Extra Kill - Dell Shannon (8 page)

The blonde was very blonde, very Hollywoodish in a
strapless gown. Brooke Twelvetrees was conscious of the camera,
smiling his white winning smile, head tilted to show off the cleft
chin and the wave in his dark hair. That was an interior shot, by
flash, and showed the pair of them sitting at a table; Mendoza
deduced one of those cheap night-club photographers. The woman in the
other picture, a bad snapshot taken on a beach somewhere, was dark,
slender, consciously posed. Mendoza looked at the second picture
longer than the other, but finally put them both back into the wallet
and everything back into the carton. "Yes. Well, if you think of
anything else, hand it on."

"Oh, certainly," said Woods. "I'm only
too pleased to be rid of this one, Lieutenant—we were getting
nowhere fast, and I've got a couple of other things to get busy on.
Not that I won't be interested in what you find out."

Hackett sighed and said gloomily, "We're not
exactly casting around for something to keep us occupied either. I
don't know why the hell you had to look in your crystal ball and find
this one, Luis. There he was, peacefully moldering away, doing no
harm to anybody. And now you've dug him up, I've got a hunch he's
going to be a tough one to untangle."

"Maybe—and maybe not," said Mendoza.
 
 

FIVE

It was almost eight o'clock when he ended his block's
walk from the nearest parking space and looked up at the sign over
the door. Quite a modest sign, and unlighted. This wasn't the most
glamorous stretch of Wilshire, but it was Wilshire, valuable business
property; the building taken over by the Temple of Mystic Truth
looked as if it might have started life as a small furniture
showroom, or as duplex shops. It had been remodeled, and presented a
rough fieldstone front with the entrance at one side, severely
modern. A small board beside the front door, discreetly lighted from
below, bore the legend:

Sabbath Celebration, Renascence of Atman
Weekly Saturdays 8 P.M.
Novitiates
10-4 Tuesdays and Fridays
Ceremony of the
Constellations, 3 P.M. Wednesdays
Ceremony of
the Inner Chamber, 8 P.M. Fridays

"
Vaya, Vaya
"
said Mendoza to himself, and went in. There was a very small
brick-floored foyer, and double doors standing open at the right let
him into a large, darkish place which must comprise nearly the whole
ground floor. It was half chapel and half theater—very appropriate,
he thought; padded folding chairs in rows like theater seats; a
carved wooden fence round what was probably meant for an altar,
pulpit, proscenium, or what-have-you; niches in the walls for
statuettes—he noticed an Egyptian ibis, the inevitable horned bull,
a goddess crescent-crowned in white alabaster.

No usher or attendant: he sat down in the last row.
There was a fair crowd already gathered, perhaps sixty or eighty
people, and in the next five minutes a dozen more came in. He
remained the lone occupant of the last row; everyone else settled as
near the altar as possible. There was just enough light from the
lobby and a couple of wall fixtures along each side that he had a
fairly good look at the late arrivals; among them he was gratified to
spot the Hollywood blonde of the snapshot. She was, in fact, the last
comer, and he had the feeling that in better light and a different
place it would have been quite an entrance. She glided past him,
erect and confident, in something dark that rustled and showed a good
deal of white throat, the shining blonde hair, to advantage: and she
trailed behind her an invisible cloud of spicy, heavy scent.

Mendoza inhaled thoughtfully and said to himself,
"Flamme d'Amour, female species?" Something like chypre,
anyway. Very interesting, but she would keep .... A number of the
congregation seemed to know her; she seated herself amid subdued
rustlings and whispers of greeting.

Almost immediately the ceremony began. He paid little
attention to it beyond remarking that it was handsomely staged.
Impossible to gather much about the Kingmans at this distance: thin,
ethereal Madame Cara, in a Grecian robe, and Kingman, looking
distinctly odd with his naked bald head rising out of a voluminous
black cassock. Several other people similarly clad took part. There
was an elaborate ritual of procession about the altar; there was a
tall gilt chalice, and an invocation pronounced by Madame Cara; there
was chanted response from the congregation. There was mention of the
great All-Parent, the cycles of the gods, the perfect circle of the
four trinocracies, and the lesson of the Great Pyramid.

Mendoza sat back and thought about Brooke
Twelvetrees, what they had on him so far, what they had on that
Friday night, and about Joe Bartlett.

He couldn't help thinking about Bartlett, at least:
he didn't like ragged edges to things, and it would be so much neater
if Bartlett and Twelvetrees were hooked up somehow. But as he'd said
to Hackett, they couldn't proceed on the arbitrary premise that
Twelvetrees had been killed that Friday night—it was just something
to keep in mind. Mrs. Bragg indignantly denied that she had removed
anything from the apartment, even a paper bag. She had been in it, of
course: finding the note announcing Twelvetrees' departure, she had
checked the supply of linen and dishes, and had placed an ad in the
Times, first appearing on Monday, which had brought several
prospective tenants to look at the place before Woods had showed up.
There had been no bag of any kind left—so she said.

The note, of course, had been thrown away with the
trash on Monday. She could not recall the exact wording, but
remembered that it apologized for his sudden leaving, gave only a
vague reason of "important business." As it happened, of
course, to be the end of the month, he was paid up to date; having
paid the customary two months' deposit when he came in, he was in
fact due a rebate, and she had assumed that she would receive an
address from him later on to send it to. She hadn't seen his
signature or writing before—he always paid the rent in cash—and
consequently she could offer no opinion as to whether the note was a
forgery.

She had first noticed the note, neatly tacked in its
envelope to the outside of Twelvetrees' door, late on Sunday morning
as she left for church. It might have just been put there, or it
might have been there for two days—she couldn't say: she hadn't set
foot out of her own place since Friday night, having been trying to
come down with flu and warding it off with rest and various potions.
And as her door and Twelvetrees' were in the rear building, and no
other tenant had had occasion to call on her those days, there was no
evidence on when the note had been tacked to Twelvetrees' door.

The apartments, of course, shared a party wall, and
she admitted that loud noises were audible through it now and then,
but remembered nothing of that sort on that Friday night. "Of
course, with them Johnstones kicking up a row again, and I was over
there to Number Three twice before I called the police, well, you can
see there might've been something going on in Mr. Twelvetrees' place
I just didn't hear." Of course, of course. And Saturday,
nothing; Sunday morning, nothing. His key had been enclosed in the
envelope with the note, and she had naturally handled it, not that it
was likely to have borne any helpful print. The same could be said of
the bolt on the trap, which Mendoza himself had handled.

All the prints in the place belonged to her or to
Twelvetrees; but a few places where one might expect to find prints
had been polished clean, which was neither very helpful nor
interesting—the table in the kitchen, the top of the bureau, the
bedroom chair. If that said anything, it said that whoever had
cleaned those places probably had not visited the apartment for long
(or often), if those had been the only things touched.

The trowel, she said, was kept in a box sitting on
the small bench inside her carport, along with a few other tools. She
didn't think any of the other tenants were likely to know that: they
hadn't any occasion. It was account of Mr. Twelvetrees taking
interest the way he had in her Tree of Heaven that he knew.

Ballistics would, Mendoza hoped, tell him something
about the gun in time.

All those handkerchiefs . . .

The alcoholic Johnstones admitted frankly that they
remembered little about that Friday night, and were suffering
hangovers all day Saturday. Sober, they were very sorry they'd
disturbed everyone. None of the other tenants who'd been home could
recall anything helpful at all: nobody remembered whether or not
there had been a light showing in Twelvetrees' apartment, or whether
his car had been in his carport, either on Friday night or any other
....

The congregation gabbled a long response to a cue
from the altar, and Mendoza muttered profanely to himself. The
car—damn it, he should have thought of that before. Phone in and
get an inquiry started right away. Because Twelvetrees' Porsche must
have been taken away immediately afterward: whoever had finished
arranging his planned departure could not know that Mrs. Bragg
wouldn't be out and about, that somebody else wouldn't notice the car
unaccountably still there after he had supposedly left. The car had
been abandoned near the Union Station, and that was quite a trip from
267th Street. Unless there were two people involved, it must have
meant that someone had to take a taxi back to 267th, or thereabouts,
to pick up his or her own car. The question of public transportation
didn't enter in: he doubted very much that there was any out there,
after six or seven o'clock, and in any case it would be infinitely
slow. No problem at all if there were two people in the business, of
course.

There was also that snapshot. That dark girl,
something teasingly familiar about her. Leave it at the back of his
mind, it would come to him eventually ....

And that seemed to be the last outburst from the
congregation; the robed figures had vanished from the altar, and—ah,
of course—now came the important part of the whole business, the
attendants passing down the aisles with little velvet bags, taking up
the collection. Not much audible jingling of hard money; there
wouldn't be, by the sum missing from Twelvetrees' keeping.

Missing?

And,
Dios mia
,
of course, what had happened to the bankbooks? The attendants missed
him there in the last row; the congregation began to drift out. He
let it go past him until the hall was empty, and wandered out after
it. What was probably a nucleus of—could one call them?—charter
members was gathered in the little lobby around the Kingmans. The
blonde; a scrawny old woman in rusty black; a buxom hennaed female
with a foolishly loose mouth and a mink stole; a scholarly-looking
middle-aged man; others more nondescript.

Mendoza leaned on the wall and lit a cigarette,
watching and listening—principally to the Kingmans. He was
interested in the Kingmans. He didn't listen long: the lobby was too
small for anyone to go unnoticed, and he began to collect curious
glances. So he detached himself from the wall, went up to them,
introduced himself, and asked for a private word with them.

"Dear me!" exclaimed Cara Kingman, opening
her eyes very wide on him. "A policeman! What can we have done?"
He put her down as nearing fifty. She was so thin she looked haggard;
her fair hair in its thick coronet of braids had only lost color, not
turned gray. She had very pale china-blue eyes, and wore, apparently,
no cosmetics: she was a ghost-figure head to foot, colorless, still
in her white robe bound with a velvet rope at the waist. Round her
neck dangled a long silver chain with a medallion, and her long
fingernails were enameled silver.

"About Mr. Twelvetrees . . ." said Mendoza
gently.

"Ah—poor Brooke," she said deeply,
lowering her eyes. "Of course, of course. For a moment I had
forgotten—do forgive me. One must put all these worldly matters
aside during the Renascence. Martin—" She turned to her
husband gracefully.

"We must put ourselves at your service, sir,"
said Martin Kingman gravely. He had a fine rich baritone, eminently
suited to public speaking; Mendoza had noted it during the ritual. He
conveyed a kind of ultimate respectability, of upper-middle-class
conventionality, which must be worth a great deal in this business.
He looked like a reliable family lawyer or doctor: bald, a little
paunchy, very neat in a navy blue suit—he had removed his cassock—a
white shirt, a sober tie. He had intelligent brown eyes behind
rimless glasses. "Anything we can do to help you, of course,
Lieutenant. My dear, we'll ask these good people to excuse us—"

A general murmur, curious glances at Mendoza; they
began to drift away politely.

"Dear Madame Cara,"—the buxom lass—"such
a dreadful disappointment for you—we must all concentrate on
forgetting it—”

"So unworldly, so trusting,"—the scrawny
old lady—"There's such a thing as too much faith, Martin.
Indeed!" Snapping black eyes darted toward Mendoza; she didn't
seem to think much of him. Evidently the watchword on Twelvetrees was
forgive-and-forget, and also don't-mention; they muttered goodnights
as embarrassedly as if he had brought up something obscene.

The blonde touched cheekbones with Madame Cara,
delicately. "We must try to remember only the good, isn't that
so, dear?"