Where Is Bianca? (17 page)

“When was that?”

“The night she.… The night before her body was found. I had a dinner engagement with Frances Weatherly. When I got to Fran's place, Noreen was coming out of the building. We spoke as we passed. Noreen had a smug look on her face. When I got upstairs, I found out why.”

Lessard paused to seek a cigarette. Corrigan gave him one, and he lit it with trembling hands.

“Noreen had stopped by earlier while Fran was out shopping,” Lessard continued. “She let herself in and waited for Fran, so she could tell Fran she wasn't going to be available for the new play. Noreen was on her way to keep a date with big-name-in-the-theater. She told Fran he was going to do things for her that would make a Weatherly play look like a high school play in Dubuque. Of course, it upset Fran, and Noreen got a big kick out of it.”

Corrigan stood still for a moment. Then he put his hand on Lessard's shoulder with force. “We're going for a ride,” he said. “You, and I, and Chuck Baer.”

In the kitchenette of Frances Weatherly's apartment, Travers Proehl nursed a nearly cold cup of coffee. His bulk threw a heavy shadow against the wall. He set the cup down on the dinette table, painfully aware of the woman watching him.

He swung about, looking at the light on her straight hair, the prominent cheekbones, the sensual mouth, the wide-apart eyes.

“You'll find another producer, Fran,” Proehl rumbled. “I hate to think of leaving New York, of the plays we might have done together. But all things have to end.”

“You won't change your mind?”

“No,” he said. “I'm leaving. I'm tired. I'm sick of the rat race. And all these cops.”

The buzzer made a demanding sound. Frances Weatherly went out, the door swinging shut behind her.

Proehl reached to pour the last cup of coffee he intended to slurp in New York. Then his hand withdrew from the coffee maker, with a sort of stealth, as he heard the voices in the living room.

Captain Corrigan's voice was saying, “You look pooped, Miss Weatherly.”

“I'm not feeling well.” Fran glanced from Corrigan to Vincent Lessard. Lessard was pale, washed-out looking. A pulse became visible in her throat above the shapeless shift “I'm also busy, Captain. Can you come back another time?”

“This won't wait,” Corrigan said.

Fran hesitated. “Very well,” she said, and stepped aside. “Just what's on your mind?”

Corrigan and Lessard followed her into the long, barren room. With its vaulted ceiling and enormous fireplace, the room looked like an abandoned ruin.

“You lied to me,” Corrigan said.

She hesitated again. “I won't ask you to sit down,” she said. “Not after that crack. How did I lie to you?”

“You told me that Noreen Gardner han't been here for more than a week before her death. Mr. Lessard pinpoints the girl here on the night she died. She was leaving the building as he came in, he says.”

Fran obliterated Lessard with a look. “Really? Could be. It was so unimportant it slipped my mind.”

“It was so important,” Corrigan said, “that you lied about it. Noreen got in here while you were out shopping. The building super knew her as your friend, and she had no trouble gaining entry. She yielded to her old greedy habits while she waited. She was all through with you—she no longer cared what you thought of her. So she lifted a few trinkets—whatever she could lay her hands on. One of them has to have been a Mayan ring. And a few hours later she was dead. When did you first discover that Noreen Gardner had helped herself to Bianca Lessard's ring, Miss Weatherly?”

Lessard refused to meet her eyes.

“Vincent has been warned to keep his mouth shut while we're here,” Corrigan said. “You won't have the chance to hatch up a story with lover boy.”

“You're guessing,” Frances Weatherly said.

“Educated guesswork is the heart of my job,” Corrigan said. “Let me guess some more. Bianca Fielding Lessard came straight here after she had that fight with her husband. Why do I say that? Because Vincent told me, in his story about the quarrel, that Bianca had said to him before she walked out that he and you deserved each other, that she wanted you both to know it.”

The woman said to Lessard, “You made that up, Vincent How could you remember every word she said?”

“Talk to me, Miss Weatherly,” Corrigan said. “There's no trick in remembering the conversation of an evening when a man sees a few million dollars walking out on him. If I had to make another guess, it's that he also regretted—as he still does—having ever climbed into your bed.”

“You can't bait me with insults, Captain!”

“How can you be insulted with a fact?” Corrigan said. “But let's get back to the outraged wife. Bianca was as good as her word, I think. She came here, to your apartment, that night to tell you to your face that you could have her husband for keeps—minus the Fielding dough, of course.”

“Suppose she did come here,” Frances Weatherly said carefully. “It doesn't prove a thing. She might have gone on from here to anywhere.”

“The ring, Miss Weatherly, the ring,” Corrigan said. “That Mayan ring says otherwise. That Mayan ring says that Bianca Lessard was in no condition to go from here under her own steam; that ring was a keepsake she never took from her finger. That means it was taken from her, and it doesn't require a genius to figure out that it had to be taken from her while she was unconscious, dying, or dead.

“The way it happened, I think, was that you saw her walking out of your and Vincent's life, taking her fortune with her. But you weren't the gutless wonder Vincent is, Miss Weatherly. You had this guy under your thumb. The Fielding fortune could be yours, or at least the opportunites it opened up. It could mean a hundred theaters for a hundred Weatherly plays. Not to mention a few miles of mink, the bit on the Riviera, a palace in exchange for this mausoleum.”

“You're making the stupid charge that I killed Bianca Lessard?” Fran Weatherly said.

“I am. I say you didn't permit her to leave this apartment alive. Then you stripped her, probably to prevent identification if the body were ever found, which would explain how the Mayan ring came to be here for Noreen to steal. Then you disposed of the body.”

A white nimbus had formed about the Weatherly woman's lips. Nevertheless, she managed to keep her voice steady. “Quite a job for a woman.”

“You therefore had help. Travers Proehl, by his own statement, was here the night Bianca left Vincent.”

Corrigan had her immobilized now by the flat conviction of his tone. She was staring at him as if he were a snake.

“None of this, of course, was preplanned—you couldn't have known Bianca was coming, unless Vincent here phoned you after she walked out on him, which I doubt; he must have been sick of what you had cost him. No, I think it was a murder of impulse, Miss Weatherly. I think you saw her walking out of your—and your lover's—life with all her money and the goodies it would buy you, and I think you grabbed the fireplace poker and let her have it.

“Even the fact that Proehl was present on the scene served your purpose. You needed an accomplice to dispose of Bianca, and you had a built-in hold on Proehl now that Bianca was dead and Lessard held her power-of-attorney. You made Proehl see that your survival meant a lot to him—unlimited play-production financing, above all. It was too much for Mr. Proehl to turn down, even with the risks involved. All he had to do was sneak the body from the premises and plant it where it would never be found. She would eventually be crossed off as just another woman who had been foolish enough to walk down a dark street, or—with her history as an emotional cripple—as having gone off her rocker and killed herself, or suffered an amnesia seizure and wandered into limbo. Even if there were suspicions that she had been murdered for personal reasons, the obvious suspect was her husband; and since he had absolutely nothing to do with her murder, no harm would come to anyone involved. Certainly you didn't think suspicion would ever fall on you, with Vincent Lessard innocent.”

“You can't bring guesswork into court, Captain Corrigan,” Frances Weatherly said. Corrigan could only admire her fortitude. She was a tough number. “And I'm ready to swear that I don't know where Bianca Lessard is, dead or alive. And nobody can ever prove that I do.”

“That may well be true,” Corrigan said, unmoved. “You may have left the whole problem of disposal to Proehl, preferring not to know the details against just such a position as you now find yourself in. I wouldn't put it past you. You're a shrewd cookie.

“Which means that Mr. Travers Proehl and I have some chinning to do,” Corrigan went on. “For instance, I'm going to ask him why the andirons are missing from the fireplace in this room.

“It's my opinion that Proehl slipped her out of this house, carted her away in his car, weighted her body with the andirons, and dropped her into the East River, or the Hudson, or maybe some Jersey marsh. At least that's the theory we're working on, and it might interest you to learn that we're already operational on it.

“We'll find Bianca's remains, Miss Weatherly, sooner or later; we'll wind up with a bundle of evidence that's going to delight the D.A.'s heart. I assure you we won't quit this case until we can stamp a CLOSED on the file.”

“Is that all you have to say, Captain Corrigan?”

“Is that all you have to say?”

“I have nothing to say,” Frances Weatherly said calmly, “beyond this: I don't know what you're talking about. I deny every charge and innuendo you've made. I.…”

Her hesitation and his reflexes saved Corrigan's life. He whirled and saw Travers Proehl's heavy face and shoulders. Beyond Proehl the kitchenette door was still quivering on its spring hinges.

Proehl had the fireplace poker over his head. It came down.

Corrigan made rubber of his body, crumpling to one side. The poker missed his head and bounced off his shoulder. He went down, caught off balance. The back of his head struck the uncarpeted floor and he was momentarily stunned.

Vincent Lessard, bleating, was bolting toward the door. Proehl leaped on him. “Damn you,
shut up!
If anyone hears you.…” He caught up with Lessard at the apartment door, struck once, twice.

Bianca's husband fell heavily, blood spurting from his skull. Proehl jumped back toward Corrigan as if he were half his weight, the bloody poker raised. His heavy lips were parted, emitting wheezes; his eyes were fixed in an expressionless glare.

Corrigan knew a berserker when he saw one. He rolled, digging for his Police Positive. As Proehl's blow missed, Corrigan took deliberate aim and placed a shot in the arm that held the poker. The bulky man squealed, the poker dropped, the sleeve reddened swiftly. Then Proehl was lunging for the doorknob. Somehow he got it open as Corrigan scrambled to his feet. He could have shot the producer in the back, but he wanted Proehl alive. Frances Weatherly had been right in one respect: he had nothing on her that could be taken to court. But her confederate in a panicky state would make an ideal wedge for the D.A. That Proehl would talk he took for granted, and Proehl couldn't talk if he were dead.

So Corrigan let him go. Besides, he had his flank protected.

Frances Weatherly was saying, “The fool. The fat
fool,
” with more feeling than she had permitted herself to show during Corrigan's interrogation. She knew what Corrigan had with a live Proehl. The producer was the seal on her fate.

The satisfying sounds of a scuffle drifted up to Corrigan. They they were stilled, and Chuck Baer's cheerful growl said, “I've got him, Tim. The fight's out of him.” Baer appeared, dragging the heavy producer as if he were a sack of potatoes. Proehl left a trail of blood from his hanging arm. He looked unconscious.

Corrigan was kneeling beside Vincent Lessard.

“Lover boy is dead,” he announced, and rose. “Now we've got a real lever with Proehl, Miss Weatherly. Are you ready to level?”

Miss Weatherly leveled.

When she had finished, Corrigan said, “One more question. Why, when you stripped Bianca before getting rid of her body, did you hang on to her Mayan ring?”

“Yeah,” Chuck Baer said, never taking his eyes from the recumbent Proehl. “That bugs me, too. For an intelligent idiot, that was pretty stupid.”

Fran Weatherly said, “I was simply waiting for a chance to slip it in among her things in the Fielding apartment. But before I could do that, Noreen lifted it. Damn Noreen!”

The steaks were a lingering memory. Over his cognac Corrigan kept looking at the face across from him.

“Can you afford dinners like this on a policeman's salary?” Jean Ainsley smiled at him. Her hazel eyes reflected the candlelight in the restaurant like a lazy cat's.

“That sounds like a leading question,” Corrigan said. “Are you setting me up?”

“You go to hell,” Jean said. “The day I have to set up a man! I have
some
pride.”

“I never knew a woman who didn't have marriage on her mind,” Corrigan said.

“Not with you,” she retorted. “I know your type, Corrigan. Love 'em and boot 'em. I wouldn't stand a chance of getting anything but hurt.”

They smiled at each other across the table.

“Shall we dance?” Jean said.

“Modern or old-fashioned?”

“Old-fashioned,” Jean said.

“Me, too,” Corrigan said, scraping his chair back. “There's no substitute for bodily contact. Miss Ainsley?”

“Captain Corrigan?”

They danced. She made a warm little package in his arms. Corrigan knew it was going to work out fine.

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