Murder on Location (22 page)

At the green marble counter in the United Cigar Store on St. Andrew Street, I braced a copy of the
Beacon
against the menus and sugar shaker. It carried an impressive spread about the death of Miranda Pride. Dawson Williams mourned her passing and recalled happier days.
James A. Sayre did not go on at length, but a brief, formal statement had been issued, probably written by Adela. They'd tried to lure Peggy O'Toole into it, but she was out of reach visiting Hampton Fisher in his guarded enclave atop the Colonel John. A spokesman for Neil Furlong said that he was under a doctor's care and would not be making any statement for some time. Savas was keeping his beak clean: “No comment.” I wondered whether he would comment over the telephone.

It was a short walk from the United to my neglected office. The curved pavement of St. Andrew Street looked wet instead of cold. Icy patches had become puddles. It was warming up. On a bench, waiting for a bus, a woman in a fur coat was sitting, trying to keep what looked like her grandchildren calm and out of mischief. One of them was rubbing her face into the fur of the coat, the other was blowing patterns in it and rubbing them out again with her mittened right hand.

Nobody was waiting for me on the stairs, but the toilet was running at the top. I jiggled the lever until the tank began to fill normally. Once I got behind my desk I placed a call to Niagara Regional and waited.

“Savas?”

“Christ, Benny. Don't you knock off on weekends? Who is it this time? Or is it more than one for a change?”

“Nobody's dead. Relax. Would you rather have me tip-toe away from the scene of the crime and let you stumble across your own bodies? Maybe you like them
when they get sort of ripe? You want me to send you a postcard next time, routed via Honolulu?”

“Okay, I get the general idea. What's the commotion?”

“Do you have the post-mortem results on Miranda Pride?”

“Sure I have, but that doesn't mean I'm going to sing them over the phone to you. Singing telegrams are nearly extinct.”

“Chris, we're both on the same side.”

“Benny, whenever you're playing, you're a side all by yourself. The woman hanged herself. That's what I say, that's what the coroner says.”

“So, what's the harm in reading me what he says? You've already given me the pill; all I want now is the glass of water.”

I heard him sucking at his teeth for a few seconds, vacuuming the crannies with his tongue. Then: “Okay, hold on to your shirt while I get the report of the examination.” He left the line for a while longer than I was prepared for, and I could imagine three cops looking through the doorway at him, each with his own problems, each waiting for him to stop talking long enough for them to get a word in. Then he was back: “Okay? Here it is. This is what we found. The subject tied a running noose in the centre of a twelve-foot nylon cord, put two silk scarves around her throat and fixed the noose over them, then tied off the two ends of the cord to the bracket and jumped off the windowsill, not the chair that was standing nearby. We've got latent footprints on the chair and windowsill.
That's the circumstantial stuff, now here's the gist of the medical examination.”

“Wait a minute. What's with the scarves?”

“Vanity of vanities, Benny. She didn't want to leave ugly tell-tale deep impressions around the lovely neck. A cord like that would leave nasty discoloration, you know, lines running under the cord. A thin cord like that would have left a very deep impression.”

“So with the scarves she's just as dead.”

“Benny, you got no class. We're talking about a lady, a movie star, not some wino with debts to a loanshark. She didn't want to get marked up. So what?”

“I wasn't criticizing her, I just wanted to be sure I understood what you were saying. Remember, I only saw her for a few minutes and, to tell the truth, I wasn't focussing very well.”

“You were a little green when you let us in. I remember. It helped soften the blow. You missed all the carrying on. First Furlong, then Raxlin, the producer. Benny, you want to hear this thing or not?”

“Shoot.”

“‘Subject well nourished, evidence of balanced diet, normal care and attention. Height, five-foot four. Weight, 132 pounds. Muted impressions around neck of noose with suspension point about one inch in front of the angle of the left lower jaw. Vital changes locally and in the tissues beneath as a consequence of sudden constriction. Ecchymoses in the face. No marks of violence or restraint. Time of death …' Are you still with me, Benny,
or did I lose you at ‘ecchymoses'? ‘Time of death sometime between eight o'clock and ten in the forenoon.' You want more technical stuff, Benny? ‘Air passage constricted. Substantial engorgement and asphyxial changes.' Is that enough? You want food residue and other stuff?”

“Any sign of illness?”

“Good try, but it doesn't lead anywhere. ‘No organic disease … subject was a healthy woman at the time of death.' Apart from needle marks on the left arm, that's it. 'Cause of death: strangulation caused by hanging.'”

“I don't get it.”

“Don't get what? You want me to send you a medical dictionary?”

“No. What I don't get is ‘why.' Why didn't she leave a note? Why didn't she say why she bumped Hayes?”

“Why don't people phone us before robbing banks, why don't they write out their own parking tickets? It's the same thing.”

“Needle marks. What does your guy say about that?”

“Ancient history. We did find cocaine, but not much of it. There was some diazepam and he thinks there was an anti-depressant in the picture. He's doing tissue and blood analysis.”

“Did you find anything unusual in her suite?”

“We went over her place and her husband's suite next door.”

“Anything odd or out of place?”

“Nothing but the coke and the straws she used to sniff it.”

“Nothing peculiar in the wardrobe line?”

“Clean bill there. Furlong must own fifty pairs of shoes. Got to go, Benny.”

“Wait a minute, not so fast! I want to know what Miranda told you about the Hayes case. She knew enough for you to pull her in but not enough for you to lay a charge. Are you happy with Miranda as the one who shot Hayes?”

“In a nutshell: right.”

“Well? What did she say? Did she kill herself to square things?”

“That's all privileged stuff, Benny.”

“What are you talking about? You've got the goods on a corpse. You think the crown prosecutor's going to give you an indictment? There's no case, Chris; your suspect's dead.”

“All the more reason to keep quiet.”

“Okay. Don't tell me anything that hurts. Do you think I'm going to phone the
Beacon
when I'm through with you? Come on. When's the last time I got my name in the paper?”

“Yesterday, and then again this morning.”

“Yeah, well … But I wasn't shooting my mouth off. At least tell me what your witness saw. That's fair.”

“William Blacklock, of Detroit, identified her as the woman he saw coming out of David Hayes' room. We showed him some pictures and he picked out Miranda right away. The night clerk saw her coming through the lobby from the other hotel.”

“How'd she take that?”

“He was alive when she left him, she said. So then she goes and kills herself. You can't tell me, Benny, that she did that because she was innocent, or in order to shield somebody.

“What about the affair with Hayes?”

“In the end she admitted there'd been one. That's when I took her in. First of all she didn't know him at all, and she worked her way up through all the stages until we had her telling us all about how and where and when. The only thing that didn't happen, she insisted, was that she killed him. I might have bought that, or at least rented it, if it weren't for the fact that when last seen together they were having an ugly fight. That's from the bartender from the bar at the top of the Tudor.”

“You were in a spot. It's not proof positive, only an indication. If she wasn't the stuff headlines are made of, you might have held her. As it was …”

“Don't rub it in. I'm only a cop, remember.”

“Chris?”

“I'm still here.”

“Miranda killed Hayes.”

“Check.”

“Miranda killed herself.”

“Double check.”

“The neatest package that ever comes across your desk: murder and suicide. Pawn takes pawn. Pawn takes pawn. The one balances the other.”

“That's right. It's all balanced on the books.”

“You know what, Chris?”

“What?”

“You know it stinks to heaven as well as I do.”

NINETEEN

The Saturday paper was lying tucked up into itself on the porch of Martha Tracy's bungalow. I collected it under my arm and banged on the door. I could soon hear footsteps padding down the long hallway. Billie was wearing a rust-coloured corduroy dressing gown that was obviously borrowed from Martha's wardrobe, and as she fumbled with the unfamiliar door to let me in, her trim figure played lost and found in the fabric whenever she moved.

“Benny! Am I glad to see you! Martha's gone for the weekend's groceries.” She watched while I slipped off my galoshes and put them on the streaked rubber mat. “I want to thank you for …”

“Catch your breath. Let me catch mine. Have you phoned anyone? Does anybody know you're here? If you've been near the phone, I'll skin you alive.” Billie took my hat, and looked around for someplace safe to leave it. She made a nervous hostess.

I followed her into the kitchen. She carried the kettle to the sink, filled it at the tap like she'd never done it before and set the promise of coffee going on the gas stove.
We sat down at a chipped white enamel-topped table. Billie took a tug at the sash of her robe and made instant.

“We didn't get much chance to talk last night. Can you tell me what happened? Were you a prisoner or having pizza with the boys?”

“I thought I was finished talking. That's all I did since they grabbed me outside the hotel the day before yesterday.”

“Do they know about Furlong?”

“Of course not. They …” She stopped and looked confused for a second, then frowned. “That was a trick question.”

“You'll give yourself wrinkles. They what?”

“They don't know very much about that. They wouldn't take it seriously. They think I came to the Falls on business. I tried telling them the truth, but they had their own story and were going to play rough until I went along with it.” She rubbed her wrists just thinking about it. “I've been talking since I saw you in the coffee shop.”

“As long as you haven't done any talking on the phone since last night.”

“Benny, I haven't spoken to anybody. Honest.”

“Billie, if you're not straight with me …”

“Well, I called Ed Noonan to tell him I wouldn't be available for a scene. That's all. If I had my way for a change, I'd be shooting the scene right now instead of cooling my heels here.”

“Oh, that's perfect! That's fine, just fine. If Noonan knows, then Furlong knows. If Furlong knows, it's
probably in the script by now. You take a lot of looking after, Billie. It's a wonder your old man wants you back at all.”

“I didn't say where I was. Give me a little credit.”

“Between us, it's cash and carry from now on.” She sipped from her mug and I sipped from mine in silence. What she'd said about having her own way for a change kept echoing in my head, making me cross. I unbuttoned several layers of clothing and laid them on the seat of a pressed-back chair.

“Tell me about Furlong, Billie. It's time I heard.” Billie gave a deep sigh while ripping a strip of folded newspaper on the table.

“I guess you already know quite a lot?” She looked at me like I was a magistrate and she was in the oldest instead of the second oldest profession. The smile on her face looked like it was going to blow away.

“I have to know it all. From the beginning.” Billie began to spindle the newspaper strip around her fingers.

“Well, I saw him first when I was still in high school. I'd won a prize for acting in a one-act play. He phoned and said he'd seen my picture in the paper and wanted to know if I could be in a revue he was working on. My parents didn't give a damn, so I thought I'd meet him and talk to him at least.”

“Was that here in Grantham or in the Falls?”

“Here at first. We did that show here, then there were others, and some of those we did in the Falls.”

“And at the Patriot Volunteer over the river?”

“Hey! Yes, we did a smashing revue there. Where did you find out all this?”

“I read tea leaves. Did Furlong write it?”

“Wrote, directed and played in. Monty Blair gave Neil professional pointers. Monty had polish and style. Neil had energy and guts.”

“Afterwards, you all went drinking at the Surf Lounge?”

“Fairly often. I was a young terror, I guess, in those days.”

“And fondly remembered by Hatch.”

“Hatch! Is he still alive?”

“Cut it out, Billie. You saw him New Year's Eve.” She bit her lip and made a face. “How close were you to Furlong?”

“I was jailbait, but I can tell about it now. It's doesn't matter. We were as close as we could get considering that I had parents, he was living in a furnished room with no visitors after ten and we were with a gang most of the time.”

“Was Dulcie Osborne part of the gang?” Billie crossed her legs and frowned at the name, like I'd just rubbed her hand on the gum on the underside of a restaurant table.

“Yeah, Dulcie was there, toward the end, anyway. Neil said she had talent. That was his word for it.”

“Tell me about her death.”