Hoch's Ladies

by Edward D. Hoch

  She laughed. “Maybe their names suggested it. Romeo and Juliet, you know? It just crossed my mind. —She was there the night Fox was killed, wasn’t she?”

  “She’d left earlier.”

  “But she could have come back. Or Romeo could have slipped past the guard downstairs.”

  The kettle whistled and Bryan poured boiling water into the cups. “You’re full of ideas, aren’t you?”

  “But I don’t like any of them. I want you to tell me who killed Fox, and why they want to kill you.”

  “Honestly, I don’t know.” He sat at the table with his coffee and helped himself to sugar.

  Libby shook her head. “Fox had an ex-wife in Las Vegas, a showgirl who just might have mob connections. Maybe she had him killed and you saw too much, so they want you out of the way, too.”

  “It might explain a few things,” he said thoughtfully. “But if I did see anything I’m not aware of it.”

  Libby started for the telephone. “We’d better call the police about tonight.”

  “That won’t get us anywhere. The police will just drive them undercover.

  Maybe they’ll try again soon and you’ll get them next time. I can’t afford your rates forever, you know.”

  “I know. You hired me for five days, and half that time is gone already.”

  “Will you stick it out?”

  “Of course,” she said. “Now let’s finish our coffee and get some sleep.”

  “Won’t it keep you awake?”

  “It never has yet,” she told him serenely.

  They stuck close to the apartment all day Saturday, then toward evening she called Sergeant O’Bannion at home. Briefly she told him what had happened the previous night. Bryan was in the shower with the door closed and she could speak freely.

  “You didn’t report it?” O’Bannion growled into the phone. “What’s the matter with you, Libby?”

  “Bryan may be right that we need to lure them into trying again. But I wanted to tell you about it just in case there’s a slip-up.”

  “A slip-up. Terrific. Meaning if we find both of you dead somewhere.”

  “That won’t happen,” she answered confidently.

  “As long as you called, there’s something else.”

  “What?”

  “I shouldn’t be telling you this, but it might tie in. The Coast Guard seized a big shipment of heroin off the California coast three nights ago—close to five million dollars’ worth.”

  “What would that have to do with—?”

  “On the boat they found weather reports from Sunny Days.” Libby was silent for a moment. Then she said, “Thanks, Sergeant.”

  “Funny thing—the most recent five-day forecast from Sunny Days was way off. It failed to mention a spring storm that came up suddenly in the Gulf of California. The storm caused the drug-runners’ boat to founder on the rocks where the Coast Guard picked it up.”

  “That might explain a great deal,” Libby said. The shower shut off behind the bathroom door. “I have to go now. I’ll talk to you later.”

  “Be careful.”

  A few minutes later, Byran came out of the bathroom, a towel wrapped around his waist. “I think we should go out to dinner tonight.”

  “That might be tempting fate,” Libby said. “We have plenty of food in.

  Let’s wait till tomorrow.”

  They played cards and watched the eleven o’clock news before retiring. The night passed uneventfully, though Libby did not sleep as soundly as on past nights. She found herself prowling the living room and the kitchen, checking the windows and listening for unexpected noises. But the intruder did not return.

  In the morning, as they were leaving the apartment for Sunday brunch at a nearby hotel, Chris Romeo arrived unexpectedly. “Sorry to bother you on your weekend off, Bryan, but something’s come up.”

  “That’s all right,” Bryan said. “Come on in. You remember my cousin, Libby.”

  “Of course. Still enjoying our city?”

  “Very much,” Libby replied, wondering if Romeo had really bought the cousin story.

  “I hope you’ll excuse us for a few minutes,” he apologized. “Bryan, the police have been checking into Fox’s suicide, and that prompted Julie and me to do some checking of our own. We’ve discovered a number of secret accounts, mainly on the West Coast and in Florida. They were being serviced by Fox without our knowledge.”

  Bryan looked blank. “I don’t understand.”

  “Neither do we, completely. I was hoping you could help. Did you ever hear Fox talking business to anyone you didn’t know on the phone? Did you ever see him making up maps and five-day forecasts for areas in which we had no known clients?”

  Bryan thought about it and shook his head. “No, I don’t remember anything like that.”

  “This is very important, Bryan,” Romeo insisted. “The police are nosing around. A scandal could put Sunny Days out of business.”

  Libby decided to join in. “What sort of scandal could involve a weather-forecasting firm? Using synthetic isobars instead of the real thing?”

  Romeo ignored her but answered the question, addressing his reply to Metzger. “We think he was providing weather information for all sorts of illegal activities, including drug shipments to the California and Florida coasts and night-flights across the Mexican border with both drugs and aliens.”

  Bryan shook his head. “It could explain a great deal, but I knew nothing of it till now.”

  “What could it explain?”

  “Why he was killed, for one thing. Libby has just about convinced me it was murder.”

  “Libby?” Romeo shifted his attention back to her. “You’d be wise to stay out of this, you know.”

  “I’m trying to.”

  Romeo headed for the door. “If you think of anything that will help with this, give me a call, Bryan. I’ll either be at my apartment or Julie’s.”

  When he was gone, Metzger said, “I guess you were right about Romeo and Julie.”

  “I guess so,” Libby agreed.

  “I still can’t believe it about Fox, though. I—”

  The doorbell rang and Metzger went to open it. “That’s probably Romeo back about something he forgot.”

  Libby started to warn him, but she wasn’t in time. The ring was different this time, more hesitant. It wasn’t Romeo again. Bryan opened the door and stepped back at once, raising his hands. There were two of them this time, the one from the other night and a partner who could have been his brother. Both had guns.

  “Get her gun,” the familiar one said.

  Libby cursed herself for being off guard. The second man grabbed her purse and pulled the Cobra out of it.

  Metzger looked sick. “Libby—”

  “Don’t worry, Bryan. I’ll think of something.”

  The first man laughed. “A real liberated woman, eh? Kill him first, Joe. I want her for myself.”

  “No! Don’t—” Libby started to fall sideways onto the still-open sofa bed where she’d spent the night.

  “Get her!” the second men cried, and the other swung his gun to aim at her. Libby hit the rumpled bedclothes and found her target, fastening on the other pistol under the pillow. She fired two shots through the blanket and the first man went down. “Drop it or you’re dead!” she warned the other one.

  “My God!” Metzger said. “You shot him!”

  “Not fatally, I hope. Call the police and ask for Sergeant O’Bannion. He should be on duty now. Tell him to send an ambulance.”

  A half hour later, still at the apartment, O’Bannion told her, “That was good shooting. You got him in his gun arm and side, but he’ll live. You think these are the ones who tossed Fox out the window?”

  She turned to Metzger. “What do you think, Bryan?”

  “I suppose it makes sense, especially after what Romeo told us. Fox was supplying weather data to organized crime. His information went wrong and they lost a ship that was running drugs. So they ki
lled Fox, not knowing if the misinformation was intentional, and tried to kill me in case I knew something about any of it.”

  O’Bannion nodded. “We’ll check Fox’s bank accounts tomorrow. If he was getting regular payments, we should be able to trace them.” He went downstairs with the stretcher, promising to return.

  “I guess I did the right thing hiring you,” Metzger told Libby. “You sure came through when I needed it. Where did you get the second gun?”

  “Like you, they forgot I wrestled the silenced pistol away from that guy the other night. I had it in bed with me, and when they took my purse I knew I had to make a dive for it.”

  “You saved my life.”

  Libby shook her head. “No, perhaps I just prolonged it. You could get the death penalty in this state for killing Horace Fox.”

  “What?”

  “I’m no dope, Bryan. You just mentioned the drug ship being lost because of the bad weather forecast, but that’s something O’Bannion told me on the phone and I didn’t repeat to you. And the ship wasn’t lost until some days after Fox’s death, so it couldn’t have caused it. You found out about Fox’s little arrangement and it seemed like a great way to make safe and easy money. So you killed him and took over the illegal side of Sunny Days’ business. The only trouble was that Fox managed to get his revenge, even from the grave. A ship foundered in a storm and fell into the hands of the Coast Guard. After that, you knew they’d be coming to kill you. It wasn’t the sort of story you could tell the police, so you hired me to protect you.”

  Bryan Metzger turned away. “You’re right about me wanting to take over his business. Why should he get all that extra money for supplying forecasts to smugglers and organized crime when I could do it just as easily. He tricked me on that California one, though. He gave me the wrong information and when I sent out the five-day forecast after he was dead it caused the heroin shipment to run aground.”

  “Why didn’t they simply hire the services of Sunny Days in the normal way?”

  “That would mean pinpointing the section of coastline or western desert where the ship or plane would be landing. They couldn’t risk the authorities learning that they wanted that information. It was worth what they paid to keep the whole business secret. But, Libby, just because I took advantage of Horace’s death doesn’t mean I killed him. He jumped out of that window.” Libby shook her head. “No, Bryan. The building’s entrance canopy is directly below his window. If he’d jumped from it, he’d have hit that canopy and gone through it. But O’Bannion told me he hit to the left of the canopy. He went out the window by your desk, which is on the right-hand side facing the street—that’s the left of the canopy from O’Bannion’s point of view. You got him to your window on some pretext, pushed him out, closed that window, and opened his, because a suicide would more likely choose his own window to jump from.”

  O’Bannion was in the doorway, listening. “I hired you to protect me,” Metzger pleaded, “not to try to convict me of murder!”

  “And I did protect you from those hoods. I couldn’t protect you from yourself.”

  “Then let me go,” he said, and broke toward the window. It wasn’t the one to the roof the gunman had used but a front one three stories up, facing the street.

  “Stop him!” O’Bannion shouted from the doorway. Libby hesitated only an instant. Metzger had, after all, paid her for five days’ protection, to keep him from killing himself. And the five days weren’t up yet. She tackled him just as he reached the window.

  THE INVISIBLE INTRUDER

  Clients of the Libby Knowles Protection Service sometimes proved to be a bit paranoid, and at first Libby would have placed Frederick Warfer in that category. He was a balding man of around fifty who glanced over his shoulder even as he entered her outer office.

  Libby’s new secretary, Janice, was out to lunch at the time, and when he saw Libby at the reception-desk, he jumped to the wrong conclusion. “I—I don’t have an appointment. Do you suppose Miss Knowles could see me?”

  Libby straightened up. “I’m Libby Knowles. My secretary is at lunch.”

  “Maybe I should come back later,” he muttered. “I didn’t realize it was

  lunchtime.”

  “No, come in. I’ve already had some yogurt.”

  He followed her into the inner office, a big square room with a wide window overlooking the busy traffic on Madison Street. The building was old, but the rent was reasonable, and that was what mattered to Libby in her first year of being in business on her own.

  “Now what can I do for you, Mr.—?” She glanced at the card he’d handed her. “Warfer.”

  “Frederick Warfer. I’m an industrial consultant—an inventor of sorts. Companies come to me with technical problems and I try to find solutions for them.”

  “You want me to protect an invention of yours?”

  “No, I want you to protect me. Someone’s trying to kill me.”

  “Why do you think that?” Libby asked, sitting down behind her desk and indicating that he sit, too.

  “Someone’s been getting into my house at night,” he said, perching on the one visitor’s chair. “It sets off the alarms, but by the time the police arrive no one’s there. There’s never any sign of forced entry.”

  “Perhaps the alarm system’s defective,” Libby suggested.

  “I’ve checked it completely and it’s working perfectly.” He hesitated “I want you to come out and stay at the house with me.”

  “All right. That’s my job, of course. But I don’t share a room with male clients. Do you have a spare room?”

  “Yes.”

  “Are you married, Mr. Warfer?” She’d started making notes on a yellow legal pad.

  “I—no, not at present. My wife left me two years ago.”

  “I see. Are you alone in the house? Do you have any children?”

  “No, no children. I’m alone. My address is on my card there.”

  Libby studied it, then asked, “Who do you think might want to kill you?”

  “A business competitor, maybe. I don’t know. I just need protection. The police don’t believe me anymore. After a full week of that alarm going off,

  they’re starting to think I’m doing it myself.”

  “Are you, Mr. Warfer?”

  “No, of course not! But I’m afraid the police are going to stop coming out when the alarm goes off. Or else they’ll take their time about it. And that’s when he’ll do it.”

  “He’ll?”

  “She’ll! Whoever!”

  “Do what?”

  “Kill me.”

  “I see. All right, Mr. Warfer, I’ll be there this evening.”

  “Will you be armed?”

  “Yes. I’m a former policewoman. I know how to use a handgun responsibly.”

  Libby had arranged to meet Sergeant O’Bannion for a drink late that afternoon. He was a bulky man with a big face that seemed to crease itself into a gloomy expression at the least opportunity. People who didn’t know him well thought he was perpetually unhappy but Libby knew better. O’Bannion had been the one person who’d urged her to remain on the force after her lover, a vice-squad detective had been caught in a cocaine scandal and killed himself in an auto crash while fleeing his fellow cops. She hadn’t followed O’Bannion’s advice, but he’d been good to her—and good for her—ever since, often sending business her way that the department couldn’t handle on an official basis.

  “I have a new client,” she told him over drinks. “A man named Frederick Warfer. Do you know him?”

  O’Bannion shook his head. “Should I?”

  “His alarm’s been ringing every night for a week. He’s afraid the police will start ignoring him.”

  “I’ll check the reports in the morning. Where does he live?”

  “Maple Shade Drive. I’ll be out there tonight.”

  “Take care of yourself, Libby. Lady bodyguards are hard to replace.”

  She smiled. “The biggest threat to my h
ealth so far has been starvation.”

  Warfer’s home proved to be an expensive Moorish-looking place with a long curving driveway. Libby guessed it had probably been built back in the 1930s when the popularity of Moorish architecture had reached this part of the country. She’d expected to find her client alone in a darkened house, but the window showed plenty of light and he opened the door with an attractive blonde woman at his side.

  “Come in, Miss Knowles. This is Helen Rodney, my neighbor from across the street.”

  Helen Rodney appeared to be in her late thirties, with the sort of eyes that stayed hard even when she smiled. “This is your bodyguard?” she asked him with a laugh. “What will she protect you from?”

  “I’d like to have a look around the house,” Libby told Warfer. The June night had been warm and she’d worn only a light jacket over her blouse and slacks. She dropped it on top of her overnight bag in the entryway and followed after her client, turning her back decisively on the blonde neighbor. They stepped down into a large living room, dominated on its far end by a massive fieldstone fireplace “That’s lovely,” Libby said, going and peering into it. “I never use it. It’s too much trouble.”

  “It’s almost big enough for a man to hide in,” Libby said, peering up into the chimney.

  Warfer shook his head. “Not really. I checked it out.”

  The dining room was almost as large, with a table and ten chairs, and the kitchen was spacious and lavishly equipped. It was a house obviously designed for entertaining and Libby said as much.

  “We did a great deal of entertaining before my wife left,” Warfer said quietly.

  He showed her the highly sophisticated burglar-alarm system that not only wired the doors and windows but also threw a pattern of invisible beams across rooms and doorways. “Once it’s switched on, any movement in here, no matter how slight, triggers the alarm,” he explained.

  “I’ve seen only one alarm system this elaborate in my life,” Libby told him “and that was in a museum. What do you have here that’s so valuable, anyway?”

  “I told you, I’m an inventor. There are times when a small fortune in ideas, notes, and mock-ups can be found in this house.”