She smirked again. “You and Henny Youngman.”
And here’s what jumped into my mind: Take my life, please.
* * *
In the rain, the two-hour drive to the Dunbar mansion turned into three, though for the last half hour the wet stuff let up. Willie Walters, still in his ear-flap cap and hunter’s plaid, was expecting me, opening the gates as soon as I pulled in. I gave him a wave and got one back, and guided my Ford Galaxie up the winding drive, which was made a glistening ivory by the three-quarter moon.
The slender Negro maid gave me an old-friends smile, took my hat and coat, and delivered directions down the hall to the library, where Dorena Dunbar was waiting. Along the way I heard typing, and I couldn’t help but wonder if that machine was the one on which this afternoon’s enigmatic note had been pounded out.
Like most big old houses anytime but summer, this one was on the chilly side, so it was no surprise to find Dorena in a beige cardigan and brown capri pants. Slender but shapely, the near-petite girl rose from a roll-top desk in a workspace notched into a wall of books. Every wall in here was books, mostly the leather-bound variety that were more for show than reading.
She came over and took my arm, apparently glad to see me, the full coral-lipsticked lips framing perfect white teeth in a smile that lightly crinkled the corners of the big brown Liz Taylor cat eyes. Her make-up was heavier than yesterday afternoon, but either way she had the kind of finely carved features that suggested either God in a good mood or a skilled plastic surgeon. At her age, probably the former, though you never knew.
“Mr. Hammer, I’m so pleased to see you,” she said.
“Thank you,” I said, though I almost asked, Why?
“Come and sit with me,” she said, taking my hand and leading me to the middle of the room where, on an Oriental carpet worth some real money, brown-leather overstuffed couches faced each other across a low-slung coffee table.
But we didn’t sit across from each other; instead, she deposited me on the left-hand couch and settled in beside me, sitting with her back to the plump arm of the thing, a leg tucked under her. Very casual, and even familiar.
“I’m pleased you were willing to see me,” I said.
“Pat… Captain Chambers… is an old family friend. I can’t imagine any request from him that I’d turn down.”
Lucky Pat.
She was leaning forward a little. “Oh, I’m sorry. I don’t mean to be rude. Would you like something to drink? Coffee? A cocktail, perhaps? I wouldn’t mind a glass of sherry myself.”
“Four Roses and ginger?”
She bounced up. “Four Roses and ginger it is.”
Her fanny was fun to watch as she swayed over to a well-stocked liquor cart in front of one of the walls of books.
As she poured, her back to me, weight on one leg, she asked, “How were the roads?”
“A little slick. Slowed me down some.”
“That surprises me some.”
“Why’s that?”
“Your reputation… as a sort of reckless individual.”
The little blonde turned with my drink in one hand and her own glass of sherry in the other. Her expression was faintly teasing and the big brown orbs bore a twinkle.
She handed me my drink and resumed her leg-tucked-under-her position, nestling in the niche between the armrest and the back cushion.
I glanced over at the roll-top desk, on which an electric typewriter sat like a plump gray Buddha. I said, keeping it light, trying not to seem rude, “You always do your correspondence this time of night?”
“Oh, that’s not my correspondence. I’m working on my new play.”
That implied previous ones.
Turning sideways to face her, I said, “I didn’t know you were a playwright. That sounds ambitious.”
She shrugged. “Well, a girl has to do something with her time.”
“Isn’t running this household enough? I assume that’s what you do.”
She nodded resignedly. “Yes, that’s a responsibility I took on long ago. But we don’t have a large staff. Just Lena the maid, Dixie the cook, some girls from town who clean, Willie the caretaker, and… well, there was Jamie, of course.”
“Of course. Will you be hiring someone to take his place?”
“I don’t know. We haven’t got that far.” Her bubbly mood was losing its fizz.
To help get her carbonated again, I asked, “So how did you get interested in writing plays? Have you had anything produced?”
She came bubbling back. “I did have something produced, last summer, at one of the Catskill playhouses. There’s been interest from a producer about an off-Broadway staging, but that’s still just so much talk.”
“Impressive nonetheless.” I gave her a kidding little smile. “What does a young woman like you have to write plays about?”
“Oh, dysfunctional families. Just like every playwright. How’s the Four Roses and ginger? Did I get it right?”
“Perfect. Am I jumping the gun, Miss Dunbar, in assuming you approve or… anyway, sanction… the investigation Pat Chambers asked me to undertake?”
She nodded, saying, “I certainly am,” adding, “and please make it Dorena.”
“And I’m Mike. I have to say I’m a little surprised.”
“Why is that, Mike?”
“Because I’ll have to ask you and everyone around here plenty of embarrassing questions and go poking into uncomfortable areas.”
She sipped the sherry. “Well, why don’t you ask me something and we’ll see if I get embarrassed or uncomfortable.”
I suddenly had a hunch this wasn’t her first sherry of the evening.
“Can you think of anyone,” I asked, “who might have a motive for killing Jamison Elder?”
“No. He was a very nice man. He was like—”
“A member of the family?”
“Yes.”
“Dysfunctional family or Father Knows Best?”
I was testing her a little, and she passed just fine: she smiled. Possibly a sherry-induced smile, but she smiled.
“Somewhere in between,” she said.
“Did Jamison have a private life that you know anything about? I assume he had some time off.”
She nodded. “He did. He had several evenings a week that were his own. For a while he was involved with a woman who taught high school, but she married someone else.”
“When was this?”
“Twenty-some years ago. Daddy was still alive.”
“No love life since then?”
A shrug. “Oh, he may have gone out with a female or two. He used to be active with his church. Episcopalian.”
“Used to be?”
She nodded, sipped more sherry. “Yes, he lost interest or faith or something, maybe, oh… ten or twelve years ago?”
Was there nothing current in this man’s life?
I asked, “Did he have any outside hobbies?”
“He played poker with some men his age, once or twice a month.”
Finally a glimmer of something!
“Gambling, huh? Did he ever get in trouble over his losses?”
She shook her head. “I don’t think so. I believe it was penny ante.”
I was starting to think that Jamison Elder was already half-dead before he became half a corpse.
Bluntly, I said, “We need to talk about your father’s death.”
“Of course.”
I shifted on the couch. “Then you agree with Pat that it might have been murder?”
She shrugged. “I always wondered.”
“Can I see where it happened?”
There was nothing bubbly about her now. Her narrow pretty face turned white, the black make-up around her eyes and the coral coating of her lips giving her a kabuki look; but she nodded. She got up, left her sherry behind, and I did the same with my now-empty tumbler. I followed her to the high-ceilinged entry area and up the sweeping stairway to the second floor. Toward the end of the long hall
way, at left, was her father’s room.
For this having been the sleeping chamber of a very wealthy man, the effect was more like the cop he’d once been before inventing his way into big bucks. A double bed, nothing fancy, with a pair of nightstands. A dresser, no mirror. Across the room, a table with a comfy chair overseen by a standing lamp. The parquet floor had a few throw rugs, the walls some starving-artist landscape paintings.
The only thing vaguely rich-person about it was the private bath.
“Where was he found?” I asked her.
She stood by where that was, just outside the bathroom, and pointed down as if she’d just spotted the body for the first time.
“He had pills in there?” I asked.
She nodded.
I pointed across the room toward the table and comfy chair. “And there?”
She nodded.
I went over and had a look. A couple of fat bestsellers were on the reading table—Hawaii, Advise and Consent.
I asked, “He often read before he went to bed?”
“Yes.”
“Didn’t read in bed?”
“No, I don’t think so.”
Not a surprise—the low-wattage lamps on the nightstands didn’t seem conducive to that.
“Do you recall,” I asked, “which side of the bed he got out of that night? Which side of the covers had been disturbed?”
Her brow furrowed. “I think… I think the left side.”
His right.
“And he kept some spare pills on the reading table, yet instead he came around and tried to make it to the bathroom, on the opposite side of the room.”
“Does that mean something, Mike?”
“He may have gone to the reading table first, and found his pill bottle emptied… not by him… and wound up crawling toward the bathroom.”
“And not making it,” she said quietly.
“If he had,” I said, “I doubt he’d have found any pills there, either.”
“You mean… you already think it’s murder?”
“It could be.”
“But the police…?”
“They’re good people, but lacking in imagination. Who found the body?”
“Jamison. When Father was late coming down for breakfast, he went up to check on him.”
Maybe the butler did do it.
She’d been keeping it together well but seemed on the verge of coming apart, so I said, “I think we’ve spent enough time in here.”
Before long we were back on the couch in the library. She got herself another sherry, and I had another Four Roses and ginger.
I asked, “Are your brothers here?”
“Stepbrothers. No. Well, my brother Chickie is, in his bedroom in the carriage house. But Dex and Wake go out most evenings.”
“And this is no exception.”
She nodded. “Madeline’s out, too.”
“With her husband?”
“Wake? Not hardly!”
“Are Wake and Dex together?”
“You do have a sense of humor, Mr. Hammer.”
I sighed, sipped. “Well, that’s too bad.”
“What is?”
“I had hoped to talk to them. I’m pleased to have your blessing to investigate, and that’s probably enough… but I’d like to get the go-ahead from those two, as well.”
Her eyebrows rose. “Oh, well… you have it.”
“I do?”
She nodded and her blonde hair bounced. “They got on board right away. They’re pleased to have you looking into Jamison’s death, and Daddy’s, too.”
“Well… that surprises me.”
“Why, Mike?”
“Meaning no offense, you and your brothers—”
“Stepbrothers.”
“You and your stepbrothers are the only obvious suspects, if Jamison Elder’s death was a homicide.”
“We are?”
I nodded. “I’m aware, Dorena, that Elder’s death pumps an extra sixty-some grand into each of your pockets.”
She was looking past me, over the rim of the sherry glass. “I hadn’t thought of that, but… I guess it’s true.” Then the big brown eyes fixed on me. “What’s your daily rate, Mr. Hammer? Mike?”
“One-fifty a day plus expenses. But I already have a client.”
“Who—Pat Chambers? Nonsense. He’s your best friend. You won’t charge him anything! Let the Dunbar family demonstrate to you that we welcome this investigation. That we welcome you, Mike. Where are you staying?”
“Kutsher’s.”
She waved that off. “Oh, that won’t do. That’s a madhouse. You’ll stay right here with us!”
I argued some, on both points, but she was a forceful little thing when she wanted to be. I wound up with her as a client, and with a room in the mansion, till my investigation was done.
She put me in her father’s room.
CHAPTER FOUR
Showered and shaved, and in suit and tie, I came down for breakfast just before eight a.m. and found two Dunbars seated at the big dining room table off the kitchen. Dexter was sitting toward the far end on the right, and Chickie at the far end on the left. Both kept the head-of-the-table chairs empty. Breakfast had apparently not yet been served.
The older Dunbar brother was in a charcoal mohair suit with a shades-of-gray silk tie. He might have been dressed to go off to a high-finance firm. Fittingly, he was reading a folded-open Wall Street Journal as he sipped his morning coffee.
Chickie was in a western-style gray shirt with a red embroidered yoke, a Lone Ranger patch on its red-trimmed breast pocket. He, too, had a paper open and was hunkered over doing a crossword puzzle. Amazingly, it was the New York Times.
I said hello, getting a “Hi” from Chickie, who did not look up, and a “Mr. Hammer” from Dex, who gave me the barest glance and nod. Then I went on into the kitchen to see what the morning drill was.
The cook, Dixie, was a big friendly heavyset Negro woman right out of Gone with the Wind, only minus any Amos ’n’ Andy accent. At the stove, after the introductions, she took my order, which I was told could be eggs any way I wanted and bacon with cottage fries. Orange juice if I liked, coffee already on the table.
“I’ll bring it to you myself,” she said, her cheerfulness taxed.
“Isn’t cooking the meals enough?” I asked, kidding her a little after I’d made my requests. “Do you have to deliver ’em, too?”
“Used to be, Mr. Jamison did all that. He’d come up for breakfast and at supper, bringin’ the boy along. For lunch, those two stayed over in the carriage house.”
“Nice man, Mr. Jamison?”
“Nice man. Kindly man. At lunch, Lena helps out. It’s a small staff, but there’s only four who’s livin’ here.”
“Four plus me, Miss Dixie,” I said, grinning at her. “And I always bring my appetite.”
She grinned back, cheerful again. “No problem, Mr. Mike.”
“When does Miss Dunbar come down?”
“About an hour. Mr. Wake, he drags along ’bout ten.”
“Not exactly a family that eats together.”
“Supper, sometimes… but breakfast, no.”
I was on my way back into the dining room when I paused and turned to ask her, “That boy Chickie… does he always do the New York Times crossword? I can’t manage the one in TV Guide.”
She shrugged big shoulders. “I know, it’s the doggonedest thing. He’s been doin’ that, and good at it, long as I been here. Which is a good ten years anyway.”
“Must be an idiot savant.”
“Well, he’s an idiot, all right.”
I split the difference between Dex and Chickie, sitting halfway down on the former’s side. Got myself some coffee, helped myself to the cream and sugar. Chickie, pausing for a sip from his glass of milk, met my eyes and smiled shyly, then returned to his crossword. The Daily News was on the table in case anybody was uncouth enough to be interested. I opened it to the funnies.
Breakfast was
fine, the scrambled eggs not overcooked, the bacon nicely crisp, the potatoes tasty but not greasy. When I came into money, I’d hire Dixie away from these ungrateful slobs.
Dex stopped reading the Journal when his breakfast came—poached eggs and toast—but Chickie kept at the crossword when his food arrived, exactly the same order as mine. Great minds.
Between bites, I said to Dex, “I was pleased that you and your brother are okay with me looking into things.”
He nodded, smiled faintly, but said nothing.
I went back to my eating.
“Done!” Chickie said, throwing down his pencil and raising his hands in triumph. Next to me, his stepbrother winced and maybe shuddered a little. Then Chickie bent over his breakfast and really dug in.
Dex finished before I did, and rose from his chair and seemed to be heading out until he stopped next to me, as if in afterthought, and said, “Could we talk sometime today, Mr. Hammer?”
With his dark hair and handsome oval face, he might have stepped out of an Arrow shirt ad.
“We’ll have to, Mr. Dunbar. It’s key that both you and your brother cooperate.”
“Of course. I’m going down to my office in Monticello. Meet me there this morning. At your convenience.”
He slipped his hand in his suitcoat pocket and handed me his business card with address:
Dexter J. Dunbar
Financial Services
312 Broadway Avenue
Monticello, New York
He’d really come prepared, unless he kept a stack of the things in his suitcoat pocket at all times.
When Dex had gone, Chickie suddenly said, “I walk over here by myself now.”
“You do?”
The man/boy nodded. “Breakfast and supper. My friend Mr. Elder used to walk me over, but he’s in heaven now, you said.”
“That’s right. I’m sure you miss him. He was your teacher, wasn’t he?”
Chickie nodded. “Maybe you could walk me back.”
“Sure,” I said.
We went outside through the library’s French doors and, as we started down the fieldstone walk, Chickie slipped his hand in mine.
The air was crisp but not quite cold, the ground slushy, the snow existing only in occasional patches with some grass straggling through like a bald man’s stubborn last strands. With the sun getting this ambitious, I wouldn’t need the Burberry today.
The Will to Kill Page 5
