The Case of the Murdered MacKenzie: A Masao Masuto Mystery (Book Seven)

by Howard Fast

  “Another few days,” Masuto promised her.

  “And you will be careful. Every time I think of the work you do, I die a little.”

  “I am the most careful man in California.”

  Since he was already in downtown Los Angeles, he stopped off at Fred Toyota’s place for a shave. Toyota was a cousin of Kati’s three or four times removed, somewhere in the tangle of relationships that Japanese families clung to, a plump, birdlike little man, who guessed that it was the Zendo that had brought Masuto down here “where a haircut is still five dollars—and just as good as the thirty-dollar cuts in Beverly Hills. But myself, Masao, I’m a Presbyterian. I have given up that old-country nonsense—”

  “Very commendable. I’m in a hurry.”

  “When I shave, I talk.”

  Humbled but clean-shaven, Masuto drove to the police station in Beverly Hills. Beckman was sitting in his office, feet up on his desk, reading the sports section of the Los Angeles Times, and he greeted Masuto with the proposition that one can’t say never. “I mean, Masao, that if anyone had told me that football players would form a union and strike, I would have said never. Absolutely never.”

  “You’re right,” Masuto said. “You can’t say never. Now, tell me something. What’s the situation at the Mackenzie house? From the time of his murder.”

  “You know,” Beckman said, dropping his feet and putting the newspaper aside, “I never thought of that. It is goddamn strange.”

  “What is?”

  “Well, look—you heard the testimony the other day in court. The whole damn thing was Feona Scott’s little ploy. Suppose Eve Mackenzie could have been found guilty. It would have been Scott who put her away. But Eve was out on bail, and there they were, both of them living in the Mackenzie house.”

  “You’re sure of that?”

  “Yeah—”

  “And you never thought it strange before?”

  “I suppose I should have. But nothing in this case makes sense.”

  “Or everything. I’ll tell you what I want you to do, Sy. Go out to Santa Monica and see Judge Simpkins and get a search warrant for the Mackenzie house. Then go in there and find something that will give us a break in this case.”

  “What?”

  “I don’t know. But there has to be something in that house that will shed a little light on the fact that a man who isn’t Robert Mackenzie but who everyone wants to dispose of as Robert Mackenzie is murdered in a crazy Rube Goldberg manner, and everyone—accused, accusers—everyone loves everyone, except that someone wants to kill anyone who puts his nose into it. So, damn it, be careful! We’ve Clint’s funeral tomorrow. I don’t want to go to yours the next day.”

  “Where will you be?”

  “I’m going across to the library, and then I’ll be back here.”

  The Beverly Hills library is unique, one of the finest public libraries in California, and housed in a splendid building across the street from the police station. The quality of the library grew out of two things; the wealth of the town, and the patronage of motion picture and television people, who needed a well-equipped library close at hand. At the cost of twenty-five dollars a year, a non-resident could be a member, but Masuto’s membership derived from his job. He was an assiduous reader and a familiar figure at the library, especially to Miss Clarissa Jones. Miss Jones confirmed Masuto’s belief that marriages should be arranged. Miss Jones, slender, very attractive behind her glasses, tall, and possessed of a decent sense of humor, was still unmarried at age thirty-seven because, as she put it, she had never gotten around to it. Masuto always thought of it as a tragic waste, and even today the thought crossed his mind as he informed Miss Jones, the librarian he most preferred, that he was interested in Scotland.

  “Scotland, Sergeant? That’s a large subject. We must have two hundred books on Scotland. Have you ever been there?”

  Masuto shook his head. “Not England, not Scotland. I am very insular, Miss Jones.”

  “I don’t believe that for a minute. Suppose we narrow it down. Where in Scotland—or just Scotland?”

  “Edinburgh.”

  “Well, you’ve just lucked out, Sergeant. I took my vacation last month, and a week of it was in Edinburgh. Shall I inform you, or do you want a book?”

  “I haven’t time for a book.”

  Miss Jones whispered a few words to another lady behind the desk, and then led Masuto to a table. “All right, here goes for a quick rundown on Edinburgh. Ask away.”

  “How large?”

  “Half a million people.”

  “Crime?”

  “Not so I noticed, but you might say that in L.A. too, if you were a tourist. Not too much, I’d say.”

  “Nice people?”

  “Delightful, but I’m prejudiced. I’m half Welsh and half Scot.”

  “Factory town?”

  “No, no, indeed. That would be Glasgow. I felt that Edinburgh was one of the loveliest cities I’ve ever seen. A great old castle sits above the town, and its location on the Firth of Forth is simply splendid.”

  “And what about hospitals, medical places? Are they up-to-date?”

  “Sergeant, you really don’t know much about Scotland. It’s not a wild, primitive place, and except for festivals they don’t wear kilts, and they really are absolutely civilized. Their hospitals are as good, as any in Europe, and in many areas of medicine they have led the world. You should know that both the Welsh and the Scots are very smart people.”

  “I’m delighted to hear that. Then you don’t think it would be ridiculous on my part to call the chief of police in Edinburgh and ask about records half a century old?”

  “Wow. Is that what you’re going to do?”

  “I’m thinking about it.”

  “Not ridiculous at all. But listen carefully, Sergeant. They have a very peculiar accent.”

  Wainwright, on the other hand, stared at Masuto glumly and asked why he couldn’t send a telex.

  “I have to talk to him, and then he’ll have to call me back.”

  “To the tune of how much?”

  “I don’t know—fifty, a hundred, a hundred and fifty—I just can’t say.”

  “We blew a bundle on those damn gravediggers and came up with nothing.”

  “Not really nothing. We know the grave is empty.”

  “That’ll buy you a stale taco and a flat beer. What pisses me off, Masao, is that I sit here and you stand there and play games about knowing who’s running this show—”

  “I don’t know who’s running it. All I can do is make an educated guess about who killed Mackenzie.”

  “Then educate me, goddamnit!” Wainwright shouted.

  “All right. I think that Feona Scott killed him—and it’s not Mackenzie. We keep saying Mackenzie. It’s another man.”

  Wainwright pursed his lips and whistled softly. “Feona Scott.” He stared with interest at Masuto. “Why Feona Scott?”

  “That’s it. As I told you, I don’t have enough evidence to fill a thimble.”

  “Then just put it together so that it makes some sense to me, Masao, because the way it is it don’t make one damn bit of sense.”

  “All right. But keep in mind that this is a creation out of the whole cloth. I don’t know what happened there at the Mackenzie house that night any more than you do, but I think I see a pattern and I try to fill in on the pattern. Mackenzie, I think, is not home. That’s only a guess, because regardless of what Mackenzie is—and I’ve come to think of him as a cold-blooded bastard—I don’t see him moving behind his twin brother and knocking him out with some kind of blunt object. Not that he couldn’t kill, but differently. Eve is out of the picture. She was an alcoholic according to Doc Baxter, and that wonderful calm and dignity of hers was probably a habit of desperate concentration to keep from falling over. So that leaves Feona, and I’m quite certain she knocked out the man in the tub.”

  “And how did she get him into the tub? Granted she’s a strong, well-built woman, may
be five foot seven or eight, but Mackenzie weighed over two hundred pounds. I saw the body, Masao. Someone had to undress him and then put him in the tub.”

  “Not Mackenzie—the twin. We go on with my invention. Mackenzie comes back. The twin is lying there—”

  “There was a skull fracture,” Wainwright remembered. “He was zapped good and hard.”

  “Feona has been reading Eve’s notebook, which makes more sense as the creation of a drunken mind. She shows the notebook to Mackenzie or he already knows about it. Let’s put him into the tub and electrocute him. Follow Eve’s formula and Eve has to be charged with the murder.”

  “Which they must have known would not stand up.”

  “They needed time,” Masuto said. “And they had certain problems. They had to get rid of the twin’s body or his clothes. The clothes were easier, and since they couldn’t get rid of the body, they left it in the tub and Mackenzie decided to vanish.”

  “Why? You can’t have it that they couldn’t get rid of the body, Masao. No, sir. They could have put it in a car and driven somewhere and dumped it.”

  “Yes.”

  “Well, damn it, what is it? Yes or no?”

  “It could be one of two things. Either they couldn’t get rid of the body or they didn’t want to. From here on, there’s just too much lunacy and uncertainty attached to it. Mackenzie goes to Soames and Fenwick and tells him that he and Feona just murdered his twin brother and framed his wife, Eve, as the killer. Soames understands and approves of this, and he gets all sorts of important people in Washington to jump in and insist that Eve be tried for a crime she could never be convicted of. Eve agrees and accepts the Fenwick lawyer as her defender. The judge decides to throw out the case. Eve has dinner in the Fenwick dining room at Malibu and gets so drunk she drives her car over a cliff and kills herself and when Beckman drives up to Montecito to talk to her sister, who does he see as he is leaving?”

  “You tell me.”

  “Mark Geffner.”

  “No. No, that’s too much.”

  “Nothing is too much. This whole thing is framed in lunacy.”

  “And you still feel that Feona Scott will be killed?”

  “I’m afraid so,” Masuto admitted. “There’s a cold-blooded killer at work here. I’ve been thinking about what you said. What can we do?”

  “Truthfully, not much. You know how Abramson feels about false arrest. And suppose we did arrest her. Her lawyer would have her out of jail in an hour. We could put a cop outside the house—”

  Masuto shook his head. “That won’t help. By the way, who is her lawyer—well, I mean the Mackenzies’ lawyer?”

  Wainwright furrowed his brow. “If I remember correctly, it was Dave Pringle.”

  “But Henry Cassell defended her.”

  “Yes. Pringle’s a theatrical lawyer. I suppose if we picked up. Feona, Cassell would come around—or maybe not. I don’t know. But if we’re going to arrest her, we need enough concrete evidence to convince Abramson that we’re not just making a grandstand play.”

  “Yes, I’ll try. Meanwhile—”

  “Meanwhile, hell. You drop a bombshell about Geffner and then walk out?”

  “No, sir. All I know about Geffner is what Beckman told me. He was driving out; Geffner was driving in.”

  “Did you talk to Geffner?”

  “Captain, I returned to Beverly Hills four days ago. Since then, my car has been blown up, someone tried to send me over a cliff in Malibu, I’ve had to send my wife and children away, I dug up an empty coffin, and I haven’t changed my clothes in two days. No, I haven’t spoken to Geffner.”

  “I’m not pushing you, Masao.”

  “No, I’m pushing because I want to stay alive. What about this call to Scotland?”

  “Okay, okay. You got it.”

  But first Masuto looked up Dave Pringle’s number and called the lawyer and got through to him without any problem and told him that they were reopening the Mackenzie case.

  “I’m glad,” Pringle said. “I’m damn glad. And I hope that at the same time you’re giving attention to the very strange death of Mrs. Mackenzie. I find the accident that killed her very disturbing. You must know, Detective Masuto, that she was my client, not her husband.”

  “Yes, I do know that. I have a very strong feeling that a deal of some sort was made with Mrs. Mackenzie, and that she agreed not to fight the indictment in return for—well, I don’t know what for. But my feeling is that in return for her silence as to who the man in the tub actually was and in return for her being on trial, it was agreed by Cassell that there would be no contest over her husband’s estate. Was Mr. Mackenzie a wealthy man?”

  “You appear to know a great deal, Detective Masuto, but before I continue, I would like you to hang up, and I’ll call back.”

  “That’s reasonable,” Masuto agreed.

  Almost five minutes passed before Masuto’s phone rang. It was Polly at the switchboard, who said, “Masao, Pringle, the lawyer. He wanted to know everything about you from day one. I’m giving him to you now.”

  “Sergeant,” Pringle said, “how much do you actually know about Eve Mackenzie?”

  “I know she was an alcoholic.”

  “Yes. Well, we tried to keep it a secret and we succeeded pretty well. But she hadn’t worked in years, and she had no future in films—poor thing. So many of us loved her, and there was absolutely nothing we could do. There is nothing as awful as giving your heart to an alcoholic. Now, you asked me before whether Mackenzie was a wealthy man. Hardly. He had no money to speak of, although Fenwick paid him a hundred thousand a year. He was a mean, vicious bastard, and if I speak ill of the dead, I do so deliberately. The only kind thing you could say about him is that he left Eve alone and that he did not throw her out. It was his house, and I suspect that there were reasons I don’t know for his keeping her there. They never entertained, and the Scott woman was apparently, according to Eve, his mistress. Eve had made a good deal of money in films when she was a star and much in demand, and I did try to husband it, but it was hopeless. She threw it away. The car in which she died used up her last bit of personal funds.”

  “And the man in the tub?”

  “Mackenzie’s twin brother. But she told me this under a pledge of silence as her lawyer.”

  “Then why did she go on trial?”

  “Because Soames, the manager at Fenwick, offered her fifty thousand dollars to accept the indictment and keep quiet about the twin brother. He assured her that the case would be thrown out of court, and I agreed with that judgment. Mackenzie also signed a new will, which they back-dated, and which leaves the house and a good packet of stock options in Fenwick to Eye. I did not learn about this until after the fact and I was sworn to silence. It was privileged. I would not be telling you this now had it not been for Eve’s death the day before yesterday. Poor girl, I wanted desperately for her to have some security, to have the house and a few dollars. Now I feel that this is information the police should have.”

  “Mr. Pringle,” Masuto said slowly, “I’m not trying to be dramatic or to alarm you unnecessarily, but unless you take precautions, an attempt will be made on your life, and very possibly a successful one.”

  “Come on, Sergeant. I’m a lawyer. I’ve been involved in legal matters, that’s all.”

  “You have been given very dangerous information. Too dangerous.”

  “I don’t believe that at all. But since you’re so sure I’m in danger, what do you think I should do?”

  “Yes, I will tell you what to do. The moment we finish, call the Los Angeles Times. Give them the whole story, every word, every detail. They’ll run it on the front page, and if you live until the paper appears tomorrow, you’re safe.”

  “Sergeant, I can’t do that. Look at the position it puts me in. And what does it do to Eve’s memory? I would betray her.”

  “You betrayed her the day you allowed her to go into that stupid charade,” Masuto said harshly.

&nbs
p; “You can’t talk to me like that.”

  “Why not? You can hang up and brush me off as another arrogant cop. But you’re still the target.”

  “What can I do?”

  “Pack a bag, get out to the airport without being followed, and take the next plane to San Francisco. And try to understand what I’m telling you. Eve Mackenzie took you into her confidence, and the information she gave you is dangerous. Now, it’s true that I know what you know, and Captain Wainwright knows it too, but the killer isn’t aware of that. Go away for a few days.”

  “I’ll think about it.”

  “You don’t believe me, do you?”

  “No, Sergeant. I’m afraid not.”

  “Well, let’s say I’ve done my civic duty.”

  “If you wish, Sergeant!.”

  Of course, Masuto said to himself. He’d be a fool to believe me. People don’t go around killing people senselessly, not in Beverly Hills.

  He went into Wainwright’s office and asked him whether he knew what time it was in Scotland.

  “Haven’t you made that call yet?”

  “I was talking to Pringle, the lawyer.”

  “My guess would be somewhere between four and five o’clock in the afternoon. What about Pringle?”

  “You know, English is a remarkable language. I don’t think there’s any word in Japanese that’s precisely the equivalent of horse’s ass, which you can be and still get through law school.”

  “What the hell does all that mean?” Wainwright demanded.

  “It means that Soames, the manager at Fenwick, offered Eve Mackenzie fifty thousand dollars to keep her mouth shut about the man in the tub being Mackenzie’s twin brother and to go on trial until the case was thrown out of court, and this damn fool, Pringle, advised her to accept the offer. And then, when I told him that he knew too much and might be a target, he refused to believe me.”

  “How about me refusing to believe you?”