The Baxter Trust sw-1

by Parnell Hall

  “He was dead when the police got there,” Dirkson said. “That’s the best we can do.”

  “You mean he might have been alive when I found him, and then died? Oh.”

  “And you have no idea who he was?”

  “No. Who was he?”

  Dirkson shook his head. “We don’t know.”

  “You don’t know?”

  “No. He had no identification on him.”

  “Oh. Isn’t that a little strange?”

  “Yes, it is. But he had nothing in his pockets.”

  “Nothing?”

  “Nothing at all.”

  “Oh.”

  Farron stole a glance at Dirkson. Nothing but the key, he thought. He saw the way Dirkson’s mind was running.

  “You have any idea how this man got into your apartment?” Dirkson asked.

  “No, I don’t.”

  “You keep your apartment locked?”

  She gave him a look. “In New York City? Of course I do.”

  “Then how could he have gotten in?”

  “I have no idea.”

  “Anyone else have a key to your apartment?” Dirkson asked casually.

  Sheila’s eyes flickered. Johnny had a key. But that was none of their business.

  “No,” she said.

  Dirkson caught it again. But he didn’t press the point. He just made a mental note to find out to whom she’d given a key.

  “All right,” he said. “Let’s get back to the letter. Can you think of any reason why this man would have sent you the letter?”

  “I can’t think of any reason why anyone would have sent me that letter.”

  The phone rang. Dirkson picked it up, listened and said, “Okay. Thanks. Send in Tucker.”

  He hung up the phone and turned back to Sheila. “All right, Miss Benton. That’s all for now. I may need to talk to you again later. The police are finished with your apartment.”

  Sergeant Tucker entered. Dirkson came around his desk, helped Sheila to her feet and gestured to Sergeant Tucker.

  “Now,” Dirkson said, “if you’ll just let Sergeant Tucker take your fingerprints, you’re free to go.”

  Sheila paled. “My fingerprints…”

  “Well, now,” Dirkson said, suavely. “We’ve taken a lot of fingerprints from your apartment. We need yours so we can tell which of them are not yours.”

  “I see,” Sheila said. She didn’t look happy.

  Sergeant Tucker escorted her out.

  Dirkson’s frozen smile lasted only until the door was closed.

  “Damn,” he said.

  Farron looked at him with a wry smile. “Helpful, isn’t she?”

  “She certainly is.”

  Farron cocked his head. “I would hate to comment on the veracity of the D.A.’s office, but I notice you mentioned there was nothing in the dead man’s pockets. I don’t believe you mentioned a key.”

  “You’re damn right I didn’t, and you’re not going to, either. I want you to clamp a lid on this key bit, and I mean now. If it leaks out, I will hold you personally responsible. You got that? If I end up having to prosecute the girl, I don’t want her to know about it until I hit her with it in court.”

  “You think we’ll end up charging her?”

  “I don’t know. You got any other suspects?”

  “Not at the moment.”

  “Okay. Get on it. And get the dope on the girl. Find out if she really saw her uncle. Find out when she left. Trace the cab that took her back to her apartment. Get the driver to identify her. Pin him down on the time. Then dig into her personal life and give me everything you can. I want to know where she buys her food, who fixes her teeth, what kind of toilet paper she uses.”

  “It’s already being done. Just routine.”

  “Yeah,” Dirkson said. “Just like checking out that letter.”

  Farron looked at him. “All right. Tell me something. If that girl walked into your office with that letter, and told you what she told me, what would you do about it?”

  Dirkson considered. “Off the record?”

  “Of course.”

  Dirkson smiled and shook his head. “I’d say, ‘Fuck her,’ and forget about it.”

  8

  Sheila Benton rode uptown in the taxi and assessed her performance, which wasn’t easy to do, seeing as how she was a nervous wreck.

  Well, she’d gotten through it. That was the best she could say about it. That damn district attorney, with his oily, ingratiating manner. He hadn’t believed a word she said, she was sure of it. Particularly the window-shopping part. That was so feeble. But she’d had to say something. She couldn’t have said, “No, I was out buying cocaine, so I couldn’t possibly have committed the murder.”

  Shit. The cocaine. They hadn’t arrested her. They hadn’t searched her. She could have had it on her all the time. She hadn’t had to mail it to herself after all. And she really could have used it now. Christ, how long did the mails take, anyway? Forever, probably. But, hell, it wasn’t like she’d sent it to Alaska. The mailbox was half a block from her house. The post office was two blocks from that. So how long could it possibly take?

  The answer was, no time at all. But that didn’t matter. Because there were no more mail deliveries today. And tomorrow seemed an eternity away.

  The cab pulled up in front of her building. Sheila paid it off and noted with regret that after paying a hundred for the elusive gram, she now had only twelve dollars left. Well, that was the least of her worries.

  Sheila looked at her mailbox on the way in. She couldn’t help doing it, though she knew nothing could be there. She went up the stairs, unlocked the door and went in.

  Christ. What a nightmare. But it was real. The body was, of course, gone, but there was a chalk outline on the floor around where it had lain, just like in the movies.

  Sheila stood, looking down at it, and shuddered.

  Then it all came apart for her. She’d held herself together for too long, and now it all let go. She went over and threw herself on the couch, weeping uncontrollably.

  She cried for several minutes. Finally she managed to stop. She went in the bathroom and splashed water on her face. She looked at herself in the mirror. God! She looked awful. Well, why not? Who wouldn’t, after all that?

  She went back and sat down on the couch.

  She reached an immediate decision. It was too much to take alone. She needed help. She needed reassurance. She needed Johnny.

  He’d told her he was staying at the Wilshire. She called information, got the phone number and dialed.

  There was no John Dutton registered there.

  Sheila hung up the phone in a cold sweat. Jesus Christ, hadn’t he said the Wilshire? She was sure he had. So why the hell wasn’t he there? And where the hell was he?

  She called information again, and told them to give her the phone numbers of all the hotels in Reno. The woman at information couldn’t believe it. Was she crazy? There were three whole pages of ’em. Sheila told her to forget it and hung up the phone.

  Sheila thought fleetingly of calling Johnny’s wife. Her name was Inez. Inez Dutton. She’d probably be listed. But Inez wasn’t supposed to know about her, of course. Well, Sheila could pretend she was a secretary or something, pretend it was a business call, couldn’t she?

  No, she realized, she couldn’t. She could never pull it off. Not in the shape she was in. She’d break down. She’d blow it. Inez would know she wasn’t a secretary. In fact, Inez might even know Johnny’s secretary.

  Shit. Of course. She was being stupid. Johnny’s secretary. Sheila didn’t know her name, but that didn’t matter.

  She picked up the phone, called the investment firm and spoke to a secretary who informed her that John Dutton was out of town and would be back tomorrow. She said it was urgent, and asked if there was any place he could be reached. The secretary said, sure, in Reno at the Hotel Wilshire.

  Sheila hung up the phone as if in a fog. What was happening? Was it a
conspiracy? Was everyone against her?

  She shook her head to clear it, and got control of herself. Okay, she had to think. Her biggest problem right now was, sooner or later she was going to be arrested for murder. She was sure of it. The D.A. hadn’t bought her story, there were no other candidates and they were going to get her. She couldn’t reach Johnny, and she needed help.

  A certain kind of help was immediately available, Sheila knew. All she had to do was call Uncle Max, and he’d take care of everything. He’d swing into action, hire teams of lawyers, call the commissioner, maybe even buy the cops off, if such a thing were possible in a murder case.

  But that was just the trouble. He’d take care of everything. He’d be in complete control, doing everything, telling everyone what to do. She’d have no say in anything. In fact, he probably wouldn’t even let her know what he was doing. He’d keep her in the dark, treat her like a child. And his stranglehold over her life would tighten and tighten.

  Even so, this was murder, and she was so scared she probably would have called him if it hadn’t been for one thing. The coke. If Max hired lawyers for her, she’d have to tell them about the coke. Or even if she didn’t tell them, they’d find out. They’d question her, and she’d have to pretend to be cooperating with them, so she’d have to answer, and eventually they’d catch her in a lie and break her, and they’d find out.

  And then Uncle Max would know. Sheila shuddered at the thought. Uncle Max. Her trustee. Uncle Max would know.

  And that would cost her her inheritance.

  No, damn it. Bad as the situation was, scared as Sheila was, Uncle Max was out. If anything was going to be done, she would have to do it.

  Sheila got up, went in the kitchen alcove, and got out the Yellow Pages. Hell, which was it? Lawyers or attorneys? A damn stupid way to go about it, but at the moment she couldn’t think of anything else to do.

  9

  Steve Winslow was dreaming.

  He was in a play, but the thing was, he hadn’t rehearsed it. He hadn’t rehearsed it, and he didn’t know the lines. He wasn’t even sure what the play was. It seemed to be a Chekhov, but he didn’t know which one. Uncle Vanya? The Cherry Orchard? The Sea Gull? No. Damn.

  He wasn’t on stage. He was in the wings, waiting to go on. Waiting and watching the action. There was a girl on stage, and he was listening to her dialogue, trying to get a clue. Christ, if she’d just say she wanted to go to Moscow, she’d be Irina, and the play would be Three Sisters. But she wasn’t saying that.

  But what she was saying was right there in the script he was holding, the script he had now, but could not take on stage. And there, just a page later, was his entrance. For a long, long scene. Lines and lines and lines, more than he could ever learn in time.

  The odd thing was, the script in his hand didn’t tell him the name of the play, didn’t even give him a clue. But he didn’t even think of that. That didn’t even bother him. That wasn’t part of the dream. In the dream it never occurred to him that the play’s title should be on the script, that all he had to do was look at the cover. In the dream the script only told him the lines, the lines that he didn’t know. That and how soon it would be that he would have to say them.

  And suddenly it came, and he was on stage, and the girl was talking to him, and in the void beyond the footlights were a thousand eyes all staring at him, waiting for him to reply, waiting like the girl for an answer that would not come, for a performance that would not happen. And here was this girl talking to him, and he didn’t even know her name. Christ, he didn’t even know his name. And the girl was talking, and the people were watching, and a phone was ringing, and-

  A phone? A phone in a Chekhov play? Wait What was going on? Something was not right. Couldn’t be a phone. A bell, maybe. Yeah. A bell. Saved by the bell. He didn’t have to go on. He didn’t have to answer. The play was called off, down but not out, saved by the bell at the count of nine and-

  Steve’s eyes popped open. He blinked, stared. Where was he? What was that?

  His eyes blurred. Then focused.

  A battered bookcase. The top two shelves taken up with worn, dog-eared, Perry Mason murder mysteries-paperbacks, some with their spines cracked, and the pages separated so that the titles were no longer legible; others, in slightly better repair, dating themselves with twenty-five-and thirty-five-cent prices. The middle shelves filled with books of plays, including several Samuel French scripts. The lower shelves filled with newer-looking law books.

  Posters tacked to dirty, cracked, off-white walls. Faded posters from summer stock theatre productions: “Mayfair Theatre presents A Streetcar Named Desire”; “Roundtree Summer Theatre presents The Homecoming.”

  A window with the blind drawn, light spilling through the cracks, offering the only illumination in the room.

  The room where Steve lay stretched out on the couch.

  Listening to the phone ring.

  His room. His couch. His phone.

  Phone.

  Shit.

  Steve rolled onto one side, reached over the end of the couch and grabbed the receiver from the end table.

  “Hello,” he muttered.

  An adenoidal voice said, “Mr. Winslow?”

  “Yes.”

  “This is your answering service. A Miss-”

  “Wait a minute. Wait a minute,” Steve said. “Lemme get a pencil.”

  He hung the phone over the end of the couch, sat up, and threw the blanket off him. He rubbed his eyes and looked at the clock: 4:30. Damn.

  He got to his feet and pulled up the blind to let the light in. He turned and looked around, helplessly.

  Steve’s apartment was a one-room affair not unlike Sheila’s except for the fact that his couch did not fold out into a bed, he slept on it as is, and, while Sheila kept her apartment fairly neat, his was a holy mess.

  He plodded to the desk, pawed through the litter on top, and pulled open the drawers.

  No pencil. Letters, books, magazines, newspapers, everything else but a pencil.

  He was about to give up and just try to memorize the message, when he spotted a pencil on the floor. He scooped it up. The point was broken. He began picking at it with his thumbnail. He grabbed a letter off his desk and hurried back to the phone.

  “Okay,” he said. “Shoot.”

  “A Miss Sheila Benton called and wants you to call her right back. She said it was urgent.”

  “Wait a minute. What did you tell her?”

  “Just what it says on your card-‘Mr. Winslow is in conference with a client right now. Could I have him call you back?’”

  “Fine. What was the name?”

  “Sheila Benton.”

  “And the number?”

  She told him and he wrote it down as best he could with the unsharpened pencil. It was poor, but it was legible.

  He hung up the phone and dialed the number.

  The first ring had barely begun when the phone was snatched up and a voice said, “Hello?”

  “Sheila Benton?”

  “Yes.”

  “Steve Winslow, returning your call.”

  “Oh, Mr. Winslow. Thank god you’re there. I need an attorney.”

  “What’s the trouble?”

  “A man was murdered in my apartment this afternoon.”

  There was a moment’s pause while Winslow digested the information. Murdered! Really? Was this a crank phone call? Was this one of his friends playing a joke on him?

  “Murdered?”

  “Yes. A man I’d never seen before. And yesterday I received a blackmail letter.”

  Jesus. If this was a prank, it was too good not to bite.

  “Miss Benton, I’d better see you right away. Where are you now?”

  “In my apartment. Do you want me to come to your office?”

  Steve instinctively glanced at the cluttered room. He smiled slightly. “No. Don’t come to my office. I want to see the scene of the crime anyway. I’ll come there.”

 
“All right It’s 193 West 89th Street, 2B.”

  He almost said, “Or not to be,” but controlled himself. Instead he said, “Be right there.”

  He hung up the phone and shook his head. Holy shit. Was it possible? A client.

  He stumbled into the bathroom, turned on the light and splashed water on his face. He gazed at his reflection in the mirror.

  Though he was thirty-five, he looked younger. Part of the reason was his shoulder-length dark hair, which made him look like a hippie from the sixties. The hair framed a lean, expressive, sensitive face. Damn. An artist’s face, not a lawyer’s.

  Steve pulled off the t-shirt and undershorts he had been sleeping in, and jumped into the shower. He washed quickly, got out and toweled himself dry.

  Now what to do? His hair. Jesus, his hair. He had kept it long since his acting days out of force of habit-you could always cut it for a part, but you couldn’t grow it overnight. Well, no time for a haircut now. He left it wet, combed it back, plastered it to the back of his neck. There. He could tuck it into his shirt collar.

  If he had a clean shirt. Shit. He groped through the closet. Yes. A white shirt. Could use an ironing, but not bad. He grabbed it off the hanger, put it on, tucking the hair under the collar. He buttoned it to the neck, to hold the hair in place.

  He went and looked in the mirror. Not bad.

  Of course, pants would help.

  He went back, jerked open a drawer of the bureau, found a pair of jockey shorts, pulled them on.

  Great. Now the suit.

  Steve rummaged through the whole closet before he remembered. Shit. He’d lent the suit to Arthur for that wedding last year, and he’d never gotten it back. And Arthur’d moved to California.

  Jesus, what to do? Improvise. Pants, jacket, tie-throw it together, get it done. If you’re going to do it at all. If not, call her back and tell her to forget it. What are you, nuts? The first client in a year. Come on Winslow, you big schmuck, this can’t be that hard.

  He continued to rummage through the closet and dresser drawers.