by Lou Cameron
“Expecting trouble?” the fat woman asked in a worried voice.
I grunted. “We always expect trouble. Best life insurance a cop can have.”
I got out and walked over to the cabin. It was getting dark, but there were no lights in the windows. That could mean they were early sleepers, out, or watching me from between the slats of the Venetian blinds.
The windows were closed. That was a break. The cabins were concrete-block jerry-builts with air-conditioning and double glazed windows. I doubted anyone inside would open up on me without smashing the window first.
I stepped up onto the concrete slab porch and rang the doorbell.
Nothing.
I looked back at Roberta Grey, still seated in the cruiser, and saw her features were obscured in the dusky shadows. The whip antenna might have tipped them off. Or they just might not have wanted to be disturbed.
I took out my snub-nosed Colt Cobra and rapped it against the door. Hard. Then I shouted, “State Police, MacDonald. Open up!”
There wasn’t a peep from cabin twenty-three.
Lots of action from the others, though. I guess my parade-ground voice had carried pretty well on the evening breeze. Porch lights winked on all along the drive, and doors started popping open like bottle caps at a Polish wedding.
“What’s going on?” a worried voice called from the dusk.
“State Police,” I replied. “You know where the manager is?”
“I’m the manager,” the same voice answered, coming closer. It belonged to a heavyset guy of about fifty in Bermuda shorts and a faded yellow polo shirt. I flashed my buzzer at him and asked, “Got a passkey?”
He nodded. “Yeah. But let’s keep it down, huh? I run a respectable court here.”
“Open it up,” I said, “and get the hell out of the way.”
“These kids seemed so nice,” he grumbled, putting the key in the lock. “What you want them for, anyway?”
“Just routine,” I said. “Let’s move it, huh?”
“Routine my ass.” He swore, unlocking the door and stepping out of the line of fire like a man who’d done this sort of thing before.
I didn’t answer him. I stepped inside, slid along the wall in the darkness with the Cobra leveled in front of me, and fumbled for the light switch.
The lights blazed on, illuminating an empty room with a double bed in the middle, surrounded by ticky-tacky hotel furniture and a coin-operated color TV. Period. There were two doors across the room. I moved fast and popped the first one open. A closet. Empty except for the tangle of coat hangers breeding like bats on the single pole.
The other door led to a small kitchen with a combined john and shower stall competing for space in a tiny alcove. There was one other door. I opened it. A flashlight shone in my face from the darkness behind the cabin, and a voice asked, “That you, Lieutenant?”
“Anybody come out?” I asked.
“Not this way,” answered the Vegas patrolman I’d staked out behind cabin twenty-three.
I muttered, “Shit,” and went back through the kitchen.
“They seemed like such a nice young couple,” the manager was saying as if I’d never left him. He was standing in the middle of the sleazy rug, waving his arms around aimlessly at the cream-colored walls.
“What name did they register under?” I asked.
“Name?” He blinked. “Oh, yeah, Fraser, I think it was. Mr. and Mrs. Gordon Fraser. He said he was a gravel salesman, from Reno, I think.”
“Tall, nice-looking guy with dark hair and blue eyes?” I asked.
“Yeah, that’s Fraser, okay. Wife was a little redhead. Little on the chubby side, but not bad-looking, if you know what I mean.”
“No.” I frowned. “I don’t know what you mean.”
The manager blinked at me and then he grinned and explained. “Looked like a heller, in bed that is. They was lovey dovey as anything, and she had this way of looking at him that made me think she spent half her time thinking up new positions they hadn’t tried yet. Real man-eater she was.”
“They owe you any rent?” I cut in.
“Rent? Naw, they paid in advance. I don’t let nobody in here without they pay in advance. They’re good to the end of the week, in fact.”
He started opening and closing drawers around the room as he added, “Sure left the place in good order. You wouldn’t believe the messes I have to clean up sometimes. Women are worse than men. Leave makeup and goddamn sanitary napkins all over the joint, like pigs!”
“Let’s not be getting our fingerprints all over the furniture,” I said. “I’m going to have to ask you to lock this cabin up, and keep it locked up, until we’ve had a chance to go over it carefully.”
“Sure.” He nodded. “This ain’t the first time you guys have busted in on me, you know. I mean, I try to run a nice respectable place here. But what the hell. Couple of people come in looking clean, and both the same color, and you can’t turn them away, see?”
He suddenly glanced down at something on his side of the bed and grinned. Before I could stop him, he’d bent down and picked something from the floor near the head of the bed. He grinned at me and said, “What did I tell you? I knew that little redhead had hot pants. Look at what they were taking to bed with them!”
He held out his hand. Resting on the palm was a pink object that appeared to be a small crown of soft rubber. I knew what it was, but he told me anyway.
“French tickler,” he chortled. “You put it on the end of your—”
“Yeah,” I cut in. “I’m impounding that as evidence.”
“Evidence?” He giggled. “Evidence of what? That the broad was as hot in the feathers as she looked? I already told you she was a flaming nympho, Sarge!”
“Lieutenant,” I corrected, taking the sex toy from him and dropping it in one of the envelopes I carried for such occasions.
“Boy,” he marveled as I finished my cursory examination of the room and motioned him towards the door. “You can always tell it’s the quiet ones who know how to screw. We get lots of divorcées with big smiles and bedroom eyes. The kind that talk talk talk all the time about sex. But it’s the quiet ones that never look you in the eye that rip your fly open the first chance they get!”
I flipped off the lights and said, “I want these lights left off and the door locked, understand?”
“Yeah. You think they’ll be back?”
“No,” I replied, “but we’re going to stake it out just the same. I’ll know about it if anybody messes around in there before I give the word. And I’ll take it personal, dig?”
“Don’t worry, Lieutenant,” he soothed, “I know the way it’s done. What about the car? You think they’re going to leave a brand-new Corvette just sitting there?”
I shrugged, not bothering to explain about people who used cars like Kleenex tissues. It would have taken too long, and I had better things to do.
I went back to the cruiser and got in. Roberta Grey waited a moment before she asked. “Skipped?”
“Looks like. You think Kathy Gorm spotted Hazel following her after all?”
“Maybe,” Roberta replied. “Of course, there’s always another possibility…”
“Yeah, I’ve already thought about it. Hazel’s had plenty of time to tip them off, hasn’t she?”
“I hope not.” Roberta Grey sighed. “It’s going to be rough enough catching up with MacDonald with Kathy helping him. If he’s got two skip tracers helping him…”
“Jesus, you’re a cheerful little optimist.” I muttered.
“I can’t afford to be optimistic, Frank,” she replied. “I’m worried about Kathy. I’m worried sick about what he’ll do to her once he doesn’t need her anymore.”
“They seem to be good friends, as of the moment,” I answered wryly. “Let’s hope he stays that way until he ditches her.”
“Like he ditched that other girl?” she asked bleakly.
“The other girl we were discussing the other day or
the one we found in the trunk?”
“The one we found in the trunk.”
I thought about that. Then I threw the car in gear and said, “We don’t know MacDonald had anything to do with that killing, Roberta.”
“No?” She sniffed. “Then who did, Frank?”
It was a good question.
I wished I knew the answer.
• • • Herman Dipple was a balding, gray-looking man in a salt-and-pepper suit. He had watery eyes the color of uncooked oysters and an expression of self-pity. His handshake was about as firm as you’d expect from a wet rubber glove full of library paste. Missing Persons had told him to see me.
He was looking for his wife. At least, he thought he was looking for his wife. He wasn’t sure they were still married, but he was still in love with her, he said, and wanted me to do something about it.
“You say your wife Sandra came to Las Vegas for a divorce, Mr. Dipple?” I asked, wondering who my enemy in Missing Persons was. I mean, we get Dipples all the time. Losers who can’t get it through their skulls that Mamma really meant it when she said she wanted out.
“Eight weeks ago, Lieutenant,” Dipple said wetly. “They told me a Nevada divorce only takes six weeks, isn’t that so?”
“About six weeks,” I agreed. “Mrs. Dipple would have had to contact a lawyer, set up residence, and so forth. You have to allow seven or eight weeks sometimes.”
“I thought she’d changed her mind,” Dipple said, not listening to me as he continued, “I only wanted Sandy to be happy and I told my lawyers back East to let her do everything her way, see? I paid for her trip and everything.”
“Very sporting of you, Mr. Dipple,” I agreed. “So what made you follow her out here?”
“I’ve already told you!” he said, staring at me like I was some sort of moron. “I told Sandy she could have anything she wanted. Even a divorce, if that was the only way she could be happy. I tried to be a good husband, Lieutenant. Maybe I’m not as good-looking as some of the men sniffing around her at the country club. But at least I’ve always provided for her. I’ve worked my fingers to the bone to give her a good home and everything she asked for and—”
“Sure,” I cut in, “but what made you think she’d decided to come back to you?”
“She never got the divorce,” he said. “She came out here and checked in at the Sands, just like she said she would. Only, when the time for appearance in court came, she didn’t show up. I mean, I’ve got a letter from her lawyer and everything!”
“I see,” I said, beginning for the first time to take an interest in the unhappy little jerk’s tale of woe. Ladies who are staying at the Sands courtesy of an overindulgent ex seldom skip town without some reason or other. Usually a good-looking male reason, at least.
“Do you have a photograph of your wife, Mr. Dipple?” I asked.
He had a wallet full of them. All sorts of shots, in all sorts of poses, of a pouty-looking blonde with “spoiled rotten” written in snot across her pretty face. A couple of them were in bikinis. Sandra Dipple had a very nice shape indeed. It wasn’t hard to see why the younger men at the country club had been sniffing around, as Dipple put it. Or why she’d encouraged them, if she was half as healthy as she looked.
“She’s very pretty. A little—ah—younger than I’d expected.”
“I married late,” Dipple said defensively. “Sandra’s seventeen years younger than me. But it’s not as bad as it looks, Lieutenant. She’s not quite as girlish in person as she photographs. Hell, she’ll be thirty-three in November!”
I nodded, staring down at the photographs while a nasty little thought stuck its head out from under a wet rock in my brain and hissed at me.
I said, “What shape were your wife’s teeth in, Mr. Dipple?”
“Teeth?” He frowned. “She doesn’t have that many, Lieutenant. She had this gum condition when I married her and—”
“Does she wear plates?” I cut in.
“Good ones,” he said, defensive again. “Finest dentures money can buy. Had the most expensive dentist in Bloomfield fit her with an upper plate and a partial bridge across the front of her lower jaw and—What’s wrong?”
“Just checking something out.” I smiled, dialing the county morgue.
I got Doc Evans’s extension and asked, “You know that party in the Volkswagen, Doc?”
“Yeah,” he replied. “Find out who it is yet?”
“Could be,” I said, still smiling across the desk at Dipple. “I was wondering about that hair, Doc. Any chance it was dyed?”
“Had to be.” He snorted. “Didn’t you look at her pubes?”
“Blond?”
“When she was a baby, maybe. I’d say it had darkened to brown by the time her teeth started falling out. You sound cagey, Frank. Can’t talk?”
“Something like that. Listen, Doc, I was wondering about fingerprints.”
“What fingerprints?” he asked. “You know the killer snipped her fingers off, dammit!”
“How about the feet?”
He paused a moment and then he said, “No central file on footprints, Frank. But they do take footprint impressions of newborn babies. If you had any idea where she was born…”
“Do you know where your wife was born, Mr. Dipple?” I asked, not covering the mouthpiece so Doc could get the pitch. “I mean, the hospital she was born in.”
“County will do, Frank,” cut in Doc Evans.
Dipple thought and then he answered, “Montclair, New Jersey, I think. We met in New York but—”
“You get that, Doc?” I asked.
“Yeah. I’ll get in touch with the county clerk, soon as I look him up. Run some impressions on our redhead’s tootsies while I’m at it. Call me back when you get rid of the joker, will you?”
“Roger.” I smiled, hanging up.
Dipple stared unwinking at me and then he said, “Sandra’s dead.”
“We don’t know that, Mr. Dipple” I soothed.
“I thought she’d changed her mind,” he said dully. “I thought she’d had time to think things over and realize what I can do for her. Sure, I know she married me for my money. I always knew she married me for my money. But I didn’t care, Lieutenant. Or at least I didn’t care enough to give her up.”
“Look,” I said, “she may have moved to another hotel.”
“I even knew what she thought of me,” Dipple sighed, getting to his feet. “But she was so… damned… beautiful! And it wasn’t just the things I bought her, Lieutenant. She was a warm-blooded woman, and there were times when she really acted like she wanted me. I mean, as a man. I know you don’t believe that. I can look in the mirror and know I’m no Clark Gable. But there were times, Lieutenant. There were times when she meant it.”
Then he took out the gun.
It was a nickel-plated Harrington-Richardson .32-caliber revolver. He’d had it in his outside jacket pocket all the time we’d been talking.
I sat there, very still, and looked at him. It was his move.
Out of the corner of my eye, I could see Bert Crawford sliding slowly away from his desk while the puffy-eyed Dipple stood over me with the gun. The trouble was, if I could see him, Dipple could. I shook my head slowly, side to side, and muttered, “Easy does it.”
“How was she killed?” Dipple asked dully.
“We don’t know that she was, Mr. Dipple,” I said “Why don’t we go over the facts again and maybe we can find your wife for you.”
“Sandy’s dead,” he insisted. “She might not have given a damn about me but she thought one hell of a lot about money. She never cashed the last four money orders I sent. She’s dead, Lieutenant. I can see it in your eyes. You know she’s dead and that she’s never coming back to me again.”
Behind him, the door opened and Larry Romero said, “What the hell…?”
I said, “Easy, Romero!” as Dipple whirled around. I still think we’d have calmed him down if nobody’d made any sudden moves. But Bert Crawfor
d got to his feet and started edging around the desk as Romero took a step towards Dipple and said, “Okay, fella, give me that gun.”
Dipple hesitated, half turned as he became aware of Crawford edging in behind him, and then, with a strangled sound that could have meant anything, put the muzzle of the gun in his mouth and pulled the trigger.
If it had been a .45, it would have blown his brains all over the ceiling. As it was, it just made a hell of a mess.
• • • Sandra Jean Dipple, née Wojensky, was born at Mountainside Hospital, Montclair, New Jersey, at five thirty in the morning of September 3, 1935. She weighed nine pounds eight ounces, and they took an inked impression of her right foot.
We found this out a couple of days after Doc Evans sent impressions of the dead redhead’s feet to the Essex County Police with a request that they check them out. They wired back the information that the baby girl born in New Jersey and the swollen corpse found in a Las Vegas junkyard were one and the same person.
Herman Dipple, now occupying a place of his own in the morgue a couple of drawers down from his wife, was the natural suspect.
An autopsy showed he was coked to the gills on pep pills and the sedatives he’d been on ever since his pretty young frau had flounced out on him. He’d have had to be a dingaling to have married her in the first place. And he certainly hadn’t shown much emotional maturity in our office.
Trouble was, he had an ironclad alibi. He’d only arrived in Vegas a couple of days before he blew his brains out in the state police barracks.
But now that we knew at least who the lady in the hot Volkswagen had been, it gave us something to go on.
Sandra Dipple was remembered at the Sands. They didn’t remember her fondly. But they remembered her.
“She was a real jumped-up bitch, Lieutenant,” the desk clerk told me. “Had one of those hoity-toity accents a working-class broad who marries money thinks’ll fool people. Ordered the help around like she thought she was the Queen of Sheba. Only we’ve had real royalty staying here, Lieutenant, and they don’t act that way.”
“We’re looking for men,” I said. “Any men she might have been involved with. From what her husband told us, there might have been more than one.”
