunch.”
“I guess the one I told you about. Dave Broon.”
“On somebody’s orders?”
“Or playing a personal angle. Turk puts him on a case, he’s cute. He’s got good moves. He comes up with things. And he’s lucky. That’s a help in cop work. But he doesn’t give a goddamn about whether anything is right or wrong, anybody is legal or illegal. It isn’t his business to find new work for the sheriff. If he spotted the mayor’s wife shoplifting, he’d follow her home and invite himself in for a drink and a little chat. That kind.”
“Could he have found out about that note without you knowing he found out about it?”
“Oh, hell yes. Far as I know he might have the leverage on somebody so that he gets a dupe of every photocopy of any evidence they run through our shop. This whole city and county is a big piece of truck garden to Dave Broon. He goes around plowing and planting and fertilizing, and harvesting everything ripe.”
“How is he with bugs?”
“Not an expert but maybe better than average. He has good contacts. If it was something tricky, he’d bring in one of the experts from Miami. He can afford it.”
“So we could be bugged?”
“It’s possible,” he said. “But not likely.”
“He isn’t too bright, Stanger. Not bright enough to be alarming.”
“Dave alarms me, friend.”
I showed him the toilet kit and the toothbrush, and the two twenties under the soap dish, and explained the situation. At first it bothered Stanger that if Broon was reasonably sure he had not left any traces, why should he advertise by taking the money? I finally made him see that taking it was the lesser of the two risks, because if I did have some way of learning that my room had been gone over carefully, finding the money untouched would alert me that it was not just petty theft.
“Broon has a family?”
“Never has. Lives alone. Lives pretty good. Recently moved to a penthouse apartment on a new high-rise out by Lake Azure. Usually got some broad living there with him. Big convertible, speedboat, big wardrobe. But on the job he dresses cheap and drives a crummy car. I’ve worked with him sometimes. He has a way of making the suspect choke up and then get in a big hurry to tell all.”
“Description?”
“Five seven, maybe a hundred and forty pounds. Knocking fifty but does a good job of looking thirty-five. Blond, and I think it’s a dye job and a hairpiece. Keeps himself in good shape. Works out a lot. Manicures, massages, sunlamp in the winter. Either his teeth are capped or it’s a hell of a good set of plates. Gets good mileage out of the accents he uses. All the way from British to redneck. He’s in so solid with the party, he just about sets his own workweek, and there’s not a damned thing Amos Turk can do about it. Couple of years ago one of Turk’s big deputies took a dislike to the way Dave was goofing off and making him do the work. Dave was giving away fifty pounds, better than six inches in height and reach, and at least twenty years. They went out into the parking lot. I guess it took six minutes. Didn’t even muss up Dave’s hair. Then they picked the deputy up and put him in a county car and took him over to the hospital. He never has looked exactly the same and he calls Dave by the name of Mr. Broon, sir. Just say he’s tough and he’s careful and he’s smart enough. The odd job he’s best at is if somebody needs a little extra leverage to use on somebody else. Then they get hold of Dave Broon and tell him to see what he can come up with. And it’s a rare human person there isn’t something about that you can put to use, if you know what it is.”
Then I gave him a complete rundown on my talk with Helen Boughmer. He said it sounded as if something or somebody had scared her, and I did not tell him that his appraisal seemed to belabor the obvious.
He reported no progress to speak of on the murder of the nurse. He said, “Trouble with that damned place, the architect laid out those garden apartments for privacy. They kind of back up to little open courts, and there’s so many redwood fences it’s like a maze back in there. If whoever killed her came to the back door, which might be the way it was because of her being found in the kitchen, I might as well give up on shucking my way through the neighborhood. No fingerprints, but come to think of it, in thirty-one years of police work I’ve never been on a case yet where there was a single fingerprint that ever did anybody any good or any harm in the courtroom.”
He sat in moody silence until I said, “It seems to be tied in to the death of Dr. Sherman.”
“Please don’t tell me that. I’ve got a file on him that you can’t hardly lift. And there’s nothing to go on.”
“Maybe Penny Woertz had some casual little piece of information and she didn’t know it was important.”
“You’re reaching, McGee.”
“Maybe she’d even told it to Rick Holton and it didn’t mean anything to him either, yet. If somebody could play on his jealousy and get him to shoot me after she’d been killed, that puts the two of them out of circulation. Maybe Helen Boughmer knows something too, but somebody has done such a good job of closing her mouth, I don’t think she’ll be any good to you.”
“Thanks. You try to give me a motive for one murder by hooking it up to another one last July. I am going to keep right on thinking the doc injected himself in the arm.”
“Got any reason why he did that?”
“Conscience.”
“Had he been a bad boy?”
“Nobody is ever going to prove anything on him, and it wouldn’t do much good now anyway. But let me tell you something. I have lived a long time and I have seen a lot of things and I have seen a lot of women, but I never saw a worse woman in my life than Joan Sherman. Honest to Christ, she was a horror. She made every day of that doctor’s life pure hell on earth. Damned voice onto her like a blue heron. She was the drill instructor and he was the buckass private. Treated him like he was a moron. One of those great big loud virtuous churchgoing ladies with a disposition like a pit viper. Full of good works. She was a diabetic. Had it pretty bad too but kept in balance. I forget how many units of insulin she had to shoot herself with in the morning. Wouldn’t let the doctor shoot her. Said he was too damned clumsy with a needle. Three years ago she went into diabetic coma and died.”
“He arrange it?”
Stanger shrugged. “If he did, he took such a long time to figure it out, he didn’t miss a trick.”
“Want me to beg? Okay. I’m begging.”
“Back then the Shermans lived about six miles out, pretty nice house right in the middle of ten acres of grove land. We were having a telephone strike and things got pretty nasty. They were cutting underground cables and so on. She’d had her car picked up on a Friday to be serviced, and they were going to bring it back Monday. Because of the phones out that way being out, he thought he’d better drive in Sunday morning and see to some patients he had in the hospital. Besides, he had to pick up some insulin for her, he told us later, because she used the last ampule she had that morning. He’d pick up a month’s supply at a time for her. He made his rounds and then he went to his office and worked awhile. Nobody would think that was strange. He stayed
away from her as much as he dared and nobody blamed him. He said he was supposed to get back by five because a couple was coming for drinks and dinner. But he lost track of the time. The couple came and rang the bell and the woman went and looked in the window and saw her on the couch. She looked funny, the woman said. The husband broke in. No phone working. They put her in the car and headed for the hospital. They met Doc Sherman on his way out and honked and waved him down. She was DOA. They say he was a mighty upset man. There was a fresh needle mark in her thigh from her morning shot, so she hadn’t forgotten. He said she never forgot. They did an autopsy, but there wasn’t much point in it. I don’t remember the biochemistry of it, but there just aren’t any tests that will show whether you did or did not take insulin. It breaks down or disappears or something. County law checked the house. The needle had been rinsed and put in the sterilizer. The ampule was in the bathroom wastebasket. There was a drop or so left in it. That tested out full strength. The doctors decided there had been a sudden change in her condition and so the dose she was used to taking just wasn’t enough. Also, they’d had pancakes and maple syrup and sweet rolls for breakfast. He said she kept to her diet pretty well, but Sunday breakfast was her single exception all week. Now, tell me how he did it. That is, if he did it.”
After a few minutes of thought, I had a solution, but I had been smart-ass too often with Stanger, so I gave up.
It pleased him. “He brought home an identical ampule of distilled water, maybe making the switch of the contents in his office. Gets up in the night and switches the water for the insulin. She gets up in the morning and shoots water into her leg. Before he goes to the hospital, he goes into the bathroom, fishes the water ampule out of the wastebasket, takes the needle out of the sterilizer, draws the insulin out of the one he filched and shoots it down the sink, puts the genuine ampule in the wastebasket, rinses the needle and syringe, and puts it back into the sterilizer. On the way into town he could have stopped, crushed the ampule under his heel, and kicked the powdered glass into the dirt if he wanted to be real careful. I think he was careful, and patient. I think maybe he waited for a lot of years until the situation was just exactly right. I mean maybe you could stand living with a terrible old broad like that if you knew that someday, somehow, you were going to do it just right. Nice?”
The Girl in the Plain Brown Wrapper Page 18
