Neal Rafferty New Orleans Mystery #1: The Killing Circle (A Neal Rafferty New Orleans Mystery) (19 page)

Timmy asked about the old man and then we farewelled each other for a while before I went over to Garber's store. Lucy McDermott's two-bit blackmail scheme had me more than curious. I wanted to see if she had fleeced Garber of any more money than her three-hundred-dollar-a-week salary. If a job with a good salary was all she wanted, where was her motive for murder? Unless she had wanted more and on Garber's promises had waited around for it for a year, realized he wasn't going to or couldn't cough up, got demented over the fact, and killed him in a moment of fury. I didn't much like the theory, but there didn't seem to be any place to go for another one, and Uncle Roddy was sitting back waiting for her a little too calmly. No telling what that old fox had up his sleeve, though.

Kids on dates and a few fancy ladies and gents moved slowly up and down Royal Street looking in the windows. Across the street from the store a wandering minstrel with sunglasses on plucked at a banjo and sang like he was being tortured. A sparse group of onlookers watched. I pulled out the key Catherine had given me and slid stealthily into the black, fetid shop. I didn't want to turn on any lights yet, so I groped along the bookcases hunting for the hidden doorknob to the back room. I was ready to chuck the no lights idea when my hand hit it. I swung the door back, went in, closed it behind me, groped again for the string to the bare bulb. Then I settled down with the ledger of monies paid out. I started at the beginning. Lucy had been hired for two twenty-five the previous August and three months later had been raised to three hundred. The sum stayed stationary until the Saturday before she had left. I guessed Garber had paid her on Saturdays so that he could get some of his money's worth by at least having her show up for the larger clientele the weekend would bring.

There was certainly nothing outrageous here. I closed the book and put it back on the shelf and ran my eye over the rest of the ledgers. He seemed to have one for everything, money received, money paid, even a separate one labeled money for supplies. Not exactly a proper bookkeeping system. I spotted a spiral binding among the other books and pulled it out. It was a checkbook with three checks to the page and stubs. I riffled through the stubs. Most of them were paid to different London publishers. Then, the same August as Lucy's juncture, five hundred dollars had been paid to L.M. On the memo line was scratched bonus. I kept going. Three months later, November, there was another five-hundred-dollar bonus. The same the next month, a Christmas bonus. The next April Lucy finally hit some pay dirt, a thousand-dollar bonus. But the best was yet to come. One year later, on August 19, Lucy got a ten-thousand-dollar bonus. Garber had been killed on August 19.

“That old fox,” I said out loud. So this was where Rankin's theory that Lucy had indeed not left on Sunday afternoon came from. It made sense in view of the fact that Garber had written her a check for salary on Saturday. Why not write the bonus the same day? But this only confused matters. Why kill a man who had just written you a check for ten grand? That was killing the goose. The same set-up would yield some more gold in a few months. Or had Garber written the check and pulled the final curtain? The whole bit was screwy, but wait calmly for Lucy to turn up I would not. It was Gulf Breeze or bust. Tomorrow.

26

A Bourbon Drinker

A streetcar came fast down St. Charles Avenue. The driver had a sneering grin on his face, the kind you see in a comic strip, and probably with the same lines of drool if I'd been close enough. His foot was planted on the bell and the dings were coming as fast as ants out of a squashed hill. A wisp of a gray-haired lady sat in the rear of the car, one hand clutching the sash of an open window, the other clutching the flowering pill-type hat on her head. Her face was clamped tight with terror, but she sat very straight, holding on to her dignity as hard as she was holding on to her hat., Coming up behind the streetcar in a close second was a dark sedan sprouting arms and heads from its open windows. There were enough kids in it to fill a phone booth for a prize and they were shouting something that sounded like “Go, Sally.”

I pulled into the passenger zone in front of the Euclid and ran to the telephone in the lobby. I dialed the police hot number and reported a runaway streetcar heading for Lee Circle. If I'd called and reported a murder, rape, or robbery, the broad on the other end wouldn't have winced, but she stuttered over this one and made me repeat the message. Back on the street traffic was just beginning to unfreeze as the tip of the express trolley moved out of viewing range.

I circled the comer and parked in the back lot and went up in the elevator muttering what next, bunch of crazy kids, and a few other inanities people mutter to themselves when there's no one around to share a bizarre situation with.

The hallway outside my door seemed abnormally quiet, but it was probably just me taking my own “what next” seriously. I unlocked the door and before I even stepped over the threshold into the small hall to the living room, I knew something was wrong. I stood just inside the door trying to ferret out the difference while the tip of a cold finger moved ever so lightly down my spine. The thought slid across my brain that maybe I was reaching the age at which the events of a day take a toll on the nerves, but it slid right on out again because I knew why the hair on the back of my head was lifting. It was too dark in the apartment. Even with the door slightly ajar I could barely make out the outlines of the furniture. The window shades I usually leave open were sealed shut. A faint odor lingering in the air found its way to my nostrils like maybe the air system was pumping it out, but it wasn't, because the smell was the smell of sweat and it wasn't mine. I pushed the door to and went for my gun. It wasn't there. It was in Catherine Garber's dressing room. I crouched low and inched along the wall to the light switch. I reached up to lift the switch when from above something sharp hit the back of my hand and a hulk of a body was on top of me. That something sharp was a knife that the hulk was trying to stick through my ribs. As we struggled I was vaguely aware of the smell of bourbon coming through the smell of sweat.

What happened next happened very fast and I'm still not sure why I'm not dead. I was trying to get the weight off me without getting stabbed and without getting my neck broken. Right then a dull thud on the crown of my head accompanied a streak of red light. As the floor came up and hit me in the face, a woman shouted, “Stop it right now or I'll shoot!” I lay on the floor, fighting the temptation to stay there and rest in oblivion by twisting enough to flip the weight off my back, but the weight was gone and all I got for my effort was a glancing blow on the shoulder from the opposite wall. The light from the hallway coming in through the wide open door was dazzling. I got myself halfway up, but the floor came with me. After a deep, nauseous breath I tried again. I stumbled out into the hall with no idea in which direction I should give chase. I went back inside the apartment, wincing as the door slammed, and turned on the lights. Catherine stood there pointing a gun at me. The only color in her face was the gray-blue of her eyes. When she realized it was me, the arm with the gun fell to her side. I looked at her a few moments and felt the spot on my head with the springs underneath it. Then I took a long fall into the sofa cushions. I sat and stared at the blood oozing out of a cut on the back of my hand onto my trouser leg.

Catherine's breath caught sharply. “You've been hurt.” She put the gun on the cocktail table.

“It's nothing,” I said, getting up and going past her into the bathroom. I wrapped a hand towel around the wound.

“Don't you have anything better for it than that?” she asked close behind me.

“I suppose so,” I said and wrenched off the towel. I reached for the iodine and bandages in the medicine cabinet. She took them away from me. Rather uncooperatively, I stood there glaring at her.

“Your hand,” she demanded, her voice brittle. I held it out, childlike. As she fixed me up I looked past her into the bedroom, noticing for the first time that every drawer had been dumped.

“Friendly sort of guy,” I said conversationally, in an attempt to relieve my own tension.

“Who was that man, Neal?”

“I don't know, but I wish he'd quit trying to terrorize me and stick around for a chat.”

“Oh, is this a nightly occurrence?” She followed me into the kitchen where I dumped a short snort of Scotch down the hatch and poured two tall ones. The bottle of bourbon was gone. I wondered if that was what he had hit me with.

“I suppose the pattern could have been established if I'd shown up at my office while he was vandalizing it.” I flopped on the sofa and put a drink in front of her. She left it untouched.

“How do you know it was the same person?”

“I'm counting on it. Otherwise there are two, maybe three people playing the same game.”

“Three?”

“Assuming it wasn't an urban guerrilla sniping at me from a rooftop on Madison Street this morning.”

“Have you ever considered a less hazardous form of employment?”

“No. What did he look like, Catherine?”

“I didn't see him.”

“Boy, is he clever Do you mind telling my how he managed that?” She stared at me with slitted eyes. “I'm sorry, Catherine. I'm being a jerk.” I took two enormous swallows of liquor. “I didn't see him either. Look, thanks. I'm glad you were here. I mean, I don't know what he hit me with, but I think I would have been finished . . . Did he hurt you?”

“I thought you'd never ask,” she said. “No, he didn't. He grabbed me from behind and walked me to your closet with a knife at my throat.”

“How did you get in here?”

“The door was open. I heard someone moving around and called your name. I got a muffled ‘Yeah’ that I thought was you, but when I got inside the door, the lights went out and then he grabbed me.”

“Did you think for even one tiny second that it was me?” I asked her like I had only the most fractional hope that she could think I was so tough. The phone started ringing.

Her mouth curled up at the corners. “No, Neal, he was a lot bigger than you are.”

I gave her a dour look as I crossed the room and picked up the receiver into which I growled a muffled “Yeah.” Catherine shook her head and rolled her eyes upward.

“Rafferty? Robert André here. I've been trying to reach you all evening. I thought it might interest you to know of a few strange incidents that have occurred at my house since you left this afternoon.”

“I'm all ears.”

“Not more than half an hour after your departure I received a phone call that could only be classified as rude. A voice demanded, ‘Put Lucy on.’” He imitated a gruff whisper. “Sounds like a cheap hoodlum, doesn't it? Nevertheless, I informed this person that Miss McDermott had not resided here for well over a year, upon which the telephone was slammed back on the hook. Perhaps an hour later the same voice called with the same request. I reminded him that I had already explained why Miss McDermott was unavailable, but that I would be glad to reiterate. This time he said, ‘You'll pay for this,’ before he slammed down the phone. Are you with me, Rafferty?”

“I'm right here, André.”

“Just making sure. I do not like speaking over the telephone. I can never quite believe that the party I'm speaking to is really there. Anyway, I did not give much thought to these calls, as I imagine that you and the police are not the only ones hunting for Lucy. However, later in the evening I went out to dinner and returned to the most squalid mess imaginable.”

“Is anything missing?”

“A bit of small change from the top of my dresser, but if anything else is gone, I haven't noticed so it must be trivial.”

“Check your booze supply.”

“How's that?”

“I believe that the same person left a calling card here not long ago in the form of a knot on my head. He's fond of bourbon.”

“Terribly sorry to hear that, old top. Are you quite all right?”

“Quite. Interesting to know that Lucy has done such an ace job giving everyone the slip.”

“So it is. Well, I'll be off now to check supplies. I grabbed for a bottle so fast when I saw the present state of affairs that I didn't notice if the stock was complete. I will resent it if this intruder imbibed my bourbon on such an unsociable call. So long, Rafferty.”

“Give my regards to your frogs, André.”

“But my dear fellow, I will, I will,” he cried jubilantly and rang off.

I turned to Catherine. “Our friend has apparently been making social calls all evening.”

“To someone you know who keeps frogs for pets?”

I attempted a laugh but it came out a snort. “Yeah. The man who employed Lucy McDermott for twenty years as a companion for his daughter—Robert André.” I watched her face for reaction but there was none. She fidgeted for a moment with the strap on her handbag.

“Don't you want to know why I'm here?” she asked.

“I figured you would probably get around to telling me sooner or later.”

“I brought back your gun,” she said indicating the piece on the table.

“Lucky for me you did.”

She flushed. “I came to apologize to you.” She looked down quickly and started fooling with the strap again. What a woman. One moment so belligerent and outspoken, the next as shy as a budding flower. I didn't say anything. Her fingers stopped working on the strap and she raised her head. “Will you forgive me?”

“What's to forgive? I can understand that you might change your mind at the last minute about wanting to go to bed with me.” It sounded cruel and I might have wanted it to sound cruel. I didn't know.

Her shoulders sagged. “I'm sorry. You must hate me,” she said quietly. I thought she was going to start fooling with the damned strap again, but she didn't. She tried to blend in with the sofa cushions first, then she started fooling with it.

“Stop fiddling with your damn purse and come here.” Her eyes opened very wide and her facial muscles petrified, but she managed to get up slowly, walk around the cocktail table, and stop about two feet away from me. “Catherine, I couldn't possible hate you. What are you so afraid of?”