Convertible Hearse

by William Campbell Gault

  She was of some age I couldn’t guess between twenty-nine and forty-five, a dark-haired, attractive and trim-figured woman who wore her beautiful clothes well and had obviously been born to the purple.

  She stood just within the open doorway and looked at me doubtfully. “Mr. Callahan?”

  I nodded.

  “I’m Mrs. Dunbar. I read about you in the paper and then remembered an old friend of mine, Glenys Christopher, had spoken of you. I phoned her. She recommends you very highly.”

  “That was kind of her,” I said. “Won’t you sit down, Mrs. Dunbar?”

  She sat in my customer’s chair and took a deep breath and looked at me thoughtfully.

  I said, “I presume you are the first Mrs. Dunbar?”

  “Yes.” She took another deep breath. “The one the News referred to as the ‘socially prominent’ one. Why do the papers always use those clichés?”

  “Most people aren’t,” I said, “so they like to read about people who are. Have you heard from — Mr. Dunbar?” I had almost said “Loony Leo.”

  “No,” she said. “But I — might know where he is. That’s why I’m here.”

  “If you have information as to his whereabouts, Mrs. Dunbar, your duty as a citizen is to take that information to the police.”

  Dorothy Hartland Dunbar sighed. “Glenys warned me you might be stuffy. I have no information of that kind. I have a — a feeling he might be at a place in the hills above Malibu.”

  “And …?”

  She frowned. “I — still like Leo. I — worry about him. I want you to go up there and if he is there, I want you to convince him he should report immediately to the police.”

  “I can do that,” I said. “Shall I bill you or Mr. Dunbar?”

  “Bill me,” she said. She smiled. “We’ll call it auld lang syne. Leo was a fine man until he — well, he’s still a fine man in many ways.”

  “I see. Is this Malibu place secret? I mean, is it something the police aren’t likely to learn from questioning the present Mrs. Dunbar?”

  “The police,” she said acidly, “aren’t likely to learn the time of day by questioning the present Mrs. Dunbar. Why do you think Leo is in this mess?”

  “I don’t know.”

  “Well, you don’t need to. I haven’t asked you to perform any illegal service, have I?”

  “No, Mrs. Dunbar. I’ll go up there right now.”

  She gave me explicit directions for reaching the place and I wrote them all down. She left and I sat for a few moments at my desk, wondering why Mrs. Dunbar should worry about a husband who had discarded her.

  Though of course, I couldn’t be sure he had discarded her. It had been the easy assumption, new place of business, new attitude toward his business, new address, new, young, imitation blonde wife. For all I knew, Dorothy Hartland Dunbar might have had a lover of her own; that wouldn’t be hard for her to find.

  The flivver went chugging toward the setting sun, up Wilshire, through the expensive going-home traffic. We were back on standard time and the day was already turning into dusk.

  A city on wheels, its traffic was stopped for blocks each time a light changed. And the suppliers of these wheels should have had the lushest market in the country. But in this as in all the merchandised lines, Los Angeles was too competitive. It was probably the most competitive retail market in America.

  And so the merchants screamed their wares via television, radio, newspaper and leaflet. And they worked on frighteningly narrow margins or they turned crooked. Volume would cut down the selling cost of each item, but when they were all volume dealers, some other profit fattener must be uncovered.

  Leo might have found the obvious solution, stolen cars. Or he might have been guilty of only that one violation. I wondered what success the police were having with the service manager.

  The red sun was low on the water of the Bay. To my left, the Malibu Colony looked smugly and languidly forward to the cocktail hour. I turned the flivver to the right, up into the dry and dusty hills.

  Up and up to a narrow, graveled road that led through a gate marked “Private” and past a sign that warned against smoking. Past three estates to another narrow road which was a private driveway flanked by stucco pillars.

  Ahead, through the screening eucalyptus, I could see a low house of pickled barn siding with a shake roof and a car port dug out of a lower level beneath it. The house was up and the view stretched for miles along the entire Bay and down on the Colony below.

  There was a Lincoln convertible on the parking area in front of the car port and a man seemed to be sitting behind the wheel.

  The flivver made the big swing and I could see more clearly across the abyss now, and the man, I decided, could easily be Loony Leo Dunbar.

  For a moment, the eucalyptus and the shoulder of the hill cut him from sight and then I was up to his level and swinging the flivver into the parking area.

  It was Leo, all right, and I got out to walk over.

  He was sitting behind the wheel, staring out at the dry, gray-green hills. He was staring but not seeing.

  There was a small but effective hole right in the middle of his forehead.

  FOUR

  IT WAS DARK when they came. The house had been locked, but I’d broken a window and gone in to phone the police. The uniformed men came first and then Pascal from the West Los Angeles Station came. He didn’t have Detective Caroline with him this time, for which I was grateful.

  Pascal wanted to know what I was doing here, and I told him. I occasionally protect the name of a client, but there wasn’t any harm that could befall Dorothy Hartland Dunbar from her innocent hiring of me. Neither of us had done anything wrong. Yet.

  Pascal said quietly, “If he hadn’t known we were looking for him, he never would have come here. And he’d be alive right now. I hope whoever tipped him off can live with that thought.”

  “It’s a tough one to live with,” I said. “Though probably not for everybody.”

  “Not everybody is right.”

  I looked at him calmly. “And of course, you’re just guessing. Leo might have been killed on his lot or in the home of one of his wives or just trying to buck that Wilshire traffic.”

  “We’d have had him in custody. No hood would get him there.”

  “Not until you released him. What are we quarreling about, Sergeant?”

  “I was lecturing, not quarreling. Hang around.”

  I hung around outside, in my flivver, staring down at the lights. I had the radio on.

  In about ten minutes, Pascal came out to tell me I could go. I said. “You’re going to check that Lincoln, of course.”

  “Of course. If Leo had any other hot ones on the lot or in the showroom, he’d be likely to drive one away, wouldn’t he?”

  “Right. Did Mr. Samuels identify the service manager as the man who bought his junked Cad?”

  Pascal shook his head and his face was sour. “He’s one of those ultraresponsible citizens. He admits this Tomsic looks like the same man, but doesn’t want to commit himself, because he isn’t sure. Boy, these solid citizens …”

  “Tomsic, that’s the service manager’s name?”

  “Right, George Tomsic. Why?”

  “In case he comes looking for me. I tipped you off, didn’t I? And the papers so stated.”

  “You tipped me off. And that’s why I haven’t gone to too much trouble investigating who tipped Leo off. Clear?”

  “Sergeant, I wish we could get along., I certainly try to get along with you.”

  “Try harder. And keep in touch with me. Good night.”

  I said good night to him and went down the hill to the highway. How many would mourn Leo Dunbar? I mourned him. He was a product of a certain time and place, no worse than most of us and better than some.

  The big yellow moon was now obscured and wisps of fog drifted in from the quiet, dark ocean. The flivver whimpered softly, her retreaded tires sighing on the damp asphalt.

 
I didn’t go home. My client would want to know what had happened to her former husband.

  The house was low, long and white, set on a knoll above an immense, sloping front lawn surrounded by a low, white rail fence. A yellow light on a post illumined the asphalt parking area next to the side entrance.

  A housekeeper came to the door. I hadn’t finished giving her my name when Mrs. Dunbar appeared.

  “What is it, Mr. Callahan?” she asked anxiously. “Have you found …”

  “I found Mr. Dunbar,” I said quietly. “He’s dead.”

  Silence while both of them stared at me. Then Mrs. Dunbar asked hoarsely, “How …”

  “He was murdered. He was shot.”

  Another silence and then the housekeeper moved over closer to the other woman and Mrs. Dunbar put out a hand for support. The housekeeper put her arm around her, while Mrs. Dunbar stared at me, her face rigid.

  I was hoping she would break down; I was praying she could cry.

  She didn’t. She said in a monotone, “Thank you for coming directly here to tell me, Mr. Callahan. I’ll want to see you tomorrow.”

  “I’ll be at the office,” I said. “Good night.”

  I went home and to bed, but I couldn’t get to sleep for almost two hours.

  The morning Times gave me another picture of the second Mrs. Dunbar. She was shown supported by a police matron as she stood on the steps of the West Side Station and mascara-tinted tears streaked her anguished face. She had become hysterical on learning of her husband’s death, the account stated.

  Leo’s age was given; he had been forty-six. The second Mrs. Dunbar, the former Mavis Lillian, was twenty-seven. There was no mention in the paper of how the first Mrs. Dunbar had taken the news.

  The police were investigating the possibility that Leo had been shot in the house and then later placed in the car. A technical examination of the house’s interior had indicated there might have been a struggle there which had tipped over furniture, though the furniture had later been replaced to its original position.

  George Tomsic, the service manager, had been released after a lengthy police grilling. I had a feeling he was not out of the woods, though. The coincidence of his resembling the man who had bought Samuels’ wrecked car was too unusual to swallow.

  I cooked my own breakfast that morning. And as I ate, I added in my mind all the information I had to all the information the paper contained. I couldn’t see a killer in that crowd.

  If Leo had been one of the outlets for a stolen-car ring, he could very easily be the weak link in the chain and subject to extermination in the event of discovery. Leo had a previous reputation which put him on the right side of the fence. When the heat was on, Leo would be the first to see the sanity of confession. And that could uncover the ring and also some men who had no reason ever to side with the law.

  That was the logical theory, Leo’s death had been a gang kill. But what gang and what triggerman?

  Tomsic, now, there was a man who could be holding a key.

  Before I left for the office, I phoned Pascal and asked him, “Did you raise the original engine number on that Cad?”

  “Right. Belonged to a man in Las Vegas.”

  “Gambler?”

  “Nope. Solid citizen, it looks like.”

  “In Las Vegas? There can’t be many. I was thinking it might be a car the owner wanted stolen. You know — a deal.”

  “We’re checking that. And what have you been checking?”

  “Nothing, yet. Am I permitted to stick my nose into this case, Sergeant?”

  A pause, and then, “So long as you keep in touch with us every step of the way. You’re the only private man in the area we’d say that much to.”

  “Thank you, Sergeant. I will keep in touch all the way.”

  I had no present reason for sticking my nose into the killing, but Dorothy Dunbar had said she wanted to see me today, and I felt sure it would be about Leo. Which would put my nose into the case.

  At ten o’clock she phoned and asked if I would come to the house.

  She seemed composed when I faced her in her sunny living room half an hour later. She was obviously tired and she looked closer to forty than she did to thirty, today, but her voice was controlled and her manner dignified.

  She said quietly, “Sit down, Mr. Callahan. Could I offer you a cigarette or a drink?”

  “I don’t smoke, thank you. And I rarely drink anything but beer. It’s too early for a glass of beer.”

  She sat in a chair across from me and looked down at the floor as she smoothed her skirt absently with the palm of one hand. “I can imagine you, like others, might see an obvious pattern in the career of Leo Dunbar.” She looked up at me.

  “From Pasadena to a TV huckster? And then the new theatrical blonde to match the new life — at forty-six?”

  She nodded. “Seems standard, doesn’t it? Even — including what happened yesterday. Right out of the tabloids.”

  “To the tabloid reader’s eye, it seems standard,” I agreed. “But nothing ever is. At least, that’s been my experience. There are always nonconforming and contributing factors.”

  She nodded and looked back at the floor again. “Leo didn’t leave me for that — Mavis. I left him, first. I fell in love with another man.”

  Silence in the room. I couldn’t think of anything to say, so didn’t.

  She picked with one fingernail at the nubby texture of her chair’s arm. “I was the — romantic light-weight. Leo was always all business, a very sound and sensible man.”

  Again, I said nothing.

  Her voice was still quieter. “Even after this man, this — fortune hunter, left me, Leo wanted to come back. I — it was a complex thing — I mean, my pride …” She took a deep breath and looked at me candidly. “I didn’t let him. I’d had a taste of freedom.”

  “And then,” I said, “Leo met this Mavis.”

  She nodded. “He’d met a hundred like her before in business. She’s a nothing, like the others, but I guess Leo had some pride, too, and he wanted to prove something to me. Though God knows what marrying a silly little tramp like that would prove.”

  “Maybe,” I said, “Leo thought it would prove he wasn’t forty-six.”

  She nodded again. “Maybe. It proved only that he was solvent. Miss Mavis Lillian wasn’t likely to make any financial mistakes.”

  A pause, while we both looked at each other.

  Then I said, “Why are you telling me this, Mrs. Dunbar?”

  “Because I want you to investigate his death.”

  “Why?”

  “Haven’t I made myself clear? I feel responsible for what happened to Leo Dunbar.”

  “You aren’t. It wasn’t your divorce that sent him into the crooked end of his business, was it? The competition did that.”

  “We’re not sure that’s why he died, are we, because of his business?”

  “No. Another thing, the police will give this far more expert attention that I possess.”

  “Perhaps. And perhaps not. There are too many murders for them to be overly concerned with any single one.”

  “But this was a big one. The stolen-car racket was getting out of hand in this town. This might help to uncover the ring, if there is one. And it’s logical to assume there is one.”

  Again, she picked at the arm of her chair. “You don’t want the job, Mr. Callahan?”

  “I want it. But I also want you to understand my limitations.”

  Her smile was dim. “Ethical man, aren’t you? And so was Leo — for years and years.” She stood up. “Well, I guess there’s nothing more to say.”

  I stood up. “Do you know George Tomsic very well?”

  She shook her head. “Except that Leo thought very highly of him. I wasn’t nearly as — interested in Leo’s business as I should have been.”

  “Well, if you should think of something, anything connected with the business that might help, phone me, won’t you?”

  She promise
d she would and I left.

  I had George Tomsic’s address and I drove over there. It was in Brentwood, in the luxury apartment section of Brentwood, a two-story place of fieldstone around an oval pool. George must be doing all right.

  He was doing a little better than that; his apartment was listed as the owner’s on a discreet vacancy sign on the front lawn. At a fair estimate, the place should be worth two hundred thousand. I’d had no idea there was that kind of money in a service manager’s job.

  I rang his bell and nothing happened. I rang it again, and the door to the next apartment opened and an attractive girl, sans make-up and with her hair in a towel, came out to ask politely, “Did you come to see about the vacant apartment?”

  “Yes. Isn’t the owner home?”

  “He left about an hour ago. I have a key to the place, though, if you’d like to look at it. It’s on the second floor, overlooking the pool. It’s a very nice apartment.”

  “I’ll take a look at it,” I said.

  She went back in and reappeared a few moments later with the key. She said, “I’d take you up there, but I’m expecting a rather important phone call.”

  I smiled at her and went up the steps to the deck that serviced the second floor and overlooked the pool. I spent only enough time in Apartment 22 to see that it had one bedroom and a small kitchen and a fair-sized dinette and a large, beamed living room. Plus a bath and a half, as the realtors say. It was unfurnished, naturally.

  I came down again, and the door to the girl’s apartment was ajar and I could hear her talking on the phone. I heard her saying, “… I won’t take it. Not from him, or anyone else. And you can tell him that, Elsa.” Silence.

  Then, “No, no, no, no — absolutely not,” and the crash of the receiver being replaced. I rang her bell.

  She came to the door looking a little angry. I asked, “What is the rent on that place?”

  “Two hundred and twenty-five,” she said. “That includes water and electricity but not gas. And not telephone, of course.”

  “Of course,” I said. “Do you know George Tomsic very well?”

  She looked at me suspiciously for seconds. Then, quietly, “You didn’t come to see about the apartment, did you?”