Lost Lady Read online

  Talk to everybody, that’s the idea. Get all the wrong answers they want to give you; that’s O.K., too. Given enough wrong answers, a smart detective will eventually discover which one is the most wrong. I’ve seen plenty of cases cracked where all the answers were wrong. You can outsmart one cop; it’s hard as the devil to outsmart four thousand trained policemen and a corps of keen technicians.

  Bert Lane had talked to the Skipper, to the head of Homicide and to the chief of detectives about assigning me to the case. I, Sergeant Daniel Aloysius O’Leary. That meant I’d be taken off regular assignment. Of course, I’d keep the others posted. I wouldn’t be any bright, shining light even if I got lucky. I was simply the guy elected to carry the ball, and the rest of the team would be in there blocking for me.

  I’ll admit I was getting a kick out of it, but I was scared, too. I had my neck out a mile. I could make an awful bum out of myself without half trying by overlooking the obvious or by paying too much attention to something that wasn’t important. All I knew was that I was going to work hard and keep my fingers crossed.

  The next thing on the agenda was something I hated. That was Iris Kent. Bert told me she already knew that her sister had been murdered. I drew a deep breath and said a prayer of thanks that I’d been spared the job of breaking the news to her.

  Two of the boys had been sent to the house on Valleycrest to tell her what had happened, but before they got there Iris had telephoned in. She hadn’t heard the news broadcast, but kind friends who heard it had lost no time letting her know. The dicks out there (Elsie Barker was one of them, Sergeant Gram the other) had orders to stand by, say as little as possible, and sort of keep things smooth.

  “Did Iris talk to you?” I asked Bert.

  “Yes.”

  “How is she taking it?”

  “I don’t know.” Something seemed to be puzzling him. “Shocked, I suppose; and perhaps deeply grieved. But she didn’t sound surprised and she wasn’t crying. Elsie telephoned me from the house and gave me the same report.”

  “She predicted it,” I reminded him.

  “Yeah. That interests me a lot right now. The way things stand, we know she predicted something that had happened twenty-four hours previously.”

  “She’s at the house?”

  “Yes. With Elsie and Don.”

  “Who else?”

  “That lad Bayless is with her, and I just heard that Dean Halliday got home a little while ago.”

  “From where?”

  “He said he’d been playing poker at one of the joints in Gardena. We haven’t got a check on that yet.”

  The Skipper suggested that Marty Walsh and I better get out there.

  On the way out Marty talked to me. He said he’d handle most of the direct interrogation, but he reminded me that I’d been chosen because of my personal in, and he said that whenever that angle showed up, I was to take over, forgetting him and his senior rank.

  The Los Feliz section is impressive by day, and it’s plumb beautiful at night. Big, fine homes, loaded with luxury. From almost everywhere you could look down on the twinkling lights of Hollywood, of downtown Los Angeles, of Glendale and Burbank. Back of the section was the dark mass of land that was Griffith Park. It was quiet and tranquil and not at all the sort of background you’d think of in connection with a particularly brutal murder.

  We rang the bell and the maid, Ellen, opened the door. She looked pretty bad, and you could see that she had been crying. She took our hats, put them on a table in the halfway, and motioned us into the library-den which adjoined the huge living room.

  Elsie Barker and Don Gram were smoking. Iris Kent and Robert Bayless were sitting on the couch. He was holding her hand.

  She didn’t look at all as I had expected she would look. Her black eyes looked blacker, her young face not quite so young. You could see that she had herself under control, but that the control could snap at any moment. The half-gay, half-mocking manner had vanished.

  Bayless nodded to us and said nothing. He looked like just exactly the right medicine for Iris at that moment. I hadn’t the faintest idea what he was feeling inside, but you couldn’t mistake the fact that he was keeping her steady. As we came in, he glanced at Iris and smiled slightly—not a humorous smile, but a smile of reassurance, as much as to say, “You see, darling—friends. Nothing to get upset about.”

  Dean Halliday was a different story. He was leaning against the mantel, long and lean and lithe. He was wearing a tailored flannel shirt that must have cost fifty bucks and a pair of gabardine slacks that had set him back at least a hundred. His socks were argyles that blended with the shirt. His hair was still wavy, still immaculate. He appeared to be interested, but only as a spectator is interested. I also got the idea that he was very much on guard. The indulgent smile he was wearing was a trifle too correct.

  He looked me over and said, “Hi, Danny,” and I smiled at him and nodded. I introduced Marty Walsh.

  Marty motioned to Elsie Barker and walked with him into the living room. After a few seconds he returned and took over.

  “Look, folks,” he said, “we’ve got an unpleasant job to do. We sympathize with you.” His voice was smooth as silk. “We wish we could spare you. But there are certain things we’ve got to know and we’ve got to know ‘em right away.” He looked at Iris. “Could Danny and I talk to you alone, Miss Kent?”

  She got up without a word. Bayless started to rise with her, then sank back on the couch. He said, “You’ll be as gentle as possible, won’t you, Lieutenant?”

  Iris flashed him a look of gratitude. It was odd, the relationship between those two. Obviously Bayless was nuts about the girl. Just as obviously she was deeply fond of him, but it looked like a sister-brother fondness, not the kind of thing that leads to marriage.

  Marty closed the door between the den and living room. Iris sat at one end of the couch, Marty in the middle, and I took a chair near Iris, so that she was between us.

  Marty was entirely different from the man I’d seen blustering around Dolores Laverne’s apartment. He was gentle to the point of unctuousness. He started off with the usual apologies and expressions of regret—stock stuff. Then he said, “I’ve got a lot of questions to ask, Miss Kent. But I’m not going to ask them all tonight; just those that seem very, very important. O.K.?”

  She nodded.

  “As I heard it,” he said quietly, “your sister drove you to the Ambassador night before last in her car. Is that correct?”

  “Yes.”

  “Where was your car?”

  “Out of order.”

  “In what way?”

  “The starter wouldn’t work.”

  “When did you find that out?”

  “When I got ready to go downtown. About nine-thirty.”

  “Then you had planned to go in your car and she in hers?”

  “That’s right.”

  “And when you came back from the garage and reported that you couldn’t get your car started, she suggested driving you down?”

  “Yes.”

  “Is your car still out of order, Miss Kent?”

  “No.”

  “When did you have it fixed?”

  “I didn’t.” Iris’ eyes had narrowed, as though she didn’t like the direction he was taking. “I went out the next day —yesterday—to try it before I called for service. I stepped on the starter and it worked. I don’t understand it.”

  Marty smiled reassuringly. That smile told me that he felt he’d made a point, so I paid particular attention.

  “Those things happen,” he said suavely. “Cars, like people, are temperamental. So Mrs. Halliday drove you downtown. She left you at the Ambassador about ten o’clock. Did she offer to pick you up later?”

  “No.”

  “Did that strike you as odd?”

  “No. She probably figured that it’d be a late party, that we’d most likely go somewhere else after the Ambassador. She knew I could get a ride home.”

&nbs
p; “Did she give you the slightest hint of where she was going, or with whom she had a date?”

  “No.”

  “Was that usual?”

  “I never thought about it. She lets me mind my business, and it never occurred to me to interfere with hers.”

  Marty took the next question slowly. He said, “I’ve got to ask you this, Miss Kent; you must understand that I’m merely trying to get at facts. Tell me, were you surprised to learn that your sister had visited a motel?”

  Iris’ eyes grew stormy. I could see that she was fighting hard for control. Then she said, in a tight little voice, “You have a right to ask that, Lieutenant. I have no right to resent it. But if you mean what I think you do, I’ll answer this way: I’d stake my life on the fact that my sister did not have a lover.”

  Chapter Ten

  When you’re a working detective you learn that there are two good ways to interrogate. The first is to find an angle that makes the suspect uncomfortable and hammer it to death. The other is to find the same angle and immediately back away from it. If the point strikes the suspect as vital, he’ll usually get back to it on his own, even if only to furnish additional explanation you haven’t requested. If he doesn’t pick it up again, you’ve still got it up your sleeve to trot out whenever it suits you.

  Marty backed right away from the motel setup, and for the next few minutes he asked questions that didn’t mean a thing. I knew he was trying to get Iris relaxed, so I threw in my nickel’s worth. I gave her an occasional reassuring grin and an approving nod when she’d make the right answer. That was helping her, helping us, and helping me establish myself as a friend.

  Right there I got a break. The telephone rang somewhere and I heard a voice talking from another room. Then the den door opened and it was Elsie Barker. He beckoned Marty and for a little while they whispered. Then Elsie went back into the den and Marty took his old place next to Iris on the sofa. He has an ingratiating personality when he wants to display it, and now he worked overtime. He said, “Sorry about that question I asked you a while ago, Miss Kent. If I’d known then what I know now, it would not have been necessary.”

  That interested her, and she asked for an explanation.

  “We found the car. Mrs. Halliday was killed in the car and taken to the motel afterward.”

  Iris was putting up a game fight, but for a moment the tears won. Marty waited until she’d calmed down and then he explained.

  “Plenty of evidence in the car,” he said, “to show that it happened there. Even the bullet. Don’t know yet what shape it’ll be in for a ballistics test, even provided we have something to test it against. Anyway, I was pretty sure that Mrs. Halliday hadn’t been stepping out.” He was dwelling on that and even repeating himself. That part of it wasn’t for me, because he knew I knew that the murder hadn’t occurred in the motel. Then, casually, he said, “Is there a gun anywhere in the house, Miss Kent?”

  Iris nodded. “Lots of ‘em. Rifles, shotguns. They’re in a wall case in Dean’s room. We’ve all hunted a lot and both Dorothy and I are—were—good shots.”

  “I don’t mean that. I mean a pistol. Revolver or automatic.”

  “I think there’s one. No, two. There’s a twenty-two High Standard we’ve used for target practice in the country, and a revolver.”

  “What caliber?”

  “I don’t know. Thirty-eight, I suppose. It belongs to Dean.““Her voice lifted on that, as though she were happy to point the finger at her handsome brother-in-law whenever possible. When Marty didn’t follow through on that, I thought she looked disappointed, but maybe that was my imagination.

  “Who,” asked Walsh, “was here at dinnertime day before yesterday?”

  “Dorothy, myself, the maid, and the cook.”

  “May I have the names and addresses of the two servants?”

  “They’re in the little leather phone book on the stand in the front hall. If you want them …” She started to get up, but I beat her to it.

  I found the book. It was one of those things where you list numbers you’re likely to need at any time. I got the names from Iris and found them listed under C and M, cook and maid; also under E for Ellen, the maid, and L for Lorena, the cook; also under J and M, the former for Jones, which was Ellen’s last name, and the latter for Marshall, which was Lorena’s name. It was a pretty thorough job of cross-indexing.

  Then something caught my eye. The entries were in a firm, tight backhand. I said, “Pretty handwriting, Iris. Whose is it—yours?”

  She glanced casually at two of the pages. “Mine,” she said, without too much interest. “Dorothy didn’t write like me at all.” She pointed out a few samples of her sister’s handwriting, and some entries that Dean Halliday had made.

  I said, slipping the book in my pocket, “I’d like to keep this for a while, if you don’t mind. Some of these phone numbers that your sister wrote might be important leads.”

  “Of course,” she said.

  She wouldn’t have been so placid had she known that my primary interest wasn’t in the entries that had been made by Dorothy, but in the ones she had made.

  I remembered the entry in the register at the Nite-Lite Motel. That had been in a sort of backhand. It seemed to me to be just the sort of signature Iris might have written had she been trying to disguise her handwriting. I caught a gleam in Marty Walsh’s eye, and I flattered myself that it was one of approval.

  Marty then rechecked some vital statistics on the murdered woman.

  “How old was your sister?”

  “Thirty-two.”

  “Where was she born?”

  “New York.”

  “And you?”

  “Same. September thirtieth, 1930.”

  “Your parents?”

  “I don’t remember them. They were killed in an air crash in Europe in February 1931.” She must have caught an odd expression on Marty’s face because she went on: “The way I’ve heard it, my mother had a pretty hard time when I was born. Her health was wrecked, and it never got better. The doctor advised a long trip, so my father took her to Europe.”

  “Leaving you with your sister?”

  “Don’t be foolish, Lieutenant. Dorothy was only eleven years old then. They left us in charge of a sort of nurse-governess—a really wonderful woman. Her name was Virginia Klinger, and she was like a mother to us.”

  “Tell me more,” prompted Marty.

  “We. moved out here when I was a baby. I don’t remember anything about it. I believe a bank was trustee for the estate. There was always a lot of money. I’ve heard that we lived in an apartment for a while, then in a rented house, and then we bought this one. This is the only home I can remember clearly.”

  “Where is Miss Klinger now?”

  “It’s Mrs., not Miss. She was a widow. She raised us both, and she died four years ago.”

  “When did your sister marry?”

  “October sixth, 1945. She met Dean when he was still in the Army. He was quite impressive in uniform. He had a good record, and there was no way for her to know that he was a louse. It didn’t take either of us long to find out, though.”

  “They were unhappy?”

  “They quarreled, yes. Usually it was because Dean wanted money that she wouldn’t give him.”

  “Did she ever explain why she didn’t divorce him?”

  “No, except that she wouldn’t. I asked her, and she never gave me any answer except that she didn’t like divorce. Maybe she was in love with him. Women can be awful fools about men, even perfect women like my sister.”

  Marty and I nodded understandingly. In police work you see a lot of that; you see it in the raw and in extremes. You even see nice women whose husbands make a practice of pounding on them whenever they feel like taking a little safe exercise, and you’re amazed when they refuse to prosecute. So for a person like Dorothy Halliday to stick to her husband wasn’t unusual at all, even though I couldn’t imagine myself acting that way if I had that sort of
husband, and, of course, if I were a woman.

  Marty asked her about Robert Bayless and got the same answers she had given me. She said she supposed she’d marry him someday—that it had sort of always been taken for granted, and Dorothy had favored it. But, insisted Iris, there was a reason.

  “I’ve been pretty wild,” she stated frankly. “I’ve done plenty of things I shouldn’t have done, and I’ll probably keep on doing them. My only regret, ever, was that I hurt Dorothy whenever I got into a jam. If I married Robert, I’d hurt him, too. I don’t like hurting people.”

  “Was he here day before yesterday—the day your sister disappeared?”

  “Not that I know of. Or the day before that. He didn’t even come to play with his trains.”

  That brought us up short. She said it casually, as though it were the most natural thing in the world. Then she caught the look of bewilderment on our faces, and she came as close to a smile as you could expect under the circumstances.

  “No,” she said, “Robert isn’t childish, or odd, or anything like that. He’s a model railroader.”

  “Oh!” said Marty. “One of them guys.”

  I could understand that, all right. I only wished I could afford to have model railroading as a hobby. It isn’t kid stuff, not a bit of it. Most model railroading— building and using scale models—is done by grown men. They spend fortunes on it. There are clubs all over the country.