Dressed to Killed (3 page)

Her lips formed a silent O of shocked comprehension. "You mean-!"

"Exactly. I think Richmond's being out of town was merely an alibi, strictly for the purpose of getting you to chauffeur the Caddy to a place where the body could be safely loaded into it. In fact, I'll give you eight-to-five that Richmond doesn't have a sister and, if he has, that she doesn't live in Kenosha."

"But—"

"Listen, honey." I leaned forward and squeezed her shoulder, stopping the flood of questions which I knew were beginning to brim in her mind. "The Caddy was hot and Richmond must have known it. It didn't cost him much to abandon it, just the seven-fifty he paid you—not much of a fee for driving a dead body across a state line and ditching it for him. Hell, you took all the risk. Figure it out yourself. Even if you were spotted and trailed, the backtrack to Richmond was obscured because your contacts were the bartender and the Evans girl. If necessary, he was alibied for the whole deal. He could wash you off simply by swearing that your story had been cooked up out of thin air. Do you see what I'm driving at?"

A muscle in her jaw did a nervous do-se-do. "B-but Ginny knows it's true. She's a friend of mine. She'll tell them that Richmond gave her the check and—"

"Sure," I snapped, "Ginny's your friend—but Richmond's got dough, hasn't he? Is she such a good friend that she won't listen to the whisper of money?"

Her head jerked as though I'd punched her in a vital area. "She wouldn't lie! She wouldn't dare! I'd... I'd..." Her voice faltered wildly and scratched to a stop.

"You'd what?" I asked grimly. "What could you do? Richmond will be taking care of Richmond. And if Ginny can be bought—where does that leave you?"

Her fingers began to writhe. "What am I supposed to do?"

"I want the truth!" I snapped. "All of it!"

"I've told you-!"

"You haven't kept anything back?"

"No. Why should I? I wouldn't want to be involved in a... in a murder, would I?"

"You are involved. That's the hell of it. We're both involved." I stood up abruptly and began to pace back and forth. "I hate like hell to throw a kid like you to the cops. But the Caddy has got to be turned in. Besides needing the fee, the fact that I took possession of it is a matter of record now. So I've got to drive it in and surrender it. If it weren't for the body, the insurance company would take the car and no questions asked. But one look at that blood and everybody's going to start screaming themselves hoarse. The fact that the stiff is Eddie Sands doesn't help, either. We're liable to get it from both directions. Especially you. I hope you're used to bright lights and loud voices."

She swallowed slowly. "Couldn't we—?" Her voice broke. "C-couldn't we d-ditch it s-someplace?"

"Where? It isn't as easy as it sounds. Why do you suppose Richmond was willing to shell out so much for the job? It isn't like hiding a peanut or burying a cat." I grinned mirthlessly. "Besides, it's illegal."

Her mouth started to open, then stopped.

I heard it, too—and froze.

Through the thin board wall of the cabin, our ears had caught the sound of a powerful engine roaring into life.

I leaped for the door, clawed at the lock, got it open. The yellow Caddy, veiled in a film of protesting dust, was shooting into the driveway. A thin-faced guy, wearing horn-rimmed glasses, was behind the wheel. I shouted and ran toward the car. He braked viciously, then flipped the shift and spun the wheel in unison. He grinned pleasantly at me and waved a hand in farewell. The Caddy went into a swift crouch and then leaped away down the driveway.

I said a one-syllabled word.

I SAID the word a second time, with even more vehemence.

What had happened was pretty obvious. I wasn't the only name on the mailing list of the A. R. A. The thin-faced guy was probably a shoe-string investigator, located in one of the small towns nearby, who made a practice of keeping a finger on the pulse of the motels. He must have eased the Caddy's hood open, checked the serial number, and teased it down without actually snapping it shut. And while I'd been yakking away at the blonde, he'd been making hey-hey with the ignition. Slick of him—and stupid of me. I felt like heading for the nearest latrine and shoveling myself under.

I stormed into the cabin.

"What happened?" she asked expectantly.

"The Caddy went bye-bye," I told her bitterly.

"What!"

"You heard me." I gave her a smile like dry ice. "Let's get out of here."

"But—"

I cut her short. "No buts. I'm moving." I turned and stalked out. Her shoes clattered on the floor, following me.

I still had the Pontiac, thank God. I got in and jabbed the key into the ignition. I kicked at the gas. She got the door open and flung herself in. I gunned the car out into the driveway.

"You could at least—" she began angrily.

"Shut up," I gritted.

I was sore as hell, sore at myself, principally, but I had to let off steam somehow, so I took it out on her and the car. I drove like mad for twenty miles, ignoring highway warnings and trying to overtake everything on the road. I kept seeing the yellow Caddy pulling away from me, leaving me with a surplus blonde and no fee. Worse than that. It left me tagged as a guy who stopped at a roadside motel to frolic with a pick-up, thereby diluting business with pleasure, while a dead stiff sweated outside in the trunk of the car I'd repossessed. I could vision the thin-faced guy parking the Caddy, walking around it triumphantly, and his horn-rimmed spectacles bobbing with shock when he opened the trunk—if he opened it. Sure, he'd open it. With half an eye, he'd spot the stains, just as I did. Then he'd run for the cops. The cops would run for the motel. The fat boy would be questioned. My description would be broadcast. And from that point on I'd be eligible for the services of a mixed quartet, the kind which sings at funerals.

How long would it be before they got enough dope for a general alarm? An hour? Two hours? Not any longer. With luck, I'd have two hours to scram around before the roof fell in. How should I use that precious time?

No matter what I did, it would look bad. It would be idiotic to tell my story to the cops. Even if they didn't laugh themselves sick, I'd become persona non grata to the A. R .A. and might even get my state license revoked. That would be better than burning, of course, but not much better. The only possible thing in my favor was the fact that I had a thin edge of knowledge: I knew that Arnold J. Richmond was behind the deal and that a girl named Virginia Evans had Addled a distracting obbligato while Eddie Sands' body was being loaded for transit. It wasn't a hell of a lot to work on. But it was better than nothing.

"Look, kid." The rasp of my voice surprised me; nerves had made my larynx tighter than a rusty screw. "I'm going to drop you off at Bellevue Place. I want you to call on your pal Ginny and see if you can get your hooks into her for some information. Pump all the facts you can out of her. If necessary, give her the whole story. It's only a matter of hours before it'll be in the papers, anyway."

"All right." She gave me a nod the size of a fingernail. "Then what?"

"Then we try to squirm out of the mess." The dash clock showed 12:17. We had been buzzing right along and were nearing the north entrance of the Outer Drive. I braked the Pontiac a little. This was no time to haggle with traffic cops.

"Meanwhile I'm going to nail down Richmond. Where does he usually hang out?"

"Gosh, I don't know. He's got an office some place, I guess, but I don't know where it is."

"What kind of an office?"

"A business office. You know."

"What kind of business?" I snorted. "Stop making me drag it out of you. What's his racket?"

"He sort of sold things."

"Sort of sold things!" I mimicked. "What kind of a racket is that?"

"Honest to God, Mr. Forbes, that's what he did!" she protested. "I've known him nearly a year and every time I've seen him he was around one of the joints, taking orders for something. You can ask Ginny. She's the one who introduced me to him originally. She's bought lots of things from him."

"What things?"

"Well, she bought a fur coat, a couple of suits, and a lot of lingerie and things like perfume. I've bought stuff from him myself—nylons and some Chanel Number Five."

"You mean he's a peddler?"

"No, not exactly. According to Ginny, he has connections and can get nearly anything real cheap."

"Wholesale?"

"Even cheaper than wholesale. He lets us have nylons for only two dollars a box. Real nice ones, too. See?" She jerked her skirt up several inches and extended a leg. I didn't know about the hose, but the leg was fine. "In the stores, I'd have to pay nearly two dollars a pair!"

"Sounds like his stuff is hot."

She shrugged. "I suppose. I never asked."

"When you talk to Ginny, ask her about Richmond's racket. Maybe he works out of a store or an office and she can spot him for me. Does he hang around any one of the joints particularly?"

"He hits all of them, I guess, but I know he stops in the Frolics nearly every night. I think he tells people to call him there, in case they want anything; or maybe Frankie, the bartender, just takes orders for him."

"I'll talk to Frankie. This morning you mentioned running some errands for Richmond. What sort of errands?"

"Real crazy. Once he paid me fifty dollars to drive all the way to Gary, Indiana, and buy six tins of sardines for him! I could have gotten the same brand and everything on North State Street, for maybe thirty cents a can, but he made me go all the way to Gary." She laughed tightly. "I didn't give him an argument. I needed the fifty."

"What else?"

"Well, another time—this was a couple of weeks ago—he left a package at the Frolics with a note telling me to sit in the lobby of the Sherman Hotel with it until someone came up and asked me how my Aunt Maggie was. At first, I thought it was a gag, but there was a hundred-dollar bill pinned to the note, so I did like it said."

"What happened?"

"Oh, I sat around for a couple hours, and then a man came in and walked right up to me and said something like, 'Good evening, my dear, and how is Aunt Maggie?' He didn't crack a smile and I didn't either. I gave him the package and walked away."

"Was he anybody you knew?"

"I never saw him before or since."

"How big was the package?"

"About like this." Her hands described a two-foot square.

"Heavy?"

"Not very."

"Sounds screwy."

"I told you. Crazy."

"I believe you, honey. I just can't figure the set-up."

The jaunt into Indiana for sardines suggested dope-running, of course, but the rendezvous at the Sherman was certainly something else. A package of dope two feet square would contain too valuable a cargo to entrust to one messenger. Richmond evidently had his fingers in many pies.

I stuck to the Outer Drive as far as Diversey Parkway, then cut into Lincoln Park and continued south.

"What about Eddie Sands?" I asked. "What was his connection with Richmond?"

"How would I know?"

"Did Richmond do business at Sands' joint, the same as he did at the others?"

"I suppose so. The Silver Cloud isn't much different from any of the others, is it?"

I had to admit that it wasn't. At Bellevue and Rush, I slowed the Pontiac, saying: "Point out Ginny's building to me, Giselle. I'll drive on past, but I want to make sure which one it is."

"It's the one on the right. The red brick with the fence."

I nodded and studied the building as the car crept past. It was a three-story apartment which looked as though it had been remodeled recently. A wide concrete driveway hugged one side, leading to a flat garage at the rear. Though it was nearly one in the p.m., four of the six front apartments had their shades drawn.

"Where is Ginny's apartment?" I asked.

"Third floor. Front."

"When you stopped here this morning, did you park in the driveway or street?"

"In the driveway, as I told you. I knew I wouldn't be there very long, so I thought it would be all right."

"Did Richmond tell you to park there?"

"Well... not exactly."

"Either he did or he didn't."

"He didn't tell me to, not this time, but once before, when I was doing an errand for him, he told me to keep his car off the street as much as possible."

"You weren't using the Caddy then, though, were you?"

"No. He had a Packard, then. This was the first time I'd used the Caddy."

I parked the Pontiac. "Okay, kid. See what you can dig out of Ginny. When you get through, go to your hotel and stay there until you hear from me. What room are you in?"

"Seven-twelve."

"Stick there, understand? I'm depending on you."

"I'll be there." She remained in the car, as though trying to make up her mind about something. "Mr... ah... Forbes," she began, coloring slightly, "I don't know how to say this, but—" She unsnapped her purse suddenly and fumbled with her wallet. "I want you to take this money. You'll be having expenses and.... well, please take it, will you?" She thrust Richmond's check and most of the bills at me.

"Nix, kid, I don't need it," I lied.

"Please! You said you were an investigator—and, after all, it's mostly because of me that you're in trouble. You can call it a retainer, if you like—but please take it."

"I don't need that much—"

"You may. You'll need cash—and I don't want the check. After seeing the blood and... and everything, I couldn't possibly spend the money. You'll be doing me a favor, actually."

"Okay." I plucked the lettuce from her fingers. "In that case, thanks. I'll give you a receipt later. Incidentally, most people call me Rusty." I rubbed the palm of my hand across the short, thick, reddish growth on my head. "The hair, you know."

"I'll remember, Rusty." She unlatched the door, then hesitated again. "I'm sorry about all this—about getting you into it, I mean. It'll come out all right, though. I know it will!"

"Sure," I said.

She slipped out of the car and smiled reassuringly at me. Then, squaring her shoulders, she walked briskly down the street toward Ginny Evans' apartment. I sat there, trying to figure the score. Nothing seemed to add, though.

I got the Pontiac rolling.