After Midnight (3 page)

The commander’s voice was like a whiplash. Wanda buried her face in the handkerchief and began to go quietly to pieces. Hannah glanced at Simon. The pensive brown eyes were brightening with a glint of anger. When he started forward, Hannah rapped his thigh with her cane.

“Simon, don’t be an idiot!” she whispered. “Stay out of family fights. She’s not only guilty, she probably has an in with the Mafia.”

It was a waste of oxygen. Simon’s glint was shining like a knight’s armor.

“Don’t blubber for my benefit!” the commander roared at Wanda. “I know Roger was an ungrateful whelp, but, by God, you killed him and I’m going to see you hang for it!”

“California uses the gas chamber,” Simon remarked.

Two interruptions within as many minutes was too much for Commander Warren. He wheeled about and glared at Simon.

“Who the devil are you?” he demanded.

“My name is Simon Drake,” Simon said.

“Drake—the lawyer? I’ve heard of you. So—” he swung back to Wanda “—you’ve already got a mouthpiece!”

“No, I haven’t,” Wanda sobbed.

“Yes, she has,” Simon insisted. “And I’ll be generous enough to warn you, Commander Warren, that—if my client is charged with the murder of your son—I intend to make your bias boomerang to her advantage.”

“Simon—” Hannah moaned.

It was too late. Simon’s glands were much too active and genuine, and even phony trembling fawns were hard to come by these days. He just couldn’t resist the challenge.

Wanda Warren was booked on the suspicion of murdering her husband at two o’clock in the afternoon of the day he died. The crime lab had found her fingerprints all over the knife—where they had every right to be since she had admitted handing it to Roger—and also found traces of dried blood—Roger’s—under her fingernails. That discovery prompted her to recall handling the knife after Elmer Cranston’s terrified shouts awakened her, but, since Cranston had immediately fled to the telephone to call the police, there was no corroborating witness. Bail was set at twenty-five thousand dollars with no generous gesture forthcoming from the commander. Simon was satisfied. Until he had time to see how the normally snobbish community might react to his client, she was better off in jail. He sent Hannah home in a cab and wangled a brief interview alone with the girl.

She had stopped crying, but it would be days before anything like normal color returned to her face. The atmosphere of the narrow cell made her seem even more young and more helpless.

“I don’t know how I’m going to pay you,” she said. “I have no money.”

“Wasn’t your husband wealthy?” Simon asked.

Quick suspicion came to her eyes.

“You believed him,” she protested. “You believed the commander when he told you I married his son for his money!”

“I didn’t say that. I was trying to keep you from worrying.”

“But there is no money! The commander disinherited Roger a week after our marriage. That’s why he worked at The Profile.”

“The Profile?”

Wanda regarded Simon’s hand-tailored tweeds with the eye of an expert.

“You don’t buy your clothes in Marina Beach, do you?”

“No,” Simon admitted, “I have a sewing machine in the attic.”

The attempt at levity was a complete failure. This wasn’t the time or the place for humor.

“If you did buy your clothes in Marina Beach,” Wanda continued, “you would buy them at The Profile. It’s on Pacific Drive and a necktie is called a cravat and sells for seven-fifty. Roger worked at The Profile. He earned about a hundred dollars a week in salary and commissions and got his suits at cost.”

Simon listened professionally. This frightened client of his was still a stranger. Anything she said on any subject brought her closer.

“Why did you quarrel so much with your husband?” he asked.

“I don’t know,” she said. “People do. They don’t intend to—they just do.”

“Why did you want to make him jealous?”

“I was afraid.”

“Of losing him?”

“Of everything. Don’t you understand, Mr. Drake? Roger was Commander Warren’s son. He went to private schools and to Annapolis until he was kicked out. He grew up rich. He was never hungry for anything.”

“He must have been if he was kicked out of Annapolis.”

Wanda smiled briefly and that was a good sign. He was beginning to win her confidence.

“I thought of that, too,” she admitted. “I guess that’s one of the reasons I married him. I thought I could help him—but I didn’t fit.”

“Maybe you tried too hard.”

“Maybe. But, you see, I grew up hungry for everything—food, money, love—”

“Don’t you have any family?”

He had spoken the anti-magic words. A long silence moved in and sat down between them, and only when she was ready did Wanda speak again.

“Have you ever heard of Joshua Call?” she asked.

“Joshua Call—the evangelist?” Simon backed up against the opposite wall of the cell and began to study Wanda Warren in a new light. “Keep talking,” he said.

“He’s my father—pastor of the nondenominational Church of the Holy Squares.” She giggled nervously. She was closer to hysteria than he thought. “That’s what Roger called it—in the beginning when we were so much in love and everything was fun.”

“It’s a radio church, isn’t it?”

“Radio, mail order—he’s trying to get time on television. Oh, he’s dedicated, Mr. Drake. My father is a dedicated man. He’s never let anything come between him and the work. I remember when I was seven—I sang a solo at every service. Then my mother got sick and had to go to a sanitarium. I begged him to take me to see her, but he never had time. There were two services on Sunday, one in the middle of the week and all the choir practice. She died on a Sunday and I sang in both services—he made me. But I never forgot. Not that—not other things. I lived for the day I could get away. I didn’t care about the streets of gold in the great bye and bye. I wanted to be beautiful and loved and have a little fun in this world!”

“That makes sense to me,” Simon said. “And so you ran off and married Roger Warren.”

“No. I ran off and tried to become a professional singer—night clubs, TV. But you know how rough that is. I finally got a job in a discothèque. I was one of the girls in the cage.”

“Not very glamorous,” Simon reflected, “but that’s show business.”

“Yes. Well, at least it was good exercise. During the daytime I went to the beach. That’s where I met Roger—only I didn’t know who he was. The first time I saw him he wasn’t wearing anything but some swimming trunks made from old levis with the legs raveling. When he tried to buy me a Coke, I had to pay for it because there was a hole in his change pocket. But he was fun. He made me laugh and feel good inside. He asked for a date and when he called for me he was all dressed up in one of those expensive Italian silk suits and driving that Mercedes. Well—”

“And so you were married,” Simon said.

“A week later. Roger did everything on impulse.”

Wanda stopped talking abruptly and stared at Simon suspiciously. Her shock was beginning to wear off, and displacing it was the knowledge that she was no longer that naïve child she had been discussing so fluently. There was cruelty and danger in the world, and bars on the door of her cell.

“I don’t think that I like you, Mr. Drake,” she said.

“What brought that on?” Simon asked.

“Because you make me tell things about myself that I shouldn’t. Please, don’t get in touch with my father.”

“But why not? He
is
your father.”

“I know—but he’ll skin me alive! My father doesn’t approve of—” She became very self-conscious and finished the sentence in a tiny voice. “—of drinking,” she said. “That’s silly, isn’t it? I mean, if I killed Roger that’s so much worse.”

“
If
you killed Roger? Then you really don’t know that you didn’t kill him.”

Their eyes met directly for the first time, and, unless Simon Drake had lost all ability to judge character, she did not lie.

“No, I really don’t,” she admitted. “I suppose I wanted to.”

“Why?”

“Because he was cruel and hateful. He said things to me like the things his father said—only it was worse when Roger said it because he destroyed the wonderful life we were going to have together. It was because of the money, I suppose. Roger was always trying to get more money. That’s why we went out to the yacht once a month.”

“Did the commander give Roger money?”

“No. But Roger thought if we kept going out there long enough he might relent and restore his allowance. He was wrong. The commander only invited us so he could ridicule and belittle me before his friends. That’s why I jumped off the ship yesterday. Roger went fishing in the small boat and left me on the yacht. I took all the sarcastic remarks I could, and then I saw a small boat with some sailors in it. I waved and they waved back and, well, anything seemed better than staying on that yacht.”

“You might have drowned,” Simon said.

“I didn’t care if I did! I just didn’t care what happened to me! Anyway, the sailors took me aboard and we went ashore. They were fun. We drank quite a bit and we danced some, but it was just fun. I knew Roger would come back and be angry and we’d fight again, but I had to do what I did or I would have exploded. Can you understand that, Mr. Drake? I would have just exploded!”

“I understand,” Simon said quietly. “Roger did come back and you did have another fight, and maybe, because you can’t remember, maybe you did explode. If I’m going to defend you in Court, Mrs. Warren, I’ll have to know where I stand. If I send a psychiatrist to see you, will you talk to him?”

“A psychiatrist?” She was frightened. “Do you think I’m crazy?”

“No, I don’t. But you are confused and I want to help you. You must believe that, Mrs. Warren. I want to help you.”

He watched her eyes (they were gray shading to green) while she made a decision. The walls of the cell were solid and the barred door wasn’t make-believe, and somewhere on the lower level of the same building the man who had been Roger Warren was laid out on a slab in the morgue quite dead from the knife wound in his chest.

Wanda trembled slightly and sat down on the edge of the narrow bed.

“All right, Mr. Drake,” she said. “I’ll do whatever you say—only don’t let my father come here. Please—”

Simon promised.

By daylight the houses on Seacliff Drive sparkled like diamond stars on the wrong end of time. The exterior stucco had been treated with fragments of glass that caught and reflected the sunlight, and the slightly varied façades combined Roman arches and mansard roofs in a careless manner that suggested one of the poorer years of the French Republic. It was all very chic and expensive, and Simon Drake found it most interesting. A police car was parked at the curb and Roger Warren’s Mercedes still occupied the driveway—now getting a direct sun treatment over the dust and rain job of the previous twenty-four hours. Simon checked the registration certificate on his way to the house. It was in Wanda’s name, and the title was clear.

Inside the house Simon found Lieutenant Franzen supervising the work of the men from the crime lab. He was in such high spirits even the heavy-rimmed glasses didn’t bother him.

“You’ve let yourself in for trouble, Mr. Drake,” he said. “I always leave the prosecution of a case to District Attorney Thompson, but I can tell you right now that this one’s going to be easy—for him. I’ve already questioned the neighbors and got the same story everywhere. The Warrens were at each other’s throats from the day they moved in. Mrs. Warren drank like a candidate for Alcoholics Anonymous, and Roger wasn’t far behind her.”

“Under what section of trial procedure is gossip admissible as evidence?” Simon queried.

“Now don’t get technical, Mr. Drake. You know what I mean. They call it motivation on the TV shows.”

While Franzen talked, Simon walked slowly to the bar—taking in the scope of the room and its furnishings. He knew the price range. The new houses on Seacliff Drive rented for five hundred dollars a month fully furnished.

“From the day they moved in,” he reflected. “What day was that, Lieutenant?”

“This section of houses was completed and set up for purchase or rental just six months ago,” Franzen said. “The Warrens were the first tenants. Signed a year’s lease one week later.”

Simon stepped behind the bar and looked up questioningly.

“It’s all right,” Franzen said. “The print man covered that area first.”

It was all very neat, compact and complete. The sink was dry, the refrigerator closed and the cabinets in order. There were no glasses on the bar with telltale liquor, stains and fingerprints, and the expensive teak ice bucket wasn’t even moist on the bottom.

Franzen followed Simon’s cursory sleuthing with a wry smile.

“If you’re looking for traces of a late visitor, counselor,” he said, “you’re wasting time. The Warrens did their serious drinking and preliminary fighting before they came home. The serious fighting came later.”

“So I’ve heard,” Simon said. “Bloodstains on the carpet and all.”

“Look for yourself.”

Simon looked. A large fan-shaped stain marked the chair in which Roger Warren’s body had been found, and a series of drops of diminishing size led back to the bedrooms. It was an expensive plush pile in an off white shade, and the lab men had carefully covered most of it with transparent plastic runners.

“That carpet’s been photographed and vacuumed for foreign matter,” Franzen added. “The lab men are working on the report now.”

“And I’m sure the District Attorney will be happy to send me a copy,” Simon said sarcastically. “It’s not that I don’t appreciate your guided tour, Franzen. It’s just that I have a habit of doing my own preparatory work.”

He opened up a liquor cabinet and withdrew a bottle of imported English gin.

“Roger Warren had good taste,” he observed.

“The best,” Franzen agreed. “You should see his wardrobe closet. Warren was no chip off the old block. From what I’ve gathered, he was one of those handsome young men who always manage to live beyond somebody else’s means. The only thing that surprises me is the blood on his shirt where he was stabbed. It should have come out martini juice.”

Now Simon was interested in Lieutenant Franzen’s opinions. “Beyond somebody else’s means,” he echoed. “Beyond whose means, Lieutenant?”

Franzen shrugged. “It’s too early in the investigation to say. I think the commander slipped him something now and then.”

“His wife says not.”

“His wife wouldn’t have had to know—or he might have played the bangtails or had other women. Maybe his wife worked on the side, if you know what I mean.”