A Pinch of Poison (24 page)

“To a hotel,” Durkin said. “Or, anyway, to a hotel door—the Carney. It's a little place, very respectable, in the Murray Hill district. Naturally, she's not there now.”

“Naturally,” Weigand said. “That would be too easy. Did she ever go there? Or did she just wait until Max drove off and walk away?”

“I wouldn't know,” Durkin said. “No Mrs. Graham registered there. A Mrs. Gebhart did, about the right time. The clerk's pretty old, and pretty short-sighted, but his description sounds as if Mrs. Gebhart and Mrs. Graham might be the same person. But he can't identify a picture—just shrugs and says, ‘Maybe, maybe not.' You know the kind.”

“Yes,” Weigand said. “And what about Mrs. Gebhart?”

“Checked out,” Durkin told him. “Took a cab this morning; the boy who brought her bags down also had a gander at Mrs. Graham's picture and says it looks like Mrs. Gebhart. He's not very sure, either; says he didn't look closely, and why should he? He put her in a cab. It's too bad he didn't pick one of the regulars that work the hotel, but he didn't. There are only a couple and both were gone. So he flagged a cruiser. A Paramount. We're checking, but it will take a while.”

It might, Weigand realized, take hours, and with no vast certainty. If things didn't go as he anticipated, he might see Staten Island yet. Cab-drivers were supposed to make records of all their trips, showing where passengers were picked up and where set down. Usually the big company drivers did. Sometimes they didn't. It would take a while to look over the sheets; it would be several hours, at best, before all the sheets were available.

“How about the kid?” Weigand asked Durkin. Durkin said they had just started on that and that it was as much a precinct and reserve job as theirs. Some details had come along. Michael had been playing on the front stoop of the boarding home, which was a detached house with a neat little yard. Another boy who was under Mrs. Konover's care had gone to school; Mrs. Konover was busy with her housework. And Michael had merely vanished. The neighborhood was being searched and the precinct men, aided by a Missing Persons Bureau detail, were questioning people who might have seen something. So far—

“Wait a minute,” Durkin said. “Let's see that, Mike.” There was a pause. “Well,” Durkin said, “here's something. There are a couple of women around inquiring, too. Or were during the morning. One of our men came on the track of them when he was asking some questions in the neighborhood. Any idea who they'd be?”

“No,” Weigand said. “It's funny. What kind of women?”

“We don't get
anything
but lousy descriptions,” Durkin complained. “Young women, apparently. They were around a while and then went off in a taxi-cab. Mean anything, do you think?”

“I hope not,” Weigand said. “I suppose it's on the radio? Well, then, maybe a couple of helpful women who heard it on the radio and just wanted to poke around.” He laughed, shortly. “Mrs. Konover better watch out,” he said, “they'll be taking her yard along as a souvenir if she isn't careful.”

“Yeah,” Durkin said. “Ain't people wonderful?”

Weigand, disconnecting, drummed on his desk. He remembered something.

“You were going to find out about a couple of wills, Mullins,” he said. “What did you find out?”

Mullins looked startled for a moment. Then remembered and hauled out a notebook.

“Ole man Ashley's,” he said. “The money is left pretty much as Buddy says; all tied up. He gets the whole business when he's twenty-five if he isn't married. There's nothing about being mixed up with a woman any other way, like you thought maybe. Mama Ashley can say a marriage is O.K. if she wants to, and then sonny boy gets the jack. Like sonny boy said. O.K.?”

“Right,” Weigand said. “How about the girl?”

Lois Winston, it developed, had left a considerable legacy to the Foundation. There were minor legacies to friends; a substantial one to the maid, Anna. The residue went to the college Lois had attended, with the stipulation that it be used for special research in the field of sociology.

“No motive there,” Mullins said. “Unless maybe—say, Loot, how about Miss Crane? At the Foundation. Suppose she figures she can get her hands on the money that goes to the agency—”

He stopped, because Weigand was staring at him.

“Listen, Mullins,” Weigand pleaded. “Don't think, huh? The Foundation, like all such agencies, is supervised by the state, and all their funds are audited regularly. I can't see Miss Crane killing anybody; she couldn't get the money if she did. Nobody at the Foundation could. And, if you were thinking of that, I don't think the president of the college killed Miss Winston, either.” He looked at Mullins. “I don't like to discourage you, sergeant,” he said. “How about Anna?”

Mullins shook his head.

“Huh-uh,” he said. “She ain't the type.” He looked at Weigand severely. “You got to know types, Loot,” he instructed.

Weigand nodded, as admiringly as he could. He said he thought Mullins had something there. Then the telephone rang. It was Durkin, and he was crisp.

“Got the kid, Weigand,” he said. “For once a hotel dick kept his eyes open. A dick at the Fairmount, up on Forty-eighth. Just called in to say that the boy—he's pretty sure it's the right boy by the description—was brought in there two-three hours ago by a woman. Registered as Mrs. Anderson, the woman did. Got Room 1209. I'm sending—”

“Don't,” Weigand said. “Don't send anybody. Put men on the doors; better have a couple on the twelfth floor, too. I want to pick the kid up myself.” He broke off, thought. “No question about who found him, Paul,” he added. “The break goes to the M. P. B., naturally. But I think it hooks in on the Winston killing, and I want to check it myself. Right?”

“Sure,” Paul said. “I'll get the men out.”

“Right,” Weigand said. “I think you've broken it, Paul. Nice going. Be seeing you.”

Mullins stood up, too. He responded to the change in Weigand's mood. They were going places, now. That was what Mullins liked; going places. His look at Weigand was hopeful, inquiring.

“Right, Mullins,” Weigand said. “This is it, or close to it. Come on.”

17

T
HURSDAY

2:20
P.M.
TO
3:05
P.M.

The Hotel Fairmount towered without character over Forty-eighth Street; it was massive and nondescript—masonry with interstices into which beds and the occupants of beds could be fitted. The doorman's uniform was arresting; the doorman inside it pale and inconsequential. A few people sat in a grillroom which had windows on the street and pudgy waiters in noticeable uniforms looked out vacantly. Mullins pointed out that they hadn't had any lunch, and his step hesitated when, through the windows, he saw bottles on the bar. “Later,” Weigand told him, curtly.

In the lobby the few people visible were without savor. Weigand's eyes flickered over the room. There were several men, waiting for nothing, who looked, if anything, more nondescript than the rest. There was one who didn't; who looked what he was. Bad work, that, Weigand thought. Cops who looked like cops had their jobs, but unsuspected observation was not among them. Precinct man, Weigand decided. One of the unnoticeable men turned from the cigar counter, vaguely, and brushed close to Weigand.

“Still there,” he said, without moving his lips. Weigand nodded. With Mullins beside him—and heads came up as Mullins passed, and one casual gentleman went, with studied indifference, toward the door—Weigand went to the elevators. The eyes of the black-haired young man at the controls of the waiting car slipped over Weigand without interest, but widened when Mullins followed. His eyes slid up and down Mullins.

“Twelve,” Weigand told him. The young man looked at Weigand, leaving the car door open. Weigand looked back, without truculence; “Now,” he said, almost gently. But there was no gentleness in the tone. “Get going.”

The operator reached for the door. He kept his eyes on Weigand as he slammed it; groped for the control and moved it without shifting his gaze.

“You better look where you're going, son,” Mullins told him. “You wouldn't want to run into nothing, would you?” Mullins turned to Weigand and beamed, falsely. “Sonny don't want to run into nothing,” he told Weigand. Weigand smiled, fleetingly. This wasn't, he thought, the place he had expected to find Michael. But for anybody who wanted to keep under cover it wasn't a bad place. Only, if his theory was right—

He broke off as the car stopped.

“Twelve,” the black-haired youth said. He said it indifferently. Mullins, following Weigand out, patted the boy's shoulder.

“Nice going, sonny,” he said. “Didn't run into a thing.”

The operator glared at Mullins and met a pleased smile. The door, clanging shut, nipped at Mullins' ankles.

“Temper,” Mullins said, and sighed. A short fat man with a red face who had apparently been waiting for an elevator looked at Mullins. Weigand's eyes flickered over the short fat man.

“Homicide,” Weigand said. “Lieutenant Weigand. You're the house man?”

“Yeah,” the house man said, heavily. “I called Missing Persons. The kid's in twelve-nine. What is it? A snatch?”

“It could be,” Weigand told him. “Which way's twelve-nine?”

The short man waved a short arm.

“Couple your guys around here, somewhere,” he said. “You gonna do any shooting?”

“Why?” said Weigand. “Who'd we want to shoot?” He looked at the fat man. “Go look in some keyholes, brother,” he advised. “Keep it clean.”

“Listen—” the fat man started.

“Right,” Weigand said. “You gave us a buzz. We've got it in the books. A nice gold star for Mr. Zepkin, house detective. The Police Department appreciates it. But we'll take it from here.”

“Sure,” Mr. Zepkin said. “Sure you will, Lieutenant. We don't want anything funny going on at the Fairmount.”

“Sure you don't,” Weigand said, cordially. “Not at a high-class house like the Fairmount.” He paused a moment. “We'll be seeing you, I wouldn't wonder,” he said. He started down the hall toward twelve-nine; stopped.

“Let's borrow your key,” he said to Zepkin. “I'd just as soon not knock. I'll leave it at the desk.”

Zepkin handed over his pass-key. He looked knowingly at Weigand, who returned the look blankly. Mr. Zepkin pressed the signal button on the elevator grill.

“It's a suite,” he said. “Two rooms. Twelve-nine and twelve-ten.”

“Right,” Weigand said. They moved along the hall. At the end of the hall there was a window and a man was looking idly out it. He turned when he heard the steps of Weigand and Mullins. Weigand nodded to him.

“Keep an eye on twelve-ten,” Weigand directed. “We wouldn't want anybody leaking out.” He saw the man's hand move, instinctively, toward a holster. Weigand smiled. “You won't need it,” he said. “Not if I'm right.”

Quietly, Weigand slipped the pass-key into the keyhole of Room 1209. He waited for movement inside and heard none. He turned the key and pushed the door open. A small, pleased voice said, “Man!” Weigand stepped through the door. He looked at the woman and the little boy sitting by the window, the child in the woman's lap.

“Well,” Weigand said, “I
will
be damned!”

“Oh, I don't know, Bill,” Pam North said, over Michael Osborne's blond curls. “Not if you learn to knock at doors and say your prayers every night. How are you, Bill?”

“Well,” said Mullins, looking over Weigand's shoulder. “What d'yuh know?”

“I thought,” Pam said, “that you two would never get here. We—I, that is—I've been here hours. It doesn't seem to me that the police are very efficient.”

Weigand looked at her darkly.

“So you were the women,” he said. “Out in Queens, prowling around, asking questions, getting in policemen's way.”

“Women?” Mrs. North repeated, wonderingly. “How could I be ‘women,' Bill? Even if I was out in Queens, asking the other little boy—Andy—where Michael was. When he came home from school for lunch, because it's only around the block. I'm still not plural, Bill.”

“Sometimes,” Weigand said, “I wonder.”

Mrs. North looked at him.

“Somehow,” she said, “I'm not sure I like the way that sounds.”

Bill Weigand smiled at her.

“Right, Pam,” he said. “It was bright of you. And I suppose the other little boy—Andy—knew right away that Michael was at the Fairmount. All by himself, of course.”

“I think,” Pam said, “that there's something confusing about that sentence. Who all by himself?”

“Michael,” Weigand said. “Michael, all by himself at the Fairmount. I suppose Michael just walked over here and registered and asked for a two-room suite? And so you just came over and looked at the register and telephoned up that you'd like to see him. And they let you come, even if they don't allow men to entertain women in their rooms.” He waited.

“Sarcasm,” Pam North said, sadly. “Just sarcasm. There was a woman, of course. The kidnaper. A large, dark woman with—with a wart. But she's gone, now.”

“Pam,” Weigand said. “Pam North.” His voice sounded hopeless. “I—”

Then he turned, because he heard a door open. Dorian Hunt stood in the doorway.

“All right, Pam,” Dorian said. “She won't go. She says she's going to stay where Michael is.” Dorian looked at Weigand. “And anyway,” she said, “there's probably a man outside the other door. You wouldn't slip up on that, would you, Bill?” Her voice was faintly scornful. Weigand wished it weren't, but his own tone was equable.

“No, Dor,” he said. “I wouldn't slip up on a little thing like that. Tell Mrs. Graham to come out and—” He broke off. “No,” he said, “wait a minute. Let's get this straight. You and Pam were the women over in Queens. Whose idea was that?”