Hoch's Ladies

by Edward D. Hoch

  the mugger in the leg and phoned the police. But Bryan Metzger was something different.

  She should have known that from the moment he phoned her and requested that they meet in a singles bar. Clients usually came to her office or made arrangements by long-distance phone and were met at the airport. Not in singles bars. And she’d never before been hired to protect anyone from themselves.

  “I’m not sure I can keep you from committing suicide if you want to,” she said. “After all, my fee doesn’t include sleeping with you. I can camp by the bathroom door and make sure nobody interrupts while you’re shaving, but I won’t be in there with you to keep you from cutting your throat with the razor.”

  “I use an electric.”

  “You know what I mean. You need a psychiatrist, not a bodyguard. Why do you think you might try to kill yourself?”

  “Because a good friend of mine did, just last week. And because I tried to do it once already.”

  “Tell me about the friend first.”

  “Horace Fox shared the office with me at Sunny Days. Last Saturday night a little before midnight, he jumped out of the window.” Bryan shook his head with a look of incomprehension Libby understood. “He didn’t have a reason in the world to kill himself, yet that’s exactly what he did.”

  “Was he alone at the time?”

  “All alone. I’d gone down the hall to get a cup of coffee out of the machine.”

  “Did you two always work that late on a Saturday night?”

  “No. We were getting out the five-day forecasts for the West Coast. There are a great many businesses, especially in the California wine country, whose livelihood depends on private weather forecasts. They need something more detailed for their area than the National Weather Service can provide. Sunny Days is especially good on five-day forecasts. Our accuracy rate is a full ten percent better than the weather bureau.”

  “Tell me more about Mr. Fox.”

  “When I came back with the coffee he was gone and the window was open. He’d jumped. The office is on the seventh floor.”

  “And this was just before midnight?”

  He nodded. “About a quarter to. We were due to knock off at twelve, but I wanted some coffee before I drove home.”

  “And he’d said nothing to indicate he was about to take his own life?”

  “Not a word, but I’d noticed he seemed unusually somber. Generally he joked and chatted with me, but not that night. We pretty much went about our work in silence.”

  “No one else was in the office?”

  Metzger shook his head. “Julie Wade, our secretary, went home around ten. And Chris Romeo, the chief meteorologist, hadn’t been in at all.”

  Libby said, “Now what about you? Why do you think you might kill yourself, too?”

  “Horace jumped on Saturday night. On Monday morning, when I was working the day shift, I found myself being drawn to the window behind his desk. I stared out of it, and for just an instant I thought about jumping, too.”

  “That’s common enough,” Libby tried to reassure him. “I think everyone has had those feelings in a high building or on a bridge. It doesn’t make sense to hire me for something like that.”

  “I’ve got the money right here,” he said, slipping the wallet from his pocket. “Look, today is Wednesday. Suppose I pay you for five days in advance, through the weekend. Maybe by that time I’ll have snapped out of this.”

  Under any other circumstances Libby would have turned him down. But when he slid the money across the table she accepted it, hoping no one noticed it and took her for a high-class call girl. She accepted it because she knew he was lying. He wasn’t afraid of suicide—he was afraid of being murdered by the same person who had murdered Horace Fox.

  Libby had developed a regular routine in her job. In the case of female clients, she often shared a bedroom with them. Her male clients required techniques that were both more circumspect and more intensive. She began by checking out Bryan Metzger’s apartment. It was a moderately priced third-floor walkup in a remodeled building near downtown. There was a sofa bed in the living room, and she decided at once that she’d be sleeping there.

  “You mean you’re actually going to spend the night?” he asked.

  “You’re paying for five days of protection and that’s what you’re going to get. I’ll be sticking to you like glue, Mr. Metzger.”

  “In that case you’d better start calling me Bryan.”

  “All right, Bryan. But before you get any ideas, I never get personally involved with my clients.”

  “Of course not.”

  “Just so we understand each other.”

  Libby passed an uneventful night on the pullout bed, her fingers close to the Cobra pistol under her pillow. In the morning she got up early, checked her client, who was snoring on his back, and started to prepare breakfast. He joined her just as the toast popped up.

  “Say, couldn’t we make this a permanent arrangement?”

  Libby smiled. “Not a chance. Do you like your toast buttered or plain?”

  “Buttered. But let me do it. I’m used to making my own breakfast.”

  “Maybe that’s what’s driving you to suicide.”

  “Don’t joke about it.”

  Libby emptied frozen orange juice into a pitcher. “If you’re suicidal, I’m a monkey. You’re one of the most normal guys I’ve ever met.”

  Metzger grinned. “If I was all that normal I’d have made a pass at you last night.” Libby measured water into the pitcher without answering. “O’Bannion told me you were a policewoman. How come you quit the force?”

  Libby set the orange juice on the table and sat down. “That’s a long story for dinner some night, not now.”

  “You’re the boss,” he said, sitting across from her and taking a bite of toast.

  “What time do you start work?” she asked. “I’m working nine to five this week.”

  “We’d better hurry.”

  “You’re not staying around all day, are you?”

  “I’ll see how it goes,” Libby told him.

  Sunny Days occupied several adjoining offices on the seventh floor of the Midway Bank Building. Libby rode up in the elevator with Bryan and was introduced to some of his co-workers. The chief meteorologist, Chris Romeo, was tall and dark-haired, with a special smile Libby suspected he reserved for young women. Bryan introduced her as a visiting cousin who wanted to see the office and Romeo didn’t question the story.

  The secretary, Julie Wade, was another matter. She was a good-natured blonde who joked with Bryan but eyed Libby with a distinctly suspicious gaze. “It’s the first of May,” she reminded Bryan. “You should have the thirty-day forecasts ready to go.”

  “Don’t worry, I will. I just want to show Libby around a bit.”

  Libby followed him into his office, leaving Julie Wade looking unhappy. “I don’t think she likes me,” Libby said.

  “Julie? She has her possessive moments, but I try to ignore it.”

  “Have you ever been married?”

  He shook his head while he glanced through the mail on his desk. “I lived with a girl for three years but we broke up.”

  Libby looked around the large office with its weather gauges and computer terminals. There were two identical desks set before two large windows, separated from each other only by a short wood-and-glass partition. Metzger was at the right-hand desk—the top of the one at the left had been cleared. “Well, you each had a window to help you determine if it was raining out. But how do you go about the task of weather forecasting for the West Coast from here?” Libby asked.

  He answered by turning to the computer by his desk and punching a series of numbers. Immediately the large video screen came to life. “It’s really quite simple. You see, the Weather Bureau’s radar pictures of dozens of cities around the country are available on the computer. You’re looking at the San Francisco area right now. See the rain pattern moving in from the ocean? This is just one tool w
e use, of course, but it’s an important one. It gives us an instant, constantly changing look at weather anywhere in the country. We also have a string of spotters all over the country to feed us information—”

  “And people pay for this service because it’s that much superior to regular weather forecasts?”

  “You bet. Florida fruit growers, California vineyard owners, even long-distance truckers need to know the specifics of weather for a particular area, and that area is often far removed from the large metropolitan centers serviced by the weather bureau.”

  Libby ventured to the other side of the partition. “This was Horace Fox’s area?”

  “Yes.” Metzger brooded. “When I came back with my coffee, his window was wide open. Even then I didn’t realize he’d jumped until they came up from the street.”

  “How did they know he jumped from here?”

  “This was the only office with a light on.”

  Libby opened the window and very carefully leaned out. “It’s too bad the building doesn’t have those modern windows that don’t open.”

  She stared straight down at the striped canopy over the building’s entrance, then quickly withdrew her head.

  “I suppose he’d have found another way,” Metzger said, “if he wanted to do it that badly.”

  “Look, Bryan, I want to check up on a few things. Do you think you can stay away from these windows for an hour or so until I get back?”

  “I’m feeling better now. I think so. Having you around has been a big help.”

  “That’s my specialty, providing confidence.”

  “My specialty is providing the weather.”

  Libby smiled. “I guess it’s the age of the specialist...”

  Sergeant O’Bannion was just finishing the morning lineup, shepherding a tearful rape victim away from the one-way mirror where she’d viewed a half dozen young men in jeans and T-shirts before finally identifying one of them as her assailant.

  “Hi, Libby,” he said when they were alone in the hallway. “How’re things?”

  “Thanks to you, I have a new client.”

  “Good. Who is it?”

  “Bryan Metzger—a meteorologist at Sunny Days, the weather-forecasting service.”

  “Where the guy killed himself last weekend.”

  She nodded. “I was wondering if you could give me a little help with it, since you recommended me to him.”

  His big face crinkled into a familiar frown. O’Bannion liked her, Libby knew, but there were times when he tried to be overly protective, like a loving uncle. “I don’t know about this bodyguard business, Libby. Why can’t you open a nice dog-walking service instead?”

  “Sergeant.”

  “Okay, okay, how can I help you?”

  “Is there any chance Horace Fox was murdered?”

  “There’s always a chance, but there’s no evidence. Why do you ask?”

  “Because my client is afraid of something. He claims he’s afraid he’ll kill himself just like Fox did, but I think there’s more to it. Maybe he fears the killer will come after him next.”

  “Well, if it was murder the killer covered his tracks pretty well. As near as we could tell, no one was in the building at the time except your client and Fox.”

  “What about Chris Romeo, the chief meteorologist for Sunny Days? And Julie Wade, the secretary? Metzger said she had been there earlier that evening.”

  “She signed out downstairs at 10:08. There’s no record of Romeo having been in the building at all, though I’ll admit these building security people can be easy to slip past. They go off to the John or someplace and an elephant could walk through the lobby.”

  “Was there anything in the dead man’s pockets?”

  “Nothing unusual. I’ll show you if you’d like. The family hasn’t claimed the stuff yet.”

  “What sort of family did Fox have?”

  “Just an ex-wife out in Las Vegas. I understand she’s a showgirl.” He led Libby up to his office and then went out to a filing cabinet in the squad room. When he returned, he had a manila envelope with Horace Fox’s name on it.

  “Doesn’t the coroner usually keep these things?”

  “Suspicious death,” he muttered.

  “Then there was something for you to investigate.”

  “Libby—you know the routine! Metzger insists the man had no reason to kill himself. That alone is cause for investigation.”

  “He didn’t live to make a statement?”

  “After a seven-floor fall? No way. He hit right in front, just to the left of the canopy over the entrance.” O’Bannion opened the envelope as he spoke and let the contents of the dead man’s pockets slide out onto his desk.

  Libby saw at once that there was nothing unusual: a handkerchief, keys, a wallet containing credit cards and a few bills, some loose change, and a wristwatch. Then she noticed something. “The watch is stopped at ten minutes to one.”

  The sergeant shrugged. “I suppose it stopped when he hit the ground.”

  “But that was before midnight.”

  He consulted the police report. “You’re right. The first call came in at 11:51. I guess his watch was wrong.”

  “Why?”

  “Libby—” O’Bannion said impatiently. “All right, I know. I was just asking.

  It seems strange.”

  “Libby, Metzger didn’t hire you to solve a mystery. He simply wants to be protected.”

  “I know,” she answered reluctantly. “You’re not on the force any more, Libby.”

  “I know that, too.”

  It was on Friday evening as she was preparing for her third night on the sofa bed at Bryan Metzger’s apartment after they’d dined together at a French restaurant nearby that he said, “You know, I think I’m really over it, Libby. After these couple of days with you I’m not afraid anymore.”

  “Good,” Libby said.

  “Are all your jobs as boring as this one?”

  “You’re paying me to keep it boring, if you know what I mean.”

  “Let’s add a little excitement. Come to bed with me.”

  “No.”

  “I suppose you’ve got a guy.”

  “No, not right now, but that’s not the point. I’m working.”

  “You asked me if I’d ever been married. How about you?”

  “I was engaged to a cop once, when I was on the force. He was killed in an auto accident. Now you know my life story.”

  “There must be more to it than that.”

  “Maybe after our five days are up I’ll tell you about it. Now I think I’ll go to bed.”

  “You’re a hard one to figure, Libby.”

  “Not so hard when you know me. Goodnight, Bryan.”

  She had been sleeping for a few hours when she came awake suddenly, her reflexes alert, knowing at once it wasn’t any usual night noise that had awakened her. She lay perfectly still and listened until it came again.

  A footstep.

  Someone was moving very quietly across the floor, toward the bedroom door.

  Libby gripped her revolver and tensed for a spring. Her eyes functioned well in the near-darkness and she could make out the shape of a man wearing dark pants and a dark pullover sweater. He was holding something long in his right hand, possibly a pistol with a silencer on the barrel.

  She moved all at once, springing from the bed with a yell meant to startle the intruder. He whirled, and she saw the flash from the pistol in his hand. Then she was on him, pinning his arm against the wall before he could fire again and trying to stun him with a glancing blow to the temple.

  Metzger was up and out of the bedroom. He turned on the overhead light. Libby relaxed her grip on the intruder for just a second and he scrambled free. She still had a grip on his gun but he abandoned it and dove for the open window by which he’d entered.

  “Are you all right?” Metzger demanded as she raced to the window. She wanted to pursue the gunman, but she knew her responsibility was to her client.
There may have been more than one of them and she couldn’t risk leaving him alone.

  “Yes, except that he got away. Did you recognize him?” He shook his head. “I never saw him before.”

  “He used a silencer. That means he was probably a professional hit man. Is there any reason somebody might want you dead?” He turned away from her. “Of course not.”

  “You haven’t been leveling with me, Bryan. You weren’t afraid of committing suicide. You were afraid of being murdered like Horace Fox.”

  “Who says Horace was murdered?”

  “I do, and I can prove it—at least to my own satisfaction.”

  Metzger walked over to examine the window. “He came over the adjoining roof and used a glass-cutter. Do you think we should call the police?”

  “That depends on what you’re prepared to tell them.” He sighed and walked out to the kitchen. “Let’s have some coffee and talk. Neither of us will be able to sleep for a while anyway.”

  “All right.”

  Boiling water for instant coffee, he asked, “What makes you think Fox was murdered?”

  “I went to Headquarters and looked over his possessions. His wrist-watch was stopped at ten minutes to one, an hour after the police report says he jumped. I puzzled about that for a while, until I remembered the date. Saturday was the last weekend in April—the start of Daylight Savings Time. He had moved his watch ahead an hour for the start of Daylight Savings at 2 a.m. If he’d been about to kill himself, I don’t think he’d have done that.”

  “No, probably not,” he agreed, looking thoughtful.

  “So are you going to tell me about it?” Libby said, measuring the powdered coffee into two cups.

  “You’re quite a detective, aren’t you?”

  “I observe odd details, that’s all.”

  “Have you observed anything odd at the office?”

  Libby shrugged. “Julie Wade and Chris Romeo—are they an item?” Metzger frowned. “What makes you think that?”