Carnival of Death (14 page)

“That’s right. What about it?”

“Had you ever been out on the boat with Tim before?”

“A number of times.”

“Do you happen to know the name of the man who owns it?”

“No, I don’t.” The girl bargained, “But I tell you what, Mr. Daly. You said you’d pay me fifty dollars to answer one question. You’ve asked three. But if you’ll make that one hundred dollars instead of fifty, I can tell you the name of the boat and where Tim’s friend keeps it.”

“It’s a deal.”

“The name of the boat is
La Femme
. That’s French for The Woman,’ I think. And Tim’s friend keeps it at the marina in Redondo Beach.”

As Daly stepped out of the phone booth, DuBoise asked, “Now what?”

Daly told him. “Now we
cherchez la femme
.”

“Any particular woman?”

Daly explained. “In this instance, it’s the name of a boat. Only we don’t have to look for her. Miss Madden said that Tim’s friend, possibly the naughty Mr. Davis, berths her at the marina in Redondo Beach.” He glanced at his watch, then added, “Unless he lives on board, I don’t imagine her owner will be there this time of morning. But shall we drive down and see?”

“Why not?” DuBoise shrugged. “The only other alternative is sleep.”

There was little traffic on Alternate Highway U.S. 101. They made good time until they cut over to the coast road. Then the morning fog rolling in off the ocean forced DuBoise to slacken the speed of the car to a crawl. The fog was even thicker at the marina. Visibility was limited to a few feet. The only sounds were the creak of the hawsers mooring the small craft in their slips, the pound and slosh of the waves against the long fill of huge rocks that formed the breakwater and the monotonous bleat of a foghorn.

DuBoise ventured out onto one of the catwalks, then hesitated. “I don’t mind risking my neck or taking an early morning bath. But with the fog as thick as it is and the number of boats there are here, it will be daylight before we finish checking the names on their transoms. Why don’t we try to locate the watchman and ask him if he knows where
La Femme
is berthed?”

“I see a faint light,” Daly said. “Can be it’s in the window of his shack.”

His hunch proved to be correct.

“Yes,” the night watchman of the marina said, “I know the boat. It’s a thirty-two-foot, twin-screw Owens. About eight years old.” He checked the diagram on the wall of the shack. “Berthed in Slip 87A. A kooky character with a gimpy leg, a guy named Jim Davis, paid the slip rental for a year in advance and we wish he hadn’t.”

“Why?” Daly asked.

“Let’s put it this way, Mister,” the watchman said. “We have a nice crowd here. Mostly families and young couples who like to get out on the ocean on weekends. Few of them live on their boats, but Mr. Davis does. And when he hasn’t got some babe aboard, both of them drunk and raising hell, he sits in the cockpit of his boat making wisecracks at every dame who passes by. You know. Telling them how pretty they are and what a build they have and inviting them aboard for a drink.”

DuBoise said, “We were informed he was a ladies’ man. Do you happen to know if he has any particular friend or inamorata?”

“If by that you mean some dame he likes better than the others, yes. Two or three times a week, some little platinum blonde, maybe twenty-five or twenty-six, drops by to play house with him. A not-too-good-looking broad, but has she got a figure. I walked past the boat one night, oh, maybe two weeks ago and the lights were on in the cabin and I couldn’t help seeing in. And there she was lying on one of the bunks mother naked.” The watchman described the woman’s anatomical development with his hands. “Her with a pair of fog lights on her as big as those on the Queen Mary.”

Daly asked, “Is she a natural blonde?”

The watchman shrugged. “I wouldn’t want to go on record. Davis came out of the head about then and after that I couldn’t see her so good any more.”

“Do you know if Mr. Davis is aboard his boat now?”

“Well, like I said, he lives aboard.” The watchman picked a powerful six-cell flashlight from a bracket on the wall. “We can find out in a hurry.”

The smell of the sea was stronger here. Hidden by the fog the land seemed far away. The monotonous bleat of the foghorn seemed louder.

The watchman flashed his light on the swaying transom of a cruiser. “That’s her right there. The
La Femme
. Registered out of San Diego.” Raising his voice, he called, “Ahoy, the
La Femme
.”

The only answer was the fog-muffled creak of the mooring ropes and the soft suck of the outgoing tide.

DuBoise took the flashlight from the watchman. “
S’il vous plaît
. It is important that we contact Mr. Davis as soon as possible. Have I your permission to go aboard?”

The other man shrugged. “Why not? Like I said, we’d be glad to get rid of the guy. Are you fellows cops or detectives or something?”

“Not exactly,” Daly said. “Don’t you ever tune in KAMPC-TV at eleven o’clock?”

The watchman wasn’t one of his fans. “Naw. I hardly ever watch tv except when the world series is on. The rest of the year, what have you got? Cowboys and Indians and old movies. Me, I like hillbilly music. And when I’m not making my rounds, I usually sit in my shack with a nice cold can of beer and listen to one of the all night stations on my transistor radio.”

DuBoise jumped down into the cockpit of the boat and rapped on the louvered door of the cabin. “Mr. Davis.”

Daly joined him. “Watch yourself, Gene. If Davis is mixed up in this thing, he probably has a gun.”

DuBoise wasn’t overly concerned. “Probably.” He knocked again, then tried the knob. The door wasn’t locked. He pushed it open and walked in, flashing a beam of light in front of him.

The cabin reeked of stale perfume and long since digested meals. The shelf of the sink in the small galley was littered with soiled dishes and empty whiskey bottles and beer cans. There were more whiskey bottles and beer cans on the deck plates. An unclothed man was lying face down on one of the disordered bunks, his face pressed into a pool of clotted blood. DuBoise turned the man on his back and a pair of open but sightless eyes above a gaping mouth, the mouth accentuated by a black hairline mustache, stared up into the beam of the flashlight.

The watchman had followed Daly aboard the boat and into the cabin. “Well, what do you know?” he said. “It’s Mr. Davis. And he’s dead.”

DuBoise prodded the lifeless flesh with professional detachment. The lower limbs were still rigid but rigor mortis had set in and passed from the dead man’s torso and arms.

“How long, Gene?” Daly asked.

“I’d say at least forty-eight hours. Possibly a little longer. He was probably killed late Saturday afternoon or early Saturday morning.”

“His cut of the loot from the armored truck, eh?”

“So it would seem,” DuBoise said.

T
HE SQUAT
, white-painted building looked solid. It was. It was built of steel reinforced concrete, with two-inch thick steel bars forming impregnable shields over all of the windows. At one end of it, in the garage section, two hydraulically operated steel doors were labeled IN and OUT.

The legend on the big brass plaque to one side of the main door read:

As they crossed the small bare foyer to a business-like reception desk, Daly was acutely aware that an alert uniformed guard was watching them.

“Yes, gentlemen?” the girl behind the desk asked.

“I’m Tom Daly,” Daly introduced himself. “And this is Mr. DuBoise. We have an appointment with Miss Lindler.”

“Oh, yes,” the receptionist said. “I’ve been expecting you. But because she is representing the firm at the funeral this afternoon, Miss Lindler had to go to lunch a half hour earlier than usual. And she asked me to ask you if you would mind meeting her in the restaurant across the street.”

“Not at all.”

“You can’t miss it. It’s at the end of the block. On the next corner. Antonio’s Bar and Grill. Most of us eat there.”

“Thank you,” Daly smiled. “I suppose the police have been here.”

The receptionist’s smile turned wry. “In and out all morning. They showed us a morgue picture of him and wanted to know if any of us could identify the man who was killed on that boat in Redondo Beach as a former Ramsdale employee.” She shrugged. “But as far as I know none of us could and one of the security guards told me that his fingerprints don’t match with any of those on file in Personnel. I can tell you gentlemen one thing, though. We’ll all be glad when this business is over with. It’s playing hob with our routine.”

“I can imagine,” Daly sympathized. “Well, thanks.”

The restaurant was a type common to most commercial neighborhoods. In a few minutes it would be crowded with business and professional men. At the moment there were only two men at the bar and less than a dozen people sitting at the tables.

Miss Lindler was sitting alone in one of the rear booths with an empty martini glass in front of her, attacking a Crab Louis with gusto. The neat blue serge dress with the prim white collar that she was wearing did little to enhance as much of her figure as was visible above the table. The mouse-colored hair under her small white turban was stringy and looked as if it had been hastily combed. She was still wearing large horn-rimmed glasses, but now that she’d stopped weeping she wasn’t as unattractive as she had been when Daly and DuBoise had last seen her.

“Sit down, gentlemen,” she greeted them. “I’m sorry to have to ask you to meet me here, but we couldn’t have talked in my office anyway. No one but employees are allowed in the garage.” She added, “Employees and policemen and detectives. And the last mentioned have been in our hair all morning.”

Daly sat on one side of her while DuBoise sat on the other. “So the girl at the reception desk told us.”

“May we offer you another martini?” DuBoise asked.

Miss Lindler shook her head. “No, thank you. I never drink more than one.” She broke a hard roll in half and spread butter on it. “Now what can I do for you?” Before either man could answer, she indicated the picture of Davis on the front page of the newspaper folded beside her plate. “If you’ve come to ask me if I knew this rather unsavory-looking creature, I’m afraid I’ll have to tell you what I told Lieutenant Schaeffer. I never saw him in my life.” She took a bite of the roll she’d buttered. “Besides, all of us Ramsdale employees are photographed and fingerprinted when we start to work for the firm. The bonding company insists on that And neither his picture or his fingerprints is on file.”

DuBoise asked, “Is it possible that before his license to practice medicine was revoked, he could have done outside work for the firm? Say, as a consultant to the company doctor?”

“I doubt it. If he had ever been employed by Ramsdale in any capacity, there would be some evidence of it. If only a canceled check.”

“Then it would have been physically impossible for him to know the exact time that the armored truck would reach the shopping center and how much money it would be carrying?”

“Unless he had an accomplice who works for us. And I don’t know who that would be. Only the guards and I know how much a truck is carrying. And the despatcher makes up the time schedule. Even I don’t know that.” The cashier looked back at the picture. “Have the police found out how he was killed?”

“Yes,” Daly said. “He was shot through the heart with a small-calibered gun.”

“By whom?”

“The police don’t know. But for the time being they are assuming he was killed by the blonde woman who is known to have been his companion two or three times a week. In fact the police surgeon who performed the autopsy is positive either she or some other woman was with him shortly before he was murdered.” Daly was as delicate about it as he could be. “You see, both he and the investigating officers found, well, shall we say, certain confirming evidence.”

Miss Lindler was amused. “Oh, come off it, Mr. Daly. I’m not a child. I know that the newspapers gave my age as twenty-seven, but I’m thirty-four years old. And I know all about the birds and the bees and the pollen. In other words, this Davis had been partying with some woman. And while they were at it, or just after they’d finished, she shot him.”

“That’s how the police see it.”

“Can’t they identify her by her fingerprints?”

“Unfortunately,” DuBoise said, “she didn’t leave any. She wiped all plane surfaces in the cabin clean before she left.”

“But what about the bottles and the beer cans? According to the story in the paper, the cabin of the boat was littered with empties.”

DuBoise shrugged. “If she drinks, it seems she didn’t indulge herself aboard the
La Femme
.”

“I see,” Miss Lindler said quietly. “And while we are on the subject of women, I want to apologize for the way I acted the other morning. But it all happened so suddenly, I was in a mild form of shock.” She added, as quietly, “Then, too, I meant what I said about Tim. I don’t receive very much male attention. Tim was nice to me and I liked him for it. Maybe I was in love with the guy. I don’t know.”

Daly changed the subject. “Did you happen to see my show last night, Miss Lindler?”

“Yes. I did.” The cashier’s face brightened. “Your guest star was a little honey. I could have squeezed her to death. Old maid or not, I’d give anything to have a child like her. But I must confess that between her eyewitness report and the fact the alleged Dr. Alveredo turned out to be a fraud, I am a trifle confused.”

“In what way?”

“I was so certain the Laredos were guilty. Now I don’t know what to think.”

“What about Miss Polly Madden?”

“I’ll bite. What about her?”

“If you watched the show you heard her say that she and Kelly had planned to spend the balance of the weekend on a boat a friend of his was loaning him. Now it transpires that friend was Davis who was at the scene of the crime and who was seen being driven away by a platinum blonde, presumably the same woman who later first had intercourse with, then killed him.”