Hoch's Ladies

by Edward D. Hoch

  “Her boyfriend had hidden the counterfeit money with her?”

  “Sure. He thought it was the safest place, but it didn’t keep him from getting killed.”

  “Roger followed us back to her apartment last night. He was parked across the street.”

  Sadie turned away. “I told her what to do on the phone earlier.”

  “What was your advice?”

  “I said if he was at the apartment she should manage to make her escape somehow. If he went after her, I’d go up there and take the money before he got it. She’d given me a duplicate key.”

  “She made her escape all right, by getting killed. Did you go there last night?”

  “God, no! When I heard about her death on the news I knew there’d be cops all over the place.”

  “Where was the money hidden?” Susan asked.

  “Inside a folded towel in the bathroom cabinet.”

  “If it was still, there, the police certainly found it. They were all over that bathroom.”

  She touched the door handle. “Look, I’ve got to go. I’ve told you everything I know.”

  “Not quite everything. Where can I find Roger?”

  “I don’t know. He was just a name to me. Betty never told me anything about him.”

  She left the car quickly, walking across the paved lot to her own little white Neon. Susan sat where she was until Sadie Shepherd had pulled out and vanished down the highway. She wanted to make certain she wasn’t being followed.

  Back at her hotel she found the Secret Service waiting for her. Adam Dullea intercepted her on the way to the elevator. “You’re a tough one to keep up with. I leave you alone for a few hours and you’re off on your own.”

  “I thought I had to clear myself by Thursday morning. I can’t do that sitting in a hotel room.”

  “Where did you go?”

  “You mean you didn’t have me followed?’ He laughed. “That was my job.”

  Susan just stood there in the lobby, wondering how much she could safely tell him. Finally she said, “All right, come on up and I’ll tell you what I learned.”

  In the room she opened the minibar and offered him a drink which he declined, “Maybe a Coke, if you’re having something.” She joined him in one and he said, “Your friend Brentnor’s been worried about you.”

  “I shouldn’t be so hard on Mike. He did fly right up here and help rescue me from a jail cell. I just always have the feeling he’s waiting for a chance to paw me.”

  “Has he tried it before?’

  “Once or twice. But he backs off when he sees I don’t like it.” He sipped his drink. “Where were you this afternoon?”

  “Out at the store. I still work for a living.”

  “So do I. Who did you see there?”

  “Betty’s assistant, a young woman named Sadie Shepherd.”

  “Does she know anything about the killing?”

  “Betty was an old friend. She told Sadie about the counterfeit money. She was afraid this Roger fellow wanted to take it without paying her price.”

  “That’s about what we figured.”

  “The money was hidden in the bathroom cabinet with her towels.”

  “It was?” The news seemed to startle Dullea. “Sergeant Razerwell told me he personally searched the entire bathroom, including the toilet tank.”

  Susan looked up. A sudden thought struck her. “What’s Razerwell’s first name?’

  “Eric. Don’t let your imagination run wild.”

  She brooded about it for a moment, then remembered something else. “While I was in her bathroom earlier, you said something about the dagger that killed her and I told you there were two daggers.”

  He shook his head. “Only one.”

  “There was a second dagger at the bottom of the tub.”

  “No, just the weapon that killed her. It was still in her back.”

  She held her breath, eyes closed, and asked one more question. “Were you parked across the street at the time of the murder, watching the apartment?”

  “Sure. I told you we were going to use the search warrant last night. I had

  to make sure she didn’t remove the money before my men arrived. When the police came I drove away until I could find out what was going on.”

  Susan opened her eyes and smiled. “Then I know how it was done.”

  It was back to Betty Quint’s apartment once more. Darkness had settled in and a strong breeze was blowing a few dead leaves down the center of the street. White-haired James Liction opened the door in answer to their ring and seemed more resigned than surprised at seeing them. “What is it? You want to examine the apartment again?”

  “I don’t think that’ll be necessary right now,” Susan told him. “I just want to ask you one question.”

  “Well, you might as well come in. You too, Mr. Dullea. Now what’s the question?”

  The answer came before she had a chance to ask it. From the kitchen, his wife called out, “Who is it, Roger?”

  “It’s just—” Liction began. Then he must have seen the expression on Susan’s face and realized what had happened. He tried to twist away as Dullea reached out to grab him.

  When the Secret Service man had him under control, Mrs. Liction came into the room. “Hey, what’s going on?”

  “We just have a few questions for your husband, that’s all.” She seemed resigned to it. “About the drugs, I suppose.”

  “That and other things.”

  Then Susan spoke. “I was going to ask you what the ‘R’ stood for in R. James Liction, the name on your mailbox. I thought maybe it was Roger. That’s what Betty Quint called you, wasn’t it?”

  “I guess so,” he mumbled. “I might have sold her a little pot. Nothing wrong with that.”

  “Are you growing it in the basement?” Dullea asked. “Some people do.”

  “Can I call you Roger?” Susan asked, then went on. “Roger, we know Betty

  offered to sell you a quantity of counterfeit hundred-dollar bills from overseas. She was frightened that you might try to steal them from her.”

  “I didn’t kill her,” Liction insisted. He could see where the conversation was leading. “I couldn’t have killed her. You were alone with her when it happened.”

  “How did you know that?’ Susan asked. “By looking in the bathroom window from your perch on the fire escape? Yes, I know there’s a fire escape outside that window even though I didn’t actually look at it. I saw the fire escape to the second floor when I drove up with Betty yesterday, and Mr. Dullea here even commented on the unlikely prospect of a burglar coming through the bathroom window from the fire escape.”

  Liction moistened his lips. “I think I want a lawyer.”

  “You’ll get one,” Adam Dullea said, formally stating his rights. “First thing, we’re going to get Sergeant Razerwell down here to make the formal arrest. The murder is his job. I’m just interested in the money.”

  Mrs. Liction spoke from the doorway. “If we give you the money, will you forget about the killing?’

  “Shut up, Mona!” he nearly screamed.

  “You see,” Susan continued, “I made a big mistake. Betty had seen someone in a car across the street and that frightened her. I thought it was Roger, but she knew it was Mr. Dullea here. She was caught between the two of them, with no way out. Maybe she’d even spotted you on the fire escape, Roger. Anyway, she decided to fake an attack on herself in the shower and escape by being taken to the hospital in an ambulance. She’d done some community theater work and had a fake dagger with one of those collapsible blades, the sort that ejects imitation blood when the blade retracts. It has adhesive to stick to the skin. While she was rummaging for a towel, she took the fake dagger and a real one and attached them to her body with Scotch

  tape, probably under her arm where I couldn’t see it. Her secretary Sadie said she was a great joker. Maybe she’d even pulled this stunt before.”

  Dullea was shaking his head. “Are you sayin
g she accidentally killed herself?”

  “No, no! She meant to tell me she was wounded and to call an ambulance. Then she’d give herself a flesh wound with the real dagger before they arrived, and she’d be rushed to the hospital, escaping both Roger and the Secret Service. But after sticking the collapsing dagger to her back, she let herself fall in the shower and accidentally hit her head, knocking her out for a moment. The real dagger, still taped to her body, came loose and fell in the tub. I saw the daggers and thought she was dead. Roger here had heard her scream, and while I was phoning 911 he came in the window of the bathroom to get the package of money. He must have seen her hide it there earlier. She was beginning to stir in the tub and he stabbed her with the real dagger. He saw that the first one was a fake, so he pulled it off her back and took it with him, along with the money. He went back out the window and closed it behind him.”

  “How long would that have taken?”

  “Not more than thirty seconds, and any sounds would have been covered by the water from the shower, which I hadn’t turned off. I stayed out of the bathroom completely after I called the police.”

  “What would she have told you and the doctors after the hoax was discovered?” Dullea asked.

  Susan shrugged. “She’d have had a slight flesh wound to show the doctors, and she’d have thought up some story to explain the knife. She’d have told me it was meant to be a joke and it back-fired. At least she’d be safe from both Roger and you. That was the important thing.”

  Dullea allowed a brief nod of agreement. “How did you know it was Liction? That first initial wasn’t much evidence to go on.”

  “There was something else. When Betty called Sadie from my hotel room, she said she was going back to her apartment and what should she do if Roger came up and demanded the money. She was saying that Roger lived downstairs, if I’d only known how to interpret her words. And once I knew Roger was so close, the method of murder wasn’t so hard to work out. One of the daggers had disappeared, and that meant someone had entered the bathroom before the police arrived. No one came through the door and the window was the only other entrance. If I hadn’t killed Betty, the person who

  entered through the window must have done it. Roger was too likely to be ignored.”

  It was Mona Liction who returned with the package of counterfeit money while they waited for the police. “Here! Take it! I told him not to get involved in this. Take it and leave us alone.”

  Adam Dullea reached out a hand as a police car pulled up in front. “I’ll take it, but I’m afraid we won’t be leaving you alone for quite some time.”

  A BUS LOAD OF BATS

  Susan Holt’s plane from New York landed in Phoenix at 5:45 and Mike Brentnor was there to meet her, having driven his rental car down from the bed-and-bath trade show in Las Vegas a few days earlier. Brentnor was tall and sandy-haired, a few years older than Susan but still in his early thirties. As a buyer for Mayfield’s, Manhattan’s largest and most prestigious department store, he often worked closely with Susan’s promotions department.

  “Right on time!” he greeted her, starting to give her a hug until her no-nonsense expression warned him off. “Long flight, huh? Tired out?”

  “I’m just all business, Mike, as you know. Save your hugs for the secretaries in the office.” “Aw, Susan! Give a guy a break.”

  She ignored it and asked, “Have you been out to the training camp.”

  He nodded as they headed out of the terminal toward his car. She was puling along her small suitcase on wheels, compact enough to fit in the plane’s overhead bin. “I drove out yesterday, after I checked in. Roitler wasn’t around, though. He’s the big cheese who has to approve any exclusive merchandising deals.”

  “So what do we do now?’

  “Get you settled in at the hotel. He’s due back in the morning. They’ve got some nice-looking stuff and you’ve seen the logo. I think it’ll take off.”

  “If the Tri-City Comets take off.” The Comets were one of major league baseball’s new expansion teams, just six weeks away from playing their first game. Mayfield’s was hoping to land an exclusive contract to handle some of their newer items of merchandise in New York City.

  On the drive into the city he said, “A lot of kids will want the jackets just because they’re new. That red comet with the three gold stars is a winner. We should talk about it over dinner.”

  Susan sighed, pushing back the wisp of hair that had a habit of falling over her face. “I think I’ll eat in my room and turn in early. I’m still on Manhattan time.” Then, trying to end on a friendlier note, she asked, “How was Vegas?”

  “You know what those trade shows are like. Even the sight of models wrapped in bath towels can get boring after the first day. I did a little gambling to perk myself up.”

  “Win anything?”

  “The first day. Lost most of it the second day.”

  He parked in the underground garage at their hotel near the state capitol. She checked in and agreed to meet him for breakfast at eight-thirty in the morning. “The spring-training camp at Bank One Ballpark is right downtown, only ten minutes away, he said, “but we should be there by ten.”

  “Bank One Ballpark?”

  “The locals call it Bob.”

  Alone in her-room, Susan sat by the telephone trying to think of someone she could call back in New York. Since her breakup with Russell there were only a few friends who might really care that she’d arrived safely. She called one of them and and got an answering machine, hanging up without leaving a message. Could an evening with Mike Brentnor be any worse than this?

  Yes, it could, she decided, and went to bed early.

  Over breakfast he showed her the Comets’ new gold-colored baseball cap with the Tri-City logo. “They’re going to be wearing this at all Sunday games, at home and on the road,” he told her. “Later on they might adopt a whole different uniform for Sunday games.”

  Susan put the cap on Mike’s head and studied the result. “The kids’ll like them,” she decided.

  After breakfast they drove out to the training camp the team shared with two other teams. It was south of the Phoenix Civic Plaza, near the railroad tracks that bisected the central city, in a sun-baked area of old warehouses just now beginning to change from wasteland to wonderland. A new hotel and a science center had recently opened, Mike told her, along with a retail and restaurant complex with a twenty-four-screen movie theater.

  “Their training camp isn’t exactly off the beaten path.”

  “They have to go where the people are, even for non-season games. They’re using the new stadium here. It’s only been open a year.”

  Soon they came upon a sign that read: Bank One Ballpark: Winter Home of the Arizona Diamondbacks, the San Diego Padres and the Tri-City Comets. Rather than the small field she’d expected, there was a brick and glass stadium with large full-color, live-feed monitors and a metal retractable roof. The building blended into the area nicely, yet still presented a modern look. Mike pulled into one of the parking areas and they walked to the clubhouse entrance. Their meeting was with Larry Freedman, whom Susan instantly identified as an eastern jock gone to middle-aged flab. He and Mike had talked the previous day.

  “It’s a pleasure to meet you at last,” he said, pulling out a chair for Susan. “We’ve accomplished a great deal by fax and phone but there’s nothing like a face-to-face meeting.”

  “It must be very exciting to be in on the ground floor of a new major league baseball team,” she said with a smile.

  “It is,” Freedman answered, probably repeating something he’d said a hundred times before. “The Tri-City folks are great. They’re big boosters of the team and they’ll be packing our new stadium on opening day.”

  Mike Brentnor grinned. “All wearing your logo jackets and sweat-shirts.”

  “You bet!”

  Susan unzipped her briefcase. “Here are rough layouts of some of the newspaper ads our art department came up with, M
r. Freedman. As you can see, we’ll rely heavily on our exclusive line of the higher-priced Tri-City merchandise.”

  “Did Mike show you the new Sunday cap?” he asked as he glanced over the layouts.

  “He did.”

  “What do you think?”

  “It might be more of a children’s item, but that’s not my decision.”

  Freedman lifted a warm-up jacket in the same gold color. “What about this?”

  “Nice!” Mike told him. “I have the contracts right here if you’re ready to sign.”

  “This is for the exclusive deal?”

  “Exclusive in New York City for two years, with an option to renew. We’ll guarantee a major advertising campaign using print ads and TV spots.”

  Freedman picked up the contract, pretending to read it. “Mr. Roitler will have to approve this. He should be here momentarily.”

  As if on cue, the door opened and they were joined by a gray-haired man with a moustache to match. Hans Roitler, one of the owners of the Tri-City Comets, was a German-born businessman who’d been brought to America by his parents at the age of eight, just before World War II. He shook hands with Mike and Susan, listening intently while Mike outlined their marketing strategy.

  “We’ve already settled most of the points,” Mike told him. “It’s just these new high-end items. We think Mayfield’s could do very well with these if we had them on an exclusive basis for the first two years, with an option for more.” He passed the contract over to the club owner. “Frankly, Mr. Roitler, we don’t make much profit selling baseball caps. These higher-priced jackets are another matter entirely.” Roitler took out a cigar but didn’t light it. He pondered the contract at some length before saying, “A one-year exclusive and no option. That’s the best I can do.”

  “Mr. Roitler—”

  He held up a hand to end the discussion. “No, no. Who knows where the Comets will be a year from now? We may have won the World Series. Look at the Marlins. They won it in their fifth season.”