A Multitude of Sins (23 page)

“Conan, what’s going on down there?”

A good question, he thought bleakly as he turned his attention to the phone and Sean.

“I haven’t time to explain now. Where are you?”

“In a phone booth a block from the Canfield house on Mission. I went out the back gate and around by the alley.”

“You’re off duty?”

“Yes. Catharine said she was going to bed early and sent Alma and me on our way at 7:40, but I got stuck with Alma. She could talk your left leg off.”

“Was Catharine alone when you were dismissed?”

“Yes. Conan, thanks for slipping me the warning. I’ve been watching her, and I think you’re right. She’s no more blind than I am.”

“I’m afraid not. Tell me about this ‘jackpot.’”

“Well, I found a regular cache of drugs; uppers, downers, grass, H, morphine, and something that may be LSD. I didn’t sample it.”

“That was smart. The ampule was with the drugs?”

“Yes, four or five of them. I couldn’t figure it out. I didn’t think you’d
swallow
something like that.”

“No, the idea is to break and inhale it. Where did you find this cache?”

“In Jenny’s studio. It’s in a Chinese lacquer box in a drawer full of tubes of paint.”

“In Jenny’s studio? Are you sure?”

“What do you mean, am I sure?”

“I was just surprised, but it doesn’t mean anything.”

“It doesn’t?” She gave a short laugh. “I was kind of impressed with that pile of loot.”

“I mean, where it was found. And as far as I know, Jenny wasn’t on anything but morphine.”

“Oh. Anyway, there was something else in the box I couldn’t figure out. A black metal cylinder—”

“A what?” He sat up, pulse quickening with both surprise and a kind of hope. “Sean, what did it look like?”

“Well, like an Arpège perfume spray; one of those aerosol things. Maybe five inches long and an inch in diameter.”

He nodded to himself, eyes narrowed.

“All right. Look, don’t fool around with it. I mean, don’t get any bright ideas like trying to see what’s in it.”

She hesitated. “Sure, Conan, but—”

“Just don’t touch it. What else have you turned up?”

“Isn’t that enough for one day? Oh, I checked your client’s medicine cabinet and found that bottle of Seconal. Also, I got taps on all the phones and checked—damn!”

His hand tightened on the phone. “What’s wrong?”

“Oh, I just caught a glimpse of a Lotus leaving the Canfield house.” A long pause, then a disgusted sigh. “He went the other way; I lost him in the traffic.”

“Could you tell what color it was?”

“Black, I think, but I can’t be sure with these street lights. I just had one quick look at him.”

“Him? Could you—”

“No, I couldn’t see the driver. I was just assuming it was Jim or Carleton. Whoever it was must’ve arrived after Catharine got rid of Alma and me.”

His mouth tightened with annoyance; it could be important to know who had been visiting Catharine now.

“All right, Sean, I’ll have to sign off now. Just keep up the good work, and be careful.”

“Sounds like I should give
you
that advice.”

8:47. Conan looked at his watch as he reached for the radio mike, finding it necessary to shout against the static. “Harry, can you hear me?”

“Just barely. I’ve got bad news, Conan. I lost the car. By the time I felt my way down the hill, the visit was over. I heard the motor rev up and ducked out of sight. He took off hell bent.”

Conan squeezed his eyes shut and missed the white flash, but heard Munson’s startled exclamation against the static punctuated roll of thunder.

“Damn, I should get hazard pay for this.”

“Harry, could you tell anything at all about the car?”

“From the set of the lights and the sound of the motor, I’d say it was a sports car.”

“Well, that narrows the field to nearly everyone involved in this case.”

“I’m sorry, Conan. You want me to go check on Jenny?”

“Can you see anything through the windows?”

A brief pause, then, “I don’t think so. The shades are down on all the ones I can see.”

“Try to find a crack in the shades, but don’t go in. Jenny has that gun, and in her condition she might take a shot at a stranger breaking in on her. I’ll try to call her, then I’m coming out. I’ll be there in five minutes.”

He didn’t wait for a reply, but switched the radio off and reached for the phone. His hands were shaking. He thought fleetingly of Isadora, but there wasn’t time to call Berg.

After the first two rings, each succeeding burr sounded a chilling alarm in his mind that was nearly paralyzing. But after the sixth ring, that mental alarm sent him across the room to the door in a headlong rush.

CHAPTER 19

“Conan, this is a mayday!”

The gears protested at his off-timed shift into first while he fumbled for the mike, wrenching the wheel around with his left hand to pull the car out of a shrieking skid.

“Carl? What’s wrong?”

“It’s Isadora. She’s headed for the cottage, and the state she’s in, I don’t know if she’ll make it.”

He hit the accelerator, the rain crashing against the windshield, blurring the line of lights marking the highway.

“What happened, Carl?”

“She got a phone call, said something to Max about Jenny, then took off for her car at a dead run. I didn’t have time to call you. I’m right behind her—south of the bookshop. Where are you?”

“My car. Day Street and the highway inter—good God!”

A swerving blur of headlights spun around the curve to the south, and Conan froze, watching the car skid broadside, nearly colliding with another approaching from the north, then weaving back into the far lane. It passed him in an arching spray; a silver Stingray. He geared down, waiting in frenzied impatience for a break in the traffic.

“Carl, she just passed. Damn, she’ll kill herself—”

“I tried to stop her; followed her out to the parking lot, but she didn’t even recognize me.”

“How did she
look
?
Could you see her eyes?”

“Not enough light, then she got away from me and—”

“Never mind.” He dropped the mike to take advantage of a narrow opening, careened onto the highway, then even before he had the car fully under control, he was reaching for the mike again.

“Carl, go to my house. I don’t care how you get in. Call Nicky Heideger. Tell her it’s an emergency and to bring some Thorazine. Leave the front door open for her, then come out to the cottage.”

“Okay, but what—” Berg’s question was cut off. Conan didn’t have a hand to spare for the mike. The XK-E lunged ahead, in full cry, swerving from lane to lane, slipping through knots of cars with hair-breadth tolerances, the windshield wipers beating furiously. The red warning of the one traffic light he ignored, his speed never dropping under 50. When he reached the Shanaway road, the speedometer hit 80 in the open stretch by the golf course.

He kept anticipating the scream of sirens, half expecting to come upon Isadora cornered by a patrol car, or worse, crushed in a rack of crumpled steel. Yet somehow, incredibly, she escaped both fates, and he never managed to close the distance between them. When he roared up the rutted, muddy road to the cottage, the Stingray was already there, nosed in at a rakish angle, its headlights making shining paths in the rain. He skidded to a jerking halt and ran toward the open door of the cottage. Harry Munson emerged from the trees, shouting, a flapping apparition in his rain parka. Conan didn’t pause; he was hardly aware of him.

But inside the house, he came to an abrupt stop.

Two things registered in that first split second: The white-draped figure sprawled on the floor, and Isadora Canfield kneeling beside it, one hand over her mouth muffling an anguished scream, the other hand raised, holding a gun that was aimed directly at him.

“
No! Not again! Not again!”

“Dore, what—” Then he dropped to the floor, ears ringing with a shattering crack, something burning across his left forearm. He came up prepared to contend with another shot, but she was staring at him with dazed recognition.

“Conan? Oh, my God, Conan…
”
She began trembling uncontrollably, the gun fell from her nerveless hand, and he had to move fast to catch her before she hit the floor in a dead faint.

As he knelt, supporting her limp body, he became fully aware of the still figure on the floor.

Jennifer Hanson, shrouded in a voluminous nightgown, the left side of her face smeared with blood, her eyes half open, but unseeing.

Those eyes would never see again.

“Conan?”

He felt a hand on his shoulder, and at the insistent repetition of his name, turned his head. Harry Munson was bending over him.

“Conan, are you all right?”

He was too sick to answer. Only the helpless weight of Isadora in his arms finally brought his fragmented mental processes into some semblance of order. He rose, lifting her, his voice strangely flat even in his own ears.

“Harry, check the bug on that phone.”

He carried her to the couch and moved some pillows under her head. Her pulse, like her breathing, was fast and erratic. She was clothed in a thin chiffon dress and soaked to the skin. A weak moan escaped her, but she didn’t open her eyes. He left her to find the linen closet in the hall, then returned with a blanket to cover her.

“The bug in the jack is gone,” Munson said, tossing off his raingear as he approached the couch. “But ours is still there. What happened to—”

“Stay with her, Harry.” He went to the phone, using his handkerchief when he picked up the receiver. Munson frowned uneasily at the red-stained sleeve of his jacket, then knelt beside Isadora, his features drawn and perplexed.

“Conan?”

He began dialing. “Yes?”

“Did she—did she kill Jenny?”

He turned, looking down at Isadora, and she seemed as ravaged as the victim of some awesome natural disaster.

“Is that what you think?”

“I’m asking you.”

“No.”

“But—”

“Excuse me. Steve? This is Conan.”

Travers began with an impatient, “Now, look—”

“I’m sorry about your hockey game, but I have a murder for you.”

“A what? Are you putting me on?”

“I wish I were. The Canfield cottage at Shanaway. Jennifer Hanson.”

“Oh, no…
”

“Steve, I also have a—a nervous breakdown on my hands. I’m leaving Harry Munson here, but I’m giving him instructions to talk to no one but you or someone you trust.”

“I’ll be down,” he responded tersely. “I’ll send a patrol car out now, but tell Munson to sit tight until I get there. And I’ll contact the county sheriff.”

“Thanks. I’ll talk to you later.” He replaced the receiver carefully. “Steve’s coming himself, Harry. He’s sending a patrol car now, but you’re to answer no questions until he arrives. How is she?”

He pressed his hand to her forehead with surprising solicitude.

“Coming around, but she’s not with us yet.”

Conan nodded, turning to look down at Jenny’s body. Finally, he knelt beside her, fighting back an overwhelming urge to weep or be sick, but managing with a concentrated effort to study that silent flesh with some detachment.

The bullet had entered an inch above the left eye. He lifted her head; it hadn’t emerged. The blood was beginning to congeal, even to dry at the edges. The nightgown was immaculately white, no stains or tears. A blue slipper covered one foot, but the other was naked.

Then he frowned at the hand lying near her head. Bloodstains under the fingernails. No. Too red; too blue a red. Alizarin crimson. Paint.

He used his handkerchief again when he examined the gun; Jenny’s gun. Two bullets were missing. At length, he rose and returned to the couch. Isadora’s cheek was wet with rain, but still hot to his touch. There was a flicker of movement behind her closed lids, but she didn’t respond to her name. He straightened and crossed to the studio, finding a sterile irony in the newly stretched canvases propped against the walls; canvases that would never know Jennifer Hanson’s brush on their pristine surfaces.

But the canvas on the easel was no longer pristine. The biting odor of turpentine was heavy in the air and the paint on the palette was fresh.

The canvas was a horizontal, about two feet wide and four long. He studied it, wondering what he expected of Jenny’s last painting. A sign, perhaps, or a masterwork?

But it was neither; it was only a beginning. Two simple, abstract forms outlined in broad strokes of red against a mottled background of yellows ranging from earthy ochre to steely zinc yellow. The red lines formed two equilateral triangles, side by side, their twin apexes pointing upward. But as if to avoid a stultifying symmetry, the slashing horizontal line that might have made a base for both triangles extended only far enough to enclose the one on the right; the other was incomplete, the bottom side open.

He turned away, oppressed with a sense of urgency that impelled him back into the living room and made him tense at the sound of a car. But it was too early for the patrol car.

“That must be Carl.” He leaned over Isadora, speaking her name. Her head moved back and forth fitfully, but she wasn’t fully conscious yet.

Munson said, “Maybe I should find some brandy or—”

“No. No alcohol and don’t try to shock her awake.” A car door slammed. “Have Carl fill you in on what happened at the Surf House. I want to check Jenny’s bedroom.”