Death Deals a Hand

by Janet Dawson

  “Not long after you did. I’m not sure of the time, though. Miss Grant was still there when I left, smoking like a chimney and reading.”

  “Did you talk with her at all?”

  Avis shook her head. “Good Lord, no. Miss Grant is not the most stimulating conversationalist in the world.”

  “No, she isn’t. Did you see or hear anything unusual?”

  Miss Margate thought about it. “I saw Mr. Cleary, the younger one, leaving Miss Larch’s bedroom. Being a gentleman, I supposed. It wouldn’t have surprised me if he’d spent the night with her. He’s an attractive man, but he hasn’t paid any attention to me, not since he first laid eyes on Miss Larch. That was before I decided to call it a night. I left the observation lounge. Said good night to the porter, he was in the kitchen by the buffet. Oh, yes, I did see that tall man, Mr. Oliver. He and his wife are in bedroom E. He was coming into the observation car just as I was leaving.”

  Jill nodded. She’d seen Mr. Oliver walking toward the rear of the train when she’d left a few minutes earlier. She needed to talk with him, and Miss Grant.

  “Who else did you see?”

  “Some man in a bathrobe coming out of the men’s room in the sleeper with all the curtains.”

  “The sixteen-section sleeper,” Jill said.

  “Yes, that’s the one. And when I got to this car, I did see the Frenchman, Florian, that nice-looking graduate student.” Miss Margate smiled. “He was doing some serious necking with that girl Lois in his roomette. I’ll bet she’s fifteen or sixteen, even though she looks older. Serious jailbait. Anyway, I went past them, here to my bedroom. It was late, so I went to bed. I didn’t see anyone else. And I didn’t hear anything, until I heard you and your uncle next door, talking to Mr. Cleary. By the way, when I saw him earlier in the lounge car, he was ready to deck Fontana.”

  Avis Margate chuckled. “I would have paid money to see that.”

  Chapter Nineteen

  Jill stepped out of Avis Margate’s room just as Doug was leaving bedroom A. He’d taken his time getting dressed. Unlike Mr. Geddes, who’d also been roused from sleep, Doug was impeccably turned out in the clothes he’d worn earlier.

  “Am I tried and convicted?” he asked, the lightness of his tone belying the seriousness of the question. “Believe me, Jill. I didn’t kill the man. Someone planted that gun in my bedroom.”

  “I believe you,” she told him. “But we’ve got to convince other people. The train is going to stop in Wendover and the conductor will turn the whole mess over to the sheriff’s office there. I hope we can get things cleared up before we get there.”

  “So do I. Let’s go.” He gave her hand a squeeze. Jill looked at the door to bedroom C, where Cora Grant slept. Then she followed Doug back through the car. As they passed roomette ten, where Florian Rapace was berthed, she paused. Inside the roomette she heard a loud snore. M. Rapace was evidently asleep, and she hoped Lois Demarest wasn’t with him.

  The train had slowed to a crawl but it still hadn’t stopped. They must be getting close to the freight derailment.

  When they went through the sixteen-section sleeper, all was quiet. Jill looked at the upper berth where she’d seen Patty Dema­rest earlier. Was Lois in the lower berth? Had she and Florian seen anything while Lois was back in the Silver Falls?

  They reached the Silver Crescent and walked back to the observation lounge. Doug glanced at his father. Then, looking relaxed and unruffled, he faced the conductor. “I’m Douglas Cleary. You want to ask me some questions?”

  “Bill Dutton, conductor with the Western Pacific Railroad. We’re trying to get to the bottom of this mess. I joined the train in Salt Lake City. Before the Denver and Rio Grande Western conductor left, he briefed me, and said you’d been involved in an altercation with Mr. Fontana. Could you tell me about that?”

  “It was after dinner, after eight, I think. Miss Larch and I went to the lounge in the buffet car, for a drink.”

  “Miss Larch is a passenger? A friend of yours?”

  Doug nodded. “Yes, to both questions. She’s traveling in a bedroom here in the observation car. Anyway, Mr. Fontana was there in the lounge, with Mr. Geddes. It was obvious he’d been drinking, quite a bit. He was upset with me because we’d been playing poker in his drawing room earlier in the afternoon and I won several hands. Then he insisted that Miss Larch have a drink with him. She wasn’t interested. He wouldn’t take ‘no’ for an answer. I told him to back off and leave her alone. Then he said something insulting.”

  “What did he say?” Mr. Dutton asked.

  “I hesitate to repeat such a crude remark in front of Miss McLeod.” Doug glanced at Jill. “Miss Larch was understandably offended, and visibly upset. I took offense as well. I would have hit Mr. Fontana if my father hadn’t stopped me. At that point, Mr. Fontana and his friend left the lounge.”

  “Did you see Mr. Fontana later in the evening?” Mr. Dutton asked.

  “No, I didn’t. Miss Larch and I had a drink with my father in the lounge. Then she and I came back here to the observation car.”

  This seemed to satisfy Mr. Dutton for the moment. The conductor pointed at the gun on one of the small center tables. “This gun was found in your bedroom.”

  “It was under the bed,” Doug said. “It tumbled out when the train slowed down. As I told my father, I’ve never seen it before.”

  “How did it get there?”

  “I assume someone put it there. I was in and out of my bedroom during the evening. As you know, those bedrooms don’t lock from the outside, unless the porter does it. So anyone could have gone inside.”

  “True enough,” Mr. Dutton said. He looked over at the Pullman conductor. “Mr. Winston, talk with the porter in that car, to see if he saw anything.” Mr. Winston nodded and left the car.

  Uncle Sean was looking at the gun on the table. “Who else on the train would be carrying a gun? I figure Fontana was, but I don’t think I should compromise the crime scene by looking for it.”

  It was time for Jill to tell them what she knew. “Miss Larch has a gun. She keeps it in her train case, unloaded. I saw it earlier today when I was making dinner reservations.” And so had Cora Grant, she thought. “Miss Larch’s gun looks like the gun found in Doug’s bedroom. At least it has the same sort of wood on the grip.”

  Doug looked surprised at this revelation. “I wasn’t aware that Miss Larch had a gun. But if you think her gun is the one you found in my bedroom, there’s an easy solution. Knock on Miss Larch’s door and see if she still has the gun.”

  “I agree,” Mr. Dutton said. “It’s time we got her version of what happened this evening.”

  Pamela Larch looked sleepy, her blond hair tumbling around her shoulders of her green bathrobe. She peered at Jill from a two-inch opening in her bedroom door, then frowned as she saw the two men behind Jill. “My goodness, Miss McLeod. And Mr. Cleary and the conductor. It’s quite late, isn’t it? What’s the matter?”

  “This is Mr. Dutton, the conductor. We’d like to talk with you.”

  “Why?”

  “I’m afraid something has happened to Mr. Fontana. He’s dead.”

  Miss Larch gasped. “Dead? How?”

  “He was shot,” Mr. Dutton said. “Miss Larch, I understand you have a gun.”

  “Oh, my goodness. You can’t think that I would… I don’t even keep it loaded. I told Miss McLeod that. I shouldn’t have brought it with me in the first place.”

  “May we see your gun?” the conductor asked.

  “Of course. It’s in my train case.” Miss Larch backed away, opening the door wider. Her beige train case was on the floor next to her bed. She opened it and took out the top tray, makeup spilling out as she set it on the bed. She pulled out her lacy brassiere and silk panties, tossing them onto the blanket. Then she held out the case so they could see what was inside.

  Sean pulled his handkerchief from his pocket and removed the gun from the case, swinging out the cylinder. There were no c
artridges inside. Sean sniffed the barrel. “Interesting. It’s essentially the same gun as the other. Both are Smith and Wesson ­thirty-eight caliber revolvers. Model Thirty-Six, also called the Chief’s Special. They’re small, easy to conceal, with a short barrel. And they both happen to have wood grips.”

  “But the one we found in Doug’s bedroom was darker, almost black,” Jill said.

  Sean nodded. “Yes, it is. That gun has what’s called a blued finish. It’s a protective coating to prevent rust and it gives the metal that blue-black look. Miss Larch’s gun here is nickel-plated, a shiny finish. More importantly, the gun we found had been fired recently, and this one hasn’t. This probably isn’t the murder weapon. But we can hang onto it and give it to the sheriff’s deputies when we get to Wendover.”

  “Please, take it,” Miss Larch said. “I don’t want it anymore.”

  Sean complied, removing the box of cartridges from the case as well.

  “Can we talk further, Miss Larch?” the conductor asked. “We’d like to ask some questions about what happened this evening.”

  “Of course. Just let me get dressed. I won’t be long.”

  When she emerged from bedroom C a few minutes later, ­Pamela Larch was wearing the same soft green dress she’d worn during the day, her blond hair falling to her shoulders. She sat down in one of the observation lounge chairs and answered questions, confirming Doug’s account of what had happened earlier that evening.

  “I did have a drink with Mr. Fontana on the first night out,” she said. “But he couldn’t keep his hands to himself, so I left. Tonight he wanted to buy me a drink but I said no. He just wouldn’t leave me alone. And then he said something quite nasty. I don’t think I could bring myself to repeat it.” She shuddered. “Then Douglas, Mr. Cleary, came to my rescue. They almost came to blows, but that didn’t happen. After that Mr. Fontana and his friend left, and we stayed in the lounge there in the buffet car. I hadn’t met Mr. Cleary, Douglas’s father, until then, so I was glad to get acquainted.”

  “Me, too,” Sean said. “Now, after that I went to the coffee shop to get a piece of pie. Where did you and Doug go?”

  “We came back here, just sat in my bedroom and talked. Ordinarily I supposed we’d have gone to the buffet or back here to the lounge. But I was afraid we might encounter Mr. Fontana in the buffet.”

  “You would have, ma’am,” Lonnie Clark said. “Like I told the conductor and Mr. Cleary here, Mr. Fontana and Mr. Geddes were in the buffet, all right, drinking.”

  The conductor nodded. “Quite heavily, you said.”

  “On my last walk-through of the train,” Jill said, “before we got to Salt Lake City, I came back here to the Silver Crescent. I saw Mr. Fontana and Mr. Geddes in the buffet. Then they left. Let’s see. Rachel Ranleigh was here in the observation lounge, along with Miss Margate and Miss Grant. Miss Ranleigh left. When I left, I saw Mr. Oliver walking back through the transcontinental sleeper. I spoke with Miss Margate a short time ago. She woke up when you and I knocked on Doug’s door,” Jill said, looking at her uncle. “She told me when she left the car to go back to bed, she saw Mr. Oliver entering this car. Mr. Clark, did you see him?”

  The porter shook his head. “No, ma’am, I didn’t. I was in the buffet and the kitchen cleaning up at that time. I did see Miss Margate walk by. But I didn’t see Mr. Oliver. I must have been in the buffet.”

  “Henry Oliver?” Sean’s expression changed. “We’d better talk with him.”

  Chapter Twenty

  At the conductor’s request, Mr. Winston, the Pullman conductor, left the lounge, heading for the Silver Falls to ask Henry Oliver if he would join them. Then the brakeman appeared, waving at the conductor. “I’ll be back,” Mr. Dutton said. The two men huddled together at the foot of the stairs leading up to the Vista-Dome. As the brakeman left, a man in a dark blue bathrobe appeared. It was Stanley Carson, his hand on his cane as he walked back to the lounge to join the people gathered there.

  “I woke up and heard voices,” he said. “There seem to be a lot of comings and goings, and the train is slower than usual. Has something happened?”

  “This is Mr. Carson,” Jill said. “He and his family are traveling in bedrooms A and B in this car. We’ve slowed down because of a freight train derailment up ahead.”

  “As to the comings and goings,” the conductor said, “Mr. Fontana is dead, murdered. This is Mr. Cleary, a retired detective from Denver. We’re trying to gather information.”

  “Mr. Cleary. Yes, I met you today, up in the Vista-Dome,” Mr. Carson said. “I also met another Mr. Cleary, who’s been spending a lot of time with Miss Larch in bedroom C.”

  “That’s me,” Doug said.

  “My son, Douglas,” Sean added. “Mr. Fontana was shot, probably sometime after we left Provo. Did you hear anything?”

  “No, I didn’t. I’m usually a sound sleeper. Perhaps the noise of the train muffled the shot.” Mr. Carson sat down. He stretched his legs in front of him and rubbed his right leg, as though it was giving him some discomfort.

  “Mr. Carson,” Jill said, “when I was making dinner reservations, you asked for the name of the man traveling in the drawing room. When I told you it was Mr. Fontana, you said you’d heard the name before. In what context?”

  “In a criminal context, Miss McLeod.” Stanley Carson looked around the lounge. “I’m an attorney with the California Department of Justice. We moved to Sacramento in 1946. Before that, I worked for the Illinois Attorney General’s Office.” He pointed at the cane. “I was injured during the war and sent back to the States for rehab, and then discharged. I went back to Illinois because that’s where my family was, and my wife’s family. Early in 1945, my office was involved in a joint operation involving the Office of Price Administration. It concerned the theft and illegal sale of gas rationing stamps.”

  Rationing. Jill remembered her dinner conversation about the war, and rationing.

  Where there were restrictions there were also people trying to get around them. People traded or sold rationing stamps, even though they weren’t supposed to. Things could be had on the black market, though that was definitely illegal. And there was a “red market” as well, with people selling lower-grade meat for higher-grade prices, or selling meat that contained more fat or bone than was allowed.

  Couldn’t get a tire for your car? Someone might sidle up to you at a service station and whisper, “I know where you can get one.” And some people followed through on that offer, no questions asked, just the quick exchange of money, or coupons.

  During the war people had even resorted to rustling, helping themselves to cattle on Colorado ranches. That had prompted Jill and her brother, Drew, to devise a security plan for the chicken coop in Grandma’s backyard. It must have worked, because they didn’t lose any chickens, or eggs.

  Sean Cleary nodded. “We had our share of problems in Denver during the war. Trucks filled with goods that got hijacked before they got to their destinations. We’d find the trucks later, empty, and whatever was inside was long gone, for sale on the black market. We also had a rash of robberies, thieves breaking into homes and taking ration books. And there was a break-in at the OPA in Denver. The bad guys took gas rationing coupons and C stickers. They were already counterfeiting the stuff. Then they got a big haul of the real ones to sell on the black market.”

  “It was the same in Chicago,” Stanley Carson said. “And it was a very lucrative business.”

  “Was Victor Fontana involved in the Chicago investigation?” Jill asked.

  “Yes, he was. So was an associate of his, Charles Holt. But Fontana and Holt were slippery. We never could pin anything on him.”

  Jill looked at her uncle. “Mr. Fontana and Mr. Geddes were on their way to San Francisco to finalize a business deal with a man named Charles Holt. That’s what I overheard them arguing about, when I was in the corridor. Mr. Fontana said he and Holt had made a lot of money during the war.”

  “Yes, they did
,” Carson said. “Most of it illegal. But they were very good at hiding their tracks. Anyway, the investigation my office took part in involved a ring of mobsters who were stealing gas rationing stamps from OPA offices around Chicago. They were selling them on the black market and they operated out of a nightclub in Chicago, a place called the Bell Tower.”

  The Bell Tower? Jill looked at Doug, remembering their earlier talk about the nightclub.

  “Hey, I know that place,” Doug said. “I went there, before the war. Good food, terrific band, a great singer.”

  “Yes, the club was very popular,” Carson said. “Plenty of customers. And they came not only for the food and the band, but for the gas ration stamps. In the course of our investigation, we learned Victor Fontana and Charles Holt owned the nightclub. We knew Fontana was a liquor distributor. When we dug deeper, we found out about his mobster past. He was working for the Smaldones in Denver, and when he moved to Chicago he forged ties with Frank Nitti’s operation.”

  “The old Capone mob,” Uncle Sean said.

  “That’s right. Fontana’s wife is the daughter of one of Nitti’s lieutenants. And Holt is connected, too. He worked for the Chicago Outfit, Capone’s organization, in the thirties, which is probably how he and Fontana met. Holt also knew Mickey Cohen.”

  “The mobster in Los Angeles?” Uncle Sean asked.

  “Cohen’s in jail now, for tax evasion,” Carson said. “But we’re keeping an eye on his associates, like Holt, who recently set up shop in San Francisco. So whatever deal Fontana and Geddes were cooking up with Holt bears looking at. I’ll be contacting my office as soon as we get to Sacramento.”

  “How come you weren’t able to catch Fontana and Holt?” the conductor asked.

  Carson shook his head. “We raided the Bell Tower. But someone—I suspect one of the Chicago cops—tipped off both men before the raid. We didn’t catch them. But we found a stash of stolen coupons and stickers, and arrested several nightclub employees who were involved in the ring.”