Rook Takes Knight (The Howie Rook Mysteries)

by Stuart Palmer

  “Did you ever get a good look at this man following you?”

  “No—just that it was a man, or different men. I’m too vain to wear glasses, and I couldn’t get used to the contact things. But it wasn’t just a wolf on the prowl, because he never moved in close and tried to make his pitch. Sometimes he was there, in a late-model car or on foot, and sometimes he wasn’t.”

  “Mrs. Charteris, when you were looking through the canceled checks to see if your husband had been paying the psychiatrist, did you also look to see if he’d made out any checks to a detective agency?”

  “Why, no. But I think I’d have noticed. And he wouldn’t have paid cash because he hardly ever carried much, or let me have more than a few dollars at a time, though I have credit cards and charge accounts all over. He was never mean—about money.”

  “What about his will?”

  “He made one when we were first married, and left everything to me. But he could have changed it, he’s threatened to. His lawyers, Hardy and Wolff, would know about that. They haven’t told me anything—except to get in touch with you, Mr. Agnews, because they were not interested in defending any criminal cases.”

  The attorney put down his drink and moved closer. “Now, Dee—you say you definitely were not having an affair with this former boy friend? Because if you were it’s sure as hell going to come out!”

  “I wasn’t! Not since before my marriage, anyway. Nor with anyone else, I’ll have you know!”

  “Well,” put in Rook, “could anybody have seen you parked last night, giving you an alibi?” Deirdre said she doubted it, that down near the beach on a warmish night one girl in a sports car would hardly stand out. “When did you last see this man?” he pressed closer.

  “Not for years—except we ran into each other on the street about a week ago and went into the Beverly Derby for lunch, very casually.”

  “But you’ve talked to him on the phone?”

  “Not until this noon. On the way back from the morgue I stopped to call him and tell him there was some stink about John’s death and that he mustn’t pay any sympathy calls or send flowers, or even phone me, because his name mustn’t be dragged into it. Not with him having a wife and all. I never met his wife, but I certainly don’t want to be the cause of breaking up his marriage. And he can’t give me an alibi—nobody can!”

  Rook sighed. “Well, who do you think killed your husband?”

  “I can’t answer that. John had no enemies—except himself.”

  Agnews looked at his watch, and winced. “Well, Howie? Enough?”

  The big man had had more than enough, but something bothered him. “I’ve been here two hours—and the phone hasn’t rung once. Doesn’t that seem a little odd?”

  “Now that you mention it, it does! I’ll just bet—” Deirdre ran up the stairs, reappearing in a moment, very flushed. “Just Mary again,” she said. “The phone in my bedroom was off the hook and she’d dialed one number and left it, so it was dead.”

  “Well, it was only for your own good, to keep you from being bothered!” came Mary’s voice from the head of the stairs.

  “She means well,” Deirdre said. “And she’s promised to stay with me until after the funeral, leaving poor Ed all alone with the night club.”

  Rook made no comment. “Have you a photo of your late husband? I’d like to get an idea …”

  “Certainly.” Deirdre went into the next room and came back with a big white leather album. She sat on the arm of Rook’s chair and flipped a few pages. “There’s John,” she said, pointing to a good-looking man somewhere in his late forties, with curly hair and a boyish mouth, standing on a diving board and no doubt holding in his stomach. His was a face to inspire confidence in anyone—the banker or clergyman type. Rook had also known a successful con man who looked like that.

  But he realized that the album could be useful. “Mind if I glance through it?”

  “Not at all—but it’s just a hodgepodge of candid shots. John was camera crazy.”

  Hal Agnews was looking at his watch again, but Rook started on page one. There was a shot of the newly wedded couple, looking happy or tight or both, taken in some Yuma chapel. There were shots of Deirdre and of Charteris on dejected-looking cow ponies, which she explained were taken on their honeymoon on a Montana dude ranch. And there were shots of this house, with Deirdre in the foreground. “That’s when we first bought it, before the landscaping was in.” There were innumerable flashlight shots of parties, indoors and outside, in the patio and around the pool. Rook noted that most of the guests seemed to be of Charteris’ generation; Deirdre must have made a complete break with her own age group and her show-business past when she became Mrs. Charteris.

  Except for one photo. “That’s dear old Max Linsky, my agent in the good old days,” Deirdre said, pointing to a small, fattish, cherubic-looking, very bald man sitting at the grand piano here in the living room, various hilarious couples in the background, nobody feeling any pain. “He was doing his imitation of Liberace,” she explained. “Max only came to that one party, though. John was itchy about anybody I knew before I married him.” She leaned over to turn a page. “And there’s Lancer as a puppy, the day we got him. He was the sweetest, most adorable little tyke …” She choked. “I’ll never own another dog as long as I live!”

  A few pages further on, Rook hesitated. “Haven’t I seen that man in court or somewhere?” He pointed to a figure in swimming trunks, the center of a group of assorted females beside the pool.

  “Oh, that’s Harry Holtz. He used to come to all our parties—and give some lovely ones of his own, though he’s a confirmed bachelor. When that picture was taken I didn’t dream I’d ever be consulting him professionally. But isn’t he distinguished-looking?”

  He was indeed, Rook had to admit. If you went for the Caesar Romero type. But Deirdre turned more pages. It was all a photo montage of playtimes and vacations—a background of mountains or seashore or a cabin cruiser or the patio. There were many shots of the growing puppy racing around, teasing for tidbits or in the pool with Deirdre. There were more shots of parties, even several of Gregorio and Maria grinning their toothy grins as they carried trays of cocktails. There was a shot of Mary and a tall, very fat man—presumably Ed Patch, the husband—hugging each other beside a vast floral wreath marked “All the Luck of the Irish,” presumably at the gala opening of the night spot. Ed looked uncomfortable in evening clothes and Sister Mary had her mouth open.

  There was a whole page of snapshots of a nervous-looking black thoroughbred—one with a monkeylike jockey perched in the saddle, several with Deirdre apprehensively patting the animal’s muzzle or trying to feed him a carrot, one with Charteris sitting stiffly in the saddle, several with a tall, lean-jawed, youngish man in blue jeans and Stetson. “That’s Charley Booth with Carbon Copy,” Deirdre explained. “John had high hopes for that colt—he thought maybe he’d win a big race at Santa Anita or Hollywood Park and I’d be presented with a gold cup and get to hang a big wreath on his neck in the winner’s circle. But it never happened. Carbon Copy never seemed to be able to run up to his workouts, John used to complain.”

  “A ‘morning-glory,’ as the saying goes. Horse racing is as full of ups and downs as show business. Did your husband bet a lot?”

  “No, he never got mixed up with bookies, if that’s what you’re driving at. If he made a bet, it was small, and he’d have Charley Booth place it at the parimutuel windows.”

  “They were good friends, then? I noticed Booth’s face in several of your party pictures.”

  “Oh, yes! They were thick as thieves. It was Charley I danced twice with—but John wasn’t angry with him, just with me later. The two men only had one disagreement, and that was a few months ago when John got disgusted with paying the feed bills and wanted to get rid of Carbon Copy, maybe sell him for glue or something. Charley simply dotes on that horse, he got mad and almost punched John in the nose and they didn’t speak for a week, but I managed t
o smooth it over and they shook hands and John decided to keep the horse if only as a tax write-off …”

  Ed and Mary Patch had appeared in only one group shot at the Charteris parties, and Rook commented on this. “Oh, my sister and her husband were usually tied up at the Corn Patch when we entertained,” Deirdre explained in a lowered tone. “And Ed never fit in with our friends. He’d always get tight and was apt to tell very long and involved shaggy dog stories, or try to sing. Charley Booth is the one who can really sing—here’s a shot of him with his guitar. He looks very nice when he’s dressed up, but he always smells of saddle soap and liniment and the stable …”

  The last shot in the album was a wide-angle photo of the finish at some racetrack, with the leaders and the field well bunched together and crossing the finish line, one horse coming on last by some twenty lengths. “That’s Carbon Copy in action,” Deirdre said.

  “Where is he now?” Rook asked.

  “I think Charley has him and the rest of his string of horses at Pomona, the county fairgrounds. Why?”

  “It doesn’t matter.” Rook handed back the album. “I’m sorry to bring up bittersweet memories, Mrs. Charteris.” She only shrugged.

  But he had noted that the great proportion of the snapshots had been of Deirdre herself, in a hundred different poses and costumes. Charteris must have been frantically trying to capture and hold her forever on film, no matter what happened. There were many more questions he could have asked, but it was getting late.

  Hal Agnews was telling the client, “Now don’t talk to reporters, let nobody in the house, and don’t let your sister jam the phone again. But only answer it when it rings three times, is silent a minute, and then rings again—because that’ll be Howie or me. And keep your chin up.”

  “We’ve had worse ones than this,” Rook told her. “And come out all right. Except in old Perry Mason films, innocent persons rarely get brought to trial for murder. And we have something worth fighting for—a lovely lady in distress!”

  It was pure blarney, but it obviously touched her. For while she gave Agnews her hand outside on the step, she grabbed Rook and kissed him on the cheek. “I sometimes have a bit of the second sight,” she said. “And I know you’ll be the saving of me, Mr. Howard Rook.” The door closed, and the two men moved over to where the Cadillac stood in the semicircular driveway.

  “What do you think, Howie?” asked the attorney.

  “She’s—she’s on the breath-taking side.”

  “Take it easy!” Agnews was using a linen handkerchief to wipe off his windshield. “I almost expected you to ask her for a scarf to tie around your helm as you go forth to do battle. Now who’s defense-minded and who’s objective, huh?”

  “All right, so she’s beautiful. But beautiful women can lie.”

  “So maybe she’s lying! But can you see that girl stealing a car and using it to crush her husband to death, not to mention the dog?”

  “I might remind you that Madeleine Smith was beautiful—and Marie de Brinvilliers, and Constance Kent—”

  “You’re not saying you think Dee is good for it?”

  Somewhere in the distance a car motor started up, but Rook was temporarily oblivious. “I don’t think she actually did it, no. It’s hardly a woman’s method. But she has the looks that could inspire a man to do almost anything. She may have a pretty good idea of who did kill Charteris, and she thinks she can wind us around her little finger, which may not be far from the truth.”

  Agnews climbed into his car. “Howie, you’re a cynic.”

  But Rook was pointing. “Somebody took off,” he said. “Just now.”

  “What? Oh, the stakeout. Maybe the operative had instructions from Wilt Mays or McDowd just to wait around until he figured the lady was settled for the night.” Agnews started his motor. “And, Howie, don’t forget that photo—”

  “I wish to God I could forget it! It’s like somebody throwing filth on the Mona Lisa, or hacking up the Venus de Milo!”

  “Okay, Howie. Sleep on it. And remember—Sherlock Holmes never let himself get involved with his lady clients!” The attorney waved his hand and took off. Rook slowly climbed into his own Plymouth, and the lights in the Charteris house went out one by one. He drove home wondering why he himself couldn’t be aloof as Sherlock Holmes or Father Brown or James Bond? And he was of the considered opinion that at the moment his head and his heart were out of sync.

  III

  HOWIE ROOK ALMOST SUCCEEDED in drowning himself that night. As was his custom under moments of stress such as this, he had slept not in his bed out on the sleeping porch but in his big bathtub, filled with warmish water and with the tap turned on just enough to keep it so. He had long since discovered that this somewhat unorthodox procedure refreshed his body and relaxed his mind more than anything else could have done when it was necessary to try to condense eight hours of slumber into four or five. But he must have been having nightmares, for he woke up face down in the water, choking and spluttering. Whatever his dreams, they were luckily gone and forgotten when he finally came wide awake to face the day, which was Friday.

  And the photograph of Deirdre and her slashed back still haunted him. He saw it in his mind’s eye when he made breakfast, which consisted of black coffee and a mug of dark beer with two eggs beaten into it. It was still too early to take off, so he spent half an hour among the hundreds of shoebox files which lined one wall of his living room. Among his treasured clippings he found little to inspire him. Most murders by auto seem to have involved driving a car back and forth over a helpless or unconscious victim, or else locking someone in a car in a closed garage with the motor running, the old carbon monoxide route. Of course, there had been the murder of a lieutenant-colonel at Fort Dilling, Oklahoma, in 1946, where the man was crushed between car bumper and stone wall on a mountaintop lovers’ lane, but he hadn’t been a moving target. There was only one recorded case in Rook’s files about a murderer using a speeding auto to strike down a pedestrian victim, and that had been in Chicago, 1957. That one had some interesting angles: the killer had tied a lap robe over the front of a sports car as a sort of buffer and had wiped out a night-club singer named Jeanine. Too obvious a motive had eventually given him away, though not until another man had stood trial for the job.

  Others, of course, might have gotten away with it. The only reason for the popular belief that “there is no such thing as a perfect murder” is that if it’s really perfect the killing is never discovered at all, or else passed off as an accident.

  Which might very well have been the situation in this Charteris case—if it really was murder. The problem was tantalizing—at the moment it could have been accidental, or suicidal, or homicidal for all that could be absolutely proved. Most probably the latter, of course. But eyewitnesses would have helped …

  And that damn photo of Deirdre kept intruding itself into his meditations, like King Charles’ head in poor Mr. Dick’s novel. It presumably supplied the element of motive—almost too much motive. Motive for Deirdre herself, on the face of it. If she were to be saved, at least from the ignominy and harassment of arrest, somebody would have to come up with the real murderer, caught dead to rights. A reasonable doubt wasn’t going to be quite enough, not with such formidable adversaries as Wilt Mays and Sergeant McDowd.

  Rook decided to take a chance and phone the West Los Angeles police substation. McDowd wasn’t always as hard-nosed as most police detectives. Luckily he was on duty and in the office. His voice was wary but not unfriendly. “Yeah, Howie, I heard you were called in on this Charteris thing—”

  “It was your man, then, who was doing a stakeout at the house on Tigertail last night?”

  “Huh? No, not one of ours. We got no personnel to spare for that kind of duty. I got the word about you from the D.A.’s office about half an hour ago. So you’re going to come roaring in and try to make us professionals look bad, eh?”

  “Mac, will you try to forget that policemen and defense investigator
s are supposed to be deadly enemies? I’m only trying to help Mrs. Charteris, and you’re trying to pin a murder rap on her, but we are both of us just out for the facts …”

  “I’m pretty well out of it,” corrected the sergeant. “We weren’t moving fast enough, I guess. Anyway, the case has been taken outa our hands. If there’s an arrest, Wilt Mays will order it himself.”

  “You think that Deirdre is innocent, then?”

  “No, Howie. I think she’s probably guilty as hell. She lied, and she’s got no alibi. She didn’t cry or take on or show much surprise when she found out her husband was dead. And she must be guilty or she wouldn’t have retained Hal Agnews.”

  “Ease it, Mac! She saw from the way Mays’ men were leaning on her at the morgue which way the wind was blowing. And not all Hal’s clients are guilty, remember.”

  McDowd only snorted, a meaningful snort.

  “And if Hal thought her good for it, would he call me in and give me a free hand? No, Mac. You can’t convict her just on the old ‘who else?’ thing. Why are you so sure it was murder, anyway? Just the fact that the driver ran a boulevard stop and didn’t hit the brakes before or after the accident?”

  “That—and the fact that the car obviously wasn’t stolen by some kids out for a joy ride, but for one particular purpose. But as far as we’re officially concerned, the case is still felony hit-and-run, plus driving a motor vehicle without the consent of the owner. We might have more if those teen-age kids in the jalopy came forward, but you and I both know that’ll be the day!”

  “Yes, the Kitty Genovese Syndrome—‘we musn’t get involved!’ You haven’t got any lead at all on the supposed eyewitnesses yet?”