Murder Most Strange (3 page)

Mendoza climbed out of the Ferrari, opened the gates,
drove through and got out to close them. The gates bore the name of
the house in intricate letters at the top: La Casa de la
Genre Feliz, the house of happy people.

There were some California live oaks on the four and
a half acres, but Alison had said leave most of it wild, just some
landscaping around the house. In the last couple of months she had
been spending quite a lot more money, and the landscaping had gone
in—fairly mature Italian cypress trees, hibiscus bushes against the
house, modest sweeps of lawn at front and sides, a few avocado and
orange trees on either side of the curving driveway, more hibiscus
flanking the triple garage. At the moment she had decided that the
Kearneys' car deserved a garage too, and that was half built as an
addition to the apartment, with a hundred yards of new drive to be
added later.

And what was passing through Mendoza's mind now was
one thing leading to another—that it was damned inconvenient to
have to stop and open and shut those gates, going and coming. There
would probably be some way to install an automatic opener, something
on the principle of those garage door openers, he thought.

In fact, only one of the potential problems attendant
on the move had astonishingly resolved itself. Everybody had been
nervous about the juxtaposition of the redoubtable half-Siamese El
Senor and the Kearneys' large black cat Nicodemus. But it appeared
that territorial rights established a truce. The Kearneys had moved
into their apartment a month before the Mendozas and Mairi MacTaggart
had moved into the house; and by the time the four Mendoza cats had
gone out exploring their new domain, Nicodemus had occupied by right
the entire area around the old winery, the stable, corral and riding
ring, and the grove of live oaks on that side of the hill. After a
few bristly encounters with a good deal of hissing and spitting, El
Senor—who only pretended to be a great warrior in any case—had
tacitly reserved for his own domain the other half of the property,
and a peaceable truce was in effect.

The other potential problem had been solved by the
discovery of an excellent parochial school only a mile away down the
hill. It even boasted a small kindergarten; but time sliding by as
alarmingly as it did, next September the twins, Johnny and Teresa,
would be starting first grade.

However, that gate . . . It was nearly full dark when
he slid the Ferrari into the garage beside Alison's Facel-Vega and
pulled down the door. There were lights in the house, welcoming. As
if to add further welcome, from somewhere out there in the dark a
couple of the Five Graces uttered loud bass baas.

Halfway up the new cement path from garage to back
door, he was pounced on playfully by the Old English sheepdog Cedric,
and being taken unawares and off balance, fell flat on his face.
"
¡Vaya por Dios!
Down—
bastante
! No, I
don't want to play—down, damn it!" Fuming, he marched in the
back door.

Alison and Mairi were both in the big kitchen beyond
the generous service-porch-pantry, Alison making a salad at the sink
and pink-cheeked silver-haired Mairi peering into the
oven.
"Now I will tell you," began Mendoza, "that damned
dog—"

"Oh, you're home, darling, I didn't hear the
car." The twins, however, had, and came running. "Daddy,
Daddy, we been ridin' all afternoon—an' Uncle Ken let us gallop a
lot—Johnny was almost afraid—"

"I wasn't neither, an' Diamond galloped faster
than Star—Uncle Ken says I'm better 'n Terry because my legs are
longer—but, Daddy—"

"Yes, yes,
ninos
.
You're both very good indeed. I will tell you,
querida
,"
said Mendoza, "we've got to put a light on that path from the
garage. This damned dog you saddled us with—I might have broken my
neck. And another thing—" Sheba landed on his shoulder from
behind without warning. "Cats!" he said. "Dogs! And
I'll tell you something else—"

"Now calm down,
chico
,"
said Alison.

"The man needs a dram or two before dinner,"
said Mairi.

"We galloped lots and Star can gallop just as
fast as Diamond, an' I only had to hang on a little bit—"

"Uncle Ken says we both gonna be good
riders—only it'd be more fun outside the fence. Daddy, can't we
ride outside the fence?"

As if by magic, hearing a reference to strong drink,
El Senor arrived, floated up to the counter under the cupboard where
the liquor was kept, and uttered a raucous demand. “
¡Santa
Maria!
How did I ever get into all this?"
demanded Mendoza violently.

"Now, now," said Mairi. "Take the man
away and settle him down before dinner,
achara
.
It will be half an hour and a bit. He's doubtless had a bothersome
day. I'll see to the salad."

Alison poured El Senor his half ounce of rye, put a
shot glass, the bottle of rye and a glass of sherry on a tray and
shepherded Mendoza down to the huge square living room, Cedric
bouncily preceding them and the twins in hot pursuit. The other two
cats, Bast and Nefertite, were sound asleep on the oversize couch at
right angles to the fieldstone hearth. The new one was slumbering
peacefully on a blanket in the middle of the floor; the new one,
Luisa Mary, not so new now at nearly eight months old, was
astonishingly mobile when awake and by now had a full head of hair as
outrageously red as Alison's. She was also definitely, as Mairi had
predicted, going to be left-handed.

"Now sit down and relax," said Alison.

He swallowed rye and began to feel slightly better.
"A post or something with a floodlight," he said. "Or
a floodlight on that side of the garage. And another thought I
had—that gate—it is one big damned nuisance, having to open and
shut it. If there was an electric eye or something—"

"Yes, I know," said Alison, sipping sherry.
"I'd had the same thought, but we've spent so much money
already—"

"Damn it, might as well be hanged for a sheep as
a lamb," said Mendoza.

"Yes. Well—that's another thing," said
Alison. "Those sheep. They ought to be sheared, Ken says. They
were a year old in February, and sheep ought to be sheared once a
year."

"I suppose he can locate somebody to do it."

"I hope so. About the gate, I'll look in the
yellow pages and get an estimate on the electric eye. You know, Luis,
it is very funny, isn't it, how one thing keeps leading to another."

"Daddy, you didn't listen about the galloping—"

"And about ridin' outside the fence. Please,
Daddy—"

The new one woke up and began to bellow. Alison
swooped to pick her up.

Mendoza resignedly poured
himself another shot of rye.

* * *

Friday was Nick Galeano's day off, but he wouldn't be
getting together with his bride-to-be; according to what they'd heard
she was a very proper convent-bred girl, and quite thick with
Galeano's mother. It was likely all the women—he had several
sisters—were busy over clothes and protocol for the wedding.

The night watch had, expectably, left them a couple
of new ones. A lab report had gotten sent up after everybody left
last night, and Mendoza looked at that before reading Piggott's
report.

"Well, there you are," he said to Hackett,
passing it over. It was the lab report on Cindy Hamilton's apartment.
"A great big blank. Latents picked up—not many—all belong to
her or these couple of close girl friends—the one who found her,
another one. She doesn't have a steady boy friend. The one girl said
she'd had a spat with the fellow she'd been going with, and it hadn't
been serious anyway. You went out on him before we heard what she had
to say, and turned up an alibi—at that party for his mother's
birthday, and that's irrelevant now. Now we know it was Dapper Dan."

"And where the hell to go on it—"

"Wel1, there isn't anywhere," said Mendoza
irritably. "Unless—
¡Por Dio!
That's woolgathering."

"What?"

"He told them all he'd just landed here from
back East—no particular place specified. Could that be so, Art?
Just maybe? Maybe somewhere back East a Dapper Dan was operating, and
the lawmen there gave up on him, and the M.O. got erased out of
NCIC's computers."

"You do have useful ideas," said Hackett.
“So we send queries to every force east of the Mississippi asking?"

Mendoza didn't bother to answer that obvious
question; he picked up the night report as Hackett went out to the
communal office. They were now working five heist jobs, and on two of
them had good descriptions: a pair, by the descriptions, had pulled
both jobs last week, and were fairly distinctive—a Mutt-and-Jeff
pair, both black, one big, one little, and they sounded like a pair
of bunglers. On the first job they had dropped half the loot in
getting away, and one witness had passed on a description of the car,
an old clunker of a Ford, dirty white. Palliser and Grace were
working that; Landers, Glasser and Wanda went out on the others.
There was still a statement to get from the second liquor-store clerk
on Monday night's heist, and Hackett was waiting for him to show as
promised when Mendoza erupted from his office with the night report
in his hand.

"For God's sake, of all the ridiculous
things—the jungle getting hairier all the time, and there's got to
be a first for everything, but for God's sake . . . Jimmy, you'd
better contact these people and ask them to come in to make a
statement as soon as possible. I want to hear about this one
firsthand."

"What's up?" asked Higgins, looking up from
his typewriter.

"Dogs!" said
Mendoza?

* * *

They came in about ten o'clock, a good-looking
couple, Mr. and Mrs. Thomas Pryor. Pryor was a lawyer; they lived in
West Hollywood. They were middle-aged, he lean and dark, she frosted
blond and smartly dressed.

"Listen," said Pryor, "do you think I
was about to take a chance? The crime rate up—a lot of people keep
these attack-trained dogs now. Would you have chanced it? Well, I
didn't."

His wife shivered. "It certainly looked terribly
savage."

They had gone to the Dorothy Chandler Pavilion, to a
concert, last night, and come out to the parking lot rather late—Mrs.
Pryor had been kept waiting in the ladies' room. And as they
approached their car, with the crowd thinned out and at the far end
of the parking lot, they'd been accosted by a man with a dog.

"It was a great big Doberman," said Pryor,
"and I know those damned things are dangerous. I couldn't give
you any kind of description of the man, I'm sorry, he was about my
size, maybe five ten, he had a hat pulled down over his face. He just
said, this is a trained attack dog and I'll set him on you if you
don't hand over your wallet."

"That's a first, all right," said Hackett,
intrigued. "And you did?"

"It looked awfully ferocious," said Mrs.
Pryor. "I was scared to death."

The man with the Doberman had gotten about seventy
dollars from Pryor's wallet. But interestingly, he hadn't taken
anything but the cash, ignoring the various pieces of jewelry they
both were wearing. He'd just walked up the alley out of the lot, and
that was that.

"It was just ravening to be ordered to attack,"
said Mrs. Pryor. "I've always been terrified of Dobermans
anyway."

"And just where," said Mendoza to Hackett,
"do we go on that one?"
 

TWO

There didn't seem to be much to do about the man with
the Doberman. As a gesture, Mendoza sent a query to R. and I. about
the
modus operandi
—did
anybody have a record anywhere of such a caper? It was a new and
novel M.O. to the Central beat, but didn't offer any leads.

Landers and Glasser brought in a possible suspect on
one of the heists; Mendoza sat in on the questioning, but it was
inconclusive, up in the air. They let him go while Landers went to
check the offered alibi.

Mendoza and Hackett presently went out to lunch
together, at Federico's up on North Broadway, and coming back to the
office at one-fifteen met Palliser just coming in with a witness; he
introduced them. "Mr. Henry Simms. Mr. Simms," said
Palliser, "has a funny little story to tell us."

"Well, I guess you can call it funny," said
Simms. "And I don't know that I believe it myself." He was
a stout, short, pugnacious-jawed fellow about sixty-five, in neat and
clean sport shirt and slacks. He took the chair Palliser pulled out
for him and regarded them dubiously. "This is the damnedest
thing I ever ran across. Joe! Of all people, Joe getting killed like
that."

"Mr. Simms was a friend of Mr. Kelly's,"
said Palliser.

"Well, I was," said Simms as if there'd
been some argument about it. "You see, while Joe was working
he'd gotten transferred around so much by the railroad, him and his
missus hadn't ever bought a house. Just rented. Myra and me had—I
was in carpentry and cabinetmaking all my life—we had a nice little
place over in Lincoln Heights, but the goddamn state took it, when
they were expandin' the Golden State freeway they just took it, some
damn thing called eminent domain —give me twenty-five thousand, I
coulda sold it for forty then if I'd wanted to, which I didn't. Damn
government. And it was along about then Myra died, so that's how come
I'm in the apartment on Miramar and got to know Joe. We ran into each
other at the market, and got talking. We had the same kind o'
background, thought the same way about things, 'round about the same
age and all—both of us widowers without much to do, y'know‘? We
used to get together, him living only a block away—I got a color
TV, and we'd play checkers sometimes. I don't know how much there is
to this, though I'm bound to say Joe wasn't a fellow to go imagining
things." He cocked his head at them.