Risky Way to Kill

by RICHARD LOCKRIDGE

  Lieutenants are free when desired by an inspector.

  Forniss is a large and muscular man; he is even taller, by an inch or two, than Heimrich. He came in and closed the door behind him and said, “Morning, M.L.”

  Heimrich’s first name displeases him. Its use, by others than Susan, is not encouraged.

  Heimrich said, “Morning, Charlie. Know somebody who’d know about architects?”

  “Could be,” Forniss said, not surprising Heimrich in the least. Charles Forniss, in their long association, had almost never failed to say “Could be,” to similar questions. Regardless of the alley they needed to go up, Forniss always seemed to know somebody who lived on it. Or, anyway, at the end of it.

  “In general, Inspector?” Forniss said.

  “Specific,” Heimrich said. “A man named Wainright.”

  “Nope,” Forniss said. “No Wainright. Man named Fulton, though. He’s an architect. Major in the Corps when I was.”

  For Forniss, there is only one “Corps,” the United States Marine Corps. Forniss was a captain in it before he was a sergeant, and longer before he was a lieutenant, New York State Police.

  “Haven’t seen Major Fulton in a couple of years,” Forniss said. “Gather he’s a big-shot architect now.”

  “See if you can get hold of him, Charlie,” Heimrich said. “Ask him what he knows about an architect named Wainright —Paul Bryson Wainright. What his standing is in the profession. Anything your friend Fulton knows about him.”

  Forniss said, “Wainright, Paul Bryson. O.K., M.L.” He turned toward the door and turned back. He said, “Because why, Inspector?”

  Briefly, Heimrich filled him in on the “why.” Lieutenant Forniss said, “O.K.,” again and went out of the corner office.

  Wasting my time, Heimrich thought. Wasting Charlie’s time. Wasting the time of a couple of troopers who ought to be on patrol instead of in a hayfield. Nobody kills a girl by getting her thrown from a horse. Too chancy, for one thing. She had been young; the young are flexible and have dexterity. So—

  Heimrich looked at his telephone and after some seconds picked it up. He got the squad room. Yes, Raymond Crowley was on duty. Sure, he would be told the Inspector wanted to see him, sir. Heimrich lighted a cigarette and got two drags from it and his door was knocked on. “Come in, Crowley,” Heimrich said.

  Detective Raymond Crowley was in his late twenties and tall and lean. He wore gray slacks and a tweed jacket which fitted so well that there was nothing to show he also wore a gun under it. Crowley stopped just inside the door and said, “Sir?”

  Heimrich said, “Sit down, Ray,” and motioned to the chair across the desk from his own. Crowley sat on it.

  “Want you to do something for me, Ray,” Heimrich said. “Down in a place called Warrenton, Virginia, there’s a bank called the Tootle National Bank. I want to talk to the president of it, or to the senior vice president or somebody of that size. I’d like you to get him on the phone and say that Inspector Heimrich, and so forth and so forth, wants to talk to him about a matter of importance. Lay it on a bit. See what I mean?”

  “Yes,” Ray Crowley said. “I guess I do, sir.”

  “Pull what rank you can,” Heimrich said. “Come to think of it, you’re ‘Lieutenant’ Crowley. Maybe the president or whoever isn’t the stuffy sort, but maybe he is. Impress him, Ray. Talk Harvard or something like that, Ray.”

  “Princeton would be better,” Ray said. “To a man in Virginia. Also, Princeton is where I went, Inspector. There isn’t any special way of talking Princeton.”

  “All right,” Heimrich said. “Standard eastern American. We’re very high-toned up here.”

  “O.K.,” Ray said. “Suppose he’ll be named Tootle, Inspector?”

  “Anything’s possible, I guess,” Heimrich said. “Switch him on here when you get him.”

  “If,” Ray Crowley said. “Stuffy ones sometimes just hang up, sir. Talk to him about, Inspector?”

  “Just a matter of importance, Ray. Official importance. Just spread it on.”

  Ray Crowley said, “O.K., sir,” and went. A trooper came in and partly filled Heimrich’s IN basket and removed what was in the OUT basket. Heimrich put a handful of “in”s on the desk and read and initialed. It had been much more interesting to be a captain. When he was a captain, somebody else had read most of the “in”s. I’ll get fat as two hippos, just sitting here, Merton Heimrich thought. Just sitting here, initialing and delegating.

  It was ten minutes before the telephone rang. He picked it up and said, “Inspector Heimrich.” It was not the way he commonly answered the telephone. He’d feel damn silly if it was, say, Charlie Forniss using the telephone to report on Wainright.

  “Mr. Warren is on the line, Inspector,” Ray Crowley said. “Mr. Howard Warren, executive vice president of the Tootle National Bank. Will you go ahead please, Mr. Warren?” Heimrich said, “Good morning, Mr. Warren.” A man—a man with a light and pleasant voice, with only a touch of Virginia in it —said, “What may this be all about, Inspector?”

  “A point has come up, Mr. Warren,” Heimrich said. “About the trust fund established for his daughter by the late Mr. Gant. Mr. Robert Lee Gant.”

  “Point? What kind of point?”

  “Mr. Gant was a director of your bank, I understand. A bank is mentioned as cotrustee with Mrs. Wainright, the former Mrs. Gant. I thought it might be yours.”

  “It was,” Warren said. “All settled months ago. Reverted to Mrs. Wainright and Mr. Gant’s younger brother. All legal and court-approved. What’s your interest, Inspector?”

  “I’d rather not go into that, Mr. Warren,” Heimrich said. “Just that it’s official. Mrs. Wainright was a resident of New York State at the time the trust was transferred to her. And to Mr. Gant, of course.”

  “My God,” Warren said. “Don’t tell me the State Police up there are tax collectors. Anyway, Mrs. Wainright has a lawyer up there somewhere. Hold it a minute.” He spoke off the phone. He said, “Molly, get me the Wainright file, will you, honey?” Then, again to Heimrich, “I still don’t get what you’re after, Inspector.”

  “Entirely routine,” Heimrich said. “Has to do with the manner of Miss Gant’s death.”

  “Ginnie Gant was thrown off her horse,” Warren said. “More than a year ago. Hadn’t you heard about it?”

  “Yes, Mr. Warren. We’d heard about it. Tragic accident, You speak as if you’d known Miss Gant.”

  “When she was a kid,” Warren said. “Very pretty kid, Inspector. The Gant women always were. So were the Tracy women, come to that. Mrs. Gant—I mean Mrs. Wainright as of now—was a Tracy before she married Boblee.”

  The last sounded something, but not a great deal, like a word to Merton Heimrich. He repeated it.

  “Called Robert Lee Gant that, if they knew him well enough,” Warren said. “Ones who didn’t call him ‘the Squire.’ Whoever owns Gant’s Courthouse is called the Squire. Bruce Gant’s that now, of course.”

  “Gant’s Courthouse?”

  “Just a name now,” Warren said. “Was a courthouse before the War Between the States. On Gant land. This is costing your state money, Inspector.”

  “It’ll pass a bond issue,” Heimrich said. “The Gant place? Near Warrenton?”

  “Ten miles or so. Three-four hundred acres, Inspector. Very pretty country. The Gants breed horses there. Always have since anybody can remember. Hobby with Boblee, mostly. Business with Bruce and Beth.”

  “Successful?”

  “Listen, Inspector,” Warren said. “Bruce Gant’s a depositor with us. We don’t discuss our depositors. You ought to know that.”

  “All right,” Heimrich said. “Mr. Gant did, I gather, come into part of his niece’s trust fund. When it reverted.”

  “Yes,” Warren said. “That’s a matter of court record now. Got a fifth of it. Mrs. Wainright got the rest.”

  “Since it’s a matter of court record,” Heimrich said. “How big was the trust fund?”


  “Inspector, what is all this? Doesn’t sound like a tax inquiry. Never did, you know.”

  Heimrich thought for a moment, closing his eyes to make it easier. This bank executive was forthcoming beyond most. He might also be outgiving.

  “All right, Mr. Warren,” Heimrich said. “Something has come up about the manner of Miss Gant’s death. Nothing conclusive. Just—call it a doubt. So we’re going through certain formalities.”

  “For God’s sake, Inspector. She got thrown from a horse. In the papers. A good deal in the papers here, she being a Gant.” It was his turn to pause. “She’d ridden since she was a child,” he said, and spoke slowly, like a man thinking things over as he spoke. “All the Gants always had. The Tracys too, come to that. Most people around here do. Oh, get thrown now and then, like everybody else. Still—”

  “Nothing really to show Miss Gant’s death wasn’t an accident,” Heimrich told Warren. “The trust fund, Mr. Warren?”

  “Not an exact figure—it involved various bonds and blocks of stock—but something over a million,” Warren said. “Part of the income to the widow, while Ginnie was still a minor. The rest went back into the trust fund, to build it up.”

  “So—if Miss Gant had lived to inherit?”

  “Up to Ginnie, far’s I know. There’d be enough to go around, I’d say. And Ginnie always was a sweet kid.”

  “You said, Bruce and Beth,” Heimrich said. “Beth, I take it, is Mrs. Bruce Gant?”

  “Yes,” Warren said. “For the last six months or so. Beth Tracy before that. Cousin of Flo Gant’s. Flo Wainright’s, as it is now. Should have happened years ago, people say. Only Bruce married somebody else. It didn’t take, but the lady hung on. Didn’t live at Gant’s Courthouse, but hung on wherever she was.” He paused again. “She didn’t come from these parts,” he said. “Up North somewhere.” There was pity in his tone, not condemnation.

  “I gather,” Heimrich said, “the first Mrs. Bruce Gant did, as you put it, finally let go.”

  “In Reno,” Warren said.

  “Recently?”

  “Last winter.”

  “Which would,” Heimrich said, “have been after Miss Gant’s death, naturally. After Gant knew he was going to get a fifth of —you said more than a million?”

  “Substantially more. In four years, it had built up. Before that, Bruce probably couldn’t—” He stopped himself abruptly. He said, “Nosir,” making it one word. The word had finality. It occurred to Heimrich that Howard Warren had suddenly, perhaps a little belatedly, realized that he was a banker as well as a Virginian willing to talk of old Virginia families.

  “You’ve been very patient, Mr. Warren. Very patient. We appreciate—”

  But Warren spoke off-phone again and said, “Thanks, honey,” and there was the faint sound of rustling papers.

  “Here it is,” Warren said. “Gilligan, Steinberg and Forsythe.” He added an address in the East Forties. Heimrich wrote the names down and the address down. “The lawyers,” Warren said.

  “Yes,” Heimrich said. “Thanks, Mr. Warren.”

  “Heimrich,” Warren said. “Some Heimrichs down in North Carolina. Von Heimrichs, they were in the old days. Dropped the Von.”

  “No,” Heimrich said. “I’m a New York Stater, Mr. Warren. For some—”

  Forniss opened the office door and Heimrich motioned toward a chair.

  “—generations,” Heimrich said. “Not a Von in any of them, far’s I know. Thanks again, Mr. Warren.”

  He put the telephone in its cradle.

  “Cui bono?” Heimrich said. “Several did, apparently. Directly and indirectly. Any luck, Charlie?”

  “Not too much,” Forniss said. “The Major knew his name. That was about all. Inquired around a little and called me back. With not too much more. Wainright isn’t one of the big names in the profession. No high-rises on tops of railroad stations. No houses cantilevered over precipices. Way the Major put it. Seems—”

  It seemed, from Major Fulton’s inquiries, that Paul Bryson Wainright, duly licensed architect, had come to New York some eight years before from, one man thought, Indiana. Another man thought Iowa. Mostly domestic architecture, one man thought. A few taxpayers, according to another. No professional associates, as far as any of those Fulton had talked to knew. “Sounds like a desk and maybe a couple of draftsmen operation,” Fulton, former Major, USMC, told Forniss, former Captain. “Claude Langley’s got a feeling he’s hooked up with one of the prefab outfits.”

  “Happens,” Charlie Forniss said to Heimrich, “I know a guy’s in the prefab racket. So—”

  So Charles Forniss, who knows guys in almost all rackets, called the guy he knew in the prefab industry. He struck pay dirt—rather shallow pay dirt, but that for what it might be worth.

  Wainright was employed, apparently on a consultive basis, by one of the manufacturers of prefabricated houses. Mostly such houses were put together from standard plans. Now and then a customer wanted a special job—a customer with enough money to pay for one and, usually, not enough time to wait for on-the-site building. Enter Wainright, or another like him, to consult with customer and make drawings for a special house. Not too special; plans which would utilize, as far as possible, standard components already in the company’s warehouse. But plans which would, to some degree at least, result in a house built to a client’s special requirements.

  Sides of houses still were trucked to building lots; roofs trucked to put over them. Kitchens came in units to fit spaces allotted. But the houses looked like houses and could be so lived in.

  “Good sound dwellings,” Forniss’s friend, who was in the trade of supplying them, told Forniss. “We put them together in maybe a tenth of the time it would take to build them from scratch.”

  Was Wainright employed by the company for which he did designs?

  The guy Forniss knew didn’t think so. If Forniss meant on a fixed salary. Wainright had his own office; probably had clients of his own. He was available to the prefab manufacturer when needed.

  “Sort of piecework,” Forniss told Heimrich.

  The guy Forniss knew wouldn’t even try to guess what the prefab company—it wasn’t the one he was associated with—would pay an architect for these semispecial plans. It would, presumably, depend on the complexity and, to a degree, at least, on the price the customer paid. There wouldn’t, for Wainright, be any fortune in it. There wouldn’t be the architect’s standard ten-per-cent fee. Probably, if enough customers wanted nonstandard prefabs, there would, for Wainright, be a living in it.

  “Could be,” Forniss said, “it’s just a side line for Wainright.”

  “Yes,” Heimrich said, “naturally, Charlie.”

  The morning slumped back into routine—into IN baskets and OUT baskets. A man was found dead of a bullet wound in a motel near Yorktown Heights. Probably suicide, but not a contact head wound. And the man’s car, which should have been in the numbered slot in front of his motel room, was not there. Heimrich sent Ray Crowley in a cruise car. The District Attorney of Westchester County wanted, on the telephone, a report on progress in the shooting—apparently by sniper—of an insurance salesman in front of his house on the outskirts of White Plains. He was told that there was work on it, but no conclusive progress. The next-door neighbor of the dead man had a target fastened to a tree, and he sometimes shot at it with a rifle. He damn well hadn’t been shooting when good old Jimmy had been killed. He’d been in his office in White Plains. Well, perhaps he had just left his office. He sure as hell hadn’t been shooting.

  Reading and initialing papers. Telling Charles Forniss that the mysterious disappearance of one Ruth Anderson, reported by her husband, was his case and to use whoever he needed on it; agreeing with Forniss that the blood stains found in the Anderson car needed more explanation than Anderson could offer. Anderson said his wife was all the time cutting herself, mostly when she was opening cans. Heimrich agreed that an automobile in its own garage was an odd place in
which to open cans.

  The District Attorney of Putnam County said that the arraignment of Arthur Jenkins, charge of murder one, had been set for Thursday morning in Carmel, and Heimrich would be needed as the State’s first witness to establish the fact, and probable time, of the death by stabbing of Francis Lennos, who had shared a summer cabin with Jenkins. There was a three-car smashup, with one fatality, on Route 22 near Bedford Village. A trailer truck had jackknifed in Cross River, tying up traffic on Routes 35 and 124. Nobody hurt but a good many considerably annoyed. Not in the province of the B.C.I. The irrelevant flows across the desk of an inspector. It submerges wisps of curiosity.

  Heimrich had a ham-and-cheese sandwich and coffee at his desk. He was smoking a cigarette with the coffee when the desk sergeant called to report that a Miss Mercer wanted to see him. “Says she has something to show you, sir.”

  10

  She was pretty standing in the doorway to Heimrich’s office. She wore a dark green dress with a white sweater over her shoulders. She had, among other things, very good legs. She was also, Heimrich thought, very young. Miraculously young. He stood behind his desk, feeling clumsy and enormous and said, “Good afternoon, Miss Mercer.”

  “I’m interrupting your lunch,” Lyle Mercer said. “But I’m supposed to interview a man who’s writing a book about the Hudson Valley, and there’s a German restaurant around here he likes.”

  She spoke rapidly and she was, Heimrich thought, excited. Perhaps about interviewing a man who was writing a book. Heimrich said, “Come and sit down, Miss Mercer. They say you’ve something to show me.”

  “We found something,” Lyle said. “That is, Bob—I mean Mr. Wallis—found it.”

  She came into the room and sat on the chair across the desk from Heimrich. She opened a handbag, which was of a green which matched her dress. She took a legal-size envelope out of the handbag and laid it on the desk in front of Heimrich. It was somewhat crumpled; it was also somewhat dirty.