“Okay—” Anthony glanced at his watch. “But I’ll have to make it quick. I’m due in Concord in an hour.”
“The quicker the better,” Friedman said, gesturing for him to begin.
“Well,” Anthony said, settling himself in his chair and crossing his long legs, “Carlton didn’t start taking flying lessons until two years ago—when he was fifty-seven years old. But he turned out to have natural ability, and inside six months he had his license. Of course”—Anthony smiled—“of course, he had lots of money, which doesn’t hurt. And lots of time, too.
“So, anyhow, he bought himself an airplane—even before he soloed, as a matter of fact. He bought a Piper 140, which is a basic four-place airplane. And, as he got more proficient, he started to just plain fly the wings off that airplane. Every other day, it seemed, he was taking it up. And the better he got at handling the airplane, the more reckless he got. He used to take that 140 off the ground like it was a fighter plane—and he’d land it the same way.
“Then, about a year ago, he got a Piper Arrow, which has a lot more power than the 140. And then, Christ, he really started hot-dogging it, with that Arrow. He was warned three times, at least, by the FAA. And then, about six months ago, he had his license lifted for thirty days. That was for being drunk and disorderly around an airplane, up in Oregon.”
“It sounds like it was only a matter of time before he killed himself,” I said.
“True. And, after he got his license back, he got worse, not better. Plus, about that time, he got rated for night flying, which he really loved. But, naturally, there’s more of a tendency for people to drink after dark. So, as you say—” He turned to me, agreeing with my point. “It was just a matter of time. And, sure enough, it happened just about like I expected it would. He got out to the field about ten that night, the way we pieced the story together. He had a woman with him. They got into the Arrow, and they took off. Even before they did the mechanical inspection, the FAA figured that he’d had a partial power failure when he was about a hundred feet from the ground—which is the worst place to have any power failure, partial or not. Assuming that he was taking off into the wind—which, with Carlton, you couldn’t assume, especially when he was drinking—then it looked like he tried to turn back to the field, which is the worst thing you can do, if you don’t have enough altitude. So, anyhow—” Anthony spread his hands. “He crashed. And burned.”
“Was anyone at the field when it happened?” Friedman asked.
Anthony shook his head. “No. It’s a very small field, as Ed probably told you. It’s checked once every hour by a security patrol, but that’s all.”
“How about runway lights?”
“Carlton probably turned them on,” Anthony said. “We have a PCL lighting system. Which means that the runway lights can be turned on by a radio signal from a plane. They go off automatically after five minutes.”
“So what did the FAA find when they examined the wreckage?” Friedman asked.
“They found sugar in Carlton’s gas,” Anthony answered.
“And that caused the crash?” I asked.
Anthony nodded. “Definitely. No question about it.”
“Didn’t Carlton do a preflight?” Friedman asked.
“It’s doubtful,” Anthony answered. “About half the time, day or night, he never bothered about preflighting.” Then, looking more closely at Friedman, he said, “Are you a flyer, by any chance?”
“I used to be. During the war.”
“Oh, yeah?” Interested now, Anthony turned to face Friedman fully. “What’d you fly, anyhow?”
“B-24s. But I haven’t flown for years.”
“Huh—” Anthony was plainly impressed. Then, regretfully, he looked again at his watch. “Listen,” he said, getting to his feet, “I’ve got to go.”
“Just one more question,” Friedman said, rising with Anthony and walking with the flyer to the door. “Was it generally known that Carlton didn’t always preflight his airplane?”
“I suppose so,” Anthony answered. “It certainly wasn’t any secret. He’d do the obvious things—the run-ups, and the mag checks, things like that. But it was very rare that he’d even bother to walk around the airplane to see if everything was attached, much less go to the bother of draining off some gas from the tanks to check for water or contaminates. And, of course, he was even less likely to do a walkaround at night, since he’d have to bother with a flashlight.”
“It sounds to me,” I said, “like Carlton had a death wish.”
Anthony nodded. “I’d say so, too, Lieutenant. Well—goodbye. Good luck.” He waved, smiled amiably, and left the office.
Friedman turned to Lewis. “Is there anything more, Ed? Have you got any leads—any opinions, about who might’ve sabotaged the airplane?”
“I don’t know whether you’d call them leads, exactly,” Lewis answered. “But there’s a couple of things that might add up to something. Which is why I’m here, really. Because it gets into your jurisdiction.”
“What kinds of things?”
“Well, first, there was Mrs. Carlton’s reaction, when I told her about the crash. I decided to tell her myself, rather than call your department. So, about midnight, I rang her doorbell. At first she didn’t answer the door. I figured she was a heavy sleeper, so I kept ringing—kept my thumb on the buzzer. And finally she came to the door. She was dressed in a terrycloth robe, and it was pretty plain she didn’t have anything underneath.”
Obviously, Lewis didn’t approve of a lady answering the door wearing only a bathrobe. So, poking perverse fun, Friedman leered broadly. Ignoring him, Lewis plodded stolidly ahead: “I started with the usual routine—said that there’d been an accident, and asked if I could come inside—mostly as an excuse to get her sitting down. We went into the living room, and I started the story. But I didn’t get very far before a man wandered into the living room—also in a bathrobe.”
Still leering playfully, Friedman chuckled. “Carlton was flying with a woman while his wife was shacked up with a guy. Everything comes out even.”
Pointedly, Lewis didn’t respond. To Lewis, extramarital sex was plainly no laughing matter.
“The guy came in and sat down,” Lewis went on, “as calm as he could be. So I figured, what the hell, I’d just come out with it—which I did.”
“How’d she react?” I asked.
“Very calmly,” Lewis answered. “Very goddamn calmly indeed. She said that it was obvious Carlton would kill himself. The only question was when. Then the guy, if you can believe it, chimed in with some mumbo-jumbo about how he had a self-destructive karma, or some such crap.”
“Who’s the guy?” Friedman asked, reaching for a note pad.
“His name is Donald Fay. He said he was a sculptor.” Obviously, Lewis was dubious. “He looked like he was in his early thirties, if that. And she’s forty, at least.”
I couldn’t resist saying: “A very sexy forty, though.”
Lewis shrugged his broad, muscular shoulders. “If you like the neurotic type, I guess you’d call her sexy. I wouldn’t, though.”
“Was that all?” Friedman asked.
“For then, that was all. Obviously, Mrs. Carlton didn’t need me—not with Donald Fay there. So I went back home, and didn’t think anymore about it—not until day before yesterday, like I said, when I heard about the sugar in the gas. When I heard that, I naturally started checking around. I started at the airfield. I’ve known Bill Anthony for years. In fact, he used to fly for the sheriffs department, years ago. So he was very helpful. Between the two of us, we spent the last two days contacting people who might’ve seen someone fooling around with Carlton’s airplane. Luckily, we could pinpoint the time frame, since he’d been flying the day before he was killed.”
“Was the airplane hangered?” Friedman asked. “Or was it tied down?”
“It was tied down. There’s only one hanger at Ralston Field. That’s mostly for repairs and, especially, painting.”
“Did you have any luck?” I asked.
“Nobody at the field remembered anything, and neither did the security patrol. But then, last night, we got lucky. It turned out that the night before Carlton was killed, a couple of teen-agers—friends of Bill’s son—were out by the airport, parked. Necking. That’s one of the favorite spots in the county, for kids. And they said that just before midnight they saw a car drive up to the gate.”
“How’s the field secured?” I asked.
“It’s not really secured,” Lewis answered. “But there’s a parking lot that’s separated from the airfield itself by a single section of cyclone fence. There’s a pedestrian gate at the center of the fence, but there’s no lock on the gate. That’s because someone could simply walk around the end of the fence, to get to the field.”
“So the fence is basically to keep cars from driving out onto the field?” Friedman asked. “Right?”
Lewis nodded. “Right.”
“Okay,” Friedman said, “we can visualize it.”
“Well,” Lewis said, “you’ve got to understand that the kids were parked beside the road that leads to the parking lot, not in the parking lot itself. So they couldn’t identify the driver of the car, for instance. However, the boy—his name is Charlie Esterbrook—is a car freak, like so many kids. And he identified the car, which was a Mercedes 450SL convertible.”
“It’s too much to hope that he took the license number,” Friedman said drily.
“It’s not like the kids suspected the driver was doing anything wrong,” replied Lewis. “Charlie’s just interested in cars, like I said. Especially cars like the 450SL, which is pretty exotic. I checked with the computer in Sacramento, incidentally. There’s only twenty-seven 450SLs registered in the whole Bay Area.”
“Could the driver see the kids?” I asked.
Lewis shrugged. “If they could see the driver, then the driver could see them. Or, at least, he could see their car. They were right out in the open.”
“What’d the driver do after he drove up to the gate?”
“He—or she—got out of the car, and walked through the gate,” Lewis said. “He—or she—went out onto the field, to where the airplanes are tied down. Charlie saw the driver stop at one of the airplanes for a couple of minutes, and then go back to the Mercedes, and drive away.”
“You say ‘he or she,’” Friedman said. “Meaning that the kid wasn’t sure, I gather.”
Lewis agreed. “Right. The driver had sort of long hair, Charlie said, and was wearing pants and some kind of a jacket. That’s all he could see. He showed me where they were parked. The distance from his car to the gate would’ve been about two hundred feet. And the parking lot isn’t illuminated. So it’s not surprising that he couldn’t see much.”
“Women walk differently from men,” I said. “That should’ve given him some basis for at least guessing.”
Lewis shook his head. “Not Charlie. He’s one of these real serious, studious kids. If he doesn’t know something, he doesn’t guess.”
“Did Charlie see what the driver did when he—or she—got to the airplane?” Friedman asked.
“He sort of stopped, like I said. Like he was just looking at an airplane, or maybe checking something.”
“Did Charlie see which airplane he stopped beside?”
“No. Apparently there were other planes in the way. But it could’ve been Carlton’s airplane, no question.”
“The Piper is a low-winged airplane,” Friedman said, thinking aloud as he doodled on a note pad with a stub of yellow pencil. “The gas tanks are in the wings. It wouldn’t’ve taken any time at all for someone to do the job. Less than a minute, if he knew what he was doing.”
“That’s what Bill said.”
Gazing down at his doodling, Friedman said to me, “I suppose it would be too much to hope that one of our suspects drives a convertible Mercedes 450SL.”
“Sam Wright drives a convertible Mercedes,” I said. “But it’s not a 450SL. It’s more like a 220.”
“Hmmm.” Friedman studied the doodle, then thoughtfully penciled in a small flourish. “Hmmm.”
“Is Mrs. Carlton one of your suspects?” Lewis asked.
Friedman looked up. “She could be,” he answered. “She’s not exactly a front runner, but she’s definitely a contender. Why?”
“Because, according to Bill Anthony, she drives a Mercedes like the one Charlie described.”
Eighteen
AS I PULLED UP in front of the elegant three-story Georgian town house, Friedman said, “The starving writer stereotype obviously doesn’t apply to Bernard Carlton.”
“Obviously.” I set the parking brake, switched off the engine, leaned back in the seat and yawned. For the past two nights, totaled, I’d barely gotten eight hours sleep.
“I guess that writing is like acting,” Friedman said. “For every actor who gets a million dollars a picture, there’re hundreds who make zilch. And it’s got nothing to do with talent, either. It’s what the public pays to see—or read.”
After he’d been discharged from the Air Corps following the second world war, Friedman had tried acting—briefly. I’d known him for years before I discovered, by accident, that he’d spent a year in Hollywood, making the rounds of the agents and the casting offices with a sheaf of 8x10 glossies under his arm. Questioned about that period of his life, he dismissed it as his “slim, darkly handsome phase.”
“Have you ever read anything by Carlton?” I asked.
“No,” Friedman admitted. “Have you?”
“No. But I understand that he was a kind of cross between Thomas Wolfe and Harold Robbins—with a little Eugene O’Neill thrown in.”
“That’s a pretty salable-sounding combination,” Friedman observed. “Did you see the movie Enemies, with Paul Newman and Jane Fonda?”
“Yes. Was that made from one of his books?”
“That’s right,” he answered. “According to my research, he’d had a total of five books made into movies.”
“Jesus. No wonder he was rich. How’d you do your research, by the way?”
“Clara did it for me. She’s read a couple of his books, it turns out. And, what’s more, she’s got a friend who’s a librarian. And the librarian says that, in addition to making a lot of money writing, Carlton also inherited a bundle from his family, who had so-called ‘old’ San Francisco money. Incidentally, whenever we catch up on our sleep, Clara wants you and Ann to come over for dinner.”
“Fine. Thanks.”
Staring speculatively at the town house, Friedman said, “I wonder whether she’ll answer the door in her bathrobe—without anything on underneath?”
“We could always ring the bell, and find out.”
But Friedman was in a theorizing mood.
“Her husband and her stepdaughter were both killed, as it turns out,” he said reflectively. “Which means that she and Justin, her idiot son, are going to split a fortune.”
“According to her, Justin’s not such an idiot. She seems to think he’s got talent as a cult leader.”
“Some talent,” Friedman grunted. “How much talent does it take to collect a bunch of confused kids, and start pushing their buttons?”
“You probably didn’t think Hitler had talent, either.”
He raised his eyebrows, pursed his lips and finally nodded. “What do I say? Touché?”
Yawning again and massaging my closed eyes with thumb and forefinger, I didn’t reply. Tonight, Ann was expecting me to phone—but not before nine-thirty. After I phoned, I would probably go to her house, where we would talk.
Instead of sleeping, after two sleepless nights, I’d be talking—trying to discover what had gone wrong between us. Suddenly the prospect seemed a bleak one. Bleak, and exhausting—and wrong.
Last night, while I’d faced a gun, terrified, Ann had been at home, tucked in, sleeping.
Tonight, if I had the chance, I should be sleeping.
Not talk
ing. Not defending myself against some unspecified, unfair charge.
“…see the will?” Friedman was asking.
Wearily, I opened my eyes. “What?”
“I said, can we see the will?”
“No. Not until tomorrow. I couldn’t get a court order yesterday.”
Still staring at the Carlton town house, Friedman fell silent. His broad, swarthy moon face was expressionless; his dark, almond-shaped eyes were inscrutable. Since it was Sunday, he was wearing loafers, corduroy trousers, a sport shirt open at the neck and a green nylon windbreaker. The effect could have been casual, even sporty. But, on Friedman, sports clothes always looked at least one size too small.
Finally, speaking in a soft, speculative voice, he said, “God, can you imagine the headlines if it turns out that she offed her famous husband and also her equally famous stepdaughter? Can you imagine what Walter Cronkite would say? I can just see his eyebrows, twitching on the seven o’clock news.”
“If we can tie her to Sally Grant,” I answered, “it could happen.” I realized that I, too, was speaking softly. The thought of arresting Cass Dangerfield for murder was awesome.
Could it happen today—in another hour? At the thought, I realized that I felt uncomfortable. For a moment I couldn’t define the cause of my unpredictable discomfort. And then it came to me: Neither Friedman nor I were properly dressed for the job of taking someone like Cass Dangerfield into custody.
At the thought, I smiled—to myself—at the same time saying, “Did you have the lab crews go over Sally Grant’s house, as well as her car? All it would take is Cass Dangerfield’s fingerprints on Sally’s coffee table, you know, to connect them.”
“That’s assuming that Cass doesn’t preempt us by admitting that, yes, she knows Sally. For all we know, they could’ve been sorority sisters. But the answer to the question is that I’ve got a crew in her house. Since we don’t have a warrant, though, it’s a small crew. A quiet small crew.”
Mankiller (The Lt. Hastings Mysteries) Page 15
