The Listening Walls

by Margaret Millar

  Kellogg’s request was simple enough. He wanted the name of a reputable lawyer who specialized in civil matters. Johnson sent him to Ramon Jiminez. Jiminez is a substantial citizen, active in politics, as well as a smart lawyer. He refused to give me any informa­tion. But when I told him I already had the informa­tion and merely wanted a confirmation or denial, he admitted that he had executed a power of attorney giving Kellogg control of his wife’s affairs, financial and otherwise. Everything was legal and aboveboard. At the mere mention of the word coercion, he blew his stack (in a nice, quiet way, of course) and asked me to leave his office. My own feeling is that there can’t have been any coercion involved or Jiminez wouldn’t have touched the thing with a ten-foot pole. Why should he risk his reputation for the peanuts Kellogg could afford to pay? (I’m assuming that your statement about Kellogg’s finances is accurate.)

  Now, about the other matters you wanted me to check. No official hearing, like our American coroner’s inquest, was held concerning Mrs. Wyatt’s death, but some dozen eyewitnesses gave depositions to the police. The ground witnesses, i.e., those pass­ing on the avenida, must be discounted, their stories were so contradictory. A combination of excitement, darkness, superstition and religious awe doesn’t make for accurate observation. Mrs. Kellogg’s account of the tragedy agreed substantially with that of the chambermaid, Consuela Gonzales, who for reasons known only to herself was spending the night in a nearby broom closet and heard Mrs. Kellogg scream­ing. She rushed into the room. Mrs. Wyatt had al­ready flung herself over the balcony and Mrs. Kellogg was lying on the floor in a dead faint. I tried to con­tact Miss Gonzales at the hotel but she was fired for stealing from the guests and being insolent to the manager. The bartender, while not a witness to the death of Mrs. Wyatt, testified that she was very drunk and in a belligerent mood. If you’re looking for sour notes, you have one right there: belligerent drunks pick fights with other people, not themselves. But this is pretty slim—belligerence can turn to depression at the drop of another martini, or, as in this case, te­quila. In any case, the police here—and they’re not as carefree and inefficient as you’ve probably been led to believe—are thoroughly satisfied that Mrs. Wyatt’s death was a suicide. They released her body and her effects to her sister in San Diego, Mrs. Earl Sullivan.

  As I said at the beginning of this report, everything at this end seems on the up and up. There is a puzzling factor involved which may have something to do with the case, and then again it may not. I give it to you for what it’s worth.

  It concerns Joe O’Donnell, the man you asked me to investigate. He dropped out of sight a week ago. He’s been hanging around the Windsor bar every night for over a year. When he didn’t show up three or four nights in a row Emilio, the head bartender, paid a visit to his apartment. O’Donnell wasn’t there and hadn’t been seen by any of the neighbors for some time. His landlady claimed he skipped out because he owed back rent. This may be true but it doesn’t explain his absence from the bar, which he used to call his “office.” Emilio was vague on what kind of business O’Donnell conducted from his “office,” but he insisted it was legitimate, that O’Donnell had never been in trouble with the police or the manage­ment of the hotel. My guess is that he went in for any petty con game that came along, whether it was ac­cepting loans from wealthy women he picked up, like Mrs. Wyatt; organizing poker parties for American businessmen, taking bets on the horses, stuff like that. Nothing illegal, nothing bigtime. O’Donnell has— or had—a lot of charm, apparently. Everyone has a good word to say for him: generous, kind, amusing, intelligent, good-looking. How come this superman is cadging drinks and playing gigolo at a bar every night? It doesn’t add up.

  I questioned Emilio further. It seemed odd to me that a bartender should go checking up on a customer simply because he failed to appear for a few nights. Emilio was evasive—Mexicans are, usually, but they lie to please rather than to deceive, and once you un­derstand this, it’s easy to cope with. It turned out that a letter had been delivered to the hotel in care of Emilio, addressed to Joe O’Donnell. It had been sent airmail from San Francisco, and on the envelope the sender had written “urgente y importante.”

  When Emilio handed the letter over to O’Donnell, O’Donnell made some remark about being an Easterner and not even knowing anyone in San Francisco except people he’d met casually in the Windsor bar. Like Mrs. Kellogg and Mrs. Wyatt, I presume. Any­way, he sat down and read the letter over a bottle of beer. Emilio asked him, half kidding, what was so “urgente y importante,” and O’Donnell told him to mind his own goddamn business. He got up and left the bar immediately and that’s the last anyone’s seen of him.

  Naturally, Emilio’s curiosity was aroused. Ever since Mrs. Wyatt’s death, he’s had suicide on his mind. For reasons not entirely religious, suicide has a more pro­found effect on the average Mexican than any other kind of violence. Emilio went to O’Donnell’s apart­ment in the vague fear that O’Donnell had killed himself because of some very bad news he’d received in the letter.

  Well, there you have it. I know O’Donnell’s address and will check on him further. Also I’ve arranged with Emilio to contact me when and if O’Donnell shows up at the bar. He might. Then again he might be in Africa by this time. He would have no trouble getting out of the country since he’s an American citizen and not in any trouble with the authorities.

  To get back to Mr. and Mrs. Kellogg. They checked out of the Windsor early on the morning of Septem­ber thirteenth and took a cab to the airport. There was no sign of the nurse Kellogg had told the hospital authorities he intended to hire to accompany his wife on the trip. Maybe he changed his mind, maybe he arranged to meet the nurse at the airport. When they left the hotel, Mrs. Kellogg was wearing a bandage over her left temple and she had a black eye. Accord­ing to the doorman, she acted as though she’d been drugged, but I’d be inclined to take this with a grain of salt. It may be a case of that national characteristic of lying to please—i.e., he assumed from my questions that I suspected something was wrong and he was merely trying to “help.”

  I await further instructions. Best,

  Fowler.

  Dodd read the report through a second time, then he buzzed for Lorraine.

  “Send a wire to Fowler.”

  “Straight or night letter?”

  “Night letter.”

  “O.K., you have fifty words.” She copied Fowler’s ad­dress from the envelope containing the report. “Shoot.”

  “Check all means of exit for O’Donnell. Search apart­ment for letters, bank statements, photographs, evidence of love interests. Get names of all friends he might con­tact. Keep up the good work. Sincerely. Dodd.”

  “That’s not fifty words,” Lorraine said.

  “So?”

  “Maybe you should add something, like ‘give my best to your wife.’ “

  “I could,” Dodd said, “but it might not be in the best of taste. He’s a widower.”

  “Oh. But if you’re paying for fifty words, and it’s almost two dollars . . .”

  “Kindly send it as is, with no further editing. After that I’d like you to call Moffett Field and get the address and phone number of a pilot named Bert Reiner. I don’t know his rank. He lives in Mountain View with his wife.”

  Lorraine rose. “Well, that’s a change from kennels and dog hospitals anyway.”

  “You’ll get back to them.”

  “If I only knew why you wanted to find this Scottie, it would make my work less boring. I mean, I’m your secre­tary, I should know these things.”

  “Maybe you should, at that. Remind me to tell you, for Christmas.”

  The exchange had given Lorraine a headache. She took an aspirin to relieve the pain, half a tranquilizer to quiet her nerves, and a vitamin pill on general principles. Then she reached for the telephone again.

  13.

  The town
of Mountain View cowered under the benevo­lent despotism of the jet age. Its older residents held pub­lic meetings and wrote letters of protest to the newspa­pers, complaining of sonic booms and broken windows, flaming crashes and altered skies. In return, the air-force personnel and some of the more war-conscious citizens wrote letters which said in effect, “Where would you be without jet protection in case of attack?”

  The Reiners lived in the lower half of a new redwood duplex near El Camino Real. Betty Reiner answered the door. She was a tall, slim, pretty brunette with green eyes and an automatic smile that looked less genial than a frown. She wore tight black Capri pants, a silk shirt, and a double strand of pearls that reached below her hips. Dodd wondered whether this was her ordinary house­keeping costume or if she had dressed for the occasion.

  “I don’t know what this is all about,” she told Dodd as she led him into an immaculate black and white living room. “I was just going to have some coffee. Would you like some?”

  “Thanks, I would.”

  “Sugar and cream?”

  “A little of both.”

  She poured the coffee out of a white ceramic pot with a black lacquered handle. The only touches of color in the room were Mrs. Reiner’s green eyes and the orange polish on her fingernails. “I wish I had a nickel for every cup of coffee I’ve doled out on the job. As soon as the pas­sengers realized it was free they couldn’t get enough of the stuff.” She handed him his coffee. “So Smitty sent you here, eh?”

  “Yes. He thought you might have some information I need.”

  “What gave him that idea?”

  “He told me you had practically a photographic mem­ory.”

  Mrs. Reiner was too shrewd to be taken in by such ob­vious flattery. “It’s not that good. Some things I remember, some I don’t. What do you have in mind?”

  “A certain flight from Mexico City to San Francisco.”

  “Which one? I’ve made that trip fifty times.”

  “Saturday, September thirteen.”

  “That was about a week before I was fired. I suppose Smitty told you? They fired me when they found out I was married. It’s a crazy rule. If marriage interferes with efficiency, why doesn’t the Air Force discharge my hus­band and all the other married pilots. You’d think being a stewardess was some fancy, high-toned job when all you do really is play waitress and maid, without tips.”

  “Saturday, September thirteen,” Dodd repeated pa­tiently. “The pilot and co-pilot were Robert Forbes and James Billings, and the two stewardesses working with you were Ann Mackay and Maria Fernandez. Do you re­call now?”

  “Of course. That was the week end a friend of mine got sick and I offered to return to Mexico City that night and take her place on the same flight the next day. It was against the rules, but as I said, they’ve got some crazy rules.”

  Dodd opened the manila folder marked A. Kellogg and took out the pictures of Amy. “This woman, I have reason to believe, boarded your plane with her husband and possibly a third party.”

  Mrs. Reiner studied the pictures with interest but no immediate recognition. “She looks like a hundred other people I’ve seen. Was there anything special about her?”

  “Two things. She wore a bandage over her left temple and she had a black eye.”

  “The woman with the black eye—of course I remem­ber! Maria and I were kidding around about it, wonder­ing how she got it, whether her husband beat her up or something. He didn’t seem like the type. A good-looking man, very quiet and considerate.”

  “Considerate of whom?”

  “Well, of her, mainly. But of us girls too. A lot of pas­sengers get pretty demanding in the course of a long flight. He didn’t ask for anything special. Neither did she. She slept most of the time.”

  “Quite a few stewardesses are also registered nurses. Are you, Mrs. Reiner?”

  “No.”

  “Had any nursing experience at all?”

  “Just the elementary stuff included in our training course, how to cope with air sickness, how to administer oxygen to asthmatics and cardiac patients, things like that.”

  “Then you wouldn’t know if Mrs. Kellogg’s sleep was a natural one or not.”

  “What do you mean ‘natural’?”

  “Is there any possibility that she was drugged?”

  Mrs. Reiner fidgeted with her rope of pearls. “Her husband gave her some Dramamine.”

  “How do you know it was Dramamine?”

  “Well, it was a little white pill that looked just like it.”

  “A lot of narcotics and barbiturates are in the form of little white pills.”

  “I guess I just assumed it was Dramamine because so many passengers use it these days. Don’t forget, Dramamine makes some people very sleepy. Maybe the effect’s only psychological, but it happens.” She tied the pearls in a knot, untied them, reached for her coffee. “I can’t believe—I don’t want to believe—that one of my pas­sengers was being doped against her will, right under my nose.”

  “Did she make any fuss about taking the pill, or pills?”

  “I only saw her take one. There may have been others. She didn’t make a fuss, no, but I thought she looked a lit­tle scared. Not about taking the pill, just scared in general. A lot of my passengers do look scared, though, especially when the weather’s bad.”

  “Were Mr. and Mrs. Kellogg traveling alone or was there a third party with them?”

  “They were alone.”

  “Are you sure? Mr. Kellogg was supposed to have hired a nurse to accompany his wife on the trip.” “They were alone,” Mrs. Reiner repeated firmly. “They paid no attention to anyone else, as far as I know. Lots of times when we’re passing over something inter­esting, the passengers will get out of their seats and frater­nize. Mr. and Mrs. Kellogg didn’t.”

  “This was a first-class flight?”

  “Yes.”

  “Double row of seats on each side of the aisle?”

  “Yes. Mrs. Kellogg was in the window seat.”

  “Who was sitting across the aisle from Mr. Kellogg?”

  Mrs. Reiner wrinkled her forehead, then smoothed out the wrinkles with the tips of her fingers. “I can’t swear to it but I think it was a couple of Mexican women, looked like mother and daughter.”

  “Which one had the aisle seat?”

  “I don’t remember. You don’t seem to understand, Mr. Dodd. When you’ve made that same flight dozens of times as I did, it’s hard to differentiate them. Why, I would never even have recognized Mrs. Kellogg’s picture if you hadn’t clued me in about the black eye. It takes some­thing special like that to make one trip stand out in my memory.”

  “Now that this particular flight is standing out, you’re remembering more and more about it?”

  “Yes. There was a little girl up front who kept getting sick. And an elderly man, a cardiac patient. I had to give him oxygen.”

  Dodd said, “I understand the airline keeps a list of the passengers on board each flight.”

  “There are several such lists. I had my own.”

  “What other information was on this passenger list?”

  “Where each of them was going.”

  “Where were the Kelloggs going?”

  “They had return tickets to San Francisco. We only made one other stop, Los Angeles.” She reached for the coffeepot again, but her hand suddenly stopped in mid­air. “Now that’s funny. I could have sworn that the Kel­loggs were booked through to San Francisco, and yet . . . Wait a minute. Let me reconstruct. The plane landed at L.A. and everybody got off, as usual, for the stopover, ex­cept the cardiac patient. I stayed behind with him. He was scared, poor guy, so I gave him all the attention I could. We were in flight again before I had a chance to resume my regular duties, making the new passengers co
mfortable, handing out pillows and so on. I went to the rear of the plane. ... I remember now,” she went on, her voice rising a little with excitement. “As I passed by, I saw that there were two women in the seats where the Kelloggs had been sitting. I was just about to tell the women that those seats were taken when I noticed that Mrs. Kellogg’s coat and carryall bag and Mr. Kellogg’s hat and brief case were missing from the baggage rack.”

  “They got off at L.A., then?”

  “Yes. I might have been mistaken, though, about their tickets being through to San Francisco.”

  “You weren’t.”

  “It seems peculiar, doesn’t it? But then, I’m sure there’s some logical explanation.”

  “I’m sure there’s an explanation,” Dodd said. “I’m just not sure how logical it is. In case you remember any­thing else, no matter how trivial it may be, call me at one of these numbers, any time.”

  “All right.”

  “And thank you very much, Mrs. Reiner, for the infor­mation.”

  “I hope you can use it.”

  “I can use it.”

  After he’d gone she sat down and poured herself the rest of the pot of coffee. Now that the flight had been singled out clearly in her mind, she couldn’t stop thinking about it. By the time the plane landed at San Francisco, the old man with the heart condition was in bad shape and had to be taken off the field in an ambulance. The little girl who’d been airsick recovered in time to chew several wads of gum and get some of it stuck in her hair. It was removed with patience and an ice cube. The honeymoon couple departed with their transistor radio tuned into the final inning of a baseball game. The smart alec with the flask and the bum jokes almost fell off the landing plat­form. The two Mexican women who’d been sitting across the aisle from the Kelloggs and looked like mother and daughter, couldn’t have been; they left the plane sepa­rately and without speaking. The younger one had her purse clutched in both hands as if it contained her whole future.