The Diehard (4 page)

“Mr. Bodnar thought the world of her,” Mrs. Mercer said. “She was smart as a whip and sweet, very well-behaved. She wasn't wild at all, like some of these young people you see on television.”

“Did they have any children?” Mulheisen asked.

“No, they didn't,” Mrs. Mercer said. “I don't know why. I never asked.”

Mulheisen hadn't noticed any pictures of children around. He suspected that the Mercers hadn't had any children either. Perhaps they had idealized Jane as a child that they hadn't had. He wondered if they really knew much about her. Well, there would be other sources.

“I suppose the Clipperts were very wealthy,” Mulheisen said. “Did Jane inherit a lot of money from her father?”

“Now that's a funny thing,” Mr. Mercer said. “I was surprised that Arthur didn't go into Bodnar's company, since Axel didn't have any sons. The natural thing would have been for Arthur to take over when the old man retired. But I guess Arthur wanted to go his own way. The company is still going strong, of course, but I don't believe that the Clipperts had any financial interest in it.”

“Well, Jane must have inherited something,” Mulheisen said.

“Yes, and you know what old Axel did? He left her a trust
fund so that she got a certain amount each year and then when she turned thirty she would get all of it.”

“That seems odd,” Mulheisen said. “Thirty is kind of an advanced age for that sort of thing, especially if your only child is happily married to a respectable young lawyer. Do you suppose that Bodnar didn't trust Clippert?”

“I don't know about that,” Mr. Mercer said. “I think it was just one of Axel's peculiarities.”

“So she inherited when she turned thirty,” Mulheisen said. “How old was Jane?”

“I'm not sure,” Mrs. Mercer said, “but I think this next April she would be just thirty. April seventeenth.”

Mulheisen was thoughtful. “So, if she wasn't old enough to inherit before she dies, who gets the money?”

“I'm sure I don't know,” Mr. Mercer said. “Perhaps a lawyer could tell you.”

Five

When Mulheisen came downstairs the body was gone. So were Buchanan and Johnson. Mulheisen went over to the Clippert house. He avoided the reporters by cutting across the lawn. His feet sank into the snow and he got snow in his shoes.

The Clippert place was crawling with lab men. They had a lot to work with. The walls had bloody handprints on them. A photographer was taking a picture of a crumpled peignoir that lay on the living-room floor. But it was much, much worse upstairs. It looked like a slaughterhouse. In the bedroom there was even blood on the ceiling.

Inspector Laddy McClain was in there. He was a giant man, standing six-six. He waved Mulheisen into the room. “What a mess, eh, Mul?” he said.

Mulheisen looked around, amazed. “She walked out of here?” he said. “It looks like the Manson family had a party.”

“There's a whole pile of stuff, TV's and paintings, piled by the kitchen door,” McClain said.

“Burglary?” Mulheisen said.

“Could be,” McClain said.

“Any witnesses?” Mulheisen asked. “What about that security patrol?”

“No witnesses, so far. The security patrol passed by here about eight-fifteen. They didn't see anything unusual. I put some of your precinct boys out on the street, door-to-door, talking to neighbors.”

“Funny time for a house job,” Mulheisen said.

McClain rocked on his heels, hands in pockets. “They must have had the place pretty well cased,” he said. “Except, how come they didn't know that somebody was home?”

“You think that maybe they weren't expecting her to be here?”

McClain shrugged. “Hard to say.”

“Maybe they wanted her to be here,” Mulheisen said. “There are some bad men in this neighborhood. She must have been a pretty sexy-looking broad.”

“Then how come they left the loot?”

“Maybe it got rougher than they had planned, so they panicked and ran.”

McClain shook his head. “I don't know,” he said. “But just look at all the blood, will you. Mul, I want you to work on this.”

“Buchanan won't like it.”

“Screw Buchanan. I'll take care of him. Anyway, that's not quite what I had in mind. Officially, and in fact, Homicide will handle the case. I'll be handling it personally. I'll handle the press and the prosecutor's office. What I want is two lines of investigation. The routine, standard approach plus your private investigation. This is going to be a hot case.”

“Fine,” Mulheisen said. “Where's Clippert, by the way?”

“His office says he flew to New York this morning. United confirms that he was on their eight-fifty flight.”

“That lets him off the hook, then,” Mulheisen said. He fished a Dunhill Corona out of his jacket pocket. He clipped the end off with a little device and lit the cigar. McClain looked at him reproachfully. Mulheisen got out another one and handed it to him.

“I'll get Clippert back here right away,” McClain said.

Mulheisen told him about the inheritance problem.

“Interesting,” McClain said. “Brings up the notion of a contract killing, eh?’

“If Clippert inherits,” Mulheisen said.

“Well, it's too early to think about. Thanks for the cigar, Mul. I'll go see the press boys now and then head back downtown. We should start getting the preliminary stuff this afternoon. Give me a call.”

Mulheisen looked into the bathroom. Three lab technicians were bailing bloody water out of the tub. They carefully poured the water through paper filters into labeled jars. A young man with heavy dark-rimmed glasses looked up and pushed the glasses back up on his nose with one finger. “Hi, Mul,” he said.

“How's it going, Frank?”

“Too damn much evidence, Mul. Enough to keep us busy for weeks. And then what'll it amount to?” He gestured at the number of labeled jars, at a cardboard box that was full of small plastic bags that were also labeled and apparently held evidence. “Probably a lot of useless information. But we'll analyze it all. It looks like a hell of a lot of blood in this tub.”

“So she must have been attacked in the tub, Frank.”

“I'd say so,” Frank said. “And from the amount of dirt we've already filtered she would either have had to be the filthiest woman on record, or else someone was in there with her.”

Mulheisen considered that one. He thought of Mrs. Mercer's recollection of Jane Clippert's last words. “Black blood,” or “black love.” Could Mrs. Clippert have been in the tub with someone at eight in the morning, with a lover, perhaps? A black lover? Why not? It was no stranger an idea than that she had been killed.

“I think she probably got out of the tub,” Frank said, “and went into the bedroom. Somebody shot at her at least four times in there. The bullets are in the bed and the wall. If he had a six-shooter, the other two should be in the body.”

“It could have happened in reverse order, couldn't it?” Mulheisen said. “Say they messed her up in there, then ran a bath and threw her in, maybe tried to drown her. They tried everything else.”

“I doubt it,” Frank said. “For one thing, there's fancy bath crystals and oils in the water, as if someone prepared the bath carefully.”

“Here's something, Frank,” one of the other technicians said. He held out a filter on which there was sand and dirt and a piece of
wood or plastic about the size of a silver dollar. Frank picked the piece up with a pair of tweezers and held it up for Mulheisen to see.

“Know what that is, Mul?”

“That? That is . . . ah . . . well, let's see. What do you think, Frank?”

Frank smiled and pushed his glasses back onto the bridge of his nose. “Sergeant, in my professional opinion this here is a piece broken off a pistol grip.” He dropped the fragment into a plastic bag and sealed it. The bag was labeled and initialed. “Know the make of the gun, Mul?”

Mulheisen looked at him sourly. “No,” he said.

“It isn't an automatic,” Frank said. “There's no empty cartridges lying around. Of course, they could have picked up their empties, but it doesn't look like they were that careful. And then this shape isn't rectangular enough for an automatic grip. No, I'd say it was a revolver, probably an H & R .32, say. Looks like the kind of material they use for grips, something they call cycolac.”

“I'm impressed,” Mulheisen said. “How about latents?”

A Tennessee drawl that belonged to a long, raw face said, “Feller was wearing gloves. Got blood smudges all over, whole handprints, but no fingerprints.”

Mulheisen went back into the bedroom. He began to look through the desk drawers. There were several pictures of the murdered woman, a couple of them in which she wore a bikini. One of the technicians glanced over his shoulder at the pictures. “Wow,” he said.

“Yeah,” Mulheisen said.

There were a few letters, presumably from friends. Most of them seemed to be from people in distant cities like San Francisco, New York or London. One, however, was from a woman in Grosse Pointe. Why, Mulheisen wondered, would someone in a Detroit suburb write a letter to someone in Detroit?

It was a social note, on engraved stationery, dated December 10—last week.

Dear Jane,

I haven't been able to get you on the phone, dear, but I thought you would like to know that Lou will be home next week, the 16th.

Why don't you call? Perhaps you could have lunch.

Affectionately,

Margaret

The engraved address said “Mrs. Margaret Drake Spencer, Lakeside Drive, Grosse Pointe.”

There was an address book on the desk. Mulheisen flipped it open to the “S” section. The address and telephone number of Lou Spencer was written in a woman's handwriting.

Who was Lou Spencer? he wondered. An old friend? Or an old lover? Today was the seventeenth.

“What time is it?” he asked a lab man.

“Going on eleven,” the man said.

Mulheisen thought it was unlikely that he would learn anything from the Spencers. But it was early and he had to start somewhere. He had to start learning about a beautiful heiress, said to be carefree and gay, a perfect daughter and wife, who now lay under a bright overhead light in the Wayne County Morgue while men she had never known peeled back her skin and probed her body with delicate instruments.

Six

Lou Spencer was not what Mulheisen had expected. She was not beautiful, but her figure compared favorably with Jane Clippert's. She was twenty-nine years old, five-five, and had a way of smiling that made her seem to squint.

The Spencer place was pretty impressive, as well. About two hundred thousand dollars’ worth of Colonial splendor that looked out on Lake St. Clair across a lawn that was larger than the combined flight decks of several U.S.S.
Forrestals.
A very pretty black maid put Mulheisen in a long and elegant room to wait for the Spencers. There were tall windows with pale draperies. The fireplace was tall and ornate and there was a very clean fire of logs on the grate.

Lou Spencer was a voluble and cooperative informant. She seemed genuinely shocked by the death of her friend, but it was not possible for her to keep her normal good spirits from surfacing. “Most of the time I just can't believe it,” she said, “and then I convince myself and I'm outraged.”

“When was the last time you saw Jane Clippert?” Mulheisen asked.

“I talked to her just yesterday, when I got in,” she said. “But the last time I saw her was in September, in New York. We went
to school together—Country Day, then later in Switzerland. She went on to Vassar and I went to Berkeley. Since then I've lived a rather different life than hers, but we always kept in touch and saw one another when we were in town together.”

“Lou and Jane were always the dearest of friends,” said Margaret Spencer, Lou's mother. Mrs. Spencer sat in a chair by the window. “But they were quite different personalities. Jane is—was—not so serious as Lou.”

“What my mother means, Sergeant,” the girl said with a smile, “is that I spend far too much time doing things like sociological research, instead of marrying and settling down. I suppose this isn't helping you much.”

“Oh, I don't know,” Mulheisen said. “I'd just like to get some kind of picture of Mrs. Clippert. I need to know how this thing could have happened to her.”

“Is there a certain kind of person who gets murdered, Sergeant? I didn't know that.”

Mulheisen bared his teeth. It could have been a smile or a grimace. “It's pretty early to make assumptions, Miss Spencer, but at first glance it appears that she was attacked by a person or persons who were interrupted in the course of a burglary.”

“Why, it's practically an accident then!”

“It was hardly an accident that her assailants were in the house,” Mulheisen said. “I mean, she was a wealthy woman and an attractive one. Those are things that might, uh, interest certain types of people. But maybe there were other qualities or aspects to her life that would put a different slant on what happened this morning.”

“That's not very clear,” the woman said mildly.

“Harumph!” Mulheisen cleared his throat, thinking he sounded like Major Hoople. Stop beating around the bush, he told himself. “Do you think she might have had . . . a lover?”

“What?” exclaimed Mrs. Spencer, shocked.

Lou Spencer was thoughtful. “I'm not sure,” she said.

“Lou! The idea!” snapped her mother.

The girl ignored her. “I think Jane had changed quite a bit in the past couple years. She struck me as being more withdrawn,
quieter. There was a time, though, when she certainly did have lovers. I thought she was rather a sensual woman, Sergeant.”

“Really? Do you happen to know who her, uh, lover might have been?”

“I didn't say she had one—recently, that is. But a woman who looks like Jane always has men hanging around her. Especially if they are lonely, and more especially if they are rich. You know the cliché of busy men's wives.” She caught herself. “Well, I really don't know much about her private life, not lately.”

“Tell me about the past, then,” Mulheisen suggested.

“I think the Sergeant might enjoy a drink, Mother. Whiskey, perhaps?”

“Ah, sure,” Mulheisen said. “Bourbon is fine, with a little ice and water.”

Mrs. Spencer knew her cue and left. Lou began to drift slowly about the room, touching things. Mulheisen watched her with interest. She was an attractive woman, he thought.

“I can't imagine what Jane did in that big house all day,” she said. “She used to read some, the latest novels. She was a good athlete, terrific at tennis.”

“But in the winter . . .” Mulheisen prompted.

“They used to go south, Florida or the West Indies. They have a lovely place up north, though. Not too far from Boyne Mountain, I think. They may have gone there to ski. She was a very good skier in school, in Switzerland. She had her first love affair on the slopes, so to speak. A skiing instructor, naturally. It's appallingly common. He was an older man. At least, that's how we thought of him. Perhaps he was only thirty, but we were just teen-agers.”

“What was his name?” Mulheisen said.

“You can't be serious,” she said. “That was an eternity ago. He was German. I imagine he's still there. It was all over within a few weeks, despite Jane's insistence that she was in love forever and that she would run away to Italy with him. Anyway, that's how she lost her cherry.”

“My, my,” Mulheisen muttered. His mocking tone did not seem to affect the woman's flippant manner. In fact, he could have sworn that her smile was mocking him. He thought that she must think him terribly stuffy.

“Let's see,” she went on, “after Dieter there was a suave Continental type, ‘a real gentleman,’ she called him. She met him in Zurich. An older man indeed. I don't think you'll want his name either. And there was another older man, in London. He even came over to Lausanne to see her. A creepy fellow, lusting after young girls. Just the Humbert Humbert type.”

“What was his name?” Mulheisen said. He took out a notebook and pen.

“I haven't the faintest notion,” Lou Spencer said. She stood by the fireplace, caressing a glass bell that covered an intricate clockwork of gears and balls.

“So she liked older men,” Mulheisen said.

“I never thought of it that way, until this moment, but I suppose that's true. Of course, it's easy to make too much of incidental details. Her husband, for instance, is ten years older than she. Perhaps it all has something to do with her father. He was quite a dynamic character who must have had a tremendous impression on her, especially since her mother died when Jane was just an infant.”

“Did you ever meet her father?”

“Occasionally. He was very busy. He didn't spend much time with Jane. Rather paradoxical, perhaps, to have this powerful father figure that alternately ignores you and then dotes on you. It must be unsettling.”

“Well, what about other men?” Mulheisen said. “Were there many, over the years?”

Lou Spencer looked rather concerned. “I don't know if I should tell you this. It seems scandalous, even to me. And dangerous, too.”

Mulheisen was interested. “What is it?”

“She told me she used to go into strange bars and pick up men. Total strangers. They'd go to a hotel. It seemed to me like she was taking a terrible chance. I mean, not only VD, but how can you tell what some guy sitting in a bar might do? She laughed at me. She said it was great fun. She really enjoyed the power she had over men.”

“When did she do this? Where?”

“It was when she was at Vassar that she started. She would
go to New York to stay with some relative. I think she was twenty-two or -three at the time. And then later, she said she had done it in Detroit, as well as almost every large city she was ever in.”

“Do you think she was still doing it?”

“No. No, I'm certain she didn't, not after she was married. I never knew anything about it, you see, until just a year or so ago. I have to confess, I was shocked. But she just laughed. She said it was a long time ago, before she married Arthur.”

“Maybe lately she had a more steady boyfriend,” Mulheisen said.

“I don't think so. She didn't seem so interested in sex in the last year or so. I don't think she was sleeping with anyone.”

“Including her husband?”

Lou shrugged. “How do I know? I shouldn't be saying all these things. It's just hearsay and speculation.”

“What kind of life did she lead?” Mulheisen wanted to know.

“A rich woman's life. Go shopping, go to the country club, go to dinner, go to South America. I don't know what she did. I don't think she had many friends.”

“Why is that?”

“Most of the women who would have been her friends are married. If you were a married woman, would you want someone who looked like Jane hanging around? Of course,” she added, “if Jane had chosen to be around, I'm sure she would have had more friends. She was a very sweet, thoughtful person.” The woman bit her lip, suddenly, thinking about her friend. She turned her back to Mulheisen and stood against the fireplace.

“Where do you live, Miss Spencer?” Mulheisen asked. “New York?”

“That's right,” she said, facing him again. “I'm a sociological researcher for a large organization there.”

“And when Jane was in town, she'd certainly stop and see you.”

“That's right.”

“How about when Arthur Clippert was in town?” Mulheisen said.

“I don't know what you mean,” she said.

“Well, I mean, if Clippert happened to come to town, alone, would he ever call you?”

“Why should he?” she said.

“Well, you were a friend of his wife's. You said she had seemed changed in the last few months. Maybe he would have noticed it too. Maybe he would be worried. What could be more natural than to turn to an old friend of your wife's if you are worried about her.”

Lou Spencer looked skeptical.

“Or maybe he just wanted to take somebody to dinner,” Mulheisen suggested.

The woman looked at him casually and said, “No.”

Mrs. Spencer returned, followed by the maid who wheeled a trolley on which were bottles and ice. The maid poured a bourbon and water for Mulheisen and gave Mrs. Spencer a martini from a shaker. Lou had nothing. The maid left.

“Mrs. Spencer,” Mulheisen said, “did you see much of Mrs. Clippert?”

“Why, no, Sergeant. Not lately. She used to be active in the Institute of Arts, but not recently.”

“How about Mr. Clippert? Ever see him around?”

“Occasionally, at a restaurant or something.”

“With his wife?”

“Well—not usually, no. He's usually with a party of people. Men, mostly. I suppose it's business.”

“Ever see him with a woman other than his wife?” Mulheisen said.

“I beg your pardon!” She looked at Mulheisen frostily.

“Oh, Mother,” Lou said, laughing, “no need to be so uptight. Arthur's a big, handsome man. I suppose it happens sometimes.”

Mrs. Spencer looked very upset. She left the room. Lou turned to Mulheisen, shaking her head. “I shouldn't do that. It's too easy.”

“Children always break their mother's hearts,” Mulheisen said.

“Is that so?” Lou said. “Did you break your mother's heart?”

“Not just my mother's,” he said.

Lou Spencer laughed aloud.

“You seem to have recovered from your shock,” Mulheisen observed.

Lou's face reddened. “It's your fault,” she said.

“Mine?”

“Yes.” She walked toward his chair and settled onto a damask-covered stool near his feet. It was a low stool and her dress was short. It was easier for Mulheisen to look between her legs than not to. He struggled.

She smirked at his embarrassment. “Are you always so stuffy?” she asked.

“I don't think of it as stuffy,” he said.

“What do you think of it as?”

“A job. I don't consider it a game.”

“Oh, sometimes you must,” she said. “Don't you occasionally put people on? Don't you play roles—the tough cop, the kindly cop?”

Mulheisen smiled. “Sometimes,” he said.

“I've heard the role of detective described as a peculiarly interesting and relevant one in terms of modern mythology,” she said.

“Who says?”

“Usually it's a tall boy with narrow shoulders and wide hips,” she said, “and he teaches at the New School.”

Mulheisen sipped his bourbon. “I suppose a young girl hears all sorts of things these days.”

“You would be surprised what a young girl hears,” she said.

“I don't think so,” he said. “My job isn't glamorous, you see, despite what the boys from the New School will tell you. There is a certain sordid reality to it.”

“Still, it must be interesting,” she said. “Do you enjoy it?”

“Sometimes. It wasn't much fun this morning.”

Lou did not flinch. “Are you scolding me, Sergeant?”

“Have you been bad?”

“Lately?”

“Usually.”

“Not in an indictable way, I think,” she said. “There are all kinds of bad girls, though. Jane could be a bad girl at times.”

“How about yourself?”

“Janey and I were friends. We had a lot in common.”

“How about older men?” Mulheisen asked.

“You mean as opposed to young men with wide hips?”

“That's right.”

“Are you going to ask me to dinner, Sergeant?”

Mulheisen sat back in his chair and thought about that one. He had no business asking a woman like Lou Spencer to dinner. His type was more the older and affectionate divorcee who hung out in downtown bars. On the other hand, even a beauty like Jane Clippert had been an occasional bar cruiser. He stood up and drained off his bourbon.

“Have you ever been married, Miss Spencer?”

“No,” she said. She looked up at him from the low stool.

“Why not?”

“None of your business,” she said. “How about yourself?”

“No,” he said.

“Are you queer, or something?”

“Maybe I will ask you to dinner, Miss Spencer.”

She smiled. “My name is Lou. And you are . . . ?”

“Mul.”

“When do we eat, Mul?”

“I'll let you know,” he said, and walked out of the room. The maid waited in the foyer with his coat.

“How do you get along with these people?” he asked her. He regretted the question the minute he spoke it. The maid didn't answer. She helped him into his coat.