Murder Most Strange (28 page)

"A funny day," said Higgins. "Some
pretty peculiar things are happening on the job lately, if you ask
me. I think I'll have a drink before dinner. I had a little shock
this afternoon." And hearing his voice, Steve Dwyer came out of
his room; he had shot up another inch in the last couple of months,
and looked more like Bert than ever.

"Hey, George, look at the great shots I got of
that sunset over the mountains, that new filter is really something."

Margaret Emily was playing on the living-room floor
with a big stuffed dog, and Laura was practicing the piano, loud. But
her teacher said she was some kind of musical genius so they had to
put up with it.

Higgins went to build
himself a drink before he admired Steve's pictures.

* * *

"Well, it might be fun," said Roberta. "I
got all this literature from the local obedience club today. She's
really pretty good." They looked at the big black German
shepherd Trina on the floor between them. Roberta had just come back
from tucking the baby into bed. "I never saw the sense of
regular dog shows, but the obedience thing, to show how intelligent
they are, that's interesting. The show's in June, in Pasadena. I can
work with her a lot more in the meantime. And the entrance fee's only
ten dollars for the novice class."

"Go ahead." Palliser smiled at her.

"Would you like that, girl? Like to go to the
show and have everybody see how smart you are?" Trina thumped
her tail enthusiastically.

"If she does take first prize it'll be all your
doing, you're the one who's trained her."

"The only thing is, it's on a Sunday and you
couldn't come. How much seniority do you have to have to get Sundays
off?"

"It goes by rote, you know that. Just be
thankful I'm not on night watch. Rich Conway is damned annoyed about
that, but maybe it'll settle him down some."

She laughed. "Well, the bride and groom will be
back soon. She seemed very nice, I do hope they'll be happy."

"We'll be damned glad
to have Nick back," said Palliser feelingly.

* * *

The woman at the hospital, the only one who'd
survived the hit-run, was Mrs. Margarita Patillo. She had a broken
leg and a sprained wrist, and she'd been knocked out with a
concussion, but now she could be talked to. They had her propped up a
little, with the leg in traction, and she looked quite alert and
sensible, if her face was drawn with grief. She was a woman in her
forties, still attractive. There was a man about the same age sitting
beside the bed when Conway came in. "Oh, I'll go out," he
said when Conway introduced himselt

"Not on my account, sir, I just want to ask Mrs.
Patillo what she can tell us about the accident."

"Accident!" she said. "This is my
husband, I guess he can stay. Only don't try to tell the man I'm
crazy, Joe."

"You've got an imagination, Rita." He
grinned at her faintly.

"I know what I know," she said obstinately,
and turned to Conway. The tears welled up in her dark eyes; she said,
"I suppose you know that I was with my niece—Mrs. Ina Rush—and
her daughter Pam. Oh, Pam! She was only eight—"

"Yes, we know that, Mrs. Patillo. Did you get a
look at the car at all?"

"That isn't going to do you any good," she
told him. "You listen to me. Ina found out about that bum a year
after she married him—he was always chasing other women and
gambling—but she tried to make the marriage work on account of Pam.
But it just got too bad, and she divorced him six months ago. And the
judge gave her four hundred a month alimony and child support, and
Jim Rush was mad as—as fire about it. He makes pretty good money,
he drives a refuse truck for the city. But he's got another woman on
the string and there's nothing he'd like better than to be rid of Ina
and Pam."

"You know," said Conway, "unless
you've got some evidence, that's slander."

"Just what I been telling her," said
Patillo.

"Men," she said. "You listen. I know
it was late for Pam, but I don't get off work till three, and there
was this movie we all wanted to see. Joe said he'd get his own
dinner. We went to the show, and we got out about six forty-five and
we went up to that restaurant on Hill for dinner. And it was when we
came out—Ina was parked in the lot across the street—not much
traffic, it was about eight-thirty—it happened. The street was
empty—nothing any direction—and we started across, and all of a
sudden I heard an engine start up with a big zoom, and that car
pulled out from the curb down the block—from the curb, mind you—and
headed straight for us!"

"You're telling me it was deliberate. How sure
are you?"

"I'm sure," she said grimly.

"You're not going to tell me you recognized the
driver," said Conway.

"No, I'm not such a fool," she said
candidly. "It was too dark. I heard Ina scream, and I tried to
reach for Pam, but it was all too quick—" She gave a
shuddering sigh.

"I take it Mrs. Rush wasn't in contact with her
ex-husband. How would he have known where she'd be, to try to run her
down?"

"Now that's the big question," she said. "I
don't know, but he did. He knows girl friends of hers, he's a smooth
talker, he could even have hired a private detective if he figured he
could get rid of her—"

"Oh, Rita," said her husband. "It's
just a damned awful thing about Ina and Pam, but you've got an
imagination—"

"I know!"

"The car?" asked Conway.

"Oh, it wasn't his car," she said
scornfully, "he wouldn't use that, in case he didn't kill her
and she could say it was him. It was a big station wagon, I don't
know what kind, it was either gray or tan . . ."

Conway sighed and
continued to make notes. He'd just had it on the grapevine tonight
that his best girl, who was a policewoman stationed at Hollenbeck
precinct, had started dating a detective in the Vice office. He was
feeling annoyed about it, but there wasn't a damned thing he could do
about it.

* * *

At ten-forty that night, Mr. and Mrs. Paul Warren and
their eight-year-old daughter Mary Ann came out of the Baker
Marionette Theater on First Street. Mary Ann wasn't usually up that
late, but it wasn't a school night and she was crazy about
marionettes. It was a prebirthday treat, because she was only having
a small party next Tuesday, when she'd be nine.

Paul Warren had an excellent legal practice in
Glendale, but he was also an ex-fullback for UCLA and kept himself in
shape without being a fanatic about it; he was six two and a solid
hundred and ninety.

They were late coming out, because Molly Warren had
dropped the case for her glasses under the seat in the theater, and a
couple of ushers took a while to find it. There hadn't been a very
big audience; not everybody went for marionettes, and Paul Warren had
been rather bored, but he liked to please his womenfolk.

They went across a largely empty parking lot to his
car, a year-old Monte Carlo, and Mary Ann climbed into the back seat
as Warren unlocked the doors.

And then a voice said behind him, "Excuse me."

A man had come up from the side alley, a tallish
shadowy figure, hat pulled down to shade his face. He had a large
Doberman pinscher with him on a leash. "Yes?" said Warren,
surprised. `

"Excuse me, but this is a trained attack dog and
I'1l set him on you if you don't give me your money. Come on, hurry
up!"

Warren froze. He heard Molly utter a little gasp. He
looked at the dog; he knew Dobes. He started to reach for his wallet.
And then Mary Ann, hearing the voices, opened the door and jumped out
of the car. And the dog gave a great whine of rapture and yanked the
leash loose and ran up to her, licking her face and waggling his
tailless rear end like mad, and Mary Ann threw her arms around him
and cried, "Oh, Daddy, he's just like Rusty!"

Warren hesitated no
longer. He brought one up from the ground, and landed square on the
jaw, and the man fell over backward onto the blacktop and lay very
still.

* * *

"What?" said Mendoza. "I didn't get
that." There were phones all over Alison's big house, and he'd
just been undressing, was standing in the master suite with just
shorts on. Alison was splashing noisily in the bathroom.

"I said we didn't know what the hell to do about
the dog," said Conway. "Animal Control is shut down for the
night. It's at the jail, one of the jailers said he'd take it out for
a walk now and then. It's a nice friendly big dog. The guy's name is
Charles Gage, he came to but he acted kind of dazed, and the doctor
at the jail said he might have concussion. I suppose you can turn the
dog over to Animal Control tomorrow, but damn it, they don't keep
them long, do they? It's a nice dog.

If this Gage has any family to claim it . . . But it
was the funniest damned thing, Lieutenant, after all we'd heard about
this savage beast—such a nice little girl, nice family, and the dog
was all over her, wagging its rear end and licking her face. The
woman said they'd just lost an old Doberman sixteen years old, and
the little girl had been heartbroken?

"Yes, I see," said Mendoza.

Conway was laughing again. "The savage beast.
Well, it was funny."

"Very," said Mendoza. "We'll sort it
out tomorrow."
 

TEN

Charles Gage looked at Mendoza and said, "So we
come to the end of the road. God, it's like a Greek play." They
had transferred him to the jail infirmary for observation, and the
doctor had said there was a mild concussion but he would be all
right. He was in a tiny narrow slot of a room, only big enough for
the hospital bed and a chair. He was a nearly handsome man in his
early forties, tall, with dark hair, regular features, but a very
ordinary man, a man you wouldn't look at twice. He was wearing the
tan cotton jail uniform, and he looked white and ill, whatever the
jail doctor said.

He gave Mendoza a very faint smile and said, "I
knew it was all up when the little girl got out of the car. I think
Bruno misses Caroline as much as I do."

"Caroline."

"My daughter. She died of leukemia last year.
She was nine."

"Well, Mr. Gage," said Mendoza, "you
had a novel idea for pulling heist jobs. We didn't have any way to
trace you at al1."

"It was a crazy idea," said Gage sadly.
"But I've been about crazy. What with everything?

"Suppose you tell me about it."

"I don't know why the police would want to
listen to the story of my life," said Gage listlessly. He was
lying on the made bed fully dressed; they would be transferring him
back to a jail cell after Mendoza had talked to him. "I don't
want to sound sorry for myself, but— God, everything seemed to
happen at once—as if God Himself had turned His back on me. And up
to then, everything had been pretty good, a good life. Well, I won't
say that Helen and I didn't have differences, but we got along. She
was always a little jealous of Caroline, but she was a good mother,
and we had a nice house—West Hollywood—and the business was doing
fine—and the nice big back yard for Bruno—I had it made, at
forty-one.”

"What business‘?" asked Mendoza.

"I've got an import and giftware shop at the
Farmer's Market in Hollywood. Not cheap stuff, all good quality—you
have to know how to buy, but experience tells you what's going to
sell. I had a girl working for me, and I thought she was a nice
girl—very efficient girl, named Doris King. Everything—going—fine."
He sat up a little straighter. Mendoza had lit a cigarette and he
said apologetically, "Could I bum one of those from you? Thanks.
I haven't been buying any lately—too damned expensive." He
smoked in silence for a while, and said, "Of course, the very
worst was Caroline. I suppose I had spoiled her—the one ewe lamb.
She lived seven months, and the medical bills piled up— God, God,
way over a hundred thousand bucks—if they could have done etching,
that wouldn't have mattered, but of course they couldn't. She died
just a little over a year ago. And then Helen changed, got restless,
she began to pick fights with me over nothing—she always did say I
was a stodgy slowpoke, never wanted to go out anywhere—well, I
never have been one for that, I guess it was pretty slow and dull for
her, when Caroline— Well, she just changed. And she decided she
wanted a divorce. She said she wanted some kind of better life while
she was still young enough to enjoy it." He was sitting on the
edge of the bed now, head down, cigarette dangling loose between his
lingers; he took a last drag and put it out carefully in the
dime-store ashtray, and Mendoza offered him another. "Thanks.
Well, she had a smart lawyer, and I guess he had an exaggerated idea
about the business, a judge gave her five hundred a month alimony.
And the next thing was that that King girl cleaned out the store bank
account. You'll think I was a fool, but she'd been with me for five
years, I trusted her. I'd given her the power to sign checks on it
because sometimes wholesale orders would get delivered when I wasn't
there, or I'd be away on a buying trip when the utility bills came
due. You see? I never dreamed she could do such a thing—but she got
in with some crook, fell hard for him—the police found out all
about it—and they took me for over twelve thousand dollars, all the
backlog, the net profits to go back into the business. The police
never got them, they traced them to Hawaii and then they just
disappeared.