Carnival of Death (16 page)

DuBoise admitted, “We can’t dispute that.”

Schaeffer continued, “On the other hand, if she and the phony doctor, who turned out to be the former Dr. Davis, had any part in the robbery of the armored truck, and it now seems likely they must have, why should she belt the mattress with Davis in the cabin of his boat all Saturday afternoon, then kill him and drive all the way up to Big Bear to shack up with another man?”

“That part,” DuBoise said, “is elemental. It was the lethal passion of the female praying mantis. After rewarding Davis with her body for the part he played in the looting of the truck, knowing he wouldn’t be difficult to trace, she had two reasons for killing him. One, to keep him from testifying against her. The other, to cheat him out of his promised share of the money.”

The homicide man wasn’t impressed. “We’ve thought of that. But let’s face it. Outside of arresting and indicting the Laredos and recovering the five grand from his carousel and maybe again as much from the teen-agers and adults who were tricked into becoming part of the diversion, we’re no closer to a solution of this thing than we were when the first police car arrived at the shopping center on Saturday morning.”

Daly asked what the Laredos had to say about the latest developments.

“Nothing,” Schaeffer said sourly. “Absolutely nothing. Since we let that high-priced lawyer you hired to defend them talk to them, they aren’t talking. No matter what we ask them all he will say is, ‘See my lawyer.’ And all she does is smile that condescending smile that all women have when they’re pregnant. What’s more, she has all of the matrons down at the Bureau on her side. All of them are so indignant because we had such a ‘sweet child’ indicted, none of them will even talk to me or Captain Franks or Carter outside the line of duty.”

Daly laughed. “But you and the DA.’s office still think Paquita is capable of murder?”

“I don’t know what to think,” Schaeffer said. “I like her. I like both of them. You can’t help liking them. But what evidence we have is against them. And it all points to one thing. That the Laredos, along with other members of the Cuban invasion brigade, the guys who played the clowns and walked off with the money, planned the almost perfect caper.”

“In that case,” Daly asked, “where do those good Cubans, Thelma and Tommy Banks, and the late Dr. James Davis fit in?”

“I don’t know,” the homicide man admitted. “And I’ll never find out standing here talking to you.” He flicked the ash from his cigar. “For that matter, how come you two are here?”

Daly said, “If we can we want to talk to Quinlan and the dead guard’s brother.”

“What can they tell you?”

“That’s what we want to find out.”

Schaeffer shrugged. “Good luck. But if you are thinking of trying to prove this was an inside job, you’re wasting your time. We ran both of them through the mill and they came out clean.”

DuBoise watched the homicide man walk back to the unmarked police car and drive away. “Charlie doesn’t seem to be very happy.”

“No,” Daly agreed. “He doesn’t.” He glanced at his watch. Miss Lindler had told them that the funeral was scheduled for twelve-forty-five and the organ had been playing for ten minutes. “Are you certain Quinlan and Kelly aren’t inside? They should have been here by now.”

“They weren’t inside when I looked,” DuBoise said. “There weren’t any men in the chapel. Only Kelly’s girl friends, all of them looking daggers at each other. However, I’ll look again.”

DuBoise entered the chapel and returned almost immediately. “I didn’t look in the right place the first time. It seems that in an attempt to drown his grief, Mike Kelly has been drinking so heavily he’s about passed out. And Quinlan and one of the attendants have him in one of the anterooms pouring black coffee into him, trying to sober him up enough so they can get the show on the road.”

Daly had seen Mike Kelly’s picture in the newspapers. This was the first time he’d seen the man. The dead guard’s older brother, a craggy-faced man in his late forties, was sitting slumped in an overstuffed chair, weakly attempting to resist the efforts of his fellow guard to get him to drink more black coffee.

When he saw Daly, he pushed the cup of coffee aside. “Well, if it isn’t the great Mr. Tom Daly from KAMPC-TV. What do you want? Don’t tell me you’re here to take pictures of Tim’s funeral so you can show them on your program?”

“No,” Daly said. “Nothing like that All we want is to ask you a few questions, Mr. Kelly.” He played on the other man’s pride in his younger brother. “Judging from the number of good-looking girls in the chapel, your brother must have been quite a ladies’ man.”

“He was that,” the drunken guard boasted. “Tim had a way with girls. If he’d wanted to, he could have crawled into bed with a different dame every night, three hundred and sixty-five nights a year.”

DuBoise smiled, “How interesting. But a trifle enervating, don’t you think? You know. All that crawling in and out.”

D
ALY SWUNG
a straight-backed chair away from the wall and straddled it, facing Kelly. “I suppose Thelma was one of his favorite girls?”

“Thelma?” Kelly puzzled.

Daly continued to smile ingratiatingly. “Come on now, Mike. Level with me. Tim must have told you about Thelma. You know. The hot little blonde with the big breasts.”

Kelly pushed at the cup of coffee Quinlan was offering him. “Could be, Mr. Daly. But then, all of Tim’s girls had big boobies. That’s the way he liked ‘em.”

Daly persisted. “Think, Mike. The platinum blonde doll who had the cabin up near Big Bear City. Tim must have spent a lot of weekends up there.”

Kelly lost what little interest he had in the subject. “No. I don’t think Tim ever went up there. He didn’t like the mountains. Sometimes he’d take his girls out on a boat, but he didn’t have to leave town. Like I said, he could have had a different dame waiting every night. Everything to live for, that’s what he had. Then that lousy little spic split-tail had to go and put poison in his lemonade. Just because Tim tried to kiss her and squeeze one of her boobies.”

Daly looked at Quinlan. “Where was this? At the East Valley Shopping Plaza, Saturday morning?”

Quinlan set the coffee cup on a table and wiped his hands with his handkerchief. “No. That was the week before. If I remember correctly, at a shopping center in Burbank. We used to bump into the Laredos quite frequently. And the first time Tim saw the girl, he got that way for her and boasted he was going to have him some of that But she wouldn’t even look at him. Then, on the lot in Burbank, he did what Mike just said.”

“Squeezed one of Paquita’s breasts and tried to kiss her?”

“That’s right.”

“As I understand it, Mickey witnessed the incident.”

“He did.”

“And warned Kelly to stay away from his wife.”

“He did more than that He told Tim if he ever touched Mrs. Laredo again, he’d beat his brains in. And you could tell he meant it.”

“What was Kelly’s reaction?”

“He laughed.” The guard continued earnestly, “I warned him to lay off the girl, but no. What does he do Saturday morning? I’ll tell you. I’m driving, see. And Laredo is in the same aisle we are, with a bunch of kids following him. Me, I just poke along, waiting for them to get out of my way. But before I can stop him, Tim reaches over and beeps the horn and startles Laredo so bad that when he turns, he falls. Then, not content with that, Tim insults the guy. He calls him the pale-faced hero of the Bay of Pigs, or something like that Then he said, and I remember his exact words, he said, ‘Drive on, James. Now that one-legged clown is out of my way, I want to cop another feel from that pretty little dumb Spanish broad and get me a couple of glasses of pink lemonade before I start toting all this money.’”

“What was Mickey’s reaction to that?”

“It was difficult to tell, with all that white stuff on his face. But he didn’t say anything. He just sat there while I drove on.”

“And then?”

“I parked the truck as close to the shopping complex as I could get. We draw our guns and walk around to the back of the truck. Mike gives Tim the first two sacks of money we’re delivering. Then we start for the bank and I’m relieved because I think Tim was just needling Laredo. But no. When we pass the lemonade stand, knowing Laredo is watching him, Tim has to stop and ask for a drink.”

DuBoise asked, “Did he attempt to become familiar with Mrs. Laredo? Did he attempt to kiss or fondle her?”

Quinlan shook his head. “No. Tim just asked, as polite as he could be, if he could please have a glass of lemonade. The girl gave him one. And a few minutes later, he was dead.”

The harried funeral director entered the anteroom. “I’m sorry, gentlemen, but we’re running on a tight schedule and I’ve delayed this as long as I can. We’ll have to begin the Kelly funeral immediately.”

Quinlan looked at his fellow guard. While he had been talking to Daly, the bereaved brother had fallen asleep. “Okay, mister,” Quinlan said quietly. “Thanks for stalling as long as you have, but go ahead whenever you’re ready. He can hear it as well in here as he could if he was in the chapel.”

“Thank you, sir,” the man said.

He left the room and a few moments later the organ stopped playing and the services began.

“How about you, Quinlan?” Daly asked. “Don’t you want to go into the chapel?”

“Why?” the other man asked. “You hear one funeral, you’ve heard them all.” He found his cigarettes and lit one. “I just came out of respect for Mike. I was never particularly friendly with Tim. I just worked with the guy. And I didn’t really enjoy that. All he ever talked about was women.”

“Then you won’t mind answering a few questions?”

“No,” Quinlan said. “Why should I? I’ve worked for Ramsdale for thirty years and this is the first time a truck of mine ever lost a dime. Now, thanks to that punk out there in the coffin, I don’t know if I have a job.”

The remark opened a new avenue of thought. Daly pursued it. “Do you think that Kelly could have had something to do with the robbery?”

“I didn’t say that,” Quinlan said. “But two things are sure. Someone hated him enough to kill him and a lot of money is still missing.”

Daly returned the chair he was straddling to the wall. “I understand you have identified Davis as the man who told you his name was Dr. Alveredo and who sent you to Dr. Murman’s office for a stomach pump.”

“That’s right. Down at the morgue. And now the garage super says that an old head like myself shouldn’t have fallen for a trick like that, that I should have stayed with the truck. But how was I to know that the guy was a phony? He talked just like an M.D. Besides, I’d just seen Mike lock the money compartment and put the key back in his pocket.”

DuBoise said, “Then the clown who threw the silver and the paper money to the crowd had to unlock the money compartment to get at it.” It was a statement, not a question.

Quinlan nodded. “That’s right.”

“With a duplicate key.”

“With a duplicate key. And, believe me, Mister, duplicate keys to armored trucks are hard to come by.”

“I presume you’re required to turn them in when the truck returns to the garage?”

“That’s normal operating procedure. But sometimes you forget and take a key home with you. I have. Twice in thirty years.”

“Then any of you could have had a duplicate made?”

“Any of us. The inside guard carries the key. We take turns riding inside. But the polygraph cleared both Mike and me. And Tim is lying out there with a priest praying over him.”

“How about someone at the garage?” Daly asked. “This super you mentioned, for example.”

Quinlan thought about it for a moment. “It’s possible, but not probable. He’s been with the firm longer than I have.” He hesitated, briefly, then continued talking. “But I was thinking about the key business last night. And there is one way someone could have gotten hold of a key long enough to have had a duplicate made.”

“I’d like to hear it,” Daly said.

Quinlan lit a fresh cigarette from the stub of the one he was smoking. “Well, the most careful of us make mistakes. When you’re riding as inside guard and you get back to the garage and your load has been checked in, you’re supposed to turn over your key with your signed tally sheet. But sometimes something happens, and you forget. Like I said, I’ve carried a key home twice. Suppose that happened to Tim one night? And suppose that Mrs. Laredo isn’t all she pretends to be? What if this ‘keep your hands off me’ bit was an act to fool her husband, or us, and she and Tim had something on the fire? Because she liked what he had, or she wanted to get at the key. Then one night, after he had been riding as inside guard and happened to carry the key away with him, they met and went to a motel or up to Tim’s apartment. And after they’d done what they met to do, while Tim was sleeping, she took the key and made a wax impression of it, then put it back in his pocket.”

Daly asked, “And turned the impression over to Mickey?”

“That’s the way it could have been. Then, Saturday morning, to create a diversion and make sure no one traced the key back to her, she slipped chloral hydrate in Tim’s lemonade.”

“It could have happened that way,” Daly said. “But there are two things wrong with your reasoning. One, Paquita would have laid herself open to exactly what she’s charged with, murder in the first degree. Two, it’s difficult for me to believe that Paquita would cheat on Mickey, or that he would allow her to prostitute her body for any amount of money or for any cause.”

Quinlan asked, “But if the Laredos aren’t mixed up in this thing, if Mrs. Laredo didn’t give Tim the chloral hydrate, how did he get it? One thing’s for sure. Knowing the guy as I did, I know he didn’t commit suicide.”

DuBoise cracked open the door leading into the chapel and studied the faces of the young women mourning the dead guard. All of them seemed to be sincerely grief-stricken. “I’m afraid I’ll have to buy that,” he said.

Daly explored another angle. “How is the money carried, Mr. Quinlan?”

“How do you mean how is it carried?”

“How is the inside of an armored truck arranged? Is the money to be delivered just sacked and tagged and lying on the floor plate in piles?”