Case Pending - Dell Shannon (7 page)

Leaves me a fair amount of time for my own work, and
at the same time I really enjoy it, you know. Not to bore you—"

"But how could you indeed?"

"And this isn't getting to what you want to
know, anyway. It's a fairly small group, I never take more than
twenty-five in a class and it's usually around twenty girls. I try to
keep it on a more or less personal basis, you see. The course is six
weeks, five days a week, but some of that time is spent on group
reading and some on—private counseling, to give it a fancy name.
Generally, I'll see each girl privately, oh, say a total of two hours
or so a week. So you see, while I knew the girl, you can't say I knew
her intimately."

"But you're no fool at sizing up people,"
he said placidly, leaning back, arms folded behind his head. "And
the girl poured out her problems into your sympathetic ear?"

"That she did. You probably know about that—the
superior boy friend and his family's objections. She was rather a
pathetic little thing, really—awfully earnest, but—" She
paused for a word.

The first one comes to your mind about her," he
prompted softly.

"Stupid," said Alison unhesitatingly. "She
was stupid. She had no imagination, subtleties of any sort just
didn't penetrate—you know the type. Oddly enough, her older sister
is quite intelligent—I met them in town one day—"

"Yes, that girl has brains."

"Elena was honest, and—though she didn't look
quite a respectable girl, in the old-fashioned sense. Immature for
her age. But stupid."

"Immature and honest," he murmured. A
little something there. The man Tomás, if there was anything in
that, this girl would probably have been too stupid to discover it.
If anyone in that household had seen something suspicious about the
visiting uncle, it would not have been Elena, but the sharp-eyed
Teresa. "That's no surprise," he said, half to himself.
"Even dead, she was—unsubtle. I haven't met the boy
yet—judging by Mrs. Wade, I'd say that his persistence was less
attraction to Elena than rebellion against his mother."

"Like that?" She looked amused, and then
sobered. "But that's another thing that happens, Lieutenant-the
old, old story. I've never laid eyes on him either, don't know what
kind of a boy he is, but—"

"Oh, yes, that's the first thing one thinks of
here—If it was a private killing, so to speak. If she was pregnant,
if she could make trouble for him, if he lost his head—It's
happened. It'll happen again. We'll find out if it happened here."

"And how easy," she said, "to talk
about it like a crossword puzzle. After all, she's dead. Nineteen. .
. .She had a private session with me yesterday. She said she'd
decided to stop bleaching her hair—" Alison stopped abruptly
and looked up at him. "I have thought of something, but it
doesn't sound like much—"

"I'll tell you whether it does when I've heard
it, Ms. Weir—or is it Mrs.?"

"I got my own name back after the divorce,"
she said absently. "It was only a year. And aren't you the
autocratic male. Well, for what it's worth, Elena asked me yesterday
what to do about 'a guy annoys you'—that's how she put it—she
said he 'sort of' followed her and stared at her."

"
¡No me diga!
"
He sat up. "Don't tell me! That might be it, you know. Tell me
every last little word she said about it!"

"But there wasn't anything, really! I'm afraid I
didn't take it as very important. You mean it might have been—?"

"It might have been. There aren't any rules for
lunatics—or part-time lunatics—but even lunatics don't often kill
utter strangers without some reason. Nor what you or I'd call a
logical reason, but a reason. I'm not even at the point of guessing
about that here, but it's probable that at least he'd seen the girl
before—consequently she may have noticed him. Let's have it—all
of it!"

Alison looked stricken. "You'll want to murder
me, Lieutenant—I didn't give her a chance to say much about it. In
fact, I used it as an excuse to give her a neat little lecture on
Making Oneself Conspicuous. She said—let me think!—'Miss Weir,
what should you do about a guy annoys you?' and I asked, Annoys you
how? That was when she said he 'sort of followed' her and stared at
her. And as I say, I seized the opportunity to point out that
sometimes a girl seems to invite such attentions by making herself
look cheap—and so on and so on—" Her voice died; she shut
her eyes and pressed both hands to her cheeks, trying to remember.
"There wasn't anything else—she said she understood about
that, and that was when she told me she'd decided to stop
bleaching—we talked about different things, you know, one thing
leading to another—"

"That you needn't tell me! Women, they never
keep to the subject!"

"But there was something else, I know it. Yes—"
She straightened. "Just as she got up to leave, she said, 'But
it's not exactly like that, Miss Weir, like he was trying pick me up
or nothing like that. It's just—funny. Awful funny." And I
said something like, Well, just be sure you're not encouraging him,
and that was that—she left, her consultation time was up."

"God favor me with patience!" said Mendoza
violently. "And they say women are curious and fond of gossip!
The girl tells you some strange man is annoying her, and you talk
about hair dye and never ask one question? She says there's something
'funny' about him, and you—"

"How should I know it was anything important? If
I'd—no, but listen, Lieutenant—she didn't say it as if she
thought it was important, anything to be worried about! You see? 
If there'd really been anything very queer about him, to frighten
her—" Her voice dropped.

"Yes, you've remembered that she was a stupid
girl," he said sardonically. "And how did she mean that
'funny'?"

"
Extraño
,
like that—she said, 'It's just funny' or 'He's just funny,' and
then she said it in Spanish, as if the English word didn't quite
express what she meant.
Es un muchacho
extraño
."

"I will be damned," said Mendoza.
"Something at last, maybe. 'A queer boy."' He looked at her
in cold exasperation. "And you didn't ask so much as where and
when she saw him, what he looked like?"

"There's a saying about hindsight,"
retorted Alison, but meekly. "Would you have?"

"No, but then I'm not a woman. My God, I'd have
thought you'd be a little curious! Well, it can't be helped." He
got up. "I'll ask you to make a formal statement about this, if
you will."

"Yes, of course." She went to the door with
him. 'Where do I go and when?"

"Tomorrow will do." Abruptly in better
humor again, he smiled down at her. "I'll take you down to
headquarters myself, not to expose any of my sergeants to temptation.
I make it a rule not to mix business with pleasure, but if you turn
out to be irrelevant to business, I'll be back—
con
su permiso
."

"Permission be damned, you mean! I do like your
nerve," said Alison pleasantly, leaning on the open door. "When
you're quite satisfied that I didn't murder the girl—maybe because
she was so stupid—or egg your lunatic onto her, you'll condescend
to find me good enough to be seen with.
Un
hombre muy arbitrario
, in fact! And doesn't
it occur to you that I might have a possessive six-foot admirer
hanging about to raise objections?"

"What, to compete with me? I don't let those
worry me any day."

"As if I needed telling. What time tomorrow?"

"In a hurry to be rid of me? One o'clock?"

"But naturally," she said, widening her
eyes at him. "I'm panting for you to get to work and absolve me
of guilt, what else, with such a reward offered? One o'clock—I'll
be ready." The small amusement faded from her eyes then and she
added, "I hope I have helped.  Good luck with it."

"That I've had my
share of for today. Until then." Scarcely a wasted afternoon,
no-however you looked at it. He reflected pleasurably and with
anticipation on Alison Weir—a sophisticated, shrewd, sensible woman
(deliver him from romanticizing and possessive young girls!) and a
very lovely one—until he slid behind the wheel and started the
engine. He then removed his mind from her firmly and thought about
what she had told him.

* * *

Hackett was waiting for him in his office; Hackett
had been busy, and there was quite a list of miscellaneous bits and
pieces to think about. Of greatest importance was the Ricky Wade
business. That had to be looked into: it was so obvious. Hackett
agreed with that: he would call there this evening, to catch both the
boy and the father at home: a phone call assured that they would be,
Mrs. Wade sounding surprised and uneasy (but what have we to do with
this sordid matter, her tone implied).

The proprietor of the rink had been out, but some
useful information had been obtained from his two employees, and
Hackett was to see him at four. Two of Hackett's men were now out
chasing down the patrons definitely stated to have been in the place
last night. That was a place to be very thorough, the rink and
everybody connected with it, for the girl had almost certainly been
on her way home from there. When Hackett left, Mendoza shoved aside
everything to do with this case, conscientiously went over all the
other pending matters under his authority. The still-unidentified
corpse found in the freight yards; Sergeant Clock hadn't come up with
anything new. The liquor-store holdup, a clerk shot; Sergeant Brice
was on a faint track there, from the usual anonymous Information
Received. The woman who'd shot her husband before witnesses: nothing
to investigate but much tiresome routine, collecting statements for
the District Attorney's office, in that sort of thing. Sergeant
Galeano thought he had it about tied up now. A new memo from the
captain's office, more routine: particulars of a man New York wanted
for parole violation, one Ray Dalton, five-ten, one-eighty, age 42,
Caucasian. Mendoza swore to himself and reached for Hackett's notes
again.

The two men at the rink, Hayes and Murphy, described
themselves as attendants. They kept the place cleaned up (Hackett's
comment: "This is news to anyone who's seen it"), one of
them was on the floor at all times during open hours, to hand out
skates and generally keep an eye on the patrons, and on occasion they
spelled Ehrlich, the owner-proprietor, at the ticket desk. Not often,
because Ehrlich didn't trust nobody much but himself with money.
Ehrlich's wasn't getting rich, but business was so-so: most nights
and Saturday afternoons they had maybe thirty, forty people in. All
kids, sure: teenagers; some of those were crazy about it, maybe the
ones had been too poor ever to have skates. They were good enough
kids, not punks: the kind of kids carried switchknives, roamed round
in gangs, all that, got in trouble with the cops—to them kind
roller skating was for the birds. Sure, the kids got noisy and
rambunctious sometimes like kids do, but there wasn't never anything
real bad, knives pulled or an honest-to-God fight.

No, neither of them ever remembered an adult coming
in not to skate. There'd been a kind of fad for it once, like that
miniature golf and ping-pong, that was when Ehrlich had opened this
place, but nowadays anybody grown-up, they'd feel like a danm fool
roller skating. Well, the chairs round the sides were for people to
sit and watch, sure, but this wasn't like an Ice Palace where there
was a show to see, for God's sake—just a bunch of kids
skating—nobody came just for that, the chairs were mostly used by
the kids themselves, resting and talking.

As for the club thing, it wasn't really a club but a
kind of season-ticket deal, see. You got a cut rate if you joined as
a "regular patron": there weren't no meetings or nothing,
all a card meant was they'd paid three or six months in advance. All
the kids with cards didn't necessarily know each other: sometimes
yes, sometimes no. A card was an automatic pass good for three nights
a week up to the date on it. What with kids sixteen and seventeen
getting maybe forty a week at some job, a lot of them had more money
than was good for them, to throw away. Both men knew the Ramirez girl
and confirmed that she had been in last night. What with the row,
they could hardly miss her. Ehrlich had been damned mad about it too,
the guy saying the rink was a low dive and all: Ehrlich was death on
liquor in the place. This fellow barged right in, about twenty
minutes to ten it was, and pulled the kid off the floor—one that
was with this girl. Gave him hell, way the kids both looked: but not
shouting, private—like at the side of the rink, see, where it was
kind of dark, account the overhead lights were just in the middle, to
light the skating floor. The fellow took the boy out finally, maybe
five minutes later—practically dragged him, hardly give him time to
take his skates off and turn them in. Yes, off the premises—Ehrlich
probably saw them go out to the street or wherever, he was arguing at
the guy and followed them. The girl was mad too, naturally. And she
didn't stay long after; a couple other kids come up and talked to
her, but she probably didn't feel much like staying to skate alone,
thought it made her look silly, have her boy friend dragged away from
her like that. She took off her skates when the other kids left her,
and turned them in to Hayes who was on duty then, and left the floor.
Murphy, who was having a cigarette in the little foyer, had noticed
her come out; she'd gone into the rest room—those were opposite
sides of the foyer, with the ticket desk in the center. Ehrlich was
sitting there again by then, he would have seen her too. She was in
the rest room maybe five minutes, and come out, and left. That was
maybe ten or five after. It sure was awful, what had happened to
her—to think of a guy who'd do that walking around loose. No,
neither of them could say offhand if anybody left right after her-the
kids came and went all the time, there was a Coke machine in the
foyer. And what the hell were the cops getting at with that?—somebody
from here the one killed her? If Ehrlich heard that he'd hit the
ceiling-besides, they were all kids in here last night, like every
night, and no kid had done that.