I felt a little sorry for Lynn, just a little. She was so young and scared. And such a damned fool.
“There’s only one thing left, Lynn. Blaik hadn’t known where he was going for dinner, hadn’t known in advance that he would take you to the Hideout. That, dear, was your idea. He told me, while you and Jazz were in the john, that you’d suggested the place. Which explains how the killer knew where Blaik would be and approximately when he’d be leaving. Because, Lynn, the killer asked you, or told you, to make sure Blaik took you to the Hideout.”
Her hand stopped moving as she held her breath. I counted the seconds. One, two, three, four—then the sudden movement again, even more rapid than before.
“We don’t need to go into what you told Blaik to explain why you wanted to go to the Hideout. That’s not important. We needn’t even wonder right now about what Mr.—call him the killer—told you, or promised you, that made you willing to take a man to a secluded, carefully selected spot where he could be murdered.”
I paused. “Hell, Lynn, I’ll give you this. There’s a good chance you didn’t think Blaik would be killed, maybe didn’t even think he’d be hurt. But I know for damn sure you didn’t guess you were supposed to be murdered right along with him.”
“That’s crazy. It’s all crazy. You don’t make any sense, not any!”
“Come on. Why do you think we brought Moulder in here—and had a policewoman pretending to be you spilling your guts? Whoever tried to kill you must know by now that he only wounded you. So he’s sweating, hoping you won’t pull through, that you’ll still die. Because he knows as long as you’re alive you might start spilling. Moulder didn’t react, and neither did you—hell, you’re strangers, you were still living in Florida when he was sent up. We didn’t expect any reaction, except a negative one.”
I got to my feet. “But you can take my word for it, you can count on it, Lynn, when the real killer walks through that door he’ll be sweating blood. And so will you. And the harder you try to keep it from showing the more it’ll show.”
“Stop it, you’re crazy! What are you trying to do to me?” Lynn’s eyes rolled from side to side. “My head. Oh, my head —”
“You’re lucky your head’s just banged up, baby. One more inch and your brain would have tried to explode inside your skull. When a .45 slug hits that soft jelly —”
“Stop it!”
I let the words come out faster. “Look, you know he tried to kill you. He was taking dead aim, as carefully as he could in the little time he had. You were clear the hell out of the line of fire—if Blaik was the only target. He couldn’t leave you alive to tell us why you did it, who you did it for. You know he killed Blaik, baby. And you know he tried to kill you. He sure meant to kill you. So now it’s your turn, Lynn. Tell us who it was.”
For a few moments I thought it had worked. It hadn’t.
I knew she must have other reasons for not wanting to spill, but little Lynn certainly was also aware that telling us the tale would make her a part of it, make her, in the dry phrase, “accessory before the fact” of murder.
She did react, though.
She sat straight up in bed, flinging an arm out, fingers clawing the air. She waggled that one claw-fingered hand back and forth as if she were rattling a doorknob, while crying, “No! I can’t stand it! No! No —”
And then she fainted.
Some faint. She must have seen Bette Davis in an old movie where the doctor says, “That’s a bad cough, lady, no more smokes for you.” It was a far, far cry from the true, authentic, no-way-to-stop-it faint, the honest-to-goodness faint, of Mrs. Moulder.
Lynn merely let her last word trail off in a kind of cooing oo-aaa, like a quail calling across a canyon, then flopped back onto the pillows. There was still color in her cheeks. She was breathing pretty well. But she must have figured she had to do something fairly dramatic.
If I knew it was a fake faint, surely the doctor did, too. But he said—not looking at all panicked, however—“I think that’s enough.”
Sam opened the door for me, bowing and sweeping his arm toward the hall like a lowly vassal—or an idiot—but I ignored him and turned in the doorway.
“All right. Doctor,” I said. “For now. But we’ll be back—with the next guy.”
There was no visible indication that the words had hit their target. Lynn didn’t twitch, or go oo-aaa. She lay as one dead.
But I knew very well the little dear was listening….
In the hallway I said to Samson, “How long do you think it’ll take to get word back from San Francisco on Robert Gordon?”
“If he’s there—and has been there all the time, no conspicuous absences—word might be waiting at the office right now. If not, who knows? Two, three hours more, maybe a day.”
“Actually, I don’t think it’s too important. But there’s no point in leaving it dangling. Everything set?”
“All set.”
“OK, see you later, Sam.”
It was fifteen minutes after midnight when I phoned Mrs. Georgina Moulder. She answered right away, so either she had a phone by the bed, or hadn’t been in bed. Anyway, she didn’t sound sleepy.
“Mrs. Moulder?” I said. “Hope I didn’t wake you up.”
“No, I … simply can’t sleep. Not after all that’s happened.”
I’ll bet, I thought.
“Is this Mr. Scott?”
“Yes, Shell Scott.”
Her voice grew a bit thinner. “Is anything wrong?”
“Wrong? I should say not. Everything’s wonderful! I’ve got wonderful news!”
“Oh? What … is it, Mr. Scott?”
“You know the police hauled Mr. Moulder in, arrested him for Vincent Blaik’s murder. But what you don’t know is that your husband didn’t do it.”
I wished I could have seen her face. There was an unduly prolonged silence.
Finally she said, “Why, that’s unbelievably good news. I can hardly believe it … although of course I knew he didn’t do it. I just knew it. But—are you absolutely certain?”
“Well, not absolutely. But I expect to know a good deal more before long.”
“Oh? How do you mean?”
“It’s clear that Mr. Moulder didn’t do the shooting. But we’re not yet sure who did. There’s another man involved, apparently—somebody who killed Blaik, at any rate—and we’re working on that angle now. When I say we, I mean the police and me. I know I haven’t been working for you, at least not officially, but I simply had to tell you the splendid news myself.”
Short silence this time. “Yes, it’s so good of you, Mr. Scott. I’ll be able to sleep now.”
“Well, then, I’ll leave you to pleasant dr —”
“Mr. Scott, don’t hang up!”
“No, I’m here.”
“I—this is such fantastic … I’m so happy. But this has been such a trying day, waiting and waiting for Leslie, you know.”
“I know.”
“And I still don’t know where he was. Why didn’t he come home to me?”
“Oh, he got drunk. He’s still drunk, if you don’t mind my saying so. He even tried—this would probably amuse you, Mrs. Moulder, if it wasn’t such a serious matter—he tried to tell us he was with you. In a motel of all things. Of course, we slapped that out of him. Incidentally, while staggering drunk, he fell and injured his face slightly. And his arms and legs. But it’s nothing serious.”
“Just so he’s alive and can come home to me.”
“Oh, I almost forgot. He won’t be released until morning—in view of his condition, you understand.”
“I’ll be waiting for him.”
I smiled, shaking my head. Words, they can mean so many things.
“I wonder where Leslie was all afternoon,” Mrs. Moulder said. “Do you know?”
“Frankly we never did find out precisely. But, since we know he didn’t do the shooting, his whereabouts are of little moment now. As long as he didn’t commit a crime, the p
olice have no interest —”
“You still haven’t told me how you—the police—know it wasn’t Leslie.”
“Oh, that. Simple, really.”
I hated to tell another lie. But I was going to have to do it. This was at least a lie in a good cause, more of a fib—and a lot of it was true. Besides, I was kind of enjoying lying. That’s the trouble with lying, it grows on you.
“You may or may not know, Mrs. Moulder, that the Los Angeles Police Department is one of the finest organizations of its kind in the world. Moreover, it has a criminalistics department second to none. In SID—that’s the Scientific Investigations Division in the Police Building downtown—they have instruments so up-to-date they haven’t even been invented yet … ah, that is, most people don’t know they’ve been invented.
“Um, to make a long story short, by certain scientific techniques and processes, involving X-rays, quantitative diffraction, and molecular precipitation, SID has been able to prove conclusively that, for at least a week past, Leslie Moulder, your husband, was never closer than two meters to the locus of a gunpowder explosion, such as that required to propel a bullet from the muzzle of a gun.”
“Two meters,” she mused. “How far is that?”
Actually, I wasn’t quite sure myself.
“Quite a ways,” I said. “The vital fact is that Leslie could not possibly have held a pistol in his hand and fired it. In fact, he hasn’t been within … two meters of anybody who did fire a pistol.”
“I see. Like the paraffin test to find out if someone shot off a gun?”
“Ho-ho,” I hoed, “that’s for writers of fiction, and old wives who tell tales.” I liked that. “You can merely wear gloves and foil the so-called paraffin test. We’re much beyond that now.” I paused. “Incidentally, this is still supposed to be secret, Mrs. Moulder. I’ve permission to tell you this much, but no more. Actually, I don’t know why I’ve told you any of it, since it’s completely irrelevant now that we know your hus —”
“But I’m interested, I really am, Mr. Scott. And I’m so—so excited, I know I won’t be able to sleep. You must come out and tell me everything. I simply must know all about Leslie—who won’t be home until morning.”
“Now? But it’s so late. It’s after midnight —”
“To me, it’s—I feel it’s the dawn of a new day.”
“Yes, I guess it is, at that.”
“Please come.”
“OK. I’ll get there as fast as I can, Mrs. Moulder.”
“Call me Georgina,” she said.
When Georgina opened the door I won another bet with myself.
I had figured it was at least ten to one she’d still—or again—be wearing her brand-new sheer negligee. She was. I think she’d also turned on three or four more lights inside the house, including some of those real hot kinds. There was a hell of a lot more illumination than she’d got from her TV set, that was certain.
“Shell,” she cooed, “you got here awfully fast.”
“I hurried, Georgina,” I said. I hadn’t been miles and miles away when I phoned, either.
She stood aside in the doorway, just enough so I had to brush rather vigorously against her to get in. Then she closed the door, took my hand and pulled me to the low divan.
The colorful flowers were still in the same places, but they appeared a little wilted now. That’s life; inevitably the bloom fades. The silver bucket was on the table where it had been before, in it the bottle of champagne. And I noticed, not with astonishment, that there was fresh ice in the bucket.
Mrs. Moulder—Georgina to me now—got me seated, then leaned back against some throw pillows at the divan’s end, and crossed her legs. Damn good legs, I had to admit it. In fact, practically everything I could see on and about Mrs. Moulder was first-class, and that included practically everything on and about Mrs. Moulder, except her spleen and gallbladder and other internal organs.
It became evident to me that I’d not quite won my bet with myself, after all. Georgina was in sheer negligee and peignoir, but it wasn’t the same outfit in which she’d greeted me before. That had been blue; this one was pale lavender. It looked even thinner than the blue one. Yes, no doubt about it. Lots thinner.
Merely by crossing her legs, and making use of some kind of inborn feminine trickery, Georgina had managed to pull the fine, gauzy cloth just smoothly enough over her firm thighs, while at the same time the delicate peignoir fell away—on both sides at once—from her swollen, pouter-pigeon-plump breasts.
“Now, Shell, tell me —” she began.
This had taken enough time already, so I interrupted her. “You’ve got an exceptionally fine body, Mrs. Moulder,” I said.
“Call me Georgina—what?” She blinked, then smiled, almost drippingly. “Not that I really mind, but you are quite blunt, aren’t you?”
“You haven’t heard anything yet.”
Maybe she really was a highly intuitive tomato—not quite intuitive enough, of course—because I think she knew, right then, that the jig was up.
I said, “It is a fine, a very lovely body, Georgina. I hate to think of it shriveling up like a sea anemone … make that a felled cactus in the desert —”
“Shriveling?”
“Yeah. Getting dry and droopy, out of juice, less fire and more ashes. But it happens. The bloom fades. Why, I’ve seen gals come out of Tehachapi after only half a dozen years —”
“Tehachapi? Isn’t Tehachapi a prison?”
“— looking like they’d been there since the Coolidge Administration. Looking like Coolidge. Yeah, Tehachapi’s a prison. But, dammit, you and—call him Lover—shouldn’t have tried to stab Leslie the second time. You’ll have to tell me part of how you rigged that twenty-eight-G dandy and stuck Leslie with it in the beginning, but you will, Georgina. I can see that the idea of Leslie’s heisting cash from the development of which he was co-owner might not have been strong enough that you could be sure he’d go to the jug, so you must have enlisted Vincent Blaik for insurance. I suppose you had something on him, or got something, or maybe just paid him off. That’ll keep. But I can tell you the finish of the Blaik caper. That’s enough by itself, and it’s all wrapped up now.”
She laughed. “This is preposterous. What in the world are you talking about?”
“You and Lover, what else? I suppose it was the same old story, Adam and Eve and them big apples, but however it started, Georgina, it is now ended.”
“You must be ill. I’m going to call the police.”
I grinned, for several reasons, and said, “Let me finish first, will you? There’s more. Some of it will interest you. Some of it will really interest you.”
“Well … all right. Try me.”
She had assumed a most perplexing posture for one presumably relaxing.
I looked at her, then turned to peek at the partly open door of the bedroom. The bedroom in which was a fine bouncy bed, of which it could almost positively be assumed I was supposed to be thinking.
But I was thinking of the guy in there. I knew there must be one guy there—maybe two.
I turned my head back toward her, saying, “I guess I’m all business tonight, Georgina. First, I really should apologize for lying to you on the phone a little while ago. But tit for—it’s even-steven now. You lied quite a lot to me today.” I got out cigarettes. “Mind if I smoke?”
“Go ahead and smoke.” She wasn’t smiling drippingly any more.
I had a puff. “The truth is,” I went on, “that’s one of the things that clinched the affair. You told me one story and your hubby told me another. Unless you were in some kind of nutty cahoots to beat the rap or set up a plea, one of you had to be lying. If you were telling the truth, Leslie of course was lying, and guilty. But if Leslie’s tale was true, it was vice versa. And the vice versa became increasingly fascinating.”
“None of this is very fascinating yet. Have you got anything important to say?”
“I’ll be more specific. The fact
is that Leslie told the truth—you did meet him, did take him to a ‘vacation’ motel. Which one isn’t important. There you dallied, and drank—and drank and drank. At least, he did. You called the Hollywood police at six thirty—knowing the Blaik kill was set for approximately seven forty-five—so the name Leslie Moulder and the fact of his release from prison would be fresh in the official mind when word came in about Blaik’s murder. Georgina, am I boring you?”
She didn’t reply. But she didn’t look bored.
“Understand, during none of this time were you home waiting for your big moment. You were in the motel room with your increasingly stewed—and undoubtedly exhausted—husband. You couldn’t go home and scoot inside until after dark, not merely because you had to avoid being seen, but because Blaik wouldn’t be dead until then. Until a quarter of eight as it turned out.
“A friend of mine named Samson tried to reach you at about eight p.m. but had no luck until eight thirty. By then you and Lover had met, put Leslie’s frazzled form in the murder car, planted the cartridge case and such, and scooted your separate ways—leaving Leslie to be found, and the sooner the better. That, of course, depended on making sure the police were looking for him. Which was part of your reason for calling me, Georgina—after you heard my name on the news programs—just in case the Missing Person bit didn’t do the job all by itself.”
I stopped, looking down at the table in front of us. “I hope I’m not out of line, Georgina, but were you planning for us to drink this champagne?”
The word she said wasn’t a very thrilling one. Maybe Leslie had picked up some of his lingo at home, before going off to college.
“Well, you don’t have to bite my head off,” I said. “You were much nicer this afternoon. But this afternoon, of course, you wanted to know if I’d gotten a look, any kind of look, at—Lover. That was vital. I wasn’t even supposed to be —”
The Shell Scott Sampler Page 16
