Severed Key

by Nielsen, Helen

  Keith’s response to the suggestion was surprising. “Good idea,” he said. “Let’s go.” He shoved back his chair and came to his feet.

  “Now?” Simon asked.

  “Why not? Unless you want to listen to the Latin playboy’s whole repertoire. I have a feeling he’s just warming up.”

  “What about our dinner?”

  “It’s too early for that now. Let’s work up an appetite. If Lundberg cared as much for that girl as he seemed to when he heard she was dead, he could probably use some human companionship.”

  Keith left a tip for the waitress and started for the door. Simon drained his drink and followed. Outside the dusky sky had darkened behind the pokers of amber light on the face of the building, and the Avenue of Stars was bathed in a kleig-like brilliance as they reached the upper level. Keith’s Cadillac was parked in the rear lot. Simon grabbed his arm as they hurried through the lobby.

  “Shouldn’t we call Lundberg first?” he asked.

  “No use. I dug his address out of the Sunday paper and tried to reach him several times this afternoon. No response. He’s probably got the phone off the hook.” Keith paused and took a letter from his coat pocket. “This was in my mail box when I got home Saturday night. I didn’t find it until this morning, and that’s what sparked my search for Sigrid Thorsen’s hotel reservation.”

  Simon moved closer to the brightly-lit window of one of the lobby shops. What Keith had given him was an envelope—legal size and bearing a Swedish stamp and a Stockholm postmark. Inside was a letter on the stationery of a Swedish export firm, typewritten in English. It was addressed to Jack Keith. He read quickly.

  My dear Mr Keith:

  You have been recommended to me as the most reliable private investigator operating in the Los Angeles, California area. I am writing in reference to my daughter, Sigrid Thorsen, and the young man she is about to marry. His name is Arne Lundberg and he has been a resident of your city for some time. Since, in fact, I provided his plane fare from Stockholm in an attempt to discourage what I considered an ill-suited romance. But now my daughter has been in the USA for several months and will join the young man on the west coast.

  I would like to have a full report on this Arne Lundberg: to know his employment status and his type of companion. He was not wise in this matter as a youth, but he may (hopefully) have changed for the better. In any event, spare no effort in this matter. Enclosed you will find a bank draft for $500 American dollars as a retainer fee.

  (signed) Axel Thorsen

  Encl.

  Attached to the letter was a snapshot of Sigrid and a blond young man with a broad smile. Although he was wearing a sweater and hiking shorts instead of overalls, the man was easily recognizable as Arne Lundberg. On the back of the snap was a handwritten note: Sigrid and Arne—1968.

  “I’ve got the bank draft in my office safe,” Keith remarked as Simon returned the letter. “Under the circumstances, it doesn’t seem ethical to accept the retainer. By this time Thorsen must know that his daughter is dead. Still, it did spark my curiosity.”

  “So that’s why I was invited to dinner,” Simon mused. “I suppose the lovely Sigrid was an only child.”

  “And no man is good enough for Papa’s baby? You may be right. That’s why I wanted to see Lundberg before getting involved.”

  They reached the end of the passageway and came out on to the street. The Sunday storm had cleared the air in the basin. The night was cloudless and cool and, beyond the fields of high-rise, the black hills were studded with lights. Keith found the Cadillac and eased it into the stream of eastbound traffic. Lundberg’s address was in Hollywood. Keith drove north on the Avenue of Stars and then turned east at Santa Monica Boulevard.

  “The trouble with being a professional investigator,” he said, “is that you still have to go digging for answers even when it’s too late for the question.”

  Arne Lundberg’s apartment was on the second floor of a new complex designed for swinging singles. Monday was normally a slow night even for the under-thirty age-group, but this Monday was special—as they discovered as soon as Keith drove into the guest parking lot. A pair of black and whites were parked at the main entrance, one with the lights still blinking, and a long white ambulance blocked the driveway. Gleaning information from the babble of voices in the chorus of curious tenants was similar to un-mixing a deliberately garbled radio message, but by the time Simon and Keith reached the guarded doorway to Lundberg’s apartment, they had learned the cause of the congestion. Lundberg was dead. Suicide. Drowned in his own bath. Drunk. Despondent. Broken-hearted over the loss of his fiancée. Piece all the chatter together and, verifiable or not, the simple fact was that Arne Lundberg was dead.

  “I was the one who called the manager,” one well-developed female insisted. “That television—all night and all day! I was going crazy. If you fellows are reporters, I was the one who called the manager and complained—”

  A very young uniformed police officer stood in front of Lundberg’s door.

  “No admittance to any but authorized personnel,” he intoned mechanically.

  Simon moved brusquely forward. “District Attorney’s office,” he snapped. “Who’s in charge here?”

  “Lieutenant Howard,” the officer responded. “Hollywood Precinct—”

  Simon and Keith pushed through the doorway before the young officer could ask for credentials. The apartment was a one-bedroom—furnished in contemporary motel naughahide: a divan, a lounge chair facing the television set, a coffee-table cluttered with newspapers that had spilled over on to the wall-to-wall carpeting and a few lamps. Most of the lights were on, as were all the lights in the bedroom and bath. “Make way for the stretcher!” somebody bellowed and Simon stepped quickly into the bedroom. The bed was turned down but hadn’t been used. A police officer was guarding the shirt, trousers and underwear that had been discarded en route to the bathroom, and inside the bathroom a stocky plain-clothesman with a narrow-brimmed felt hat riding on the back of a shock of red hair barked orders to the white-coated stretcher bearers who were proceeding towards the bath.

  “Don’t let the water out of the tub when you remove the body. We found a whisky glass floating in it. The lab men will want to make an analysis to see if it contained only whisky. Okay, lift him gently. That does it—”

  He stepped out of the bathroom and saw Simon and Keith watching the procedure.

  “What the hell are you two doing here?” he roared. “I gave orders that nobody comes in this apartment but authorized personnel!”

  Keith dug out his licence and held it out for scrutiny. “Authorized personnel,” he said.

  “Whose authorization?”

  “Father of the dead man’s fiancée—the girl who was killed in the airline crash Saturday.”

  “Thorsen? You’re working for Sigrid Thorsen’s father?”

  “Right. When did this happen?”

  “Check it out with the lab tomorrow when the autopsy report’s in,” Howard said. “All I can tell you is that the water in the tub is cold and the next door neighbour says his TV was playing all night and all day. Why did Sigrid Thorsen’s father hire a private detective?”

  “To learn if his daughter was marrying the right man, I suppose.”

  Howard accepted the explanation without question. By this time Lundberg’s naked body had been placed on the stretcher. His face, chest and arms, normally tanned by the sun, now had an ugly grey cast. The arm dangled over the side of the stretcher. When one of the attendants raised it and placed it across his chest, a band of stark white flesh traced where he had worn a ring. An instant later the corpse was covered by a grey blanket and the stretcher rolled through the bedroom on its way to the hall.

  “Suicide?” Simon asked.

  Lieutenant Howard studied Simon through narrowed eyes. “I’ve seen your face in the newspapers,” he remarked. “You’re Simon Drake.”

  “Acknowledged,” Simon said.

  “Are you r
eally going to marry that sexy night-club singer?”

  “In a matter of weeks.”

  Howard sighed. “Some guys have all the luck. Now, Lundberg’s luck ran out, wouldn’t you say? It does look like suicide, doesn’t it counsellor? The living room’s cluttered with newspapers all opened to coverage of the air crash that killed his girl. The television, which was playing when we got here, is set to the top news station. There’s an almost empty whisky bottle on the floor next to the chair facing the television and a glass was floating in the tub when we found the body. The bed hasn’t been slept in …” Howard paused, staring intently at the bed. “What’s missing?” he asked abruptly. “Something’s missing. Tell me, Mr Private Detective, what don’t you see on that bed?”

  Howard was about thirty and quick of eye. He knew his job. Simon and Keith looked at the bed. It was king-size. The sheet and blanket were turned back as if Lundberg had prepared for bed. There were two pillows: one with a crisp white pillow case and the other with no case at all. On the bedside table was a lamp, a radio-alarm clock and a set of keys.

  “One pillow case is missing,” Keith said.

  “Good! Now, why didn’t one of my men notice that? Burrows—” The lieutenant called out to the young officer in the next room. “—since you can’t seem to keep unauthorized people from coming in here, maybe you can locate that pillow case. Try the clothes hamper. If it isn’t there, check with the manager and see if this building has a laundry room. In my bachelor days I used to use one pillow case until it was dirty and then switch to the other pillow.”

  Simon had moved closer to the bedside table. He picked up the set of keys. A tiny replica of a licence plate was attached to the ring. He replaced the keys as Howard looked back towards the bed.

  “Something else is missing here,” he observed. “No ashtray. I didn’t see any ashtrays in the living room either. But there’s cigarette ash on the floor near your foot, Lieutenant.”

  Howard looked down at his feet. The ash was about an inch long and virtually intact. Nobody in the apartment was smoking and there was no smoke in the air. He took a card from his pocket, folded it to make a tent, and placed it over the ash.

  “Thanks, counsellor,” he said. “If Lundberg has no ashtrays, he didn’t smoke—but somebody who called on him did. I wonder if this place provides maid service.”

  The stretcher bearing Arne Lundberg’s body was now being rolled out of the apartment. Simon walked back into the living room. The white naughahide chair was facing the television set, and the newspapers were spread out on the coffee table and on the floor; but the lamp on the table was in a peculiar position. Simon switched on the lamp and sat down in the chair. The light blinded him. He turned it off.

  “What are you doing?” Howard asked.

  “Trying to see the television screen through a 200-watt bulb,” Simon answered.

  “The light was placed for the papers on the floor.”

  “I hope so.”

  Simon stood up and began to examine the chair. He switched the lamp on again. Now, from the higher angle, he could see a small reddish-brown smear on the edge of the cushion. He removed the cushion from the chair and handed it to the police lieutenant who had become an interested observer. Something glittered in the webbing at the bottom of the chair, and Simon retrieved the man’s gold ring.

  “Capricorn,” he mused, studying the symbol. “The sign of the goat.”

  It was a zodiac ring set with one small diamond, but the diamond didn’t shine because the dried reddish-brown substance had covered the set. He handed the ring to the lieutenant.

  “Blood?” he suggested.

  Howard held the ring under the light. “You can get a complete lab report in the morning. For now, Mr Drake, and you, too, Mr Keith, you’ll have to leave. I’m closing this apartment up like a vault!”

  On the way back to the Cadillac, Keith sought out the residents’ parking garage and searched the licence plates until he found the one that matched the identification tag on Lundberg’s key chain. It wasn’t attached to a red Camaro. Arne Lundberg drove a white Datsun pick-up with a camper cab.

  CHAPTER SIX

  THE CROWD AROUND the ambulance parted reluctantly when the blanket-covered stretcher bearing Arne Lundberg’s body was wheeled out of the building. Simon and Keith watched from inside the Cadillac. It was impossible to move out of the parking lot until the ambulance departed. And more cars were arriving—adding to the traffic congestion. Word had got out to the newspapers, and small sport sedans with press cards attached to the windshields were nosing their way into the scene. The stretcher slid inside the vehicle and two white-jacketed attendants climbed inside and shut the door. The siren was turned on and the rotating red light of the ambulance marked its progress through the driveway with a police car escort following closely. Keith switched on the ignition of the Cadillac.

  “Shall we follow it down to Receiving?” he asked.

  “I don’t think the police lieutenant would appreciate that,” Simon answered. “Besides, you owe me a dinner.”

  Keith edged the Cadillac forward into the driveway and then, with a sudden burst of speed, swung in behind the ambulance escort. Brakes screeched and someone yelled an obscenity over the voices of the crowd.

  “And up yours I” Keith shouted back. The right front bumper of a dark blue Mustang, which had stopped about an inch away from the left front bumper of the Cadillac, moved back slowly giving Keith the right of way. There was a long dent on the Mustang bumper that wasn’t of recent origin. “That mother must make a habit of getting hit,” Keith muttered. “That’s right, fella, move it! I’m coming through!”

  The Cadillac resumed speed and followed the ambulance and its police escort into the street, and, behind the steering wheel of the Mustang, a swarthy young man swore softly to himself.

  “Did you see that?” he demanded. “Did you see who was driving that car? That was Jack Keith, the professional snooper who was with Simon Drake when they fished Sigrid’s cosmetic case out of the sea.”

  Seated beside him was the big man with straw-coloured hair. He stared after the disappearing rear lights of the Cadillac until it turned into the street and merged with the traffic.

  “He snoops too much, Mario,” the big man said. “Have we got insurance for that?”

  It wasn’t a filet mignon, nor a top sirloin; it wasn’t even a lowly porterhouse. It was a towering stack of finely shaved, over-done roast beef enclosed in an out-sized bun soaked with barbeque sauce. It came wrapped in moisture-proof gold paper bearing the trade mark of a steer’s head and the red lettering: Longhorn’s Beef Sandwich. Jack Keith watched Simon’s expression as he unwrapped the paper, gingerly raised the top of the bun and sniffed the contents.

  “I suppose you wanted horse radish,” he said.

  “What I wanted was something warranting the wearing of this garrotte,” Simon answered. He put the sandwich down on the bar and undid his necktie. It was one of Hannah’s gifts: wide silver and grey stripes that now made a glittering garland for the wall lamp that was focused on Keith’s liquor stock.

  “Picky, picky,” Keith scolded. “You know we couldn’t get in any good restaurant at this hour without a reservation, and I did promise you the best Scotch in town.”

  “And I’m still waiting for it,” Simon said. He ate the sandwich hungrily while Keith took out his twelve-year-old stock, poured it into a glass over ice and added one quick spray of soda. Even franchise fare could be edible at ten p.m., which was about eight and a half hours on the far side of lunch. “This takes me back to my early postgraduate days,” he mused, between mouthfuls, “when I was still moonlighting as a mechanic to pick up the rent for my law office—but the office was nothing like this place!”

  Jack Keith’s apartment was on one of the highest floors of a new Beverly Hills high-rise, and on nights like this one, when the wind had dispelled the smog, the lights of the city spread out below like a carpet of stars. From opposite sides of a tea
k-panelled wall, the finely-balanced strains of a stereo emitted a muted Vivaldi concerto for lutes and string orchestra. When, to this gentling atmosphere was added the drink Keith delivered, it was easy to accept the idea that Arne Lundberg, in medieval melancholy, had killed himself for the love of a lady.

  “What are you going to do with the five hundred dollars now?” Simon asked.

  Keith finished chewing and swallowing the first bite of his sandwich before he answered. “Well,” he drawled thoughtfully, “I have kind of earned it.”

  “It should just about cover a month’s rent on this pad.”

  “Just about.” Keith put down the sandwich and looked at his watch. “A little after ten here—that means it’s a workday morning in Stockholm. You can enjoy my art gallery while I put in a call to Axel Thorsen. Maybe he can clue me in on the kind of companions Arne had in his youth.”

  Keith came out from behind the bar and went into the room that served as his business office. With the door closed, Simon couldn’t eavesdrop, so he set about locating the art gallery, which, discovered, was found to consist of one Klee, two Picasso prints and exactly eleven camera studies of well-assembled young ladies, Caucasian and Asiatic, all of whom had inscribed their photos with expressions of spontaneous, if not undying, love. Simon smiled nostalgically and sipped his drink. His own collection now consisted of three studio portraits of Wanda Call (soon to be Wanda Drake)—which was as it should be. And then he thought of Arne Lundberg and what was missing in his apartment. A few minutes later, Jack Keith emerged from his office.

  “I just thought of something peculiar about Lundberg’s apartment,” Simon said. “Sigrid Thorsen was a professional. She must have had dozens of pictures of herself, but Lundberg didn’t have even one in his apartment.”

  Jack Keith didn’t seem to hear. He stood thoughtfully rubbing the red stubble on his chin that would probably develop into a beard if he didn’t have a change of heart.