Women Crime Writers

by Sarah Weinman

  Someone had used the ladder to gain entry to Stolz’s room. Had they succeeded? She rushed a second time to the zinnia bed and looked upward. What she could see reassured her. There was no indication that the sills had been prized, and she could see the locks in place on the crosspieces.

  She felt a little calmer. Someone had tried to get in, but they hadn’t risked a forced entry. Sneak thief, she thought. She looked at the footprint in the earth and a sly, menacing figure seemed to build itself in the air above it. Mrs. Havermann shuddered, averting her eyes as from a living criminal, and then she went quickly back to the laundry room.

  I can’t just go to pieces, she thought. I must go at this sensibly. She stood by the white enamel tubs and forced herself to consider, to think the situation through. The best and most obvious course was to go to the police and report an attempted burglary.

  Would Stolz want her to do this? Somehow she thought not. She remembered vividly the scene in the library more than two years past—she and Stolz sharing a brandy, the room warmly lit, Stolz’s darkly handsome face looking at her over the brandy snifter, and his voice: “I’m going to ask a favor. Don’t be afraid to turn me down, Maude. I’d like to keep a bit of money here.”

  She’d said promptly, a little coquettishly, “Well, why shouldn’t you?”

  “Would it make you nervous?”

  “I keep money in the house, Dan.”

  “This might be much more than what you’re accustomed to having around. If I leave it here, shall it be our secret, yours and mine? I don’t have to warn you about careless talk.”

  “I wasn’t born yesterday.” She had smiled at him, inwardly delighted. Not only at his trusting her so far but, as well, that the storing of money in her home made a kind of tie between them and a guarantee of his continuing visits.

  “If anyone ever tries to question you——” A touch of sharpness in his glance; she noted it.

  “I’d tell them nothing, never fear.”

  His emphasis on caution and secrecy had impressed her. True, she had hinted about the money to Karen, but she quickly dismissed the memory. She was positive that Karen had too much honor and good sense to go babbling about it to outsiders.

  She again thought of Stolz’s words: “. . . shall it be our secret, just yours and mine?”

  He wouldn’t want her to call the police and explain about the money, she decided. At least, not yet.

  The first thing to do, if she was to pursue a sensible course, was to check and make sure the money was still there. Though she had dropped hints to Karen, on her own part Mrs. Havermann had maintained a curious sense of honor; she had felt that Stolz wouldn’t want her spying on his hoard and so she had given in to her curiosity only once, some six months after he had requested permission to leave the money here; and at that time she had found over fourteen thousand dollars in one of his wardrobe drawers.

  Now, composing herself in case she met Karen in the hallway, she went upstairs to her room. The key was in her bureau under a box of handkerchiefs. As she took it out, she heard Karen in the bathroom adjoining. “Karen?”

  “I’m washing the tile. I didn’t get finished yesterday.”

  “That’s good.” The bathroom faced the rear yard, overlooking the area between the house and the garage. Had Karen looked out of the window a few minutes before, she would have seen Mrs. Havermann below, but Mrs. Havermann had shut the frosted pane tight upon arising, as usual; there was no reason for Karen to have opened it. The girl hadn’t seen anything.

  These ideas trailed through Mrs. Havermann’s mind as she stood there with the key in her fingers, and something more followed. She always kept the bathroom light burning at night. She’d read somewhere long ago that such a light was one most apt to keep off burglars, seeming to indicate that one was up out of bed either using the toilet or taking medicines—in either case relieving a condition which had made one wakeful. Now it occurred to her that the bathroom light being on during the night had been what had kept the burglar from making a forced and perhaps not entirely silent entry. He had thought that someone was awake upstairs.

  She nodded to herself, pleased in spite of her worries that her small precaution had paid off. She went downstairs, unlocked the door to Stolz’s room, went in, relocked the door, and looked around. She had been here only yesterday, checking to see if she should dust; her eyes flew at once to the coat on Stolz’s bed.

  She had almost convinced herself, since first finding it, that the coat had actually been on the bed all of the time since Stolz’s departure and that she had somehow overlooked it. But now a new conviction startled her. Someone had already been in the room, searching for the money.

  Puzzled over this, as well as sure that her conclusion was the right one, Mrs. Havermann opened the drawer where she had once seen and counted the fourteen thousand dollars. To her surprise there was no money here now, only some of Stolz’s shirts and underwear. She opened other drawers in the wardrobe, and then looked into a set of drawers built into the closet. Such drawers as did not hold clothing were empty.

  He’s taken the money away, she thought vaguely, aware that her sensations were a mixture of relief and disappointment. The next instant she became illogically convinced that the thief had been successful, the money stolen! In fright she finished her search by throwing open the door of the wardrobe compartment designed to hang clothes. At sight of the enormous heap of green packets she stood transfixed, and as she comprehended the size of the heap and the amount of money which must be here, she gave a shrill cry and almost fell to her knees.

  She was as stunned as if she had come upon some monstrous growth which in stealth and darkness had increased beyond all bounds. While she stood tottering a couple of packets slid off to the floor, and she jerked her foot away as from a poisonous and malignant fungus.

  She managed finally to slam the wardrobe door, then went to the bed and sat down groggily. Fear seemed to have congealed in her marrow. Under the poleaxed numbness some thoughts fluttered: one, that there must be something illegal in Stolz’s hiding such a vast amount; and also, a brief feeling of outrage that he had chosen to put it here. In that instant she nearly grasped how illusory was the sentimental dream she’d built up around him.

  She rose from the bed and, without another glance at the wardrobe, went into the hall and locked the door.

  She passed Karen on the stairs. Karen carried cleaning materials in her hands, had her eyes fixed where she must step. For a moment Mrs. Havermann paused. Her emotions had been stirred as they had not been in years. She was on the verge of panic and the need to talk to someone was almost overpowering. She blurted, “Karen!” and the girl looked at her.

  Like an electric spark there seemed to flow between them a blaze of sympathy and compassion. There was in both a terrible need to communicate. Mrs. Havermann’s stark eyes and chalky skin brought out in Karen the yearning to console, to listen and reassure. And for the first time in Mrs. Havermann’s life she felt the girl there as a living human being on whom she could depend, whose love she had earned and deserved.

  Mrs. Havermann put out a hand, opened her lips to speak. In the next moment she would have spilled her panic and confusion, and Karen would have confessed all of Skip’s plans.

  But the words wouldn’t come. In the years of repression, of rejection, the loving and confiding words had withered and died. Now there was only awkward silence, the ticking away of the moments as she and Karen faced each other on the stairs.

  Mrs. Havermann licked her lips. The warm turmoil was dying in her, and Karen seemed to be receding to a more proper perspective. She tried to think of something to say. “I’ll be going soon,” she got out.

  Karen waited as if still not giving up hope, her face full of the ache to be accepted. But Mrs. Havermann brushed by her and went on up the stairs.

  Chapter Ten

  “WHEN MRS. Havermann came out of the front door, wearing her hat and coat and carrying a purse, she found the big collie ly
ing on the porch. His fur was golden in the sun. He lifted his head and wagged his tail, blinking his eyes against the light. She stopped abruptly to stare at him. Where had he been during the night? She hadn’t heard a bark out of him, though his little house was just beyond the garage.

  He greeted everyone, she knew, with a happy frisking, often too exuberant to be welcome. But surely, if a stranger had gone so far as to put a ladder on the wall, he’d have at least barked a little. The dog’s silence became a part of the menacing and incomprehensible whole, like the misplacement of the coat on Stolz’s bed and the thief’s directness in going straight to Stolz’s window and no other.

  She hurried down the front walk, then down the paved street to the main boulevard where the bus passed. A cab happened to come by before the bus did, and she took that. She got out at the shopping center.

  The locksmith had a small office in a corner of one of the supermarkets. There was a counter, beyond it a desk and a table full of tools, shelves of stock, and some key-cutting equipment. The man who came forward when she stopped was about thirty, very clean-looking in a smart gray apron. “Yes, ma’am.”

  She had taken his mailed notice from her bag. “I received this today.”

  “One of our ads. What can I do for you?” He was sizing her up and perhaps he saw the fear she tried to repress, for his glance sharpened with interest.

  “I wish to have a lock installed. Locks, rather. A door and two windows.”

  “Yes, ma’am. Any particular make or type in mind?” He was pulling a scratch pad and a pencil toward him on the counter.

  “The best. The very strongest. You choose them.”

  “We have some remarkable new locks for windows now,” he said pleasantly. “Absolutely burglar-proof. What’s the address, please?”

  She gave the address of the tall old house, and he wrote it down. She stammered then, “There is another thing I want to mention. I don’t care to have anyone come to the house in a . . . any kind of truck with a sign on it. That is, if anyone happened to be . . . to be around outside . . .” She stumbled to a halt, her face alternately blanched and crimson. He was looking at her directly now, a stare of open curiosity.

  “It’s not an outer door?”

  “No. A bedroom.”

  “You prefer that we come in a private automobile?”

  “Yes, please.”

  “What about our satchel of tools? The boxes of locks?”

  She saw gratefully that he had quickly grasped her need of secrecy. “Could you disguise them somehow? If I were to buy some groceries——”

  He thought it over for a moment, tapping his teeth with the pencil. He had the air, she thought, of entering into a game. Could it be, she wondered briefly, that he considered that he was humoring a crocked old lady? “I have even a better idea. Now, you just don’t want to advertise that you’re bringing in a locksmith, is that it?”

  She nodded mutely.

  “Well, what about a plumber?”

  She looked blankly into his friendly gaze, not understanding.

  “I know of a plumber’s truck I could borrow. Has the plumber’s sign on it.”

  “Why, that would be fine!”

  “How about tomorrow morning?”

  For an instant she didn’t grasp it, and then she felt the blood drain from her skin. “Oh, but this must be done today!” She had a moment’s horrifying image of herself lying awake tonight listening for the thief.

  “I’m not sure that I can borrow the truck today, the other truck. Besides, you see, I have a partner in this business. He’s out now on a commercial job and won’t be back till late. I could hardly leave the office for such a length of time.”

  She was desperate. “Ten dollars extra if you’ll come today!”

  He nodded. “For ten dollars I’ll come right this minute.”

  “No. There’s someone that I . . . Could you make it at one o’clock?” A plan had come spinning into her head from nowhere. Karen loved the big downtown stores. She’d pretend she hadn’t found what she wanted here and send Karen downtown for the afternoon to look for it. Something inexpensive and hard to find, some certain brand of wax or polish. But no. In Karen’s unusual mood she might become discouraged too quickly. Here Mrs. Havermann, recalling that moment on the stairs, had a twinge of guilt. Best to give the girl something to look for that she’d find interesting, some folderol thing. Cosmetics. Or clothes. Or perfume. That was it, some kind of cologne they didn’t make any more. Keep her running to perfume counters, a pleasant chore.

  This all ran through her head with the speed of light; the man behind the counter must have seen how she had cheered up.

  “One o’clock on the nose,” he said in a friendly manner.

  She felt better now, enough to wonder what he thought of her behavior. “I guess you don’t get many requests like mine,” she said with a small effort to be cheerful.

  “More than you’d think, ma’am.” He smiled in a reassuring manner.

  She went back outdoors. The sunlight seemed garish, almost scalding. She saw a cab pull into the parking lot, raised her hand in a signal. An old friend and neighbor got out, old Mrs. Potts, and she had to stop and commiserate over the woes of arthritis and colitis. Once in the cab and headed for home, a confused panic almost overwhelmed her. She was aware of her aimless, bumbling behavior. Perhaps she was, after all, doing the wrong thing. Surely the logical action would be to call Stolz in Las Vegas.

  She could pretend she hadn’t investigated his room, hadn’t seen the money, was merely worried over indications of attempted entry.

  She could ignore the emphatic request, repeated since the time he had begun staying overnight, that she never try to contact him in Nevada. A silly rule. Obviously he didn’t want anyone over there knowing of his private retreat in her house—but suppose a fire or other catastrophe had wiped out his money? Wouldn’t he want to know? She rapped on the glass panel between herself and the driver.

  “Yes, ma’am?”

  “Stop at the first public telephone.”

  He nodded, braked, swung toward a drugstore on a corner.

  Inside it was cool and dim. The druggist, in a white jacket, was squatted before an array of rubber beach toys, building a pyramid. He rose and looked at her. “The phone,” she said.

  Then she saw it, the black box inside its cubbyhole at the rear. It seemed to promise relief from intolerable anxiety and tension. She went into the phone booth and drew the door shut after her.

  Stolz, however, was not at the Solano Sea. She had to leave a message for him, to be delivered if and when he came in.

  Big Tom was sitting in a chair by the telephone, his expression glowering when the call came at eleven forty-five from Benny Busick.

  “Benny here.”

  “Yeah. Yeah.”

  “Take it easy, now, for God sakes. Keep the lid on.”

  Big Tom hitched himself closer to the phone. “Look, crumb, why aren’t you on the way back here? I need you outside tonight. I’ve got things to tell you.”

  “Not me, you don’t. No, sir, I don’t want any part of it.”

  “What do you mean?” Big Tom felt like biting the phone. “You don’t want what we lined up—you crazy?”

  “I don’t think you know what you’ve got lined up.” Benny’s tone had grown high and squeaky with defiance.

  “Spill, crumb.”

  “Look. This . . . this information you got. It’s known here in Las Vegas, and the ones who know aren’t doing a damned thing about it. Lay off, Tom. Don’t touch it.”

  “You must have a screw loose,” Big Tom growled into the phone.

  “Maybe I have. I got a nose, too. This deal smells funny.”

  “Now you lay it on the line or, by God, when we meet again I’ll stomp you flat.” The words were bitten off crisply, and Big Tom knew the effect they’d have on Benny in Las Vegas. Benny’s narrow face would be wet with sweat and his chest would be heaving. He’d be staring into the phone lik
e a wild-eyed tomcat.

  “I’ll . . . I’ll call you when I’ve got something,” Benny said in an almost inaudible voice. “Stick around.” To Big Tom’s disgust, the wire went dead. Benny Busick had hung up.

  Big Tom slammed the receiver into its cradle. For a moment he remained in the chair, staring at the opposite wall. Then, with a hard angry look on his face, he went out to the kitchen. He stood by the drainboard and drummed his nails on the tile, looking out of doors through the window over the sink.

  When his anger had subsided somewhat he went to the kitchen range, heated a cup of coffee left in the pot, drank it standing in the middle of the floor. A couple of cats had roused themselves from a midday nap and now came looking for lunch. Big Tom grumbled at them, meanwhile spooning processed fish into their bowl.

  He went back to the living room, sat down, dialed a number on the phone. It rang twice before someone lifted the instrument at the opposite end of the wire. “Yeah? Hello?”

  “Ranigan here.”

  “Oh. Hey, wait a minute, will you?” The voice turned from the phone and spoke to someone else. “Doll . . . run down t’ the corner and get me some smokes, huh? Couple a cartons.”

  A girl’s voice whined a complaint, dim in the distance.

  “Be a good kid, huh? Filter tips, king size. The kind like it says on the TV, not a burp in a bellyful.”

  The girl’s voice rose sharply in sarcasm. “Oh, Harry, you’re killing me!”

  “Don’t forget t’ bring matches, two, three them little packs.”

  She grouched: “Oh, okay, I’m going.”

  Dimly Big Tom heard a door close behind her. Harry said, “She’s a good little twist; I just don’t want t’ explain everything t’ her.”

  “Same one you had last year?” Big Tom said evenly.

  “You mean Eva? Ah, she ran off with a bum, played the cornet in a dive, him and her are over t’ Phoenix now.”